Janet over at The Art of Getting By offered a challenge as part of her regular Tell It To Me Tuesday feature. What are your favorite songs with names in the titles?

As you might have guessed from my recent posts, music has been on my mind a lot lately. So Friday afternoon I opened a text document and when I thought of a song that fits the category (in between blog reading and email) I made a note of it. I had a couple hours of work to do on the computer yesterday and added several more. And I thought of a few more last night and this morning. What I decided not to do was look through my CD collection, my mp3 player, or search online. [Because that would have been more like research than a game....] I have also not looked yet at the comments or other players — I know I’m going to be smacking my forehead, “I should have thought of that one too….”

When I started I thought I might be able to come up with at least one for each letter of the alphabet. (With research I still think I could.) But at this point I have 79 songs and no names that start with H, I, O, U, X, Y, or Z. I went back and looked and Janet didn’t specify that it has to be a person’s name, but I assume that was the intent so I took Wildfire and Me and You and a Dog Named Boo off my list anyway. It was easiest for me to think of song names that start with A (11 of them), but I ended up with almost as many (10 each) of J, R, and S.

But this is about my favorites. Here are my top picks [with links to YouTube].

  • Alison by Elvis Costello. I first saw Elvis Costello on his infamous Saturday Night Live performance in December 1977. I thought at first it was one of their skits. [The first time I saw a commercial for the Early Pregnancy Test was during SNL and I thought that was one of their fakes, but that's another story.] But I’ve liked a lot of his stuff over the years. I once heard Alison described as “the first new wave ballad”. The truth is though, my favorite version of this song is the cover by Linda Ronstadt on her Living in the USA album.
  • Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin. This is another cover since the song was recorded first by Roger Miller and Gordon Lightfoot and written by Kris Kristofferson, but I think even he says that hers is the definitive recording of the song. It’s also sadly notable as a rare posthumous number one song since Joplin died shortly after it was recorded.
  • Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies. Hmmm, this post could double for another TITMT on favorite cover songs. This is a Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground song but I love love love the Cowboy Junkies version. This is probably their best-known song from probably their best-known album, The Trinity Session. And this is interesting, while looking for links for this post I found a reference in Wikipedia that “Lou Reed himself described it as ‘the best and most authentic version I have ever heard.’” I wonder if Elvis Costello ever commented on Ronstadt’s version of Alison?
  • Julia by The Beatles. My reasons are not strictly related to the song itself. Julia is the name of my first great love. She had never heard the song before we dated and she told me that her initial reaction was that she didn’t like hearing her name over and over in a song. I don’t know where she is today. Last I heard she was married with a couple of kids.
  • Layla by Derek and the Dominoes. I like the original much better than the unplugged version (once described as “Layla Light”) that Eric Clapton released in the ’90s. The song is notable in one respect (along with Something in the Way She Moves and Wonderful Tonight) as one of a trio of songs inspired by Pattie Boyd who divorced George Harrison and married Clapton. The raucous guitar riff provided by Clapton and Duane Allman and mellower piano riff are an irresistible mix. But this song is indelibly marked in my memories of a relatively happy time in high school. During half time at my high school basketball games the drill team would perform their “Famous Flashlight Routine” to this song. As the piano part began all the lights in the gym would go out and the routine continued with only the light of flashlights held by the girls as they danced around. [Hey, at least there was no disco ball....]
  • Hey Paula by Paul and Paula. I have similar reasons for liking this as for liking Julia. She’s also married with a couple kids, but I know where she is. She’s the “Old Flame” that I wrote about a while back. I don’t remember if we ever talked about this song.
  • Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega. This song was followed on her Solitude Standing album by Luka, which also fits the category of name songs but is not one of my favorites. There are references on the song to several real-life events but there are also two [I think] really interesting pop-culture connections. The setting and title were inspired by Tom’s Restaurant in New York city. The outside of Tom’s Restaurant was used as Monk’s Cafe in the TV sitcom Seinfeld. And when Karlheinz Brandenburg was developing the algorithm for mp3 audio compression, he used the song as a benchmark to make sure that the quality of her voice remained after the compression.
Posted by Tim