Chirpin' Bird

For Kelly, the ideal pop song is three minutes of catchy aural narrative, inevitable ("the three minutes are so well constructed that they feel totally inevitable to me"), and "chirpy."

My initial parameters are set for thinking about the perfect pop song. Because I'm probably a little OCD (I used to put my money in order by serial number, and, yes, I stopped doing this many years ago), I had to add extra guidelines for myself so that I'm not throwing in a movement from a Bach cello suite or "In the Mood" because, hey, they were popular music at one time!

My additional guides are these:

--I'm going to focus on American artists. So none of the fabulous pop music from around the world fits here. No Gainsbourg, Burman, Bowie, Cure, etc. Absolutely no Beatles.

--Genres are tricky things: helpful one moment and meaningless the next. Regardless, I'm going to attempt to stick to "pop" music, so no Godfathers of Soul or Kings of Rock and Roll or Queens of Soul. No Public Enemy, Hank Williams, Sr, or Bob Wills, even though deep down, especially in terms of favorites, I think they go here. But that's another debate that I've opted out of for the moment. This will also eliminate bands like the Residents, who write pop songs about pop songs. So, yes, I'll do my best to eliminate "art" songs, which oddly also eliminates Weird Al and Ray Stevens.

--The Neil Peart Factor. This is not a "best of," so I'm going after songs that have worked their magic on me. A "best of" would be asking me to think about this in a very different way and to make stricter categorizations. I love and hate best of lists. Most of these kinds of lists are just favorites lists sprinkled with authority, but make no sense in the larger scheme of things.

I call this the "Neil Peart Factor" because of the continuous arguments I had in high school and college about this "best of" idea. Of course, everybody knows that Neil Peart is the best drummer in the world. Except he can't swing like Max Roach, Elvin Jones, or Tony Williams and certainly wouldn't ever play in bands like Cephalic Carnage or Slayer, which have great drummers in their own right. Also, I've never heard something from Peart as sublime as Joey Baron playing with brushes. I actually love Rush and I think Peart is the best drummer . . . in Rush.

Peart can be anybody's favorite drummer, but there really is no "best."

Enough already. One more rule.

--I can, and most likely will, violate any and all distinctions, rules, parameters, etc. I've set for myself. That's just the way it goes.

So, on with the show...