Johnny Mathis, one of the two or three greatest male pop singers of our era, turns ninety this year, and he’s still with us. I heard a song of his the other night, and decided to post my three favorite songs he recorded. He didn’t write any of them, but it’s the voice that really counts here. Nobody else has a voice that sounds as rich and mellow as his.

After the three below, I added one of my favorite Christmas songs, of which Mathis does the best cover.  Note, though, that for the first three I’ve put up videos of the live versions though his recorded versions are a bit better (I’ve added links to those).

First, “A certain smile“, which I learned actually came from a movie. The Wikipedia article about the song says this:

“A Certain Smile” is a popular song that was written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster for the 1958 film of the same name. Johnny Mathis performed the song in the film, and his recording reached the top 20 on the record charts in the US and the top five in the UK. The songwriters were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1959.

The recorded version is here, and it’s terrific. Be sure to listen for the high note accompanying the last use of “certain.” One thing I like about Mathis’s recordings is that he embellishes the endings with lovely vocal tricks.

Stop this video after the first song, as it continues into a lesser song.

One of Mathis’s most popular recordings was “Misty“, which, according to Wikipedia, is

“. . . a jazz standard written and originally recorded in 1954 by pianist Erroll Garner. It appeared on Johnny Mathis’ 1959 album Heavenly, and this recording reached number 12 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart later that year. It has since become one of Mathis’ signature songs.”

The recorded version is here, with an absolutely stunning bit when Mathis’s voice blends with (and is indistiguishable from) the oboe—at 2:40.

“It’s not for me to say” (recorded version here), was also in a movie:

“. . . . a 1957 popular song with music by Robert Allen and lyrics by Al Stillman. American singer Johnny Mathis recorded the song and later performed it in the 1957 movie Lizzie. His recording reached the top 10 on the US pop charts.

The ending hook here is the way Mathis sings the word “we” in the final “we will never meet again” (3:10 in the live version, 2:33 in the recorded version).

Finally, I decided to throw in a holiday song, my favorite: Do you hear what I hear?. I didn’t know this song was so recent, nor written as a plea for peace:

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” is a song written in October 1962, with lyrics by Noël Regney and music by Gloria Shayne. The pair, married at the time, wrote it as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Regney had been invited by a record producer to write a Christmas song, but he was hesitant due to the commercialism of Christmas. It has sold tens of millions of copies and has been covered by hundreds of artists.

Robert Goulet is often said to have done the best version, but I think Mathis’s, below, is far better. I have only the recorded version, and the final hook is the modulated phrases, “He will bring us goodness and light” at the end.

My other favorite Christmas song is “Merry Christmas, Darling,” by the Carpenters.

At the Honest Broker website, writer Ted Gioia has an article summarizing his friend’s view of the bet and worst hit songs of the 1960s—perhaps the best decade in the history of pop and rock music. The article is below, and I’ll simply list a few songs from each category selected by his friend Chris Dalla Riva (he has a book on them, too). Dalla Riva also runs his own site, “Can’t get much higher“, which deals with a lot of interesting musical questions like “The greatest two-hit wonders”, e.g., Pink Floyd, Jimmy Buffett, and “Which music stars [of the Sixties] are being forgotten the fastest?” e.g., Peter & Gordon, jan & Dean.

At any rate, here is an excerpt from Gioia’s article and Dalla Riva’s selection of best and worst hits (songs that made #1) of the Sixties.  Quotations are indented, and my own comments are flush left. Click screenshot to read:

Excerpts:

Chris Dalla Riva is a guru of data analytics on popular culture. He’s been a longtime friend to The Honest Broker, and I’ve learned a lot from his work.

And now Chris has released a fun and fascinating book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. This is the closest music writing gets to the freewheeling conversations ardent fans have among themselves about bands, songs, and rising or falling reputations.

But Uncharted Territory also draws on the scrupulous research that is Chris’s trademark. (You might have seen some of it on his Substack Can’t Get Much Higher.)

With his permission, I’m sharing an extract below on #1 hit songs of the 1960s. The entire book deserves your attention. You can learn more at this link.

This is from Dalla Rivia’s book:

When I decided that I was going to listen to every song to ever get to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, I wasn’t in a great spot. My mental health was suffering greatly, and I was working a job that I hated. Every waking moment outside of my job was spent with my guitar. Some nights I would literally fall asleep playing. Still, I did not feel good. And nothing seemed to help. Therapy. Medications. Exercise. Socializing. It was all a wash.

For some reason, I decided that a musical quest might help. I set out to listen to every number one hit since the Hot 100 was started in August 1958. Why? Again, I was a musician. I thought it might help my songwriting. Maybe I could unlock some secret to writing a hit and use the knowledge to quit my job. At the same time, I thought it might be good for my sanity. I would only listen to one song a day. Listening to one song a day is an easy thing to accomplish. Maybe one little win could right my mind.

And it kind of did. A friend soon joined me on my journey. Each day, I would text him the number one hit. We’d both listen a few times. I’d play along on my guitar. We’d talk about it and rate the song out of ten. I started tracking those ratings in a spreadsheet. Slowly, that spreadsheet began to balloon as I tracked a ton of other facts and figures. Trends began to emerge, and I started to write about them. My musings became Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent all those years listening to every number one song.

That’s an interesting task, and here are the author’s highlights with a few of them giving his comments:

“Georgia on My Mind” by Ray Charles (November 14, 1960)—The reason this song has been recorded hundreds of times is because the melody sounds like it was delivered from the high heavens. That’s not a shock. That melody was written by Hoagy Carmichael, the man behind classics like “Stardust” and “Heart and Soul.” But the reason you know this version of “Georgia on My Mind” rather than any other comes down to a different person: Ray Charles.

To state the obvious, Ray Charles was a talented piano player. You can hear that talent shine on the jazzy fills he sprinkles throughout this song. But his greatest instrument was his voice, a voice whose subtle slides and slurs could make Georgia feel like your home even if you’d never been within a thousand miles of it.

“Runaway” by Del Shannon (April 24, 1961)

“Running Scared” by Roy Orbison (June 5, 1961)

“He’s a Rebel” by The Crystals (November 3, 1962

“My Girl” by The Temptations (March 6, 1965)—When Smokey Robinson wrote “My Guy” for Mary Wells, I imagine he thought he’d never write a better song. “My Guy” is just so expertly crafted that burgeoning songwriters should study it. But then a year later, he decided to write a response to “My Guy” for The Temptations. Response songs were very common during the 1960s. Chubby Checker hits it big with “The Twist.” Joey Dee jumps on the bandwagon with the “Peppermint Twist.” Only one name made sense for Smokey’s response: “My Girl.”

“My Girl” is not just the greatest response song of all time, it might be the greatest song period. I’d go so far as to argue that if a random DJ in the twenty-first century cut off whatever booty-shaking track they were playing at the club on Friday night and put on “My Girl,” nobody would complain. Decades later, the ascending guitar riff and finger-snapping rhythm that drive this track remain as fresh as ever.

“Ticket to Ride” by The Beatles (May 22, 1965)

“You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes (November 19, 1966)

“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of The Bay” by Otis Redding (March 16, 1968)

“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye (December 14, 1968)—This song is about humiliating heartache. It’s about finding out your lover is done with you indirectly, through rumors circulating on the streets, rumors you are the last to be privy to.

That rumor starts with the keyboard playing a circular riff in its lower register. Then it moves to the drums, a soft thump, your heartbeat. Then it finds its way to the guitar and strings echoing the initial whisper of the keyboard. With each step, the truth becomes more apparent. Then Marvin Gaye arrives, the pain dripping from his voice, a voice whose range and control are nearly inhuman. He knows the truth, and even if “a man ain’t supposed to cry,” he can’t hide his pain.

Sadly, I don’t have time to look at the #1 songs myself, though I have to say that there are better songs by these groups or singers, but they may not have made #1. For instance, Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” is, to me, a lot better than “The dock of the bay,” and “Stop! In the name of love” by the Supremes beats “You keep me hanging on.”  There are others, but let’s go on to the worst songs.

“The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton (June 1, 1960)

“Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” by Brian Hyland (August 8, 1960)—This song is about a girl who is embarrassed by the yellow polka dot bikini she is wearing and runs from place to place to stay covered up. She starts in a changing room, then runs to a blanket, and then into the water. While in the water, she’s described as “turning blue” before the final line declares that there isn’t anywhere else for her to go. Call me crazy, but I think this irritating song might have a sinister, deathly undertone that everyone else has missed. And even if I’m imagining it, it still makes me feel sick.

“Moody River” by Pat Boone (June 19, 1961)

“Wooden Heart” by Joe Dowell (August 28, 1961)

“Go Away Little Girl” by Steve Lawrence (January 12, 1963)—My sister Natalie was walking through the room while I was listening to this song. 27-year-old Steve Lawrence crooning the words “Go away, little girl / I’m not supposed to be alone with you” stopped her dead in her tracks. “Is this by a pedophile?” she asked.

Despite how creepy that couplet might sound, the lyrics are not anything criminal. The song was composed by Carole King and Gerry Goffin about a man tempted to cheat on his lover. Albeit patronizing, the term “little girl” was common fare in pop songs at the time. In this era alone, it’s used in five additional songs, including The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” (e.g., “I’m so glad that she’s my little girl”) and Tommy Roe’s “Sheila” (e.g., “Man this little girl is fine”). But when you need this many words to explain why a creepy-sounding song actually isn’t creepy, you’re probably not going to have people lining up to listen to it.

“Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” by Herman’s Hermits (May 1, 1965)

These last three are real stinkers, and they’re on my own personal list:

“The Ballad of the Green Berets” by SSgt. Barry Sadler (March 5, 1966)—When looking back at the 1960s, we often remember the scores of artists who wrote songs in protest of the Vietnam War. But there really were people who supported it. “The Ballad of the Green Berets” is proof of that. Topping the charts for five weeks on its way to becoming the tenth best-selling single of 1966, SSgt. Barry Sadler’s military march is an unabashed celebration of the armed forces, the soldier in his song dying with only one final request for his wife, namely that their son also serve. Now knowing about the endless, pointless destruction of the Vietnam War, this musical wish is hard to stomach.

“Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro (April 13, 1968)—Telling the story of a man whose wife died, “Honey” falls within the maudlin tragedy song tradition. But what makes this sappy song stand out is that it’s not clear whether the narrator ever really liked his wife. He describes her as “Kind of dumb and kind of smart,” while also recounting how he laughed himself to tears when she almost hurt herself falling in the snow. With lines like, “She wrecked the car and she was sad / And so afraid that I’d be mad, but what the heck,” the only thing you should feel after “Honey” is hope that you’ll never be in a relationship like this.

“In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” by Zagar and Evans (July 12, 1969)—In Dave Barry’s novel Tricky Business, he describes a band that is forced to work the party circuit after they fail to make it big. When the group is asked to play a song that they don’t like, Barry describes how they then perform a retaliation song to punish the audience. “In the Year 2525” is described as the “hydrogen bomb” of retaliation songs. While I don’t know if I’d go that far, it’s a strange song that predicts the future in thousand-year increments. If Zager and Evans are correct, then in the year 4545 you’ll no longer need your teeth because “You won’t find a thing to chew.” Dentists, please beware!

And, just to supplement this list (actually, “Mrs. Brown” isn’t so bad), here’s my own personal list, compiled over decades, of the worst pop/rock songs ever. The “best” list is pages long, so I won’t include it. But if you can find “An open letter to my teenage son, list to it. Remember, many of these songs were after the sixties, so it’s not comparable.

Coyne’s Worst Songs Ever

Green Berets                                       Sgt. Barry Sadler

An Open Letter to My Teenage Son  Victor Lundberg

Spill the Wine (Dig that Girl)             Eric Burdon

I Got a Brand New Pair of Rollerskates         Melanie

I’ve Never Been to Me                                    Charlene

Octopus’ Garden                                 The Beatles

Macarthur Park                                   Richard Harris

Old Rivers                                           Walter Brennan

Take the Money and Run                   Steve Miller

Muskrat Love                                     The Captain and Tenille

The Name Game                                 Shirley Ellis

Drops of Jupiter                                  Train

Oh hell, I’ll also add my BEST list, but only between 1962 and 1969. Surely some of these made #1, but they’re not in the list above. They also don’t include soul music, of which I’ve kept a separate list. And THAT one is awesome (perhaps I’ll put it up some time). I have added “God only knows” by the Beach Boys, which came out in 1966.

Coyne;’s best non-soul songs, 1962-1969

Light My Fire                         The Doors

Nowhere Man                         Beatles

Eleanor Rigby                         Beatles

In My Life                              Beatles

Got to Get You into My Life  Beatles

Please Please Me                    Beatles

A Day in the Life                    Beatles

Louie Louie                            The Kingsmen

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes            Crosby, Stills & Nash

49 Reasons                              Crosby Stills & Nash

Bluebird                                  Buffalo Springfield

Rock & Roll Woman              Buffalo Springfield

On the Way Home                  Buffalo Springfield

Feel a Whole Lot Better         The Byrds

Eight Miles High                    The Byrds

Mr. Tambourine Man             The Byrds

Turn! Turn! Turn!                   The Byrds

Touch Me                               The Doors

Honky Tonk Woman              The Rolling Stones

Venus in Furs                          Velvet Underground

Heroin                                     Velvet Underground

California Dreaming               Mamas & Papas

I Saw Her Again                     Mamas & Papas

Younger Girl                           Lovin’ Spoonful

Summer in the City                Lovin’ Spoonful

Groovin’                                  Young Rascals

Wouldn’t It Be Nice                The Beach Boys

Don’t Worry Baby                  The Beach Boys

God Only Knows                     The Beach Boys

Little Deuce Coupe                 The Beach Boys

Badge                                      Cream

Positively 4th Street               Bob Dylan

Angel                                      Jimi Hendrix

I Only Wanna Be With You   Dusty Springfield

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart          Big Bro. & Holding Co.

Along Comes Mary                The Association

Israelites                                  Desmond Dekker

You Don’t Have to Say you Love Me            Dusty Springfield

I Only Want to be With You  Dusty Springfield

These choices are subjective, of course, so feel free to weigh in on either my choices or Dalla Rivia’s:

h/t Barry

For the past two weeks I have had bits of a song’s melody in my head, but I couldn’t remember any words, and that made it tough to remember.  Then, last night, I remembered a bit of one line, which, in my brain, went “Didn’t it seem right to walk along the beach last night”, but I still couldn’t find the song from Googling that, either. (It turns out that the word is “sand,” not “beach”.)  Amazingly, though, as soon as I remembered that line I remembered the end of the stanza as well its title “It could be we’re in love”.  Then I was able to find it by Googling.

It amazes me that my brain had been working unconscionsly on this thing for weeks, and finally the neurons came through for me.

The song is “It Could Be We’re in Love”, released in 1967 by The Cryan’ Shames, a Chicago group. It’s a good but not a fantastic song, but it’s catchy and somehow it was lingering in my brain and popped up for unknown reasons.  There are two versions, one with laughing in it and another with some psychedelic vibrato. I’ll put up both.

First, the better 1966 psychedelic version released on LP: (psychedelic vibrato at 1:41).

And here’s the laughing version, from the 1967 single (laughing at 1:49):

I have loved this song ever since, years ago, an Irish friend gave me a CD containing it. This is an instrumental version with Seamus Ennis on uilleann pipes, also called “Irish bagpipes,” accompanied by his daughter Catherine Ennis on the organ.  I have a recorded version but found this live version; I’ve started the video at 3:08 when the song begins.  I find it mournful but not depressing, and incredibly beautiful, even though the melody repeats itself many times. The uilleann pipes, to me, are far more mellifluous than Scottish bagpipes. And here they meld perfectly with the organ.

As far as I can find out, “Easter Snow” is a traditional Irish song whose name has been corrupted. It also apparently had words.  One site says this:

“Paddy Tunney’s mother Brigid appears to have been the oral the source of this in Ireland; another version was recorded in New Brunswick, Canada. Sam Henry included a 1925 version in his ‘Songs of the People’ column in the ‘Northern Constitution’ newspaper under the title Westersnow and an earlier one was discovered in J.P. McCall’s unpublished songbook, where it was said to have come from ‘County Carlow/County Wicklow’, there given the title Esther Snow. Collector Sean O’Boyle wrote of it:

‘Estersnowe is the name of a townland in Roscommon. Originally the place was known by its Gaelic name Diseart Nuadhan (St. Nuadha’s Hermitage) but in the process of adaptation to the English language in Elizabethan times, it became known as Issertnowne. By the nineteenth century the people, when speaking English, called it Estersnowe and rationalised that strange name into Easter Snow. In County Antrim where there is a strong Scots influence, the song is known as Wester Snow.

An instrumental version of the tune is in the Standford-Petrie Collection with two titles in Irish- Sneachta Casga (a literal translation of Easter Snow) and Diseart Nuadhan (the original Gaelic name of the district). The final folk etymology of the name was one I heard from the Donegal Fiddler John Doherty, who played the tune for me but did not know the words of the song. He called the tune Esther Snow and told me that Esther was “a most beautiful lady, with skin as white as the snow.” And then with equal authority, he added: “She was six foot one.” The prosody of the song is particularly interesting, being an echo of the Ochtfhoclach form with double assonantal rhymes (Aicill Dubalta). The double rhymes occur in this song only at the line endings:

Start at the song by pressing the arrow below. There are other instrumental as well as vocal versions on the Internet, but to me this one is by far the best (Seamus was largely responsible for reviving the uilleann pipes as an instrument).  If you have a cat, I’d be interested in knowing how it reacts when it hears this song.

This is only one small fragment of a long list of what I see as the best rock, pop, and folk music of my time. Remember, it’s subjective, Jake!  Feel free to mention your favorites that you don’t see here, though unless I’ve missed something, I’m unlikely to supplement what’s below, which came from decades of listening.

This list, containing songs that all came out when I was around my teens, is why I say that I lived through the best era of rock music in history. (Remember, this is only one out of ten pages.)

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted     Jimmy Ruffin
Ooo Baby Baby                                  Smokey Robinson
More Love                                          Smokey Robinson
Since I Lost My Baby                         Temptations
What’s Going On                                Marvin Gaye
This Old Heart of Mine                      Isley Brothers
Heat Wave                                          Martha and the Vandellas
Ask the Lonely                                   Four Tops
I Was Made to Love Her                    Stevie Wonder
Nowhere to Run                                  Martha and the Vandellas
I Can’t Help Myself                            Four Tops
Jimmy Mack                                       Martha and the Vandellas
When a Man Loves a Woman            Percy Sledge
Nothing But Heartaches                     Supremes
Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone       Bill Withers
Use Me                                               Bill Withers
Back in My Arms Again                    Supremes
Come and Get These Memories         Martha and the Vandellas
My Girl                                               Temptations
I’m Losing You                                   Temptations
Man’s World                                       James Brown
It’s the Same Old Song                       Four Tops
Just My Imagination                           Temptations
Georgia on My Mind                          Ray Charles
My Baby Must be a Magician            The Marvelettes
Heaven Must Have Sent You             The Elgins
Tell It Like It Is                                  Aaron Neville
What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)       Junior Walker and the All-Stars
1-2-3                                                   The Jackson 5
Everlasting Love                                 Carl Carlton
It’s a Shame                                        Spinners
Give Me Just a Little More Time       Chairman of the Board
Never Had a Dream Come True         Stevie Wonder
You Don’t Know Me                          Ray Charles
Try a Little Tenderness                      Otis Redding
Let’s Stay Together                            Al Green
(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman    Aretha Franklin
Too Busy Thinking About My Baby  Marvin Gaye
I Heard It Through the Grapevine      Marvin Gaye
You’re All I Need To Get By             Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell
If I Could Build My Whole World Around You        Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell
With This Ring                                   Platters
Too Late to Turn Back Now               Cornelius Bros. & Sister Rose
Joanna                                                 Kool and the Gang}
Stop (the Love You Save May Be Your Own)          Jackson 5
Could it be I’m Falling in Love          The Spinners
Oh, How Happy You Have Made Me            Shades of Blue
Use Me                                               Bill Withers
Chain Gang                                         Sam Cooke
Change Gonna Come                          Sam Cooke
Soul Man                                            Sam and Dave
Stoned Soul Picnic                             Fifth Dimension]
If Loving You is Wrong (I Don’t Wanna Be Right)  Luther Ingram\
Me and Mrs. Jones                              Billy Paul
Dock of the Bay                                  Otis Redding
Baby It’s You                                      Shirelles
My Guy                                               Mary Wells
Higher and Higher                              Jackie Wilson
People Get Ready (There’s a Train A’Coming)  Curtis Mayfield

To me, this song—performed live in France by the Four Tops—epitomizes soul. Look at the sweat pouring off Levi Stubbs!

Many people, including Paul McCartney, have said that the 1966 Beach Boys song “God Only Knows,” a product of Brian Wilson—with a bit of contribution from Tony Asher—is their favorite rock/pop song.

To wit:

Now I won’t beef about the grammatical error in the title (it should be “Only God Knows,” but that would mess up the rhythm), but I do agree that it’s in the top ten of rock songs. (For me, the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” would probably be #1).  The words may be a bit puerile—just another testimony to undying love—but that’s not why the song is famous. It’s the tune and, above all, the vocal embellishments and the complex melody, that makes this song so great.  If you don’t mind a bit of arcane music analysis, here’s Rick Beato in a recent video calling “God Only Knows” the “perfect song.”  And even if you’re not into Beato’s analysis of melody, you can’t help but see from his analysis how unusual and inventive Wilson’s melody was. Wilson spent days perfecting the song and its recording.

You can see how energized Beato is when he listens to the song and discusses its chords and notes.

Below is the final product as released on the immortal album Pet Sounds (have a look at its lineup of songs at the previous link). There’s a great live performance, with Carl Wilson singing lead (as he did on the record), here. But first, a few words from the Wikipedia entry:

Written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher, it is a baroque-style love song distinguished for its harmonic innovation and complexity, unusual instrumentation, and subversion of typical popular music conventions, both lyrically and musically. It is often praised as one of the greatest songs of all time and as the Beach Boys’ finest record.

The song’s musical sophistication is demonstrated by its three contrapuntal vocal parts and weak tonal center (competing between the keys of E and A). Lyrically, the words are expressed from the perspective of a narrator who asserts that life without their lover could only be fathomed by God—an entity that had been considered taboo to name in the title or lyric of a pop song. It marked a departure for Wilson, who attributed the impetus for the song to Asher’s affinity for standards such as “Stella by Starlight“. Some commentators interpret “God Only Knows” as promoting suicidal ideations, although such an interpretation was not intended by the songwriters. Others have compared the song’s advanced harmonic structure to the work of classical composers such as Delibes, Bach, and Stravinsky.

Wilson produced the record between March and April 1966, enlisting about 20 session musicians who variously played drums, sleigh bells, plastic orange juice cups, clarinets, flutes, strings, French horn, accordion, guitars, upright bass, harpsichord, and a tack piano with its strings taped. His brother Carl Wilson sang lead, a vocal performance that became regarded as Carl’s best ever, with Brian himself and Bruce Johnston providing additional harmonies. The song ends with a series of repeating vocal rounds, another device that was uncommon for popular music of the era.

The released version (official video), three minutes of musical genius.  The video apparently shows two high-school lovers with one about to go off to college.

I’ve previously posted the video below, but wanted to show it again it again because it documents another connection between the Beatles and “God Only Knows”: George Martin (“The Fifth Beatle”) goes to visit Brian Wilson at his home, and they discuss the song at length, later repairing to the studio where Martin fiddles with the original tapes. It’s five minutes well spent.

Finally, two videos documenting the production of this song in the studio. Both show Wilson’s perfectionism.

Now if you have a different “perfect song” (and “perfect” is subject to different interpretations), please name it below. In lieu of that, give us your favorite song, which may or may not be ‘perfect.”  Picking one off the top of my head, I’d say the Beatles’ “In My Life” comes close to perfection (original here). The lovely baroque bridge was written and performed by George Martin.