60 years of my favourite music – Part 1

My favourite songs are usually ones that cause me to either leap around the room in total abandon, or sing loudly at the top of my voice. Or, even better, to sing loudly at the top of my voice while leaping round the room in total abandon. Some of them are favourites because they just about rip my heart out of my chest. And some just slay me with their beauty.

My tastes are somewhat eclectic. I don’t much care for most jazz, thrash metal, electronica or modern classical, though there are exceptions. But there are things I like in most other genres. Some of my picks might be for popular artists, but my favourite track of theirs might be an obscure one.

I have hundreds of favourite songs and found it hard to choose. So I decided on one from each year, from the year of my conception to this year. Obviously some of these were not my favourites at the time, even in the later years. But mostly they’re songs that have stood the test of time and they still affect me today. Some of them are in homage to some of our Kiwi greats.

Even that was hard; some years I’ve cheated and picked two because I couldn’t decide between them. But I did set myself one other rule – only one song by each artist. Ooh, that was hard too.

So these are not necessarily my 60 favourite songs, but are all up there.

For this first decade, I was interested to note that most of the songs don’t affect me in the same way as some of the later music. Is that an inherent quality of the songs from that time, or because I didn’t hear them till later? I don’t know. Anyway, some of these are ones I like but don’t necessarily love.

10 videos are a lot to check out, but I hope you have the time to enjoy at least some of them.

1957 – Elvis Presley – All Shook Up. I could also have chosen Jailhouse Rock. But I teach an arthritis exercise for elders on a Monday morning, and this is in the repertoire, so that was the clincher.

1958 - Everly Brothers - All I Have To Do Is Dream. I’ve used this one for the arthritis class too.

1959 - Platters - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. When the movie American Graffiti came out, I saw it several times. That’s where I first heard this track.

1960 - Brenda Lee - I'm Sorry. I’m not sure where I first heard this, but does it really matter?

1961 - Barry Mann - Who Put The Bomp (In The Bomp, Bomp, Bomp) = just a kinda fun track.

1962 – Peter, Paul & Mary – Where Have All the Flowers Gone. Hmm, interesting. In my mind, this typifies the protests about the Vietnam War. But it came out before either NZ or USA were there. Oh well…

1963 - Lesley Gore - It's My Party – just something fun and poppy, or do I mean boppy?

1964 - Animals - House Of The Rising Sun. Now we’re starting to get to the interesting stuff…

1965 – Things started to really pick up this year with the Rolling Stones, Righteous Brothers, Petula Clark, Sonny & Cher, the Supremes and the Byrds. I had some trouble choosing, but in the end I went with The McCoys – Hang on Sloopy. Though The Kinks – All Day and All of the Night - was a close second.

1966 – Rolling Stones – Paint It Black. This one gets me still. I know there are loads of great Stones songs, but this one will always be my favourite. The Left Banke – Walk Away Renee comes in second.

This post, or series of posts, was inspired by a post by @giantbear some weeks back. I’ve been working on it off and on since then. Look for the next decade next Friday.