What the What?: The 436th Greatest Song of All Time

 

The more I write about Rolling Stone's list, "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time," the more confused I get.

I'm not puzzled that songs I've never heard before are on the list when those songs are from the 90s and later. (I stopped paying much attention to pop radio sometime in the 80s.) But if the song was recorded in 1967, I expect to be familiar with it...since it's such a great song and all.

However...

Song number 436 absolutely befuddles me.

It was recorded in 1967, but not only had I never heard it before, I had never heard of the group that recorded it, namely, Love. Yeah, a group named Love from 1967 and they are a complete mystery to me.

According to Rolling Stone and songfacts.com, the song is a tribute to the composer's mother, who was a flamenco dancer. While I can certainly hear the Latin influence in the music, the lyric contains no reference to any mother figure I've ever encountered:

Yeah, I said it's all right

I won't forget

All the times I waited patiently for you

I think you'll do (just what) you choose to do

And I will be alone again tonight, my dear

Yeah, I heard a funny thing

Somebody said to me

You know that I could be in love, with almost everyone

I think that people are the greatest fun

And I will be alone again tonight, my dear

MAYBE the first verse could be sung by a long-suffering mother to her teenage son, but the second verse sounds more like a proposition than a frustrated sigh. Ole'!

And the title of the song puts me into an OCD-related spasm: "Alone Again Or".

OR WHAT?!!?

But maybe I shouldn't be surprised, what with Love's only song to make the charts in the U.S. was the Number 33 song, "7 And 7 Is".

IS WHAT?!!?