My Top-30 Most Listened To Songs of 2024
Added 2024-12-31 07:00:47 +0000 UTCOh boy! It’s time for nobody’s favorite end of year blog that I insist on doing! It’s time to answer the question absolutely NOBODY was asking, which songs are at the top of my Apple Music Most-Played count?
So, even I had started to get tired of doing this kind of round up for a while, because the play counts up at the top of the list had gotten so big that there was little chance of the ranking actually changing much from year to year anymore. Seriously, the number one track had a count that was in the triple digits (that being "Bismillahi 'Rrahman ‘Rrahim" by Harold Budd, for the none of you who asked) and it was the only one. That song wasn’t getting dethroned by anything short of a full reset of my iTunes… which is EXACTLY what happened when I had to start changing computers over the past couple of years. Lo and behold, now I actually find this stuff interesting again! Seriously, it’s fascinating to see just how different the list of songs wound up being from this time last year, and how different BOTH those lists wound up being from the ones I’d tallied up in years past. Go back and find some of those earlier blogs and marvel at just how much New Age/Easy Listening background noise I was listening to back in the day. I’ve gone through SEVERAL different phases since then, and the resulting selection of songs is much, MUCH more varied. If anything, the opposite problem has been happening as far as the song count goes. My music library is so vast, and I’ve been hoping around so much of it, that the play count of any individual song has been weirdly low. Seriously, it wasn’t until around mid-September that the Top 30 count no longer included a single Christmas song, even though I hadn’t played a single one of them in nine months. THAT’S what a broad selection of songs I’ve been drawing from to form this list. And dare I say it, this end result is probably a much more accurate depiction of what the inside of my head actually sounds like most of the time than those New Age-heavy ones ever were. If only my brain were actually that serene. So let’s all dig into what I’ve been digging into over the past year. I can pretty much guarantee there’s at least a few songs here you’ve never heard before! (And yes, I’ll be including links so you can experience the sounds inside my head for yourself)
30. “Path Through the Forrest” - The Factory
Case in point: unless you’re an absolute DORK about obscure Psychedelic records, there is absolutely no chance you’ve ever heard “Path Through The Forest.” It’s one of those many, many ‘60s singles that vanished as soon as they were released but found a second life appearing on various rarities complications in the 21st century. Personally, I encountered it on the Nuggets, Vol. 2 box set, and I’ve obviously liked it a lot ever since. While it’s obviously attempting to evoke a sort of Cream-style Power Trio sound, the wall of trippy effects and reliance more on a pulsing beat than a recognizable riff makes it sound more like something by Hawkwind. Very groovy.
29. “Red Chair, Fade Away” - The Bee Gees
Oh, this is a weird one. Unless you somehow already know this song, and I mean this one specifically, I promise you that whatever you imagine from seeing The Bee Gees credited up there is wrong. And I don’t just mean the fact that it’s not a Disco song… though that IS true, this isn’t a “Stayin’ Alive”-era Disco song by any stretch. But even people who think they know about the Bee Gees’ ‘60s output because they know “To Love Somebody” or “I Gotta Get A Message To You” may still be surprised by just how wacky and Psychedelic their first (non-Australian) album was. “Red Chair, Fade Away” is a weird mix of shifting time signatures and disorienting chord changes all wrapped up in lush, Sgt. Pepper-era orchestral arrangements. Check it out and see just how off the wall the Brothers Gibb were before Saturday Night Fever happened.
28. “She Said She Said” - The Beatles
Okay, here we go. Spoilers, but The Beatles are the VIPs of the list again this year, and I’m still a bit surprised that this didn’t happened more often before the computer shakeups happened. I’m pretty sure this is the first time “She Said She Said” has made it into the list, though it sure fits the Psychedelic kick these early entries have been on. “She Said She Said” is John Lennon in peak acid-drenched gibberish mode, and the band as a whole is in top rocking form, just on the verge of moving into the studio full-time but still possessing the fire of a live band. Musically, “She Said She Said” is basically the (relatively) better known song “Rain” mangled up and made more disorienting, with some really wonky time signature changes throughout. I wouldn’t know from personal experience, but I imagine that “She Said She Said” is a better reproduction of the fractured reality of an acid trip than any pf The Beatles’ later Flower Power anthems ever were.
27. “Somewhere Up Above” - April March
Well, look at this! A song that was recorded after the year 1967! …that clearly draws all of it’s inspiration from the years before 1967! Yeah, April March was one of many Indie artists around the turn of the millennium to draw a lot from ‘60s Go Go/Lounge/Exotica music but try and give it a more contemporary spin. You probably know her pest for the song “Chick Habit” at the end of Death Proof, but “Somewhere Up Above” (and the whole album it comes from, Triggers) is less blatantly retro ‘60s revivalism and more of a revisionist interpretation of those sounds, kind of like a more quirky version of Stereolab. I was all about this stuff back in college, and while not much of it made it up into the top ranking this year, it is a sound I’ve been revisiting a lot more recently. I’m nostalgic for this music that was already kind of nostalgic for some other music.
26. “Cherry Blossom Girl” - Air
AND SPEAKING OF WHICH! After I kind of moved on from all that quirky Indie Rock stuff post-college, I went through a bit of a Chillout/Downtempo phase, and Air were one of the top contributors. After all, most of Air’s best-known stuff, “Cherry Blossom Girl” included, still has enough Pop hooks to still overlap with the Indie stuff I had been consuming. I’d been aware of Air ever since I stumbled onto the rather inexplicable video for “Sexy Boy” on VH-1 of all places, but “Cherry Blossom Girl” is obviously the song I revisit the most. A lot of Air’s best stuff walls the line of being Ambient background noise and melodic Pop music, and few songs in their catalogue manage to pull off both at the same time quite as well as “Sherry Blossom Girl.” Honestly, it’s a bit surprising that more Air songs didn’t make it up to the top of the list, although…
…we do have this song by generic store brand Air. Okay, that’s unfair, I really like Zero 7 a lot, and their later albums successfully carved out a unique vibe all their own. But WOW did their debut really, really, REALLY copy Air’s homework. They did it well, mind you, “Destiny” is an absolutely fantastic groove, but still. Heck, I even stumbled onto “Destiny” and Zero 7 the same way I learned about Air: stumbling onto the music video during the one hour or so at 7 or 8 in the morning when VH-1 still played music videos. Admittedly, “Destiny” is a lot less Ambient than most of Air’s stuff, with Sia’s spine-tingling vocals commanding the listener’s attention, but the overall vibe is still the same. By the way, “Destiny” is one of the various songs that have been in my “Songs I Think Should Have Been Anime Themes” blogs, just like…
Waaaay back when YouTube was young and I had only just discovered that there were Japanese music videos floating around on it, “If” by Triceratops was one of the first songs I discovered that WASN’T directly connected to an anime of some sort. And as is often the case, the first is still the favorite. Triceratops did a whole lot of other songs, plenty of which are quite good, but “If” is the one I keep returning to the most. That guitar strumming sounds has a great late ‘90s vibe to it, which I guess I could say about most of their stuff, even though most of it was recorded in the 21st century. It does my soul good to hear that, while nobody on our side of the pond has ever heard of Triceratops, “If” was apparently a fairly decent domestic hit back in ’99.
23. “Girl Inform Me” - The Shins
Hey, remember back when everybody everywhere were hyping up The Shins as The Next Big Thing? That sure seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? I’m sure “Girl Inform Me” wasn’t the first of their songs I ever heard, I think that was probably “So Says I” when I discovered the video for it on Yahoo Music. However, “Girl Inform Me” was probably the most memorable Shins song for me because I actually had to go out of my way to identify it. Back in the aforementioned peak of my Indie Rock days, I heard this playing on the local college radio station (88.1 “The Revolution” …yeah, very cringe) and had to go poking around the internet with only the half-remembered lyric about “a mountain range on fire” to help me track the song down. Honestly, I don’t blame myself for not recognizing the band, as “Girl Inform Me” is a lot more precocious and twee than most of their better known songs. Maybe that’s why it’s the one I still revisit the most?
22. “Out and In” - The Moody Blues
One of the interesting (to me) side effects of looking back over the listening stats of my music collection is having those moments of realizing “Wait, THAT’S the song of their I’ve listened to the most?” It happens a lot with me, actually. A band with several really well known songs will have them all utterly out-ranked by some random album track or a flop oddity single or whatever. Case in point, my most-listened to Moody Blues song isn’t “Nights In White Satin” or “Tuesday Afternoon” or “The Question” or even freakin’ “Go Now.” Nope, it’s “Out and In,” a rarely-remembered track on a frequently overlooked album. Now, To Our Children’s Children’s Children is actually my favorite Moody Blues album, so having a track off of it be my top Moodies song isn’t totally surprising, but even then most people would pick “Watching and Waiting” as the album’s standout. And yes, it probably is my number two pick, but “Out and In” has a space yet mellow vibe that just works for me.
Back we go to the Indie Pop of my college days, though this time it’s not the goal College Radio station to blame, but rather Pandora. Yeah, there was a somewhat brief window of time where the majority of new music I encounters was saved up by Pandora’s algorithms. I certainly never would of herd of acs like Bicycle, Apollo Sunshine, or The Spinto Band otherwise. And I’ll be real here, I’m only rambling on about them because I know absolutely nothing about Marjorie Fair outside of his one song. I heard the whole album exactly once, and only wound up keeping the one trash that Pandora had exposed me to. It’s a charming little tune, thought, actually in a very similar vein to the previously mentioned “If,” and it’s obviously stuck with me over the years. I just have nothing at all to say about it.
20. “California Dreamin’” - The Mamas & The Papas
Okay, step aside Indie obscurities and album deep cuts, here we have a very well-known band with the singly song they’re most known for. Nice and simple and obvious. The Oldies radio hits might not be as prominent on this year’s list as they were previously, but there’s still a number of tracks here that were absolute staples of my childhood listening to Fox 97 in Atlanta. “California Dreaming’” wasn’t The Mamas & The Papas’ only hit, and it wasn’t even their biggest (that would be the follow-up “Monday, Monday”) but it’s the one pop culture most readily associates with the group. What’s weird is, I’m pretty sure this is the first time this or ANY Mamas/Papas tune had made it this far into my rankings. I know I had a big resurgence in ’60s standards in recent times, but anybody who knows me would have assume that would focus around either Psychedelic Pop or British Invasion stuff. Even I was a bit surprised to look at the final count and realize just how much moody Folk/Baroque Rock made it up to the top. Because there’s more than one of these surprise entries, such as…
19. “Walk Away Renee” - The Left Banke
The song that single-handedly made the harpsichord cool for a couple of years in the mid-60s. That surge of Oldies songs that dominated the list last year included a lot of tunes that I’d heard OCCASIONALLY on the radio as a kid, and which I’d been binging over and over now because I HAVE CONTROL NOW, DANG IT! “Walk Away Renee” was a major beneficiary of that trend, and it’s actually charting a bit higher this year than it did last time around. That’s in stark contrast to a bunch of the other heavy hitters, which have all dropped off of the list entirely. I guess that really WAS a bit of a fluke phase I was going through last year. Or, at least, the phase shifted a little, because there’s somehow some OTHER Oldies Radio stalwarts that have only just this year made the ranking despite being utterly passed over last year. Such are the mysteries of iTunes shuffle command, I guess.
18. “Cats on Mars” - Gabriela Robin
Yeah, talk about some mood whiplash. Just as we were getting into a groove of stately ‘60s Folk Rock, suddenly here’s some bouncy absurd space cadet gibberish. For those who don’t know, “Gabriela Robin” is actually Yoko Kanno, and this is one of the tracks off the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. And no, not one of the swinging’ Jazz tunes, but one of the… OTHER ones. Like so many people, the soundtracks for Cowboy Bebop and FLCL were my primary introduction to the broader world of Anime soundtracks, and as such it’s a bit surprising to me that this seems to be the first time a Bebop song has made it onto a year end list like this. I would have thought for sure a mellower tune like “Wo Qui Non Coin” would have been somewhere on the list when I was going through one of my New Age/Easy Listening phases, but apparently not! Now, let’s se if I spontaneously go through a Jazz phase and end up with “Tank!” on the list one of these years.
17. “When The Alarm Clock Rings” - The Blossom Toes
Oh, HERE’S an absolute first-timer, and one that I can absolutely, positively, for SURE guarantee no one looking at this has ever heard of. Unless you had the misfortune of riding in the van with me right after I got the Nuggets II box set and was playing it on every single drive everywhere we went, I can’t imagine there’s any chance that you’ve encountered The Blossom Toes in the wild. Heck, people only barely heard then back in Swingingg Sixties London, when they were ostensibly trendy. One of the many musical acts to jump onto the post-Sgt. Pepper mania for lush orchestral overdubs, not to mention the era’s penchant for absolutely TERRIBLE band names, The Blossom Toes pretty much fell off the face of the Earth until complete DORK record collectors started digging anything remotely psychedelic up and reissuing it. As one of those complete dorks, I’m glad they did, because “When The Alarm Clock Rings” is a great example of that uniquely unusual and rare breed of Psych-Pop single that could only ever have existed in one very, VERY distinct cultural moment.
16. “We Can Work It Out” - The Beatles
And from user obscurity back to omnipresence, we have a song that I was a bit surprised to see chart so highly lats year, and am still kind of surprised to see here. I can’t remember what I said about “We Can Work It Out” last year, and that’s fitting because this is very much a song that sneaks up on me. Even though it’s a frequent presence on any Greatest Hits compilation, it’s not a Beatles song I ever really think about. It’s just sort of… there. But it’s ALWAYS there, seemingly. It’s such a solid piece of pleasant filler that I can easily slot it onto just about any Oldies-themed playlist, and it ends up ranking up a lot of plays that way without me even realizing it. There’s far worse songs to realize I’ve been putting into my head all year, but it sure is hard to come up with anything interesting to say about it.
15. “‘Till I Die” - The Beach Boys
Now THIS, of the other hand, I can say a lot about. This is the only Beach Boys song to make it onto the list, and I can pretty much guarantee it would never have been anybody’s pick for that honor. For one thing, it hails from that post-“Good Vibrations” wilderness period where only the most hardcore music nerds even remember The Beach Boys recorded anything at all. And the few who do either focus on Brian Wilson’s leftover debris from the aborted Smile album or brother Carl’s newfound talent on songs like “Forever” or “Feel Flows.” But no, I’ve latched onto a rare new Brian Wilson composition, regarded by many as his last truly great song. And make no mistake, it is indeed great: melding the classic coal harmonies of their best work with all the best aspects of their flailing post-relevance era while cutting out pretty much all of the depressing bad bits. It’s still too moody a tune to every make it onto any Oldies radio rotation, but it’s beautiful enough for that to be a real shame.
14. “The Door Into Summer” - The Monkees
Back to the repeat offenders on this one, though continuing with the trend of obscure tracks that I quietly love more than most of the better known hits. This album track hails from that brief era when The Monkees were still TRYING to function as a unified group, having wrested control of the act away from Don Kirshner but having not yet started fighting with each other over it. It’s also a difficult song to pin down musically, in a way that only late-‘60s tunes truly can be. Compositionally, it owes a lot to the previously mentioned “California Dreaming’” or “Walk Away Renee” thanks to Mike Nesmith’s finger-picking guitar and Peter Tork’s baroque keyboards. But at the same time, there’s a shimmering Psychedelic atmosphere to the arrangement that it quite at odds with the tone of the lyrics. It’s a strange goulash of styles and influences, but it all blends together seamlessly.
Okay, THIS is an entry that really surprises me. As I mentioned earlier, there was a time when my most-played list was utterly dominated by New Age/Ambient music, thanks in no small part to that being the background music I’d have going on long car trips or convention work. Most of that stuff has fallen off the list these days, with the former reigning king "Bismillahi 'Rrahman ‘Rrahim" by Harold Budd not even coming close to registering on the chart. And yet, SOMEHOW, that song’s producer Brian Eno managed to sneak back up with this opening track off the pioneering Music for Airports album. I don’t think this song made it onto the list back when I was actively listening to this kind of thing on the regular, so I’m honestly a bit unsure how it managed to sneak all the way up here when I’ve mostly been listening to punchy Indie Pop and Psychedelic Rock lately. I mean, I actually DO know how it happened, I’ve fallen into a bit of a habit of playing Music for Airports in general and “1-1” specifically on a loop when I’ve really needed to focus on getting something done. I just didn’t realize I’ve been focusing THIS much on anything. My productivity levels sure wouldn’t suggest that.
12. “Submerciful” - Disasterpeace
Fitting that these two would be right next to each other on the list. “Sumbersciful” might have more of a beat driving it than “1-1,” but it’s still another song that I turn too regularly when I need to calm down and tune things out. I think I mentioned on the last list that “Submerciful” is one of the few Chiptunes songs I still regularly listen to, and the fact that it’s so chill and relaxing instead of hyperactive and energetic like most famous examples of the genre speaks volumes. It is kind of funny, then, that the song still made it into the top runs of the list, even so much of the surrounding spaces are held by far more punchy and lively tunes, comparatively speaking. Take, for example…
11. “A Hazy Shade of Winter” - Simon & Garfunkel
Is this the first time Simon & Garfunkel have made it onto my end of the year round up? I’m pretty sure it is, and it’s not an obvious pick, either. Sure, “Hazye Shade” isn’t exactly an obscure cut, it did get a high profile cover by The Bangles after all. But really, how many people out there would thing of THIS riff-driven Folk Rocker as the top example of Simon & Garfunkel, and not “Sound of Silence” or “Mrs. Robinson” or “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” or something like that? Well, me, apparently, even though this song sounds a lot more like “Bus Stop” by The Hollies than any other S&G song. Then again, this is another one of those songs I remember not hearing anywhere near enough on the radio when I was a kid, so I guess it’s another one of those “I’ll show you who’s boss now” kind of things. That’ll teach The World for playing “The Boxer” too many times!
10. “Someday Man” - The Monkees
Back to the roster of returning songs again, and this time it’s an ACTUAL obscurity by a well-known band. I’ve already gone on record more than once with my opinion that “Someday Man” is the greatest Monkees song you’ve never heard, and which really deserved to be a much bigger hit than it actually was. In fact I’ve said it so many times that I’m struggling to think of anything new to add. Oh, I know! Let’s say there’s some cosmic justice in “Someday Man” consistently ranking higher than the Mike-sung “Door Into Summer” on these lists, when a big part of the reason “Someday Man” failed to chart properly was because nobody could decide whether to promote it or it’s flip-side: Mike’s “Listen to the Band.” It’s a small victory, maybe, but at least it’s something.
9. “She’s Not There” - The Zombies
OOOooooh, another new face on the list, and it’s one that REALLY came out of nowhere! The Zombies were easily the oddest off the post-Beatles British Invasion groups to hit it big, and their influence vastly outstrips their chart success. “She’s Not There” is pretty much their only hit to be and actual hit pretty much everywhere, and not just a weird fluke in one market but nowhere else. It also sounds like absolutely nothing else on the rock scene in 1964, what with the moody, Jazz melody and rapid-fire electric piano flourishes. Sure, plenty of American Garage bands tried to sound like The Zombies, and it’s hard to imagine Ray Manzarek of The Doors getting anywhere without Rod Argent pointing the way for him to follow, but the overall package of the band is still utterly unique. Heck, it doesn’t really even sound like anything else on this list, and I consider that a great example of just how cool this list turned out to be. I mean, just compare this song to…
8. “Gone Is The Sad Man” - Timebox
Another absolute obscurity here, and another first-time entrant on these lists, and it’s even another song I first discovered on the Nuggets box sets! Timebox were one of the many, MANY bands kicking around the absurdly over-fertile London scene in the mid-to-late-‘60s, issuing multiple singles that were all decently solid, but never really managed to carve out a distinct identity o build a career around. That’s kind of surprising, given that Timebox were one of the few bands around to have an official, permanent vibraphone player in the line up. One would think that such an idiosyncratic feature would surely make a band stand out from the pack, but nope! Granted, part of the problem seems to have been a lack of original material. Of course Timebox was going to sound like everybody else if they had to rely on covering everybody else’s songs. This is especially a shame since the band WAS recording original tracks, but they were relegated to the B-sides of singles, like “Gone Is The Sad Man.” This os one of those uniquely British-sounding Psychedelic songs, like an unusually chipper and freewheeling Moody Blues. The layers of vibes gives the whole thing an especially dreamlike quality, and speaking of which…
It’s just not a real “most played” list if THIS oft-forgotten album track doesn’t show up! Seriously, I think “Mudmen” has been on every single one of these blogs in one spot or another, not bad for a track that even many hardcore Floyd fans haven’t heard of. Hailing from the Obscured by Clouds album, “Mudmen” is practically a dry run for all of the sounds that would appear on Dark Side of the Moon a few years later. From stately pianos to spicy synths to dreamy vibes to towering guitars, the whole classic Pink Floyd sound library is present here in it’s almost-but-not-quite-final form. That makes it pretty funny, then, that no track from Dark Side made it onto the list this year. But what’s even funnier is that, this time around, there IS another Pink Floyd track on the list, ranking even higher than “Mudmen.” It’s never made it onto the list before, and I can all but guarantee that it’s NOT what you’re thinking of right now.
6. “Renaissance Fair” - The Byrds
Well now, THIS is a surprise! I’m pretty sure The Byrds have never made it onto one of these round-ups before, and the fact that THIS is the song that broke through tells you all sorts of things about me. It wasn’t one of their best known Folk Rock hits like “Mr. Tambourine Man” or “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and it wasn’t one of their later Country Rock tunes either. Heck, I couldn’t even go with their game-changing Psychedelic pioneer “Eight Miles High,” but instead I had to go with the OTHER Psychedelic Byrds classic: “Renaissance Fair.” I’ve always lamented that the distinctive, unique Jazz/Psych sound introduced in “Eight Miles High” never got properly expanded upon, thanks to the infamously turbulent Byrds line-up spending too much time being shaken up to properly follow it up. The sad thing is, “Renaissance Fair” actually IS a perfect follow-up to “Eight Miles High,” blending the bands trademark harmonies and jangly 12-string guitars to abstract Jazz Fusion chords and melodies in a way that sounds like it’s echoing directly from outer space… but then it got released as the B-side to yet another Bob Dylan cover. Bad form, Columbia Records.
5. “Nowhere Man” - The Beatles
WE HAVE AN UPSET, FOLKS! Yes, the number one winner from last year’s blog has fallen all the way down to FIFTH place this time around! I guess I fell a lot less like I was sitting my nowhere land making nowhere plans for nobody in 2024, huh? Well, maybe not, since I still managed to listen to this song enough for it to outrank MOST other songs. I mean, just look at how many songs from last year’s list didn’t make it onto this one at all. I was clearly listening to this a SOME point. And why not? “Nowhere Man” is one of those songs that’s so good that you don’t even realize how good it is, effortlessly catchy and flawlessly constructed. It’s definitely the pinnacle of The Beatles’ Folk Rock phase, but it’s NOT the top Beatles song on the list this year. Yep, there’s still one more song that managed to get more plays than this one this year, but before we get to that…
4. “See Emily Play” - Pink Floyd
SURPRISE SYD BARRETT APPEARANCE! Yup, after years and year of Prog Rock-era Floyd being an inescapable mainstay on these blogs, this year I was in enough of a Psychedelic mood for one of their early, Syd-era singles to just swoop right in and bypass all those other songs! Really, the only surprising thing is that it took so long for this to happen. For a few years in my teens, I was actually ONLY a fan of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett-era songs. Seriously, I was quite possibly the first person in three decades to own Piper at the Gates of Dawn but NOT Dark Side of The Moon. Yeah, I’ve always been a weird one like that. But it’s not like “See Emily Play” doesn’t deserve to be played more often, the secret weapon of pre-raving-and-drooling Syd Barrett songs is how they could somehow be impossibly catchy at the very same time that they were disorientingly weird. A lesser band would have made four or five songs out of the hooks Barrett stuffs into this one track, almost as if the guy knew he didn’t have much time left to still be in full command of his abilities. Oh, but if you think THIS is a surprising entry on the list…
3. “Goodnight, Until Tomorrow” - Nobuo Uematsu
WHAT THE ACTUAL CRAP?!?!?!? How did THIS make it onto the list, and at such a high rank at that? Okay, you might not realize what’s up just from glancing at the name. “Goodnight, Until Tomorrow” is one of the tracks off of the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack, and that is NOT the part that’s weird. Heck, previous lists have boasted “Silence Before The Storm” from Final Fantasy X, so I’m clearly not against listening to video game music in Real Life. No, the odd thing is that it’s THIS song… which only barely even counts as a song. “Goodnight, Until Tomorrow” is the title jingle that plays when you go to sleep at an inn. It’s more of a glorified sound effect than a song, only lasting for ten seconds. I mean, I guess that explains who it could get so many plays, in the sense that it doesn’t take long, but still… THIS song? Not “Prelude” or “One Winged Angel” or any of the battle music or the Main Theme… but THIS song? See, this is one of the reasons I feel compelled to keep a record of this stuff, because there’s no way I would have been able to make up a goofy twist like this on purpose.
2. “Cherish” - The Association
And on that note, I continue to be amazed when I see “Cherish” clock in this high on the list. It doesn’t feel like a guy who listens to as many wacky Psychedelic songs and quirky Indie tunes and weird video game or anime soundtracks would keep revisiting this slick, calculated slab of mainstream (for 1966) Pop song enough for it to almost make the top spot. But let’s face it, it does have pretty much everything I look for in a song: soaring harmonies, memorable melody, unique hook, and well-realized production. Sure, The Association don’t tend to be remembered as having the same freaky cred as most of the artists we went past to get here, but when you really compare those song musically to “Cherish,” it’d be weird if I DIDN’T love this song. But I don’t love it as much as…
1. “Paperback Writer” - The Beatles
WE HAVE A NEW WINNER! BUT IT’S STILL THE SAME BAND! I’d say “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” but that’s a different group. Still, yeah. I’ve complained in the past that too many critics sleep on “Paperback Writer” because it’s too close to the old Beatlemania formula, and they want to hurry up and start talking about the Psychedelic stuff. While I can certainly understand that impulse, I still say that more people need to recognize what an achievement to tight songwriting this really is. What’s more, it’s a fantastic synthesis of everything else going on in the Rock scene in 1966. It’s got harmonies straight out of The Beach Boys, a guitar riff that’s pure Rolling Stones, a thundering bass a-la The Who, slice of life lyrics just like The Kinks, and they’re delivered in a rapid-fire manner akin to Bob Dylan. They’ve got everything in here! And I show know, because I’ve clearly listened to it enough times to know all the details by heart.
And there we have it! My 2024 in musical form! Will I be revisiting this madly self-indulgent hobby again next year? Honestly, probably. If there’s anything to be learned here, it’s that the numbers in my iTunes stats are still low enough for things to change around a lot over twelve months, and my listening habits have clearly shifted and changed enough for that to yield all sorts of real change. Who knows what sorts of wonky phases I’ll go through by this time next week year? I’ll tell you right now, all this time spent listening to my Mannheim Steamroller-heavy Christmas list has already given me a real hankering’ to return to those very New Age/Contemporary Instrumental sounds I’d apparently been so sick of the past few years. But a the same time, I’ve also inexplicably found myself closing out the year quite obsessed with “Prisencolinensinainciusol” (aka “The Italian Gibberish Song”) by Adriano Celentano, so there’s clearly no rhyme or reason to what I end up listening to and when. So we’ll just have to check back in twelve months and see what happens!
