Guest Post Thursday #7: Top Ten Heart Songs

Another Thursday, another Guest Post. And we welcome back George, who's getting all mushy on us...

George's Top Ten Heart Songs

Rol made the huge mistake of saying I would be welcome to do another piece for his blog.

And I have chosen My Top Ten Heart songs so I could shoehorn in one of My Favourite Songs Of All Time, brought to me by Andy Kershaw many many years ago. I was thinking originally of a Top Ten Meal songs but that led to me that huge pile of old pish Breakfast In America, which would never ever be included in such a list but I had to banish that song from my mind. And instead we have this top ten. Spoiler alert: No Supertramp. Actually, that’s hardly a spoiler, but hopefully you get the point.

That’s a picture of a cow’s heart. Something I have cooked up for the dogs and cats, who could not scoff it quickly enough. When I told Talho Jorge that I was vegetarian it caused great amusement. We used to get a great slab of heart-and-lung (different butcher) which I just could not deal with. Enough of this offal talk. On with the music:

A Top Ten Heart Songs has to have this in it. Peerless. Well, almost.

1. Hank Williams - Cold Cold Heart

When he sings about the robin, it can, and indeed has, moved me to tears. He never did a better song than this.

Bonny Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart   BEHAVE yourselves.

(George just does things like that to taunt me. Total Eclipse is Jim Steinman at his immense batshit-craziest. I will post the video as evidence for the defence. - Rol.) 

2. Neil Young - Heart of Gold

This song has been ranked as the 303rd greatest song of all time, in 2010.

Again, perverse not to include, and better than the Boney M cover.

You’ve never heard that one? For your pleasure here it is, performed live!

The Isley Brothers - This Old Heart of Mine, which took me longer than I thought to find because I was thinking it was by The Four Tops…

3. The Isley Brothers - This Old Heart of Mine

(George has now redeemed himself for dissing Ms. Tyler & Mr. Steinman. That is one of my all time favourite songs, as featured here many times before. - Rol.)

I was something of  a Hendrix obsessive in my youth, amassing 26 albums by the age of 19. This is from the Royal Albert concert of 1969, on the same day as Denis Law’s 29th birthday:

4. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Bleeding Heart

It’s amazing how clean that guitar sounds, and how all you need for a fantastic blues song are three people. No embellishments, just Hendrix playing the blues, bass and drums.

5. Calexico - Black Heart

There might be one or two people reading who don’t actually own Feast Of Wire. You really should catch yourselves on and rectify that right now. It is frequently considered The Best Album Ever Made In The Entirety of Recorded Music. That title has also been bestowed upon ABC, Rod Stewart, and The Turbines. At the momentum it belongs again to Calexico. And this song replaced a Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters song, THAT is how good it is:, it’s the slow, sweeping orchestration, the almost tortured painful vocal, it’s a glorious and dark, dark song...

It’s after this track that the realisation dawns that the entire album is something special.

6. Dwight Yoakam - Heartaches by the Number

The final track on Dwight’s best album, which would be his first one (which reminds me, some bloke’s writing a weekly piece of about second albums that are better than the first...)

7. Buddy Holly - Heartbeat

Now for some, this song might have been rather spoiled by the bloody ghastly ITV programme of a few years ago, but listen to it now, it’s a fantastic, simple love song, beautifully played and sung, 2 minutes and 7 seconds of pure pop perfection. Come on, who amongst you will not sing the “piddle dee pat” bits. And the rest of it???

8. Cream - Deserted Cities of the Heart

This song is from the completely over the top and self-indulgent double album Wheels of Fire album (one track involves an especially tedious Ginger Baker drum solo), but this a great psychedelic/rock song, showing what a great vocalist Jack Bruce was, really powerful, there’s no unending guitar noodling from Clapton, just a brief interlude, and those huge thumping drums of Ginger Baker.

I love how that song seems to begin with Jack Bruce launching into the vocal and Clapton and Baker are almost caught unawares.

9. Al Green - How Can You Mend A Broken Heart

I was thinking about not including this, because the singer appeared in my previous outing here. I played it again and thought that if this is to be a Top Ten and not just Ten Songs with Heart In The Title, then it would be ridiculous to exclude it.

(Agreed. - Rol.)

It’s a tremendous song, but remarkably not his best! Another song that can move me to tears. If you don’t like this, you’ve got no heart...

(The Bee Gees do a murderously poor version of this song. Dear god, you’d have thought they’d written it!)

10. Carl Butler and Pearl - Heartaches For Lunch 

And here’s the shoehorn - I jettisoned the Top Ten Meals Songs idea for the rather easier Heart Songs just so I could include this song. Well, it has been one of my (and I suspect Charity Chic’s) Favourite Songs Of All Time since first heard 30 or so years ago. Like the Dwight song above (OK, I know that’s a cover) I can sing along, or “sing” along, to this word-perfectly. Almost word-perfectly. It’s meant to be sad but it always makes me smile, the cheery music just does not go with the sentiment of the song. Now THIS is a peerless song...

Carl Butler and Pearl - Heartaches for Lunch

Two minutes and 50 seconds of country music genius. You’ll not hear a better song today.

“I opened up my sack, and lord there it was, my baby’s goodbye note, heartaches for lunch”

“Teardrops change the flavour of things I loved once”

Where else but in country music do you get such great lines??

So, no Jayhawks (Two Hearts) which was briefly a contender. No Joy Division (very very briefly a contender, but not as strong as The Jayhawks). No Bruce Springsteen, obviously.

There might, just possibly, be something that I missed, but looking at the list the only tracks that could possibly be replaced are the Neil Young and Cream songs, the others are nailed on surefire bets for being in any Top Ten Heart Songs.

And thanks to Rol for allowing me again to pollute his pages.  

No, thank you, George. For anyone who's interested, I did a Top Ten Breakfast Menu Songs back in 2013... and promised I would include Supertramp in a future Top Ten that never materialised. One day, Supertramp fans, one day.

Now I never even thought  of tackling a Top Ten Heart Songs because there are so many available options. George did nail a couple of my favourites above... but if he missed out any of yours, feel free to contribute a list of your own for a future instalment of Guest Post Thursday.  

Next week: more booze!