Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is a victory lap listing of my all-time top 40 favorite tracks.
Because of my willful pop obsession, the virtual ink on this piece wasn't even virtually dry when I regretted omitting "Time Will Tell" by Holly Golightly. Ah well. The nature of these lists makes them just snapshots in time, subject to ongoing revision. That's why I embrace the notion that an infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Gimme MORE!! (Cue plug for the book.)
In the 1980s, my friend Fritz Van Leaven encouraged me to assemble a list of my all-time Hot 100; in 1985, I came up with my first such all-time Hot 100 list, which I updated periodically for several years thereafter. I made an abortive attempt at another one in 2018, deliberately skipping my five favorite groups--the Beatles, the Ramones, the Flashcubes, the Monkees, and the Kinks--but still unable to narrow things down below 125 songs before giving up. It's okay. Excess is its own reward.
I have done annotated artist-specific all-time Top 25s for my favorites by the Beatles, the Monkees, and post-Beatles Paul McCartney, plus a supplemental listing of my next 40 Monkees faves. I may yet follow with Top 25s for the Kinks, the Hollies, the Rolling Stones, KISS, and/or others.
Swinging for the fences in 2018, I began a series called Remembering/Imagining The Music That Played, an attempt to recreate what would have been my all-time Hot 100s if I'd done such lists and subsequent updates when I was in my late teens and early twenties, 1976-1982. Because music is such an integral part of who we are and what we become, the resulting pieces are as much personal memoir and autobiography as they are celebrations of individual tunes. I'm quite proud of those six essays--I Was 16 (Going On 17), When I Was 17, 18 (And I Like It), Hey 19!, I Hit 20 (And 20 Hits Back), and No Time To Be 21/This Year I'll Be 22--and I eventually brought them all together in one place. It's one of my favorite pieces.
And we're all about the favorites here. A list of my all-time Top 40 favorite tracks is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.
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