I was totally floored when I first heard Billy Joel sing, We didn't start the fire. The speed at which he sang, the encapsulated version of American history that he presented us.
There were some interesting motifs that we appreciated, the fire that we hadn't started -- symbolising the political mess that each generation inherits and worsens, and the turning of the pages of the calendar -- standing for the relentless march of time over the decades. I was so impressed with this song that I was determined to do an Indian version, by mentioning the political messes that had been perpetrated in my country, but that project never came alive. Once upon a time, I prided myself that I could remember the lyrics by heart. I still can. USA for Africa's We are the World was another song whose lyrics I can still sing to. For the one time, when famous artistes came together to sing for the benefit of Africa.
I won't say much, just that like the song says, much can be achieved if the world comes together as one.
Video killed the radio star by The Buggles was a song I heard very few times, but it left its mark. The song talks about modern day inventions and how they make something else obsolete. Specifically, how video killed the radio.
Those were the days when VCRs had just come into the market. Ironically, within a few years, VCRs themselves would be killed by the CD. Since then, the technological death march has continued. Nowadays, there is much less lean time, with newer technologies outdating previous technologies, almost before half the population has had a chance to buy it. And of course, the mobile phone has killed so many things, including videos, radios, cameras, watches, editing consoles, pianos. Will this ever stop?
I bet you couldn't hear Una Paloma Blanca by George Baker without feeling something soar within your own heart. Without feeling suddenly upbeat and free. The song always had that kind of an effect on me, and my friends confirmed feeling the same way. I would stretch my arms out wide and pretend that I was a dove, miles above the earth, enjoying her freedom.
From the opening riffs of the song, it seemed to invite you to clap along and sing delightedly and loudly. George Baker's voice was so refreshingly robust, it felt thrilling to hear it.
That's what friends are for was first sung by Rod Stewart but it is the version with Dionne Warwick, Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder that we remember the most. The official video was apparently performed along with Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight.
When I was younger, my friends and I used to sing it together. It was our friendship anthem. I remember how we used to sing it as our college years tapered to a close. It seemed to symbolise everything beautiful about our friendship. Those were the days by Mary Hopkin was another childhood favourite. What a voice she used to have. So distinctive, so completely unlike anything I'd heard before. The first time I heard it, I had gooseflesh. It was so hauntingly beautiful. And the lines, where the narrator looks in the glass in the tavern and thinks, Is that lonely woman really me?
This song could cause me to feel sentimental for no reason I could think of. After having spent five of the most beautiful years of my life in college, I think I was afraid of the rest of my life going downhill from then on. Those were the days my friend We thought they'd never end We'd sing and dance forever and a day We'd live the life we choose We'd fight and never lose Those were the days, oh yes those were the days
In the song, Sad movies always make me cry by Sue Thompson, the narrator suffers a betrayal on the part of her boyfriend and her best friend. Even as a child, I felt keenly this unnamed woman's misery at how she was being cheated by the two people she loved the most. And of how she wept in secret. Of how she watched them, seated there in front of her in the movie theatre, ripping apart her trust and faith. The saddest part was when her mother sees her tears and asks her what is bothering her. And she replies, Sad movies always make me cry. This video shows her performing this song in 1991. She first sang it in 1961.
I first heard about Rasputin through Boney M. They painted an intriguing picture of a manipulator who get close to the power base through healing the Queen's son, and then through an affair with her. Our history books mentioned Rasputin only in passing, so I was mighty pleased that I had some inside knowledge of the man.
The song itself painted a very colourful picture of his life and his death. It was all very interesting. And at the end, we got to say, "Oh, those Russians!" As if people weren't the exact same no matter where you went.
Que Sera Sera, Whatever will be, will be by Doris Day. The Spanish and the English in that line are not exact translations of each other. In fact, the Spanish is grammatically incorrect. That didn't stop me from liking it.
The lyrics told us about the unpredictability of life. We could never tell what lay in our future. They also reminded us about the inevitability of life. What had to happen would find a way to happen. It's still a phrase I often use.
Please help me, I'm Falling (in love with you) by Hank Locklin is a sweet number about a very volatile situation.
Our narrator is married, yet finds himself hopelessly drawn to another, unable to be true to the vows he has taken. Yet he makes the choice to turn himself away from the temptation. Hank Locklin sings the song so simply, while playing his guitar. There is no wild gyrating to music, and no skin-show on display and yet this song has always touched me with its simple melody. Great music doesn't need fancy videos and expensive props to hold it up and it never ever goes out of style.
One Lonely Night by REO Speedwagon has always seemed to me to have that slightly haunting quality about it. It tells us that one lonely night is all it takes to completely break a person.
For some reason, the song always reminded me of the millions of people all over the world who live lives of quiet loneliness, day after day, for years. What does the loneliness do to them? How does it unravel them? And the rest of us, who are not in their shoes, might never even recognise the agonies they live on a daily basis.
Cheesy as it may now sound to my (let's admit it) slightly and partially cynical ears, Nothing's gonna change my love for you was a great hit back in the day. We all loved it, and almost all my friends got this moony, dazed look on their faces when the song began to play. Okay, I got it too. I can still sing the words of this song, both verses and the chorus, without forgetting a syllable in between.
And of course, I am old enough to realise that there's no such thing as a love that remains unchanged. Love is like water. It must change its nature once in a while if it is to remain dynamic. When it stays as it is, it tends to stagnate. To be alive, love must alter its intensity. And so it is. Sometimes it grows and sometimes it abates.
I have always sung Jim Reeves' May the Good Lord bless and keep you in a soft, solemn undertone, treating it with as much feeling and reverence as if it weren't a song, but a beautiful blessing, a prayer.
Jim himself sang this one with a sense of awe and humility, it has always seemed to me. If you listen to the lyrics, I'm sure you'll feel that way too.
La Bamba by Ritchie Valens burst in on our minds, as soon as it
began playing on the airwaves. We were drawn to it almost as soon as we first
heard it.
Gleefully, we tried to make sense of the language, the
meaning behind the words. They made no sense at all. Even then, in spite of not
knowing the meaning of those words, we were drawn to them.
Soon we were singing them, or rather mimicking them. Or even
more correctly, attempting to mimic them.
Since the vocalist sang too fast for
us to catch on, we hummed and hammed our way through those sections where we
couldn’t quite catch on. When it came to the parts we knew, una poca de gracia,
or ya arriba, yarriba, or yo no soy mariner, soy capitan, we sang louder.
What fun times La Bamba can still conjure up!
Living in the Love of the Common People was apparently quite
a favourite with many artistes, but it was the version sung by Paul Young which
caught my fancy.
I liked to think that song meant something more to me than
it did to many other people. There wasn’t any hole in my shoe where the rain
came through.
But I could relate to many other parts in the song.
Our condition wasn’t so bad, growing up.
But Dad did face years of joblessness, when his company was
locked down. It was a period of major deprivation for us, and if Mum and her
sewing talents hadn’t risen to the fore, we would never have managed to get by.
She was a wizard with a thread and needle and with the sewing machine. One more
reason why I was never a little sister, crying ‘cause she doesn’t have a dress
without a patch for the party to go. Not that I had a party to go to.
That song always reminds me of the tough times I went
through as a child.
But more importantly it is a reminder that at the worst of
times, we were still much, much better off than many other families I heard of.
Families that gave up and surrendered to despair.
Thank God, we didn’t.
Mum and Dad worked hard, steadfastly, battling circumstances
and bills with smiles, infusing us with hope.
When Paul Young sang, Daddy’s gonna buy her a dream to cling
to, and Mamma’s gonna love her just as much as she can, it resonated with me.
The crowning glory came with the last verse when he said,
Living on a dream ain’t easy,
but the closer the knit, the tighter the fit,
and
the chills stay away.
You take them in stride, family pride.
You know that
faith is your foundation,
with a whole lotta love and warm conversation,
don’t
forget to pray, making you strong,
where you belong.
Reasons why this song remains deeply satisfying for me.
Another pick-me-up song for me is the pleasantly indolent yet energetic sounding King of the Road by country singer Roger Miller.
The song spoke of a vagabond, a hobo, who reveled in his life of rootlessness, of living it up in whatever situation he found himself. A "man of means by no means."
There was more than a hint of delight and mischief in that voice that reminded us that our lives, caught up in deadlines and routines, was missing something. We let other people’s rules and plans decide for us, but this tramp made his own decisions. He did whatever his fancies dictated.
We were slaves to others.
And that is why this song is so fascinating.
We may never chuck it all away. We may never willingly choose to drift about, driven by every passing wind.
Yet we cannot help but be charmed by this hobo, who deserves his self-styled epithet, King of the Road.
Bridge over Troubled Water was my introduction to the
astounding repertoire of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, known popularly as Simon
and Garfunkel. With just this one song I realized what a phenomenon they were.
At its heart, the song was a touching promise and a proof of rock solid commitment. Growing up, I learned to value the strength it contained within itself, the reassurance it offered.
Can there be a greater love than laying down your life for those you love?
But this one ranked a close second.
Being there for those you loved. Holding their hands and comforting them. Wiping the tears from their eyes and offering to stand between them and the hardships that each day flung at them. That was the comfort that was implicit in these words.
A safe way out of the most difficult situations. When the world turns its back on you, how comforting to have that one person who never deserts you, but stands in your corner to the very end.
In essence, the song expressed the strength of the most durable relationships. The promise in the song was the glue that holds and binds all ties together.
As a kid, I wondered if a special someone would ever sing this song for me.
As a teenager, two of my closest friends and I sang it for the fourth friend in our quartet when she had her first heartbreak. Later, we all had need of that song. It was a part of growing up, and it was refreshing to hear that song, whether it was sung soulfully by Simon or Garfunkel, or “murdered” by tone-deaf friends, the comfort it offered, remained undiminished.
Bridge Over Troubled Water can still do that to me.
Another B that has the ability to blow me away was sung by
none other than a B. It was Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, a song that helped
me appreciate how compelling a well written song could be.
Sheer poetry.
The poetry of protest and revolution and insurrection.
The poetry of questions.
The kind that asks questions that no one has answers to.
But even when the answers are blowing in the wind, it helps
to know that they are there. Like the wind, invisible and hard to grasp, but
certainly there.
Blowin’ in the wind helped me understand that music didn’t
always have to soothe.
Rap, the sound track of the anti-Establishment, had not yet
emerged as a voice then. And Blowin’ in the Wind succeeded in making a political
statement that was couched in stylized vocals. It seemed so easy.
There was no grilling or rattling of our consciences.
Without holding anyone of us responsible for the abysmal
state of affairs, it still managed to evoke in us a sense of political
responsibility.
What kind of a song was it?
Just a series of rhetorical questions thrown up into the
air, into the wind, left to fall as they may, by the wayside where they might
be trampled upon or in the minds of its listeners who might be persuaded to understand
its deep meaning.
What kind of a man did it speak of?
How many roads must a man walk down, Before you call him a man?
Whether you were a woman, a dark-skinned person, a slave or
a prisoner, whatever you were, it enveloped you and the oppression you suffered
in the embrace of “man,” signifying the human experience, and how we are all
alike, or ought to be.
But even within the confines of melodiousness, I could see
that it was possible to prick the conscience of your listeners, to make them
see that some things weren’t right, to feel for those others, even in the midst
of your comfort.
The writing was beautiful, and as the song flowed on,
sonorous, seemingly lulling you to sleep, it was actually shaking your
sensibilities awake.
Whether Dylan was speaking against war or about human rights
and freedom, I believe he was asking us, as humans, to give others their due,
to give them the same rights we demand for ourselves.
Pay attention to the lyrics of that song, and you’ll see
what I mean. If you don’t already, and you’re not already nodding in agreement.
The answer is blowin’ in the wind. Will that wind move us to
tears or leave us scrambling for cover?
The answer to that question is as relevant as ever.
The third B song that mattered much in my growing up years was Jim Reeves' But you love me, Daddy.
Dad used to sing it to me, and because I was 5 then, I believed he'd made it up for me. Of course, a lot of the other lyrics didn't strictly apply to me. You can read more about it here. That song can still make me feel all warm and fuzzy and gooey inside. I learned that it wasn't Dad's original composition only when it played on the radio, on Saturday Date. For a brief while, I felt crushed. Dad had not written that song for me. But the feeling passed. And I realised that it didn't matter if Dad wasn't the original singer. When Dad sang it, it was mine. That was all that mattered.
