Great POP songs

[Wombat]

I can't understand the restriction to music that is essentially cheesy. That's just an artefact of the way the business has gone for the last 15 years or so. Go back far enough—early Madonna (Poppa Don't Preach) and Cindi Lauper (Girls Just Wanna have Fun, Time After Time) and you've got pure pop which is really good.

The 60s were the best period for really good pure pop. The Hollies produced hit after hit of great tracks. The girl group scene of the early 60s produced dozens of classics, and was teh hidden ingredient in the English beat scene. Here's a few favourites, not all girls and girl groups, but most:

Lesley Gore—Maybe I Know
Betty Everett—It's in His Kiss
The Cookies—Chains (NOT the Beatles version)
The Crystals—Da Doo Ron Ron
The Crystals— Then he Kissed Me
Darlene Love—Wait Till My Bobby Gets Home
Charlie and Inez Fox—Mockingbird
Sandy Shaw—Always Something There to Remind Me
Sandy Shaw—Long Live Love
Unit 4 + 2—Concrete and Clay
Unit 4 + 2—Never Been In Love Like This Before
Mary Wells—My Guy
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles—You Really Got a Hold On Me (NOT the Beatles version)
The Hollies—I'm Alive
Roy Orbison—Leah
The Yardbirds—For Your Love
The Exciters—Tell Him
The Velvelettes—Needle in a Haystack
Earl-Jean—I'm Into Something Good (NOT Herman's Hermits version)
The Ad Libs—The Boy From New York City
The Shangri Las—Remember Walking in the Sand
The Beatles—Love Me Do (at last) and all their early hits

Others like Dionne Warwicke and Dusty Springfield are too soulful to count as pure pop. One or two I've chosen are borderline but the words clinch it.

[djm]

You forgot Leader of the Pack, Ahab the Arab, Sugar Sugar, Wait a Minute Mr. Postman, The Locomotion, Teenager in Love, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, etc.

djm

[Wombat]

You forgot Leader of the Pack, Ahab the Arab, Sugar Sugar, Wait a Minute Mr. Postman, The Locomotion, Teenager in Love, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, etc.

djm

Leaving out Ahab and Sugar, the rest are all good; just not amongst my absolute favourites. Literally hundreds of great pop songs back then.

[djm]

'Sall pop music to me, as were Doris Day, Perry Como and Andy Williams in their day. "Pop" is for popular, not "good". One does not necessarily include the other, and your opinion of either may not necessarily jive with anyone else's. All we can say for sure was that, at one time or another, these tunes were "popular".

djm

[Wombat]

"Pop" is for popular, not "good". One does not necessarily include the other, and your opinion of either may not necessarily jive with anyone else's.

I wouldn't expect it to. Well, I'd expect a lot of people to like some of my selections but everybody to prefer some songs I didn't include to some I did. But we were asked to say what moved us.

I could easily have given a list 20 times the length of the one I did but it would soon cease to be interesting.

[djm]

The request was to confess to the cheesy pop tunes you like, not list what you like that is not a cheesy nor a pop tune. I like lots of cheese, even though it is not good for me.

djm

[Wombat]

The request was to confess to the cheesy pop tunes you like, not list what you like that is not a cheesy nor a pop tune. I like lots of cheese, even though it is not good for me.

djm

I think there's the tiny hint of cheese in all of them. Perhaps a good Stilton. But cheese nonetheless.

[buddhu]

The cheesy thing was just to emphasise that I hoped people wouldn't just post the usual lists of credible, elitist, deliberately obscure and exclusive stuff that usually crops up in lists of favourite songs.

I wanted to avoid posing, posturing and pretension. Just hold up yer hands and admit "I love Donny and Marie, and I'm proud of it... or at least reasonably comfortable with it"

[brianc]

The cheesy thing was just to emphasise that I hoped people wouldn't just post the usual lists of credible, elitist, deliberately obscure and exclusive stuff that usually crops up in lists of favourite songs.

I wanted to avoid posing, posturing and pretension. Just hold up yer hands and admit "I love Donny and Marie, and I'm proud of it... or at least reasonably comfortable with it"

OK... "The Monkees" was the first record I ever owned, and I pretty much wore it out.

[missy]

I wanted to avoid posing, posturing and pretension. Just hold up yer hands and admit "I love Donny and Marie, and I'm proud of it... or at least reasonably comfortable with it"

"I'm a little bit County, I'm a little bit Rock and Roll...."

Sorry, even though he's the same age as I am (so is Michael Jackson), I've never been able to stomach Donny. I was at the state fair one year when they were there - and all these 10 year old girls were walking around with "I heart Donny" buttons and shirts on - gag me.

My favorite Monkee was Peter Tork.

However, I did get a postcard from Barry Cowsill!!!! (well, it SAID is was from him.....)

And I will own up to having the Partridge Family LP (I think I love you.....)

I only got 16 Magazine for the Dark Shadows related stuff!!!!!

If we're gonna talk about 60's songs, can we do death songs? Last Kiss. Dead Man's Curve. Leader of the Pack. Teen Angel.

[cowtime]

If we're gonna talk about 60's songs, can we do death songs? Last Kiss. Dead Man's Curve. Leader of the Pack. Teen Angel

Only if you really, really liked them.

OK, let's see if I can recall any 60s pop that I liked good enough to buy. Hah! I'll go look at the stack of 45s- Hmmm, I had better taste back then than I realized. Most would be considered "classic hits" now. From one stack, here's the cheezy 45's I admit to owning, ca: 1960s:


Del Shannon- My Little Runaway

Paul Revere and the Raiders- Kicks

OC Smith- Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp

The Jaggerz- The Rapper

Bananarama- Venus

Strawberry Alarm Clock- Incense& Peppermint

Ides of March- Vehicle

Kasenetz-Datz Singing Orchestral Circus- Quick Joey Small

[Jack]

Everything by Madonna!

[djm]

Everything by Madonna!

I blame it on the metal brassieres. :roll:

djm