Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: Song-By-Song Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by KJTC, Sep 19, 2021.

  1. BluesOvertookMe

    BluesOvertookMe Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX, USA
    Easiest one to name is the first one: Kristofferson. It's also considered the best, although the follow up, The Silver Tongued Devil and I, is also well regarded.
    You've likely heard many other people covering songs off of Kristofferson: Not just Bobbie McGee and Sunday Morning Coming Down, but Help Me Make It Through The Night, and For the Good Times.
     
  2. KJTC

    KJTC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    He is a country artist. There are plenty of those who are universally well regarded within the genre and less familiar to those who don’t listen to it. There isn’t an honor he hasn’t received as a songwriter. I wouldn’t be able to name any more than a handful of country songwriters who have been more celebrated than Kris Kristofferson, and all of them that I could name had much more successful and lengthy recording careers (Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams.)
     
  3. Smith

    Smith I'm cyanide over you.

    Location:
    Toronto.
    Always felt "SMCD" (a song I like a lot) was generally overrated relative to the rest of his catalogue 'cos of the lyric "lord I wish that I were stoned" (or whatever it is), along with the basic subject matter.

    For whatever reason a certain demographic gets all excited when crusty white dudes talk about getting high.
     
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  4. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    "Sunday Morning Coming Down"

    (Some of this is adapted from a prior post I made on this song in another thread.)

    For the second time so far, the august RS 500 voting panel has chosen an inferior version by a song's composer over a superior hit version. (See "Pancho and Lefty" for the other one.) At least they got it right with "Without You" and probably "Oye Como Va" ...

    Kris Kristofferson marveled early in his career that anyone, much less a well-regarded label like Monument, would ever sign him as a singer; he once said, "I sound like a damned frog." That may be why he preferred songwriting, though over time, he became a passable singer. That said, there are exactly two Kristofferson compositions where I prefer his version to a cover: the minor 1971 hit "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" and the bigger 1973 hit "Why Me" (also known as "Why Me, Lord"), a #1 country and #16 pop hit, though it spent 37 weeks on the Hot 100 and still didn't cross over in some markets (WFIL in Philadelphia never added it).

    He said that "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was based on personal experience: In 1969, his first wife had left him and taken their two children, and he was living alone in Nashville in a $25/month apartment and generally feeling sorry for himself. He chose Sunday for the song because it was the one day when the bars were closed in the morning and no one was working, "so if you were alone, it was the most alone time…”

    I listened to Kris' version, which was released after at least four others and, probably because of that, was not issued as a single in 1970. It sounds like a demo, and for all I know, maybe it was originally. Unlike Townes Van Zandt's original version of "Pancho and Lefty," I can't imagine including Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" on a future volume of A Few of My Favorite Things.

    ---

    In Kristofferson's quest to become a Nashville songwriter, he met June Carter around 1967 and gave her a demo tape with some of his songs on it, asking if she could funnel it to her husband, Johnny Cash. She did, but the tape ended up on a pile of similar tapes. A few weeks later, Kristofferson, not having heard anything, flew a helicopter into Cash's front yard to deliver a fresh copy! (Kristofferson was a licensed pilot thanks to a former job flying workers to and from a Gulf of Mexico oil rig.) That got Cash's attention.

    Meanwhile, though he would eventually have a hit with it, Cash was far from the first to cut "Sunday Morning Coning Down." The first released recording was by Ray Stevens, who led a double musical life cutting both popular novelties and more serious fare. It was one of his last 45s for Monument before he left for Andy Williams' Barnaby label; Stevens' version got only to #81 pop and #55 country (his first appearance on the Billboard country chart). In preparing for this post, I listened to Stevens' version for the first time, and though it's well-sung, it lacks a world-weariness that, to me, the song requires.

    In short order, versions by Vikki Carr (of "It Must Be Him" fame) and by Roy Drusky followed, and some others, including Kristofferson's own, were in the pipeline.

    Then Johnny Cash had his say.

    In 1970, Cash was at arguably his commercial peak. Starting in 1968 with Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and continuing in 1969 with Johnny Cash at San Quentin, he had two huge albums and three #1 country hits in a row. He even had his biggest crossover pop hit with the #2 smash "A Boy Named Sue." He recorded with Bob Dylan on the latter's Nashville Skyline album. His former label, Sun, started overdubbing his 1950s recordings with fake crowd noise, passing them off as live. And Cash became a TV star with The Johnny Cash Show, which started airing on ABC in the summer of '69 and, after a fall hiatus, came back early in 1970. The variety show was recorded live at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and Cash had pretty much carte blanche on musical guests during the two years the show lasted. (He had everyone from Louis Armstrong to Derek & the Dominos on his show.)

    With all that going on, Cash had managed to record barely an album's worth of new studio material in the fall of 1969. In the spring of 1970, he released the socially conscious "What Is Truth," which became another crossover hit (#3 country, #19 pop), but when it left the charts, he was overdue for a follow-up.

    One of the recurring segments on The Johnny Cash Show was "Ride This Train," during which Cash played an assortment of three to five songs loosely tied together by a theme. On the February 25, 1970 program, the segment paid tribute to the American drifter, past and present. After starting with a cover of the Jimmie Rodgers song "Waiting for a Train," Cash launched into a monologue:

    "You know, not everybody that's been on the bum wanted it that way. The Great Depression of the Thirties set the feet of thousands of people - farmers, city workers; set 'em to ridin' the rails. My daddy was one of those who hopped a freight train a couple of times to go to look for work. He wasn't a bum. He was a hobo, but he wasn't a bum. I suppose we've all, all of us been at one time or another a drifter at heart. And today, like yesterday, there's many that are on that road headin' out - not searchin' maybe for work as much as for self-fulfillment, or understanding of their lives - tryin' to find a meaning for their lives. And they're not hoppin' freights much anymore. Instead, they're thumbin' cars and diesel trucks along the highways from Maine to Mexico. And many who have drifted - includin' myself - have found themselves no closer to peace of mind than a dingy back room on some lonely Sunday mornin', with it comin' down all around you..."

    He then segued into "Sunday Morning Coming Down," which interestingly, had been performed by Vikki Carr during the February 18, 1970 show, one week prior.

    He concluded the segment with "The Country Isn't Pretty When You're Hungry" (also known as "It's a Devil Wind That Blows"), a (possibly) unreleased song Cash sang at the beginning of the 1971 film A Gunfight, in which he co-starred with Kirk Douglas.

    This is the entire "Ride This Train" from February 25, 1970.



    Without intending to, that segment yielded one of Cash's biggest and most enduring hits.

    After excising the monologue, Columbia released this version of "Sunday Morning Coming Down," with its abrupt fade-in, wonky sound, and all, as his next single. It eventually peaked at #46 (#41 in Cash Box, #44 in Record World) pop, but got to #1 on the country chart in all three magazines.

    After the success of "Sunday Morning Coming Down," Columbia built an album, The Johnny Cash Show, using recordings from the program. The short (under 30 minutes) LP included two complete "Ride This Train" segments, from February 11, 1970 and April 8, 1970, but not the one with the hit song in it. Most sources, including usually reliable ones, claim this entire album was recorded live on July 10, 1970, but this is unquestionably false.

    When a DVD set of highlights from The Johnny Cash Show was released in 2007, a later performance of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was chosen instead of the hit version. Go figure.

    ---

    I first heard "Sunday Morning Coming Down" in 1992. I was starting to get into country music, and desiring a new record-collecting challenge, as I was almost done obtaining every top 20 hit from 1955 to the early 1990s, I bought The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits, which told the stories behind every chart-topper from 1968 to 1989. Naturally, most of the #1 singles were easy to locate. One of them I got was Johnny Cash's version of "Sunday Morning Coming Down."

    It hit me in a way that I was not expecting. Though I've never used drugs or alcohol as an escape, more than once in my life I put on my cleanest dirty shirt to start a day. I could relate to the abject loneliness Cash sang about in his version of the song. To this day, it cuts deep into my soul. His version is one of my favorite records of all time. Needless to say, it's already on a volume of A Few of My Favorite Things (Volume 6, track 2).
     
  5. BluesOvertookMe

    BluesOvertookMe Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX, USA
    Oops, forgot Oye Como Va... I guess it's 3-2, not such a big pattern, never mind.

    [​IMG]
     
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  6. KJTC

    KJTC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    Looking at some of the country/Americana artists who voted for the list, I do wonder if they leaned into the "Best Songs" framework and voted for the song and its songwriter. The John Prine and Lucinda Williams entries are also better known as Bonnie Raitt and Mary Chapin Carpenter songs, respectively.
     
  7. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    Sure. But a lot of the people I'm talking about are somewhat familiar with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell and more contemporarily, Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, the Zac Brown Band, etc. Those folks had enough of a cultural presence as singers/songwriters that even people who would never watch CMT, say, are somewhat aware of them as singers and songwriters. That hasn't been the case with Kristofferson. But there are a lot of people who know him from various movies while barely being aware (if at all) that he was a singer/songwriter. For whatever reason, he didn't have a broader cultural presence in that milieu.
     
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  8. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient

    Location:
    new york city
    Sunday Morning Coming Down
    A-
    I'm not the hugest Kris Kristofferson fan, but this is one of his best, IMO. I'm also not the hugest country music fan, but I do like a lot from the late-sixties/early 1970s period where the concept of "country rock" was being developed.
     
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  9. RudolphS

    RudolphS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rio de Janeiro
    Kris Kristofferson - Sunday Morning Coming Down

    'Sunday Morning Coming Down' can be found on Kris Kristofferson's debut album "Kristofferson". I haven't heard much else of Kristofferson's music but I guess I'm not too far off when claiming his debut is still the to-go-to KK album for the casual fan. It's as important for the outlaw country movement as any of those classic Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings albums.
    Now, back to 'Sunday Morning Coming Down'. The song works fine as the closing track on the LP, but taken out of that context it falls a bit flat for me and looses some of its power. But hey, what do I know, I just read there exist some very successful cover versions of 'Sunday Morning Coning Down', which obviously gives the song extra legs. Even so, I think 'Me And Bobby McGhee' would have been a much better pick to represent Kris Kristofferson on this list.

    3 / 5
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2021
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  10. Wild Horse

    Wild Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Sunday Morning Coming Down

    It's a more well-written song than some of the songs on the lower half of my Top 10 list, but like the Townes Van Zandt song, there's just something boring in the arrangement and vocal. Kris Kristofferson was a great songwriter, but not much of a singer.

    I like Johnny Cash's version of this song even less, which I guess is some kind of sacrilege. :laugh:
    :shrug:

    2.5/5

    Does not make list.

    So What - Miles Davis
    You're So Vain - Carly Simon
    Without You - Nilsson
    Oye Como Va - Santana
    I Can't Help Myself - Four Tops
    Baby Love - Supremes
    Cross Road Blues - Robert Johnson
    Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
    Our Lips Are Sealed - Go-Gos
    Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N' Roses
     
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  11. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    We're now 5% of the way through the list (25 of 500) and here's where the best of them are for me.

    Already on a volume of A Few of My Favorite Things:
    "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (Johnny Cash version) (vol. 6, track 2)
    "Our Lips Are Sealed" (vol. 32, track 15)
    "You're So Vain" (vol. 17, track 5)
    "Without You" (Nilsson) (vol. 41, track 20)
    "Pancho and Lefty" (Willie Nelson/Merle Haggard version) (vol. 5, track 17)

    Not on a volume of A Few of My Favorite Things, but definitely will include later:
    "Buddy Holly"
    "Bad Romance"

    Not on a volume of A Few of My Favorite Things, but may include later:
    "Pancho and Lefty" (Townes Van Zandt version)
    "Time After Time"
    "Truth Hurts"
    "So What"
    "Just a Friend"
    "212"
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2021
  12. prymel

    prymel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston
    “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” 4/5 – This is exactly the kind of country song that appeals to me, but I’ve never been particularly sold on Kristofferson as a singer. His voice lacks character and that lived-in quality that is present in the best country performers. He’s not the most technically proficient, which means he needs a certain angst or emotional core to sell a song, which I think he lacks. Still, the song itself is great and absorbing in spite of the vocals.

    Top 10:
    1. Cannonball – Breeders
    2. Our Lips Are Sealed – Go-Go’s
    3. You're So Vain - Carly Simon
    4. Oye Como Va - Santana
    5. I Can’t Help Myself – Four Tops
    6. Where Is My Mind? - Pixies
    7. Baby Love - Supremes
    8. Without You – Nilsson
    9. Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down – Kris Kristofferson
    10. Buddy Holly - Weezer
     
  13. Popmartijn

    Popmartijn Senior Member

    Location:
    The Netherlands
    OK, I kinda forgot that I do have that Go-Go's song in my collection. Charming all-girl new-wave pop but not very groundbreaking or outstanding. So I can't really hear why this would be in a top 500 as I don't really hear anything that makes an impression.

    Regarding the list in general, it's interesting to note that these first 25 songs are all by North-American artists (and all US except two). It does give me a different perspective on some music as some of these artists/songs never made an impression in Europe.
     
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  14. Flaevius

    Flaevius Left of the dial

    Location:
    Newcastle, UK
    #477 The Go-Gos - Our Lips Are Sealed
    Fun, bouncy and well-crafted pop song. Surpassed by my surprise at discovering Belinda Carlisle was a temporary member of Germs :yikes:

    #476 Kris Kristofferson - Sunday Morning Coming Down
    A prime example of a track that I have never (knowingly) heard, can respect and appreciate the intention and quality of it, but would never seek to listen to it. In view of the above discussion, I reviewed both the Kristofferson and Cash versions back to back; I definitely prefer the sparser Kristofferson original. It doesn't have the personal enjoyment factor to make my list, but with the caveat that it is better material than some of the songs below.

    [​IMG]
     
  15. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    I think Kris is, if anything, overrated as a songwriter and that Sunady Morning is clumsy and labored. He manages to combine the worst of the old (maudlin self-pity) and the new (pretense oozing from every pore). And he can't sing, can't even talk convincingly. And this isn't even his best song (although it's not the worst either). Not surprisingly, I don't own anything except the album of Willie singing his stuff, which gets played a lot less than Willie's album of Cindy Walker songs. Still, not the worst thing so far, either as a song or a record.
     
  16. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    I like Sunday Morning Coming Down, certainly more by the end than I thought I would at the beginning, at which time I thought it would just be another tedious singer-songwriter track without many features of interest. No, it wasn't. The first chorus ramped things up a bit, featuring the beginning of the song's tastefully sparse arrangement, with organ, bells, a guitar flourish here and there, and a couple of other things. Kristofferson's vocals sound just fine to me, a little world-weary but I believe that's the point of the song anyway (lyrics included). Overall, it's a nice pleasant listen that's a notch or two above my well-used "lukewarm".

    I am wondering, however, if a couple of truly excellent songs that at least border on the folk and / or country genres, that occurred to me while I was listening to Kris, are going to show up in the RS list: I Can't Walk Roads of Anger by Bob Lind, and Home from the Forest by Ronnie Hawkins. I'm also wondering whether any of the RS judges are even aware that they exist.
     
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  17. Chief

    Chief Over 12,000 Served

    “Sunday Morning Coming Down” is a song I don’t know. Just listening to it now and I don’t hear what makes it particularly special. Good song though.

    14th out of 25 so far
     
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  18. KJTC

    KJTC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    #475. Janet Jackson, “Rhythm Nation” (1989)
    Written by James Harris, Janet Jackson, Sly Stone, Terry Lewis

    Wikipedia says:

    “Rhythm Nation" is a song by American singer Janet Jackson, released as the second single from her fourth studio album, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989). It was written and produced by Jackson, in collaboration with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jackson developed the song's concept in response to various tragedies in the media, deciding to pursue a socially conscious theme by using a political standpoint within upbeat dance music. In the United States, it peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Dance Club Songs charts. It also peaked within the top 40 of several singles charts worldwide. "Rhythm Nation" received several accolades, including BMI Pop Awards for "Most Played Song", the Billboard Award for "Top Dance/Club Play Single" and a Grammy nomination for Jackson as "Producer of the Year". It has been included in two of Jackson's greatest hits collections, Design of a Decade: 1986–1996 (1995) and Number Ones (2009).

    The accompanying music video for "Rhythm Nation" was directed by Dominic Sena and choreographed by Jackson and a then-unknown Anthony Thomas. It served as the final segment in Jackson's long-form Rhythm Nation 1814 film. It portrays rapid choreography within a "post-apocalyptic" warehouse setting, with Jackson and her dancers adorned in unisex military attire. It was filmed in black-and-white to portray the song's theme of racial harmony. Jackson's record label attempted to persuade her against filming the video, but upon her insistence it became "the most far-reaching single project the company has ever attempted." The video received two MTV Video Music Awards for "Best Choreography" and "Best Dance Video." Jackson also won the Billboard Award for "Best Female Video Artist" in addition to the "Director's Award" and "Music Video Award for Artistic Achievement." The Rhythm Nation 1814 film won the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video. The video's outfit was inducted into the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where its hand-written lyrics are also used in the museum's class on female songwriters.

    Artists such as Sleigh Bells, Jamie Lidell, and Kylie Minogue have cited the song as an influence, while artists including Lady Gaga, Peter Andre, OK Go, Mickey Avalon, Usher, Keri Hilson, and Britney Spearshave referenced its music video. Beyoncé, Cheryl Cole, Rihanna and Ciara have also paid homage to its outfit and choreography within live performances. It has inspired the careers of choreographers such as Darrin Henson and Travis Payne. Actors including Kate Hudson, Michael K. Williams, and Elizabeth Mathishave studied its music video, with its choreography also used in the film Tron: Legacy. It has been covered by Pink, Crystal Kay, and Girls' Generation and has also been performed on Glee, The X Factor USA, and Britain's Got Talent.




     
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  19. the_doctor

    the_doctor Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Oh man, I've fallen way behind and there's been a nice variety of songs coming through. I'll continue my gripe that it's basically an all-American list still though! No doubt the NME version is chock-full of UK artists though so I should just accept it's how these things always are.

    480. Biz Markie, “Just a Friend”
    Fun track and sounds of it's time in a great way. The simple arrangement with piano and drum sample sounds really good to me. Never heard this before and I've no idea why it would be in a top 500 songs of all time. But... why not, it's fun and I like it.

    479. Santana, “Oye Cómo Va”
    Santana are on my list of 'bands that I need to take some time to listen to' and I love this. Hypnotic groove and nice construction. Also, I'm a sucker for an organ solo, so this is right up my street. Time to check out some more Santana!

    478. Juvenile feat. Lil Wayne and Mannie Fresh, “Back That Azz Up”
    Yep, pretty good, but with no real knowledge in-depth of this genre I can't really judge how outstanding this is.

    477. The Go-Gos, “Our Lips Are Sealed”
    I've not listened to The Go-Go's much but I know they're well-liked. This is a nice slice of poppy post-punk and a nice short 2:47 single length. The highlight for me is the sloer middle-eight with it's lullaby feel. As with a lot of these songs I like them just fine, but I think they could be easily replaced by a hundred other songs. That's probably just the natural state of the lower end of a 500 list though so it's not a big deal.

    476. Kris Kristofferson, “Sunday Morning Coming Down”
    I guess if I gave it time this would be a slow-burner. But honestly, it has no particularly distinctive features of points of interest on first listen. Dare I say it's just plain dull?


    Updated top 10... It's already looking like a mix of quality song-writing, well-knwon classics and a bit of Indy thrown in. I imagine it will stay like this.

    1. [reserved for Talk Talk. They'll be in there, right? Right!?]
    2. Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
    3. So What - Miles Davis
    4. You're So Vain - Carly Simon
    5. Baby Love - Supremes
    6. Oye Como Va - Santana
    7. Cannonball - The Breeders
    8. Our Lips Are Sealed- The Go-Go's
    9. I Can't Help Myself - Four Tops
    10. Where Is My Mind? - Pixies
     
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  20. the_doctor

    the_doctor Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    475. Janet Jackson, “Rhythm Nation”
    There's not really much Janet Jackson in here. Super-dated song that Prince would knock out in his sleep. Interesting that Wiki's list of people influenced by this track show it was one of the harbringers of late 90s glossy pop that used to drive me to despair when watching Top of the Pops. I won't rearrange my top 10 for this one.
     
  21. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    RS #475

    Janet Jackson – “Rhythm Nation” [from Rhythm Nation 1814]

    I’m a huge Jacksons fan (as I’ve mentioned before, I lump artists together in “families,” and with the Jacksons, that’s quite literal). The Jacksons are a 1st tier, top 1-50 artist for me. I’d have to double-check, but I’m pretty sure this is the first appearance of a 1st tier artist for me in either list so far.

    Janet’s Rhythm Nation 1814 album was a well-deserved blockbuster—helped not only by Janet’s earlier success, but by the stratospheric popularity of Michael at the time, and both were helped by the fact that they presented a rather unified musical personality: they were clearly sibling counterparts.

    The title track, which kicks off the album after a brief interlude, features a New Jack Swing groove that’s impossible not to dance to. It’s catchy pop with a super-hooky, multipart chorus, and it’s very innovative in terms of arrangement and production. It’s one of the earlier examples in this sort of contemporary r&b dance-pop of making timbral shifts as important of a compositional element as melody, harmony, etc., which became the major pop music compositional trend over the next 30+ years, and it exploits technological possibilities to create material that would be impossible to play on a traditional instrument but that still has a resonant, human feeling to it.

    At this, there at least a couple tracks, especially “Escapade,” that I’d rank above “Rhythm Nation,” but the latter is still excellent, as is the rest of the album. “Escapade” would definitely be on a top 500 song list for me, and the album is a solid candidate for my top 500 album list.

    Top 15 tracks so far, also factoring in particular arrangements/performances.
    1. "Time After Time" - Cyndi Lauper
    2. “Rhythm Nation” – Janet Jackson
    3. "Without You" – Nilsson
    4. "You're So Vain" - Carly Simon
    5. “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” – Four Tops
    6. “Oye Como Va” - Santana
    7. "Baby Love" – Supremes
    8. “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” – Kris Kristofferson
    9. “Bad Romance” – Lady Gaga
    10. "So What" - Miles Davis
    11. "Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns N' Roses
    12. “Cannonball” – The Breeders
    13. “Just Friends” – Biz Markie
    14. “Buddy Holly” – Weezer
    15. “Our Lips Are Sealed” – The Go-Go’s
     
  22. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    "Rhythm Nation"

    I never really got Janet Jackson. Most of her hit songs were surrounded by so much production that I really don't know if she had a good voice or not. Of her 1989 female competition, she certainly lacked the vocal histrionics of Whitney Houston, but I could hear enough that she certainly sounded better than Paula Abdul, who had an inexplicably huge hit album in 1989. In retrospect, the only song of hers I kinda like is "Nasty," but that's as much because of the sass and defiance in Janet's delivery ("No, my first name ain't Baby, it's Janet... Ms. Jackson if you're nasty") as anything else. I admit I despised it when it first came out, but I grew to like it. I go back and forth as to whether to include "Nasty" on A Few of My Favorite Things, but so far, I've chosen not to do so.

    The entire album Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 is a cacophony, an aural assault, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production that makes me think of an 80s R&B attempt by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to emulate Phil Spector, but without any of the charm. Of the seven official singles from the album, only one was a ballad, and even that one, "Come Back to Me," is overproduced. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy much of Spector's work, but Jam and Lewis were so over-the-top that it's headache-inducing.

    As for "Rhythm Nation" the song, the best part about it is the sample from "Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin" by Sly and the Family Stone, which is a terrific single. Even that sample is so heavily processed that it might as well have been re-recorded by the cast of thousands on the album rather than sampled.

    Not on a volume of A Few of My Favorite Things and won't include later.
     
  23. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    #479. Santana, “Oye Cómo Va” (1970)
    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I have no idea what this record is saying, but I love it! Its rhythms, melody, and overall musicianship are soulful and the ditty just plain grooves!
     
  24. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    It's called inclusion: Everyone gets an 'A' for effort!
     
  25. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    476. Kris Kristofferson, “Sunday Morning Coming Down”
    Long before AM (MW) broadcasters stopped airing pop music, I would occasionally hear Johnny Cash's rendition played. I find Kristofferson's take even more depressing. I realize we're still at the near bottom of the list of so-called greatest songs, but this is just awful!
     
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