The Stupid Little Song That Would Not Die

222. JOURNEY, "Don't Stop Believin'"

Written by Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry, and Neal Schon; produced by Kevin Elson and Mike "Clay" Stone

Columbia 02567 1981 Billboard #: 9

Confession # 1: I don't really like this song--never have, never will. To tell you the truth, I've never really liked Journey. If you put a gun to my head and said I had to listen to one of their songs, I would probably pick "Only the Young," but that's mostly because it's on the Vision Quest soundtrack. I wouldn't pick this this song, though, not in a million years. As I recall, I half-detested two or three decades ago.

Confession # 2: This song wasn't on the list for this project originally. There are 1001 slots, but I've only really mapped out 700-800 of them. I wanted to leave room for music that was released while I was working on it, as well as songs that I suddenly realized I needed to fill out my argument.

"Don't Stop Believin'" definitely falls under that latter category. It is the Stupid Little Song That Would Not Die. Released in 1981, coming as the metal lite of Aerosmith et al became even liter and slipped irrevocably into the reign of the hair bands, this song and Journey passed almost immediately into the land of Dad Rock. It wasn't really a hit or the summation of an era. It was just one of those songs that was Around.

Then in 2007, we got this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnT7nYbCSvM

Two years later, we got this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_DQ6FAdmEA

A few months after that, we got this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4THvv-i4vqs

Then a couple of weeks ago, we got this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laaU5I0xUmk

As I said, the stupid little song just won't die. Somehow, it seems of immense significance to our culture. Why it won't die is an interesting question, one that brings us back, as always, to Frank.

It is, as you will recall, Frank's World. (We just live in it--I have a button that says so.) Back in the 1950s, both Frank and Ella were engaged in an interesting bit of musical archeology, unearthing songs from before the Second World War and rerecording them, and in the act of doing so creating what is now rather pompously called The Great American Songbook. Ella, as always, took the high road, following in the steps of Lee Wiley and recording albums for Verve that were devoted to Cole Porter, George Gershwin, et al. Frank recorded songs by those people too, of course, but he also unearthed a great many Stupid Little Songs of the 1920s, songs like "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me" and "Makin' Whoopee" that lack the clever construction of a truly great pop song like "I've Got You Under My Skin" and are simply fun to sing.

In other words, Frank recorded the Grandfathers of Stupid Little Songs like "Don't Stop Believin'," and in his performances these songs inevitably sound better than the originals. As I commented on in my post on Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt," after Dylan and the Beatles we think of pop songs as belonging to particular performers, which wasn't the case during the swing era. In post-1970 pop, a cover is somehow cheesy, a B-side at best and karaoke at worst. The importance of Stupid Little Songs, though, is that they are not irrevocably owned by the people who wrote them. They leave something for the performer and audience to do, which is why they ultimately work better in karaoke--and Glee, for that matter, which is a post-karaoke musical--than very well written songs do.

Am I saying Journey wrote a page in the Great Neo-American Songbook? Not as much as Trent Reznor or Prince (whom on a good day I might call my generation's Cole Porter). But they did write the kind of song that an internet-era Frank Sinatra could kill on. Stupid Little Songs can still spawn great, goofy performances.

Tom's Big Time

987. TOM WAITS, "Downtown Train"
Produced and written by Tom Waits
1985 Did not enter pop charts

The highest charting single by one of the greatest late twentieth-century U.S. songwriters--except it wasn't his recording of the song that charted.

Four years after Tom Waits' original recording of "Downtown Train" (released on the Burkeanly sublime album Rain Dogs), Rod Stewart's version made it to # 5 on the Billboard charts. The video for the song shows Rod in front of a number of trains, so he has apparently been in a subway station at least once, but seriously can you imagine Blondey Boy pining away after a woman he sees repeatedly on the G train? I'd buy into the dewy-eyed innocence of "Maggie May" before I'd believe that.

It's a shame really, because if Waits ever had a shot at the big time, it was with this song. It's probably his most conventional ballad, sweet but still gritty. Certainly, "Downtown Train" is not as weird as "Cemetery Polka" or as hopelessly pathetic as "Train Song." "Jersey Girl" is sweeter still, but even Bruce Springsteen didn't try to release his cover of that as a single. But the longing of this song is so beautiful, so perfect. It's almost medieval. And it's really not the same if anyone less shattered than the author himself sings it.

So, to answer your question: no, I don't like all covers. Some tracks are hard to improve on.

Specialized Labor

596. METALLICA, "Turn The Page"
Produced by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich; written by Bob Seger
Polygram International 566591 1998 Did not make pop charts

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had all these friends--not really cinephiles, but literate, educated friends--who loved John Sayles movies and loved Spike Lee movies. And yes, there were things I liked about all those movies. But far too frequently I found myself wishing that Sayles would be something more than a novelist with moving pictures that didn't move enough, and that Lee would be more than a kinetic cinematician with bumper-sticker dialogue.

After a while, I realized what I really wanted. I wanted Sayles to write a screenplay that Lee filmed--great scenes, great shot composition, all around good movie. I've never believed in the hyphenate in cinema. (Woody Allen's two best screenplays, for example, are the ones on which he had a collaborator.) Some people should just write and some people should just direct and some people should just perform.

I feel that way about pop music too sometimes. Since Dylan and the Beatles, there's been this real emphasis on singer-songwriters, but is it really such a great thing that Lindsay Lohan felt she needed to write songs on her albums in order to be "real"? My favorite single of hers is still "Ultimate," the one she did on the Freaky Friday soundtrack. It almost certainly won't make the cut for this list, but it's catchy and she sells it. It's just about right for her. Thank God she didn't feel the need to rewrite it into a soul-baring ballad about her relationship with her father.

Anyway, this Metallica single is for me the equivalent of my dream Sayles-Lee collaboration. Seger has a better eye for synecdochal (rather than allegorical) detail than Lars and James ever did, but when they sing Seger's lyrics they sound genuinely burnt out. As you may have guessed by now, I'm a big fan of covers, as long as they're the right ones.