Ten Songs That Make Me Drop Everything I’m Doing

(Part 1)

Cover art from “Dark Side of the Moon”, Pink Floyd

I just got done reading this piece by Terry Barr, as well as listening to all the songs he picked:

All of Me Loves All of These Songs

The compulsive in me was inspired to dive in and think about the songs that just take over when I hear them.

What music nerd hasn’t pondered some version of this question? What would you choose if you had to name ten songs that move you the most? If you were dying and had to choose ten songs that would be the last things you hear, what would they be? And so on. It’s a fun bit of daydreaming.

Having to make some choices and commit to them in writing is another thing altogether! If I do this again in a week, there might be some differences, though some of the songs are certain to be there no matter what. I got my list down to around twenty, and after that, it became really tough. Also complicating matters, of course, was that I had to listen to all my candidates and got so absorbed that I lost track of time.

In some cases, my pick is a specific rendition of the song, a singular performance that hits me especially hard. The difference might be the brilliance of the performance, the backstory, or both.

In the end, it’s all about my thoughts and feelings in the moment. I say thoughts AND feelings because great music appeals to both, at least for me. It’s not always possible to explain why we love something, and sometimes I can’t even figure it out for myself, let alone explain it. But all of these songs extract me from whatever I am doing — wherever I am doing it — and deliver me to another place.

A few self-imposed rules:

Only one song per artist could make the list. This matters because a couple of artists would likely have made the list more than once.

Western rock/pop only. That rules out jazz, blues, opera, and classical crossover, as well as the 95% of music that isn’t from our little corner of the world. I needed to narrow things down, or I’d still be pondering, and you wouldn’t be reading this.

I did not rule out the Beatles, but surprisingly, although they are my favorite band of all time, they didn’t make the list. I do have a list of honorable mentions, and they made that.

So, here goes, in roughly chronological order:

Roy Orbison: “In Dreams”

Imagine being with the person you love and waking to find she is not only gone but perhaps never existed. You may have had that sort of experience — I have. Orbison’s first wife died in a motorcycle accident three years before he wrote this, and reviewers often surmise that the song is about her. As far as I know, Roy never confirmed or denied it.

Singing about heartbreak isn’t new. What makes this song unique is the musical structure, coupled with Orbison’s impossibly rich voice. J.D. Souther called him “The world’s only operatic rockabilly singer,” and boy, was he right. Orbison ignores popular songwriting conventions. No A-B-A-B-C-A-B or similar structure. It goes A-B-C-D-E-F. In other words, it is more like an opera than a pop song. The closest thing most people have heard that isn’t hours long is Ravel’s “Bolero.”

This version is my favorite. It’s from “Black and White Night,” the live concert video made less than a year before Orbison’s death. His backing musicians include the TCB Band (Elvis Presley’s band from 1969 until he died in 1977, featuring the legendary James Burton on lead guitar); male vocalists Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, and Steven Soles, some of whom also played backing guitars and keyboards; and female vocalists k.d. lang, Jennifer Warnes, and Bonnie Raitt. It’s been called “the Billion Dollar Band”. They all performed for free to honor Orbison and raise money for charity.

Linda Ronstadt: “Different Drum”

When I first heard this, I was a teenager hopelessly obsessed with a girl who barely knew I existed. It was obvious she was way out of my league. Realistically, all I could hope for was that she would acknowledge me before turning me down.

No such luck.

When I heard this song, I realized that someone had figured out what all of us ugly toads desperately needed to hear: That we were actually worthy. That they could have loved us if the timing had been different (even if deep down, we knew it wasn’t true).

If you’re going to be rejected, this is the most glorious way for it to happen. I had never heard a voice like this in my life, and still haven’t. Ronstadt’s combination of purity, power, and youthful brightness has never, to my knowledge, been matched. The song is simple and sweet, and it doesn’t need to be anything more.

…….

Procol Harum: “Whiter Shade of Pale”

This song floored me from the first opening chords and still does. That organ solo feels sacred. The imagery, even if inscrutable, takes me into a dream world.

People have done PhD dissertations on the lyrics. There is still no consensus on what they mean, and the original members of Procol Harum have never given a clear answer. In interviews, they drop hints, but those hints are confusing at best. With the death of Gary Brooker, we are unlikely ever to know.

This live performance with the Danish National Orchestra in 2006 takes the song to a transcendent level. Brooker’s timbre at 70 is gorgeous — he has developed a bit of roughness that gives him an even warmer sound than in the original recording. The first time I saw this video was days before he died. When I heard the news he was gone, it was like an era in my life had truly ended.

Queen: “Bohemian Rhapsody”

The bar to becoming a hit in popular music is depressingly low. As a result, a lot of bad stuff fills the airwaves and the charts. There isn’t much incentive for talented musicians to work hard to become great, so most don’t. (The best actual musicians in pop music today are the session musicians you never hear about, who make the music sound good.) Too many headliners mail it in. The result is that there are not a lot of actual masterpieces in pop or rock music.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is the extreme exception. I can’t describe how moved, mystified, and shaken I was when I first heard it. It wasn’t even my favorite song on the album at first, but I played it obsessively because I needed to understand it. Each time I listened to it over the years, it felt like there was something new I hadn’t heard before. This is a true masterpiece, and it captivates me now even more than it did a thousand listens ago.

…….

Pink Floyd/Clare Torrey: “Great Gig In the Sky”

There are tons of musical pieces about death, and I have yet to hear another one like this. Since I first heard it more than 45 years ago, I have never been able to listen to it without needing some time to return to the real world. Most death songs try too hard to be grim, scary, and dark. This song is light, ethereal, mysterious, terrifying — and eventually inspiring. It has been likened to the Five Stages of Grief, and I think that’s apt.

Torrey improvised the wordless vocals on the spot. They just asked her to sing whatever came to mind. She only did two takes, and they used the first one. That in itself is just mind-blowing. The result sounds like the musings of someone oscillating wildly between terror and wonder. In concerts over the following decades, the band has typically had to hire two or three vocalists to approximate Torrey’s performance. No one has come close.

She had to sue to get songwriting credit and a share of the royalties, which is a sad story but one so typical of the music industry. The good news is she won, and she even appears to be on good terms with the members of Pink Floyd (better terms than they are on with each other…)

Five to go…watch for Part 2. Thank you for reading.