There is an important, if slightly ridiculous, distinction to be drawn here between songs that you like that you could have written (probably in your dreams, but still), and songs that you like that you could never have written in a million years.

For instance, there are any number of great 50s songs that follow a single chordal pattern, and anyone who was around then, and had the wit or thought rock and roll was important could have written another one. For example, UNDER THE BOARDWALK and UP ON THE ROOF and Back Row of the Balcony and so on. It is a bit like physicists who happened to be around the week after the atom was smashed -- Nobel Prizes were there for the taking! But where did James Taylor's "FIRE AND RAIN" come from? Or the Beatles "A DAY IN THE LIFE"? I don't think I would have liked to have written either, but I would have liked to be under the same tree when the lightning struck.

Yours, Peter T.