Songs With Which to View the Solar Eclipse

In honor of the total solar eclipse that is due to occur over parts of the United States on Monday, August 21st -- a few tunes that may enhance your viewing pleasure.  

"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" /
The Walker Brothers

Because when the moon is so aligned, it will obscure the sun totally, with just a rim of light -- the corona -- visible.

Anyone remember the Walker Brothers? A trio from California, none of them really brothers, they found success by moving to the UK in 1965 -- payback for the British Invasion, I guess. Their first hit was Bacharach & David's "Make It Easy On Yourself" (remember the Jerry Butler version?); this single from their 1966 album Portrait got a little more airplay in the States and cracked the top 20.

Okay, so it's really not about celestial events; they're bemoaning the cataclysm of love gone wrong. It's hyperbolic, pop-induced tragedy. Still, I love how they copied that Righteous Brothers white-soul sound perfectly, all echo and back-up choirs and manly harmonies. "The sun ain't gonna shine anymore / The moon ain't gonna rise in the skies / The tears are always clouding your eyes" -- rip those heart-strings!

"Everyone's Gone to the Moon" /
Jonathan King

Got the Eclipse Fever yet? Well, dial things to 1965, when social satire was just starting to creep into British Invasion pop, courtesy of the Beatles and the Kinks. And here was Jonathan King -- a clever and well-connected pop enthusiast, who was at the time still a student at Cambridge -- cracking the charts with this uniquely haunting track, prefiguring a desolate Earth depopulated by lunar resettlement.

While it peaked at #3 in the UK, it only hit #17 in the US, but it was eventually covered by everyone from Nina Simone to Doris Day to the Flaming Lips. This is a song that clearly struck a chord. As a goofy pre-teen in Indianapolis, I was mesmerized by its futuristic message of a society gone off the rails.

There's a sort of trudging quality to the verses, as the observers march past "Streets full of people / All alone / Roads full of houses / Never home." Everything's in a wistful state of arrested development, things just unnervingly out of whack. By the time you get to the line "Sun coming out in / The middle of June," you're primed to think it's all too much -- even though in fact the sun should be coming out in the middle of June. Such is the power of nuance.

Then there's that wistful bridge: "Long time ago / Life had begun / Everyone went to the sun." The sun/moon dichotomy is in full force, with all its Dionysian ramifications.

But in the last verse, the sci-fi implications come out: "Cars full of motors / Colored green / Mouths full of chocolate / Covered cream / Arms that can only / Lift a spoon . . " Yes, this is our future, and it's a scary prospect indeed.

Oh, but of course, the astronomical convergence of the sun and moon has nothing to do with social disruption or moral decline or anything. Right?

Right?

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" /
"God Only Knows"
The Beach Boys

If you haven't seen the Brian Wilson bio-pic Love & Mercy, I beg of you, PLEASE don't miss it. I just saw it last night, and it's sending me into a weekend of Beach Boys nostalgia.

Two brilliant actors -- Paul Dano and John Cusack -- play Brian Wilson at different periods of his life, and both deliver performances of exquisite subtlety, intelligence, and heart-breaking empathy. But what's even more rare about this film is how it gets the magic of musical creation, with scene after scene of Brian in the studio creating Pet Sounds. It geeks out on the "how did they make that sound" details, and somehow even captures the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of Brian's artistic genius.

And in the throes of this Beach Boy weekend, I'm happy to see that post I wrote a couple years ago about these two landmark songs basically already says everything I want to say. 
    
I won't lie, Beatlemania was the reigning passion of my adolescence, but there was an interlude -- think of it as my Lost Weekend -- in the summer of 1966, when my family took a train trip west to Southern California. Our West Coast sojourn was one golden blur of Disneyland, malls, Baskin-Robbins ice cream, and trips to the beach, preferably in the company of my one-year-older cousin Jeff, who had black hair and ice-blue eyes and a strong jaw -- possibly the dreamiest male I had ever met in the flesh. This SoCal infatuation lasted well into the fall -- as I recall, that was also the year the Monkees debuted on TV -- until who knows what Beatles song jarred it loose.

And right in the heart of that Golden Summer came this double-sided hit from the Beach Boys. These guys had always been the sound of summer for me -- even in the Midwest, with a turquoise cement-rimmed swimming pool standing in for the LaJolla cove. (Hey, in the Midwest we needed the Beach Boys even more, to create the illusion of summer.) The Beach Boys brand was a dependable sun-kissed commodity. But in the summer of '66, with these two songs, Brian Wilson leaped light-years into the future, leaving even the Beatles in his dust (presumably that was Brian's goal). Even as a kid, I could instantly tell this was something special and new. Really, listen to these two melodies -- was anything EVER this gorgeous?

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" was the ultimate Good Kids Waiting For Sex song, which hit me right in my adolescent sweet spot -- though I didn't yet have a boyfriend (my hunky cousin being off limits) I yearned and burned in principle. The Beatles were all about sex, but now here were the Beach Boys making chastity sound romantic and cool. Listen to how that plinky electric piano riff at the beginning gets suddenly smacked down with a treMENdous drum whack. This whole song is about trembling on the verge of intercourse, yet the rock-bottom assumption was abstinence. "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older / Then we wouldn't have to wait so long" -- we all knew what they were waiting for.

Cynicism was never the Beach Boys' game, but this song is remarkably earnest even for them. Hand it to Brian Wilson, arrested adolescent par excellence, for dwelling whole-heartedly in this pre-lapsarian scenario. In verse two, he does get a little hungry as he projects into the future: "Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up / In the morning when the day is new / And after having spent the day together / Hold each other close the whole night through." And yet STILL so innocent -- just holding each other, that's all, really! (I love how it slows down, almost groaning with desire, as he sings, "You know it seems the more we talk about it / It only makes it worse to live without it..."). Naturally they will be married ("we could be married") which equals being happy ("then we'd be happy"), and OH, wouldn't it be nice? And then the whole thing dissolves into a masturbatory swirl of overlapping phrases and echoes and harmonies, as never-ending as that passionate long kiss.

Believe me, I spent hours agonizing over which was my favorite side of this single (bought, oh so eagerly, with my hard-earned babysitting money). The B side, though, eventually came up the winner, for one simple reason:  The glorious lead vocal of the most underrated Wilson brother, Carl. I had no idea it was him singing -- if you'd asked me, the only Wilson I was interested in was the beautiful Dennis -- but something about Carl's voice dove straight into my heart.

This song has no dramatic tension at all. It's just a straight-shooting expression of devotion, and nobody could do sincere like Carl. But even more important was his exquisite ear -- who else could have steered that tune through its morphing key changes, vertiginous swoops up and down the scale, the surging swells of volume? The vocal had to be strong to stand up against the densely layered instrumentation of strings, woodwinds, synthesizers, and whatever else obsessive Brian had hauled into the studio. It expresses passion on an operatic scale, and for once pop music had musical tools worthy of that passion.

That opening is so damn noble, like an opera overture, with marching electric piano chords and a French horn fanfare. Enter our white knight, Sir Carl, singing humbly, "I may not always love you" -- hunh? but no, it's a rhetorical trick, as the next line resolves. "But long as there are stars above you / You never need to doubt it / I'll make you so sure about it." The way he throws his voice into that top note "sure" is equaled only by the poignance of the same line in verse two, as he imagines her leaving him and protests -- "So what good would livin' do me?" What good indeed, I ask myself.

That's about it as far as lyrics go -- from there on it's just repeats of "God only knows what I'd be without you," sung as a round, then as a madrigal, then amplified into full orchestral counterpoint, until you're lost in the dizzying tapestry of aural textures. I find myself singing along with one voice, then another; sometimes the wave breaks on "what," other times on "without," but it never resolves, never ends, a continuous spiral of sound. He's fighting through a wilderness, with only his steadfast love to guide him. It's amazing how ego-less this is -- he's not bragging about his passion, simply stating, over and over, with dogged humility, that he'd be nothing without her. Simple as that.

Raised on songs like this, is it any wonder that we who were girls in 1966 found real-world adult love baffling?

“When A Man Loves a Woman” /
Percy Sledge

Another icon is gone. The great soul singer Percy Sledge died yesterday, after a long struggle with liver cancer.  R.I. P.

 

Ever since this song came out in 1966, I don't think it ever went out of rotation on radio playlists.  Even pre-teen me, head-over-heels in love with British beat bands, stopped whatever I was doing when this record came on.  I remember seeing Sledge sing it on Hullaballoo or Shindig or one of those shows, pouring his heart out on stage. I was way too young to have any idea what he was singing about, but I knew it was true.

 

This is the ultimate slow dance, slouching and grinding from beat to beat, each chord shift groaning toward resolution. I remember this song coming on during school dances – one round of dancing this song, and you practically felt knocked up. (Usually I’d wimp out and flee the dance floor.)

 

 

 

You have to go back to the 60s to find a song that believes in love like this song does. Not sweet and innocent love, not pure and noble love -- no, it's torment and sexual obsession he's singing about. The very first notes announce Major Emotion -- those blaring horns, the resonant organ, the ominous bass -- and then comes Percy Sledge's anguished vocal, elevating lust to epic heights. 

 

“When a ma-an loves a woman,” Sledge trumpets at the outset, flinging his voice into those high notes, pitched just over the key’s octave note. He's testifying, all right, testifying to the glory of love.  

But is love glorious?  Right away things start to disintegrate, slip-sliding down the scale, as he stuffs in the details – “Can't keep his mind on nothing else / He'll trade the world / For the good thing he's found.” The crap that besets this man seems inevitable (in other verses he turns his back on his best friend, spends his very last dime, sleeps out in the rain); but somehow all of it means nothing next to the fact that he’s loving with his whole heart. The stately, almost lazy tempo takes this all in stride; it’s the way of the world, and eternal as the pyramids.

For the first three verses it’s all theoretical; in verse four he confesses that he’s singing from his own experience: “Well, this man loves a woman / I gave you everything I had / Tryin' to hold on to your precious love / Baby, please don't treat me bad.” He’s not accusing her, not exactly, but he does have a sickening sense that he’s going to get the shaft.

He goes back to the third person, but it’s pretty clear he’s raging about his own situation: “She can bring him such misery / If she plays him for a fool / He's the last one to know / Lovin' eyes can't ever see.” Is she cheating on him? Or, in the final verse, is he the one cheating: “When a man loves a woman / He can do no wrong / He can never own some other girl.” We don’t know; probably even he doesn’t know – that’s how muddled up you get when you’re in love.

Whatever’s going on, there’s pain and heartache here, that’s for sure. But as Percy Sledge sings it, there’s not one minute of blame or regret. He knew coming in that the path of true love wouldn’t be smooth – but it’s still the most glorious thing in the world. And if you can’t get that, then you don’t deserve to be in love.

52 GIRLS

"Georgy Girl" / The Seekers

Anyone remember this movie?  1966, British, in arty black and white -- it was part of that brief new wave of British filmmaking that began with the gritty realism of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and ended with the absurdism of If . . . . My favorite era of filmmaking, hands down.

But this one in particular had a story that really spoke to me. Georgy/Georgina, played by Vanessa Redgrave's kid sister Lynn, is an impulsive, cheerful, slightly overweight girl, harboring a mad crush on the gorgeous boyfriend (Alan Bates) of her icy, elegantly beautiful roommate (Charlotte Rampling). Just guess which character I identified with.

With its perky whistling motif, "Georgy Girl" sounds more like cabaret, or at least folk music, than backbeat rock & roll. The Seekers (note: NOT the Searchers) weren't British but Australian -- the first Aussies, in fact, to score Top 5 hits in the US, UK, and Australia -- and they clearly identified as folkies. The songwriter was Dusty Springfield's brother Tom, her old partner from the folk trio the Springfields, who had also written the Seekers' earlier acoustic hits, "I'll Never Find Another You" and "A World Of Our Own." (The Seekers' lead singer, Judith Durham, even sounded like a Dusty Springfield, minus the Motown influence.)  Yet the times they were a-changing, and this song mixes things up with a brisker, boppier, tempo, and lyrics by musical comedy actor Jim Dale. 

 

Despite its plucky melody, we all knew this was a desperately sad song. Addressed to Georgy by an omniscient narrator, the song goes to the heart of her paradoxical nature: "Hey there, Georgy Girl / Swingin' down the street so fancy free / Nobody you meet could ever see the loneliness there / Inside you." It's almost as if this is her shrink singing, the close folk harmonies adding a sort of clinical detachment. Men pass her by, unattracted by her frumpy appearance; we're still in pre-Swinging London when the bohemian look was not In. Yet in that wistful bridge, Durham's voice rings out solo, noting Georgy's secret hunger for love: "You're always window shopping / But never stopping to buy / So shed those dowdy feathers and fly! / A little bit." As a clumsy pre-teen, I took that directive very much to heart.

Teetering on the cusp of the Be Yourself groovy 1960s, in the chorus the singers become cheerleaders urging Georgy to self-actualization -- "Hey there, Georgy girl / There's another Georgy deep inside / Bring out all the love you hide / And, oh, what a change there'd be / The world would see / A new Georgy girl." In verse two Durham exhorts her: "Don't be so scared of changing / And rearranging yourself / It's time for jumping down from the shelf / A little bit." I love how they tack on those last short phrases -- "inside you," "a little bit" -- knowing that Georgy is only ready for baby steps toward Finding Herself.

This song was so inspiring, so heartening to me, that I pretty much refused to acknowledge that there was another set of lyrics for the end credits:

 

 

Wait -- how did Georgy get from lovable eccentric to a selfish gold-digger? Sorry, you'll just have to see the movie. . . .  

 

27 DOWN, 25 TO GO

"Black Is Black" / Los Bravos

Summer of '66, this song was a constant presence on Indianapolis' WIFE-AM ("Home of the Good Guys"!). With my ear glued to that radio, I knew what it was instantly, from the very first bass notes. That tripping bass line, the feverish organ, the soulful horn section -- it sounded totally Stax to me. Just the right steaminess, just the right racing pulse for a hit summer record.

Only years later did someone -- a Spaniard, in fact -- inform me that this band was from Spain. You'd think he'd know, but even so I had to look it up to be sure, that's how surprising this was. I mean, I knew there were rock groups in European countries doing spot-on covers of the big rock hits of the day -- but to record an original song that would pop to the top of the UK (#2) and US (#4) charts? No European bands had hit records, not until Abba. I'll bet that the Good Guys on WIFE didn't know it themselves -- otherwise it would have come up time and again in their inane between-songs chatter.



After finding this out, I listened again, with new ears. And it's still amazing to me. The lead singer, Mike Kogel, was the one member of the group who wasn't Spanish, but even stranger, he was German, which shoots to hell my theory that this song merely applied Latin heat to the rock 'n' roll formula. But Kogel's voice is a pitch-perfect copy of Gene Pitney -- so good, that apparently Pitney himself went back to check his records, puzzled that he couldn't remember recording it. The echo effects, the whining urgency, the sliding yelps -- play this record for someone who's never heard and see if they don't guess it's Gene Pitney.

To increase the international profile, the song was written by an English team, Tony Hayes, Michelle Grainger, and Steve Wadey. Los Bravos, who sang pretty much exclusively in English, just had to learn the lyrics, not write them. And the lyrics aren't exactly Shakespeare. "Black is black / I want my baby back" (the Johnny Hallyday version in France changed that to "noir c'est noir," which doesn't have quite the same percussive kick). The color imagery carries on: "Gray is gray / Since she went away, oh no, / What can I do? / 'Cause I-I-I-I-I, I'm feelin' blue." The cleverness goes downhill in later verses ("If I had my way / She'd be back today," "I can't choose / It's too much to lose," and the from-hunger last verse, "Bad is bad / This fella is so sad.") No wonder we never hear of this songwriting team again.

Apparently, the BBC ignored this obscure track by a foreign band; it wasn't until pirate radio latched onto it that the record became a hit. (Yay for pirate radio!). With the driving beat and the Memphis-style arrangement, this was catnip to those pirate DJs. And once it had become a hit in the UK, getting tons of US airplay was no problem. British listeners may have loved it because it sounded American, but as far as American listeners were concerned, it just sounded like music -- and good music indeed.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 1-5

AND THE WINNER IS . . .

[ . . . drum roll, please!]

Well, I told you it would be subjective. These are not the top five singles of all time on Rolling Stones' list, or Mojo's list, or any other list put together by rock snobs or music pundits. I haven't jiggered it to showcase my favorite bands (look, no Kinks! no Nick Lowe!) or to make a political statement or to show off my superior taste. You'll notice I've already written about all of these songs -- BUT OF COURSE!! These are simply the five singles that knocked me hardest off my feet in the course of my life.

And yeah, they're all from the 1960s, because that was the decade that made me the music fan I am. Or more importantly, that made me the person I am. Which is really what the music's all about, isn't it?

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

1. "The Letter" / The Box Tops (1967)
I hear those knocking lead-in drum beats, and I am GONE. When all is said and done, the essence of rock and roll is nothing more or less than hormonal teenage cravings, and nobody has ever expressed that randy yearning better than an absurdly young Alex Chilton, fronting this seminal Memphis pop group.



2. "Happy Together" / The Turtles (1967)
They were hardly one-hit wonders, but even the Turtles never again hit such a sweet spot, a magical convergence of lilting melody, playful rhythms, and intimate vocals that will forever be the soundtrack of my eighth-grade nirvana.



3. "She's Not There" / The Zombies (1964)
The first 45 I ever owned -- if only my taste had always been this impeccable!



4. "If I Fell" / "And I Love Her" / The Beatles (1964)
Desperately in love with the Beatles -- okay, okay, in love with Paul McCartney, who was in 1964 the most beautiful man on the planet -- of course I had both of these tracks on the Hard Day's Night album, the first LP I ever owned. But I simply had to buy the single too, so smitten was I with this matched set of John/Paul declarations of love.

5. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" / "God Only Knows" / The Beach Boys (1966)
Honestly, I wasn't a Beach Boys fan, not really. And by 1966, I already had the Beatles to keep me warm -- what did I need with these clean-cut California boys in their squaresville striped shirts? But then they unleashed this pair of gloriously inventive tracks, back and front of one 7-inch vinyl masterpiece, and set a new gold standard for rock-pop brilliance.

And now, YOU tell ME -- what would your #1 be?

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 6-10

Still stuck in the 60s -- not that I'm complaining. Looking over today's list, I realize that these songs all tend towards the dark-and-brooding end of the spectrum. When I first heard them, I had no idea why they moved me so. But over the years, as I learned more of life, these are songs that have continually deepened for me. They have more than stood the test of time.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

6. "The House of the Rising Sun" / The Animals (1964)
I'll admit it, in 1964 I wasn't ready to appreciate this haunting, dangerous bit of music. Hey, I was only a grade-school kid, what would you expect? But even then I made a mental note to store it away for later. I must have known someday it would all make deep, dark, sinful sense.

7. "Tired of Waiting For You" / The Kinks (1965)
Why, what a surprise! Again I have room to expound at large on a Kinks song -- this primitive early track, my personal favorite of all those 1964-65 breakthrough Kinks singles. Of course "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" were astonishing and new -- I remember hearing them on the radio and being deeply disturbed. But personally? This February 1965 hit was the one that stole my heart. (It wasn't just me -- this song is tied with "Come Dancing" as the Kinks' highest-charting US single ever.) No other song, except maybe the Beatles' "I'm So Tired," has so perfectly captured the feeling of being bone-weary and fed up to here. When "I'm So Tired" came out, however, we were all hip to the knowledge that it referred to drugs. "Tired of Waiting" belongs to an earlier, more innocent era -- it's all about emotional exhaustion, with just a hint of post-masturbatory letdown. Not that I would have known that in 1965, but -- well, I have to assume something in its oozing chord changes subliminally warned me there was (shhhhh) S-E-X involved. Listen to the groaning edge of Ray Davies' vocal as he complains, "I'm so tired / Tired of waiting / Tired of waiting for you!" I love the lapidary effect of that, how each line builds on the previous one, dazedly adding the next word or phrase to that long sinuous melodic line, while the rhythm moves fitfully in starts and stops. We back up for a little character establishment: "I was a lonely soul / I had nobody till I met you" (the woefulness of Ray's vocal here cracks me up.) The rhythm seems aimless, relaxed, like freeform jazz -- until he ups the ante with a key change: "But you / Keep-a me waiting / All of the time / What can I do?" You can just hear the frustration underlying those surging short phrases, like a ticking time bomb. Now comes the genius part: a swift-kick major key change for the bridge, and the mellow assertion, "It's your life / And you can do what you want." (Note how the key darkens into minor on "life." Do we really believe that he's just going to step aside?) A quick scuffle of drums and guitar, and then Ray -- such a feminist, so enlightened! -- loftily repeats, "Do what you want," before diving fiercely back into his own agony: "But please don't keep-a me waiting!" The guitar churns, drums whack, volume builds, chords shift, and he urgently repeats, "Please don't keep me waiting, 'cos I'm / So tired," and we relapse into his listless cycle of fatigue. All of those early Kinks signature songs were about being run ragged by obsession: the inescapable clutches of "You Really Got Me," the 24/7 lust of "All Day and All of the Night," the begging for release of "Set Me Free." By the time he'd got to "Tired of Waiting," however, I sense that Ray Davies himself was feeling strung out and worn out. He's not even beginning for release anymore, just staggering through a limbo of unslaked desire. Because there's no question about it: We all knew what the singer was waiting for. I was only twelve years old and I knew. It terrified me. And yet -- god help me -- I wanted more.

8. "Summer in the City" (1967)
The antithesis to everything I loved about the Spoonful's rollicking jug band sound, "Summer in the City" was like a gritty slap upside the head. Admit it: whenever this track comes on, don't you brace yourself for the blackout?

9. "Walk Away Renee" / The Left Banke (1966)
This is what pop does best -- distill love into two-and-a-half minutes of longing and heartache.

10. "Along Comes Mary" / The Association (1968)
Edgy, wordy, and faintly mysterious, this quintessentially West Coast track teased me with its coded references to a much cooler lifestyle than anything this junior-high kid had ever known.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 16-20

This high on the list, we should have nothing but Major Artists, right? Wrong. Beatles, yes, Beach Boys yes, but those other three? Well, this is MY list, and I'm happy to tell you why those three belong so near the top. For one thing, notice their distinctive intros -- you could easily name that tune in four beats or less. That may not be the only mark of a great single, but it's a pretty persuasive start.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

16. "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" / The Beatles (1967)
Hard to imagine that the Beatles captured this much genius on one seven-inch disc of plastic. Shrewdly, they marketed this as a double-A single -- there was the John side and there was the Paul side, and they were as different as could be.

17. "Good Vibrations" / The Beach Boys (1966)
This record was released the week I turned thirteen. You remember what it feels like to be thirteen: Everything inside you and around you is changing; you don't know who or why or where you are. And suddenly here was this song that totally captured that shape-shifting state of mind -- not only that, it made it seem mysterious, exciting, and cool. "Good Vibrations" is a truly astonishing track, a perfect little "pocket symphony." It starts out with Carl's sweet anxious tenor, soon joined by Brian's falsetto, on the ballad-like verse. (Any time a song starts out with Carl Wilson singing, you know I'll love it.) Then we switch into a more traditional Beach Boys sound for the chorus, Mike Love booming in his low voice, "I'm picking up good vibrations / She's givin' me excitation," while the others chant "um bop bop good vibrations" in their trademark close harmonies. But what is that whiny space-age sound floating over their voices? I had never heard a theremin before, but it was a genius move to throw it into the mix, adding an other-worldly dimension to this song about finding your soul mate. And just when you think you've got the pattern -- verse, chorus, verse, chorus -- after the second chorus the song suddenly transmogrifies, each "good good GOOD" rising in pitch and volume, chords shifting upward until it achieves lift-off. There's a jangly little interlude, a meteor shower of overlapping vocals, and at last we hit cruise altitude in the bridge, with a mellow organ and creamy call-and-response vocals -- "got to keep those good vibrations a-happening with her" -- all soft rock, L.A. style. But wait! Just when you least expect it, we break on through to the other side, with that magnificent wall of sound: "AAHHHHHHH!" Then we go into warp drive, tempo faster, chords shifting, voices crossing, drums jingling -- and finally burst into a new galaxy entirely, with a shimmering cascade of vocals in counterpoint, a rock madrigal, with nothing but a tambourine for accompaniment. By the time the theremin whizzes in again, like a rocketship to bear us away for the fadeout -- WHEW! I suppose you're gonna tell me now that the song was meant to replicate a drug trip, or the act of intercourse (that orgasmic AAHHHHHH!!). But what did I know at the time? I was only thirteen. And YET it spoke to me, in an ecstatic musical language all its own. It certainly wasn't the words ("She goes with me to a blossom world"?) Mike Love lyrics never did the trick for me. But who cares?

18. "I'm a Believer" / The Monkees (1966)
One day one of my older brother's friends -- maybe it was Skip Keene -- told me that the Monkees were fakes. "They don't even play their own instruments!" he sneered. I knew he was only saying it because he knew how much I loved Davy Jones. But still, it made me cry because I loved the Monkees, and I'm not afraid to admit it. (Click here for my "Last Train to Clarksville" squeal of fangirl devotion.) Glued to that television set every week, I knew all their songs, but like everyone else I was swept up in the triumphant success of "I'm a Believer" -- their great #1 hit, and the US's top-selling record for 1967 (click on the 1967 label to the right to see what other amazing songs it beat out). Take THAT you scoffers! Though the Monkees had only released their first album in September 1966 -- timed to coincide with the debut of their TV series -- they were such an instant hit that a second album was rushed out in December 1966. Compared to their carefully assembled first album The Monkees (a surprisingly fine LP), More of the Monkees was, er, kinda spotty. The Monkees themselves were so busy filming, music director Don Kirshner only had them drop by the studio to record vocals; the compelling guitar hook here was played by the song's composer, none other than Neil Diamond, and other session musicians did the rest. (I'd love to know who contributed that distinctive calliope organ riff.) Still, there were some excellent tracks on the LP -- not only this but also its B-side, "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" -- and it wasn't just Monkeemania that made this single a hit. It fairly bursts with youthful high spirits, and that toe-tapping beat is irresistible. One of the Monkees' first acts of rebellion was to override Kirshner's choice of Davy Jones as the band's main lead vocalist; listening to this, even I have to admit that Mickey Dolenz was the right man for the job. There's something boyish and tentative about his voice at first, as he recounts, "I thought love was only true in fairy tales / Meant for someone else but not for me." But he gathers intensity in the chorus, declaring, "Then I saw her face / Now I'm a believer! / Not a trace / Of doubt in my mind." He's a convert, testifying and bearing witness for all he's worth, building to a groan of slaked lust: "I'm in love, Ummmmm! / I'm a believer, I couldn't leave her / If I tried." As the song spun off in its own orbit with the fadeout, Mickey scatting away, we legions of Monkee fans were like the children of Hamelin town -- ready to follow that pied piper anywhere.

19. "Dancing Queen" / ABBA (1976)
I defy ye, rock snobs! (Yes even you, Ray Davies, making fun of ABBA at your concert last Saturday night. . . what have you got against Sweden these days?) I refuse to apologize for loving ABBA. At the height of ABBA's fame, I was living in the UK, and although I had missed the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, when "Waterloo" swept the top prize, most of my English friends were confirmed ABBA addicts, and I quickly caught the bug. In 1976 this hit single was an absolutely essential part of every night out at the disco. When I say disco, I don't mean Studio 54 -- I mean some drafty little community centre in a small town on the Kent coast, with watery drinks and a dodgy PA system and warps in the lino floor. But when "Dancing Queen" came on, a cry would go up, and the dance floor filled in an instant. You immediately know it's "Dancing Queen" from that long downward keyboard glissando, followed by a sheer wall of ahhh'ed vocals and synthesizers -- production values to the max -- punctuated with Liberace-style hammered piano chords. Then in swoop the girls, wasting no time; they START with that frantically emotive chorus: "Yooo-OU can dance, yooo-OU can ji-ive / Having the time of your life / See that girl, watch that scene / Digging the dancing queen." The mix of Agnetha and Frida's voices always sends a shiver up my spine, and recently I learned why: Their voices were recorded at slightly different speeds, then one was sped up, to create a whisper of dissonance when they were played together. That gives their doubled vocals a hard edge, and a melancholy that always seems to me to be peculiarly Scandinavian. Gently rocking verses set the nightclub scene (memorable phrases: "Friday night and the lights are low . . . Anybody could be that guy / Night is young and the music's [beat] hi-igh. . .") -- just a beguiling hint of scuzziness. Then it's back to the chorus to celebrate our heroine: "Dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen (ahh ooooh) / Dancing queen, feel the beat of the tambourine (yea-ahh)." (Do I hear an echo of the Beatles in that "only seventeen" line?) The whole thing dances on the cusp of moral ambiguity, innocence and depravity held in the balance. Is the "queen" a woman, a drag queen, or the female monarch of Sweden? IRRELEVANT, I tell you! It's all about that crisp, taut dance beat, and how it can take over your cerebral cortex for three minutes and 52 seconds. (Check out this link to the invaluable Songfacts site to sample critical opinion.) If you can sit in your chair while this thing's playing, I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU.

20. "96 Tears" / ? and the Mysterians (1966)
Now THIS is what I think of when I think of a radio hit classic -- 2:57 of swampy fun, with an organ riff you cannot get out of your head.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 26-30

Looking at today's list, I'm struck by one similarity -- when each of these songs hit the airwaves, they sounded so new, so original, even so bizarre. These aren't necessarily artists I've clasped to my inmost heart of hearts -- they're not My Major Artists -- but I can't deny they are all brilliant. As evidence, I give you these specific singles, each of which galvanized a certain moment in my life in some weird and wonderful way.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

26. "Space Oddity" / David Bowie (1969)
Always ahead of the curve, Bowie was. The thing was, he was so damn clever, such a showman -- you could never have a fangirl crush on a guy this elusive, but you could certainly dwell within his fantasy worlds.

27. "Walk on the Wild Side" / Lou Reed (1972)
That same first trip to Europe, summer 1973: Leaving London and "Space Oddity" behind, my college friend Debbie and I headed for the Continent, armed with our Eurail passes and ready to see the "Wild World" that Cat Stevens had warned us about. HA! From predatory lechers in Italy to drug-infested hostels in Amsterdam, culminating in a student riot one afternoon in Paris -- store windows shattered, overturned cars set on fire, masses of gendarmes with nightsticks -- it was WAY more than we expected. Forget Cat Stevens; what we needed was Lou Reed. (Even better, Lou Reed as produced by David Bowie -- though it was years before I learned that connection.) We kept hearing this song in shops and cafes, instantly recognizable from that low, funky, boozy bassline. Bit by bit, we pieced together the gallery of misfits Lou described in his gravelly croak. We guessed that if we were Warhol insiders, we'd have recognized them -- Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Jackie, and (our favorite) "Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the street / Looking for soul food and a place to eat." But whereas we'd felt we HAD to decode "American Pie," with "Walk On the Wild Side" it just didn't matter. We were venturing out of our comfort zone for the first time in our sheltered lives, and it was daring to sing along to a song that mentioned giving head and taking Valium -- or, most shocking of all, that referred to "colored girls," when we'd been schooled for years to say "black women." But hey, we didn't want to change genders or score drugs or become prostitutes. We just wanted to shuffle along those cobbled European streets to an American rhythm, singing along with the colored girls -- "Doo doo-doo doo de-doo-doo doo doo de-doo doo de-doo-doo doo dooooo." That hot sax solo, the surge of gospel choir -- it was the sound of America, like an anchor, keeping us tethered.

28. "Sweet Dreams / The Eurythmics (1983)
Ten years later, another song that dominated the airwaves, this time -- it being the 80s -- driven along by an obsessively repeated synthesizer riff. You KNOW that riff. It was mechanized, soulless, and yet it functioned perfectly as a bass line (Dave Stewart in fact invented the riff by playing a bass line backwards), stalking the underbelly of the song. Melody? Not much of that, just Annie Lennox's hard mannish voice toggling between the notes of a minor-key chord. "Sweet dreams are made of this / Who am I to disagree? / Travel the world and the seven seas / Everybody's looking for something" -- a scenario of hope and aspiration, turned to despair by that relentless automaton beat. A few whip-slap drum beats, and Annie's ravished wail floating in the background -- it was dark, haunting, anything but sweet. Even in the bridge, when Annie delivers advice ("Keep your head up, movin' on / Hold your head up, movin' on" -- is that Dave or just Annie's low voice on the call-and-response?), it's hardly cheery; I picture robots on an assembly line, hustled heartlessly along. Then there were the S&M overtones -- lines like "Some of them want to abuse you / Some of them want to be abused" -- even if it wasn't promoting kinky sex, it certainly held out a pessimistic view of human relationships. But it was a killer dance track, and a mesmerizing video (gorgeous androgynous Annie, with short red hair and a man's dark suit). And in the Eighties, that was what mattered. Compared to the frantic sex-drive and cheesy emotion of most disco tracks, the taut tension and jaded world-view of "Sweet Dreams" were downright bracing. With Annie in charge, the New Wavers could take over the dance floor for four minutes at least -- that was something.

29. "Layla" / Derek and the Dominos (1970)
Was Clapton God? I never thought so, until this song began to make me wonder.

30. "Mr. Dieingly Sad" / The Critters (1966)
Maybe producing a pop song this perfect required that this band should afterward simply disappear. . .

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 56-60

For better or worse, my musical tastes were born out of the British Invasion, so it's no surprise I'm hitting a run of mid-60s English rock in the heart of my list -- and no surprise that I've already written about so many of today's songs. Some of these bands belong to that elite group of artists who've nabbed more than one spot on my list (guess which); others are more in the category of one-hit wonders, but as my write-ups explain, don't dismiss them so quickly.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

56. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" / The Animals (1965)
The last great Animals single to be recorded with Alan Price on organ -- and oh, it's a sizzler.

57. "Sunshine Superman" / Donovan (1966)
So many great Donovan tracks, it was hard to choose just one. (I'm prepared now for the onslaught of comments telling me which Donovan tracks you thought were better.) But in the end I had to go for "Sunshine Superman" because it encompasses everything we loved him for -- folkie innocence, hippie psychedelia, and a nifty world music groove.

58. "Time of the Season" / The Zombies (1969)
Thank goodness I've got links for the rest of today's songs -- that leaves me plenty of room to write about this song. As many of you know, I go weak in the knees whenever I think about the Zombies. They weren't around very long -- in fact they broke up a full year before this single was released. Fun facts to know and tell: Wikipedia tells me that it was rock & roll zelig Al Kooper, who'd recently become an A&R exec at Columbia Records, that pushed to lift this track from their 1968 farewell album Odessey and Oracle and put it out as a 45. How cruelly ironic, then, that it turned out to be their best-selling single ever, at least in the U.S. (The Zombies were one British Invasion band that didn't really catch on over here, though I can say I was a Zombies fan from the get-go.)
Talk about the Spookiness Quotient -- this song is simply drenched with it. Some songs just deserve to be heard in the dark, late at night, and this is one of them. That mysterously tip-toeing bass line, the descending triplet on the organ, strange little percussion accents like bumps in the night -- dig that one repeated tic, a lightning-swift combo of block clap, cymbal, and gasp (sounds like somebody's being whipped down in the dungeon). Above all, it's Colin Blunstone's other-worldly voice, doubled and echoed until it sounds like it's coming from some parallel dimension. And on the second verse, all those overlapping voices, falsettos and booming baritones, coming out of the woodwork like a spirits at a seance: "What's your name? (What's your name?) / Who's your daddy? (Who's your daddy?)/ (HE RICH) Is he rich like me-ee? / Has he taken (Has he taken) / any time (any time) / (TO SHOW) To show you what you need to live?" It's like an allusive, coded conversation, something heard through a wall maybe; we have no idea what they're talking about. In the bridge, the imaginary voices take the lead: "(Tell it to me slowly!) / Tell you what?/ (I really want to know). . . " Then they all chime in together in thick clotted sacral harmonies for the refrain: "It's the time / For the see-ea-son for loving," ending on a VERY disturbing chord. After which, off goes Rod Argent's lunatic, inspired organ solo -- I've got to think that Al Kooper was grooving on that. The baroque textures of this song tap into so many dark psychological states -- it makes me think of time travel, of drug trips, of haunted houses, of black magic, of kinky sex, of mad wives locked in the attic, of evil clowns and malevolent ventriloquist's dummies coming to life. You know, like The Twilight Zone on acid, with a script by Ray Bradbury, directed by David Lynch, starring Jeremy Irons and Amanda Plummer. Gothic and stylish, a pure class act.

59. "Concrete and Clay" / Unit 4 + 2 (1966)
Ah, just listen to that cowbell intro. A fluky hit, catapulted from obscurity by pirate radio stations (raise your hand if you saw the film Pirate Radio, a.k.a. The Boat That Rocked), this irresistible little swinger was best listened to on a transistor radio snuggled underneath your pillow. Few songs transport me back as totally as this one does.

60. "A World Without Love" / Peter & Gordon (1964)
The fact that this song was written by Paul McCartney is one-hundred-percent beside the point. I adored Peter Asher, and the heavenly harmonies on this record were pop perfection.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 61-65

By some great serendipity, here in the early 60s of my list comes a cluster of five mid-60s classics from the British Invasion. Major artists? Maybe not (I'd make an exception for Georgie Fame, but only the basis of his later jazz albums). But major British Invasion hits? Indeed they are.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

61. "To Sir With Love" / Lulu (1967)
I'll admit, my love for this song is inextricable from my love for the film it appeared in, an Inspiring Teacher drama starring Sidney Poitier, Suzy Kendall, and teenaged Lulu herself. I still cry whenever I see it; even this clip makes my eyes well up. While Lulu had been a star in the UK ever since she was 15, belting out a hit version of the Isley Brothers' "Shout," this was the song that really broke her into the U.S. market. In the movie, she sings it in the closing scene, when a pack of troubled urban secondary-schoolers gather to thank the teacher (Poitier, natch) who helped them turn their lives around. (Bonus points if you recognize the band playing in the first part of that clip as the Mindbenders.) For a natural diva like Lulu, there was plenty of drama to play with in those lyrics by Don Black (a movie-theme specialist, who also wrote "Born Free") -- "Those schoolgirl days / Of telling tales and biting nails are gone" or "If you wanted the sky I would / Write across the sky in letters / That would soar a thousand feet high." But perhaps more important was that emotive melody, written by Mark London, the husband of Lulu's longtime manager Marion Massey. London knew exactly how to showcase their girl's brassy, rich contralto -- octave leaps, swift swoops up and down the scale, long sustained notes packed with crescendo and vibrato, heartfelt warbles of melisma. And Lulu, god love her, made it all sound so easy, effortless, spontaneous. "But how can you thank someone / Who has taken you from crayons to perfume?" THIS is how you do it.

62. "Georgy Girl" / The Seekers (1966)
Another movie theme song, from another brilliant 60s British movie -- slightly earlier, in arty black-and-white. (Have I ever mentioned that this is my #1 favorite era in cinema?) Another girl singer, too -- Judith Durham -- with a voice that nearly rivaled Dusty Springfield for clear hard power. Back then, when I played this 45 constantly on the fold-up stereo in our basement rec room, I never noticed that this song was in fact written by Dusty's brother Tom Springfield, her old partner from the folk trio the Springfields. Tom also wrote the Seekers' earlier hits, "I'll Never Find Another You" and "A World Of Our Own" (I'd love to know Dusty's reaction to having her brother feed hits to Judith Durham); for the lyrics on "Georgy Girl," he turned to musical comedy actor Jim Dale. With its perky whistling motif, "Georgy Girl" sounds more like cabaret, or at least folk music, than backbeat rock 7 roll. The Seekers weren't British but Australian -- the first Aussies, in fact, to score Top 5 hits in the US, UK, and Australia -- and like many people, I often confused them with the Searchers. In general I think the Searchers were a much better band, but this one single gets me more than anything the Searchers ever did. Maybe that's because I so loved the movie, with Lynn Redgrave playing an impulsive, cheerful, slightly overweight girl harboring a mad crush on the gorgeous boyfriend (Alan Bates) of her icy roommate (Charlotte Rampling). Now there was a movie I could identify with. Despite its plucky melody, we all knew this was a desperately sad song. "You're always window shopping / But never stopping to buy / So shed those dowdy feathers and fly! / A little bit" -- what an anthem to grow up with.

63. "A Summer Song" / Chad & Jeremy (1964)
It really does blow my mind that in the course of one year -- 1964 -- I could have so many crushes on different British musicians. Oh, Chad, with your golden mop and black-framed glasses . . .

64. "Michelle" / David and Jonathan (1967)
Truly, this is not a shameless way to sneak yet another Paul McCartney song on here. I honestly did love David and Jonathan's cover of "Michelle," and besides, the Beatles didn't release this one as a single. In case your memory of this has been obliterated forever by the Beatles' album version (I know mine has), here's a video:



Okay, okay, OKAY, it's not better than the Beatles' recording. It clips along a little faster, and David and Jonathan's voices are smooth and banal compared to Paul's. They weren't really singers, after all; they weren't even named David and Jonathan (corny Bible reference), but songwriters Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook, who also wrote "You've Got Your Troubles" for the Fortunes. Rog and Rog teamed up here with George Martin to help the Beatles extend their brand, maintaining their full frontal assault on the record charts. Martin added background oohs and a touch of strings, transposed Paul's acoustic finger-picking to what sounds like a harmonium, and had Rog and Rog harmonize the whole way through. It's just slightly slicker than the Beatles track -- but for a genius track like "Michelle," that slickness is no improvement. On the other hand, you'd never know that if you hadn't heard the Beatles' version yet, which I hadn't when this first hit the airwaves. And I have to say, it does feels more Parisian -- I could almost hear accordions in there, and visualize Apache dancers in a smoky Left Bank cafe. McCartney, always keen to score points for sophistication, was striving for that French bohemian sound, which is why he asked his pal Ivan Vaughn's wife Jan to supply a few French phrases -- "Michelle, ma belle, sont les mots qui font tres bien ensemble." Paul hadn't a clue what it meant. I'd just started studying French in grade school, though, and it was lovely to imagine that Paul was sending me secret messages in "our" second language. The fact that he'd had to employ David and Jonathan to slip that message to me made no difference at all.

65. "Yeh Yeh" / Georgie Fame (1965)
Sorry, Mr Lennie, but you do not know whereof you speak. It should be apparent by now that I have a sneaking affection for jazz-inflected rock, and here's the guy who led me to it.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 71-75

I realize that most of these are "transition" songs -- singles that crept into my heart during down times when my big music manias (British Invasion, New Wave) had spent themselves. Indianapolis was more of a Motown city than you might expect, so it was inevitable that some soul classics would land here, as much a part of my musical DNA as the British beat stuff is. Jump from there to the 1980s to find an oddball pair of MTV-enhanced songs, among the last singles I ever owned in the Decade That Killed Rock Music.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

71. "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" / Bill Withers (1971)
By 1971, Motown fare already felt too slick -- R&B and rock were moving closer and closer to each other, and they didn't need to be kept in separate boxes anymore. When I hear Bill Withers' debut hit, though, it still feels like a real sea change to me. I was a senior in high school, a founding member of our school's crunchy-granola Human Relations Forum; we thrilled to this song, believing that Sam Cooke's longed-for change was finally gonna come. Withers' voice had a creased and weathered quality so different from the mellifluencies of Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson; this song was produced by Stax mainstay Booker T (released on Sussex Records), but the personnel also included rockers like Steven Stills on guitar and Jim Keltner on drums. Even more important, "Ain't No Sunshine" had a restless, provocative bite -- those morose verses, with their glum plodding bassline (Donald "Duck" Dunn?) and repeated melody -- "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone / It's not warm when she's away / Ain't no sunshine when she's gone / And she's always gone too long, anytime she goes away." Who knows why she's away -- a quarrel? infidelity? or is she just a free spirit? He's so down in the dumps (hear the grief-stricken swell of those minor-key strings), he can't even tell us. And of course, the best part: "Well I know I know I know I know I know" repeated 27 times, sung with shifting syncopation on one loooooong breath that finally peters into a croak. We just had to sing along with the "I knows," every time, it was so damn cathartic. Apparently Withers -- who when he recorded this still had a day job in a toilet-seat factory -- sang it this way in the studio as a placekeeper, intending to write a "proper" chorus, Holland-Dozier-Holland-style. Thank god Booker T was there to stop him.

72. "Standing in the Shadows of Love" / The Four Tops (1966)
The Temptations may have been Motown's most reliable hitmakers, but I'm sorry, in a smackdown between the Temptations and the Four Tops, I'd always choose the Four Tops.

73. "Tears Of A Clown" / Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1970)
(No, not "Death of a Clown" -- sorry, Dave Davies fans.)
So why "Tears of a Clown" and not "Tracks of My Tears" -- Smokey Robinson's 1965 mega-hit, one of the greatest soul recordings ever made? I really struggled with this one. Frankly, in my mind the two songs always run together -- "Tracks of My Tears" has basically the same theme (that great line "my smile is my make-up I wear since my break-up with you"). In fact this was originally conceived as a follow-up to "Tracks of My Tears," taking that laughing/crying dichotomy one step further -- working that clown imagery, even throwing in some strains of circus calliope and a reference to Pagliacci (for those few Motown fans who also listened to grand opera?). But while "Tracks" may be slower and more earnest, "Tears of a Clown" seems way more poignant to me. I was won over by that winsome melody, courtesy of co-writer Stevie Wonder (the only Motown artist I loved more than Smokey Robinson); it's perfect for Smokey's high breathy voice. "Now if there's a smile on my face / It's only there trying to fool the public / But when it comes down to fooling you / Now honey that's quite a different subject" (that "public/subject" rhyme kills me). Brisk and perky as the song seems, there's just enough creepy desperation in the arrangement -- listen to those shrill piccolos competing with a lagging bassoon -- because, I dunno, what's creepier and more haunting than a sad clown? I can just imagine this guy dancing as fast as he can, juggling all his balls in the air, even as his heart is breaking. I'll admit that "Track of My Tears" has been forever tainted for me by Linda Ronstadt's cover. But ultimately, as with so many songs on this list, it's all a question of timing. When "Tracks of My Tears" came out, I was lost in a British Invasion fog, but by 1970 my ears thirsted for Motown again. And of course, a year later Motown would leave Detroit and the whole soul thing would split wide open...

74. "Come On Eileen" / Dexy's Midnight Runners (1982)
Just listen to all the surprises in this song. That sappy Celtic folk fiddle opening ("Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms"!!), switching in a heartbeat to a chugging rock & roll jig that was yet somehow ska-flavored -- strange and wonderful. "C'mon Eye-leen!" Dexy yelps in the background -- love the Irish pronunciation -- and then he and his mates work their way up a scale singing "Too-ra-loo-rye-ay." It was just this side of a novelty number. But why shouldn't an Irish rock song sound like it came from Ireland? (It's no accident it lasted for 11 weeks as #1 on the Irish charts.) Dexy invokes the spirit of "Poor old Johnny Ray," whose music spoke to an earlier generation -- but how can modern kids relate to those elders, with their "beaten-down eyes / Sunk in smoke-dried faces, they're so resigned to what their fate is." He needs a new untarnished sound, something for his generation, and thank god New Wave music had expanded the available vocabulary. Naturally he's got an ulterior motive -- he wants Eileen to shrug off those old Catholic morals and sleep with him. ("At this moment / You mean everything," he pants; "With you in that dress / My thoughts I confess / Verge on dirty.") He's pulling out every trick he can think of. Keys change, tempos change; the syncopated jig gives way to a march, and then it crashes to a halt for that bridge -- "Come on [beat] / Eileen, too-rah-ay!" begun as a lumbering chant, then accelerating into absolute frenzy. I loved this song even before I saw the video, but the video sealed the deal -- a grainy black-and-white beauty directed by Julian Temple, with Dexy and Eileen wandering around gritty urban streets in sleeveless tanks and loose denim overalls. I guess I wasn't surprised that we never heard of Dexy's Midnight Runners again -- what were the odds they'd catch lightning in a bottle twice?

75. "Wrap It Up" / The Fabulous Thunderbirds (1986)
Kim and Jimmie helped me get through 1987 -- the year we lived through major apartment renovation with a colicky newborn baby. I'm sure our neighbors hated this song, though; we played it often, and loud.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 91-95

Quite a mixed bag in today's installment -- most of these artists are here for their general importance in my musical life, not because of these specific singles. But for various reasons, each of them simply HAS to be on the list somewhere, so here they are . . .

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

91. "Cruel to Be Kind" / Nick Lowe (1979) Ah, c'mon, you KNOW I love Nick. But he was never very lucky when it came to singles; this was his only hit, a power-pop gem that still never tempted me to buy his albums. It would be years before I saw the light.

92. "Hungry" / Paul Revere and the Raiders (1966)
Throughout the mid-60s, I was a stubborn Anglophile, watching the nighttime music revues Shingdig! and Hullaballoo only to catch the latest British bands. But I had a secret. Every day when I came home from school, I'd turn on Where the Action Is to watch Paul Revere and the Raiders cavort on a SoCal beach in their full trademark regalia of ponytails, breeches, and tricorn hats. My crush on lead singer Mark Lindsay was a deep dark secret (secret, that is, from my true love Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits). Only years later did I realize that the Raiders were in fact a tight, energetic dance band, with songs that were hardly inane fluff. The costumes, the gimmick, were just the price of fame. "Hungry" -- which, like their other big hit "Kicks," was by veteran songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill -- simply seethes with sexual appetite, underlaid with Revere's thrusting keyboards and a prowling deep bassline. Lindsay's bluesy voice was like America's answer to Eric Burdon -- those cajoling, intimate verses just exploded into the frenzied chant of the chorus: "Hungry for those good things, baby / Hungry through and through." The segue into verse two is devastating, as Lindsay sucks in his breath, then groans, "I can almost taste it, babe . . . " And me on the sofa with my 6th grade homework, the little fangirl storing it all up.

93. "For Your Love" / The Yardbirds (1965) I say I was infatuated with the British Invasion -- and yet of its Big Six bands (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Animals, Who, Yardbirds) I only liked the first four. I was way too young to "get" the heady guitar-driven sound of the Yardbirds back in 1965. My loss . . .

94. "I Can See For Miles" / The Who (1967)
The other major British Invasion band I couldn't quite love at first. I didn't like the Who because they'd copied their sound from the Kinks. I didn't like the Who because they busted up their instruments. I didn't like the Who because somehow, instinctively, I felt they were perves. (Come on, Tommy was just creepy.) But for a little period there, just as British rock headed into psychedelia, the Who won me over. Ostensibly a song about catching his girlfriend cheating, to me "I Can See For Miles" was always really about getting high, about the illusion of expanded consciousness. The spookiness of this track haunted me, with those clanging windmill guitar strums, Daltrey's echo-chambered vocals ("I know you deceived me, now here's the surprise / I know that you did 'cos there's magic in my eyes"), and best of all, the slow-mo progression of dissonant chords on "miles and miles and miles and MILES and MILES and m i l e s." The Who's lyrics never really held up, and they weren't much for melody, but for hooks and riffs they couldn't be beat. With this song, they added texture, playing metal against muffle, dark against glitter, and showmanship against sincerity; it was like they'd gone 3-D. The rest of this album, The Who Sell Out, baffled me, but this song? It made me forgive the Who. It's their Get Out of Jail Free card as far as I'm concerned.

95. "Heart of Glass" / Blondie (1979)
I moved to New York City in 1979 and immediately plunged into the New Wave scene, along with all the other recent college grads with nice entry jobs and tiny Manhattan apartments, privileged kids who didn't dare be associated with the punk scene down on St. Mark's Place. Blondie -- or more precisely, Blondie's lead singer, Debbie Harry -- reigned as Queen of that New Wave scene, but as I recall it, her power was not unquestioned. All the men I knew were infatuated with her ex-Playboy Bunny pout and fishnet-covered legs; most women I knew resented her for exactly the same qualities. Compared to the other New Wave ladies -- Kate and Cindy of the B-52s, Tina of the Talking Heads -- why did we need a vamp like Debbie Harry, even if she did have a killer singing voice? Nevertheless, Blondie's slightly edgy but catchy power-pop was deliriously fun to dance to, with great singalong hooks, and it'll always remind me of those glory days, when the downtown music clubs hadn't yet given way to disco. "Heart of Glass" was already heading in that direction -- just listen to that metronomic rhythm track, the syncopated synths, the robotic high flutter of Debbie's voice on "Once I had a love, it was a blast." It was Blondie's 3rd hit single from their breakout album Parallel Lines; when "Heart of Glass" hit #1, I remember finally dismissing Blondie as a mainstream sellout band. Now, of course, when this song comes on the radio I'm hit by waves of fond nostalgia. Go figure.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 96-100

THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS!

I'm going to start at the bottom of the list and work my way up, five songs a day. Down here at the end of the list, I'll admit, guilty pleasures rule -- they're on here as much for nostalgia as anything else. But before I hang my head in shame, I ask you, if you're really being honest -- What's on your list?

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

96. "Spinning Wheel" / Blood, Sweat & Tears (1969)
In 1969, both Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago hit the airwaves, a jolt of contrast to the reigning vibes of acid rock. Instinctively I knew they weren't my kind of music -- I loved the funky horns and riddling lyrics, but their sound was too big and glossy for me. (I see an arc here leading directly to the Eagles.) But on this second album, their big breakthrough, the musical genius of the recently departed Al Kooper still invigorated BS&T, now sweetened with David Clayton Thomas's juicy vocals, and for a season -- when it was being played everywhere -- I couldn't help succumbing to this song's slouchy beat -- "What goes up must come down / Spinning wheel got to turn round." How did I know that Clayton-Thomas's lyrics were meant as a put-down of psychedelic rock? In short order, BS&T churned out more hits -- we'd already had the ingratiating "You Make Me So Very Happy," to be followed soon by the faux-folk "And When I Die" and an overbaked rendition of "God Bless The Child," both of which horrified me later when I discovered the Laura Nyro and Billie Holiday originals. In the course of one album, the band had already jumped the shark for me. But could I leave "Spinning Wheel" off this list? I could not.

97. "When A Man Loves A Woman" / Percy Sledge (1966) No special stories here, just a vintage soul classic that's too great to be denied a spot on my list.

98. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
Another band that eventually jumped the shark for me, as their songs became too samey and were grossly overplayed, not just on radio but on MTV as well. And yet, and yet, and yet . . . in the 1980s R.E.M. were the standard-bearers for that endangered species, intelligent rock music, with their oddball blend of hooky Southern rock and cryptic New Wave lyrics, and I can't deny I was seduced. In 1991 I couldn't take my eyes off this video, set in a gauzy side-lit bare room, Peter Buck plucking a winsome mandolin while Stipe sat morosely on a hard-backed chair, pining for love. What a poetic figure he cut, in that white linen shirt, sleeves rolled up, long arms crossed, the fine-boned hands drooping. (Despite all the shots of falling angels and stigmata, we could tell this song had nothing do with actual religion, although of course the Catholic Church protested like crazy.) "That's me in the corner / That's me in the spotlight, I'm / Losing my religion" -- it's like an updated version of "Tears of A Clown," only ten times more neurotic. Obsessive, vacillating, self-conscious, despairing -- here was a love song all us losers could relate to. "Oh no, I've said too much," Stipe agonizes; or, wait, "I haven't said enough." And then Stipe starts to dance, all spastic and geeky -- somehow that endeared him to me even more.

99. "Show Me The Way" / Peter Frampton (1976) My ultimate guilty pleasure.

100. "Different Drum" / Stone Poneys (1967)
Okay, so Linda Ronstadt squeaks onto my list. I'll confess, I was an early Ronstadt fan, snapping up this 1967 hit single from her original band, an L.A.-area folk-rock trio called the Stone Poneys (mid-60s cute misspelling and all). The Stone Poneys weren't long for this world, as the record execs were already pushing her bandmates out the door to highlight the girl singer, with her bold, expressive contralto. Linda was a great popularizer of other people's songs (how I wore out my audiocassette of Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits until I discovered the original artists' versions!), and this one's no exception. It was written by Mike Nesmith, who'd become famous a nanosecond later when The Monkees blazed onto television. But when a guy sings about needing his freedom, it's not the same as when a girl says the same thing. "Don't get me wrong, it's not that I knock it, / It's just that I am not in the market / For a boy who wants to love only me" -- that was practically radical feminism in 1967 pop music, and something about it plugged right into my little pre-teen heart. "Yes, and I ain't saying you ain't pretty / All I'm saying is I'm not ready / For any person place or thing / To try and pull the reins in on me." Reins, get it? Stone Poneys? I really thought that was clever. And who knows, maybe the girl-power oomph of this song is what eventually sprung me out of Indianapolis years later. We are the music we've listened to, and when all's told, even "Different Drum" accounts for at least a few sinews and corpuscles.

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" /
"God Only Knows"
The Beach Boys

THE BEST A + B SIDES

Beatlemania was the reigning passion of my adolescence, but I'll confess that there was an interlude -- think of it as my own Lost Weekend -- in the summer of 1966, when my family took a train trip west to Southern California. Our West Coast sojourn was one golden blur of Disneyland, malls, Baskin-Robbins ice cream, and trips to the beach, preferably in the company of my one-year-older boy cousin Jeff, who had black hair and ice-blue eyes and a strong jaw -- possibly the dreamiest male I had ever met in the flesh. This SoCal infatuation lasted well into the fall -- as I recall, that was also the year the Monkees debuted on TV -- until who knows what Beatles song jarred it loose.

And right in the heart of that Golden Summer came this double-sided hit from the Beach Boys. They'd always been the sound of summer for me -- even in the Midwest, with a turquoise cement-rimmed swimming pool standing in for the LaJolla cove. (I suppose in the Midwest we needed the Beach Boys even more, to create the illusion of summer.) How did they do it? Was it the nimble Chuck Berry-like guitars, sparkling like sunlight on ocean waves? The sweet foregrounded vocal harmonies, surging and lapping like tides? Or was it just the ineffable beauty of Brian Wilson's melodies, soaring toward a distant horizon?

The Beach Boys brand was a dependable commodity by the summer of '66. But with these two songs, Brian Wilson leaped light-years into the future, leaving even the Beatles in his dust (presumably that was Brian Wilson's goal). Even as an untutored kid, I could instantly tell this was something special and new. Really, listen to these two melodies -- was anything EVER this gorgeous?

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" was a stroke of genius -- the ultimate Good Kids Waiting For Sex song. The Beatles were all about sex, but now here were the Beach Boys making chastity sound romantic and cool. Sure, it was uptempo and catchy, but listen to how that plinky little electric piano riff at the beginning is suddenly smacked down with a treMENdous drum whack. This whole song is about trembling on the verge of intercourse, yet the rock-bottom assumption was abstinence. "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older / Then we wouldn't have to wait so long" -- we all knew what they were waiting for.

Cynicism was never the Beach Boys' game, and it is remarkable how earnest this song is. Brian Wilson was enough of an arrested adolescent to dwell whole-heartedly in this pre-lapsarian scenario. In verse two, he does get a little hungry as he projects into the future: "Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up / In the morning when the day is new / And after having spent the day together / Hold each other close the whole night through." And yet STILL so innocent -- just holding each other, that's all, really! (I love how it slows down, almost groaning with desire, as he sings, "You know it seems the more we talk about it / It only makes it worse to live without it..."). Naturally they will be married ("we could be married") which equals being happy ("then we'd be happy"), and OH, wouldn't it be nice? And then the whole thing dissolves into a masturbatory swirl of overlapping phrases and echoes and harmonies, as never-ending as that passionate long kiss. Brian Wilson's discovery of aural texture was a new frontier for pop music, and we were all gobsmacked by it.

I was young enough in 1966 to eat up this song's scenario. I didn't have a boyfriend at the time (unless you counted my hunky cousin) but I yearned and burned in principle. Nevertheless, the B side of this record had one advantage for me: The glorious lead vocal of the most underrated Wilson brother, Carl. I had no idea it was him singing, of course -- if you'd asked me, the only Wilson I was interested in was the beautiful Dennis -- but something about Carl's voice dove straight into my heart.

The song has no dramatic tension at all -- it's just a straight-shooting expression of devotion, and nobody could do sincere like Carl. But even more important was his exquisite ear -- who else could have steered that tune through its morphing key changes, vertiginous swoops up and down the scale, the surging swells of volume? The vocal had to be strong to stand up against the densely layered instrumentation of strings, woodwinds, synthesizers, and whatever else obsessive Brian had hauled into the studio. It expresses passion on an operatic scale, and for once pop music had musical tools worthy of that passion.

That opening is so damn noble, like an opera overture, with marching electric piano chords and a French horn fanfare. Enter our white knight, Sir Carl, singing humbly, "I may not always love you" -- hunh? but no, it's a rhetorical trick, as the next line resolves. "But long as there are stars above you / You never need to doubt it / I'll make you so sure about it." The way he throws his voice into "sure" is equalled only by the poignance of the same line in verse two, as he imagines her leaving him and protests -- "So what good would livin' do me?" What good indeed, I ask myself. Again, cyncism would ruin this song, and there's never a whisper of it.

That's about it as far as lyrics go -- from there on it's just repeats of "God only knows what I'd be without you," sung as a round, then as a madrigal, then amplified into full orchestral counterpoint, until you're lost in the dizzying tapestry of aural textures. I find myself singing along with one voice, then another; sometimes the wave breaks on "what," other times on "without," but it never resolves, never ends, a continuous spiral of sound. He's fighting through a wilderness, with only his steadfast love to guide him. It's amazing how ego-less this is -- he's not bragging about his passion, simply stating, over and over, with dogged humility, that he'd be nothing without her. Simple as that.

Raised on songs like this, is it any wonder that we who were girls in 1966 found real-world adult love baffling?

"Mr. Dyingly Sad" / The Critters

Talk about pure pop gems. When this song came out in the summer of 1966, all I knew was that it had that swoony sound I'd loved in Chad & Jeremy's "Willow Weep For Me." Hey, I was a drippy adolescent girl; this was just the sort of song I wanted to play on long summer nights, mooning over some boy who didn't know I existed.

And then the song disappeared . . . and the band disappeared . . . and the Summer of Love hit and I forgot all about "Mr. Dyingly Sad." (Apparently spelled "Dieingly," or so the internet tells me, though that would be wrong -- if I could only find my old single I'd prove it!) When I heard it again about a year ago, it hit my ears like a whiff of Oh De London! cologne -- by which I mean, the pure distilled essence of the mid-60s. Now I learn what happened: that half of this band -- a bunch of high school friends from New Jersey, several of whom went to Villanova together -- got shipped out to Vietnam before their first album was even released. There's a classic case of bad timing for you.

The song was written by lead singer Don Ciccone (who years later did a tour of duty as bassist with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons -- once a Jersey boy, always a Jersey boy). God, his tenor voice was perfect for this song, mellifluous and earnest and just slightly breathy. It's like one of those Clairol commercials with sunshot women in white dresses running slow-mo through a meadow, their blond tresses bouncing (as opposed to the Tampax ads where they caper in white slacks down a beach). "Just a breeze will muss your hair," he begins adoringly, over a gentle samba beat with a touch of Latin percussion. "But you smile away each little care / And if the rain should make you blue / You say tomorrow is anew." It seems all so perfect. SO WHY IS HE SAD?

Yes, she's the perfect girl, as he describes in affected poetical word order ("Blue be your eyes, blonde your hair"). But underneath this portrait of WASPy perfection, the diminished and seventh chords, the achingly sweet backup harmonies, hint at something fragile and evanescent. Sure, she may be "mystifyingly glad", but there he is, her rhyming opposite: "I'm Mr. Dieingly Sad." And that dichotomy gives this song all the tension it needs, like a grain of sand grinding away inside the oyster shell.

It's the change of seasons, you see -- part of that time-honored pop tradition of the end-of-summer song ("See You In September," Chad & Jeremy's "Summer Song," "A Summer Place," "All Summer Long" by the Beach Boys). He already knows it's coming, and he can't get his mind off it -- because the end of summer inevitably means being separated from her. (That's the beauty of summer romances -- they always end too soon, before life cruds them up.) "And when the leaves begin to fall / Answering old winter's call / I feel my tears, they fall like rain / Weeping forth the sad refrain." Okay, so it's self-consciously poetic -- but that slots right into the adolescent mindset. "Blue, dark, and dim it may seem," he moans, depressive-in-training that he is; "You mark a grin, a moonbeam / Brightens your smile." Forget the stilted grammar; the images are hazy, soft-focus beautiful, underscoring the cruel irony: The happier she gets, the sadder he gets. He just can't stand it that she's not miserable about the impending end of summer. The impending end of their time together.

The bridge slides into even more minor chords, as he mournfully resists her attempts to cheer him up: "You say, 'Take my hand and walk with me / Wake this land and stop the sea / Show me love, unlock / All doors / I'm yours." She's doing everything she can, offering her body to him -- and all he can do is mope. What a sensitive guy!

"Then the tide rolls up to shore," he sets the scene for his final verse; "I whisper low, 'I love you more / More than even you could know'." He's finally ready to take her up on her offer -- solemnly, of course, because he's a nice guy, not some cad who'll take advantage of her. (Thirteen-year-old girls cannot resist this line.) "Adore me, do, so I could show / I'm so mystifyingly glad / Not Mr. Dieingly Sad." Yes! What a neat resolution! It's within her power to transform him! What girl doesn't love that idea?

I know, I know, I can't help making fun of it -- all the pop cliches, falling neatly into line. But you know what? The song still works. For all its lush dopiness, that yearning vocal and those falsetto harmonies weave their end-of-summer spell all over again. Let's suspend our cynical selves for just a minute and admit it: Running along a beach hand-in-hand with someone you love is still a bittersweet thrill. I love a tough-minded relationship analysis as much as the next person, but the soaring melody here, paired with those rueful close-clustered chord changes, works its emotional magic. Don Ciccone may not be a genius, but he struck gold with this little number.

Mr. Dyingly Sad video