176. "Let It Be" by the Beatles

Paul McCartney had a happy, well-adjusted family until his mother died, throwing his life into a dark alternate universe. In this alternate universe, he joined a band, had insane talent, and wound up the most famous musician on Earth. But then his band began to die too, and he reached out to the memory of his mother for help to get through it. 

I have a good mother, and she has always been very talented at giving me little phrases to say when I am worried about something. It virtually saved my childhood. And sounds like Paul's mom was good at that too.

175. "Left & Right In the Dark" by Julian Casablancas

Superb melody and oddness in a pop song. 

Exercise for you: Sit down right now, and to one your favorite melodies, write new lyrics about something with a very clear story - like how you and a friend came to be friends. 

I bet most of your lines won't have much basic coherence to them, much less irony, pathos, poetic use of speech rhythm, etc. Mine won't either.

Julian Casablancas never seems to exude it, but his lyrics are regularly outstanding: They appear plain only if you ignore how jumbled and stupid most lyrics, like ours from the exercise, start out. He makes an art of culling tricky ideas into laconic phrases. 

Here he is describing memories most people have:

"Running in the parking lot I'm four years old
I am lost, those were the days
The soft murmur of voices in the other room
Comforting you as you fall asleep"

Cleanly, competently written - all while intentionally understating the longing he feels to have these days back again.

Here is another plain line I love:

"I am ashamed I think maybe sometimes
I might have used tricks to make you like me more"

That may not seem overly showy - it's not as ostentatious as a Shakespeare sonnet - but it's awful hard to write that straightforward and have it fit a melody well.

Give it a listen, bob your head, sing along.

174. "Last Nite" by the Strokes

Planes had just smashed into the World Trade Center. 21 years old, huddled beneath the swiftly descending shadows of the new age, I saw the video for this new song, and Julian Casablancas became my hero. 

The last whimsy of the old times.

173. "Last Friday Night" performed by Katy Perry

I devote almost no time to 21st century pop culture because it is mostly vapid, tends to celebrate a fascist mindset of social and physical superiority, and because it will all be quickly forgotten anyway, as the seasons change and tastes lurch into some new direction. 

Example: Will anyone admit to obsessing over Glee, that dated once-center-of-everything? 

No! The phenomenon of how pop culture is discarded by its supposed devotees is a fascinating mix of shame and true, oblivious amnesia. 

In the end, only the nerds have the strange compulsion to remember anything, which is why if you care about your legacy, you better not piss off nerds. Not geeks. Nerds. They literally carry our entire heritage forward in their wondering brains. And each prideful generation had only castigated them for it. 

I'm not for pop culture, but I have come to love some Katy Perry songs. 

Since I have no pop culture bio to clutter my perception of her, I'd like to think I see straight to the music, no marketing filters.

"Last Friday Night" is great music. The guitar part has a cool, minimal strum. The vocal melodies are imaginative and catchy.

There is one qualm I do have about this song and nearly every other Katy Perry song: They all settle in with one chord pattern and never change it. They are allergic to true development. Check it out for yourself - they disguise this fact by changing the singing melodies and usually adding more instruments to elevate choruses. Sometimes middle bridges change chord pattern but usually (as in this song), the same chord progression is just played at a softer volume. 

I cynically believe that this one-progression mega-trend (it is everywhere now!) is caused by producers who don't want to "waste" catchy chord progressions by lumping more than one into the same song. Maybe my industry/producer type friends can confirm or deny this. 

But in the case of "Last Friday Night," the effect is cool, and I do somewhat like the theme and variation challenge of the compositional style. I just wish it wasn't so slavishly ubiquitous every time I venture to a pop radio station. 

Listening to it now, something else about this song shines. The whole stupid party story used to make my eyes roll back. Plenty of other people attacked it as everything up to outright immorality. Now, I see the song as an account of the flippant, innocent memories shared by so many who found prosperity and new hope in the Obama years, a lightness we've quickly fallen out of in the new normal.

I share this historical perspective, and I celebrate Katy Perry for you now, because I am a nerd.

172. "Last Chance" by John Mellencamp

The drummer's name is Kenny Aronoff.

This song is the last best roots song John Mellencamp wrote before modernizing with mixed results on subsequent albums. It's in the vein of his best work on the Scarecrow album, though the dark vision here is directed inward rather than at the state of American farms.