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Henning's 150 Not Really Faves Henning: When I was first presented with the idea of compiling a CD of my 150 favorite songs of all time I was a little skeptical. “150 is a lot of songs”, I thought. I was wrong. 150 is not really that many songs when you start compiling them. The next day, while riding through up state New York on a journey to Toronto, I began making a list and I started to see how I would ultimately fail. There are certain musicians who I hold in higher esteem than others, but I did not want this collection to be filled with primarily Paul Simon, XTC, The Beatles etc. So, I started to limit myself to two songs per performer. Suddenly 150 songs seemed like a lot again. How could I possibly limit the amount of songs by a writer like Paul Simon while at the same time including Cindy Lauper or The Nails? Is “88 Lines About 44 Women” a better song than “The Sounds of Silence”? No. But did I include it anyway despite leaving off “Sounds Of Silence”? Yes. Why? Variety, I guess. The whole project started to become more like a huge mix-tape. And, what is a favorite song anyway? George Harrison dies and suddenly you start listening to All Things Must Pass. You see the film Magnolia and now you love the soundtrack. How different will this list be 5 years from now? A little bit different, I guess. There’s another problem with great songs, too, and that’s over-rotation. “Imagine” by John Lennon and “American Pie” by Don MacLean are both incredible songs but are absent from this collection. Over the years they have become parodies of themselves thanks to the glut of Classic Rock radio stations. So, I left them off, because you just really don’t need to hear them much more in your life-time. Ok. For the most part, all of the songs collected here were the first songs that popped into my head as great songs that I love for one reason or another. I came up with about 130 in that first sitting in the car. Later, a song here and there would pop into my head. There was, sadly, also an issue of time and technology. Some of the songs I wanted to put on this list, I simply could not find. Jonathon Richman’s “Have You Ever Been To Bermuda?” comes to mind. If I had had more time…maybe. So, anyway, here it is. My collection from 2001
of my Not Necessarily Favorite 150 Songs (but songs that deserve
to be heard again and again anayway.) Enjoy. |