Perfect Pop Songs


Those with the kind of music, lyrics, performance, arrangement and production that you could easily repeat all day.

How about starting with this one? Somewhat outside of her usual cannon and none the worse for it. Perhaps also a contender for the sexiest vocals ever?

Louie Louie  by Julie London
cd318

"Once In A Lifetime" by Talking Heads was my tongue worm, but that's not popular song.

Rick Beato must be the king of picking great songs and pop songs for that matter

It's always great to stumble upon a great new recording.

Sometimes it can happen in the most unlikely of places, a fairly recent Disney movie.

 

I See the Light - Mandy Moore and Zachary Levy (Tangled OST)

 

My personal favorite pop song is “Two For the Road” by Henry Mancini.
The instrumental version on the “RCA Legendary Performers” Mancini comp is the towering, definitive version.
The song is arranged, played and recorded…well…I don’t really have words, to be honest.
When this version reaches an orchestral-strings-only break at the 2:00 mark, and then goes into a dark, increasingly dissonant, jazz-piano-inflected outro…ending with a brief, haunting, almost-creepy melody (vibraphone?)…you already spent the first 2 mins in the throes of peak bliss, and then that is how they ended it?!…ridiculous.

“Moon River” by Mancini/Mercer.
Both the main version with choral vocal arrangement and the acoustic guitar/string arrangement version that Audrey Hepburn sings in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Can’t go wrong with either.