'Best song ever ...'? (2014 thread)

Subject: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 09:02 AM

While searching for an answer to Radio 4 BH's quiz this morning, I discovered that a magazine poll has declared Petula Clark's "Downtown" to be the "Greatest Song in the History of Music".
It struck me that mudcatters might have other suggestions ...

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 09:24 AM

Well, it's a bit like asking " Who is the beautiful women in the world?"

Why I use that example is because, back in the 60s, Raquel Welch carried that title but I didn't see it at all as because she used to remind me of my sister!
BTW, whenever I would mention that connection, back in the day, some bloke would always ask " Would you introduce to your sister?"

AS to the greatest pop song. Well, I think that you would have to have different categories as comparing e,g. a 50s pop/rock song with a Cole Porter, Gershwin, Kern type song would be like comparing chalk and cheese.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 10:41 AM

... to say nothing of Schubert Lieder; or arias from Mozart operas. "Non Più Andrai"?

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Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 10:54 AM

Operatically, probably Verdi's La Donn'E Mobile; or maybe the quartet from the same opera. Or Voi Che Sapete, going back to the Mozart...

Could go on like this for hoursnhoursnhoursnhours.....

Eh?

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 11:13 AM

You're own personal favourite.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 11:31 AM

Oh wow! A magazine poll! I'm sure glad they got a relevant sample of competent experts on music to answer such an important question.

I was afraid they might pick "Sha-Boom"

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 11:31 AM

I'm sure many of us change our personal favourites from day to day.
Also, I would have to catagorise my favourites: My favourite folk song, singer/songwriter song, country song, jazz song, bluegrass song western swing song, fiddle tune, classical piece, show tune...

"Downtown" is a great song, but "The Greatest Song in the History of Music"?

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 01:12 PM

IMO, Downtown is average. Petula Clark has recorded much better songs than that two note anthem;-)
I should add that I'm not a big fan of Tony Hatch(et)although he has penned some decent music.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: Leadbelly
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 02:11 PM

At least, Pet (aged 82) still looks very pretty.

Unbelievable.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 02:41 PM

ooohhhh best song ever... this is a tough one...

.. just how would you even start to choose between "Leader Of The Pack" by The Shangri-Las
and "Windmill In Old Amsterdam" by Ronnie Hilton...?????

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: Leadbelly
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 02:45 PM

punkfolkrocker,

what about "Tulips from Amsterdam" by Max Bygraves? When it's spring again, they sing again...

One of my personal favorites most likely would be "El Paso" by Marty.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 02:51 PM

"Tulips of Hamster Jam"!

Remember that one!

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 02:58 PM

The Best is Yet to Come by Clifford T Ward - perfection.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 03:13 PM

Tunesmith,

do you mean "Two Lips of Hamster Jam" by Emile Ford?

Was a great hit in Germany.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 03:36 PM

Regarding the "Tulips from Hamster Jam" quote.
What I was recalling was joke, and not a song.
Forgive me! But it went like this:

"A chap has a hamster and it goes missing.
Now, about the time it disappeared he was making some home-made jam.
I short time after he made the jam, some flowers begin growing from the jam.
He is puzzled, and gets in a horticultural expert to try to explain the phenomena.
The expert ponders the problem for a while and then says, what you have here is...

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 03:53 PM

Funny, Tunesmith, but I understood that you are joking.

And because there's a background behind this it was much more better than my "joke".

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 03:54 PM

Great? hardly.

Ava Maria.
God Bless America
Finlandia
The band played Waltzing Matilda.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 03:20 PM

The sound of silence, Paul Simon.
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot. This one makes me tear up every time.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: Bert
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 03:49 PM

I never did like Downtown, too raucous for me. I find the contrast between the BLAH, BLAH of Down Town and the diddly dum de dum of the rest of the line rather incongruous.

Gordon Lightfoot's 'Song for a Winter's Night' has got to be somewhere on the best song list.

Personally there are many songs that I would find hard not to include in a best 100 songs list.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 04:15 PM

I don't like 'Downtown', and I find Petula Clarke's voice too whiney and nasal, but what the song has going for it is that it would probably sound just as good/bad sung by anyone else.
There are some songs that I only want to hear sung by a particular singer. For me, 'The First Time Ever I saw his/her Face' has to be Roberta Flack. 'What is Life' must be Kathleen Ferrier (a recording, obviously), and I don't ever want to hear 'Lilac Wine' by anyone other than Jeff Buckley.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 12:53 PM

I saw Pet Clark in concert several years ago and she was superb. Although I wasn't a big fan at the time, I was accompanying a friend who was.
Oddly enough, I thought the weakest songs Petula sang were her hits. Her renditions of various other songs in jazz, blues, etc. modes were absolutely brilliant.
"Tell Me It's Not True" (from 'Blood Brothers') was a show-stopper.

I'm now 'a fan' :-)

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 01:11 PM

topsie -- I would rather hear the composer, Ewan MacColl sing "First Time Ever"; tho Roberta Flack certainly does do it beautifully.

But I still think that La Donn'E Mobile & Voi Che Sapete & Non Piu Andrai have better claims. But then, Verdi & Mozart are my ideals as operatic composers. A Wagnerian would presumably think differently.

But if we are in the popular field, the older 20s-40s Berlins, Porters, Kerns et al are the guys for me... And what about dear old Lennon&MacCartney then? Can't help feeling this is a bit of a pissing·down·the·wind thread...

"Best song ever..."? Tell you what -- I'm going to write it; think I have a window about next Thursday to get it done & dusted. Shouldn't take more than about ¾-hr...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 23 Aug 14 - 05:26 AM

What an impossible question. But just for fun and off the top of my head, and in categories, here's a few I clas as best
Country Music - Blue Side Of Lonesome, Cold Cold Heart
Folk Music - Dirty Old Town, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, Peggy Gordon
Irish - The Rare Ald Times, The Town I Loved So well, Slievenamon,Singing In Kilkenny
Pop/rock Satisfaction, Yesterday, In My Life
Opera - The Aria from Carmen

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Aug 14 - 06:19 AM

Which aria from Carmen, Desi? Toreador's song, or the card-playing, or Habanera ...? Carmen is one of the most tuneful of operas...

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Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 23 Aug 14 - 10:14 AM

Best country song? "Sunday morning coming down,"

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Aug 14 - 11:48 AM

Two candidates which occur to me —

Noel Coward's "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington"

Max Bacon's "Cohen the Crooner" [google it: I have also refreshed the thread on it that I OPd three years ago, whcih , followed thru, will give all inf re its provenance, authorship, &c]]

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Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Bignige
Date: 23 Aug 14 - 12:19 PM

The trouble is when Downtown was first released back whenever, not many English people had actually been to the States,(unlike these days of course), so at the time we didn't really understand what Downtown really was.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 23 Aug 14 - 12:55 PM

My Auntie Helen singing "The Laughing Policeman".

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Sandy sans cookie
Date: 23 Aug 14 - 02:37 PM

So, so totally subjective and so many great songs! I loved "Downtown" and Petula Clark, but best ever just doesn't pass my ear test. In a pop/folk vein Judith Durham and The Seekers outdoes Petula, but that does not touch my favourite "old country" standards...........

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 05:05 AM

RE MGN
Well, you show up my rather lack of knowledge of Opera as I don't know the actual name, but it's the main one i.e that very carchy part that goes la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la has a Spanish Flamenco sound to it?

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 05:08 AM

Kendal

Certainly a contender, and definately the best hangover song ever

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: PHJim
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 12:53 AM

GUEST,DTM - PM
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 01:12 PM

"IMO, Downtown is average. Petula Clark has recorded much better songs than that two note anthem;-)
I should add that I'm not a big fan of Tony Hatch(et)although he has penned some decent music."


That "two note anthem" has at least 9 notes the way Petula sings it. Not a lot, but there are plenty of good songs with only 9 notes.

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: Andy7
Date: 25 Aug 14 - 03:03 PM

The only song that EVER made me stand still and listen, with my mouth hanging open in wonder, was 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'.

It has the perfect combination of a beautiful lyric, haunting tune, strong emotion and wonderful vocal. Despite the fact that Paul Simon later admitted that the final verse doesn't really fit (it's true, it doesn't).

Other than that, I'd say there are 3 possible reasons why a song might be perfect:

1. You wrote it yourself (if you happen to be a great songwriter),
2. It brings back strong memories of that certain moment in your life, or
3. There's just something about the melody/words/message that you love; and this will be different for all of us, thank goodness!

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: Micca
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 12:55 AM

Desi C do you perhaps mean this one?
this is from the Migines-Johnson film of "Carmen is

Subject: RE: 'Best song ever ...'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Aug 14 - 04:55 AM

Could be that one - Vaguely translated as "the dance of the tinkling drumsticks". But I think he most likely meant The Habanera (google)

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I'm going to close this thread and transfer the 2018 messages to the 2018 thread. It's too confusing to have two threads on the same subject going at the same time.
-Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor-