The end of the year is a good time to reflect; the top 100 list is the most attractive way to put reflections and reveries into an easily accessible and memorable form.
The following list is a zeitgeist of iconic phrases from popular song. “Greatest” is a huge exaggeration. This is merely a populist snapshot. But Scarriet is fast becoming the master of these zeitgeist lists; we occasionally do web searches of these attempts by others, and generally find no criteria whatsoever: a presentation of narrow musical taste, compounded by highly personalized choices—trees entirely without a forest.
Scarriet’s criteria are based on the moral, the historical, and the popular, and the excitement of what a few words can do.
We avoid fixating on some intricate series of words—by an artist we like—simply because we find it personally pleasing. We don’t eschew the intricately cool, but more important to us are lyrics that vibrate, resound, or agitate the popular consciousness, for whatever reason; we don’t see how this can not be an important criterion. We use this criterion, naturally, within the widest possible array of tastes applied to the widest possible audience (in English) in both time and place.
The moral criterion is crucial—it contributes to popularity, certainly, but it also engages judgment in a way that makes it more trustworthy, and also good—if we may use that word in the widest possible sense. This is why “Let it be” is number one on the list; without indulging in a lecture, this fountain of wisdom seems to us to be the best ‘moral high ground’ advice which, in our highly fraught and frenetic times, it is possible to make, in the vehicle of song. It is even better, we think, than “All you need is love,” and almost as popular.
We like “She loves you” and “Mrs. Brown, you have a lovely daughter”—these two examples rise above the “I love you” two-person formula, adding characters, charm, and interest.
To illuminate another crucial criterion: The simple phrase “paint it black” is on the list mostly for this reason: the phrase emerged in 1966, before the great tidal wave of darker material transformed popular music from “June/moon” to Black Sabbath/death metal, etc. This phrase (from a Brian Jones era Rolling Stones song) is presented as an historical indicator.
Intro over. Enjoy the list.
1. Let it be.
2. One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the one that mother gives you doesn’t do anything at all.
3. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.
4. All you need is love.
5. Good night, Irene, good night, Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams.
6. It’s only a paper moon over a cardboard sea, but I’ll believe in make believe if you believe in me.
7. What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson? Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away?
8. This land is your land.
9. She loves you.
10. How does it feel? To be on your own? A complete unknown? With no direction home? Like a rolling stone?
11. Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike, they’ve all gone to look for America.
12. Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that’s where you’ll find me.
13. I knew a man Bojangles and he’d dance for you in worn out shoes.
14. She’s buying a stairway to heaven.
15. We shall not be moved.
16. O’er the ramparts we watched the twilight’s last gleaming.
17. And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
18. I will survive
19. Imagine there’s no heaven
20. I will follow you into the dark
21. You can’t always get what you want
22. You broke my will, but what a thrill, goodness, gracious great balls of fire.
23. If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, all over this land.
24. Some say this town don’t look good in snow; you’re gonna go, I know.
25. Nights in white satin, never reaching the end; just what you want to be, you’ll be in the end.
26. I walk the line.
27. Have you ever seen the rain, coming down on a sunny day?
28. You’re living in your own private Idaho.
29. I did it my way.
30. The times they are a changin’.
31. This is the end, beautiful friend.
32. Boxes, little boxes, and they’re all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same.
33. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
34. Here comes the sun.
35. Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills, and everywhere.
36. The thrill is gone.
37. I put a spell on you.
38. How will I my true love know, from another one?
39. Blue moon, I saw you standing alone.
40. Yesterday, all my troubles were so far away.
41. The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.
42. Don’t you want somebody to love?
43. We don’t get fooled again.
44. Paint it black.
45. Stopped into a church I passed along the way; well I got down on my knees and I began to pray. Well you know the preacher’s like the cold—he knows I’m gonna stay.
46. Yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun.
47. O Maybellene, why can’t you be true?
48. Put a ring on it.
49. Stars shining bright above you, night breezes seem to whisper I love you.
50. The man who invented the stream drill, he thought he was mighty fine; but John Henry drove fifteen feet and the steam drill only made nine.
51. Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry, go to sleep my little baby; when you awake, you shall have cake, and all the pretty little horses.
52. Fly me to the moon, and let me dance among the stars; I want to see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
53. This is ground control to major Tom; take your protein pills and put your helmet on.
54. Don’t let the sun catch you crying.
55. What’s goin on?
56. Mrs. Brown you have a lovely daughter.
57. Why must I be a teenager in love?
58. Hello darkness my old friend
59. The moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup, I say a little prayer for you.
60. That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion.
61. Well I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord but you don’t really care for music, do you?
62. Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.
63. Wild thing, I think I love you.
64. Is that all there is?
65. So you think you can tell heaven from hell?
66. Imagine I’m in love with you.
67. No phone no pool no pets, I ain’t got no cigarettes.
68. Stop in the name of love.
69. I’ll find you in the morning sun; and when the night is new, I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you.
70. Everybody dies but not everybody lives.
71. On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
72. I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a king
73. Oh mother tell your children not to do what I have done, to spend your life in sin and misery in the House of the Rising Sun
74. Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, til you find your dream.
75. Out here in the fields I fight for my meals
76. You don’t own me.
77. When you’re a Jet, you’re Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day.
78. It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside
79. I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.
80. Last night I had the strangest dream I ever dreamed before; I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.
81. There was a lofty ship, and she put out to sea, and the name of the ship was the Golden Vanity.
82. Did you bring me silver, did you bring me gold—or did you come to see me hang from the gallows pole?
83. Hey Jude, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.
84. I’m going to lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside
85. There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief.
86. If you don’t know me by now you will never, never know me.
87. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord; he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
88. You can’t hurry love.
89. To the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left.
90. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
91. Where do you go to, my lovely?
92. My dear lady Anne, I’ve done what I’ve can, I must take my leave, for promised I am.
93. Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do.
94. Never mind, I’ll find someone like you.
95. Oh the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, and the young folks roll on the floor.
96. If you go away on this summer day, then you might as well take the sun away.
97. Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
98. Eleanor Rigby, wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.
99. They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad.
100. Cry me a river, ’cause I cried a river over you.
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