W -- We didn’t start the fire, We are the world

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.

V -- Video killed the radio star

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?

U - Una Paloma Blanca

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. 

T -- That’s what friends are for, Those were the days

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

S -- Sad movies always make me cry

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.

R -- Rasputin

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.

Q - Que Sera Sera

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.

P -- Please help me, I'm Falling

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.

O -- One lonely night

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.

N -- Nothing's gonna change my love for you

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.

M -- May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You

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.

L -- La Bamba, Living in the Love of the Common People

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.

K -- King of the Road

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.

J -- Jolene

I was struck by what seemed like anguish in the voice of Dolly Parton when she sang, Jolene. It was a song about an unnamed woman who feared that her lover/husband was about to be ensnared by Jolene, against whose superior charms she stood no chance.

I was too young to comprehend anything about the nature of relationships, how complicated and twisted they often got, how they could make a person feel fulfilled and abased in equal measure. And yet I blithely went about singing, Jolene.

In my mind, I seemed to stare wide-eyed at this fearsomely beautiful woman who could take anything she set her heart on, leaving behind broken hearts crumpled in a heap.

My sympathies lay with the unnamed woman whose plea I sang all through the day, unable to get her cry out of my mind. It was as if the childish me was pierced by her pain.

I still hope Jolene moved on to other pastures.

I -- I can see clearly now, I will survive

I can see clearly now by Johnny Nash. Something about the lyrics of that song or the upbeat tune, I don’t know for sure, always made me feel a wee bit more positive and optimistic about my situation. No matter what circumstances I was going through at the time.

It was my instant, pick-me-up, feel good song.

I would listen to the words, and just like that, my spirits would be uplifted.

I will survive by Gloria Gaynor had her expressing her determination not to give in to the overwhelming sadness of a devastatingly hurtful breakup.

I was very young when I listened to this song. Even so, I was struck by the fierce grit in her voice, as she insisted that she would survive.

H -- Hasta mañana

Hasta mañana by Abba was the first Spanish I ever learned. Later Arnold Schwarzenegger taught me three more words, Hasta la vista, when he threatened to return in the sequel to The Terminator.

For a long time, I didn’t know what Hasta mañana stood for. No, I didn’t figure it out, not even when it stood within the rest of the context.

When I signed up to learn Beginner’s Spanish, I learned that mañana stood for tomorrow. That was an A-ha moment, I can tell you.

Hasta mañana was such a beautiful song. It carried within it the pain of separation tempered with the hope of a reunion. Sure, the cynics say that tomorrow never comes, but when Abba wished to meet again mañana, it felt good. It felt certain somehow.

This was decades before social media, of course. So when people moved apart, often they moved apart for good. It wasn’t always easy to keep in touch. And so, the hope expressed in Hasta Mañana comes across as even more powerful, a sort of fist-in-the-face-of-fate.

Even when confronted with the finality of “Don’t know where, don’t know when,” the song said, “Darling, our love was much too strong to die,” making the “new tomorrow” seem so defiant.

Courage in the face of uncertainty.

G -- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

I must have just stepped into my teens when I first heard the song, Girls just wanna have fun, by Cyndi Lauper.

Theoretically, it sounded like a great theme song. Especially, since middle class girls back then, as now, didn’t really have much fun, unless we were heavily chaperoned and the fun in question was thoroughly vetted before we had it.

Our brothers had a lot of fun though. They were allowed to return home late if they wanted to. No deadline for them. And they didn’t have to ask for permission before they did anything. Not as much as us anyway.

They weren’t berated or scolded as much as us, and their every move wasn’t scrutinized or criticized as much as ours was.

So this song, Girls just wanna have fun, sounded like a nice anthem to grab hold of, one that would, in the spirit of song and dance, allow us to get away with a little infusion of rebellion.

Perhaps there were other girls and women around the world that thought so too, because pretty soon the song was a hit.

Of course, there were some who thought that Lauper, with her outlandish dressing style and garish makeup was a little over-the-top, at least back then, but I didn’t think so.

Girls just wanna have fun was a statement, about equality and empowerment, and when you make a statement, you’ve got to ensure that you have everyone’s attention.

Cyndi was just winning some attention to the cause.

F -- 500 miles

The song, 500 miles, always made me sad. It was the perspective of a guy who was far away from home, and getting further by the minute, a guy who either couldn’t or wouldn’t come home.

I remember feeling a tinge of sadness whenever I heard this song. It was a great song to hum, and once it got into your head, it was hard to dislodge it. But one couldn't help but be struck by the regret in the words.

Because he never told us what kept him away from home, I was free to speculate. Was he ashamed of returning home? Had he committed a crime? Taken something that wasn’t his to take, or merely broken someone’s heart?

Why couldn’t he just get into the train and chance it, like the prodigal son did after all options were exhausted?

The mere lack of a shirt on his back and a penny to his name ought not to have prompted him to stay away.

So many questions, and the hero of the song never bothered to clear the air.

Five hundred miles is a long distance, in physical terms, but the resignation in the voice told us that figuratively, he was too far gone to return.

Some distances are just too far to return from.

E -- Every breath you take

Every Breath you take by Sting was one of my favourites. Back in the day, I thought it incredibly romantic, particularly on account of Sting's distinctive, sensuous voice.

I used to sing my own version of the song: Every breath you take, every move you make, every heart you break, every cake you bake, I’ll be watching you.

Today when I think of it, I can see the dangerously stalker-like overtones to the song. I certainly wouldn’t want somebody watching every breath I took. The very thought is creepy.

I must have been very naïve back then. As were so many other people. In fact, couples used to play the song at weddings, so there was a romantic aura that attached itself to the song.

It felt like a soothing reminder to a loved one, that you were always around and watching them.

I needed adulthood to see through that illusion.

D -- Don't Cry for Me, Argentina

Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina was a part of the album, Evita. It was sung by Julie Covington, and it was later included in Evita, the musical. Based on the life of the Argentinian leader, megalomaniac Eva Peron. She was also the wife of Juan Peron, Argentina’s President.

The song supposedly involved the spirit of the dead Eva exhorting the people of Argentina not to mourn her.

I didn’t learn until much later that the song was loosely based on an impassioned speech by Eva Peron.

Being half a globe away, India was not too hot on Argentinian affairs. Nor was I old enough to be interested.

The song was very significant to me because I used to sing the chorus, infusing into my singing my own brand of passion and what I thought was soulfulness.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know the lyrics well, and so I mis-heard the lyrics, and sang what I thought I heard.

So while Julia was singing, “All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise,” what my ears deciphered for me was, “All through my wide As, my married sisters, I kept my promise.”

It never occurred to me that I was making a mistake.




I recall telling my brother, “Why don’t these pop singers pay attention to their songs? What are wide As and what do they have to do with married sisters?”


There was no Internet then, so I had no opportunity to look up the lyrics and amend the version I was singing.


So I gave the singer the benefit of the doubt. Maybe, I told myself, it was some kind of a code. Maybe it was some uniquely Argentinian eccentricity. I told my brother about my new theory, and continued to sing my version as loudly and enthusiastically as I could.



Don’t cry for me, Argentinaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I wailed.



I have no doubt that Argentina wailed ever louder in response.