Or you can just be amused at juxtapositions like the fact that "Come On Eileen" was the song that knocked "Billie Jean" out of the #1 position (and was, itself, replaced by "Beat It" which then gave way to "Let's Dance")
I feel young again! Oh no, wait, I actually feel even older. Rats.
"Horse With No Name" knocking out "Heart of Gold" is pretty amusing.
Am I the only person who did not realize it was "Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin" (or maybe more likely, knew once and have forgotten). Video.
2: Or this little sequence from 1969:
"Get Back", Beatles with Billy Preston
"Love Theme From Romeo & Juliet", Henry Mancini And His Orchestra
"In The Year 2525", Zager & Evans
"Honky Tonk Women", The Rolling Stones
"Sugar, Sugar", The Archies
And not to dwell on those hippy '60s, but this song spent 5 weeks at #1, most weeks for any song between "Can't Buy Me Love" in mid-64 and "I'm a Believer" at the beginning of 1967.
Jesus
The theology thread is a few doors down the hall, old timer.
Looking at the mid-to-late 1960s, I'm struck by how often the Supremes had #1 hits, especially given their competition.
Also, I'm reminded of how, whenever anyone mentions Henry James, I allow as how I like his early stuff, but that I think he really hit his stride with the stuff he recorded with the Shondells.
or, if you want to enjoy music in music form, w/o a bunch of clicking, go to all the things like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMw0QKS1gbo
8: Thank You Falettin Meef Lip You Awe Fagin.
Thanks for posting this.
You can get seriously immersed in this site.
I almost titled the e-mail, "time waster" but I wasn't sure if that would discourage you from reading it. It's kind of addictive.
The list in 5 is great.
I could not sing the chorus to more than 25% of those songs. I know a lot of the names, but the songs are mostly new to me.
It is an interesting bit of pop culture. From my perspective, so many of the songs are not very good (though many are) but there is something grand in having all of the #1 songs together like that.
It's also interesting that it does take more than just being a successful pop musician to get a song to #1. It's interesting to see who doesn't show up on the list very often. I only see two David Bowie songs, for example ("Fame" and "Let's Dance") less than Roberta Flack ("First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly With His Song", and "Feel Like Making Love")
I'm struck by how often the Supremes had #1 hits, especially given their competition.
The other thing that strikes me is that presentation counts. Most of the people that make the list have really polished their persona.
For example Billy Idol may not have been a great songwriter, but he had the look down.
Actually a bunch of the 80s music videos are really good. Though, wow, George Michael had a lot of #1 songs in the 80s.
Speaking of young Rod Stewarts, which of The Faces' songs is the one that people always try to convince people to listen to prove that they -- being both The Faces and the person plugging them -- are awesome? I thought it was the one in that Wes Anderson film, but Google's telling me otherwise.
Also, if you're curious to find out what someone tripping balls on cocaine sounds like, you can learn quite easily.
@14: There's only one that people frequently cite, and I know I'll know when I hear it, damn it, but I can't put it in my head myself ... damn it.
(@15 references Nick's list, and isn't just a random pro-or-maybe-anti-but-probably-pro-cocaine video.)
I didn't get through the whole list, but I was actually surprised at how good, on the whole, the songs were -- it didn't have that feeling of staring at the Billboard Top 10 lists, which always look dreadful to me.
I have a kind of soft spot for those weird 1950s/1960s squaresville "historical" songs like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" or that "North to Alaska" song. That is a musical genre that is just gone forever. 1960's "Mr. Custer" by Larry Verne, on the list, which i'd never heard of before, is kind of amazing, it looks like a novelty song that somehow made it to No. 1.
No clue what song SEK is talking about, but the Faces were great. Hard to argue with this if you like classic rock at all.
this video seems very apprapo for an unfogged thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gu-MmmFkoA
and 16 really is a swing and a miss. if obvious joke is passed up, who will get 20?
but lets tie this thread together. First song of rod stuart i ever heard, was the radio it played a cover of this song, which is about doing cocaine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaeLKhRnkhQ
said cover: http://www.4shared.com/audio/_dDUJmXd/00_Rod_Stewart_-_Cigarettes_an.htm
but be here now actually sounds like coke.
and, faces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtqF0qBqzZo
actually none of these songs sound to coked up.
Never listened to the Faces much, but Rod Stewart in the Mercury era [first three or four albums, up until Never A Dull Moment is such an under-rated singer and writer. There's the laddish rock persona, yeah, but also a load of surprisingly subtle soul-inflected country-rock tunes.
re: 19
Yeah, that's actually a Stewart solo album track [but the Faces are the band on it].
this kinda does. really only listened to them becasue of spriitualized, although i can't seem to find my fold with covers in it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZMmV6xXYFw
and hey tamm could you explain wtf this guy means by "order a pure orange juice on the rocks [nefarious peace sign]" re: pubs means? in this tv w/in the first 5 seconds or so? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSlyn0WoSjc
actually pretty much everything nick lowe wrote is like course in music history, but a cover, only better. some superlative not-sampling but at least as derivative, in the most complementary way (2c ot wilde(or was it twain/lincoln?!))
it appears the 'folder' with spiritualized covers got dumped into a big download folder, and linux doesn't do so well at the sort by metadata thing. fuck.
26: I read the description in the top post of Enigma's "Sadness No. 1" and I thought, "There's no way I've ever heard that song." But nope, it turns out I've heard it a hundred million times.
Is it even controversial to note that everything the Small Faces did was better than anything Stewart and the Faces recorded?
The Faces were OK, but the Small Faces, their precursor band, were really awesome. Steve Marriot, if not actually god, was at least an archangel.
The thing that struck me about the early years of that stuff is that the Beatles' first five singles were released in a completely different order in America from the UK. I wonder what the point of that was.
pwned while typing.
No it's not controversial.
I have a kind of soft spot for those weird 1950s/1960s squaresville "historical" songs like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" or that "North to Alaska" song.
Me too. Johnny Horton -- the "North To Alaska" guy -- was the master of the genre. Not just Battle of New Orleans (in that video he looks like even he would concede it's gone too far), but also Jim Bridger , "Sink The Bismarck", "Young Abe Lincoln (Made a Tall Tall Man)", "O'Leary's Cow", "Comanche", "Battle of Bull Run", and probably more I don't know. Most are pretty mediocre, except I do like "North To Alaska" and I'm glad to get Jim Bridger get his props...nobody ever credits the mountain men. Got tired of filling them in but it looks like they're all on Youtube.
29, 30: Well then, harumph, glad to see that we are in agreement.
I thought everyone agreed that
The Small Faces > The Faces > early Rod Stewart > middle Rod Stewart > current Rod Stewart >future Rod Stewart.
I know the original Small Faces are a bit of an outlier on this list.
re: 33
I'd probably go with early Rod Stewart over The Faces. Although they overlap [songs/material/musicians], obviously.
I love how it's endearing, earnest dorkiness of The Battle of New Orleans, and then a few weeks later Elvis shows up and just ruins everyone's shit.
This the happiest link ever. My morning is completely ruined.
28: Is it even controversial to note that everything the Small Faces did was better than anything Stewart and the Faces recorded?
Is it even controversial that this kind of indier/rootsier-than-thou overstatement is the scourge of the "with it" internet.
No italics in 2nd sentence 9as if that needed to be made3 explicit).
I like it when Stormcrow's grumpy in the morning.
He's hitting both active threads with it. Maybe he needs another cup of coffee.
38: I am kind of barging around here at work as well.
36: Yeah, but, the Small Faces were hardly "indie" or "rootsy", by most objective measurements. They just made really good pop songs. If we were going to get into that whole "indier-than-thou" trip, I'd talk about Big Mama Thornton or Little Esther or someone like that, not the Small Faces. What's that line from the Jean Teasdale column about the hipster kids who follow her around for awhile? "I can't believe I ever shared a single non-ironic thought with you!" Something like that.
Or maybe I just stare at chests. Whichever.
Ah, here we go: "God, I'm sorry I ever shared a sincere, non-sarcastic thought with you!"
46: No, I'm a feminist. No need to shun me.
NOBODY TELLS MISS JEAN TEASDALE TO CHILL OUT@#!$
I love Poor Little Fool, by Ricky Nelson.
re: 51
Yes. The top Scottish funk band of all time.*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ISLeHByD-I&feature=related
You'll probably have hear some of their stuff via the medium of hip-hop sampling.
* it's not a big pool, tbh.
52: I was already in New York by then, so missed Scottish funk.
Is it controversial to say that the Small Faces were the quintessential mod also-rans and really a bit shite?
Also, Morrissey-Mullen was a better, (although less mainstream) Scottish funk band.
Eating a batch of bad haggis can lead to a nasty case of the Scottish Funk.
re: 54
Shit, yeah, forgot Morrissey-Mullen. Although I suppose Jim Mullen did also play with AWB.
The 1000 cover my listening life: Volare is the earliest song I can remember hearing on the radio when it came out -- I was about ten at the time. There are periods where I can recognize almost all the #1s and there are periods where I recognize very few. But I can't necessarily tie those to what else was happening in my life. I can probably sing from memory most of the disco stuff from the late '70s. But I wasn't out dancing then; I was slaving over my dissertation.
Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
"historical" songs like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" or that "North to Alaska" song.
I hadn't heard Indian Reservation (7/24/71) before and it's quite good.
Also, I'm often surprised to remember how good Peter, Paul, and Mary really were.
I like Rod Stewart on Jeff Beck's first solo album.
lyrics from Jaime Brockett's Talkin' Green Beret New Super Yellow Hydraulic Banana Teeny Bopper Blues:
Turned on my radio today
To see what Spiro Agnew had to say
He said, "If you don't like The Ballad of the Green Berets
Then you're probably one of them long-haired unwashed dope-smoking living-in-a-commune hippie Marxists"
61: Thanks. I would never have dredged that one up from the deep internal memory hole. Available on YouTube it turns out.