Doesn't really sound like anything else Fleetwood Mac ever did... or anyone else, for that matter. I love that there was a time when tracks like this were hits. And why the hell is it called Tusk?
I honestly forgot who this was between compiling the competition and coming to do the answer's post. It took me ages to pick apart than anagram. I don't know how you guys do it so quickly each week.
Only one band could illustrate the moment that Life Begins in our Hot 100 Countdown (even though, like Benjamin Button and the hero of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, we're aging backwards). I was never s huge UB40 fan, and I prefer the Neil Diamond original of the above song to their hit version, but I always quite liked their famous "I'm a prima donna" mondegreen. (Apparently they sing "Ivory Madonna"... but I don't believe it for a second.)
...which is always welcome here because it features Leonard Nimoy in the video. And if you're wondering how The Bangles know what a UB40 is/was, they probably didn't. The original was by Katrina & The Waves.)
Anyway, as you can imagine, there were a hell of a lot of songs with the number 40 in the title. I'm not even getting onto lyrical nods this week, unless you guys specifically brought them up. Let's see how quickly we can rattle through the list...
Starting, as if often the case, with The Swede, who kicked us off with a serious contender...
Longtime readers will know that I've always got time for Jimmy B - I may even be a parrothead. As with many of Jimmy's songs, this one has a nautical theme... yet it also tackles the mid-life crisis in a beautiful way.
Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late
Ian McNabb does a pretty cool version of that too, but sadly I can't find it on the interweb and don't have time to upload it right now.
Onto The Swede's other fine suggestions, the last of which opens up a whole avenue of possibilities...
And now I shall hand you over to our Canadian correspondent, Douglas McLaren, making a welcome return this week with a whole bunch of fine suggestions...
I felt like I had to keep up the Canadian side once again when we hit 40. A fun one, for starters, is by Canada's (former) house band...
Then there is, of course, the granddaddy of Canadian folk rock, Gordon Lightfoot, who can teach you how to be an Auctioneer. And no, we don't actually have a forty-five dollar bill here in Canada.
Perhaps that's because the original came from the USA, Douglas (it's featured here before as my dad used to be an auctioneer when I was a boy).
From Canada we then journeyed halfway round the world to Australia, with another welcome
return from my old pal Deano who's just about to celebrate a rather relevant birthday. Remember, Deano - "life begins!" Cough cough.
He describes his first offering as "a silly, but oh so much fun, one hit wonder from New Zealand." Sounds perfect!
Next, "a Tasmanian-via California-via Nashville country singer
that I have really started to enjoy recently. She’s lived those forty
years (“I got battle scars around my eyes. I got old boyfriends with
bitchy wives. I look back and I wonder why.I’m forty.”) Sadly, she died
young after a cancer
Deano's final offering comes from a classic country songwriter: "In the process of discovering Tom
T Hall at the moment, and enjoying every moment of it. What a
songwriter. In this one, he talks about a funeral, and reflects on the
fact that the dead guy owed him $40."
All of which leaves me with just a handful of my own selections that nobody else mentioned, so I thought I'd make this post even longer by counting down my Top Five 40 Songs. I actually did a Top Ten 40 Songs seven years ago when I did turn 40 and three of these (as well as a bunch of your suggestions) featured there. That was on the old blog though which exists now only in my archives, so no link, I'm afraid.
Last week, unable to find a decent song with 83 in the title, I had to go searching lyrics... and came up with ten great lyrical mentions.
This week, I considered doing the same, and there were plenty to choose from... not least of which being Asia - Heat of the Moment, as suggested by Rigid Digit.
However, I didn't need to do that in the end, as there were a number of tracks in my collection that featured 82 in the title...
All good songs... but none of them in the same class as this. From his first album, which very few people bought... at least until after his third album. Back when he was just a Dylanesque folk singer, not the future of rock 'n' roll...
