Story Songs

CNN has been running a survey: What is your all-time most hated song? Number one: "Having My Baby," by Paul Anka. Personally, that song seems hilarious to me and I turn it up when I hear it, much as I do whenever ABBA comes on the radio. Wasn't that a naive, pretty little world we were all living in, Nina Pretty Ballerina, Odea Coates, and me.

Here's my list, not in any particular order:
1. Cat's in the Cradle: Harry Chapin
And my bat's in the trunk. Hold still.

2. Brand New Pair of Rollerskates: Melanie
That three-o'clock-in-the-morning-I-am-going-insane feeling

3. Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: Gordon Lightfoot
People get kicked out of countries for less than this.

4. Canadian Railroad Trilogy: Gordon Lightfoot
Hey, now, there's no call for that

5. Footloose: Mr. Kenny Loggins

6. Anything by Kenny Rogers. Line 'em up.

7. Comin' to America: Neil Diamond
Except when played on the public address system at Culver City High on July 4th as the fireworks display of Niagara Falls lights up. Then it's okay.

8. The Way it Is: That Hornsby Person
Why'd you want to go and ruin my day?

9. Ebony and Ivory: McCartney and Jackson
Oh Lord, as they say.

10. Morning Train: Sheena Easton
Eew.

11. Papa Don't Preach: Madonna
Camille Paglia thinks you're a genius.

Hey! Lookit me! Stuck in the 80s for a change. Or maybe it's just that we're programmed in our likes and dislikes when we're in our teens and twenties and nothing can budge us after that. Or maybe it's that the 80s were a grand age of story songs, which I can't stomach, nope, hardly ever, unless it's Mr Steve Earle wailin' about heroin or shotguns. Then it's grand.