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Your First Favorite Song


preahko
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Okay, so one of my regular pleasure-reading websites is The Onion's AV Club, lots of interesting pop culture commentary on music, film, etc. (and, unlike the regular "Onion," actually based in reality, haha)...

 

They have these regular "Staff Q&A" features, which are sometimes quite interesting, and the latest was something to the effect of "what was your earliest memory of a favorite pop song?"

 

Now, I was born in 1959 (I know, a mere babe compared to lots of you guys, hahaha), and the majority of AV Club staffers were born in the early 80s (at best); the comments on the original article (always at least half the fun) are mostly from kiddies born late 80s to early 90s, yaaaawn...

 

Also, note in advance that the vast majority of the regular AV Club readers/commenters fall strongly into the "hipster douchebag" category...

 

So, I put the question to you august gentlemen: what is your first memory of a pop song that you got really excited about?

 

First of all, here's the Onion AV/Club Article to which I refer:

 

Link

 

...and to get things started, here's mine:

 

My first clear memories of pop songs were early 60s things I heard on the radio in my dad's car, stuff like Petula Clark's "Downtown," Roger Miller's "King of the Road" and "Watching All the Girls Go By" by whomever did that (too lazy to Google it)...

 

Then at about age 9 or 10 I got into dancing to my dad's Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass records, feeling I was somehow "hip" (no, I'm NOT proud of this, haha)...

 

But the first song I remember really "liking" (in terms of waiting anxiously for it to come on the radio, and learning all the lyrics and singing along) was the Dionne Warwick rendition of Bacharach's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again"...

 

In my defense, in the 70s I was into Alice Cooper and T. Rex, in the 80s, Sonic Youth and Scratch Acid, and by the 90s I was producing my own "dark ambient/noise," hahaha...

 

 

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Yellow Submarine and Puff the Magic Dragon before I knew what it meant.

Yes, mine to was Puff the Magic Dragon :beer:

 

And it never meant puffing on a reefer, that's urban legend.

 

The writer himself has been quoted as saying "The lyrics for "Puff, the Magic Dragon" were based on a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton, a 19-year-old Cornell University student. Lipton was inspired by an Ogden Nash poem titled "Custard the Dragon", about a "realio, trulio little pet dragon.

 

After the song's initial success, speculation arose that the song contained veiled references to smoking marijuana. For example, the word "paper" in the name of Puff's human friend (Jackie Paper) was said to be a reference to rolling papers, and the word "dragon" was interpreted as "draggin'," i.e. inhaling smoke; similarly, the name "Puff" was alleged to be a reference to taking a "puff" on a joint. The supposition was claimed to be common knowledge in a letter by a member of the public to The New York Times in 1984.

 

The authors of the song have repeatedly rejected this urban legend and have strongly and consistently denied that they intended any references to drug use. Peter Yarrow has frequently explained that "Puff" is about the hardships of growing older and has no relationship to drug-taking. He has also said of the song that it "never had any meaning other than the obvious one" and is about the "loss of innocence".

 

On one occasion, during a live performance, Yarrow mocked the drug-related interpretations by reciting his own tongue-in-cheek drug-related reinterpretation of "The Star-Spangled Banner", and ended by saying, "You can wreck anything with that kind of idiotic analysis

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