Janet Jackson: It's All for You

I’ve written about Janet Jackson’s case for the Hall of Fame before, here and here, and there’s not a whole lot more to say about it. She’s had more hit singles than nearly everyone who’s already enshrined, and is an icon to many, many contemporary singers, not just women or people of color. So rather than go into that, I thought I’d tackle the question of whether Nipplegate really torpedoed her career, as the legend now has it.

The incident in question took place on February 1, 2004, two months before the release of Damita Jo, Jackson’s eighth solo album. In the interim, CBS forbade Jackson to appear at the Grammys, where she had been scheduled to present an award. But Justin Timberlake, her partner in malfunction, was still allowed to appear, although he was the one who instigated the incident.

Damita Jo sold just over a million copies in the U.S., although Jackson’s two previous albums had both sold over 3 million. None of its three singles even reached the Top Forty, despite the fact that she had had two Top Fives from her previous album, 2001’s All for You.

That all looks pretty bad, but I’m not quite convinced. There’s a line on Wikipedia about the singles from Damita Jo being blackballed by pop radio, but the reference links to an article that doesn’t say anything of the sort. It can be hard to tell the difference between blacklisting and just not liking a record. Her subsequent two albums sold even more poorly than Damita Jo, suggesting that either her career had completely run out of steam, or the blackballing was more persistent than anyone cared to admit.

More to the point, Miss Jackson had been placing songs in the Top Five for 20 years up to that time, and people don’t do that. Elvis didn’t do that, Stevie Wonder didn’t do that, Elton John didn’t do that (aside from his late-career Lion King and Princess Di flukes). Only a very small handful of acts have stayed on the charts significantly longer than 20 years. You don’t have to ask why someone didn’t continue to have hits after 20 years – you have to ask why they did.

Jackson was only 37 at the time of Nipplegate, not particularly old for a pop star. She had been on the charts forever, but she was only 18 when Control came out. Nevertheless, I suspect she was nearing the end of her chart run anyway by the mid-aughts, bare breast or no. But really, that’s neither here nor there: Janet Jackson had done more than enough by Super Bowl XXXVIII to warrant induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The Matched Set Madonna is one of the few pop stars whose chart run lasted longer than Janet Jackson’s, although it was only by a few years. And of course, Madonna made a huge cultural impact, with way too many articles written about her containing the word “gaze.” 

On the other hand, Nipplegate still pops up in the occasional discussion, while Madonna’s Sex book has been basically forgotten. (Maybe featuring Vanilla Ice in it was not such a hot idea.) When MTV chose its first MTV Icon, in 2001, the selection was not Madonna or Janet’s brother but Miss Jackson herself. And try though she might, Madonna's acting career has never launched a character as memorable as Penny on Good Times.

So you have someone with 90 percent of the chart impact of Madonna, and maybe 80 percent of the zeitgeist impact. Yet Madonna sails in on the first ballot, while Janet Jackson has lingered outside for years.

The Verdict An obvious Yes. Janet Jackson is overqualified for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Devo: I Can't Get Me No

Devo left their footprints through an awful lot of Seventies and Eighties culture, probably more than you realize, with ties to Neil Young, the Pretenders, Square Pegs, Pee Wee Herman, the Kent State massacre, even the great Toni Basil. They made an early appearance on Saturday Night Live, reinforcing that show’s reputation as a supporter of the avant-garde even while, half the time, they were still inviting musical acts like Meat Loaf and Judy Collins. (Fred Willard was the host.)

I remember watching this live as a wee tot, although I don’t remember my reaction (I probably hated it). It’s pretty amazing, though, isn’t it? I’m a little surprised that they came out with three guitars and a bass, since Devo was promulgating what would evolve into New Wave synth-pop. The bassist is real good, too. 

Devo's label wanted to get the Stones' blessing before they released this, so Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale found themselves sitting down one afternoon with Mick Jagger himself. The New Yorker picks up the story:

As the sounds of the cover filled the room, Jagger sat stone-faced.... “He was just looking down at the floor swirling his glass of red wine,” Casale recently remembered, adding, “He didn’t even have shoes on, just socks and some velour pants [! - ed.]. I don’t know what his habits were then, but this was early afternoon and it looked like he had just gotten up.”

For thirty seconds or so, the men sat in silence, listening to the weird robo-funk coming from the boom box. Then something changed. “He suddenly stood up and started dancing around on this Afghan rug in front of the fireplace,” Casale said, of Jagger, “the sort of rooster-man dance he used to do, and saying”—he impersonated Jagger’s accent—“‘I like it, I like it.’ Mark and I lit up, big smiles on our faces, like in ‘Wayne’s World’: ‘We’re not worthy!’ To see your icon that you grew up admiring, that you had seen in concert, dancing around like Mick Jagger being Mick Jagger. It was unbelievable.”

Let’s take it from the top: Devo was formed in Akron, Ohio, by the Mothersbaugh and Casale brothers, along with a drummer who would later be replaced by the great Alan Myers. Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh had been students at Kent State in 1970 when four protesters were murdered by the National Guard, one of them being Casale’s friend Jeffrey Miller. That helped inspire the concept of de-evolution, which would eventually give the band its name. Chrissie Hynde was there, too, and played in a band with Mark Mothersbaugh before Devo got off the ground.

After seeing the band’s short 1976 film The Truth About De-Evolution, David Bowie lobbied his label to sign them. The uniforms they wore in the film came from Gerald Casale's day job doing graphic design for a janitorial supply company. Neil Young recruited them to appear as nuclear garbagemen in his film Human Highway, which Mark Mothersbaugh ended up scoring. Gerald Casale and Toni Basil began dating, and Devo backed her up on her debut album Word of Mouth (which actually post-dated “Mickey”), including three Devo covers.

Devo itself finally landed on the pop charts with the MTV fave “Whip It,” which went to Number Fourteen on the Billboard pop charts in 1980. In 1982, they played at Muffy’s bat mitzvah on Square Pegs. I seem to remember a character on that show wearing plastic Devo hair, but can't find any references or pictures thereof. A little help?

Unfortunately, that’s about all there is to the Devo story. Mark Mothersbaugh went on to produce the music for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and turned into a highly successful TV composer, but “Whip It” would be their only Top Forty hit. Their theme for Doctor Detroit peaked at No. 59 in 1983, and they never even made the Hot 100 after that.

The Matched Set It’s gotta be Kraftwerk, right? We’re going to deal with Kraftwerk a little later on, but like Devo, they were as much an art project, deconstructing pop music, as they were a band. They were also a little shy on the hits, with just “Autobahn” squeaking into the Top Forty.

The Verdict I want to like Devo more than I do. “Satisfaction” is brilliant, “Whip It” remains a terrific single, and their commitment to the whole art-project concept is admirable, especially since it’s a really cool concept. Their only problem is the music – aside from those two singles, there isn’t anything in the Devo catalog that I actively like, and a lot of it, like “Through Being Cool” and “Freedom of Choice,” is pretty bad. I suppose I could be convinced otherwise, but for now, I’m voting No on Devo.

Stevie Nicks: Just Like the White-Winged Dove

Everybody loves Stevie Nicks’ songs: “Rhiannon,” “Sara,” “Landslide,” “Dreams.” Too bad we’re not supposed to consider any of those records here, because they were all Fleetwood Mac songs, and Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Hall of Fame back in 1998. We’re here to deal only with solo Stevie, which means “Stand Back,” “Talk to Me,” “Edge of Seventeen.”

Stevie was also a great duet partner back in the day (which was evident from her Mac work as well): “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Tom Petty, “Leather and Lace” with Don Henley, “Whenever I Call You Friend” with Kenny Loggins. That stuff, she’ll get credit for here. But when it comes right down to it, there are really only two strong points in Stevie’s favor: The whole Welsh Witch persona, and “Edge of Seventeen.”

The shawls ‘n’ twirls Stevie has arguably already been inducted; she was doing that crap as far back as “Rhiannon,” from 1976, with Fleetwood Mac. Let’s not kid ourselves that it’s not a huge factor in her mystique, and therefore in her iconic brand of stardom. My feeling is that you absolutely should take that kind of stuff into account. Would Kiss have made it in without the makeup?

Since it’s already been recognized, though, I don’t really feel the need to recognize it again. It’s a little weird to ascribe her personality to her group’s candidacy but not to her solo career, but here we are. Opinions may differ.

Stevie’s other real talking point is “Edge of Seventeen,” which wasn’t her biggest solo hit (it only went to No. 11 back in 1982) but certainly has had the longest shelf life. I saw Stevie at Red Rocks about ten years ago, and “Edge” got possibly the biggest response from the audience (with the chainsaw riff being played by the man who played it on the original single, Waddy Wachtel). The title comes from Tom Petty's wife Jane, who told Stevie she had met Petty "at the age of seventeen," but her strong Southern accent turned it into "edge."

Of course that riff showed up again on “Bootylicious,” Destiny’s Child’s Number One single from 2001. Stevie appeared in the video but had nothing to do with the recording of the song, aside from the sampling, but it’s a killer record. To my mind, though, the rest of Stevie’s solo career doesn’t add up to much.

Fun fact: Did you know that Stevie Nicks considered Joe Walsh to be the one true love of her life? That’s a bit icky, ain’t it? Joe Walsh doesn't come across as the kind of guy who bathes very often.

The Matched Set Don Henley was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of Eagles, also in 1998. It’s largely forgotten now, but Henley had a substantive solo career, placing nine singles in the Top Forty between 1982 and 1990. (He and Stevie get shared custody of “Leather and Lace.”) “The Boys of Summer” is still kind of an Eighties touchstone, for good or ill.

But does anyone think that Don Henley should be inducted as a solo artist? I don’t think so.

The Verdict Everybody loves Stevie Nicks, who has evolved from the ethereal spirit of the 1970s to that supercool aunt that your parents kinda wish you wouldn’t talk to. Shoot, I love Stevie Nicks, too. If she hadn’t already been inducted with Fleetwood Mac, and we could consider her body of Mac-work in the current decision, I’d be inclined to vote for her. But her solo career is really thin. I vote no on Stevie Nicks.

Radiohead: This Is What You'll Get When You Mess With Us

Let’s face it, Radiohead should have gone in last year, on their first nomination to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and it’s absurd that we have to consider them again. Leaving them out of the Hall of Fame is like leaving the Kinks out, or Neil Young, or the Go-Go’s. Wait, the Go-Go’s aren’t in?

Radiohead is as important to contemporary rock music as Buddy Holly was to his generation, seeing things in the music that other people hadn’t come across but that would soon become obvious and greatly desired by all. In the early 1990s, they mastered pop music with songs like “Creep” and “Fake Plastic Trees,” and then they decided that wasn’t good enough, so they tore the whole thing up and reinvented it, and sounded better than ever.

The only knock against Radiohead is their relative lack of chart success. They only had two top Forty hits in the U.S.: “Creep,” which went to No. 34 in 1992, and “Nude,” which went to No. 37 in 2008. They did have several hits on the U.S. alternative charts, for whatever that's worth, and they were much bigger in the U.K., where all three of the brilliant singles from OK Computer, “Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police” and “No Surprises,” made the Top Ten.

They don’t need the credit for that, though. Jimi Hendrix had one Top Forty hit. Carl Perkins had one Top Forty hit. If you’re as important and as good as Radiohead, chart success is a bonus, not a central qualification.

Hey, here's one more awesome thing about Radiohead: Their lyrics. They're not exactly Dylanesque streams of stanzas, but more aphoristic and incantatory, in a way that other bands couldn't even attempt. Thom Yorke will find a line he likes, then chew it around until it loses all meaning and becomes something completely different. What I most like about Radiohead's lyrics is that they're formed distinctively and unmistakably like Radiohead lyrics, and you know exactly what I mean by that. 

Take a look at the rhymeless, repetitive, yet haunting lyrics to "Karma Police" 

Karma police
Arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radio

Karma police
Arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo
Is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party

This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with us

Karma police
I've given all I can
It's not enough
I've given all I can
But we're still on the payroll

This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with us

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself

The Matched Set I’ve been listening to a lot of Bee Gees lately, from their early days, which span roughly from “New York Mining Disaster,” in 1967, to “Love So Right,” from 1976. After that, of course, Saturday Night Fever happened, the Bee Gees became briefly the biggest stars in the world, with six Number One hits from 1977 to 1979. When people think of the Bee Gees these days, they think of the late-70s, “Stayin’ Alive” era band.

But the music they made before disco blew up was already worthy of the Hall of Fame, a collection of gorgeous, delicate Beatlesque pop that kept them on the charts for the better part of a decade. (Some of the Saturday Night Fever music, like “You Should Be Dancing” and “How Deep Is Your Love,” had actually been released on prior Bee Gees albums.)

Anyway, I think Radiohead suffers from a little bit of the same phenomenon. OK Computer was regarded as such a revolutionary achievement, from the moment it came out, that it overshadowed what they had already done. The Bends is arguably their best album! “High and Dry”! “My Iron Lung”! They made this ridiculously good guitar album, one that would be a career capper for most bands, then they tore up the blueprints and started over again.

Unlike the Bee Gees, Radiohead didn’t have enough material in the can before the career-altering event, but man, were they awesome already. They were one of the world's best guitar bands, then they became the absolute best deconstruction whatever-you-want-to-call-it band. They didn’t need to turn the world upside-down to become one of rock's most important acts, but they did it anyway.

The Verdict I heard of a couple of voters who passed over Radiohead last year so they could vote for Sister Rosetta Tharpe, assuming that Radiohead’s induction was a foregone conclusion. Fellas, in a world where Deep Purple and ELO are considered worthy, Radiohead is not obvious to everyone. Let’s not make that mistake again. I'm voting Yes for Radiohead.

Def Leppard: Look What You've Done to This Rock and Roll Clown

There was a cover story in Rolling Stone about Def Leppard fairly late in the band’s career, when they were down to a collective total of nine arms, that ended on a scene of the band trying to jam together, and failing miserably. They eventually admitted to the writer (the great David Fricke) that if they ever showed up at a bar and tried to take the stage, the only thing they’d be able to play is Def Leppard songs. Maybe. 

That says a lot about Def Leppard’s music, which is often characterized as heavy metal, because of the power chords and the shaggy British hair and the name consciously evoking Led Zeppelin, but to my ears, it's much closer to high-gloss pop. It’s a studio construction, a la Ace of Base, much more than it’s like Motorhead. Pyromania and Hysteria were both recorded by each member individually, with none of them playing together as a band, and that's how they sound to me. That's not very metal.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that - I much prefer well-constructed pop. But I think it’s the reason why Def Leppard has been characterized as the heavy metal band that girls like (a formulation I believe I first heard from my friend Gavin Edwards). It’s because they were focused so much on creating radio-friendly singles, and because they lacked the misogynistic vibe that so much metal traffics in. And it worked, because they ruled the charts in the MTV era, putting nine singles in the pop Top 30 during the 1980s.

That’s a strong factor in their favor. Also, there’s the fact that “Photograph,” which put them on the map, was really great, a McCartneyesque construction crammed with hooks and gorgeous harmonies, crunched out with those ‘80s guitars. “Photograph” was the band’s first Top Forty hit, in 1982, and they seemed to spend the rest of the decade trying to remake it.

The follow-ups were close enough to the archetype to reach the charts, but I don’t know that very many people are listening to “Rocket” or “Animal” these days. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” seems to be their most enduring non-“Photograph” hit, but points off for stealing its trope from an Archies song.

Def Leppard had a very strong cultural impact in those early days of MTV, with videos in constant rotation and a crossover appeal to the teenage girls of the era. I don’t discount that at all, and I think it’s the best reason to vote for them. But I look at their cultural impact since then, and I just don’t see it. They got outflanked on one side by Guns n’ Roses and on the other side by Radiohead, and by the early ‘90s, there weren’t a whole lot of bands cranking out radio-ready processed metal, vying to be the next Def Leppard.

The Matched Set I liken Def Leppard to Duran Duran, another MTV-ready band churning out pop hits from underneath carefully chosen haircuts. “Rio,” like ‘Photograph,” still sounds great if you come across it on the car radio, but the other hits have a lot less impact, and they didn’t leave a lot of footprints. Also, girls love Duran Duran.

Duran Duran has never even been nominated for the Hall of Fame, near as I can tell, despite a dozen Top Forty hits in the '80s, even more than Def Leppard had. Their image is that of a lightweight, photogenic pop band, and that’s the same bucket I’d put Def Leppard into.

The Verdict Let’s face it, Def Leppard is going in. They were to the ’80s what artists like Chicago and the Steve Miller Band were to the ‘70s, and those acts were voted in to the Hall of Fame fairly easily. 

But I’m just not feeling it. For all their chart success, I can’t say that I’ve go out of my way to listen to their music since "Photograph," was on the charts. I don’t see any bands that appear to have been strongly influenced by them, and that's important to me. Nothing against Def Leppard, but they haven’t earned my vote.

The Dizzy, Dancing Way You Feel

Greatest Songs of the 20th Century: "Both Sides Now" (Joni Mitchell, 1967)
Joni Mitchell wrote "Both Sides Now" at the age of 22 while she was still just working in folk clubs and hadn't released a single of her own, much less an album. The lyrics were inspired by Saul Bellow, she explained in an interview to a radio show in 1967: "I was reading a book, and I haven’t finished it yet, called Henderson the Rain King. And there’s a line in it that I especially got hung up on that was about when he was flying to Africa and searching for something, he said that in an age when people could look up and down at clouds, they shouldn’t be afraid to die. And so I got this idea 'from both sides now.'”

Dave Von Ronk was the first singer to cover "Both Sides Now" (under the title "Clouds"), although he seems almost comically inappropriate for its sensibility of girlish indecision. Joni was at a bar in Greenwich Village in May 1967, reeling over a breakup, when she met the session musician Al Kooper, who was crashing at the time at Judy Collins' apartment. Joni and Al got to talking, and she told him he wrote songs. After the bar closed, the two of them went to Joni's apartment so she could play him some of her stuff. 

 "Her songs were incredible and totally original," Kooper said. "She would finish one, and I would say: more, more.  One song especially killed me: 'Michael from Mountains.'  I thought it would be great for Judy."  Even though it was three a.m., he told Joni they had to call Judy Collins and play her this song.

Judy Collins remembers that Kooper had other things on his mind as well. "I've just met this girl here in the bar," he recalls Al saying. "She and I were talking and she told me she wrote songs. She's good-looking and I figured I could follow her home, which couldn't be a bad thing no matter how you look at it."

Judy remembered Joni playing "Both Sides Now," and instantly recognizing it as "absolutely mind-boggling." The song first appeared on Collins' 1967 album Wildflowers, but was remixed several times before it was released as a single in October 1968. It became Collins' first hit single, rising eventually to Number 8 on the Billboard pop charts. (I've seen reports that Mitchell didn't like Collins' version, but they've also been friends for about 50 years now, so she couldn't have hated it that much.)

Mitchell's first album, Song to a Seagull, came out in March 1968, before Collins' cover of "Both Sides Now" appeared. After the song became a hit, Joni's own version appeared on her second LP, titled Clouds after you-know-what. All told, "Both Sides Now" has been covered a whopping 1250 times, which seems almost unbelievable, but Joni's website has a list of all 1250 artists, including Chet Atkins, Harry Belafonte, Bing Crosby, Blossom Dearie, Neil Diamond, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Robert Guillaume, Hole, Carly Rae Jepsen, KC and the Sunshine Band, Willie Nelson (who had an album titled Both Sides Now), and Frank Sinatra.

But the definitive version will always be Judy Collins'. "Some people are bound to sing certain songs," Collins said of the three a.m. phone call from Al Kooper. "It was instantly obvious to me that 'Both Sides Now' was my song." Here she is:

We're After the Same Rainbow's End

Greatest Songs of the 20th Century, Part V:
"Moon River" (Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, 1961)

Sometimes you just get lucky: The original title of "Moon River" was "Blue River," until lyricist

Johnny Mercer realized there was already a song by that title. Forced to find a new name, needing a long vowel sound in that first syllable, Mercer came up with "Moon River," which is miles better. Aside from the occasional Chicago River on St. Patrick's Day, most rivers are somewhat blue, so the modifier doesn't add much in that case. But a "Moon River," you can only imagine at night, with a big full yellow moon reflected in its ripples. That simple switch makes the whole title - the whole song - so much more evocative. "Blue River" is not and would never be a classic song. "Moon River" almost instantly is.

It's also an instant classic after those first three notes, nearly replicating that octave leap we were just discussing in "Over the Rainbow." Composer Henry Mancini supposedly took a month to write those first three notes, but once he had those in place, the rest of the song took a half an hour.

Mancini knew he was writing the song for Audrey Hepburn to sing in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Hepburn wasn't much of a singer, with a range of about an octave, so those initial two notes pretty much proscribed the song's breadth. It's also in the key of C, with no sharps or flats, which I guess would make it easier to sing, but I don't really know. I can't sing.

The film's producers initially asked that someone else to dub Hepburn's voice for the performance in the movie. Then after the first screening, a producer demanded the song - with Audrey plucking a guitar out on her fire escape - be cut. Audrey herself insisted that it stay in, famously declaring, "Over my dead body."

Soon after Breakfast at Tiffany's was released, in the fall of 1961, Henry Mancini released an almost-instrumental single version of the song, with a chorale coming in on vocals about halfway through the record. Jerry "the Iceman" Butler also released a surprisingly unsatisfactory version, where his vocals stayed persistently behind the orchestra for the whole record. It's kind of annoying. Nevertheless, both versions were hits, peaking at an identical number 11 spot on the Billboard charts, with the Iceman's getting there two weeks before Mancini's. (Both records also peaked at No. 3 on the Adult Contemporary charts, then known as the Easy Listening chart.)

One name you haven't seen so far in this article is Andy Williams, even though "Moon River" became his signature song. In early 1962, he released an album called Moon River and Other Great Movie Themes. Although his version wasn't issued as a single, it was well-received enough that Andy was asked to perform the song at the Academy Awards in April of 1962, where it was up for Best Original Song (it won).

"Moon River" was never a single for him, although it didn't really need to be. Williams titled his autobiography Moon River and Me, and more significantly, called his theater in Branson, Missouri, the Andy Williams Moon River Theater. The stage was wider than a mile.

Since 1961, "Moon River" has been covered by literally hundreds of artists, from Frank Sinatra to Frank Ocean.  R.E.M. used to cover it live, back when Michael Stipe still had a voice; it was quite nice:

Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops

Greatest Songs of the 20th Century, Part IV:
"Over the Rainbow" (Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, 1939)

The octave leap at the opening of the chorus of "Over the Rainbow" is maybe the most significant combination of two notes in the entire American songbook. The contrast between the two notes perfectly captures the sense of yearning and escape the song conveys. We'll hear that octave leap on two other songs in this series, neither of which I chose for that reason and both of which were written after this one, so we'll give "Over the Rainbow" the bulk of the credit. That same motif also shows up in David Bowie's "Starman," which I guess is a spoiler that "Starman" isn't going to end up on this list.

The octave leap is not technically the opening of the song, though. Like many of the songs of the 1930s, "Over the Rainbow" has an introductory verse that is usually dropped in modern renditions of the song. Indeed, Judy Garland doesn't even include the verse on the version she sings in The Wizard of Oz.

To back up for a second, "Over the Rainbow" was composed by Harold Arlen, nee Hyman Arluck, who already had a stunning string of songs behind him - "Stormy Weather," "Let's Fall in Love" - when producer Arthur Freed asked him and lyricist Yip Harburg to whip up a batch of songs for The Wizard of Oz. ("Yip" wasn't really a nickname, by the way - Harburg's middle name was Yipsel.) The two of them made $25,000 on a contract that lasted 14 weeks.

The pair had already completed "We're Off to See the Wizard," "The Merry Old Land of Oz," and "Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead," when Arlen decided to focus on a big ballad for Judy Garland to sing. Harold and his wife were driving down Sunset Boulevard to Grauman's Chinese Theater when the melody struck him, and he pulled out a pad of paper and wrote it down right there in the car: "It was as if the Lord said, 'Well, here it is, now stop worrying about it!'" (In 1981, Harburg was killed in a car wreck on Sunset Boulevard.)

When Arlen played it for his lyricist the next day, Harburg didn't care for it, finding the melody too grandiose for a young girl from small-town Kansas. Arlen turned to Ira Gershwin for a second opinion, and when Gershwin liked it, Harburg grudgingly wrote lyrics for it. 

"We have this little girl, a girl yearning to be out of this little damn little place, this Kansas," Harburg said shortly before his death in 1981. "She wants to get somewhere, anywhere. Where shall it be? Kansas is a dry, arid place, and the only colorful thing in her life is a rainbow. The rainbow was good enough for Noah, and it's good enough for me."

The song was nearly cut from the film, as the studio felt it made the Kansas sequence drag on too long, but Freed and Arlen fought to keep it in. There was supposed to be a reprise of the song, sung by Dorothy in the witch's castle to remind her of being home in Kansas, but people felt it was too sad. Both Garland and the crew cried when she recorded it.

The Wizard of Oz came out in August 1939, and Garland's single version of "Over the Rainbow " was released that September. There weren't pop charts yet, but by all accounts, the song was a huge smash from the beginning, and it's never gone away. It was named the greatest song of the 20th century by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and who am I to disagree?

"Over the Rainbow" also lived on in a classic story told by Pete Barbutti on The Tonight Show, one of the few jokes about a song that pivots on the melody rather than the lyrics: 

 

Long Distance Information

Greatest Songs of the 20th Century, Part III
"Memphis, Tennessee" (Chuck Berry, 1958)

"If I had to name the best short story in the form of a song lyric, I suspect the winner would be Chuck Berry’s 'Memphis, Tennessee,' first released as a B-side in 1959," wrote Verlyn Klinkenborg in 1999.  At the very least, in my estimation, "Memphis, Tennessee" has the greatest twist-ending of any song in what Casey Kasem liked to call the rock era.

The song would work fine on its own without the twist, if it were merely the story of a man struggling to get in touch with Marie, the woman who broke his heart. The details are indelibly rendered: "hurry-home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye," "my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall."

But the song's ending flips the whole thing over, turning the narrator into a loving father who can't stop thinking about his little girl. There's no cheating it, either - every detail in the story that we thought was about a lost romance works perfectly for the lost daughter. Chuck knows exactly what story he's telling here; there's no chance of getting lost in the weeds, like you do in "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia."

As Klinkenborg alludes to, "Memphis, Tennessee" was originally the B-side to "Back in the U.S.A." It never charted for Chuck, but people noticed it, and almost immediately began covering it. The Beatles played it at their audition for Decca Records on January 1, 1962; Pete Best's drumming probably ruined whatever chance they had on that day.

Anyway, here we have one of the greatest lyrics ever to appear in a rock song. But what makes "Memphis, Tennessee" so remarkable is that even if you strip out its greatest strength, it's still a hit. The blues guitarist Lonnie Mack recorded an instrumental version, titled simply "Memphis," in 1963. Without that classic lyric, the song still went to Number Five on the Billboard pop chart.

That's really something, isn't it? It's as if someone recorded a spoken-word version of "Boogie Oogie Oogie," and made a hit out of it. That would kind of give you more respect for "Boogie Oogie Oogie," wouldn't it?

The biggest hit version of "Memphis" was the one recorded by Johnny Rivers in his quasi-live style, which hit Number 2 in 1964. The country singer Fred Knobloch (most familiar to me as the author of "Killin' Time") took his own version to the Top Ten of the country charts in 1980.  

Buck Owens and Roy Orbison both cut it as well. The Beatles played it FIVE TIMES on their BBC Radio show, one of which was included on their monumental Live at the BBC box set. I wonder if they ever did it as an instrumental.

That's Just the Way the Story Goes

 Greatest Songs of the 20th Century, Part II:
"Without You" (Pete Ham and Tom Evans, 1970)

"Without You" was written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans, who were the two primary songwriters in Badfinger, the Beatle-discovered pop band that recorded for Apple Records. Ham wrote the verse after leaving his girlfriend at home one evening to go work on a recording: "Well I can't forget tomorrow, when I think of all my sorrow, I had you there but then I let you go, and now it's only fair that I should let you know...." Evans wrote the chorus after leaving his German girlfriend in Berlin, then deciding he couldn't go on without her: "I can't live, if living is without you, I can't live, I can't give any more."

"Without You" made its debut on the second Badfinger album, No Dice, released in November 1970. The lead single from that record was "No Matter What," while "Without You" was considered just a strong album track. It was never released as a single, either in the U.S. or in Badfinger's native U.K.

At that point, the chorus of the song had a clipped feel to it:
I can't live [long pause]
If living is without you
I can't live [long pause]
I can't give any more

Shortly after the release of No Dice, Harry Nilsson happened to hear the song - not the Badfinger rednition, but someone else covering it. "I was at a friend's house in Laurel Canyon," he said many years later. "It was one of those Sixties sit-on-the-floor parties. [Ed. note: It was the Seventies, but whatever.] And I heard that song. I thought it was an obscure Beatles track.... it sounded Lennon-ish. I asked all my friends. But then I found it wasn't the Beatles, it was Badfinger."

Nilsson recorded the song some time in the first half of 1971, and on October 11, 1971, "Without You" became the lead single off Nilsson Schmilsson, which followed in November.  "You have to have hits, I don't care who you are," Nilsson said. "In the end, 'Without You' gave us that boost we needed. It was perfect." Nilsson's version of "Without You" reached Number One on the Billboard charts on February 13, 1972, and stayed there for four weeks. 

Of course, Nilsson changed the chorus of the song, such that it now went:
I can't li-i-i-ii-ii-i-ve
If living is without you
I can't li-i-i-ii-i-ve
I can't give anymore

My question is, did Nilsson decide to elongate those vowels, or was that the way he heard that anonymous singer do it in Laurel Canyon? I guess we'll never know, because Nilsson's dead now. Either way, that vocal choice changed the song from a nice Beatlesque tune to a classic. 

It's hard to imagine Mariah Carey wanting to cover the song without those blasts of melismatic goodness, but she recorded the Nilsson-ified version for her third album, Music Box, released in August of 1993. Harry Nilsson died on January 15, 1994, and nine days later, "Without You" became the third single off Mariah's latest album. Was that a coincidence? I find it hard to believe they would be able to gin up the release of a single in nine days, or that Columbia would make that kind of financial decision based on nostalgia for a largely forgotten singer, but who knows.

At any rate, "Without You" went to Number Three on the Billboard charts. That was actually a mildly disappointing performance for a Carey single; among her first ten single releases, she had already had eight Number Ones, and Number Two, and a Number Five hit. But it was huge in Europe, going to Number One in the U.K., Austria, Belgium and Iceland. 

And it's never gone away since then. There have been a reported 180 cover versions of "Without You" released, and at least that many people have done the song on the various talent shows that mob the airwaves. Pete Ham and Tom Evans wouldn't know about any of that; they each hanged themselves, Ham in 1975 and Evans in 1983.