307. "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News

Crank this until it's just too darn loud!

Here's the thing about "The Power of Love." Wonderful song, just a landmark of the mid-'80s soundscape.

Doesn't actually fit in the Back to the Future soundtrack - at all. Yes, it's the perfect, driving rock number Marty McFly would enjoy as he's hanging off of truck beds. And so it's technically an acceptable song, in terms of internal film logic, to be playing diegetically in the opening set piece.

But as a commentary on the actual themes of the film, what the hell is "The Power of Love" doing there? Are we truly believing that Marty's sole motivation for returning to the present is to get back to his girlfriend, of which we learn next to nothing neither before nor after Marty's time travel to the past? There is exactly one mention of Jennifer as a motivation to return to the present, when Marty pleads for '50s Doc Brown to help him because back in his time he has a girl. Doc asks, "Is she pretty?" And Marty shows him the flier onto which she wrote her love note.

This is, of course, the pivotal moment of the film, where on that flier they discover the exact upcoming event that can help Marty get back to the future. That's true.

But is that really demonstrative of the "power of love"?

Shouldn't the song be more about "the power of blind fortune"?

And honestly, the key motivation for Marty to get back home is the fact that his presence in the past is slowly erasing his presence completely from the space-time continuum. That's what really gets him off his ass. 

I would be more satisfied if Huey Lewis wrote a driving guitar ode to "the power of the impending void."

Talk about existentialism!

Or, if you want to skew to the affirmative aspects of the film, you could go with "the power of confidence," which is by far the most dominant theme. In fact, it's less love that motivates Elaine's attraction to, first her future son, then her destined husband, and it's more her reaction to that prototypical Reagan-era male confidence. Confidence is what makes Marty a promising guitarist capable of blowing out the ears of two successive generations, not to mention such a scrappy street fighter and dashing escape artist. It's what gets George his publishing deal. It's what made Doc crazy enough to steal plutonium from Lybian terrorists. It's what made Lybian terrorists think they could hit a time traveling DeLorean with a paltry shoulder-mounted rocket!

It goes to show how slapdash and haphazard the production of Back to the Future was, where multiple script ideas were cycled in and out, and even Michael J. Fox didn't enter the cast until well into shooting. Maybe at the time that "The Power of Love" was commissioned and recorded for this film, there was a much stronger love story serving as the main theme.

But whatever! The song absolutely worked in the spot it needed to work - because confidence!

When you have a great song, you can be confident about anything!

It's really about "the power of a can't-miss song."

P.S. This film theorized that Lybian terrorists had plutonium in 1985. Never has anything in reality come close. THERE is your science fiction.

306. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band

The Band played this song at the Last Waltz concert (which I've linked as the definitive version). That was supposed to be the last time the Band ever played. A few members did actually re-group and plug along for a much more diminished run. But Levon Helm never played "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" again. If that’s all "The Last Waltz" really meant, that's by far enough.

The music is so visceral and moving, some of the very, very best ever recorded. Right from the mournful opening fanfare, this song is a rare, blood-dark gem.

The hot takes about the Civil War will never stop emanating from small people in our own time.

It's actually possible, however, to separate the politics, ethics, and morals of the war from the basic human drama that unfolded on both sides of the conflict. Death, loss, defeat, shame, and desperation are universal experiences that everyone gets to have. Maybe, to some, accepting that makes me a compromiser. To this imagined slight, I retort that I am an artist, and I want to see from a solar distance. In my estimation, objective, widely curious artists are truly braver and more controversial than any artist swathed in their partisan cuddle blankets.

I think some people assume that Levon Helm, who contributed to the ideas in these lyrics, was painting some Lost Cause portrait of Southern justification. Why? Of course, he was from Arkansas. The decision to inhabit the thoughts of some poverty-stricken Southerner at the downfall of the Confederacy, that sympathy alone, given Helm's origin, gets played as damning evidence of his white supremacist alignment. 

I'm gonna tell you, I don't think Levon Helm gave a damn for much other than music itself. Every time I heard him talk about his upbringing, it was mostly about all his wonderful childhood memories of taking part in the adults' parties and music, which inspired him to become one of the absolute greatest musical talents America has ever produced, from any region. He, like many artists, had an appreciation of people for their experiences, their organic, inborn poetry. He spent his adult life driving and playing throughout the entire country, seeing every corner of it, every type of soul, on the ground, collecting every manner of story.

The song is about one poor man from the Confederate South, the fictional Virgil Caine. Caine makes no ideological points. His entire story is what lays before his very eyes: The destruction of Southern infrastructure to bring its capitulation, a chance sight of Robert E. Lee, the sounds of the towns and the cities on the day of surrender, and the physical facts of the dirt below him and his brother above.

It's so well written that it feels of that time. That's what hits me.

305. "The Man In Me" by Bob Dylan

"The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from bein’ seen
But that’s just because he doesn’t want to turn into some machine"

"The Man In Me" is the theme song for The Big Lebowski, a film that defines a type of modern hermitage in plain sight, in the midst of an overpopulated planet, where there are no longer wild places for dissenters to escape: The achievers are menaces. The artists are bratty, rebellious children of the achievers. The official enemies of their society are caricatures in fevered dreams. The bands are nihilists. The mysteries are not worth solving. Donny is out of his element.

But oh, what a wonderful feeling just to know you are near. It's the feeling of organ ringing gospel cadences, and friends oohing beer-scented harmonies together into the same mic. It's the sound of Bob Dylan's threadbare voice, tired, but in love.

304. "The Longest Time" by Billy Joel

It's doo-wop day in 356-land!

This is the number one, undisputed champion song of songs I sing in the shower, and my wife probably despises me and Billy Joel for this. It is, bar none, the most deliriously fun song to sing!

How dare Billy Joel write melodies that balance such prime challenge with slicker than slick chord navigations? How dare he combine so many satisfying modes - the gay finesse of the verses, the driving release of the choruses, and the touch-and-go delicacy of the minor chord modulations in the middle bridge???

My only regret is that, alone in my singing chamber, I have to get those little backing falsettos by myself then rush back to the vocal melody proper. It undoubtedly sounds super obnoxious doing all of that impossibly alone, probably second in obnoxiousness only to people who try to sing accurately along with the entire middle of "Bohemian Rhapsody." Sometimes I hear Jill wander into the bathroom, she feels charitable and throws in a harmony, and together we take the number all the way through to the end. That's love.

We chuckle, and then she tells me I'm wasting water.

303. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," performed by The Tokens

This song is so cute and catchy and unique, with its definitive tune and backing voices, its perfect ambling shuffle rhythm. It's perhaps the creative apogee of doo-wop. I can't think of another doo-wop tune so ambitious in its vision, so lush in its production.

But here's the best:

We're almost trained just to accept this song as simplistic novelty number.

Really think about what it's about...

It's the relieved sound all gentle souls would make if the predators were suddenly gone.