As I mentioned previously, Prof. Klein is a bit of a stickler about getting these Numerology pieces right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Instead of chalking early attempts up to the blogging learning curve like the rest of us, he stays awake at night, shaking with regret that a number as primary as, say, 1, was not given it's proper due. So here, as with 4 on the 4th, is a retooled essay, appropriate to the holiday at hand. (JK)
Lists of the 100 greatest movies, albums, and novels tend to begin at 100 and work their way down. It’s different with number songs. Here, we begin at 1 and work our way up. At the outset, the field is so crowded that choosing the definitive #1, 2 or 3 song is a purely subjective act. With 40 or 50 good choices, it’s pretty hard to say: This is it, the Ultimate No. 1 Song in the Universe. It’s later on, when you encounter a number that offers only one or two viable choices, that the process seems imbued with some measure of objectivity. But so many songs have 1, 2, or 3 in their titles that I make no claim to objectivity for the winner’s of these slots. After that, something strange happens: 4 comes up, and suddenly you can count the contenders on one hand. And a little later 12 comes up, and it dawns on you that you have some serious digging to do. Thus, the real work of this list really begins after the initial flood of 1, 2, and 3. But what a flood it is.
One is undoubtedly the most common number found in the world’s song titles. A cursory examination of hit songs in the U.S. and UK over the past 40 years shows no less than 50 hit songs that begin with “one”—and that doesn’t even include songs that have the word somewhere else (e.g., “Just One Look”). One is such an essential concept in human existence, and it crops up in so many critical figures of speech that it looms over its numerical brethren like the monolith in 2001. No other number can come close to boasting this many sublime (and occasionally ridiculous) songs. Here’s a sampling:
“One Way or Another,” “One Fine Day,” “One Love,” “One Way Out,” “One Way Street,” “One More Time,” “One of a Kind Love Affair,” “One Bad Apple,” “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show,” “One on One,” “Little Bitty Pretty One,” “Long Cool One,” “Could You Be the One,” “This is the One,” “I’m One,” “I Am One,” “I’ve Been the One,” “Still the One,” “She’s the One,” “You’re the One” “Going for the One,” “Special One,” “You’re the One That I Want,” “The One I Love,” “The Only One I Know,” “One More Cup of Coffee” “One Too Many Mornings,” “One More Night,” “One of These Days,” One of These Nights, “One Summer Night,” “One Night in Bangkok,” “One O’Clock Jump,” “One Mint Julep,” “One Headlight,” “One Piece at a Time,” “One on One,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” “One After 909,” “One For My Baby,” “One Draw (I Want to Get High), “One Step Up,” “One More Colour,” “One of Our Submarines is Missing,” “One of These Things First,” “One of a Very Few of a Kind,” “One World,” “One Word,” “One Way Ticket,” “One Will Be the Highway,” “One Long Pair of Eyes,” “Just One Look,” “One of Those Sometimes is Now,” “Just One of Those Things,” “My One and Only Love,” “You’re the One,” “Inspection Check One,” “One Tin Soldier” (The Legend of Billy Jack).
As great as these songs are, they all lack something crucial: They aren’t about one or oneness; they’re about a headlight, a tin soldier, a night in Bangkok. Thus, in order to whittle down this enormous field, I’m only going to consider songs with a pronounced sense of one-ishness. And still, there are tons of choices. “One Two Three Four,” the infectious single from Feist’s much-lauded The Promise, fulfills the criterion by using 1 as a number. The problem is—and I know this may sound churlish—1 in this case is no more important than 2, 3, or 4. Manfred Mann’s “5-4-3-2-1,” “1-2-3 Red Light” by 1910 Fruitgum Co., and others of that ilk share this same basic shortcoming. (Actually it’s their only shortcoming, and I apologize for exposing it.) “One,” the mighty antiwar epic from Metallica, never mentions one at all, so that won’t fly.
Songs called “Number One” are legion, making strange bedfellows of Joni Mitchell, John Legend, Styx, Pharrell, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Deep Blue Something (remember them?), Etta James, Helloween, Martha Reeves, and my favorite “Number One,” the one by Alison Goldfrapp. “Looking Out for Number 1” is a title employed by BTO, UFO, the 5th Dimension, and Travis Tritt. Also worth noting is “No. 1 Blind” (Levolour/Lev-o-lour”) by Veruca Salt, “1” by Throbbing Gristle, and a bevy of songs called simply “One” –by the likes of the Bee Gees, Busta Rhymes, Creed, Dokken, Vince Gill, Ghostface Killa, Alanis Morissette, and Sunny Day Real Estate. (For those of you planning on making a #1 Songs Mixtape, I recommend segueing from “No. 1 Dominator” by Top into “Number 1 Lowest Common Denominator” by Todd Rundgren—and honestly, not because it rhymes, just because it just happens to flow perfectly.)
For me, it comes down to a trio of great songs that wear “one” proudly on their sleeves. (And “Number 1” by the Rutles isn’t one of them.) “One” is among the greatest songs in the U2 catalog. The slow building arrangement showcases the band’s individual parts beautifully, leading to a truly joyful release, and the lyric is sharp and powerful, however you read it. It’s the kind of song that even the band’s detractors might grudgingly admit digging. “One” is U2’s most covered song, with versions by Johnny Cash, Mary J. Blige, Warren Haynes, Joe Cocker, and most alarmingly, Jim Dubois and Ethan Chandler of the Bank of America, (which itself earned a cover by David Cross.)
“One” (as in “is the loneliest number”)—a magical pop single with a concept everybody gets—is also one of a handful of songs about a number that didn’t debut on Schoolhouse Rock. In 1968, “One” was the first in a run of 21 consecutive chart hits for Three Dog Night. In Aimee Mann’s version of the song, which is prominently featured in Magnolia (1999), the song’s essential charms are maintained without the falsetto bathos of the original.
The only critique I can offer of “One” by U2, Aimee Mann or Three Dog Night is that they are all seriously earthbound. A mad quest needs to begin in a high and exalted place, and you can’t get any higher than “The No. 1 Song in Heaven” by Sparks. I have another reason for choosing Sparks. It’s this: After first witnessing Sparks—pre-puberty, at soccer camp, on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert—I went out and bought my first album. I had other records, of course, but Propaganda was the first one I went out and bought with my own money. I’m proud of it now, but for a long time chose to withhold from my teenage friends how impressed I was by the sight of the prancing, falsetto-voiced, staccato-singing Russell Mael and his winsome, Hitler-mustachioed, keyboard-playing brother Ron, and their performance of “Reinforcements.” The song was just so stuffed: stuffed with layers of fat glam guitars; stuffed with tasty words like “subterfusion,” “coup d’etat,” and “Denise” (the name of the girl I was obsessed with at the time); and all of it tricked out in a baroque Queen-like arrangement featuring multiple buildups and breakdowns. The rest of the record did not disappoint: there were more interesting words (potentate, impetus, ornithologist ) and an abundance of astounding Les Paul hooks, not to mention the drum stylings of Norman “Dinky” Diamond, whose VH-1 profile beckons to be made. The highly enlightened music writer Jim O’Rourke will forever be my hero for calling Propaganda “the standard to which I hold myself and everything else” and “one of the few perfect pop albums.”
Sparks had a go at nearly every musical idiom that cropped up in the past three decades. The L.A. natives never tried grunge, but they aced the exam for lethal glam rock, orchestral bubblegum, and calibrated slabs of oomph like “No. 1 Song in Heaven” (1979). When they decided to go disco, the Maels went straight to the top, enlisting the Eno of Disco himself, Giorgio Moroder. Not surprisingly, the entire platter pulsates like a finely crafted soul mechanism delivered from on high.
The song filters down, down through the cloudsIt reaches the earth and winds all around
And then it breaks up in millions of ways
It goes la, la, la, la-- la, la la la la…
Sparks - "No. 1 Song in Heaven"
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The higher the digit, the lonelier the climb.
Previously: No. 1, 2-4, , 4 (redux), 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 , 47, 48, 49 , 50, 51, 52, 53, 54
