Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Jack/John.”

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Leaving on a Jet Plane was Peter, Paul and Mary’s biggest (and final) hit, becoming their only No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. The song also spent three weeks atop the easy listening chart.

But their version was a cover.

John Denver was a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio when he  wrote and released the song on his 1966 studio album John Denver Sings with the title Babe, I Hate to Go. After his producer convinced Denver to change the title, Peter, Paul and Mary recorded the song in 1967 for their Album 1700 and released it in 1969.

Denver also recorded the song for his 1969 debut album Rhymes and Reasons, and again for his first greatest hits compilation but never attained the chart success with the single as the folk song group.

FUN FACTS:

• The song also topped the charts in Canada, and reached No. 2 in both the UK Singles Chart and Irish Singles Chart in February 1970.
• Leaving On a Jet Plane was used in commercials for United Airlines in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
• Denver claimed that he wasn’t a prolific or systematic songwriter – he wrote songs when they came to him. Some of his popular songs took months to complete, but Leaving on a Jet Plane took him just a few hours to finish.
• On one of his BBC radio specials, John Denver said: “This is a very personal and very special song for me. It doesn’t conjure up Boeing 707s or 747s for me as much as it does the simple scenes of leaving. Bags packed and standing by the front door, taxi pulling up in the early morning hours, the sound of a door closing behind you, and the thought of leaving someone that you care for very much. I was fortunate to have Peter, Paul and Mary record it and have it become a hit, but it still strikes a lonely and anguished chord in me, because the separation still continues, although not so long and not so often nowadays.”

Forgive me but I got a bit carried away and posted John’s version, Peter, Paul and Mary’s version, and a video of Denver and the group singing together!

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Big/Large/Little/Small/Tall/Tiny.”

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Mr. Big Stuff was a huge crossover hit for R&B singer, Jean Knight in 1971. The song spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Soul Singles chart and peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.

FUN FACTS:

• Mr. Big Stuff  went double platinum and was the No. 1 Soul Single of the year.
• It became one of Stax Records’ more popular and recognizable hits.
• Mr. Big Stuff was nominated for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 1972 Grammy Awards.

Knight performed the song on Soul Train on December 11, 1971 during its very first season and that’s the video performance I’m featuring today! So 70s – check out how high her hair is! 😀

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Cinnamon/Mint/Parsley/Pepper/Rosemary/Sage/Salt/Thyme.”

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In August 1966, the Beatles permanently retired from touring and began a three-month holiday. During a return flight to London in November, Paul McCartney had an idea for a song involving an Edwardian military band that formed the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept. The inspiration is said to have come when roadie Mal Evans innocently asked McCartney what the letters “S” and “P” stood for on the pots on their in-flight meal trays, and McCartney explained it was for salt and pepper. This then led to the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band concept, as well as the song.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band appears twice on the 1967 album of the same name–as the opening track (segueing into With a Little Help from My Friends), and as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise), the penultimate track (segueing into A Day in the Life). As the title song, the lyrics introduce the fictional band that performs on the album.

While the single enjoyed only moderate success until a resurgence in the 70s and 80s, the album was wildly popular. It spent fifteen weeks in the number one spot on Billboards Top LPs, and won four Grammy Awards in 1968, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honour. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been recorded numerous times over the years by A-list bands and performers.

FUN FACTS:

• Three days after the album came out, Jimi Hendrix opened a concert with the song. McCartney and Harrison were both there, and were very impressed that Hendrix learned it so quickly.
• There really is an apostrophe in this song’s title, although on the album cover, it is rendered without. Since the Lonely Hearts Club Band belongs to Sgt. Pepper, it is possessive, thus “Sgt. Pepper’s.”
• The album was heavily produced and took 129 days and about 700 hours to complete. The Beatles first album, Please Please Me, was recorded in less than 10 hours.
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was never performed live by the Beatles. It was performed by three of the former band members (McCartney, Harrison and Starr) plus Eric Clapton on May 19, 1979, at Clapton’s wedding party.
• The Sgt. Pepper mythology was re-imagined for the plot of the 1969 animated film Yellow Submarine. In the film, the Beatles travel to Pepperland and rescue Sgt. Pepper’s band from evildoers, the Blue Meanies.

McCartney acts as the master of ceremonies near the end of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band track, introducing Starr as an alter ego named Billy Shears. The song then segues into With a Little Help from My Friends amid a moment of crowd cheer.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “End/Finish/Over/Stop.”

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“When we wrote One Toke Over the Line, I think we were one toke over the line. I considered marijuana a sort of a sacrament… If you listen to the lyrics of that song, ‘one toke’ was just a metaphor. It’s a song about excess. Too much of anything will probably kill you,” explained Tom Shipley, one half of Brewer and Shipley and co-writer of the song.

The incident that sparked this song happened at the Vanguard in Kansas City, Missouri. The band was playing the show because, in seeking to escape the LA music scene, they started a tour of their Midwest homelands. Shipley reports that he was given a block of hash and told to take two hits. He ignored the advice and instead took three. Shipley recounts in The Vinyl Dialogues, “I go out of the dressing room – I’m also a banjo player, but I didn’t have one, so I was playing my guitar – and Michael (Brewer) came in and I said, ‘Jesus, Michael, I’m one toke over the line.’ And to be perfect honest, I don’t remember if Michael was with me when I took that hit or not. I remember it as ‘not’; I think Michael remembers it as ‘yes.’ And he started to sing to what I was playing, and I chimed in and boom, we had the line.”

Brewer also remembers the occasion. “I just cracked up,” he said. “I thought it was hysterical. And right on the spot, we just started singing, ‘One toke over the line, sweet Jesus,’ and that was about it; then we went onstage.”

Some radio stations refused to play this song because of the drug references, but not everyone got this meaning. In 1971 the song was performed on the Lawrence Welk Show by the wholesome-looking couple Gail Farrell and Dick Dale, who clearly had NO clue what a toke was. Welk, at the conclusion of the performance of the song, remarked, without any hint of humor, “there you’ve heard a modern spiritual by Gail and Dale.”

FUN FACTS:

• The song peaked at #10 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and #8 Cash Box during the spring of 1971, and was the duo’s only Top 40 hit.
• Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead was brought in to play played steel guitar on the Tarkio sessions. He didn’t play on One Toke Over The Line, but did appear on the B-side, Oh Mommy’ (I Ain’t No Commie).
• The song is notably mentioned in the opening of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and was “sung” by Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) in the 1998 film of the same name.
• One Toke Over the Line appears on numerous compilation albums, making its way onto albums with songs about drugs, hits of the ’70s, and one hit wonders. It remains a major source of income for Brewer and Shipley.
• Spiro Agnew said the song with its reference to marijuana use was “blatant drug-culture propaganda” that “threatens to sap our national strength,” pressuring the FCC to include the song on its list of music banned from the airwaves because of drug references. (Poor Spiro! He resigned in disgrace and Brewer and Shipley are still collecting royalties! 😀 )

I couldn’t decide which video to use, so you guys get an “old” performance from 1971, a “newer” live performance from 1998, and yes…THE LAWRENCE WELK PERFORMANCE!!! I dare you to watch it without grinning! 😀 😀 😀

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Song that includes a number.”

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How Many Ways is the fifth and final single from American singer Toni Braxton’s eponymous debut studio album, released in 1993.

It was released as double-sided with I Belong to You, which garnered Braxton a nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 1996 Grammy Awards.

In How Many Ways, co-written by Braxton herself, the protagonist declares there are many ways in which she loves her man, and she does a literal count from one to ten.

FUN FACTS:

• A remix produced by R. Kelly also was released to radio and music television stations.
• I Belong to You/How Many Ways peaked at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 on January 21, 1995.
• The music video for How Many Ways features Braxton and actor Shemar Moore (Criminal Minds) riding in a car, frolicking in a playground, and on a veranda.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Couple/Together/Us.”

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Nickelback’s lead singer and guitarist Chad Kroeger described Far Away on the Tour when in Australia as the “only real love song” that Nickelback has. He described many others as “being about love” but not solely about “being in love”.

With lyrics like ‘Cause with you, I’d withstand all of hell to hold your hand; I’d give it all I’d give for us Give anything, but I won’t give up… I’d have to agree!

Released in late 2005 or early 2006 in the United States, Far Away was a huge success for Nickelback in the U.S. and became the band’s fourth top ten single on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 8. The song was the second top ten single from their latest album All the Right Reasons.

FUN FACTS:

• Though the group started as a cover band under the name Village Idiot, they later changed to Nickelback, which originated from the nickel in change that band member Mike Kroeger gave customers at his job at Starbucks; he would frequently say, “Here’s your nickel back.”
• Nickelback is one of the most commercially successful Canadian rock bands, having sold more than 50 million albums worldwide.
• In 2009, Billboard ranked them the most successful rock group of that decade; their song How You Remind Me was listed as the best-selling rock song and the fourth best-selling song of the decade overall. They were listed number seven on the Billboard top artist of the decade, with four albums listed on the Billboard top albums of the decade.
• Far Away was one of the songs most dedicated to firefighters battling the 2019-20 Australian Brush Fires.

The music video for Far Away was first shown on VH1’s V-Spot. Filmed at Green Timbers Park in Surrey, British Columbia just outside Vancouver, the video starts with a couple in bed, when a cellphone rings and the husband is forced to leave. It is revealed that he is a firefighter, and has been called to help fight a forest fire.

As the song moves on, we see the firefighters dropped right into the middle of the fire by a helicopter, which quickly overwhelms them and forces them to retreat. The husband goes back to help a fallen firefighter, and watches the helicopter leave without him. After the husband sees the helicopter leave, a large, fiery tree is seen falling, presumably onto him. This footage is inter-cut with his wife watching the news about the fire.

Later, she receives a phone call, and breaks down, as it appears that she has been informed that her husband has died. She rushes outside to see several firefighters emerge from a truck…including her husband, covered in soot. She rushes to him and hugs him, and the video ends.

The entire song also features inter-cuts to the band playing in a large, strobe light-filled red and orange room.

VH1 later named this video as the third best song on the Top 40 Videos Of 2006, behind Hips Don’t Lie by Shakira and ahead of SexyBack by Justin Timberlake.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Burrito/Fajita/Mexican/Tequila.”

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Named for the tequila-filled cocktail with lyrics reflecting a laid-back lifestyle in a tropical climate, Margaritaville has come to define Jimmy Buffett’s music and career.

The song was written about a drink Buffett discovered at Lung’s Cocina del Sur restaurant in Austin, Texas, and the first huge surge of tourists who descended on Key West, Florida, around that time. He wrote most of the song one night at a friend’s house in Austin, and finished it while spending time in Key West.

The 1977 hit reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and went to number one on the Easy Listening chart, also peaking at #13 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard ranked it number 14 on its 1977 Pop Singles year-end chart. It remains Buffett’s highest charting solo single.

The song is about a man spending an entire season at a beach resort community. The three verses describe his day-to-day activities. In the first verse, he passes his time playing a six-string guitar on his front porch swing, watching tourists sunbathe, all the while eating sponge cake, and waiting for a pot of shrimp to boil. In the second verse, all he has to show for his time is a tattoo of a woman – a Mexican cutie, but he cannot remember how he got it. In the third and final verse, while the narrator was going out for a walk, he blew his Flip-flops and cuts the heel of his foot by stepping on a “pop-top” (the pull tab from an old-style soda can), forcing the narrator to come home, and ease his pain, with a fresh batch of margaritas.

The three choruses reveal that the narrator is drowning his sorrows over a failed romance, all the while onlookers speculate that an ex-girlfriend is at fault. The last line of each shows his shifting attitude toward the situation: first “it’s nobody’s fault,” then “hell, it could be my fault,” and finally “it’s my own damn fault.”

FUN FACT:

• Margaritaville was inducted into the 2016 Grammy Hall of Fame for its cultural and historic significance.
•  As Buffett’s signature song, Margaritaville has been used in a number of commercial ventures and product licensing tie-ins including:
  • Radio Margaritaville, a radio station that broadcasts on the Internet and Sirius XM Radio
  • Tales from Margaritaville, a collection of short stories by Buffett
  • Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, a casual dining restaurant chain, tourist destination and chain of stores selling Buffett-themed franchise merchandise in Jamaica, Mexico and the U.S. In 1985, Buffett opened a “Margaritaville” restaurant in Key West, though his first was in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
  • Margaritaville margarita mix (manufactured by Mott’s)
  • Margaritaville tequila

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Alone/Confined/Depressed/Isolated/Restless/Solo.”

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Boomers are old enough to remember some of the heyday of Dionne Warwick, and to have witnessed her comeback which included No Night So Long, the title track from Warwick’s second album for Arista Records in 1980.

While it doesn’t speak directly to this week’s prompt, this song keeps me connected to a lifelong friend who was considering suicide during a low point in her life when she felt abandoned. We traded mix-tapes over the years and now share playlists, and No Night So Long is always on the list. We’ve both lost our parents and are widows, but this song reminds us though it’s dark and you have traveled far, every long night gives you one bright shining star.

FUN FACT:

• No Night So Long peaked at number twenty-three on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at number one on the adult contemporary chart. It was Warwick’s third number one on the AC chart.
•  Richard Kerr and Will Jennings also wrote Warwick’s 1979 comeback hit I’ll Never Love This Way Again which won her the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

The video is a live appearance from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Home Town or City where you were born, or where lived in, or some place that you relate to.”

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A place I relate to isn’t a home town or city.

It’s the water.

The water has always been my safe place. Regardless of whether I was in it, on it, or sitting on a bank or a beach, water not only calmed me and gave me clarity, it rejuvenated me. All my life I’ve lived near a pond, lake, or ocean that gave me peace of mind and energy during my darkest times.

Except now. Now I call Arizona home, and me and the desert… we’re not friends. I’d planned a trip to Cali this summer, but coVID19 has scrubbed those plans.

So for now, it’s just me and playlists of oceantides and seascapes; great songs like CSN’s Southern Cross, which I featured a few weeks ago, and this great hit from 1980.

Sailing was the second single from the self-titled debut album of Christopher Cross. The song was a success in the United States, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on August 30, 1980, where it stayed for one week, and it also won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Arrangement of the Year, and helped Cross win the Best New Artist award. VH1 named Sailing the most “softsational soft rock” song of all time.

FUN FACT:

• In his Grammy acceptance speech, Cross acknowledged Sailing as his favorite song on the album and that originally it was not meant to be a single.
• Cross had another number one song the very next year with Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do) (from the 1981 film Arthur), which also won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1981 (with co-composers Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen).

The video is a live appearance from 1999 and Cross and company deliver a performance almost as smooth as the original recording twenty years earlier.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Diamond/Emerald/Jade/Pearl/Ruby/Sapphire.”

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Performed by Sonny Charles and The Checkmates, Black Pearl was a 1969 hit; #8 on the R&B chart and #13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Written by Phil Spector, Toni Wine, and Irwin Levine, the song is described as “one of the great Phil Spector productions, a phenomenal song with his extraordinary sound.” Black Pearl was arranged by composer Perry Botkin, Jr. who would win a Grammy Award nearly a decade later for Nadia’s Theme, the theme song from daytime soap opera, The Young and the Restless.

The single ranked #66 on Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1969.

FUN FACT:

• From Fort Wayne, Indiana, The Checkmates began as Checkmates, Ltd. They were discovered by Nancy Wilson and included both black and white members.
• The group broke up in 1970, but reunited in 1974 for a few more years. They performed on the same billing as Frank Sinatra and Herb Alpert, and sang the National anthem for the Thrilla in Manila–the final boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier–in 1975.
• Sonny Charles joined and toured with the Steve Miller Band from 2008 until 2012.
• On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Checkmates, Ltd. among hundreds of artists who lost material in the 2008 Universal fire.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.