My favorite song IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD is "Here Comes the Sun." See the light? It just feels like joy growing right out of sadness, and it DOES grow, it starts out with just one acoustic guitar and BUILDS. The lyrics are full of hope-- not naive happiness but deep I-have-seen-the-dark-but-now-there's-light JOY-- not straightforward and preachy but poetic, such that you can read it on several levels. And the music, oh, it just captures the whole feeling perfectly.

I was really sad after George Harrison died, because I had written him this lovely fan letter thanking him for writing this song, but I never figured out where to send it, and before I could, he DIED! I mean, not that it probably would have made a difference in his life, but STILL... Okay, before I start crying...

That may be my favorite song in the whole world, but it's not my ONLY favorite song...

MY FAVORITE MUSIC by amy

Other Favorite Beatles Songs Classic Rock Songs from my Childhood
Songs from my Adolescence Recent Music Movie Music Broadway
Church Music Jazz, Swing, and Stuff Classical

  • OTHER FAVORITE BEATLES SONGS
    • "In My Life," "A Day in the Life," "Hey Jude," the Abbey Road medley
    • and I think "All You Need is Love" and "Let it Be" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Dear Prudence" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and... okay, I'm not sure where to draw the line.
    • My favorite album is Abbey Road with Revolver in a close second.

  • OTHER CLASSIC ROCK AND/OR OLDIES
    • Chicago (my other favorite band): "Dialogue parts 1 and 2," "25 or 6 to 4," "Saturday in the Park"
    • Crosby Stills and Nash (my other other favorite band): "Ohio," "Woodstock," "Southern Cross"
    • Van Morrison: "Into the Mystic."
    • Carole King: "So Far Away" (I LOVE Tapestry)
    • James Taylor: "Fire and Rain"
    • Carly Simon: "You're So Vain"
    • Elton John: "Tiny Dancer," "Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding"
    • Deep Purple: "Smoke on the Water" (this song had great family significance)
    • The Who: "Baba O'Riley"
    • The Doors: "People are Strange" (no kidding), "Touch Me"
    • Derek and the Dominos: "Layla"
    • Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Voodoo Child," "Purple Haze"
    • Jefferson Airplane: "Somebody to Love"
    • The Byrds: "Turn, Turn, Turn"
    • Pink Floyd: "Wish You Were Here," and an odd early number called "Bike," which you just HAVE to hear sometime.
    • ELO: "Mr. Blue Sky," another odd little number you have to hear. It's very happy.
    • The Kingsmen: "Louie Louie"
    • The Rolling Stones: "Ruby Tuesday"
    • The Mamas and the Papas: "Creeque Alley" Or, maybe any of their songs, they're just so singable!
    • The Drifters (my really oldie): "Up on a Roof"
    • Sly and the Family Stone: "Thank you..."
    • Donovan: "There is a Mountain." If you don't know it, it's just a bizarre little song that I at one point in my life decided it was my duty to make sure everyone knows. So there you are. TRY IT!
    • my favorite Motown song is "Can't Get Next To You," by the Temptations, my favorite Motown group
    • and I have this strange affection for "A Summer Song" by Chad and Jeremy, and I have no idea why. Might possibly have to do with the dream I had in which the song had supposedly been written by this imaginary guy named Simon who was madly in love with me, although I was Marcia Brady at the time. True dream.

  • SONGS THAT ACTUALLY CAME OUT IN MY LIFETIME, or, SONGS FROM CHILDHOOD (1978-1990), or, MOSTLY 80s SONGS
    • U2: "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
    • Styx: "The Best of Times"
    • Blondie: "The Tide is High"
    • Chicago (again): "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away"
    • Peter Gabriel: "Solisbury Hill" (if I spelled that right)
    • Toto: "Africa"
    • Howard Jones: "No One is to Blame"
    • Paul Simon: "Graceland" The album, too. "You Can Call Me Al" used to be my favorite off it, but I developed a real affection for the title cut
    • Billy Joel: "An Innocent Man"
    • The Police: "King of Pain"
    • Huey Lewis and the News: lots, really, mostly "Power of Love," but probably just because it was the theme to one of my favorite movies. You were around in the 80s, you know which one.
    • Pink Floyd: "On the Turning Away"
    • Alan Parsons Project: "Time"
    • Moody Blues: "Your Wildest Dreams"

  • The Music of my Adolescence (ie, 90s music)
    • REM: "Everybody Hurts"
    • After that one, I don't really have any favorites I LOVE LOVE LOVE. More just really like. I wasn't much into 90s music. But still:
    • Cranberries: "Dreams"
    • Collective Soul: "The World I Know"
    • Green Day: "Basket Case"
    • Okay, call me a follower or whatever, say "why can't you pick a DIFFERENT Nirvana song?" but face it, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" rocks. So there.
    • On the other side of cheesy, Six Pence None the Richer: "Kiss Me." Come on! It's sweet!
    • No Doubt: "Spiderwebs"
    • Blues Traveler: "Hook"

  • ACTUAL RECENT STUFF (Post College)
    • This is difficult, because I don't think I can give you any specific titles...I think I have this thing where I can't tell for sure if a song is my favorite until I hear it for several years. It has to sink in there or something before I can give it the honor.
    • In general, I tend to prefer punk, as far as current bands go. Punk and crazy straightforward rock. Like I think the Darkness is just cool, though my husband thinks they're terrible. I just dig weird stuff like that. I don't really like hip-hop, and I hate rap metal, and the whiny sound-alike bands bug me; the one exception being Evanescence, whose album Fallen is just awesome and I can't understand why the critics don't like them better. But I think it's the punk bands who can save rock from being trampled under hip-hop's feet, because punk gets back to the basics and proves why people got into rock in the first place! Okay, off the soap box now.
    • Oh, one more: Elizabeth Molnar: "Watchtower Moon." Oh, you've never heard of it? That's because Liz is a friend of mine who is too shy about her music to publish it, even though it (particularly this song) is AWESOME!!!!!

  • MOVIE MUSIC
    • this is mostly Disney. I like the background music to Beauty and the Beast
    • and "Jolly Holiday" from Mary Poppins
    • and "Once Upon a Dream" from Sleeping Beauty
    • John Williams's "March from 1941" is my favorite march ever. We did it in band one year.
    • Speaking of John Williams, I truly think the best part of the "Star Wars" movies is hearing that opening fanfare as the backstory flies across space; and considering I am a huge "Star Wars" fan, that's saying something.

  • BROADWAY
    • I used to be more into this category than I am now. It was totally my favorite genre when I was in middle school. But I still love Les Miz and Guys and Dolls, and am still rather fond of Into the Woods and West Side Story
    • Then you could get into rock operas, but that's different. Like, does Tommy count? I only love it when the Who does it.
    • I REALLY LOVE Godspell most of all, but I'm almost inclined to put that under church music

  • CHURCH SONGS, while I'm at it
    • "Be Not Afraid"
    • "Blest Are They"
    • "Prayer of St. Francis," mostly for the lyrics, because the melody's really nothing special
    • "Let Justice Roll Like a River," when Newman Center choir does it
    • "Amazing Grace," but not when it's overdone. When it's all very natural and spiritual and you're all just spontaneously harmonizing and all
    • and a lot more whose titles I can't think of at the moment. Especially rejoicing songs
    • and these wonderful mournful songs and Mass parts we used to sing during Lent at Newman Center. I really miss that choir...

  • JAZZ, BIG BAND, SWING, AND ALL THAT STUFF (all that jazz???)
    • Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"
    • I love the sound of Big Band and Swing, but can't single out any titles in particular
    • and jazz-- I can't even describe what sort of jazz I like. I know I love some of it and dislike others, but I guess I don't know enough about it to really say what...
    • This probably goes in another category, but when it comes to music in the first half of the 20th century, I really love "As Time Goes By"

  • CLASSICAL
    • Mozart-- just about anything by him
    • Bach's "Toccata and Fugue" --Bach is usually pretty cool
    • a lot of Beethoven, and Hayden's chamber music. The problem with this category is that even a lot of music majors I know don't know the titles for a lot of songs. And if you really want to be technical about it most of them aren't "songs," they're symphonies or overtures or whatever... I'm not a music major, I'm just friends with a lot of them....

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