“It’s the fabled automatic.”
About six years ago, a friend from high school asked me to do a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. It was quite a process, and I wound up writing it for my previous website in four separate posts of 25 each.
First 100-76, then 75-51, then 50-26 and finally 25-1.
Well, that was six years ago. There have been some great songs since then, and there were some great ones I overlooked or eliminated to keep the previous list to 100.
So I decided to expand the list. I’m 71 now, so I figure two songs a year is a reasonable total. I’m adding 42 songs, making for a total of 142. And while some of the newer songs probably would make the top 100, I’m not messing with that. The additions will count down from 142-101.
Every one of these songs has one thing in common. They are all songs I enjoy when I hear them.
Here goes (click on the title to listen on YouTube):
142. THE PRESIDENT SANG AMAZING GRACE, Joan Baez — One of the saddest moments of the last decade was when a gunman shot and killed nine people in a Charleston, S.C., church. When President Obama came to South Carolina for the memorial service, he moved the audience when he started singing “Amazing Grace.” It has been a while since Joan Baez was prominent, but with this song she rose to the moment.
141. IF DONALD GOT FIRED, Randy Rainbow and Patti LuPone — Definitely out of the mainstream here but a song that has brought me joy many times in the last couple months on the Trumpocalyse. Best moment is when LuPone sings, “There’s no decidin’, I’m ridin’ with Biden,” Randy responds with, “I’m voting for Patti LuPone,” and she pumps her first and says, “Yes, queen!” Look it up.
140. FRONT ROW SEATS, Sunny Sweeney — I had never heard of this young country singer till I came across this on YouTube. A great song about having front-row seats to the collapse of the American culture. Funny and sad at the same time.
139. WORKING CLASS MAN, Jimmy Barnes — I first heard this song over the closing credits of the 1986 Michael Keaton movie “Gung Ho.” Movie and song are both about the Reagan Era, when millions of good-paying blue-collar jobs just vanished. “He believes in God and Elvis, he gets out when he can. He did his time in Vietnam, still mad at Uncle Sam.”
138. SAIL AWAY, Brian Wilson — This is a song I can listen to over and over again and never get tired of it. One of the musical thrills of recent years was seeing Wilson and his band live in St. Petersburg, Fla., in November 2015. I made some pretty good iPhone videos at the concert, but sadly, I didn’t get this song. So glad to catch Wilson on tour.
137. F*CK YOU, Lily Allen — Definitely a unique song, reportedly a song sung blue to Gee Dubya Bush for the war in Iraq and anti-gay positions. A beautiful young girl, a lovely voice and the most famous four-letter word of all.
136. SONG FOR SAM COOKE (HERE IN AMERICA), Dion DiMucci — One of the greats from 60 years ago gets another one (Paul Simon) to help him sing a lovely song about a third (Sam Cooke) and the racism he encountered back in Jim Crow days.
135. CARMEN OHIO, Various artists — One of the stranger entries on this list, it’s basically the Ohio State University alma mater, and the first time I heard part of it was in the 1969 movie “Goodbye Columbus.” I lived in Ohio for 10 years and we moved to Virginia when I was 13. My sister Laura went back to OSU for her degrees, and my late lamented friend Tom Kensler was a Buckeye till the day he died. A very pretty song.
134. BLITZKRIEG BOP, The Ramones — I will never understand my musical taste in my late 20s, that I spent my time listening to Barry Manilow, the Carpenters and Olivia Newton-John and ignoring music like this. Could I be the only person who decided in his mid 60s that the Ramones were pretty damn good? Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. In my defense, the stuff I liked best then was by Springsteen and Jackson Browne. But still …
133. SAN FRANCISCO, Johnny Hallyday — A song I truly loved in the summer of 1967 was the original version of this by Scott McKenzie, the “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair” version. I had never heard of Hallyday, known as the French Elvis, until I was in my late 40s, and even though my French is only good enough to pick up parts of the songs, I still enjoy them. No one covered more American hit in the 1950s and ’60s.
132. LULLABY OF BROADWAY, Jerry Orbach et al — My deep, not-so-dark secret is that I love show tunes. This one typifies the kind I really like, the big, whole-cast numbers that grab the audience by the throat and never let go. I’ve actually never seen the show this is from, but it’s great anyway. If I have a favorite show it’s probably “A Chorus Line,” which I saw in Washington, New York, London and Glendale, California.
131. GOODBYE EARL, the (Dixie) Chicks — Listen to their albums and you’ll see how wonderful they were until they ran afoul of Gee Dubya Bush and his minions. This probably wasn’t one of their best songs, but it was fun to listen to and it made a pretty good point. Don’t mess with the Chicks.
130. PARADISE BY THE DASHBOARD LIGHT, Meat Loaf — An extremely underrated song, maybe the best song ever written about teenage sexual anguish, with a truly great ending. “And now I’m praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive …”
129. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN, Heart — This is not the famous version that was called the best song of the 1970s. I heard the Led Zeppelin version so many times I find it impossible to sit through it again, but Ann and Nancy Wilson did a hell of a good job at the Kennedy Center Awards.
128. SHE IS STILL A MYSTERY TO ME, Lovin’ Spoonful — First band I ever saw in concert, fall of 1967 in Charlottesville, Va., for a ticket price of $3. One of the most underrated American bands of the ’60s, with at least half a dozen great songs that have lasted. This one was a lesser hit, but one of my very favorite ones.
127. HASTEN DOWN THE WIND, Warren Zevon — A truly lovely song from the late ’70s, also performed by the great Linda Ronstadt, about the end of a relationship. As much as anything else, this was the song that tore at my heart when my first marriage was coming to an end.
126. ALL MY TRIALS, Mickey Newbury — This is a traditional song that Newbury arranged. It’s most often heard as the final third of his American Trilogy, but by itself it’s an extremely poignant song about the trials of life.
125. ALABAMA CLAY, Garth Brooks — I was sort of horrified when I looked at my original list and saw the one Brooks song I had included was “Friends in Low Places,” which isn’t even close to my favorite. This one fills the bill better, about a young man who chased his heart’s desire only to realize he had left it behind him.
124. ALL THOSE YEARS AGO, George Harrison — John Lennon was never my favorite Beatle, but that was more my own short-sightedness than anything else. He was the one of the four who really was indispensable, the one who had it inside him to be a great man. This song was George’s tribute to his bandmate.
123. TELSTAR, the Tornadoes — I was 12 when Telstar changed the world. Not the song, the communications satellite. Before Telstar, it was tough to get video on network news more than a couple hundred miles from New York. Telstar also made the transatlantic phone cable obsolete. The song was pretty great too, No. 1 on the charts.
122. BE YOUNG, BE FOOLISH, BE HAPPY, the Tams — Another great one from the beach music pantheon, the Tams told three generations of fans that it was important to enjoy your life and not let things get you down. Wonderful.
121. LA MARSEILLAISE, Mireille Mathieu — The greatest of all the national anthems, and Mathieu does it proud. France has something symbolizing the country. It’s called Marianne, and from time to time, a different Frenchwoman is designated as Marianne. Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve were both honored, and so was Mathieu. A great singer, a great song.
120. YOUR SONG, Elton John — “Tiny Dancer” has always been my favorite Elton John song, and it’s even my ringtone for calls from my beloved daughter. But when this song came along in late 1970, introducing Reginald Dwight to the world, I think we all knew we were witnessing the beginning of something really special.
119. POSTCARD FROM PARIS, John Denver — A lovely Jim Webb song about a man traveling on business and sending postcards home to his wife stateside. John McDermott also does a wonderful version of this song, but Denver gets the edge for the correct pronunciation of Notre Dame (the one in Paris).
118. COMIN’ IN AND OUT OF YOUR LIFE, Barbra Streisand — A Streisand song from the early ’80s that always reminds me of someone I have known and cared about for more than 40 years. We never really had an “our song,” but in my mind this is it.
117. DAWN (GO AWAY), Four Seasons — For most of the early to mid ’60s, the Four Seasons were one of my favorite groups, and this was one of their very best songs. An almost typical Four Seasons song about a guy who loves a girl but knows he can’t be with her.
116. MY CUP RUNNETH OVER, Ed Ames — Another show tune, or at least a tune from a show (“I Do, I Do”), one of the only popular songs partially taken from the 23rd Psalm. A story of a man who loves his wife and doesn’t need anything else to be truly happy.
115. I AIN’T MARCHING ANYMORE, Phil Ochs — One of the greatest protest songs ever by a man whose life was tragically cut short, Ochs lived to be only 35. I saw Ochs in concert two years before his death at the Cellar Door. His voice was all but gone and he looked like he was 70, not 33, but the packed venue held fans who loved the man who was one step below Dylan in the pantheon.
114. IN SPITE OF OURSELVES, John Prine and Iris Dement — Prine was one of the big losses in the ongoing pandemic, and for all his wonderful ballads, this song was maybe the most fun to listen to. “… she gets it on like the Easter Bunny …”
113. THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN’, Bob Dylan — Most people consider “Blowin’ in the Wind” the greatest example of Dylan’s early work, but I always liked this a little better. Yes, the times they were a changing, but we didn’t follow through enough and they changed back.
112. MR. TAMBOURINE MAN, the Byrds — Maybe the best compliment I could pay to this, another great Dylan song, is that when it came out in 1965, it didn’t sound like anything else. It showed that the songs coming out from Southern California were about a lot more than just surfer music.
111. HALLELUJAH, Many Artists — Leonard Cohen wrote it, and all sorts of wonderful artists recorded it, from Jon Bon Jovi to Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton. “I did my best, it wasn’t much. I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch. I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.”
110. WHERE’VE YOU BEEN, Kathy Mattea — A song about love at the end of a lifetime and how when everything else has been taken away, the feeling of love from your lifetime companion remains in your heart.
109. STAY STAY STAY, Taylor Swift — See, there are some contemporary artists I like, and Swift is at the top of the list. This particular song is a funny one about a relationship that survives because the guy reacts with humor to bad situations.
108. HEART OF THE MATTER, Don Henley — Another great song from Henley’s “End of the Innocence” album in the late Reagan years, this one is about forgiveness. It also asks “how can love survive in such a graceless age?”
107. PERHAPS LOVE, John Denver and Placido Domingo — One of Denver’s last great songs, an ode to love and what it means. “If I should live forever and all my dreams come true, my memories of love will be of you.”
106. LEANING ON THE EVERLASTING ARMS, various artists — One of the most famous traditional hymns. One of the nicest scenes in the WWII movie, “The Human Comedy,” is of American boys on the train heading off to war singing “Leaning” in unison to pass the time.
105. DANCING QUEEN, ABBA — This was ABBA’s only No. 1 hit on the U.S. charts, and it’s the song of theirs that seems to me to hold up the best after more than 40 years. It was released at the height of the disco craze. I always thought “Dancing Queen” was the perfect disco song.
104. DAUGHTER OF MINE, John McDERMOTT — A father sings to his daughter on her wedding day, telling her that even though she will be with her husband now, she will always be his little girl and he will always love her.
103. THE SIDESTEP, Charles Durning — Another show tune, this one from “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Durning is a Texas governor who shows his talent for evading tough situations. “Now you see me, now you don’t …” And who knew Durning could dance so well?”
102. HELLO IN THERE, John Prine — Bette Midler also does a wonderful version of this heartbreaking song about old age and all it entails. “And all the news repeats itself …”
101. IMAGINE, John Lennon — To my great shame, I didn’t particularly like this song in 1971. But it has grown on me, and if I were to rework the numbers, it would jump into the top 15. A poignant song about the world we could have if we cared enough to try.
*****
So there it is. I’m already thinking of more songs I overlooked, but this is it for now.
Maybe someday I’ll do a bottom 10.