The three hundred and second song: Black Night - Deep Purple
This feels like a road trip track - a group of travelers on their Harleys driving across endless American plains. The music is loud, straight forward but it drives you on. The lyrics were written to be incidental and it shows - there's a few words that jump out fitting the theme, but they don't matter as much. For that genre, it suits it well and the solo songs alone drive it well enough.
The three hundred and third song: War - Edwin Starr
Originally a Temptations song, the single release was tied to a performer whose career would not be ruined by it. Adding a James Brown sound it, we get a more soul, looser and because of it angrier sound to it. There's a lot of energy in it, driving the structured chorus to jump out from the chaotic verses surrounding it. It's a powerful effect that sustains the song well and the sing drags you through all of it.
The three hundred and fourth song: (To Be) Young, Gifted, and Black - Bob and Marcia
Here we get another protest song, aimed at civil rights, but here adding a Jamaican band to a Nina Simone originally. It's interesting to hear the normally quite energetic, frenetic sounds and instruments of reggae applied to a more subdued, quiet song focused more on a message and it butts heads here sometimes. It works decently well though, even if I'm told it doesn't hold up to the original.
The three hundred and fifth song: Ball of Confusion- The Temptations
Whereas War was a bit too much for them earlier, here the Temptations still show a larger connection with the political at the time, although possibly in a way that's trying to be more open. We're getting more soul and take a step further for that genre, going bigger and creative once more with, still, a lot of energy. There was a lot of anger at the time (as there is now) and it feels like these songs are giving a voice to it.
The three hundred and sixth song: Avec le temps - Leo Ferre
So what's going on in France at the same time? We still mostly seem to get the slower chansons coming from there. While I'm sure rock won't have passed them by, I guess they wouldn't last as long and that's why we have this sad lovesong instead. The language and music do a lot to convey the sadness and it reaches you from the start, even without keeping up with the lyrics. It's a lovely, sweet song on the whole.
The three hundred and seventh song: The Man Who Sold the World - David Bowie
And so another big musical influencer enters the list. Produced from beginning to end, there's something esoteric from the rock song, using a lot of electronic sounds and sudden jumps, with some now odd sounds keeping up in the background, the changing of different rattles moving you between songs. There's a differnet sound to this, its own niche that I haven't quite identified before, that is good to listen to.
The three hundred and eighth song: Awaiting on You All - George Harrison
It feels like, now the Beatles are over, that George Harrison goes back a bit more to their roots rather than their later work, and here crosses it with Phil Spector's big productions. It's a good, swinging song that has a lot of happiness and exuberance in there that's clearly missing from earlier in this batch of songs - then again, you couldn't say that he wasn't at least partially in the establishment at this point. Despite its big sound, this song just can't help but make you feel good on some level.
The three hundred and ninth song: Northern Sky - Nick Drake
And now some folk music in between to calm us down - together with Leo Ferre the two smallest songs in this nine, and the lowest energy. Here that's intentional, based on Nick Drake's style, but it is a mental shift. The music was improvised separately from the writing of the track, but it works here to evoke a more magical work than just a man and a guitar would create, and it's that dreamlike quality that appeals to me here.
The three hundred and tenth song: Maybe I’m Amazed - Paul McCartney
Paul's first album following the Beatles has this on it, on what sounds like is a mostly self-produced work. There's something sweet and really well meant in the lyrics of this song, clearly dedicated to his then-wife Linda. It feels really real, something that was often missing from Beatles tracks and it becomes a lot more personal because of that. THat's what works, even if musically it doesn't feel as challenging. It's solid, which feels like it has its own appeal here.