Unlike most of my pages, this one is not going to simply be a list of hyperlinks to the pages with the lyrics. Most of the songs that I like have some kind of meaning and so you'll have to suffer with a bit of rambling. Of course, the links are of a different color than the rest of this text, so you can choose to ignore my prose if you wish.
My favorite singer of all time is the great Waylon Jennings. It was back in about '77 or '78 when I made the switch from the pop/rock of the day (no, not disco) to country and have been there ever since. Although I'll admit that within the past 3 years or so I've been picking up on some non-country stuff like the Cranberries, Tori Amos, and Enya. Anyway, as I said, it was back in about '78 when I heard 3 songs that caught my attention and two of them were by Waylon Jennings. The first was Good-Hearted Woman which was a duet with Willie Nelson. The other was Amanda.
These two songs led me down a path of wonderful music. Songs that can describe every facet of human emotion as well as descibe the condition of the common man in general. And I listened to just about everything: the old, the new, the country-pop, the country-rock, the western-swing, the cowboy songs and, my favorite, the outlaw movement. This last one was headed up by Waylon and Willie and my collections of their records (yes, vinyl) has grown tremendously and I have yet to get even half of it.
I have many songs by Waylon that I like - perhaps I should start a page that just lists those! Among my favorites are It's The World's Gone Crazy (Cotillion) a song he cowrote with the ever insightful Shel Silverstien (of Where the Sidewalk Ends fame); I May Be Used (But Baby I Ain't Used Up) which actually made it on a list of worst country song titles, but does a good job of making a case for us older guys; Bob Wills Is Still The King which Waylon wrote as both a tribute to the King of Western Swing as well as a minor slam against Willie (the guy in Austin) since Ol' Waylon and he were in the middle of a minor spat.
Once while seeing Waylon in concert I heard him singing a song about Geminii, but due to the outside atmosphere and crowd noise I couldn't make out all the words. I finally found it and it is called, appropriately enough, The Geminii Song. Since he wrote this, I figured he must be a geminii and after a bit of digging I discovered that we share the same birthday, although he is my senior by exactly 30 years. This song also helped me really appreciate Waylon not only as a great singer, but also as a songwriter. I found a couple songs he wrote about trying to make it in the music business called Nashville Bum and Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way. Then there are a couple songs on one of his later albums, Waymore's Blues (Part II), called Old Timer (The Song) and No Good For Me. The first takes place in Wyoming, where I lived from '89-'97, and the second, well, let's just say I understand it well.
OK, enough of Ol' Waylon (for now). As I said, I have branched out into other musical tastes and as I hear songs that move me I'll add them here.
During the heydays of Highlander: The Series I really got hooked on the music. Most of it was just reuse of the music written by Queen for the original movie but it stuck with me so much I went out and bought the CD. My two favorite songs are Princes of the Universe and Who Wants to Live Forever. This is probably due to all the exposure the series gave these two songs - the former as the starting and ending theme and the latter played anytime someone with whom we were to sympathyze, died.
I was just recently turned onto a Canadian folk group called Moxy Früvous by my girlfriend. She lent me their CD Bargainville and I about wore it out. My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors could describe Mary Ann well and The Drinking Song just sort of touched me; one of those "seeing your mortality" things. Of course, being a physicist, I found the Entropy song to be really good! I ought to play it for my intro physics classes when we reach the thermodynamics chapter.