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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #82: Leaving on a Jet Plane

 

Lyrics

Peter, Paul & Mary from Album 1700 (1967)

“The first cover song on the list,” Peggy said. “John Denver fans are going to have a bone to pick with you.”

“Actually, this is no more a cover than ‘I Heard it through the Grapevine’ was. John Denver wouldn’t release a commercial version of this song himself for six years. He was essentially an unknown songwriter when Peter, Paul & Mary had a hit with it. As far as his fans having a bone to pick with me, I don’t think his version holds a candle to the PPM version. His vocal is lovely, but Mary Travers’s vocal is transcendent. You’re right there in the room with these two people.”

“I get what you’re saying. He’s singing it out to the crowd, while she’s singing it to her lover.”

“Exactly.”

“John Denver fans are still gonna be pissed with you.”

“I’m ready for their ire.”

“Good to see your convictions are strong. So what exactly is going on in this song, anyway? Is she going on a business trip? Is this a long-distance relationship? Is she joining the Peace Corps?”

“I hadn’t considered the Peace Corps thing, but that makes as much sense as any other scenario. There’s a little too much pain here for a business trip, unless it’s a really long business trip, and I don’t think this is a long-distance relationship. If it were, she wouldn’t be talking about what happens when she comes back.”

Peggy was quiet for a few seconds, during which I conjured other scenarios for this couple’s separation.

“I was never good at long-distance relationships,” she said, which seemed like a bit of a non-sequitur to me.

“Or long-distance friendships,” I said, the words jumping from my mouth before I had a chance to consider them.

“Ouch.”

Now that we were back in touch on a regular basis, I hadn’t planned on bringing up how we’d lost communication or how I felt that Peggy had largely been to blame for this. I’d tried in multiple ways to stay connected to her after Stevie whisked her away, but I never felt as though she was trying as hard, and I finally let it go.

I thought about apologizing for being insensitive. Then I decided against it. Instead, I said, “Good thing one of us came up with an elaborate excuse for getting back in touch, huh?”

She hesitated a couple of seconds before saying, “Yeah, good thing.”

Sticky
Jul 17, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #83: The Wheel

Lyrics

Rosanne Cash from The Wheel (1993)

 

“Wow, a song for grownups,” Peggy said.

“I think there have been quite a few songs on this list that grownups can relate to.”

“Yes, but I think this is the first that only grownups can relate to.”

“I’m not convinced of that. I would have understood at least a chunk of this message when I was a teenager.”

Peggy laughed. “Yes, you were always very mature about relationships. To a fault, in my opinion.”

The sentiment threw me back a bit. I felt a little as though Peggy were attacking me, and my immediate response – as if to prove that I wasn’t ruled by maturity – was to think that Peggy was the exact opposite in that regard. She was always ridiculously impetuous about relationships. She’d even married a “bad boy,” though, to her credit, she’d stuck with him a long time at this point. I managed to avoid actually bringing this up, though.

“Kidding,” she said when I didn’t say anything right away.

She wasn’t, but I let it go.

“It isn’t just the message that’s mature in this song,” I said. “It’s the production as well. While this song would completely work on one instrument – and you know that’s one of my qualifiers for being on the list – the production takes it to another level. Those guitar arpeggios, the jittery drumming, the plaintiveness in her voice. There’s experience in that arrangement.”

“So you’re saying a more pop arrangement would have undermined the song?”

I wasn’t saying that, but it was a good point. “I think it would have. The way this song was produced compels you to listen to the lyrics – interestingly more than if the arrangement had been simpler.”

I could almost feel Peggy nodding on the other end. “Something you can only truly appreciate when you’re older.”

“Or if you’re mature to a fault.”

Peggy chuckled, but I could sense some discomfort in the chuckle, which I considered to be a good thing. “That bugged you, huh?”

“What gave you that impression?”

Sticky
Jun 30, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #84: Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels)

 

Lyrics

Jim Croce from You Don’t Mess Around With Jim (1972)

 

“I wouldn’t have let her keep the dime,” Peggy said.

“You wouldn’t have? You don’t think the therapy session – not to mention getting the number for him – was worth ten cents?”

“That’s not what I mean. They obviously had a connection, and he’d finally moved on from his old girlfriend. He should have stayed on the line and gotten to know the operator better.”

This surprised me. Peggy was as far from a romantic as anyone I knew who actually had a soul. “You wanted him and the person on the other end of the phone to hook up? We don’t know anything about her. She could have been someone’s grandmother.”

“She wasn’t someone’s grandmother. You could tell from her voice.”

“We never hear her voice.” I was beginning to wonder if Peggy knew about some alternate version of this track that I’d never discovered. “Besides, that’s not the point. He hadn’t moved on. He goes back to his request at the end of the song.”

Peggy didn’t say anything for several seconds. I wondered if she was playing the end of the song (you know, the one that everyone else knew) in her head. “What are you talking about?”

“The song goes back to the chorus after he tells her she can keep the dime. He still wants the number. He can’t get past it.”

“Are you saying that Croce wasn’t just repeating the chorus?”

“Well, of course he’s repeating the chorus. But he’s doing so for a reason. He’s doing so to show us that this guy is on an endless loop about this relationship. He’s desperate for closure, even though he’s afraid of what will happen if he actually talks to his ex.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it.”

“Said the person who hears the voice of the operator.”

“I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one.” Peggy made a sound on the other end that could have been tsk-ing me or could have been blowing me a kiss. Cell phone fidelity being what it is, I couldn’t be sure. “So what’s the deal with this song. I love it, too, but I can’t really tell why. The melody is very simple, Croce is hardly a remarkable singer, and, as we’ve already established, the lyrics are a bit vague.”

“I think it’s just very sincere. You know how basketball GMs will talk about going after unrefined big men because you can’t teach height? I think sincerity is one of those things you can’t teach singers. They either have it or they don’t. Jim Croce absolutely had it.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right about that. It allowed him to get away with songs like ‘I Got a Name.’ That song could have come off as hackneyed with a lot of other singers. So you really don’t think he should have spent more time on the phone with the operator? I thought you were a happy endings kind of guy.”

“You’ve always misunderstood me with that. I’m a right endings kind of guy. This is the right ending.”

“The operator was totally grooving on him.”

I laughed. “Maybe I should go listen to the song again.”

Sticky
Jun 16, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #85: Fall on Me

 

Lyrics

R.E.M. from Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)

 

“You’ve had a disproportionate number of message songs on this list so far. Is that a theme?” Peggy said.

“I think that might be a sample size thing. I probably have a disproportionate number of songs that begin with the letter W on the list at this point, too. I can promise you it didn’t factor into my choices.”

“But you do like message songs. That was always one of your things.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that. I mean, songs are supposed to be about something, right?”

“Berry Gordy didn’t think so.”

“He wasn’t alone in that. There are plenty of music company heads – and artists for that matter – who feel the same way. I heard a song this morning that I swear came straight from an algorithm. Somebody punched in a few keywords like ‘horny man,’ ‘sex,’ and ‘clichéd come-on lines,’ and this song came out.”

She chuckled. “So if you punched in ‘acid rain’ and ‘environmental earnestness,’ ‘Fall on Me’ wouldn’t come out?”

“I don’t think so. This song might be earnest, but it’s genuinely earnest. I think you can call Michael Stipe and Mike Mills on a lot of things, but I think they truly felt what they were writing about.”

“Okay, I’ll give you this one.” Peggy paused, presumably to allow me a half-second to enjoy the fact that she’d conceded a point to me. “It’s actually pretty funny that we’re even talking about the lyrics to an R.E.M. song. How often did you have to listen to this song to figure out the words?”

“Well, the video helped on this one. The lyrics were superimposed over the images. But yes, Michael Stipe might be the greatest mumbler in the history of popular music.”

“It says something, then, that we all think so highly of his messages.”

I grinned. “Well, you think so highly of his messages. I just like the way the guitars sound. I never cared all that much for message songs.”

Sticky
Jun 11, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #86: I’ll Be There

 

Lyrics

The Jackson 5 from Third Album (1970)

“You know what’s interesting?” Peggy said. “This is the second artist on your list already who had his first hits as an adolescent and continued deep into adulthood.”

“You find that interesting?”

“You don’t? How often does it ever happen? You have Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. How many more can you name?”

“Okay, good point.”

Peggy paused. I noticed that she tended to pause when she said something I wouldn’t have observed myself. I wasn’t sure if this was to let me consider it or to have me stew in the fact that she was smarter than me.

“Do you think Michael Jackson had any idea what he was singing about when the Jackson 5 recorded this song?” she said.

“Given his public persona throughout his life, I’m guessing the answer to that question is ‘no.’”

“But even if that weren’t the case, how could any twelve-year-old sing a song this romantic convincingly?”

“And yet he did.”

“Yes. He absolutely did. How does that happen? This isn’t Justin Bieber singing ‘baby, baby, baby.’ This is a mature love song that sounds entirely believable coming from a middle-schooler.”

She had me there. What Jackson was doing wasn’t mimicry. It wasn’t a producer in a studio telling him to whisper here and get soulful there. It was a twelve-year-old singing like a man and making adults all over the planet believe it. “I’ll Be There” had been a massive hit across a wide demographic, and at this point it definitely wasn’t because little Michael looked cute fronting a band of his brothers. That might have been the case with “ABC,” but it certainly wasn’t the case with “I’ll Be There.”

“He was tapping into something,” I said. “Maybe he really was an alien. Maybe he’d lived multiple lifetimes on other planes before adopting this form. Maybe he’d loved and lost repeatedly in those other lifetimes.”

“I was going to say that he was a skilled student of human interaction, even if he didn’t turn out to be much of a participant.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a better theory.”

Sticky
Jun 09, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #87: Homeward Bound

Lyrics

Simon & Garfunkel from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966)

 

“Do you know which word shows up most amongst the titles of the eight thousand songs I have on iTunes?” I said.

“Um, ‘the?’” Peggy said. “‘A?’”

“Other than articles and other super-common words.”

“‘Love?’”

“Okay, other than ‘love.’”

“Is there anything else you’d like to eliminate before I continue guessing?”

“You’re right; that was a stupid way to start this conversation. It’s – other than ‘love’ – ‘home.’”

Peggy laughed. “That is so you – in two ways.” She laughed again.

“Really?”

“Really. One, that you’re such a nerd that you would actually know this kind of thing, and two, that you’ve always had a home fixation.”

“I have?”

“You don’t know this about yourself? No question about it – marriage, family, food. You’re all about that stuff.”

“Food is about home? You know, there are these businesses called ‘restaurants’ –”

“– Food is definitely about home for you. Remember who you’re talking to.”

Since I’d reconnected with Peggy, it wasn’t always easy to remember who I was talking to. Because we were so close a long time ago, did she know me in a way that more recent friends and associates didn’t? Or did she only know who I once was? She had me on the home thing, though.

“So, you’re saying that we can define ourselves by the titles of the songs we have on our computers? I think the word that shows up fourth most often – other than the common stuff, again – is ‘better.’ Does that mean I’m an incurable optimist?”

“I think you’re making a good case for this as a new form of analysis.”

I decided to pursue a different course of conversation. “This song came very early in Paul Simon’s run. He kept writing memorable, influential songs for nearly a quarter of a century – right through The Rhythm of the Saints. That got me thinking about something else I want to explore soon: whether or not you could collect a good album from the songs an artist released after their peak-output period ended.”

“In other words, would an album of the best songs released by, say, Tom Petty after Into the Great Wide Open be considered a major release?”

“Exactly. The answer to that one would be no, by the way.”

“Agreed. We’re gonna have fun with this one. So what about Paul Simon?”

“I don’t think so. After Rhythm he just dropped off the table. Did you listen to that album he released a few years ago? Ouch. And we don’t even want to consider the Capeman stuff.”

“Maybe he just ran out of things to say. It’s amazing that he had so much to say to begin with.”

“And ‘Homeward Bound’ was one of the best of them.”

One of the best? Does that mean there’s more Paul Simon to come?”

“You’re not going to get me to reveal anything before it’s time.”

She laughed again. “You already have.”

Sticky
May 05, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #88: Superstition

Lyrics

Stevie Wonder from Talking Book (1972)

“Do you think there’s any rock superstar with more range than Stevie Wonder?” Peggy said.

“Well, the Beatles had a lot of range.”

“Sure, but I don’t know that even their catalog was as diverse as Wonder’s has been. Look at the two songs from him in your top one hundred so far – a sentimental ballad and a funk rave-up. And even that doesn’t express his full range. You can go even more sentimental with something like ‘Sunshine of My Life’ and into something approaching hard rock with ‘Higher Ground.’”

“Speaking of hard rock, you know that ‘Superstition’ was supposed to be Jeff Beck’s song, right?”

“Jeff Beck?”

“Yeah, Beck was starting Beck, Bogart & Appice, and Wonder wrote this song for them. Then Beck’s new band had delays getting their album out and Wonder released ‘Superstition’ on Talking Book. The BB&A version is really good, though it’s hard to imagine it would have been anywhere near that hit that Wonder’s version turned out to be if it had come out first.”

“Great songs can go in lots of different directions.”

“Exactly. Actually, that was one of the standards I used for putting this list together. The song had to have the potential to work in multiple arrangements. I was specifically thinking that it had to work with one instrument, since that would get to the essence of the song.”

“I’m not sure I see this song working with one instrument.”

“Really? I could imagine a sleek version on acoustic guitar. That wasn’t really the point in this case, though. The ‘multiple arrangements’ thing applies here.”

Peggy laughed, but didn’t say anything else.

“What?” I said.

“You’re still a rock geek after all these years, aren’t you.”

It would have been silly to protest that.

Sticky
Apr 23, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #89: Wide Open Spaces

Lyrics

Dixie Chicks from Wide Open Spaces (1998)

“This is your first big chorus song,” Peggy said. “That’s surprising, because I always took you to be a big chorus guy.”

I heard what Peggy wasn’t saying. Back when we were close, she’d use musical preferences as a form of psychoanalysis. She strongly believed that people who liked songs with soaring choruses with multi-layered harmonies – songs like “Wide Open Spaces” – were the kinds of people who loved their families and had responsible jobs. People who liked songs that were less immediately “singable” contributed something to the world. I’d never been able to convince her that a person could fall into both of those categories. It’s unlikely I had a better argument for her now.

“We’ve only just gotten into the top ninety,” I said. “I think it’s safe for you to assume there will be more.”

“Glad to see you haven’t changed too much on me. This is a really good song, though. It was the first time I’d ever heard Dixie Chicks. I’d kinda written them off from their name. Who knew back then that Natalie Maines was such a badass.”

“Yeah, it took a few more years before that became obvious. ‘Wide Open Spaces’ made it clear that they were primed for mainstream pop stardom, though.”

“No argument there. She had the plaintive/spunky vocal thing down, the fiddle carries you through the song without latching it to a genre . . . and then there’s that big chorus thing.”

“And you know how much I love those. I’m just that kind of guy.”

Peggy chuckled. “You know the line that gets me in this song every time?”

I answered instantly. “The one about checking the oil.”

“Yeah, that one. How’d you get it right away?”

I knew that Peggy had had a complicated relationship with her late father. They’d always had trouble communicating, and he never seemed to understand what mattered to her. He was the kind of man who would have yelled, “Check the oil” as he was driving away rather than “I love you.”

“Educated guess. I remember an old friend once telling me that you could use musical preferences as a form of psychoanalysis.”

 

Sticky
Apr 21, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #90: Beast of Burden

Lyrics
The Rolling Stones from Some Girls (1978)

“Well, so much for the romance,” Peggy said.

“Hey, we talked about how hard it is to get that right. I think this sentiment is much easier to express.”

“Maybe so. But it’s always going to sound cool coming from Jagger’s mouth.”

“Indeed. Though Bette Midler did an awfully good job with it. Sent the message in an entirely different direction.”

“Yeah, that was a great cover. I always thought the guitar part was what made this song unforgettable in the original, though, and that’s definitely missing from the Midler version. Did you ever notice that nearly all of Keith Richards’s riffs are built around strummed chords? That’s a pretty distinctive thing.”

“Well, ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘Gimme Shelter,’ but I get what you’re saying. He riffs in a different way than someone like Eric Clapton or Jack White or Prince, who usually use notes or runs.”

“This is a tough lyric, though. Definitely not a pretty relationship.”

“Remind you of anyone?”

Peggy laughed, but tentatively. “That girl is long gone.” She paused, and her voice modulated. “It’s hard to see any of myself in this song now.”

That last exchange was perhaps the clearest indication of the gulf the years had created between Peggy and me. It dawned on me that the woman I was envisioning on the other end of the phone was my good friend at twenty – and that I was much younger in my own head. And here was the thing: I couldn’t tell whether these phone calls were bringing us closer again, or just showing us how far we’ve drifted apart.

“The Edge,” I said, moving us toward safer ground. “He uses strummed chords for his riffs a lot, too.”

Sticky
Apr 10, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #91: You and I

Lyrics

Stevie Wonder from Talking Book (1972)

 

“Do you know this is the first truly romantic song on your list?” Peggy said.

“You don’t consider ‘Whole Lotta Love’ romantic? It even has ‘love’ in the title.”

“Yeah, I consider it romantic the way I consider the Big Mac to be food.”

I laughed. “‘You and I’ is a crazily romantic song, though, isn’t it?”

“You aren’t kidding. I listened to it this morning in advance of our call and I wouldn’t let my Stevie out of the bedroom.”

“I’ll skip the rest of the details, if you don’t mind.”

There was a moment of silence that felt odd to me. Then Peggy said, “Why do you think it’s so hard to write great love songs?”

I gave that a little bit of thought. Most of us have had at least some experience with love – maybe not as much experience as we’ve had with lust, or rage, or betrayal, but some. Why, then were there so few songs that captured the essence of love the way “You and I” did? I remembered a conversation I had a few years back with a music industry lawyer. He told me that after representing pop stars for so many years he became convinced that he was as capable of writing a hit as they were – until he tried. He figured the easiest kind of song to write was a love song and he spent a couple of days churning out one cliché after another until he went back to his day job.

“I think it comes down to there being a very fine line between banality and universality.”

“Translation, please.”

“I think it’s super easy to say the same thing that everyone else is saying, because there’s some level of truth to what everyone else is saying. To write a great love song, though – one that really gets through to people and lasts a long time – you need to find a way to capture the universals of love instead of stringing together a series of tired phrases. That’s what makes this song so brilliant.”

“That, and Stevie Wonder’s voice.”

“Well, yeah. And his mastery of melody.”

“So, really, all you need for a great love song is the ability to tap into universals, write gorgeous melodies, and sing like Stevie Wonder.”

“I think you just answered your question.”

Sticky
Apr 07, 2015
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