1. Back To Living Again – Curtis Mayfield – This wasn’t Mayfield’s last song, it was the first song of his last album, and with Aretha “Go ahead, Mayfield” Franklin swinging by for the last few bars, it isn’t a farewell any more than Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World” was, but it sure does play like one. It sure does sound like Mayfield, who sang in from a wheelchair paralyzed from the neck down, was saying goodbye, just reminding us if he could come back from the devastating accident that nearly, and eventually would, kill him so could we: the trick to life is living it. Not only is it a glorious melody it is also a glorious sentiment and a benediction.
2. Oppenheimer – Old 97’s – One of the great metaphors of our time, Rhett Miller puts himself and the girl he is starting to fall desperately for, in the apartment above on a street called Oppenheimer, and suggests that the explosion of love is like an emotional atom bomb as the song keeps right on building as the feelings get harder, hotter and faster.
3. Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed – Richard And Linda Thompson – It plays out like one of those English detective TV shows, the down beat ones in grey toned London, starring Helen Mirrin or John Thaw, trying to find out what happened: it’s a direct observation without a direct answer and a complicated metaphor for infidelity and divorce.
4. With A Little Help From My Face – The Beatles – There is something else going on here: the counter culture set parents against children so harshly that the usual my family being the people who are most for me disappeared and your friends became your family: this was a generation gap song.
5. Apron Strings – Cliff Richard – As heartthrobs go, Cliff was too cute to be sexy but on occasion his desire overwhelms and in this teen pop rocker he makes puppy love a form of domestic desire while gurgling like Elvis.
