All-time Favorites

So I was thinking the other day that this would be a fun post, and since I don't want to do the other things I should be doing and feel guilty watching another episode of Lost right now, I thought now would be the time. At least I'll be thinking and writing instead of just vegging, right? (Right. Of course.)
I was driving back to Provo from home last night, and I was thinking that it would be fun to create a list of all-time favorite songs. I figure that needs a little bit of clarification though, because there are a lot of songs that I really love right now, but who's to say that I'll still like them in a year? I was thinking I'd make it a one year requirement (I have to have known and loved the song for a whole year) but then I remembered that it was only a year ago that I started listening to The Fray, Muse, Rogue Wave, Feist . . . that wasn't that long ago. You can't judge endurance by one year - artists are still practically new to you then. I mean, it's been almost a year since I started listening to Glen Hansard! So I made the requirement a two-year minumum of adoration of the song, and I also decided that I have to have some kind of reason for why I love it, even if that reason is just the feeling I have consistently got every time I listen to it. So here goes.
In no particular order, the songs that are the most meaningful to me:

• "American Tune" by Paul Simon - I don't know why I have loved this song so much for so long, but I can't even tell you how many times I've been doodling in class and I've written, "Many's the time I've been mistaken, and many times confused; yes, and I've often felt forsaken, and certainly misused. Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right - I'm just weary to my bone. Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant so far away from home . . ." I think the lyrics to this song are so beautiful and ring so true when things are hard are confusing ("I don't know a dream that's not been shattered, or driven to its knees . . .") and it has meant a lot to me for years - junior high at least.
  
• "The Longest Time" by Billy Joel - My first memory of this song is of Spence and Ty singing it in the car on the way to the MTC (I was 6) and of my mom crying when it came on the radio for the next two years. After that I began to love it for itself - it's happy and catchy and poetic and the kind of thing I would like have said to me. My favorite part is that bit at the end - "I want you so bad, I think you ought to know that I intend to hold you for the longest time." Sigh.
• "Matthew" by John Denver - Yeah, some of you may be shocked that I include John Denver, but what may surprise you the most is that I had a hard time picking just one. I also considered "Wild Montana Skies" and "High Calypso." I think the reason I stuck with this one has something to do with the chorus - "Joy was just a thing that he was raised on, love was just a way to live and die . . ." Yeah. Lovely. I always tell people that my first musical love was Paul Simon, but it was probably John Denver. We listened to the Wildlife Concert on every road trip ever when I was little, and we always sang along, even Clark, who was a cool teenager at the time. We even yodeled to "High Calypso."
• "The Way I Am" by Martin Sexton - I distinctly remember the first time I heard this song. I was in 7th grade and we were in Clark's room - Ty was playing it because he was trying to talk my parents into going to the concert. We all fell in love with it because of the pseudo-yodel in the chorus, and I didn't get to go to the concert because I was going to my very first 7th grade birthday party that night, but I have listened to Martin ever since and loved him ever since. My other favorites are "Caught in the Rain" and "Freedom of the Road."
• "Where the Streets Have No Name" by U2 - I'm not sure why this is the actual pick from U2, but I do adore this one. I very distinctly remember sitting in Spence and Ty's room listening to them when I was little (just as I remember watching Ty's Talking Heads video - big suits), and when I went to the U2 concert a few years ago the songs were all incredibly familiar - I knew every word to songs I hadn't listened to in years.
• "Lady Be Good" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald - I remember stealing Treb's Ella Fitzgerald Best of the Songbooks CD when I was probably 5 or 6. This one has stuck with me because my freshman year the words seemed especially poignant: "Listen to my tale of woe, it's terribly sad but true; all dressed up, no place to go - each evening I'm awfully blue. I must win some handsome man - can't go on like this. I could blossom out I know with somebody just like you." Laugh it up, but then think about what you were like as a freshman, and remember that I had 5 roommates get married that year. Besides the BYU freshman appropriateness, it's a lovely song and brings back memories of being a young jazz efficiando (efficianda?) because of my oldest brother.
  
• "Paper Doll" by The Mills Brothers - This song makes me think of my dad almost as much as "Side by Side" (which we always used to sing together) because it always seemed like he sang it all the time. I'm not sure why he liked it so much, or why I do, but he did and so do I.
  
• "Your Smiling Face" by James Taylor - This song makes me think of cleaning the house with my mom on summer Saturdays. I think it was the first one on one of her many James Taylor CDs, so I remember waking up to it on more than one occasion. I swear that I can always smell lemon Pledge when I hear it. It's also a lovely song. :)
• "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" sung by The Limeliters - every road trip ever - I loved the harmonies on this song so much it made me want to run somewhere.
• "Whistling in the Dark" by They Might Be Giants - This song makes me think of Clark, especially one day when he was in college and we'd gone to a funeral or something. I don't remember where my parents went, but they left me with Clark and we listened to They Might Be Giants and drove up to Aspen Grove in the snow and then drove back down. I'm honestly not sure why I remember that day, but They Might Be Giants has had a special place in my heart for years because of Clark. Also, "There's only one thing that I know how to do well, and I've often been told that you only can do what you know how to do well, and that's be you, be what you're like, be like yourself." Magic.
• "Delicate" by Damien Rice - Note that I say this one rather than "Grey Room" because I've only known the latter for a few months. Ty played me this song in the kitchen on a holiday - Thanksgiving or Christmas or something - and I stood in the middle or the hustle and bustle and proceeded to have my mind blown with "Why'd you sing hallelujah, if it means nothing to you?" and so a couple of months later when I listened to the whole CD on a choir trip to San Diego, it entered my consciousness forever. Really.
  
• "Blue" by The Jayhawks - I don't even remember a time when I didn't know this song although Ty takes credit for bringing the Jayhawks to the family, but it has gradually morphed from a pretty song that my brothers all seem to like into something that really speaks to me at this point in my life. "Where have all my friends gone? They've all disappeared. Turn around maybe one day - you're all that was there." It's lovely and I turn it up every time I hear it start.
  
• "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkle - Need I say more? When I was in 5th grade I listened to our S&G cassette every night while I "fell asleep." I'm not sure I ever actually fell asleep to that tape, and I almost always turned it over. I love all of the songs, but wow. That one . . . yes. I also have an intense love of "America" because of the line, "'Kathy I'm lost,' I said, though I knew she was sleeping. 'I'm empty and aching, and I don't know why.'" I don't know why either, but I love that line. And I love "Bridge Over Troubled Water" too. :)
  
• "I Am Ready, I Am" - by The Format - What can I say? A line from this song is the description of my blog. This song is me once you get past the line about "I'm nicotine." "I need a reason to let go, an intervention, a lullabye, something to cure me . . ." "I'm not bitter, no, it's just I've passed that point in my life . . ." It's wonderful.
• "Moon Over Bourbon Street" - by Sting - Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles was my first "real" CD. (Read: not the soundtrack to Annie or Kenny Loggins.) I got it on Treb's recommendation, and I love people's reactions (at least real music people's) when I tell them I got this CD in about 7th grade. It's not exactly Hannah Montana. The reason I love this particular song so much is that I thought it was so cool that it was a song about a vampire! It had never occurred to me that normal artists could write about such cool things in such poetic and beautiful ways. My favorite part was toward the end: "How could I be this way when I pray to God above? I must love what I destroy and destroy the thing I love." So cool.
• "Testimony" by The Actual Tigers - Love this song. I think it was Ty who introduced me to this still not well-known band, but all of the Winegar children latched on pretty quickly. This song reminds me a little of "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," but it's fantastic in its own right as well. "I was standing on the corner - you use a public phone you gotta pay. Yeah, the day I find someone who's worth my quarter, I was thinking, "That'll be the day."
• "Raining in Baltimore" by The Counting Crows - Despite Treb's assertions that the lead singer sounds constipated, I have always loved Counting Crows. I especially love this song, and I think I truly fell for it during my junior or senior year of high school. I know because I put it on a CD for my boyfriend and he didn't like it. I should have known right then that it wouldn't last. This song is so achingly beautiful - and really, what would you change if you could? (That's a lyric in case you aren't familiar with the song.)
  

That's all for now because I need sleep. Today was crappy and I am tired, but I imagine that I'll be adding to it later.