@loomisjohnson: That Seatrain album (their second) is a real good one. Also on it is the first version of the Lowell George song "I’m Willin" I ever heard.
The album was produced by George Martin, and features the second line-up of band members, now including fiddler Richard Greene (formerly of The Jim Kweskin Jug Band, from which also came Maria Muldaur) and Peter Rowan, a pretty well known Bluegrass guitarist and singer. Richard and Peter had both earlier been in Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. Excellent musicians.
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Good one @tylermunns. Yeah, Rock music can just be considered one branch of Pop music. How about Blues? My focus on Pop songs started in the late-60’s, when the album format replaced the 45 RPM single as the dominant format for Pop music.
I heard album after album with no really good songs, which is my first love in non-Classical music. Rock bands in the late-60’s and 70’s were more interested in exploring improvisation (often in pale imitations of Jazz), and in becoming virtuoso musicians, rather than writing good songs. So my attention moved on to singer/songwriters like Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, etc. I reserved my admiration of superior musicianship for the likes of The Band, Ry Cooder, and studio musicians (the L.A. guys of course, but also those in the Muscle Shoals studios---the recording team now known as The Swampers).
And like you, I consider the song "form" (verses, choruses, bridges, etc.) the determining factor in what makes for a Pop song. So when the debut album by The Dwight Twilley Band came out in 1976, I was stoked! They were a Rock ’n’ Roll band, but they wrote fantastic Pop songs, combining Memphis R & R with Merseybeat, an unbeatable combination. Their Sincerely album sounds as exhilarating today as the day it was released. Their follow up Twilley Don’t Mind has some great Pop songs, including the irresistible, hook-filled "Trying To Find My Baby", a great, great Pop song.
And then in 1977 Dave Edmunds’ Get It album appeared, and I discovered "The Master". 😉 Not just a great Rock ’n’ Roll guitarist, but one hell of a producer. He recreates the Sun Records sound like no other, as well as Spector’s Wall-Of-Sound. His albums with the Rockpile team (Nick Lowe, Billy Bremner, Terry Williams) are as good as Rock ’n Roll gets, with the emphasis on songs.
These days there are more good songwriters active than ever before. My musical taste leads me to the Americana genre, which is filled with great songwriters and singers, creating music as good as I have ever heard. It's a great time to be alive!
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I agree, "What is Pop music?" is an interesting question, one perhaps without a definitive answer.
It originally referred to songs written in the classic two verses, chorus, bridge (middle 8 in England), third verse, chorus, out form. Or a close approximation of it. Also with a sing along melody and "hooky" chorus. That’s how The Beatles started out, not surprising as they based their music on the American Pop music of the 50’s and early-60’s, with some Rock ’n’ Roll thrown in. They pretty much stuck with that formula through the Rubber Soul album (with some exceptions), after which there were no more rules.
ABBA was obviously a Pop Group, but in my opinion so were The Ramones, and so are Weezer (hooks galore!). The Stones never were, nor were The Yardbirds (though in the 1960’s the British press referred to all the bands---including The Stones, The Who, even Cream---as Pop Groups. That was to differentiate between music for teenagers, and the adult music: Jazz and Classical). The Kinks are a tough call; Ray Davies wrote Pop Songs, but most of them didn’t sound Pop ("Waterloo Sunset" being one notable exception, but there are plenty of others). The line between Rock and Pop is not so clear, and as much an opinion as anything else. Is a "Pop" song performed by a Rock band Pop music, or Rock? Like Van Halen’s version of "California Girls".
When it comes to "God Only Knows", I use the term Pop in reference to the non-Pop music it shares many musical "devices" with: Classical music. It’s certainly not a Rock song, so whatta ya call it? There is a sub-genre amongst Pop music aficionados, called Baroque Pop. I suppose that’s the best we can do. That term works for Brian’s pal Van Dyke Parks too.
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How about "Pretty Ballerina" by The Left Banke, written by Michael Brown? Also their "Walk Away Renee", done in a great version by The Four Tops as well.
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@tylermunns: Does your copy of the Song Cycle LP have the beautiful gold Warner Brothers center paper label? Both my copies (one has the rear cover with lyrics, the other without them but full musician credits) have the later ugly green WB label. I’ve been looking for a gold label copy in Mint condition for a few years now, to no avail. I’m a patient guy. 😉 The LP was reissued by somebody a few years ago.
I have the Speakers Corner Records reissue of Nilsson Sings Newman, but haven’t gotten around to listening to it yet. Thanks for the reminder.
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@tylermunns: A songwriter/bandmate and I discovered Randy Newman’s first album through Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. Because of Van’s work with Brian on the Smile recordings (I discovered the Smiley Smile album in early-’68, and turned him on to it. He became as obsessed with it as I), we got his debut album (Song Cycle, an amazing piece of work) as soon as we learned of it (it was released in late-’67). Listening to Song Cycle on acid is an experience unlike any other. 😉
Song Cycle opens with "Vine Street", a song credited on the album’s back cover to R. Newman (he is credited with the arrangement as well), and a little investigation revealed the R to be Randy. Van performs "Vine Street" in a somewhat surrealistic manner, so I didn’t know what to expect when I got Randy’s 1968 s/t debut album (it was released with two different covers; I of course have both 😉). The album credits production to Van Dyke Parks and Lenny Waronker, so getting it was a no-brainer. The album was engineered by Lee Herschberg, so it sounds great.
What a breathe of fresh air! In the midst of psychedelic horsesh*t, power trios (with which I was growing tired), and album side-long jams, here was an album of superb two and three minute long songs, recorded not with a Rock band, but an orchestra. Randy’s vocal abilities were obviously limited, but his delivery served the songs well enough. I became a life-long fan, though I wasn’t happy when he hired the members of Toto to record with him. I have his entire catalogue, Good Old Boys being a particular favorite. It was through Randy’s albums that I first became aware of Jim Keltner, Randy’s preferred drummer (he is also on Maria Muldaur’s 1973 solo debut, another favorite album of mine).
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One of my very favorite early-60’s songs/records is "On Broadway", sung by The Drifters, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s Brill Building songwriting team competition: Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. The song/recording is very haunting, and hearing it never fails to "return me to" the time of it’s release. I remember hearing it coming out of the transistor radio under my pillow at night. 😊 By the way, playing the guitar solo in the song is none other than Phil Spector!
@loomisjohnson: Speaking of Phil Spector, you may know he didn’t write the orchestra charts for his recordings/productions, that was done by his arranger Jack Nitzsche. Guess who wrote the orchestral/string arrangement for "Expecting To Fly", and produced the whole recording? Jack Nitzsche. Jack in one reason Neil’s Harvest album is as good as it is, as well as the 1971 s/t Crazy Horse album, produced by Jack and Bruce Botnick.
@tylermunns: I absolutely loved Bobby Vee’s recording of "Take Good Care Of My Baby" and "Go Away Little Girl" by Steve Lawrence. I had them on 45 RPM singles back then, and still do. That’s one reason I could never own only a Linn Sondek. 😉
I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to be surrounded by fellow song and songwriter lovers! I’m tempted to start a thread dedicated to a related topic: Power Pop. That idea came to me after listening to the one Fastball album I own, which opens with a killer Power Pop song: "The Way".
Has anyone else heard "One Hit Wonders Of The World Unite" by the Canadian group Badger? Here ’tis, but be forewarned: the sound quality is terrible.
bahttps://youtu.be/yjfqmK_xPPI?si=JIyIG-rJc162izNknd
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Brian Wilson cites Gershwin as a major influence. He in fact recorded an album of Gershwin tunes---entitled Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin---in 2010.
Dave Edmunds included a beautiful version of Rodgers & Hart’s "Where Or When" on his Get It album, one of my Top 10 of all time albums. Play that song while seducing a woman---it’s SO "dreamy". 😉
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During the Hippie era, Pop became a dirty word. The 3-minute single became the domain of teenybopper music, not serious "Art". Pretentiousness became rampant, reaching it’s peak with Progressive Rock, the appearance of The Ramones finally putting a much-appreciated end to.
But I never stopped loving Paul Revere & The Raiders, whose "Just Like Me" is a fantastic Pop song! Sure, the chord progression is nothing special, but the song has a great melody, and the all-important sing-along chorus "hook", as well a really cool double-tracked guitar solo by Drake Levin. Plus, Mark Lindsey was (is?) a great singer.
I auditioned for a Hippie band in the spring of ’71, and after passing the audition (a jam from 10 PM to 6 AM the next morning) moved into the band house. The bass player helped me carry in my LP collection from my VW van (of course 😉), and after looking through the titles said to me "You like weird music." He had seen my Beach Boys albums (they had long ago become uncool), my Paul Revere & The Raiders, my Ventures, my Animals and Manfred Mann albums, my copy of Emitt Rhodes s/t debut (a Pop classic), my girl group albums, my Soul and R & B, my Country & Western (Hippies did not allow you to like Merle Haggard, even though Jerry Garcia did), and my Andy Williams Greatest Hits album (which contains some songs by Henry Mancini, a favorite of mine). But my Jazz and Classical were fine, of course. I liked some albums by current bands, like those of Moby Grape, The Sons (though a Hippie band---in fact as about as Hippie as they come---they were great), Spirit, Fleetwood Mac, Procol Harum, The Kinks, a few others.
I played the band The Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile album, with which I was at that time obsessed (read the two chapters on the making of Smile in the Paul Williams book Outlaw Blues if you don’t already know about this incredible album-that-never-was), and they just didn’t get it. I eventually had to quit the band; too much jamming/extended guitar soloing, too little playing and singing of songs.
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Fantastic list @tylermunns! For an example of Carole King’s early songwriting quality, give a listen to her "Halfway To Paradise". I first heard the song on an early (pre-debut album) Nick Lowe single on Stiff Records, and was stunned speechless; it’s an incredible song! Investigating, I learned it had first been recorded in 1961 by Tony Orlando (!), but I don’t remember hearing it. I was buying Pop singles in the early-60’s, and Carole’s name (along with that of her lyricist husband Gerry Goffin) was on a lot of them. She was already a professional songwriter while still in high school.
I just now stumbled upon another video in which "God Only Knows" is examined, and it might be my favorite of them all. A pianist with a pretty heavy Italian accent dissects the song, but what I really like about his presentation is that at the end of each section of the song, he plays through that section, so that one may hear what he just explained. The beauty of the song is fully expressed, the brilliance of it’s composition fully revealed.
If you decide to watch the video (Secret Chords Found In The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows" Analysis), and find yourself somewhat lost in the technical matters (when I and my musician peers got to college, many of us took Music Theory. We were surprised to learn how mathematical music is.), just let it go and keep watching and listening. You’ll "get it" anyway. 😉
https://youtu.be/9dU1dZCM0fc?si=ukd1C_nBM87nqtRx
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@jmalen123: Rodney Crowell's "Why Don''t We Talk About It" is from 2001. Lucinda Williams' incredible song "West" is from 2007, her song "Essence" from 2001. The latter, by the way, is the most intense song I've heard from this century, with a vocal performance absolutely lascivious, the lyrics full of wicked double entendre.
Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt" is from 2002, though he of course didn't write the song. He does however make the song his own. Was he too old to matter to you? 😉
But ya know, one element in a song's stature as a great one is how it holds up to the passage of time. Some songs improved with age, others become diminished (no musical pun intended). A lot of the late-60's music now sounds quite dated to me. Genius songwriters aren't necessarily born every day, or even every decade. Would you rather listen to great music from the 20th century, or mediocre music from the 21st? J.S. Bach was for many years considered too "old" for 19th and 20th century ears, but sounds far fresher to me than most music written in those two centuries. Perhaps my love of Bach explains my love of "God Only Knows".
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@mrskeptic: You misunderstand my intent in the use of the term "greatest" (but @tony1954 doesn’t). It was deliberately chosen not to apply that adjective as a simple-minded statement of fact, but rather to make a polemic assertion. My statement assumes all readers are aware of the fact that in art there is no greatest, except for the music of J.S. Bach, of course.
Still, in the world of Pop music songwriting, "God Only Knows" stands alone. Says who (or is it whom, rpeluso? 😉)? Me. And Paul McCartney (a pretty good songwriter himself). And a few excellent songwriters I personally know (or knew. A few are dead).
But I have plenty of others. "The Weight" by J.R. Robertson, "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" by Gary Brooker & Keith Reid, "Nowhere Man" by John Lennon (which contains my favorite bit of George Harrison’s guitar playing in the song’s short/perfect solo), "Waterloo Sunset" by Ray Davies, "Waterloo" by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, "Shake Some Action" by Cyril Jordan and Chris Wilson, "Fresh As A Daisy" by Emitt Rhodes, "Why Don’t We Talk About It" by Rodney Crowell (found on his perfect album The Houston Kid, which I rate higher than Pet Sounds), "No Time To Cry" by Iris DeMent (about which and whom and I learned of in an interview with Merle Haggard), "Love Hurts" by Boudleaux Bryant (the original by The Everly Brothers please, not the inferior remake by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris), "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, and "Like A Rolling Stone". There are dozens and dozens more I could name. All great, unique, and incomparable with each other.
For me, it all starts with the song. That’s why I don’t love than many Rock bands: most don’t have a great songwriter amongst it’s members. Being a musician, even a very, very good one, has NOTHING to do with writing songs. Prior to Brian Wilson and Lennon & McCartney, Pop music was most commonly made by separate teams: professional songwriters, studio musicians, the featured singer(s), and the record producer. After The Beatles, all Rock bands were expected to write their own material. That has resulted in a lot of mediocre music being made. IMO, of course..
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@rpeluso: Oh yeah, if you remove the "Paul and" the sentence would read "agree with me". So even with "Paul" in the sentence, "me" is correct. Smarty-pants. 😉
Another Top 10 song for me is "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted". Like "God Only Knows", it’s chord structure/modulation/inversion just kills me. The bass part---played by my favorite bassist, James Jamerson---raises the hair on the back of my neck.
As for Beatles covers of Motown songs, give the original recording of "Money (That’s What I Want)"---written by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, sung by Barrett Strong---a listen. Good as The Beatles version is---and it’s good---the original is even better (a very visceral feeling of tension-and-release is created by The Funk Brothers), with a very wicked little guitar solo (incredible tone, too).
John Lennon’s vocal on "Twist And Shout" is one of his best. I don't remember whether or not The Beatles did the song when I saw them live in '65. But I vividly remember looking up at Lennon on stage, standing on the floor of The Cow Palace in S. San Francisco about ten yards away from him. He had an electric piano next to him, which he played on only one song. He smiled a lot that night, appearing to be having a great time. Amazing to think he was murdered only fifteen years later.
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