"Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets (1954)

Do you know any little girls who own white dresses with voluminous petticoats? I know just the song they can dance to!

"Rock Around the Clock" was more or less the first rock and roll song (or let's say the first one for white people), though it didn't make much of a splash until it was used over the opening credits of the film The Blackboard Jungle in 1955 (bonus Glenn Ford connection!). It was later used in American Graffiti, and then as the theme song for the first season of "Happy Days", which is how 80s brats like me got to hear plenty of it and wonder why everyone was so goddamned apple-cheeked back then.

It's a song perfectly evocative of its time -- a brightly-colored, spit-curled era of sock hops and soda jerks -- yet timeless and inexhaustible. Whereas the likes of "Teen Angel" now sound hopelessly mired in 50s goo, this song remains as fresh and spunky as the day it was recorded. (Or, uh, re-recorded, since Haley sang a shorter version specifically for "Happy Days". And since this is rock, please feel free to read "spunky" as a double entendre).

This song works because it's rock and roll to the core: playful and dangerous, fun yet menacing. Get up and dance, dammit! Those opening drum hits -- they propel you out of your seat, but maybe straight into the fist of an angry teenager. The song travels on a great journey that takes you from happy clappy to "I think the guitarist is stalking me". You count along with Bill because you're afraid not to, but then the band winds it up and lets you go....back to their van!

Go ahead, try to listen to this swing rhythm-and-blues without tapping your foot and bopping your head. Even bad dancers can dance to this one.

Put your glad rags on and join me, honey!

"Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol

Just thinking about this song gets your toe a-tappin' and your head a-bobbin'; it has that perfect blend of mellow reflection and defiant rockin' to suit almost any mood. It's a song about being so far into self-pity that you're past it, suddenly happy to bop around despite being a pathetic wallflower and make your own fun. Or masturbate. It might be about masturbation.

(I still remember my junior high health teacher singing and dancing around the room to "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Even I knew what that one was about, and he didn't? Maybe as our health teacher he was giving us some kind of secret message, the kind of message that got Joycelyn Elders booted from the Surgeon General's office (she wanted to "ask the world to dance", too). Hmmm, I hadn't thought of this. Stealth teaching in a Christian Right-dominated society.)

I read an interview with Billy Idol in his heyday, and he said that he has no problem with people who laugh at his punk posturing -- that he welcomes it, in fact, as long as they're open to his music. I can believe that a man with that perspective could write a song as matter-of-factly great as this one.

My friend Killian has a theory that songs with "la la la" sections automatically might be great. This song's excellent "oh oh oh-oh" bits bear that out, along with its perfectly-measured tempo changes and Idol's brilliant performance. He tells the story of the song from smooth to snarl to "scat" (what one set of lyrics I found on the internet hilariously called his oh oh oh-ohs) to scream with perfect ease.

Dude put toothpaste in his hair, but he could sing.

"She Blinded Me With Science", by Thomas Dolby

Thomas Dolby sounds like a fake name, like if you were getting into movies and called yourself Frank Kino or you were taking up painting and were suddenly Cal Utrecht.

Oh...according to Wikipedia, it is a fake name. Ha! That makes me like this song even more.

I hate the '80s and generally think little to nothing good came out of it. Awful music, bad books, suspect mores, terrible fashion, Iran-contra, Robert Downey Jr AND Bret Easton Ellis. It was a celebration of assholishness that seemed to endlessly ask the question, "What can I get away with?" and answer it with, "Everything."

This song ought to fit right in with the synth pop that continues to haunt my nightmares -- I mean, holy Mary, even the great Steve Miller somehow morphed his white boy blues into the mushy meaninglessness of "Abracadabra" (pure genius to rhyme it with "grab ya", though, no? No.). The '80s were cruel.

But I can listen to this song endlessly because it's full of little treats and unexpected turns: little pops and funky jumps down the scale stairs and Dolby's vocal barks and playful, actorly line readings, and the undeniably authentic yearning of his growling lament "she's poetry in motion". The lyrics tell the story with perfect economy and charm. It's synth-funk; or hiptronic?

Plus I like that Dolby is a dedicated electro-geek and is still at it, performing behind banks of keyboards. He made this song out of love, and it shows.

"Tupelo Honey", by Van Morrison

I think what makes this song so perfectly sweet and dreamily, drowsily edible is that it is just this side of irritatingly coy. It grabs the feeling of idealizing your loved one until you almost hate him a little for drawing you so close, then it squeezes that feeling out in a burst of lyrical lullaby rock.

"Mr. Brightside", The Killers

Jealousy-fueled insomnia set to an irresistible beat, complete with paranoic nightmare scenarios of the lost love with her new boytoy, capped off with disbelief that all this pain could've started with a simple kiss.

If you've never felt this perfectly awful, then you've probably never been in love; if you have, you know that in some sick way the pain of it is as beautiful as this song.

"Under Pressure", Queen w/ David Bowie

I don't even know what this song is about. Stress? Is it about stress? Soaring awesomeness, that's my guess, a.k.a exuberance. It's a song as exuberant as "Mmmm-Bop" (which is about...recycling? My friend Killian claims it is), but with balls. Exuberant balls!

Listening to Freddie Mercury's voice is like diving into a cold pool on a hot day: bracing and thrilling and a little bit overwhelming but a lot just what you needed at that moment. Pairing that force of nature with the other most defiantly and coolly theatrical voice in rock and roll was a stroke of genius, like mixing a summery cocktail of sweet and tart in ice, ice, baby.

I've never met a single person who didn't like this song. People on the street, dee dee dede, all of them, they love it. And well they should, because it's the sound of Bob Beamon soaring through Mexico City, or Michael Johnson rounding the curve, gold heels flashing. It's muscular and theme-park-ride exciting and it reminds us all to relax and recycle.

"Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye

I've never met anyone who didn't like this song. There's something magic about this one that it manages to be totally groovy without being skeevy. You can hear it in a doctor's office or a hardware store (where I heard it today) without feeling weird, unlike with other sexually frank songs that you can't hear without feeling like you can't look at the people around you without them thinking you're coming on to them. Like, say, Warrent's "Cherry Pie". I don't want to hear freakin' "Cherry Pie" when I am anywhere around other people. (I'm kind of horrified that that was my counter-example song, but it's the first one that came to mind.) Or, okay, "I Touch Myself". Did people stop writing songs like that?

I was a prudish child, but even I loved this song as soon as it first came on the radio.

Maybe it's a shame that Mr. Gaye's most accessible song is his least challenging, or maybe it's a complement to his ability to expertly convey a feeling everyone has sooner or later.

I still can't go over the fact that his own father shot him to death.

"ABC" by the Jackson 5

Michael Jackson is the ultimate test of the question, "can I separate the art from the artist? Can I go to my co-worker's swank party even though he's an arrogant prick who doesn't need more sops to his ego? Can I accept that branch of my relatives even though they're dopey and dull? Can I buy a Starbucks latte without worrying about fair trade and Third World farmers?" These are the conundrums of daily life.

The Jacksons are a family of greedy, waxen, manipulative liars. Not a nice thing to say, but molesting poor kids and fleeing to Bahrain is not a nice thing to do. ("Allegedly!", as Kathy Griffin would add.) How utterly unfair that they possess musical genius.

I can't figure out how their music (the stuff they've done both individually and collectively) can express such effortless joy and warmth when they themselves express the opposite.

"ABC"is pure joy. I feel lucky to be alive when I hear it. Isn't that a son of a bitch?

Maybe the Jacksons need to put the love into their songs because that's the only place they can find it. Maybe music is in their tell-tale hearts. Maybe they're just lucky assholes.

Other joyous Jackson songs:

"Someone to Call My Lover“ -- Janet
"I Want You Back" -- the 5
"PYT (Pretty Young Thing)“ -- Michael

It's the Jacksons, if you're nasty.

"Eat It" by Weird Al Yankovic

"Yo, Ding Dong, man. Ding Dong."

"You ain't fat. You ain't nothing!"

Weird Al at the top of his game (which is saying a lot). What a peculiar talent this guy has. Thank god he was around to keep a check on the excesses of the 80s and deliver this perfect parody song and video.

"Tears of a Clown", Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

This lyrically intricate and layered song is pure emotion swaddled in an undeniable beat. The tension-filled lyrics are fun to say and fun to sing along with.

Smokey's peculiar, robotically-reserved interpretive style perfectly fits this song of secret passions hidden beneath bland exteriors. It's Smokey to a T, isn't it? -- the hard-bargaining, egotistical songwriting genius lurking like a troll beneath the bridge of his breathy tenor.