Hotel California (The Eagles). 40 Songs for 40 years, 1982

As all hipsters know, liking the Eagles is irredeemably lame, and in 1982, I was not cool in any way. I did, however, think that the idea of a band led by a drummer was pretty neat.

Oddly enough, the thing I remember most about this album is that I got it for Christmas on cassette tape along with my trusty Sony Walkman TCS 310. I remember listening to Hotel California in my new Walkman, crammed into the back of my dad’s sports car as we drove to Christmas dinner with my granny.

Sony Walkman TCS 310

Dollar for dollar, that Walkman was the best audio equipment purchase ever. It was built like a tank (admittedly a mixed virtue in portable electronics), but it proved to be nearly indestructible, and the integrated microphone came in handy for a budding musician. I recorded hundreds of hours of performances and practice sessions on that thing and listened to thousands of hours of music. It finally succumbed midway through college.

Watching the Wheels (John Lennon). 40 Songs for 40 Years, 1981

As a huge Beatles fan, I was shocked by John Lennon’s murder, and it’s the first public tragedy I remember. The publicity surrounding it led me to ask for a copy of Double Fantasy, which had just been released.

I don’t know what—as a nine-year-old—I found so compelling about Watching the Wheels, a song about abandoning the quest for achievement. It would be several years before anxiety and ambition became a part of my life, and several more before I questioned whether they should be.

Now that I’m well into middle age, the fantasy of just letting things go is a lot more potent. John Lennon was about my age when he recorded this song, and I wonder how much of the melancholy in this song stems from knowing—at some level anyway—that his best work was behind him.

Love Stinks (The J. Geils Band). 40 Songs for 40 Years, 1980

Growing up in Casper, Wyoming, there was only one FM rock radio station. I used to listen to it when I came home for lunch from the school down the street. One day, they had a quiz: “Can you name the movie that featured this song?”. I immediately recognized the opening piano riff from Hey Bulldog by the Beatles, which I knew came from Yellow Submarine (I’d just gotten the record for Christmas).

I begged my Mom to call the radio station. She looked up the number in the phone book, while I jumped up and down worrying that I was going to miss my chance. When we got through, I got to talk to the actual DJ, who told me that I had the right answer. I was caller number two—thankfully the first caller got it wrong. He asked me if I came up with the answer by myself (me: “of course!”) and how old I was. I can still hear his amused reply: “Seven??!! All right!”.

When I returned to school, I told everyone about the best lunch ever. And after school my mom drove me down to the station where I got to meet the radio station staff (both of them) and retrieve my prize: a radio-station copy of the just-released album Love Stinks by The J. Geils Band. I then drove my parents crazy by listening to this record nearly every day for months.

The Rainbow Connection (The Muppets). 40 songs for 40 years, 1979

It’s hard to believe that this iconic song from The Muppet Movie didn’t win the Oscar for Best Song (which went to the less enduring It Goes Like It Goes from the movie Norma Rae). I would have been indignant if I’d known this at age seven. Even today, I can sing pretty much the entire Muppet Show and Muppet Movie records top to bottom from memory.

Looking back, I’m particularly impressed with the levels of humor at work in the Muppets. Take Fozzy Bear (please!—rimshot). To a young kid who laughs at knock-knock jokes, he’s a riot. For grown-ups, the overwhelming corniness of the jokes themselves is the funny part. It’s hard enough to make something funny for one audience; making something that is funny to two different audiences in totally different ways illustrates the kind of ambition that has made The Muppets such a classic.

Of course, this song isn’t funny at all. It’s as poignant as My Funny Valentine, even if it is sung by a frog.

Waterloo (Abba). 40 Songs for 40 Years, 1978

My grandma was extremely proud of her Scandinavian heritage, and no matter the topic, she found some way to relate it to Scandinavian culture. Each time I visited, we found our way to Ballard (Seattle’s Scandinavian neighborhood) and the Nordic Heritage Museum, ideally during Viking Days, the museum’s annual celebration. I always had a blast there, especially because Grandma let me run free, figuring that I couldn’t get into much trouble surrounded by so many wholesome Scandinavians (about half of whom apparently knew Grandma and kept an eye on me). Grandma loved a good party, and she really loved dancing, and Viking Days provided both. Grandma could polka and schottische with the best of them, and she usually commandeered me for a reluctant (on my part) tour or two around the dance floor.

In other words, Grandma was a sucker for Scandinavian dance music, so when she heard about a Swedish group that had become an international dance music sensation, she knew just what to get me for Christmas. And that’s how I ended up with a couple of Abba albums. When my parents asked her why she’d sent me these records—which explored some themes that strained my parents’ ability for euphemistic explanation—she said that Abba were “nice Swedish kids” and told my parents to get over it.