The greatest Pop song yet written and recorded.

No one who puts their feet up on my coffee table and says, “God Only Knows” is the best pop song ever written will get a dirty look from me.

A pop song that can hit a “laymen” with authority and merely sound like a “pretty, catchy song,” but which employs highly sophisticated methodology in it’s construction/execution, is, to my mind, a good measurement of a great pop song.

The hazard in writing, say, “Hang On Sloopy” (a song I love) is that it may be perceived as “too simple.” The hazard in writing, say, “Aja,” is that it may be perceived as, “obtuse, ponderous, boring, etc.”

To write a song that simultaneously achieves both…damn hard to do.

The best pop songs (of which there are many) by these songwriters achieve this remarkable balance:
- Jerome Kern
- Irving Berlin
- George Gershwin
- Vincent Youmans
- Cole Porter
- Richard Rodgers
- Harold Arlen
- Harry James
- Jimmy Van Heusen
- Henry Mancini
- Burt Bacharach
- Carole King (do yourself a favor and spend a few days - it’ll take a few days as the volume is staggering - digging into the pre-‘70s-solo-artist-i.e.-Tapestry-etc. Carole King compositions of the ‘60s…amazing)
- Randy Newman (ditto)
- Brian Wilson
- John Lennon
- Paul McCartney
- Ray Davies
- Harry Nilsson
- Nicholas Ashford & Valerie Simpson
- Stevie Wonder
- the Odessey and Oracle LP by the Zombies
- Thom Bell
- Elton John
- Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff
- Joni Mitchell
…to name a few 😉

@loomisjohnson

“The Porpoise Song”…written by Carole King

An awesome song that will thwart many a Monkees-basher’s notions as to their mediocrity/crappiness.
Carole’s demo of “Pleasant Valley Sunday” is great, and superior to the original Monkees record, in my opinion

Also written by Carole King:

“I Happen to Love You” - The Myddle Class (The Electric Prunes version equally good)

“Don’t Bring Me Down” - The Animals

“So Goes Love” - The Turtles (glorious song and track)

“Honey and Wine” - The Hollies

“Wasn’t Born to Follow” - The Byrds (the Dusty Springfield and Carole/The City’s version are very different but superb, my preferred versions)

“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” - Aretha Franklin (Carole’s version also gorgeous)

“Take a Giant Step” - Taj Mahal

“Chains” - The Cookies (Beatles version so-so)

“I’ll Love You For a While” - Dusty Springfield (badass pop perfection)

“The Loco-Motion” - Little Eva (of course Kylie Minogue’s hit 25 years later)

“I Can’t Stay Mad at You” - Skeeter Davis (sort of a re-write of her high school buddy Neil Sedaka’s classic ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’ but a gem in its own right)

“She Doesn’t Deserve You” - The Honey Bees (addicting flawlessness)

“Every Breath I Take” - Gene Pitney

“Keep Your Hands Off My Baby” - Little Eva (Beatles version so-so)

“You’re Just What I Was Looking For Today” - The Everly Brothers (check out this surprisingly not-so-Everly-Brothers, psychedelia-ish 1967 gem)

“Just a Little Girl” - Donna Loren

“Brand New Man” - Richard “Popcorn” Wylie (yet another gem that slipped through the cracks)

“Let’s Turkey Trot/Down Home” - Little Eva (world-beating 45; ‘Let’s Turkey Trot’ is irresistible and ‘Down Home’ is as good a pop song as you’ll ever hear…simply brilliant…the novelty-ness is the only reason ‘Let’s Turkey Trot’ was the A-side)

“I Can’t Hear You” - Betty Everett (Dusty’s version just as good, and my preferred version - YouTube her live TV performance of this and see her set the damn house on fire)

“Don’t Forget About Me” - Dusty Springfield

“Goin’ Back” - Dusty Springfield (The Byrds’ version from The Notorious Byrd Brothers is very different but quite good)

“Some Kind of Wonderful” - The Drifters

“He’s In Town” - The Tokens (what a great song, great record)

“That Old Sweet Roll (Hi-De-Ho)” - Dusty Springfield (Carole demo is great also)

“I’m Into Something Good” - Earl-Jean

“Crying in the Rain” - The Everly Brothers

“One Fine Day” - The Chiffons (masterpiece)

“Don’t Ever Change” - The Crickets (best version but Beatles version quite good as well)

”It Might As Well Rain Until September” - Carole King (pop perfection - sink your teeth into the bridge to receive a clinic on deceptively uber-sophisticated pop songwriting ingenuity…simply brilliant and seamless)

”Up On the Roof” - The Drifters (Carole’s version very different but awesome)

”I Can’t Make it Alone” - Dusty Springfield

“I Was There” - Lenny Welch (simply stunning song/track, criminally unknown)

“So Much Love” - Dusty Springfield (heaven)

“No Easy Way Down” - Dusty Springfield (ecstasy)

”Another Night With the Boys” - The Drifters

“I Didn’t Have Any Summer Romance” - The Satisfactions (another criminally unheralded, gorgeous song and track produced by Jack Nitzsche)

“Road to Nowhere” - Carole King (dark, ominous, almost sounds like the Velvet Underground was trying to copy it with ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’)

“Make the Night a Little Longer” - The Palisades (another forgotten nugget of goodness)

“It’s Going to Take Some Time” - Carpenters (I prefer Carole’s demo)

“Some of Your Loving” - Dusty Springfield (bliss)

“Will You Love Me Tomorrow” - The Shirelles (written by King as a teen; she had perfect pitch at age 4)

@jonwolfpell Indeed, Carol King wrote all those songs.  
Goffin was more the lyrics guy.  
That’s a fraction of the list, also.  
Those were just the ones I was particularly fond of.  
I didn’t mention “Take Good Care of my Baby” by Bobby Vee, her second #1 hit after “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” both written and released when she was a teenager.  
“Go Away Little Girl” by Steve Lawrence and “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss” by The Crystals have great music (Carol) and…sort of…um…strange.,,lyrics by Gerry 😆.  
Anyway, yeah, the list goes further on and on with her beyond the list I posted and it is indeed staggering to comprehend.  

Randy Newman’s body of songs in the ‘60s is the same way.  
People have no idea how many absolutely brilliant songs he wrote in the ‘60s prior to becoming a recording artist.  
His songs were a bit more musically/lyrically complex and adventurous, a ton of them absolute masterpieces.
 

@teboerio I feel compelled to note that Glen Campbell’s 1970 version of Jimmy Webb’s masterpiece “MacArthur Park” is hard to beat.  
IMO, Waylon Jennings’s 1976 version is right behind.  
Harris’ version is probably somewhere behind Donna Summer’s version.

@noromance Carol was the music, Gerry was the lyrics. 
I don’t listen to that music for the lyrics. I don’t wish to diminish Gerry’s contributions, but that’s just how I see it.

Phil Spector’s vision was original. He was a producer, not an arranger/transcriber.  

He was also no dummy when it came to pop songs.  
“To Know Him Is To Love Him,” with it’s clever bridge chord progression/melody was written solely by Spector.  
He wrote one of my favorite songs ever, “Spanish Harlem” with lyricist Jerry Leiber.
Randy Newman played the “Jack Nitzsche role” on the brilliant Nitzsche-produced music for the soundtrack of the film Performance.  
In that same role as arranger, Randy Newman wrote the absolutely brilliant orchestral arrangement for Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller’s masterpiece, “Is That All There Is?” with brilliant vocals by Peggy Lee.

@bdp24 

My original US copy of Song Cycle is one of my more cherished records.  
Was re-watching the Twin Peaks series (again) the other day and whaddya know…I always forget Van Dyke Parks has a small role in season 2 (attorney in courtroom scene).
Van Dyke Park’s version of “Vine Street” is awesome but no version of that song holds a candle to Harry Nilsson’s version as track 1 on the Nilsson Sings Newman LP. 
Like the Van Dyke Parks version, it has a small mini-song unrelated to “Vine Street” open the LP and segues into “Vine Street.”  
Harry proceeds to weave a tapestry of some of the most awe-inspiring, exquisite vocal overdub arrangements you’ll ever hear, accompanied by only Randy himself on the piano.  
I could provide a list similar in length (and similar in musical quality - arguably superior) to the huge Carol King one I posted earlier regarding the number of knockout songs Randy wrote in the ‘60s. If I get the gumption, maybe I will…

If it ain’t classical and it ain’t jazz (I don’t consider vocal recordings of pop songs by the great songwriters of the early 20th century I posted previously to be ‘jazz’), it’s pop.

- verse/chorus
- repeat
- A middle section (either bridge, solo, interlude, etc.).

Though obviously some exceptions, generally in the 3:00-range.

That applies to everything from Al Jolson to Frank Sinatra to the Carter Family to Jimmie Rodgers to Bill Monroe to Hank Williams to Chuck Berry to James Brown to Kraftwerk to Bob Marley to The Ramones to the Sugarhill Gang.

The more “out-there” part of pop (the prog-y stuff, math metal, Zappa, Beefheart, etc.) is just the outer reaches of pop. It still ain’t classical or jazz. It’s just exploring the farthest outer reaches of the pop universe.

@mdalton 

Do you remember that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine’s boyfriend would suddenly enter an impenetrable trance-like state whenever he heard, “Desperado?”  
I kind of turn into that guy whenever I hear “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper.

@bdp24 
I suppose I consider the records of Charley Patton, Leadbelly, Son House etc. etc…to the records of Elmore James, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf etc. etc…and the records of The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, etc. etc…to the records of Bill Monroe, Bob Wills, Hank Williams etc. etc…all in conjunction with the pop masterpieces of the early-20th century and gospel music to be the primary building blocks of modern pop music, or, perhaps, the “rock n’ roll era” (‘55-to-present day).

@hce1
“Thanks for that list of Carole King songs.”

You bet! 😉
My (nerdy) pleasure.

“It’s incredible and I’ll be listening to them all week long.”

I love to hear that!