Jump to content

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten Facts


Recommended Posts

"No Time"

The Guess Who

Written by Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman. Recorded in August 1969. Released as a single in January 1970, "Proper Stranger" was the B-side.

It reached #5 in Bilboard Top in the US. It did much better in Canada, where it sold 1.000.000 copies.

According Wiki, the song is basically a Dear John letter stating, "No time left for YOU".

There are two versions of the song. The original 1969 recording was done for The Guess Who's album Canned Wheat. But it is the 1970 re-recording (as featured on the American Woman album) that is the better-known version. This one is slighly faster in tempo and the two verses transposed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 2.8k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

...well, Wiki has some info on

"December"

Collective Soul

Written by Ed Roland.

A single and a track from the album "Collective Soul", recorded in 1994, released in 1955.

the song peaked at #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at #1 on the Mainstream Hot Tracks chart.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #132

FOUR songs this week:

Theme From An Imaginary Western - Mountain (1970)

Ballad Of Cable Hogue - Calexico (2000)

Negative - Mansun (1998)

Duelling Banjos - Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel (1972)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Negative - Mansun

From the 'Six' Tenth Anniversary Blog:

Singer Paul Draper explains how this song was inspires by his applying for a mortgage. A blood test was part of the application and thus the word 'negative' is meant to imply a 'positive'. Draper describes it as 'secretly an uplifting song' that sounds really dark.

The line 'I look downwards' simply referred to reading the application form.

DJ Ben Chaplin was responsible for playing the beats between choruses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Theme For An Imaginary Western"

Mountain

A song written by Jack Bruce and Peter Brown and the second track of Mountain´s first album, "Climbing", released in March 1970.

The band performed it at the Woodstock Festival, it´s also seen on the movie and appears on the album. A very good version and one of their most memorable songs..

Mountain was formed by then by Felix Pappalardi, Leslie West, Corky Laing and Steve Knight.

Thanks Allmusic...:

Originally intended for the late Cream repertoire (although not recorded by them), "Theme From an Imaginary Western" was written by the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. Nearly classical in its melodic approach, it is not unlike some of Procol Harum's songs of the late '60s, and this is underlined by Steve Knight's excellent Hammond organ performance. Sweeping and grand, there is a broadness to the whole piece that is irresistible. Lyrically, it is indeed a song with a cinematic and Western slant, and, in a weird way, it echoes the end of the '60s riding off into the sunset.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Dueling Banjos"

Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel

Written by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith and Don Reno. Arranged and performed by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel.

Released in 1973 with "Reuben´s Train" as B-side.

From Wikipedia:

...an instrumental composition that was made famous in a scene from the 1972 movie Deliverance. The scene depicts Billy Redden playing the piece opposite actor Ronny Cox on guitar. Redden plays "Lonnie"—a mentally retarded, inbred, extremely gifted banjo player. Due to the unique sound of the song and its inclusion in the film, it went to #2 on the U.S. pop chart in 1973, remaining there for four weeks. The song also topped the adult contemporary chart for two weeks that same year.

The piece was arranged and performed for the movie for guitar and banjo by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel and was on the movie's soundtrack album. In 1955, Arthur Smith composed a banjo instrumental he called "Feudin' Banjos" and recorded the song with five-string banjo player Don Reno. Later the composition appeared in the popular 1972 film Deliverance as "Dueling Banjos" played by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel. Not given credit, Smith had to proceed with legal action that eventually gave him songwriting credit and back royalties. It was a landmark copyright infringement suit.

The composition is commonly used to depict a rural lifestyle and the people of these regions, most commonly mountain people of the southern region of the United States. This is at least in part due to the song's association with the above mentioned film.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Ballad Of Cable Hogue"

Calexico

I have no info about this beautiful song.

I only know that it written by Joey Burns and was released as the second track of their album "Hot Rail" in May 2000.

Facts about the band:

Wiki: ...rock band based in Tucson, Arizona, known for playing an eclectic variety of music. Its two main members are Joey Burns and John Convertino, who first played together in Los Angeles as part of the group Giant Sand. They have recorded a number of albums on Quarterstick Records, while their 2005 EP In the Reins recorded with Iron & Wine has reached the Billboard 200 album charts. Their musical style is influenced by traditional sounds of Mexico and the Southwestern United States, and they have been described by some as indie rock. The band is named for the border town of Calexico, California.

:help: :help:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #133

THREE songs are factless this week:

Sunspot Baby - Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band (1979)

View From The Afternoon, The - Arctic Monkeys (2006)

Singer Not The Song, The - The Rolling Stones (1965)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Singer Not The Song"

The Rolling Stones

Written by Jagger/Richards.

It was recorded on September 6th and 7th and released as the B-side of "Get Off Of My Cloud" in October 1965, in the UK. It was also a track of their fifth US album "December´s Children (And Everybody´s)" on the same year.

Many people say the song sounds very much like The Beatles ´ "Not A Second Time", included in their second album, 1963, "With The Beatles".

allmusic said:

The early Rolling Stones (and in fact, the Rolling Stones throughout their career) were never all about raunchy, bluesy rock. They also penned a fair number of tuneful, poppy romantic songs, even if those were never dominant in their repertoire. "The Singer Not the Song," appearing on the December's Children album in late 1965, is one of the more overlooked ones. In retrospect, it's kind of a bridge between their early, wimpy Merseybeat-like original songs — which they tended to give to other artists to record, rather than do themselves — and their more mature pop/rock, non- blues-based tunes, such as "Lady Jane" and, a little later, "Ruby Tuesday." "The Singer Not the Song"'s still been criticized for being a little too sappy, and for the undoubtedly out-of-tune guitars and harmonies (as if those were rare events on early Rolling Stones records). But it's a fairly attractive British Invasion-like pop tune with a tinge of folk-rock in the heavy use of reverberant acoustic guitars (and a tinge of groups like the Beatles in the greater use of harmonies than usual). There are also some hints of tenderness and vulnerability in both the lyrics and the way they're sung, as if to signify that there was more to Mick Jagger and the boys than sardonic rebellion and misogyny. The phrase "it's the singer, not the song" is itself pretty lyrical and abstract for an early Rolling Stones song — almost philosophical — and helps put this in a more sophisticated league than earlier pop/rock ballads the group had written. The final chorus, too, has a weird leap into falsetto harmonies, on what's been speculated is an actual attempt to sound like the Four Seasons. Not too many people have heard it (or ever will), but there was a good, somewhat more rock-oriented 1966 cover of the song with organ, folk-rock 12-string guitar, and a key change for the final verse by the Pittsburgh group the Napoleonic Wars, as heard on the obscure '60s garage rock compilation Burghers, Vol. 1. More well known is the version done by Alex Chilton in the mid-'70s, shortly after the breakup of Big Star. The original Rolling Stones version, incidentally, was probably more visible in Britain, where it was used as the B-side of "Get Off of My Cloud" (though it was only an LP track in the States).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks again edna :thumbsup:

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #134

THREE songs without facts this week:

Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters - Elton John (1972)

Another Day - Paul McCartney (1971)

Blue On Black - Kenny Wayne Shepherd (1997)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mona Lisas & Mad Hatters - Elton John

This song reflects Bernie Taupin's experience in New York City after witnessing a shooting near his hotel while he was visiting the city.

The song's lyrics were partly inspired by Ben E. King's "Spanish Harlem," in which he sings "There is a rose in Spanish Harlem." In response to this, Taupin writes, "Now I know Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say / I thought I knew, but now I know that rose trees never grow in New York City." A more upbeat sequel to the song called "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (Part Two)," was recorded about 15 years later for Elton's later album Reg Strikes Back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Another Day"

Paul McCartney

Written by Paul and Linda McCartney

Recorded in 1970, December, during the sessions for "Ram", his second album. The B-side was "Oh Woman, Oh Why" and it was released in February 19th 197. It was his first solo single.

According Wikipedia:

"Another Day" is written in an observational style reminiscent of "Eleanor Rigby" and "She's Leaving Home". The lyrics describe the drudgery and sadness of an unnamed woman's life at work and at home, with the lilting melody of the verses and "du du du"s of the chorus contrasting with the darker tone (lyrically and musically) of the bridges. Linda McCartney provided harmony vocals. Her husband credited her as co-writer. However, this was seen as a business maneuver in the post-Beatles legal matters.

allmusic says:

Paul McCartney's first solo single, 1971's "Another Day," remains among his best post- Beatles work. As a legal maneuver to keep royalties coming into his household while his own affairs with Apple and Northern Songs were tied up, the always business savvy McCartney credited his wife, Linda McCartney, with co-writing his songs. While for the most part this was simply a loophole, on "Another Day" Linda earns her pay, delivering her finest supporting performance on any of her husband's records. Of course, the show is Paul's, and the raw material here is undeniably of the highest quality. "Another Day" features the best of what he is capable of: an incredibly catchy melody; an organic, acoustic arrangement; complex and well-orchestrated harmonies; and an active, melodic bass line. And again, lyrically, this type of song is where he shines. It's a picture of seemingly average life, about a woman who gets up everyday and goes to work. But McCartney is able to expose the darkness underneath the surface of this life, describing her hopes and disappointments and, ultimately, her breakdown. It is one of McCartney's gifts, like a pop Rodgers & Hammerstein, to be able to match the music to the change in lyrical tone within the same song, making it sound seamless and natural. "Another Day" bounces along with the cheery banality of the woman's routine before making sharp detours into menacing territory as he describes her sadness and her highs and lows as "the man of her dreams" appears. But he apparently uses her and leaves her again in despair. Dramatic swells and releases mark this event: "And he comes, and he stays/But he leaves the next day/So sad." This is also the point where Linda's contribution comes to the fore. Her harmony on this latter line matches Paul's lead vocal in presence, and the passionate swell in volume is truly the selling point of the song. She sings well throughout the song (parts no doubt arranged by Paul), but perhaps the importance of her part here is not just her complete commitment to it, but also the fact of the female voice being identifiable with the song's subject character. Paul pleads, "Ah, stay/Don't stand her up," but it's Linda, becoming the character and doubling the plea, who injects reality into the moment. The tone of her voice as it changes from a falsetto background voice to a prominent, full voice is distressingly and perfectly sad. The culmination of the song is the woman's breakdown: "As she posts another letter to the sound of five/People gather round her as she finds it hard to stay alive." McCartney then leaves this scene to refrain. Just the hint of it is enough to convey the despair of her life. Earlier, he indicates this impending breakdown in a mirroring verse as he says, "At the office where the papers grow she takes a break/Drinks another coffee as she finds it hard to stay awake." This betrays the foreignness of this office setting to McCartney himself ("at the office where the papers grow") and thus, to the character he's created, who has difficulty surviving there when it's all she lives for (since the rest of her life is so unrewarding). However, the final verse is a repetition of the first verse, describing her getting up and going to work again, indicating that it's a cycle she will not break out of. Nothing has changed for her, and therefore, nothing will.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is from previous Top ten...

The View From The Afternoon"

The Arctic Monkeys

from Wikipedia:

"The View from the Afternoon" is a song by Arctic Monkeys originally released on the band's first album "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" in January 2006. It was also the lead track on the "Who the F*ck are Arctic Monkeys" EP. This release had an accompanying video.

The themes of "The View from the Afternoon" are based around observations of behavior on an excursion into local nightlife. In a repeated verse, the singer comments on the expectation that an evening will be enjoyable will likely lead to disappointment. The singer describes various scenes; a group of meretricious females who have rented a limousine for a fancy dress party; a gambler who has won and then lost the jackpot on a fruit machine; text messaging through the lock/unlock function on a Nokia mobile phone; "two for the price of one" drinks promotions, which the singer explicitly blames for the drunkenness of the sender and his predicament.

Composition

Alex Turner:

“This is one of the last songs written for the album. There’s nothing clever, it’s just about anticipating the evening, finding comfort in familiarity and the fact that you know you’re bound to send a daft message or something before the sun comes up. I think I’ve stopped doing that now.â€

Music video

The video is based around a young male in a parka jacket playing the drum part of the song in the middle of a courtyard between blocks of flats. Then, there is a sequence of surreal elements; an Indian schoolgirl walks past wearing plastic devil horns; a running fox; three men are curious about the lone drummer and try to attract his attention while he ignores them; he is fed milk by the schoolgirl and then a brief shot in colour of him washing himself in shallow water; a shot of man in the dark wielding a baseball bat; a brief shot of the moon which then explodes into pieces. Finally the man with the bat comes near to him and is about to strike him, but the audio stops and we see a last shot of the male being showered in what could be rain or the fragments of the moon. The video is shot in black and white. It was filmed near Parkhill flats in the Arctic Monkeys' native city of Sheffield, directed by W.I.Z. for Factory Films. The video is analogous to the Hindu story of Shiva (dancer, drummer and master of creation) and his devoted girl who revitalizes and pays tribute to him by bathing him in milk and honey (viewed by the Hindu religion as sacred) and his battle against those who wish to destroy all that is good.

The lyric "you can never beat the bandit, no" refers to the same fruit machine that the Reverend and the Makers sing about on the song Bandits. Both of them describe losing out to the fruit machine

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Sunspot Baby"

Bob Seger

Written by Bob Seger.

Released in 1976 as a track of his album "Night Moves".

Recorded with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section in Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, Alabama.

from Wiki:

The protagonist in the Bob Seger song "Sunspot Baby" bemoans a deceptive lover who left with his money and credit cards: "I looked in Miami, I looked in Negril , the closest I came was a month-old bill."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Blue On Black"

Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Written by Mark Selby, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Tia Sillers. Produced by former Talking Head Jerry Harrison.

From the album "Trouble Is...", released in October 1997 and also a hit single. It went #1 in the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks and #78 at The Billboard Hot 100.

:help:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks edna, Mind Crime, Jenny and also Laurie for editing :grin:

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #135

THREE songs missing from the top ten this week:

Lucky Man - The Verve (1997)

Telephone Line - Electric Light Orchestra (1976)

If 6 Was 9 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"If 6 Was 9"

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Written by Jimi Hendrix. Released in December 1967 in the album "Axis: Bold As Love". It was also a song in the "Easy Rider" soundtrack released in 1969.

From wiki

The style of the song has been referred to as "acid-fueled blues". The guitar solo is noteworthy for making innovative use of studio technology for the time, with stereo panning from left to right and vice versa, along with other effects, such as slap echo, fuzzbox distortion, and reverb.

There is some confusion as to whether Hendrix played a flute or a soprano recorder on this track. The credits list Hendrix as playing flute, but recorder player Rodney Waterman and Joe Vanderford of Independent Weekly refer to Hendrix's instrument as a recorder. Early music enthusiast Nicholas S. Lander maintains that "the high tessitura, the typical 'breaking' between octaves, and other characteristics are more suggestive of a soprano recorder.

The theme has been described as an "individualist anthem".

The lyrics portray the underlying conflict of the counterculture of the 1960s: the "social and cultural dichotomies" between the hippies and the "white collared conservative" business world of the establishment. Beginning with a blues riff, the lyrics accompany a "spacey" free-form jam, with Hendrix epitomizing the existentialist voice of the youth movement: "I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die/so let me live my life/the way I want to."

The title, "If 6 was 9", may stem from the fact that an inverted figure 6 becomes a 9, and reflects many of the lyrics in the song, which assert that even if basic things about the world were suddenly completely different, the narrator intends to continue living his life uninfluenced by outside forces.

Various urban legends based on numerology have developed around the meaning of number 9 in the song and Hendrix's subseqent accidental death from asphyxiating on his vomit after taking a mixture of Secobarbital and alcohol in 1970.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Telephone Line"

Electric Light Orchestra

Written and produced by Jeff Lynne, it was released as a track of their 1976 album "A New World Record". It was also released as a single (second from the album) in 1977 with "Poor Boy" & "King Of The Universe" as B-side.

It reached #7 in the US charts, #8 in the UK charts and #1 in New Zealand.

From allmusic.com:

A New World Record found Electric Light Orchestra consolidating the pop chart success they achieved with Face The Music by creating another collection of carefully-layered orchestral pop. One of its highlights was "Telephone Line," a lush ballad that became another major hit for the group. The lyrics of "Telephone Line" use the scenario of a lovelorn narrator trying to talk a telephone operator into connecting him with a lover who won’t answer her phone, a scenario that has been used in songs as diverse as "Memphis Tennessee" and "Operator." Lynne’s take on this premise wrings it for all the melodrama it can muster via lines like "I look into the sky/The love you need ain’t gonna see you through" and " oh, telephone line/Give me some time/I’m living in twilight." It could have easily become an over-the-top exercise in camp but is saved by a gorgeous melody that contrasts verses full of yearning highs and aching lows with a descending-note chorus that clinches the song’s heartbroken feel. Electric Light Orchestra’s recording of "Telephone Line" accentuates this feel through an anguished but tuneful lead vocal by Lynne and a strong arrangement that build from piano and gentle strings on the verses to a bombastic chorus where Lynne is supported by a choir’s worth of falsetto back-up vocals and swirling layers of lilting strings. This stunning arrangement transformed "Telephone Line" into a miniature symphony and allowed it to become a hit single around the world, including a #7 charting in the U.S.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lucky Man

From Wikipedia:

"Lucky Man" is a song by the rock band The Verve and is featured on their third album, Urban Hymns. It was released 24 November 1997 as the third single from the album, charting at #7 in the UK Singles Chart (see 1997 in British music). The song was also the band's second, and so far last Top 20 hit in the USA.

The final b-side on CD 2 of the UK release, "Happiness More or Less", was a remix of the title track made by guitarist Nick McCabe after another b-side was needed for the release. All of the guitar and most of the vocal parts were taken out, leaving the drums, bass and strings. Another b-side on CD 2, "MSG", was an alternate version of Bitter Sweet Symphony, which featured the percussion and bass line from that song, with psychedelic soundscapes added.

The track featured prominently in the prom scene at the final climax of the 2004 film The Girl Next Door.

Anastacia "borrowed" the melody and hook of this song for her hit "Cowboys & Kisses" in 2001, but Richard Ashcroft received no credit for it.

U2 frontman Bono recognized "Lucky Man" as one of six songs that he wished he had written from the last 20 years of music.

FOX used the song as background music in a Super Bowl pregame piece on New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin.

And I spotted a rumour that the stones sued them for stealing something from their song?

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...