My personal favorite pop song is “Two For the Road” by Henry Mancini.
The instrumental version on the “RCA Legendary Performers” Mancini comp is the towering, definitive version.
The song is arranged, played and recorded…well…I don’t really have words, to be honest.
When this version reaches an orchestral-strings-only break at the 2:00 mark, and then goes into a dark, increasingly dissonant, jazz-piano-inflected outro…ending with a brief, haunting, almost-creepy melody (vibraphone?)…you already spent the first 2 mins in the throes of peak bliss, and then that is how they ended it?!…ridiculous.
“Moon River” by Mancini/Mercer.
Both the main version with choral vocal arrangement and the acoustic guitar/string arrangement version that Audrey Hepburn sings in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Can’t go wrong with either.