Continuing on with the songs in my collection from the Rolling Stone Top 500 list.
1. All The Young Dudes – Billy Bragg (#253, orig. Mott The Hoople)
2. I Can See For Miles – The Who (#258)
3. Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley (#259, cover of Leonard Cohen)
4. Sail Away – Randy Newman (#264)
5. Sunday, Bloody Sunday – U2 (#268)
6. Sloop John B – Lager Rhythms (#271, orig. The Beach Boys)
7. Somebody To Love – Unknown (#274, orig. Jefferson Airplane)
8. Born In The USA – Bruce Springsteen (#275)
9. Money (That’s What I Want) – The Beatles (#288, orig. Barrett Strong)
10. Can’t Buy Me Love – The Beatles (#289)
To me, “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is a top-ten all-time song. I have no idea why Rolling Stone rated it this far down on the list. Yes, I somehow have a version of “Somebody To Love” whose artist is unknown to me. No, I don’t know how that came to be. As for “Hallelujah”, for which the Buckley cover and not the Cohen original is on the RS list, I’ve linked before to this essay about the song’s evolution from the Cohen original to one of the most-covered and used-by-TV-and-movies songs around, but apparently the domain on which that appeared is now offline. Thankfully, someone created and uploaded a document of that post, so you can still read it. Which you should if you haven’t before, it’s well worth it.
Entire song list report: Started with “Stolen Car”, by Bruce Springsteen. I apparently have two versions of this song, one from “The River” and the other from “Tracks”. This is the sort of thing you learn about your collection when you play it all in alphabetical order. The version from “The River” is listed first, so it’s what I began with. Finished with “Sukiyaki”, by Big Daddy, song #5103, for 63 tunes this week. Among them were the five movements of the Suite of Old American Dances, by Robert Russell Bennett, performed and recorded by the Trinity University Wind Symphony circa 1987, which included yours truly on the alto saxophone. Thankfully, the other, more talented, members of the ensemble largely succeeded in drowning out my contribution. What are you listening to this week?