My iPod Top 40, part 1

Within days of becoming a rabid fan of pop radio (back in 1969 when I was 13), I also became a collector of pop charts. Every trip to downtown Lazarus was an occasion to pick up the WCOL Hit Line, a printed list of that station's Top 30, and not long after that, I discovered that a little newsstand right in Grove City (the Columbus suburb where I lived) carried Billboard Magazine, which published the national music charts of record for the music industry. I couldn't afford to buy every weekly issue, but I bought as many as I could, and I still have a pile of at least a hundred in my mom's basement (even though it's unbecoming for an 50+ man to still use his mom's house as a storage facility). I also still have hundreds of WCOL charts from 1969 through about 1976, and they are cherished possessions. I was also a faithful listener of Casey Kasem's American Top 40, every Sunday morning after church.

Though I liked watching the rise and fall of the records I loved (and hated), what I really liked was seeing the names of records that weren't on the local charts. It always seemed that among those songs could be some fantastic overlooked pop gem that Columbus radio was keeping from my ears. To be honest, Columbus was actually a dream town for pop music. WCOL-AM was relatively adventurous back then and would often give odd little songs airplay after dark, even if the songs never actually made their chart, and later WNCI-FM would become even more interesting, with a top 50 list that always included some strange things. Lazarus would carry many more singles than WCOL played, so sometimes I'd buy a 45 that I'd never actually heard. One way or another, I wound up able to hear almost every song that made Billboard's Top 100.

Those days are long behind me--I gave up on current pop music sometime in grad school (mid-90's)--though I have never lost my fascination with music charts. You can ask some of my co-workers about my ongoing side project (in which I indulged at work at the reference desk when things were slow) of making my own singles charts for each year from the mid-60's to the mid-90's, in which I collated chart info from as many as 10 different online sources (trade publications, radio station playlists, and other lists that other chart fanatics had previously put together. Someday maybe I'll post some of those here.

But now, I have my own top 40. Not necessarily what I would pick as a carefully considered list of my favorite songs, or the ones I think are most important or influential, or even the ones that mean the most to me personally, but the ones that I've actually been listening to the most on my computer and iPod over the past couple of years. Some caveats: Many of these songs are here because they are on several playlists (based on genre or years or artists) that I have in heavy rotation; some are here because when they come on, I don't care enough to turn them off or skip to the next song; some are here because they put me in a certain mood in which I like to be; and I'm finding many to be here because they are fun and easy to sing along with. My list, with annotations, below and over the next few days.

1. Barbara Allen -- Art Garfunkel: This old folk ballad is about a young man who withers away and dies because the love of his life, Barbara Allen, was pissed off at him for dissing her at the tavern a few nights earlier. Then she dies. I hope there is more to the story than that, but I have yet to read any more interesting interpretation. This version is on Garfunkel's first solo album (from 1973), which I owned but never listened to much. I discovered it a few years ago and I enjoy both the weird storyline and Garfunkel's crystal-clear tone and emotional reading of the song. This is by far the most-played song on my iPod, I guess because it is on several different playlists (70's, folk, "Nightswimming," High School). Though I'm no Art Garfunkel vocally, when I put the melody down a notch, I can sing along pretty well.

2. Shine on Me -- The Wondermints: Wonderful glowing 21st century bubblegum; more about it here.

3. Alice Long -- Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart: Wonderful bubbly 1960's bubblegum, from two guys who wrote several Monkees songs. [At the top is a picture of the Bilboard Hot 100 from my birthday week in 1968, and if you click on it for the larger version, you can see this song perched at #34.] Speaking of the Monkees...

4. Daydream Believer -- The Monkees: One of the first 45's I ever bought.

5. Love is Blue -- Paul Mauriat: The epitome of Euro-easy listening lounge music

6. Blue Jay Way -- The Beatles: More here.

7. The Magic Garden -- Dusty Springfield: The first of two Jimmy Webb songs in the top 10; I whimsically came up with a entire genre of music named after this whimsical but intense song (see here).

8. The Girl's Song -- The Fifth Dimension: Another Jimmy Webb song; stupid title, but catchy as hell. I don't know why the Fifth didn't have a bigger hit with it.

9. Tomorrow Never Knows -- The Beatles: I don't sing along as much as yell or chant along.

10. Across the Universe -- Rufus Wainwright: I actually like the various Beatles versions of this song better (from a charity album, from Let It Be, from bootlegs, from the Let It Be remix album) but Rufus's vocals are strong and clear, and again, fun to sing along with.

More soon... Below, a YouTube slide show of "The Girl's Song"