Original by The Beatles (click)
"I Will" is a song by The Beatles that was released on The Beatles. It was written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and features him on lead vocal, guitar, and "vocal bass".
Saturday, February 27, 2010
#039 10,000 Maniacs - More than this
Original by Roxy Music (click)
"More Than This" is a 1982 single by British art rock band Roxy Music. It was released as the first single from their album Avalon. The song peaked at #6 in the UK. Although it only charted at #103 in the United States, it remains one of their best known singles there, and was covered by 10,000 Maniacs in 1997 for a successful cover which hit #25, which outperformed Roxy Music's lone US Top 40 single "Love Is the Drug" (#30, 1976).
#038 Gladys Knight and The Pips- Hero (Aka Wind Beneath My Wings)
Popular version by Bette Midler (click)
"Wind Beneath My Wings" is the title of a pop song written by Larry Henley and Jeff Silbar.First recorded in 1982 by Roger Whittaker, then a country music hit for Gary Morris in 1983, it was covered six years later by Bette Midler. Morris' original was a Top Ten country hit, and it won the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Song of the Year awards that year. Midler's was a Number One Billboard Hot 100 hit which also won her a Grammy Award in 1990.
Monday, February 22, 2010
#037 Metallica - Stone Cold Crazy
Original by Queen (click)
"Stone Cold Crazy" is a song by English rock band Queen from their successful 1974 album Sheer Heart Attack. The song is the eighth track on the album. Although the song was never released as a single, it has been featured on Queen compilation albums and was played live on almost every show in their first ten years.
The song credit is shared between all the members of the band, although Mercury played it with his band Wreckage before Queen was created in the late 1960s. It was the first song Queen performed live in 1970, but the song underwent many changes musically and lyrically before getting recorded, resulting in credit going to the entire band. Early versions of the song were much slower, according to the band, although no bootlegs exist.
The lyrics feature a gangster theme, even mentioning Al Capone. A person is dreaming on a Saturday morning about being Al Capone committing various crimes, although the lyrics are very tongue-in-cheek and have humorous lines such as "walking down the street/shooting people that I meet/with my rubber tommy water gun".
In 2009 it was named the 38th best hard rock song of all time by VH1.
"Stone Cold Crazy" is featured in the music video games Guitar Hero: Metallica and Rock Revolution.
#036 Guns N' Roses - Live And Let Die
Original by Paul McCartney & Wings (click)
"Live and Let Die" is the main theme song of the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die and was performed by Paul McCartney and Wings on the movie soundtrack and on the soundtrack album. The song was one of Wings' most successful singles, and the most successful Bond theme to that point.Commissioned specifically for the movie and credited to Paul McCartney and his wife Linda, it reunited McCartney with Beatlesproducer George Martin, who both produced the song and arranged the orchestral break.
#035 Scorpions - Dust In The Wind (Acoustic version)
Original by Kansas (click)
"Dust in the Wind" is a hit single released by the American progressive rock band Kansas in 1977. It peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week of April 22, 1978, making it Kansas' only top ten Billboard Hot 100 charting single. Written by Kerry Livgren, it was one of the band's first acoustic tracks; its slow melody and melancholy lyrics differ from their other hits, such as "Carry On Wayward Son" and "The Wall". The song's instrumental bridge contains a distinctive and highly memorable melodic line for solo viola played by Robby Steinhardt.
Kansas also released a live version of the song on their album Two for the Show.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
#034 Guns N' Roses - Knocking On Heaven's Door
Original by Bob Dylan (click)
"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan for the soundtrack of the 1973 film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. It reached #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. In 2004, representatives of the music industry and the press voted it #190 in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time issue.
#032 The London Jersey Boys - Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry, Walk Like A Man and Bye Bye Baby
"Big Girls Don't Cry" is a song written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio and originally recorded by The Four Seasons. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 17, 1962, and, like its predecessor "Sherry", spent five weeks in the top position. The song also made it to number one, for three weeks, on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues survey.
According to Gaudio, he was dozing off while watching the John Payne/Rhonda Fleming/Ronald Reagan movie Tennessee's Partner (1955) when he heard Payne's character slap Fleming in the face. After the slap, Fleming's character replied, "Big girls don't cry." Gaudio wrote the line on a scrap of paper, fell asleep, and wrote the song the next morning.
However, the now-famous line does not appear in the Ronald Reagan film. According to Bob Crewe, he himself was dozing off in his Manhattan home with the television on when he awoke to see John Paynemanhandling Rhonda Fleming in a 1956 film noir Slightly Scarlet. The line is heard in that film based on a James M. Cain story.
Like "Sherry", "Big Girls Don't Cry" is sung mostly in falsetto. The similarity in style was not a coincidence: the two songs were recorded in the same recording session. With "Big Girls Don't Cry", the Four Seasons became the first rock-era act to hit the top spot on the Hot 100 with their first two chart entries (their first single, "Bermuda"/"Spanish Lace", did not appear on any Billboard chart in 1961).
#031 Alison Krauss - When You Say Nothing At All
Original version by Keith Whitley (click to hear)
"When You Say Nothing at All" is a country song written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz. It is among the best-known hit songs for three different performers: Keith Whitley, who took it to the top of theBillboard Hot Country Singles chart on December 24, 1988; Alison Krauss, whose version became her first solo top-10 country hit in 1995; and Irish pop singer Ronan Keating, whose version was his first solo single and a chart-topper in the UK in 1999.
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