2. Brown-Eyed Girl, Van Morrison

            “Hey, wherever we go,” you’re pretty much assured of hearing this classic. It’s totally infectious, whether you’re singing along on the car radio or bopping on the dance floor: “We used to sing – sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-di-la-di-da.” I’m generally not big on lyrics, but that’s one I can remember. The key words for me in this song, however, come late, and I never fail to wait expectantly. You have to remember that this came out in 1967, when references to sex were not so explicit. When Van the Man sang about “making love in the green grass, behind the stadium,” it unleashed my primal fantasies as I tried to picture the exact spot behind the football field where I could do it.

            I saw Morrison twice in concert in the ‘70s, once at the Fillmore East, the second time at Avery Fisher Hall. I remember walking back up Broadway from Lincoln Center, overhearing some fellow concertgoers opine that Van was the best singer in rock, and realizing that they were probably right. It doesn’t hurt my evaluation, or ranking of this song, that he followed it with one of the ten, maybe five, best albums of the Rock Era, Moondance.

Sidebar: Albums

            It’s worth addressing near the outset the question, why apotheosize 25 “songs,” when for much of the period it was the “album” (l/k/a “CD”) that was collected and was the unit upon which artists were judged. From 1955 until the Beatles’ breakthrough concept album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in 1967, the album was basically a collection of singles, generally sold on the strength of the hit song or two. The ‘70s and, to a lesser extent the ‘80s, were the era of the album, exemplified by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, in which one song melded into the next, a whole much, much greater than the sum of its single parts. Every art movement leads to a reaction, and by the early ‘80s the pop single, whether deriving from the New York Ramones or the British New Wave, was the hot trend. And since then, we’ve had a little of each, with the emergence of online downloading virtually erasing the relevance of music’s source.

            As for me, I have been introduced to almost all my music through the radio, which means that, even for albums I love, I have come to them through a favorite song. Even when the relationship I have with an artist leads me to buy an album, songs unheard, there was always one particular song that started the relationship. That will be the work I include in this list.