30 Posts in 30 Days: Day 1: Your Favourite Song

To pick just one favourite song, or album, or group/singer, is an impossibility. There are so many that I love for different reasons. If there is a common denominator in most of the songs/music I love, it often includes great vocals (I love tight harmonies) & a catchy guitar riff.

Here are five, off the top of my head:

• "In My Life" by the Beatles. I LOVE the Beatles. They have been around for most of my life and are part of my childhood memories, so it's hard to imagine a world without Beatles music. "In My Life" is probably my favourite song of theirs. I love the melody, the words, the message. I can remember watching the news in my dorm room at university the day John Lennon died and watching a montage of film clips as this song played in the background. I broke down in tears. I've told dh that this is the song I want played at my funeral. (His own picks are "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel & "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen.)
• "Get Off My Cloud" by the Rolling Stones. Funnily enough, I have clearer memories of watching the Stones on Ed Sullivan than the Beatles. British Invasion music in general was the soundtrack of my childhood. I preferred the Beatles when I was younger, but I've grown to like the Stones more as I got older. I used to find them slightly ominous. Now I look at them kind of affectionately, like aging hippie uncles, lol. This is probably one of my favourite songs of theirs. Great guitar riff! (I found this old video clip. Seeing Keith wearing a turtleneck & GLASSES slays me! -- I hear he has an autobiography coming out this fall. Can't wait!!)
• "Prove it All Night" by Bruce Springsteen. I had to get a Bruce song in here. : ) I knew very little about Bruce until I met dh, who was a HUGE fan. But once I started listening to his stuff, I realized that one of his songs, "Prove it All Night," had been one of my favourites in the summer of 1978, when I was 17. I was working in a small antique shop for my mother's hairdresser (a sideline business he owned) that summer. It was kind of off the beaten path & there weren't a lot of customers, so I got to listen to the radio a LOT, & this was one of the songs that I loved. It speaks to me of being a teenager in the summertime & longing to break free from the restrictions of jobs and school and parents and all that other stuff and drive off into the night with a hot guy in a hot car and the wind whipping my hair (all the usual cliches, lol). It's still one of my favourite Bruce songs. I got to see him do it live at a concert back in the early 1990s, too. : )
• "No Sugar Tonight" by the Guess Who. The Guess Who was a local band that found some international success in the late 1960s/early 1970s -- the pride & joy of my home province. I was just a little too young to see them live (although my mother remembers them playing a dance at the city hall in the northern Minnesota town where my grandparents lived in the mid-1960s), but I've seen the lead singer, Burton Cumnings, several times as a solo artist, & I believe he has one of rock & roll's greatest voices. This song is one of my favourites -- great riff, great harmonies.
• "Try" by Blue Rodeo. Blue Rodeo is another well loved Canadian band, with a slight country flavour. Jim Cuddy has a beautiful voice (he also kind of reminds me of an old boyfriend, lol), & this was one of their first & biggest hits. It was hugely popular right around the time dh & I were newlyweds, & I can remember us dancing to it in the living room of our tiny apartment. It's kind of a sad song, if you listen to the lyrics, but it makes me happy every time I hear it. Some years ago (probably about 10), Blue Rodeo was presented with the keys to the city in a noon hour ceremony at BCE Place (now called Brookfield Place), near where I work in downtown Toronto, in the building's Allen Lambert Galleria -- modelled on the Galleria in Milan, Italy. It's probably one of my favourite modern public spaces in Toronto. It was in November or December, near Christmastime, & there were thousands of tiny white lights hanging from the roof of the galleria, like tiny stars. It was an extremely busy time of year for me at work, but I managed to sneak away from the office for awhile & joined the crowd. After getting the keys, they played a free lunchtime concert. When they started playing "Try," I called dh on my cellphone & held it up in the air so that he could hear the music. I looked around me at all the happy people, singing along, the twinkling lights hanging from the glass roof of the galleria above us. It was a magical moment. : )