Singing the Blues - Marty Robbins

Singing the Blues - Marty Robbins

2:25

single, 1957

Written by Melvin Endsley

Fun fact: this is the song the Clash are referencing in the final line of "London Calling" when Strummer fades out stuttering, "I never felt so much like-a, like-a..."  A neat bridge between punk apocalypse and old-school heartbreak.  Anyway, this song's message is pop's most common, a lost love lament: "Well I never felt more like crying all night / Cause everything's wrong and nothing ain't right / Without you, you got me singing the blues."  The words are deeply maudlin, but the music is bright and effervescent, with a cheery piano bouncing along as Robbins pipes out the lyrics in his velvet voice, sounding pleased as punch.  I guess even despair can swing.

Sunday in New York - Bobby Darin

Sunday in New York - Bobby Darin
2:30

From Hello Dolly to Goodbye Charlie, 1964

Written by Carroll Coates & Peter Nero, 1963

This song was written for a romantic comedy film of the same name (which was itself based on a stage play).  Darin belts out the optimistic lines with his usual confident cheeriness: "If you've got troubles / Just take them out for a walk / They'll burst like bubbles / In the fun of a Sunday in New York."  The song assures us that love is just around the corner, that maybe you'll see the face of the love your life reflected in a shop window, that time will stop, your new life in love begins.  It's a vision of New York as benevolent matchmaker, bustling but tender, glamorous without menace.  The band is just fine, with bright brass accents punctuating the verses, but it's Darin's warm voice that carries the song and invites you to share its sunny outlook.

Zoot Suit - The High Numbers

Zoot Suit - The High Numbers

1:59

single, 1964

Written by Peter Meaden

The High Numbers are actually the Who, temporarily renamed by their first manager, Meaden.  The song is a copy of the 1963 song "Misery" by the R&B group the Dynamics.  After this tailor-made-for-Mod single failed to take off, the Who took their name back, fired Meaden, and then proved definitively that they didn't need him by writing "I Can't Explain."  So this is a justifiably forgotten dead end in the Who story, but it's not bad. The track rides a primitive, stomping beat with a noodling guitar break that hints at Townshend's restless energy, even if it's boxed in by the concept. Lyrically, it's nothing more than a celebration of a flashy guy's immaculate clothes: identity expressed entirely through cut, stripe, and swagger.  I'm charmed, though, by the slang. "So all you tickets I just want you to dig me / With my striped zoot jacket that the salts can plainly see." Is being a "ticket" an insult? Is a "salt" an authority figure, a square, or just any outsider?  The ephemeral fruit-fly life of this movement almost makes it worth bringing the jargon back.

Young Blood - The Coasters

Young Blood - The Coasters

2:23

single, 1957

Written by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and Doc Pomus

I first came to this song through the Band's 1995 cover on Till The Night Is Gone: A Tribute to Doc Pomus, and the contrast is instructive. The Coasters' original is a touch less wink-wink goofy, though it still revels in cartoonish exaggeration, especially in the vocal work: they stretch their range, slip into character voices, and turn the song into a miniature piece of musical theater.  Set against a slinking, burlesque horn line and echoing backing vocals, the lyric sketches a familiar teenage tragedy. A guy falls hard, only to lose the girl when her father steps in (his disapproval memorably delivered in Bobby Nunn's stern, bottom-of-the-well bass).  The humor keeps things light, grounded in something recognizably true: for those who burn with puppy love, the sting is real.  

X-Kid - Green Day

X-Kid - Green Day

3:41

¡Tré!, 2012

Written by Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool

The title of this initially serviceable power pop number is the first hint at the darkness underneath Armstrong's ebullient chords and sing-along chorus.  The "meaning" of a song is rarely very simple, of course, but most sources agree that this song commemorates a friend of Armstrong who committed suicide: "And you were searching your soul / And you got lost and outta control / You went over the edge of joking / And died of a broken heart."  That tension between bright, almost carefree music and deeply wounded lyrics is what lifts "X-Kid" a lot of its brethren on the oft-maligned trilogy.  The song works whether you hear it as a lament for a lost friend, a reflection on aging and the disappearance of youthful recklessness, or a broader meditation on transitional moments when identity fractures under pressure.  What might otherwise land as mid-tier Green Day gains weight and resonance through its emotional honesty, ultimately one of the band's more affecting late-career moments.

Ways To Be Wicked - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Ways To Be Wicked - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

3:26

Playback, 1995 [recorded 1987]

Written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell

This is an outtake from the Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) sessions.  The narrator of this song, like that of so many old blues classics, has a low-down woman who knows just how to hurt him.  She knows so many ways to be wicked, but nothing about love.  The man knows he can take it, but she's just in it to hurt him.  "Yeah those cobra eyes / Light with a smile / You take pride / In that devil down inside."  It's a solid, no-frills rocker, and Petty sings it with conviction and attitude.  But the song never turns the corner.  There's no twist or final insight; I'm left wondering why the narrator is with this devil of a woman.  Also, while I know Petty's a hit machine with legions of fans, to me the majority of his material has a country-rock sameness to it.

Vanity - The Avett Brothers

Vanity - The Avett Brothers

2:48

Magpie and the Dandelion, 2013

Written by the Avett Brothers

This is an interesting folk-rock song, in that it neatly splits the folk and the rock.  It starts with some rather oblique lyrics that reference Ecclesiastes 1:2 and then go off in a different direction: "Call off the guards / Call off the search / Their heads are chopped off / They're running in circles."  Midway through, the song erupts into a thunderous rock riff that feels almost outsized for its brief runtime, before circling back to the earlier refrain. The structure recalls "Live and Let Die" in miniature: quiet reflection interrupted by sudden force. It doesn't hit the same dramatic heights at McCartney's song, but the contrast gives the song its charge, making this a compact, slightly strange, but ultimately satisfying listen.

Underneath the Streetlight - Joni Mitchell

Underneath the Streetlight - Joni Mitchell
2:18

Wild Things Run Fast, 1982

Written by Joni Mitchell

Joni goes pop!  Drawn to the sleek sound of early-’80s new wave, she trades acoustic introspection for bright drums, stacked harmonies, and urban sparkle.  Joni's vocal here is bright and cheery, the whole having a restless immediacy and energy conspicuously missing in much of her beloved folk oeuvre.  The song depicts an urban romance, maybe just a glimpse through a window or under a bar sign.  Amid the professions of adoration, the bustling and buzzing cityscape is painted in vivid images. "Yes I do I love you! / I swear on the buildings above I do / I swear on a billion yellow / And T.V. blue windows / Gayboys with their pants so tight / Out in the neon light."

Threat Level Orange - Earth To Eve

Threat Level Orange - Earth To Eve

2:33

single, 2025

Written by Earth to Eve

Over an industrial-lite beat comes a tight, furious rap about contemporary America that eschews metaphor in favor of names and images. The opening bars, calling out a "bitch in a toupee," juxtaposing anti-immigration rhetoric with Melania as a "mail-order bride," abuelitas and graduation ceremonies with masked ICE agents constituting a "foreign armed invasion," land hard because they're specific.  It's protest rap that understands clarity is sharper than cleverness.  While the rhetoric is furious and unleavened, the song is brief; it says its piece and gets out. The beat stays skeletal, almost deliberately underpowered, letting the words sit front and center like evidence laid out on a table. There's no radio hook begging for radio or ironic detachment.  If you want it more musical, or more abstract, this isn't that. But if you want a snapshot of 2025 that doesn't blink or hedge, Earth To Eve nails it.

Shakin' All Over - Johnny Kidd & the Pirates

Shakin' All Over - Johnny Kidd & the Pirates

2:21

single, 1960

Written by Johnny Kidd

Johnny Kidd is notable for being one of the few pre-Beatles English rockers to hit it big, and for wearing an eyepatch as a stage affectation.  This song, a sparse early rocker, is centered on Kidd's vocal and a modest, almost tentative guitar solo.  The song's premise is as basic as early rock gets: Kidd’s physical reaction to seeing a beautiful girl:: "Quivers down the backbone / I got the shakes down the knee bones / Yeah, the tremors in my thigh bone."  This is not by today's standards a thrilling song, lacking the raw drive of Eddie Cochran's contemporaneous primitive rockabilly, but it has its own cool restraint. There's something almost proto-mod about its clipped rhythm and lack of bombast.  It's an interesting historical artifact, a reminder of how British rock first learned to translate American excitement into something tighter, more self-conscious, and, oddly, more elegant.