My favourite songs of all time
by
Steve Wallis
My five favourite songs of all time are the following (track – artist and album in brackets):
Heaven (Candlelight Mix) – DJ Sammy and Yanou featuring Do (DJ Sammy: Heaven – US import)
If – Paul Heaton (Fat Chance)
Not Like You – The Bangles (The Best Of The Bangles)
A Slow Waltz For
Three of the songs are overtly political, and I include the lyrics below, taken from the album booklets:
If – Paul Heaton (Fat Chance)
If God comes down
Which he won’t
Half the do-gooders
Will find they don’t
If Jesus Christ’s alive
Which he’s not
He’d get rid of
Every follower that he’s got
Don’t do what you can just say that you would
As long as it, makes you feel so good
Cleverly alter thou shalt into should
As long as it, makes you feel good
Does it rack you with guilt
Does it rack you with guilt
A freezing cold body would die for a quilt
Does it rack you with guilt
Does it rack you with guilt
If the Messiah
Is due back down
How come the highest priests
Dressed up as clowns
If the Bible’s made up
Which it is
The last laugh can’t be ours
It must be his
Bleed countries dry till they pray for a flood
As long as it makes you feel good
Bid them farewell leave their faces in the mud
As long as it makes you feel good
Water to wine or gold into blood
As long as it makes you feel good
You’d feed the 5,000 if the spotlight gained could
Make your self look bloody good
White unborns worth ten black workers blood spilt
Don’t let that rack you with guilt
New roof for church whilst new houses not built
Don’t let that rack you with guilt
Please don’t show your soul to me,
I think I’d see the light shine through.
And please don’t greet me on the street,
I’d like to see a world without you.
Chorus:
‘Cause I’ve found there’s nothing more
That I could say to you,
Nothing I could do to change your mind,
Change your ways and your tune.
Please don’t change your uniform
And start to mourn the thousands dead.
And please wear what you’ve always worn
And don’t be drawn by what I’ve said.
Chorus:
So please don’t feel you have to sway
Or move away from how you feel
And please say what you mean to say
And always stay with a heart of steel.
A Slow Waltz For
Last night I heard of the death of a stranger to me
‘Though I’ve known many more of her kind
Scattered in bed-sits and in ‘hard-to-let’ flats
And anywhere else they could find
Half a world distant for half a life here
With the certainty at the day’s end
Still they’d have to return
While something remained to defend
There’s a slow waltz for
All down through the years
Of Pinochet, murder and dread
With no quick step solution
Just the will to resist
‘Til the last decent Chilean is dead
All the stencils and the arguments, the smoking and the damp
These were the things that I came to resent
Until a, “Who’s going to miss me if I miss now and again?”
Soon came to mean that I never went
But drinking, I’d be there, my fist in the air
‘To consolidate we must advance’
Now a cold wind from
In suffering there just is no romance.
Last night I heard of the death of a stranger to me
And I didn’t ask how she died
Because the way that she lived was all that we need to know
While we’ve still got time to decide
How I came to select these five songs is quite interesting. I have put many of my albums on my Sony VAIO laptop’s hard disc, using Sony’s SonicStage program. This is really handy since I can play lots of great tracks by double clicking on them, rather than having to keep inserting CDs.
SonicStage has a feature called “Favorites” which allows you to select your favourite tracks and put them in one place, so that you can easily play them in the order you have selected them. SonicStage somehow put the Tracy Chapman song “Talkin’ Bout A Revolution” in the list of favourites, without me deciding I wanted it there. There is a dreadful mistake in that song –