Listen to the Music, Not the Song

by Andrew

Because we haven't had an open thread in a while, and because I'm currently acting battalion commander and I'm not going to have a lot of time for other activities while that's the case, and because someone asked, I'll post a few notes on some of my favorite tunes.

I'll start with the traditional listing of the top ten most popular songs on my iPod, although that's a poor proxy in my case because I don't have all of my favorite songs on there yet and I only have about six weeks of history to draw on.

1. There's the Girl, Heart
2. Walk Like an Egyptian, The Bangles
3. eBay, Weird Al Yankovic
4. Thunderstruck, AC/DC
5. Told You So, Barenaked Ladies
6. Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Belinda Carlisle
7. One For the Mockingbird, Cutting Crew
8. She Bop, Cyndi Lauper
9. Should I See, Frozen Ghost
10. Taking It All Too Hard, Genesis
11. Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah), Joan Jett
12. Pretty in Pink, The Psychedelic Furs
13. So Long, Farewell, from The Sound of Music
14. Blood & Roses, The Smithereens
15. Only a Memory, The Smithereens
16. I Loved You Once In Silence, from Camelot

I actually listed 16, since #4-16 have all been played an equal number of times. Interestingly, few of those songs are my favorites from the artists in question. Were I to select a favorite song from those artists, I think I would swap out Everything I Wanted for The Bangles, It's All Been Done Before by Barenaked Ladies, Leave a Light On by Belinda Carlisle, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper, and I Hate Myself For Loving You by Joan Jett. Of course, even then we're not really looking at my favorite songs, but that is at least a good start. Just for fun, I'll also offer the first ten songs off a random selection on my iPod.

1. Uptown Girl, Billy Joel
2. Old Friends/Bookends, Simon & Garfunkel
3. Emotion in Motion, Naked Eyes
4. Physical, Olivia Newton-John
5. Tonight She Comes, The Cars
6. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Bach (Ah, Bach.)
7. Hide and Seek, Howard Jones
8. Joe, The Cranberries
9. Vacation, The Go-Gos
10. Walking Down Your Street, The Bangles.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Comments

[Anarch]

[there are genuine umlauts over all of those "o"s, I believe, but I can't be bothered to figure out how to make them appear here].

Frankly, I think you should put a few extra umlauts on those names, because, dude, it's so much more metal that way.

[Phil]

Heh. Back in an old band of mine in Cleveland, we were, um, encouraged via a cease and desist letter to change our name from "Electrolux." One of the choices we bandied about was "Türd."

[Slartibartfast]

"So I count you in?"

Sure. Especially if you're buying, but I'm not averse to a little shoulder-rubbing with the proletariat even when drinks are on me. And the lingon's on me, too!

[JakeB]

I am a great believer in the power of the ümlaut, myself. I should point out that even the Clinton administration realized its power, as can be seen from this Önion article.

As for Sjöwäll and Wählöö, however, I prefer Mänkëll's writing to thëïrs.

[JakeB]

Also- John T. - you know that he wrote Red Red Wine as well, yes?

[Gary Farber]

I feel sö pröud.

[KCinDC]

Mankell? Are you sure you don't mean Manning, or Henkell?

[Anarch]

Apropos of not very much, just saw Cartoon Network's Metalocalypse for the first time tonight. It's... well, it's like double- or even triple-umlaut metal. Not just if it's good or not, but it's definitely metal.

Oh, and Top Secret is on right now, which means I finally get to quote one of my favorite lines here on ObWi:

Nick Rivers: Hillary. That's an unusual name.
Hillary Flammond: It's a German name. It means 'she whose bosoms defy gravity'.

There's something so singularly pure about it.