The 30 day song challenge - Day 1

Day One: Your Favorite Song

A couple of friends on Facebook have been doing this (the Facebook page is here), and I figured I'd leap in as well, but do it over here where I can take a bit more time to discuss why a particular song made the cut or whatever. This way, I'll have a way to blog daily with a relatively easy meme.

Already, though, I'm in trouble. Day one asks you to post your favorite song. Do adults still have favorite songs? If it asked me to list seventy songs I particularly enjoy, I'd have no problems whatsoever, but a single song that counts as my favorite?

Yes, by the way, I shall likely be overthinking each of the 30 entries.

The other issue is that you're supposed to link a youtube video of the song in question, but a lot of the music I listen to is relatively obscure by youtube standards, and no such video exists. I suppose in those cases, I'll mention at least two songs, and have a video for whichever ones I can find.

For my favorite song, I decided to go for a Beatles track, as they are my favorite band. My favorite record of theirs is Revolver, and the track that most exemplifies what makes that record so exciting for me is "Tomorrow Never Knows." While much of Revolver straddles the line between the jangly pop music that put them on the map in the first place and the expanding consciousness music that would cement their legacy, "Tomorrow Never Knows" has both feet planted firmly in the future.

As a feat of songwriting and recording, it's kind of audacious. It's one chord droning on and on with backward looping guitars crying out like seagulls and some of Ringo's finest drumming creating a sense of dynamics under Lennon's nasal monotone.

I actually used to call a radio station in sixth grade and request this song. Sometimes, they even played it for me.

The youtube version that I am linking is apparently from the Beatles' Saturday morning cartoon, which I've not really seen since I was ten or eleven. I'm more than a bit surprised that they made a clip for this song.



Cartoon shorthand for backward guitar? Giant horns that terrify bats but seem to arouse dinosaurs. Good to know.