{"id":669,"date":"2006-10-03T10:59:10","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T10:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/03\/sing-sing-a-song\/"},"modified":"2006-10-03T10:59:10","modified_gmt":"2006-10-03T10:59:10","slug":"sing-sing-a-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/03\/sing-sing-a-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Sing, Sing a Song"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at his AOL gig, John Scalzi <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.aol.com\/johnmscalzi\/bytheway\/entries\/2006\/09\/30\/see-headline-below\/6552\">points to<\/a> a list purporting to be the <a href=\"http:\/\/top40.about.com\/od\/top10lists\/tp\/singalong.htm\">Top Ten All Time Pop Singalong Songs<\/a>. Here&#8217;s the list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1) Baha Men &#8211; Who Let the Dogs Out<\/li>\n<li>2) Beatles &#8211; Hey Jude<\/li>\n<li>3) Bee Gees &#8211; Stayin&#8217; Alive<\/li>\n<li>4) Whitney Houston &#8211; I Will Always Love You<\/li>\n<li>5) Tommy James and the Shondells &#8211; Mony Mony<\/li>\n<li>6) Joan Jett and the Blackhearts &#8211; I Love Rock and Roll<\/li>\n<li>7) Don McLean &#8211; American Pie<\/li>\n<li>8) Queen &#8211; Bohemian Rhapsody<\/li>\n<li>9) Santana Featuring Rob Thomas &#8211; Smooth<\/li>\n<li>10) Village People &#8211; YMCA<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Words fail me. Almost. Words like &#8220;madness&#8221; and &#8220;sadly deluded&#8221; and &#8220;totally on crack, maybe cut with something halluucinogenic&#8221; are actually rushing forward, offering to help out.<\/p>\n<p>Miscellaneous thoughts below the fold:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>1) &#8220;Who Let the Dogs Out&#8221;? Huh? &#8220;?!?!?!,&#8221; even. <\/p>\n<p>2) No Motown? &#8220;Tracks of My Tears?&#8221; &#8220;My Girl?&#8221; These don&#8217;t make the list? Are you mad?<\/p>\n<p>3) I mean, seriously, no &#8220;All Time&#8221; list should include anything recorded in the last ten years. Unless it&#8217;s really, amazingly good, and &#8220;Who Let the Dogs Out&#8221; isn&#8217;t that. Jesus, if you&#8217;re going to put novelty hits on the list, where&#8217;s &#8220;Whoomp (There It Is)&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>4) Also, &#8220;I Will Always Love You&#8221;? Are you kidding me? The only thing that song makes me want to do is change the station. Even &#8220;Mike and Mike&#8221; using it as a lead-in to talking about the tastefully named Chad Pennington makes me kind of twitchy.<\/p>\n<p>5) I&#8217;ll give you &#8220;Hey Jude,&#8221; &#8220;American Pie,&#8221; and &#8220;Mony Mony.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>6) &#8220;Bohemian Rhapsody&#8221; isn&#8217;t actually a great singalong song, it just gets cast as one because of <cite>Wayne&#8217;s World<\/cite>. If you want a Queen song for the list, it&#8217;s either &#8220;We Will Rock You&#8221; or &#8220;We Are the Champions.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>7) &#8220;Smooth&#8221; is a fun song, but I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;d put it down as a great singalong song.<\/p>\n<p>8) I&#8217;m not a big fan of &#8220;Stayin&#8217; Alive,&#8221; either. If I&#8217;m going to do ridiculous falsetto, I usually go for &#8220;Beast of Burden&#8221; by the Stones.<\/p>\n<p>9) On the one hand, &#8220;YMCA&#8221; is fundamentally a novelty song. On the other, we&#8217;ve been stuck with people publically singing along with it for nigh on thirty years, so I suppose it probbaly belongs.<\/p>\n<p>10) Seriously, no Temptations? No Smokey Robinson? But &#8220;Who Let the Fucking Dogs Out&#8221; tops the list?<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, any real list of this sort will be highly individual, so I wouldn&#8217;t really attempt to claim that I know the absolute ultimate Top Ten songs to sing along with, but here&#8217;s a set of songs that are highly likely to get me to sing along with the iPod while driving:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Tracks of My Tears&#8221; by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles &#8212; One of the most perfect pop songs ever.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Beast of Burden&#8221; by the Rolling Stones &#8212; I have a mix tape in the car with &#8220;Ziggy Stardust&#8221; followed by &#8220;Beast of Burden,&#8221; and late at night, I would sometimes rewind the tape, just to sing those two songs a second time.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Big Brown Eyes&#8221; by the Old 97&#8217;s &#8212; &#8220;I got issues&#8230; Yeah.\/ Like I miss you&#8230; Yeah.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Baba O&#8217;Riley&#8221; by the Who &#8212; It&#8217;s hard to resist belting out the &#8220;Teenage wasteland&#8221; part.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)&#8221; by Bruce Springsteen &#8212; Even better than &#8220;Born to Run.&#8221; It&#8217;s got style changes, key changes, daft lyrics&#8211; the works.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I Don&#8217;t Wanna Grow Up&#8221; by Tom Waits &#8212; One of the few people I can almost sound like.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;American Pie&#8221; by Don McLean &#8212; We should keep one from the original list, so why not this one?<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Like a Rolling Stone&#8221; by Bob Dylan &#8212; The original is one of the great kiss-off songs, and the live version on <cite>No Direction Home<\/cite> just kicks ass.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Lost in the Supermarket&#8221; by the Afghan Whigs &#8212; Greg Dulli&#8217;s alternative lounge singer really works well with this song.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Tainted Love&#8221; by Soft Cell &#8212; &#8220;Sometimes I feel I&#8217;ve got to&#8221; BOMP BOMP &#8220;Run away, I&#8217;ve got to&#8221; BOMP BOMP &#8220;get away&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I could keep this up for a quite a while&#8211; obvious stuff like &#8220;I Will Survive&#8221; and &#8220;Brown Eyed Girl;&#8221; less-known stuff like &#8220;Hoover Dam&#8221; or &#8220;Hyper Enough;&#8221; too-recent stuff like &#8220;Roses&#8221; or &#8220;Your Little Hoodrat Friend&#8221;&#8230; But never in a million goddamn years would I get to &#8220;Who Let the Dogs Out&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>What are your best singalong songs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at his AOL gig, John Scalzi points to a list purporting to be the Top Ten All Time Pop Singalong Songs. Here&#8217;s the list: 1) Baha Men &#8211; Who Let the Dogs Out 2) Beatles &#8211; Hey Jude 3) Bee Gees &#8211; Stayin&#8217; Alive 4) Whitney Houston &#8211; I Will Always Love You 5)&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/03\/sing-sing-a-song\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sing, Sing a Song<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}