How did I miss "40 Most Softsational Soft-Rock Songs"? Here's the list, though. Let's see if I can say what I hope I can say that I've never liked a single one of them. Oops, no, I can't. I'm not ashamed to have liked and to still like:
33. Cat Stevens - "Peace Train"
13. Carpenters - "Superstar"
But that's all.
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That is a great concept, but the list was horrendous. Peace Train, while a good song, doesn't fit the motif (other Cat Stevens' tunes could). Bread should have been number one, with "I want to make it with you," and the Carpenters "We've only just begun," should have been number two. And no "Midnight at the Oasis?" The horror.
Never cared the least bit for Cat Stevens's music and these days don't care the least bit for Cat Stevens. I'm suprised how many song I don't recognize. One I do remember liking was Juice Newton's Angel of the Morning. Haven't heard it in years, but imagine I would still like it.
Do you think I could get a job as headline proofreader at Forbes.com?
Guess I overlooked "We've Only Just Begun." Liked it then. Would now, too, I imagine. Has personal meaning to me.
Wow, there is some real dreck in there! "If You Leave Me Now" is nothing like the true, deep emotion of "Colour My World." "Babe" is pablum, and "Escape" is a vapid, awful chorus in search of a verse.
Perhaps a better name for the list would have been "40 totally banal songs for people who don't know much about music but like to have it on while they vacuum."
Color me grumpy, but that stuff sucks.
Trey
I'd call it "40 songs my dentist thinks will improve the drilling experience."
I'd call it "40 songs metrosexuals think will improve the drilling experience. Or make it more likely."
What strikes me is realizing that while yes some of the list is dreck, at the time many of those songs came out they were mostly regarded as meaningful (for instance Cat's In the Cradle) or romantic (Superstar, Open Arms). Even now hearing Bread takes me back to my college dorm room listening to that album with my girlfriend and the feelings it, er, aroused.
Now I learn it was actually crappy music. Maybe this maturing business isn't all it's cracked up to be.
There are many many songs, no matter how you define the genre, that go on the list, not matter how long the list, before: Dan Hill and "Sometimes When We Touch".
My testosterone level just dropped in half thinking about it.
And sometimes when we touch
The honesty's too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you til I die
Til we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides
--
40 songs that zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . . . . .
"Superstar", sung by David Spade and Chris Farley in Tommy Boy, deserves to be on the best performance songs ever list.
OOOGH, I can't say how much I despise "Sometimes When We Touch." I never knew (or wanted to know) the name of the guy who sang it. But that version of the sensitive whiny guy should be sexually selected out of existence very swiftly. If you ask me.
I like "Ooh Baby I Love Your Way," at least the concert version that's supposedly crossbred with "Freebird." Like to sing along with it on the car radio.
I also despise "Dust in the Wind," particularly the lyrics, and particularly because the guitar playing tends to suck me in, where I then smash into the awful, pretentious lyrics.
I am of course notorious for liking "Horse With No Name" (and being disappointed to learn that it's a drug song -- duh!). In my defense, at the time it came out I really was finding surcease in the real desert from somebody who was causing me pain. You hadda be there.
I also like #1, "Sailing."
The rest of them are just a snore.
I heard a quite horrible song by Cat Stevens on the radio recently, "Lady D'Arbanville" (written for, or at, girlfriend Patti D'Arbanville, who also crossed swords with Mick Jagger and Don Johnson). Extremely creepy. Here are the lyrics. As someone here remarks, "it sounds like a necrophiliac's anthem." If I ever liked any of Cat Stevens's songs, his becoming "Yusuf Islam" chilled me off them permanently.
I am in complete agreement with amba on the creepiness of Cat Stevens (beginning with Ooo Baby It's A Wild World).
In my grandiose opinion,
The best soft rock song ever (in fact, the only even decent soft rock song) was done by Johnny Rivers.
Parenthetically, the best pure rock song ever was done by (Peter Green)
Fleetwood Mac.
Yusaf Islam is a jerk, of course, but the dude could knock out some good songs in the '70's.
10cc? One decent album in (I think) '75.
Trivia: their name supposedly reflects the volume of the average male ejaculate.
Just sayin'.
There are actually plenty of great soft rock songs. The first one I think of is "Here, There and Everywhere." Plenty of others by the Beatles. There are great Elton John songs like "Daniel." But maybe these aren't "softsational."
I like quite a few of the songs in the list. In fact, the mention of "Rosanna" reminds me that I need to pick up a Toto CD.
"Baby, I Need Your Loving" is indeed a great song. And Elton John has certainly written some fine mellow music. The good, softer stuff still has some swagger or real emotion to it.
But some of the stuff on the list is Pat Boone on moos stabilizers.
Trey
I have an alarmingly high number of both those on the list or those people are mentioning, for one reason or another (mostly not out of critical appreciation, fer shur).
No, I will not specify.
However, in my own defense, they do comprise an infinitesimal number in context of the total collection. I've got that going for me, anyway.
1408 should change your opinion of "We've Only Just Begun". Unless, you like me, have always found it a horror song.
I'm thinking of that internet guy, Jonathan Coulton and his wonderfully creepy "Soft Rocked By Me":
I'll sit and listen to you talk
About the way you feel
I'll smile an understanding smile
When your boyfriend calls
Then you'll go
But you'll think of me
And one day
you'll knock on my door
Because you want be
Soft-rocked by me
You will be soft-rocked by me
Though it may take some time
I know eventually
You will be soft-rocked by me
I use the passive voice
To show how gentle I'll be...
Jordan Peele does a Cat Stevens as Yusaf Islam impression that's one of the funniest impressions I've ever seen. Unfortunately I can't find it on YouTube.
OOOGH, I can't say how much I despise "Sometimes When We Touch."
Me neither.
I think that the title of this list should be.
Sap, Pap, and Crap from the seventies and eighties.
There are a couple of outliers on either end of that time period. How do they pick this dreck?
You would think that Billy Joel's Don't Go Chainging would be on the list but maybe that melodic sax solo in the middle made it just a little too musically interesting for such august company. Ha
I searched out a bunch of them and listened to them one after the other and I was struck by how formulaic and similar the composistions were. After about ten, you just about gag after a few notes of the intro. because you know whats coming.
Back the hell up from my Chuck Mangione. I can trace a line of my jazz exposure from Feels So Good to A Love Supreme.
Jeremy,
You are so right about the Chuck Mangione tune. There is a real melody there and the absence of vocal puts into a catagory of its own. It's always a surprise and a pleasure when a good instrumental makes it into one of these lists. You almost feel like there is some hope for the pop music universe, in that there is a mass appreciation for a really good melody.
The only other tune on that list that I found to be musically interesting was More than Words, for the close harmony and the melody line.
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