My Top 25 Most-Played Songs of 2023
Added 2023-12-28 01:29:16 +0000 UTCYes, I’m STILL rambling on about what music I’ve been listening to all year. Look, until the world finally gives me uncontested control of my own network or radio stations through which to inflict my musical tastes upon the populace directly, I gotta find an outlet in whatever way I can. And you know what? I legitimately do think this year’s round up is pretty interesting. To reiterate what I said on the Christmas blog: I put these lists together in the most basic way possible: open up Apple Music, sort by “Plays,” and just write down what’s at the top of the list. The problem with this approach, of course, is that I'm unaware of any way to sort out plays according to any time scale, meaning last year's plays will still be a part of this year’s count. Thus, after a couple years, the songs at the very top of the list have too much of a lead over the others to really change all that much. And I don’t like deliberately messing with the settings on ANYTHING, no matter how insignificant, so those plays from previous years really do have time to build up unless some outside force steps in and changes everything up for me. In fact, I didn’t even DO one of these blogs at the end of last year, because much like with the Christmas one, there just wasn’t enough of a change to be worth it. Well, guess what happened this year? Yep, over the torturous process of getting myself set up on a new computer, one of the obviously lower-priority changes was all those iTunes stats getting completely reset. Thus, the play count at the end of 2023 really is just what I was in to over the course of the past year. And let me tell you right now, a LOT has changed since the last time I counted this stuff up.
For all you normal people do DON’T obsessively follow my own listening habits, and thus don’t automatically remember what was on the previous lists, I went through a pretty lengthy period of being VERY into New Age/Smooth Jazz/Contemporary Instrumental type stuff, so the previous lists were more or less ruled by that kind of stuff. Just go back and look at the utter dominance of proto-Ambient song “Bismillahi 'Rrahman ‘Rrahim” by Harold Budd. It also helped that this kind of smooth instrumental track was one of my go-to background choices on convention trips, all the better for drowning out noisy hotel rooms, or just long drives in general. The same goes for a rather epic playlist of Pink Floyd and Floyd-adjacent Prog Rock jams. I had that playing on a continuous loop so many times while I was out and about that pretty much everything on that playlist had a massive advantage over everything else once it came time to tally up the numbers. Even when the world shut down and I wasn’t going anyplace, that whole “unfair numerical advantage” thing came into effect, and whatever changes in my listening habit DID take place still wasn’t racking up enough plays to cancel out the lead the songs at the top of the list had. But now that the numbers are all reset, those years of roadtrip plays are officially no longer a factor, and WOW does the top of the list look different. I think there’s some interesting conclusions to be drawn about myself as a person from this list as compared to previous years, but I don’t wanna get ahead of myself. Let’s finally dig into my Top 25 Most-Played Songs of 2023 and see just how much things have truly changed.
25. “Daydream Believer” - The Monkees
Oh, of COURSE I have to start off with a mention of The Monkees. It’s not like that was ever a running gag or anything. No, but seriously, I’ve always loved the world’s first industry plants. Well before I had any understanding of how they were any different form any other band from the ‘60s, I just thought their songs were some of the best on the local Oldies station, this one included. And you know what? When I finally DID learn the crazy story of music industry machinations and culture wars and interpersonal turmoil that was The Monkees, I only found them even more fascinating. It obviously helps that, no matter who was making what when, the body of The Monkees’ work is one of the strongest of the decade, with this charming slice of Sunshine Pop as one of their crowning achievements. And it really is THEIR achievement, as “Daydream Believer” hails from that vanishingly brief period of time AFTER the four stars of The Monkees TV show had successfully wrestled creative control of their musical output away from the industry experts, but BEFORE relations between the four had broken down to the point of not being able to work together. “Daydream Believer” is a legit collaborative effort, with all for Monkees present on the recording, and it’s status as a perennial Oldies standard proves just how real The Monkees could be when they actually got a chance to try.
24. “Walk Away Renee” - The Left Banke
An astute reader will notice a trend already beginning to emerge, and I’ll go ahead and ruin the suspense right away: Yes, this list is going to be heavily dominated by Oldies Radio, the music I was quite literally raised on despite being born decades after it had been culturally relevant. Even in their day, The Left Banke were a bit of a flash in the pan, constantly beset by lineup problems and crippling feuds between members that scuttled their career momentum before it’d really had a chance to begin. Still, “Walk Away Renee” was a pretty respectable hit at the time, and kicked off a mid-60s fad of using harpsichords in as many things as possible. True record nerds know that, while The Left Banke’s backlog is small, there’s an awful lot more good stuff than just their one big hit, but it’s obviously still the one that I’ve been going back to the most. It can’t be a coincidence that this is also the song of theirs that most heavily emphasizes the band’s knack for vocal harmonies, because boy is THAT a shortcut to getting my attention.
23. “Laughing” - The Guess Who
Alright, “Walk Away Renee” is one of those songs that stuck around Oldies Radio for years and years, but it’s not like The Left Banke were every really household names or anything. The Guess Who, though? Yeah, we’re definitely hitting the mainstream in ways that my previous top song lists never dreamed. Screw obscure 80s Jazz Fusion and unknown European Prog Rock ballads and other music nerd curios, we’re dipping straight into a song that has ABSOLUTELY been played over the speakers of random gas stations and grocery stores for the past fifty years. While Canada’s biggest culture export certainly made attempts to fashion themselves as a cool, trendy, counterculture hippy band, the fact remains that their biggest hits are absolutely songs that your Dad’s Dad could listen to without feeling weird. And that’s kind of funny, because “Laughing” is actually a much more complicated song than it seems at first listen. Sure, at surface level is seems like the kind of vaguely Jazz-tinged tune that any lounge singer could and did work with, but there really is a lot of complicated rhythmic patterns and odd chord changes lurking behind Burton Cummings’ crooning. It’s not exactly Progressive Rock or anything, but it’s still trickier than “that one Oldies song” would have you believe.
22. “Renaissance Fair” - The Byrds
Okay, HERE’S one you’re never hearing on the Oldies station, which is a real shame as far as I’m concerned. Sure, The Byrd’s early Folk Rock hits are perennial favorites, but more and more I find you need to really be a Psychedelic connoisseur to find people who actually talk about the band’s pioneering Acid Rock work like “Eight Miles High” or this track. I obviously think highly enough of it to have listened to it more times than obvious choices like “Mr. Tambourine Man” or “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” making this the first of several entries here guaranteed to make at least one person go “Wait, THAT’S the song of theirs he listened to the most?” So I’ve not COMPLETELY turned in my membership to the Musical Obscurities Club, just found some different ways of showing it off. But seriously, “Renaissance Fair” is a pretty weird song. Great but weird, and one of the few fully-formed examples of The Byrd’s fleeting infatuation with Jazz during their Psychedelic period. Heck, it’s even got Jay Migliori playing a sax riff that almost disappears into the mix of swirling 12-string guitars. It’s also the sort of song where it’s genuinely hard to pick out what the actual melody is and what’s a harmony line, and I mean that as a good thing here. Where so many Psychedelic songs either fall short of their experimental ambitions and just sound like conventional music with some production tricks on top, or delve so deep into their own indulgences that they become formless, tuneless blobs, “Renaissance Fair” really does sound like music from some other dimension: unfamiliar but focus, structurally alien but still recognizably structured in SOME way.
21. “In My Life” - The Beatles
And now we start busting out the BIG guns. The Beatles are the single most-represented artists on this whole list, with a grand total of four songs throughout. And in another year, it might be a bit of a surprise that such a familiar standard as “In My Life” made it onto a list of mine over their weirder Psychedelic stuff or any number of lesser-known British Invasion bangers. But no, this is seemingly the year of the Oldies Radio Standard, and this is absolutely a radio standard. It’s also a great slice of Folk Rock, with tight three-part harmony and an early stab by John Lennon at some more reflective and mature lyrics, so I’d say it absolutely deserves that level of cultural familiarity. Still, this feels like a good point to really dig into the major theme emerging with this list: I’ve apparently spent the bulk of 2023 listing to a LOT of the songs I used to hear all the time on Fox 97 and the other Oldies radio stations I grew up with. Again, the 60s were decades before I was born, but that’s still pretty much what my childhood sounded like, right there. What’s more, some of the first albums I ever owned were Beatles greatest hits collections, a few of which contained “In My Life” despite it not actually having been a “hit” in the conventional sense. So yeah, I’ve definitely been in a nostalgic mood over the past year, appropriate for a song with such a reflective theme, and my listening habits have definitely shown that. And speaking of which…
20. “Cherry Blossom Girl” - Air
Brace yourselves, folks, because this right here is literally the ONLY song on this entire list to be recorded after the mid-70s. Seriously, even my own standards, I have straight up forsaken the modern musical landscape in favor of the past. Heck, even this one “modern” song is nearly twenty years old. Yes, that’s right. This song that hails from 2004 is nearly TWO DECADES OLD. We are all ancient fossils. But seriously, this sort of Downtempo, Chillout groove was a pretty big thing for me for around a year or so, representing one of my final gasps of anything resembling contemporary relevancy after I’d fallen out with the larger Indie scene but before the Vaporwave bubble convinced me that I’d rather just listen to the original songs that these new ones were sampling. Granted, “Cherry Blossom Girl” is apparently free of any pre-existing samples, but it certainly SOUNDS like the sort of song that would have started as a loop of some clip of ‘60s library music. It also sounds absolutely gorgeous, with soaring harmonies and a generally spicy vibe throughout. Part of me is a bit surprised that “Cherry Blossom Girl” was the one song of this era to claw it’s way up to this list. If you’d asked me at the start of the year what one Chillout song I would expect to reign supreme, I would have assumed “Destiny” by Zero 7 to take top honors. But see, that’s exactly why I enjoy doing lists like this: you truly never know what you’ll end up doing until after you’ve done it, and many times you end up surprising yourself.
19. “You Were On My Mind” - The We Five
And back we go to the Oldies vault, with another song I’m as surprised as anyone to see this high up in the ranking. The We Five are the classic example of a ‘60s one hit wonder: an utterly anonymous West Coast Folk band who stumbled into one monster smash when they decided to cover a minor Canadian hit for a new market, then completely fell off the public’s radar when attempted follow-ups failed to live up to the one hit. Honestly, I can’t say that was even all that unfair, the rest of the We Five canon is pretty lackluster, even by my own very forgiving standards for that era. But before you think they were totally talent-less bombs who just leeched success off of somebody else’s hard work, I’ve heard the original Ian & Sylvia version of “You Were On My Mind.” Not only is it nowhere near as good as the We Five version, but the arrangement is barely recognizable, so SOMEBODY was really putting in the work here. And make no mistake, the arrangement of “You Were On My Mind” is the best part, and another of those songs where you don’t immediately recognize how complicated it is. While the basic melody is pretty basic Folk Rock, the vocals are constantly evolving and the band keeps adding more and more layers to the performance. Heck, the chiming 12-strong guitar riff, which most of these Folk Rock songs are completely built around, doesn’t even BEGIN until the song is halfway finished. The opening verse is practically whispered, staring a steady build-up that allows the crescendo at the and to feel even bigger than it actually is. It’s a bit of a shame that a band clever enough to put such a unique spin on somebody else’s song never managed to come with one of their own this good.
18. “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” - Procol Harum
The hits just keep coming with another all-time standard. Technically, Procol Harum aren’t a One Hit Wonder, but good luck finding normal people who actually remember any of their other songs. And that’s wildly fair, since “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is literally one of the best-selling singles of all time. Of COURSE most people are going to struggle to remember the likes of “Homburg” or “A Salty Dog.” As a result, though, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” is one of those songs where it’s actually a bit of a challenge to talk about it as an actual song -with components that can be picked apart and analyzed- and not as a sort of omnipresent cultural fact. It’s one of those songs that just feels like it’s always been there. Even as a kid, right as I was starting to get obsessive about the bands I’d always heard on the Oldies stations, for whatever reason Procol Harum never triggered the same curiosity that, say, The Zombies or The Moody Blues ever did. Maybe that’s because, even as a kid, I could name at least one other song by The Zombies or The Moody Blues, or maybe even then I could pick up on the fact that “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” would be nothing if it didn’t crib so strongly from Bach’s “Air on the G String.” The later’s not all that likely, but the fact remains that, even now, I have to remind myself that “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” actually came from someplace, even as it has apparently been one of the songs I’ve listened to the more all year.
Wow, here’s another major upset. In previous years, Pink Floyd have utterly dominated these lists, I think literally being the most present artist once or twice. And yet, in the year of our Lord 2023, this the ONLY Pink Floyd song to make the list. That’s a pretty major shake up, though it might be a bit self-explanatory. I run the risk of getting sick of pretty much ANYTHING if I indulge in it too long, so I probably just burned myself out on that whole Floydian strain of epic, elegant Prog Rock for a while. Case in point, just look at how many radio-friendly singles made the list instead this year. What’s a bit more surprising is WHICH Pink Floyd song managed to claw up onto the top 25. Not “Time,” not “Brain Damage,” not “The Great Gig In The Sky,” not ANYTHING off of Dark Side of the Moon. Nope, “Mudmen” is an instrumental track off of Obscured by Clouds, one of the various bits of soundtrack work the band did in the early 70s. While indeed obscure, “Mudmen” is nevertheless a great early indicator of all the sounds Pink Floyd was about to unleash on the world, shedding most of the more hippy-ish tendencies of their earlier Space Rock days and embarking on an altogether more refined and polished brand of Prog Rock. Indeed, you can hear obvious traces of all the Dark Side songs I mentioned earlier in “Mudmen,” both in overall mood and the specific chord changes and musical phrasings. Heck, even the fact that “Mudmen” uses the same chords as fellow Obscured by Clouds track “Burning Bridges” could be seen as presaging the album-long structure of Dark Side and its various reprises. Also, it just sounds really cool and is a great track to chill out to.
16. “The Door Into Summer” - The Monkees
We continue out mini-streak of obscure tracks by not-at-all-obscure-bands with our next Monkees tune. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but this relatively forgotten album track as low key turned into one of my favorite Monkees songs. I know, that should be obvious since it’s on this list, but the same is also true of “As We Go Along” or “Come On In” and you won’t be seeing THOSE in this blog. Anyway, “The Door Into Summer” is something of a contemporary of “Daydream Believer,” hailing from the very closing days of The Monkees’ willingness to actually participate in the recording of each other’s songs. Thus, while it’s definitely a Mike Nesmith project (written by Mike’s friend Bill Martin), there’s clearly a lot of Peter Tork giving the song a more Folk/Baroque feel than it would probably have if it was just Mike running things on his own. Indeed, this almost sounds more like a Left Banke song than anything, despite the presence of, at best, very little harpsichord. What it does have is some very nice guitar finger picking, mirrored by some lovely little piano flourishes over the chorus. There’s even some nice traces of early Psychedelia lying in the production. While it’s nowhere near as iconic as “Daydream Believer,” I do think there’s a case to be made that this is any even better demonstration of how much talent The Monkees actually had outside all the Behind The Music shenanigans.
15. “These Eyes” - The Guess Who
And back we go to the Oldies Radio standards, but in the process also return to me talking about songs that are a lot more complicated than you might initially thing. After all, it’s The Guess Who again. This is music that plays while you wait at the dentist’s office, right? I mean, yeah, it’s an AM Radio hit with Jazzy chords and swooning strings and melodramatic vocals on top and all that… but have you ever stopped and REALLY listened to it? Or, better yet, tried to sing along to it? Yeah, play the clip from Superbad. Many a poor, unsuspecting soul has thought they could handle this song, only to get hit in the face by the chorus and realize they’re utterly unprepared. The meter starts getting more complicated and the lyrics start coming faster and faster and the key keeps shifting higher and higher and AHHHHH! In it’s own way, it’s every bit as tricky as portions of a bunch of Yes songs, all this in a ditty that you’d easily see some mustachio’d crooner belt out on some ‘70s variety show. But that’s surprisingly common with a lot of these Oldies standards. Seriously, just look at pretty much anything from the golden age of Motown. I’ve heard entire albums with less music going on than a single Holland/Dozier/Holland production, and while I’m not saying Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings are on the same level as that, they definitely crammed a lot more detail into what could have just been another sappy radio ballad than they ever needed to. If nothing else, I certainly found enough going on to keep me coming back over and over this year.
14. “Everybody Knows (I Still Love You)” - The Dave Clark Five
Oh, this is an especially interesting one to me, since it’s another in the “Wait, THAT’S Your Most Played Song?” category. The Dave Clark Five were, for a year or two, one of the top bands of the British Invasion, scoring hits right alongside The Beatles. Unfortunately, like so many other Beat groups like Billy J. Kramers & The Dakotas, Freddie & The Dreamers, or The Swinging Blue Jeans, the rapidly-shifting Rock & Roll landscape were not kind of The DC5, and they just couldn’t hang with The Rolling Stones or The Hollies in following The Beatles into more adventurous territory as the decade progressed. The odd thing is, generally, those Beat bands who fell off were the ones who could only play covers, which quickly became lame once everybody noticed The Beatles wrote songs themselves. But that’s the thing: The Dave Clark Five DID write most of their own hits. “Glad All Over,” “Bits and Pieces,” “Because,” “Catch Us If You Can,” they were downright prolific in that ’64/’65 window of time. But by as early as as 1967, they were basically has-beens, because the stuff they were good at just wasn’t popular anymore. And yes, when it comes to that specific brand of short, punchy, British Invasion tunes, they were VERY good at it. Case in point, this lesser known track, which I say about a song that still made the Top Twenty in mid-’64, but was apparently forgettable enough for the bad to release ANOTHER song called just “Everybody Knows” two years later. This first one is the better one, with some really nifty chords throughout. Lots of 7ths and stuff I never got good enough at playing guitar to really comment on, but I can still recognize when I hear it. When I first started digging into my parents’ vinyl collection, this was one of the first instances of a band I’d been hearing on the Oldies station having some deep cut I actually liked as much if not more than the hits I was familiar with. The fact that this particular list is so full of the big hits might suggest otherwise, but that was the start of YEARS of digging around to discover new obscurities.
…then again, sometimes even “the hits” can be obscure in their own way. Unless you’re a really diehard Oldies radio listener, you’ll probably have to do some serious Googling to have any idea who “The Cuff Links” even are. And that’s a trick question, of course, since they never really existed. Rather, they were writing/producing duo Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance releasing some songs with session vocalist Ron Dante, soon to be better known as the voice of The Archies. There’s a whole crazy story about how Pockriss & Vance tried to strong-arm Dante into recording more Cuff Links material after “Tracy” became a hit, but I have a feeling this entry is already going to be too long as it is. Because remember what I was saying about how a bunch of these Oldies standards are actually a lot more musically complicated than they seem at first glance? Dude, you have NO idea how much is going on under the hood with “Tracy.” It comes across as just a cheesy little Bubblegum ditty, until you actually try to sing along with it. Or, more specifically, if you try to sing it from memory without any backing track to give you a foundation. Only then will you realize that, in two verses and three choruses, this thing is constantly shifting from key to key and back again. What’s more, it’s never actually the same chorus twice! Every one has slightly different chord changes and end up in different keys and GAAAAAAH it’s so much more confusion than a silly little song by a make-believe band has any right to be! This is one of those songs that I didn’t hear a LOT on the Oldies stations, but that just made it a bit more of a “Oh, neat!” moment those times it DID play. Maybe that’s why I’ve found myself revisiting it so much recently?
12. “On The Way Home” - Buffalo Springfield
And back we go to the “Really? THAT song?” pile once again for Buffalo Springfield’s only appearance on this list. They’ll forever be known to the whole of Pop Culture as “That Stop-Hey-What’s-That-Sound Band,” despite the actual title of that song being “For What It’s Worth.” The tale of how much talent Buffalo Springfield squandered through personal drama is well-told, and also well-proven thanks to the lengthy careers most of their members went on to after the break up. And speaking of their break up, that’s when “On The Way Home” was released so you can imagine how well it did on the charts. In fact, not only is it the last single released under the band’s name, but it’s also the last recording to feature the entire line-up all playing on the same song (the fittingly titled Last Time Around album is most made up of solo recordings). But I obviously think pretty highly of it, and genuinely think it could have stood a chance at some decent airplay if a band had still existed to promote it. While “On The Way Home” is a standard early Neil Young song in composition, with Folk Rock structure and enigmatic lyrics, the arrangement is something altogether unusual for Buffalo Springfield. The instrumentation is much mellower, with vibes and a string section and even horns throughout. Honestly, it sounds as much like a Guess Who song as both the Guess Who songs on this list. I really think it’s got all the makings of an Oldies radio fixture, aside from the fact that it wasn’t enough of a hit to be nostalgic to anybody. Well, it’s nostalgic to me. One of the first vinyl records I ever went out and bought on my own was a Buffalo Springfield greatest hits collection, and pretty much everything besides “For What It’s Worth” was completely new to me. At the time, “Bluebird” and “Mr. Soul” stuck out to me the most for being so Psychedelic, but these days it’s the laidback catchiness of “On The Way Home” that really strikes me as the great shoulda-been hit of Buffalo Springfield's lamented career.
11. “Never My Love” - The Association
Nobody can say THIS one wasn’t a hit. Although The Association ostensibly grew out of the same Folk scene that birthed the aforementioned Buffalo Springfield, and their first big hit “Along Comes Mary” was loaded with counterculture street cred, The Association ultimately gained a reputation as being about as slick and mainstream as a ‘60s band could be. Clearly, I don’t consider that a bad thing, and just as clearly never have. I think at least one Association song has made it up into every one of these lists I’ve compiled, and at least once that song was “Never My Love.” This is one of those unusual songs where the actual instrumentation is quite sparse, but it still sounds lush to the point florid. That’s all down to the vocals, piled and piled on top of the modest foundation of hushed guitars and electric piano and forming one of the best webs of West Coast harmonies this side of The Beach Boys. I’ve seen a blurb floating around saying that “Never My Love” is the second most-played song American song of the 20th century, behind only “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” by The Righteous Brothers, but that’s the kind of statistic that sounds especially dubious to me. After all, I apparently found ten songs worth listening to more, and I’m clearly a reasonable test case for the entirety of the Americas, right? No, but seriously, “Never My Love” is a pretty dang impressive balancing act, managing to take a big and elaborate arrangement and use it to create an atmosphere of remarkable calm and intimacy. This is exactly the kind of song that an artist could easily ruin by trying to show off to much. Heck, just look at The Addrisi Brothers’ infinitely worse cover, or the even worse (to the point of almost being So Bad It's Good) OTHER version, and they’re the ones who originally WROTE the dang thing. Oh, but if you think The Association deserve praise for knowing how to tone things down, just wait until we get to…
10. “Love Is All Around” - The Troggs
Yup. I’m not sure if this counts as another “Wait, THAT song?” moment, since “Love Is All Around” is legitimately The Trogg’s second-biggest hit. But when their number one hit is freakin’ “Wild Thing,” me talking about the pretty little hippy-tinged romanic ballad with the 12-string guitars still feels a bit odd. On the other hand, looking back over how mellow most of the list has been so far, it actually might have been weirder if “Wild Thing” HAD been the song for me to talk about right now. I mean, so far, one of the wildest rockingest songs on the list has somehow managed to be “You Were On My Mind.” I guess even when I leave the New Age Elevator Music and Stoned Out Space Rock behind, I’m still going to end up with soft and cozy background music in one form or another. And yes, for as much as The Troggs get remembered as Punk pioneers, “Love Is All Around” is the very definition of cozy. Even as a kid, before I had any real concept of what Psychedelic music was, I could tell that simple, repetitive guitar sound was the kind of thing somebody could get wrapped up in and just disappear for a while. This is another one of those songs that wasn’t exactly RARE to hear on the Oldies stations, but was juuuuust uncommon enough for Young Me to perk up a bit when it did get played, which is probably another reason why I’ve been revisiting it so much now. And along all those same lines…
9. “How Can I Be Sure” - The Rascals
…here’s ANOTHER band known for songs that sound nothing like the one I’ve most listened to! Granted, this isn’t QUITE as drastic as the Troggs example, since The Rascals had a whole Blue-Eyed Soul period where songs like “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long” or “A Beautiful Morning” or especially “Groovin’” stand out on sharp contrast to early Garage Band anthems like “You Better Run,” “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” or the immortal “Good Lovin’” …literally any of which are probably better remembered than “How Can I Be Sure.” (Well, okay, maybe not “An’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart,” but still). Compared to both the Punkish Rock of their early songs and also the Gospel-tinged sound of their later stuff, “How Can I Be Sure” sticks out like a sore thumb. An accordion-driven waltz that sounds a bit like something a character in an old Disney movie would sing while rolling down the streets of Paris, this is the kind of song that really, really, REALLY wouldn’t have stood a chance of becoming a chart hit after the sixties. Heck, even then it was already considered a bit of a risk for a Rock band to take a chance on something so potentially square-sounding. And once again, this is another song that I remember being mildly surprised every time I actually heard it turn up on the Oldies stations as a kid. It wasn’t massively rare or anything, but I was so much more likely to hear “Groovin’” or “People Got To Be Free” -songs I didn’t like anywhere near as much- that the occasion of hearing this one instead always felt like a minor little victory. Clearly, I’ve spent the past year getting my revenge on radio programers from thirty years ago. “I’LL SHOW YOU ALL! I’LL PLAY THIS SONG AS MANY TIMES AS I WANT! AND ALSO EAT JUNK FOOD WHENEVER I FEEL LIKE IT!”
8. “Love (Can Make You Happy)” - Mercy
Geez, and you thought the last few songs were a bit sappy. “Love (Can Make You Happy)” is so corny that both Percy Faith and Ray Conniff recorded covers within months of the original’s release. For those of you who don’t speak Elevator Music, that means it’s a song that a hippy’s parents would like. It’s a DEEPLY sappy song about getting married, perfect for corny Easy Listening guys like the ones I mentioned above, and is about as light and fluffy as a commercial jingle for a mattress store. And yet, paradoxically, it’s also a rather ragged-sounding recording, as befitting a tune originally bashed out for a tiny indie label in Florida. So… I guess this is the Garage Band version of Elevator Music? Oh, and for all you bad movie fans out there, Mercy is also the band (well, the GUY, vocalist Jack Sigler Jr. pretty much WAS Mercy) playing in the lounge scene in Mr. No Legs. So, yeah, that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how many hits Mercy had AFTER “Love (Can Make You Happy)”. And once again, we have a song that I’d only ever hear on the Oldies stations every so often, though this time it really WAS a legitimate rarity. In fact, I think I remember it turning up most when they’d specifically do one of those “We haven’t played THIS in a while” days. So, again, I might just be excerpting some long-overdue control over my life by listing to one of those songs I didn’t get to hear very often in my youth… but there’s a lot of songs like that which haven’t made it this high onto the list. The truth is, I actually do like Percy Faith or Ray Conniff in the right circumstances. Heck, most of this paragraph was written while a Percy Faith Christmas song was playing. “Love” is just one of those songs I find myself returning to more and more when I need something calm and relaxing to have playing in the background, especially when I have to do something stressful or aggravating. And we all need as many of those songs as we can get, right?
AND SPEAKING OF WHICH. We’re definitely out of the “I didn’t hear this one all that often” category with this one, “Traces” got played all the freakin’ time, and probably still does on generic Easy Listening stations. I wouldn’t know, I’ve got an iPod these days. If the past few entries have taught us anything, it’s that I feel like I can do better with radio station programming than any real radio station. But seriously, “Traces” is one of THE Easy Listening songs of the ‘60s. In fact, The Classics IV were one of those acts that kind of succeeded their way out of a job, as they were too good at chasing the money their smooth ballads were making to notice that they’d pretty much destroyed any credibility they once had with the Rock crowd. But you know what? I think it was a fair trade, because “Traces” is just plain great. Similar to “Never My Love,” “Traces” is one of those songs that a less disciplined artists would be tempted to turn into a vehicle for big diva moments, but Dennis Yost & co. know well enough to keep things reigned in. As a result, the song simmers, but never boils over, which exactly what a song all about regret and missed opportunities ought to do. And, of course, it also makes it that much easier to absorb the song while in the middle of doing something else, which is apparently the exact formula needed to get me to listen to your song over and over.
6. “We Can Work It Out” - The Beatles
Well, look who’s back! And with a low key surprising entry, as well. For a song that was on constant rotation on all the Oldies stations throughout my childhood, I never remember actually liking “We Can Work It Out” all that much. I didn’t hate it or anything, but I also didn’t especially love it. I had two Beatles greatest hist compilations as a little kid, and with both of them I’d almost always mash fast forward when “We Can Work It Out” to get to “Paperback Writer” or “Day Tripper” instead. Clearly, I was bigger on searing guitar riffs than Ernest acoustic strumming. That, or I just didn’t like harmoniums as a kid. Admittedly, this is one of those songs that doesn’t really operate on a killer, memorable hook so much as a general groove, though that does bring me to something that’s come to fascinate me about the song. On several occasions so far, I’ve made reference to songs being more musically complicated than they seem on the surface. With “We Can Work It Out,” on the other hand, I think we have a song that sounds a lot trickier than it actually is. Yes, it’s a song that does indeed randomly switch into a 3/4 waltz for a few measures during the chorus before switching back to 4/4 the rest of the time, but look at the verses. I always get thrown off by all the syncopation going on with Paul’s vocals, to the point that my brain absolutely INSISTS there’s some extra measures getting slipped in the middle of the verses or right before the chorus line. If I try to sing it to myself, I’ll actually trip over myself at the points because something in my head just refuses to stick to a standard 4/4 beat. I mean, there’s just NO way those words could get in all those weird places without some freaky changes to the rhythm, right? Nope! Actually count along and RIngo’s clearly doing a basic four-on-the-floor beat everywhere other than that little waltz bit. Intellectually I understand that to be true, but I just can’t accept it, and maybe THAT’S why young me always avoided it? I dunno. Apparently I’ve gotten over it enough to keep playing “We Can Work It Out” as background noise, but it’s still odd.
5. “Someday Man” - The Monkees
It’s our third and highest-rated Monkees song, and the one I absolutely GUARANTEE nobody out there has ever heard of unless it was from me. And if you’ve heard me talk about it before, you know I think it’s one of the best singles they ever put out, despite not even comic CLOSE to being a hit. It had the misfortune of comic out well into The Monkees’ commercial decline and interpersonal collapse (Peter Tork was already long gone by this point), and also got caught in some major promotional indecision. It was released as a single along with Mike’s song “Listen To The Band,” but nobody could ever agree on which side should be getting pushed as the A-side, so basically the two songs ate each other alive on the charts and neither became a hit. And again, this was at a point when anything released under the Monkees banner already had the odds stacked against it as is. And you know what? That’s a crying shame, ‘cos “Someday Man” is fantastic. It’s an early Paul Williams song sung by Davy Jones, with sort of a grab bag of Broadway Showtune and Sunshine Pop cliches all thrown into a blender. And to reiterate another unintended theme that’s developed here, Davy Jones doing both Broadway and Sunshine Pop had bad habits of going way too broad to the point of getting obnoxious, but somehow it’s all reigned in here. The horns are muted, the shifts in time signature are surprisingly easy to follow, and Davy sounds nice and relaxed throughout. This is a song all about taking it easy and not worrying about stuff, so it’d all fall apart if he gave it his usual big, broad, trying-too-hard schtick. Good for him. Also, it goes without saying that I never once heard this one played on the radio. I stumbled onto this thing in a “greatest hits” tape that was almost entirely comprised of non-hits. Like, it randomly dropped one of their ‘80s reunion songs (“Heart and Soul”) in amid all the ‘60s tracks with absolutely no warning or context. And then “Someday Man” came right after that. I mean, it’s super jarring, but it sure made “Someday Man” sound better by comparison, and I’ve clearly held that impression ever since if it made it all the way up to number five.
4. “Summer Rain” - Johnny Rivers
Now THIS one even caught me a bit my surprise when I realized how high up the play count it was climbing. Johnny River is one of those artists that I heard all the freakin’ time on the Oldies stations without every really thinking much about him. Like, the Procol Harum situation again, except even more significant because they actually played more than one song over and over. Johnny Rivers was around for years and years, riding the shifting trends in ways that much better known artists failed to navigate. He spent the early 60s as the off-brand Chuck Berry with stuff like “Secret Agent Man”, even having the definitive hit version of Berry’s “Memphis,” before surprisingly pivoting towards Easy Listening ballads like “Poor Side of Town.” While bands like aforementioned Classic IV had their momentum stall when they tapped into the Mom & Dad market, Rivers somehow managed to ride the inertia of doing lush ballads right into hippy-dippy Flower Power vibes, a move that would have been a thousand times harder to take if the rocking “Seventh Son” and the lush “Summer Rain” didn’t have a year’s worth of covers of “Tracks Of My Tears” and “Baby I Need Your Lovin” as a buffer zone. It’s a good thing, too, because I really think “Summer Rain” is Rivers’ crowning achievement. Even as a kid, I may not have given much of a crap who Rivers actually was, and it DEFINITELY took longer than it should have for me to notice that all the previously mentioned songs were actually by the same guy, but I could always tell that “Summer Rain” was something special. After multiple instanced of me praising songs for reigning themselves in and not going too hard, “Summer Rain” works for the opposite reason: it knows to go harder than one would initially expect it to. It’s a folksy Flower Power ballad about the idealized counterculture dream, which apparently means laying around listening to Sgt. Pepper a lot, and it’d have been extremely easy for somebody to do it as a sub-Donovan piece of navel gazing fluff. Heck, that’s what the rest of River’s Realizations album boils down to (featuring truly one of the worst versions of “Hey Joe” I’ve ever heard), so it’s a minor miracle that he knew to keep "Summer Rain" both as concise as it is and also jazzed up with enough punchy Rock flourishes to avoid getting lost in the pot smoke. In retrospect, “Summer Rain” makes it pretty dang obvious why Rivers would ditch the Hippy stuff by the end of the sixties and return to his roots with “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.” The man was clearly meant for rockin’ out.
3. “Paperback Writer” - The Beatles
Hey look! A song that’s NOT a ballad! I mean, somebody who didn’t know any better would be forgiving for assuming otherwise during the first few seconds, what with the layers and layers of Beach Boys harmonies. But then George Harrison kicks in with that wicked guitar riff and we’re deep into RAWK territory. Ever since I was a kid, “Paperback Writer” has been one of my favorite Beatles singles, and it’s always bugged me that it tends to be treated as a bit of an afterthought by a lot of critics. Heck, even at the time of release it kind of got a “Meh, more of THIS, eh?” treatment from a lot of people, and these days I see people scrambling more to heap praise onto the Psychedelic B-side “Rain” than the main event. And I get it, this is structurally a bit of a throwback to earlier British Invasion singles at a time when even The Beatles themselves were moving away from that stuff… but it’s just so GOOD! I see “Paperback Writer” as sort of the Final Form of the classic Beatles single, mixing the energy of “She Loves You” with the production of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” or “A Hard Day’s Night” and the killer riff of “Day Tripper” or “I Feel Fine.” It’s a crying shame to see people just skip over “Paperback Writer” because they’re in a hurry to talk about “Tomorrow Never Knows” or the other Psychedelic stuff. The craftsmanship and refinement on display here absolutely phenomenal, every bit at fine-tuned as the more critically lauded stuff they were working on at the time. Heck, “Paperback Writer” even has some early Psychedelic flourishes of it’s own! Just get a load of that reverb at the end of the verses! Yeah, I definitely think “Paperback Writer” deserves a lot more respect than it gets… though apparently not enough for it make it higher than number 3.
2. “Cherish” - The Association
Back with the ballads again, arguably with THE Rock Goes Easy Listening song. This is pretty much the point at which The Association officially went from vaguely counterculture folkies to A Pop Group, and I think they spent the whole rest of their career struggling to undo it. Too bad, because I obviously think quite highly of the song. Even before 2023 became The Year of Oldies Radio for me, “Cherish” had managed to worm its way onto at least one previous list. Similar to “Paperback Writer,” I find myself somewhat in awe of the very construction of this song, of just how much it managed to cram into three and a half minutes. This a densely packed pop song right here, with way more lyrics than it has any right to have and a surplus of clever little melodic flourishes and chord changes. But most importantly, THOSE HARMONIES. This is the most Beach Boys song The Beach Boys never recorded. In fact, as an aside, I’m a bit surprised that no ACTUAL Beach Boys songs made it up into the top 25. I think “In My Room” just barely missed the bottom of the list, coming it at around number 27 or so. But yeah, tight vocal harmonies remain a surefire way to get my attention, and tight production is still the way to hold onto it afterwards. It really is a shame that The Association struggled so hard against their true calling and kept trying to regain some level of underground credibility. I mean, the followup single to “Cherish” was “Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies,” which is basically two minutes and forty-five seconds of them screaming “No, really! We’re they guys who made Along Comes Mary! We’re totally still cool!” Guys, come on. Recognize your own strengths and play to them, not against them.
1. “Nowhere Man” - The Beatles
Well now! We finally make it up to number one, and I do believe this is a song that has NEVER been on the list before! And what’s more, I’m pretty sure this is also the first year where The Beatles have actually managed to snag the top spot. That’s downright baffling all on it’s own, considering how pretty much all of my formative years were spent with me proudly proclaiming The Beatles to be my favorite band. And Lord knows it’s not as if “Nowhere Man” is some little-known obscurity or anything. This is probably the peak of Folk Rock-era Beatles, even if it’s far more on the Rock than Folk side from a performance standpoint. For a song that’s conceptually even more contemplative than “In My Life,” it does pack a lot more of a punch, with quite a lot of distortion on that lead guitar. And yet, with those tight, three-part vocal harmonies throughout, the song still registers as soft and lovely. And despite all the praise I heaped on “Cherish” for all it’s clever tricks, “Nowhere Man” may find its greatest strength in it’s simplicity. It’s straightforward to the point of becoming repetitive, but uses that repetitiveness to really drive home the idea of a guy stuck in a rut. And the strict adherence to it’s musical formula throughout means that the few moments where it actually DOES shake things up -like the extra harmonies on the final line- stand out all the more like major crescendos. Also, there’s probably some significance to be minded from the fact that the guy who draws internet cartoons for a living has apparently spent a whole year listing to a song about living in a nowhere land making nowhere plans for nobody. But let’s not think too hard about that.
And there you have it! For once, a Most Listened To list from me with absolutely NO mention of Mannheim Steamroller or any Windham Hill artists. For the record, I actually DID write down all the song stats from the old computer right before the switchover, and I HAD contemplated doing a big ol’ master blog of what the final play count there was… but it was waaaaaay too long. See, the dirty secret in a lot of these “most played” blogs is that a lot of the songs are actually tied with each other in terms of actual plays. Look closely and see if you notice any suspiciously alphabetized entries anywhere. So I was going to do big, paragraph-sized entries for literally every track that was tied for any given number, but it just added up to too much too quickly. I mean, I’ve been doing paragraph-sized entries for every individual SONG on these things so far, trying to cover that much material would have wound up turning into a friction’ book. And dang it, I’ve got other stuff to do, and some of it is even stuff that people other than me find interesting. But yeah, all that to say that I’ve been on a MAJOR Oldies kick and listening to a lot of classic 60s singles, majorly shifting away from where my head had been in previous years. And what will 2024 hold? Will I continue with my 60s jukebox ways, or will I get as bored with that and I did with the Contemporary Instrumental stuff and move on to something else entirely? Could 2024 be the year where I spontaneously go on a huge Power Metal kick and spend the next blog talking about Armored Saint and HammerFall? Or maybe this will be the year where I finally get over my Pavlovian association between J-Pop and post-con exhaustion and start listening to that stuff on the regular again. Or maybe I’ll just snap and turn into a major Country freak out of nowhere. Who knows? There’s actually precedent for all of these things, and the sudden turnaround seen hear means that anything’s possible! I guess we’ll just have to check back in 12 months to find out. Hopefully there WON’T have been another computer upheaval between now and then.
