The Global 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: Page 5
Visit the post for more.
https://s0.wp.com/i/webclip.png
World Listening Post
The Global 500 Greatest Songs of All Time

Why this list? When I launched World Listening Post in 2015, my goal was the same as that of myriad music publications and websites, with one exception: I would review new albums, but I would concentrate on music that encouraged readers to explore beyond the linguistic frontier. In service of that goal, this site has featured artists performing in more than 100 languages.

But focusing on new releases left me little time for listening to or writing about the great artists and songs of all eras. To right the balance, I conceived this project.

This is hardly the first list to present the most exceptional songs of all time, but I believe it is the first that represents a serious effort to cover the entire world. Many lists that purport to catalogue the greatest songs are fun and informative—and all of them to date have been shortsighted. Most confine themselves to a few genres; some, even as they emphasize the “all time” claim, cover just the past few years. But the worst flaw is in the lists that limit themselves largely, or even exclusively, to songs in a single language—usually English.

Fact check: English is the primary language of just six percent of the world’s population. Adding those who speak it as a second language, the figure climbs to about 15 percent. This list reflects global reality.

Each of the 500 entries has the following elements:

Name of artist(s) and song title

Lyric and music credits

The song’s country of origin; language; and performance year*

A video or audio clip

A brief comment, followed by a lyric excerpt

My aim with this project has been to judge, as faithfully as possible, all the songs and artists I surveyed in the context of their own cultural milieu, and to imagine what music critics and listeners in any given country or language community would consider the greatest.

This list not definitive—and I wouldn’t trust a list that presented itself as such. If anything, I hope my effort to produce an inclusive list will prompt others to undertake the same exercise. If I can offer one insight it would be that the most one can hope for is a list that is impressionistic. In two years of research I have concluded that there must be at least 10,000 songs that merit inclusion in a roster of the 500 best.

Given the project’s scope, I often found myself on untrodden or lightly beaten paths to ensure accuracy. I looked for multiple sources on every element of every entry, but sometimes a single source was all I found. While I welcome readers to question my choices of songs and rankings, I would especially appreciate corrections of song details and lyric translations.

I could not have produced this list in two years, or even twenty, without help. It would be impossible to single out all those who inspired me, but I would like to thank a few of the artists, producers, publicists, reviewers and friends who gave me critical assistance. For their music suggestions, input and encouragement, thanks to Dan Rosenberg, Ila Paliwal, Paul Fisher, Dhara Bakshi, Sam Debell, Jeff Meshel, Adriana Groisman, Alberto Oliva and Joseph Lowin. Thanks to Ryan McCarthy, my web designer and developer. Thanks to Angie Lemon, who asked me a question in an interview a few years back that lit the spark for this project. And eternal thanks to Suelly Rodrigues Tigay, my muse, Portuguese teacher and life companion. — Alan Tigay

* Where appropriate, artists/songs are identified by multiple countries, by country-plus-region, or by self-identification. Performance year is not necessarily the year of composition

One of the most prolific and renowned Latin artists of all time, Gabriel wrote some 1,800 songs and sold 40 million records during his lifetime. He originally wrote Así Fue for the Spanish singer Isabel Pantoja, whose 1988 recording was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic. Gabriel didn’t release a cover of his own song until 1998, when it won many awards. (On his 2015 album Los Dúo, Gabriel and Pantoja performed the song together.) The song, which has also been covered by numerous other artists, portrays a protagonist telling a former lover why they can never be together again.

I’m sorry to make you cry/I’m sorry to make you suffer/But it’s not in my hands/I’ve fallen in love/I’m sorry to cause you pain/I’m sorry to say goodbye/How can I tell her that I love you when she asks me?/I told her that I don’t/I’m honest with her and with you/I love her, and I have forgotten about you/If you wish, we can still be friends/Don’t hold on to something impossible…/You know well that it wasn’t my fault/You left without saying a thing/And even if I cried like never before/I was still in love with you/But you left, and if you were going to return, you never told me/That’s how it was/That’s how it went

Gainsbourg was a larger-than-life figure in French music and his stature has only grown since his untimely death (at age 62) in 1991. He wrote more than 500 songs and was especially noted for the wordplay of his lyrics. He composed Je t’aime… in 1967 and sang it with Brigitte Bardot, but didn’t release the song. By 1969 he was in a relationship with Jane Birkin and re-recorded it with her; the song was a seething success in France, became the first foreign-language hit to reach number one in the U.K. and was banned in several countries because of its sexual nature. Many years later, Birkin told The Telegraph, “I only sang it because I didn’t want anybody else to sing it [with Serge]”.

I love you, I love you/Oh yes, I love you/Me neither/Oh my love/Like a vacillating wave/I go, I come and I go/Between your loins/I come and I go/Between your loins/And I hold myself back/I love you, I love you/Oh yes, I love you/Me neither/Oh my love/You are the wave/I am a desert island/You go, you come and you go/Between my loins/And I’m joining you/I love you, I love you/(Heavy breathing interlude)/You go, you come and you go/Between my loins/And I’m joining you/I love you, I love you/Oh yes, I love you/Physical love, for its own sake/I go, I come and I go/Between your loins/I come and I go/I hold myself back…/Me neither…/No! Come! Now!

Bonnie Raitt has earned 14 Grammy Awards (as of 2024), and although she received critical acclaim early in her career, which began with her first album in 1971, it wasn’t until her tenth album (Nick of Time, in 1989) that her commercial success matched her glowing reviews. Nothing sealed her legacy more than I Can’t Make You Love Me, which appears not only on numerous “greatest songs of all time” lists but, notably, number eight on Mojo magazine’s “100 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. Raitt recorded the song in a single studio take, observing that the song was so sad she couldn’t recapture the emotion. In an interview on NPR some years later, she said, I Can’t Make You Love Me is no picnic. I love that song, and so does the audience. It’s almost a sacred moment when you share that depth of pain.”

Turn down the lights, turn down the bed/Turn down these voices inside my head/Lay down with me, tell me no lies/Just hold me close, don’t patronize/Don’t patronize me/’Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t/You can’t make your heart feel somethin’ it won’t/Here in the dark, in these final hours/I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power/But you won’t, no you won’t/’Cause I can’t make you love me, if you don’t/I’ll close my eyes, then I won’t see/The love you don’t feel when you’re holdin’ me/Mornin’ will come, and I’ll do what’s right/Just give me till then to give up this fight/And I will give up this fight

Aurelio Martinez is the leading cultural ambassador of the Garifuna—a people of mixed African and Amerindian heritage speaking an Indigenous Caribbean language. The Garifuna emerged on the island of St. Vincent but were eventually expelled by the British in the eighteenth century, shipped to the Central American coast, eventually spreading from Belize to Nicaragua. Aurelio (who uses only his first name professionally) is a singer-songwriter and musician, and also a former Honduran congressman. He was a protegé and partner of the pioneering Garifuna artist Andy Palacio, from Belize, whose leadership mantle Aurelio inherited when Palacio died. In Yalifu, Aurelio highlights a more recent Garifuna migration—for economic opportunity—imagining himself as a pelican flying to see his father who has gone to work in New York.

Father, where are you, my father?/I am waiting for you/Pelican, give me your wings so I can fly there/The sun sets over the horizon and I am waiting for you, Father/The wind is blowing. I am here and you have still not arrived/I am here on the seashore, waiting for you/Father, where are you? Out at sea and I am here on the shore/Waiting for you, oh father! Where are you?/Oh, Father! How sad I am here in the afternoon/Sister, Mother, where is my father? I am waiting for him

Divanhana is dedicated to sevdah, the urban traditional music of Bosnia & Herzegovina. Established in 2009 by students at the Sarajevo Music Academy, the group enriches its repertoire with classical, jazz and pop elements and mixes its trad repertoire with original compositions. Emina is based on real people. It takes place in the old town of Mostar, where the poet Aleksa Šantić lived. Next door to his sister’s house lived a Muslim family and in the neighbors’ garden he saw the beautiful Emina Sefić, whose father was a prominent imam. The song’s lyrics were first published in a literary journal in 1902 and the became the basis for one of the most popular sevdalinka songs of all time, performed by many artists over the past century. In 2010 a bronze statue of Emina was unveiled in Mostar. The song also has the distinction of touching all three of Bosnia’s communities: It is a poem by a Serb writer, focused on a Bosniak Muslim woman, both living in a neighborhood that is today inhabited mostly by Croats. For this reason—and for the song’s cultural importance—its text has been proposed (as reported on the news site Balkan Insight) as the lyrics for Bosnia’s wordless national anthem. Postscript: Emina’s great-granddaughter, Alma Ferović is a renowned Bosnian soprano, having collaborated with Elton John and A.R. Rahman, among others.

Last night when I came back from the warm hammam/I passed by the old imam’s garden/And there in the garden, in the shadow of a jasmine/Emina stood with an ewer in her hand…/Wind blew from the branches, and down her stunning back/It untwined her thick braids/Her hair started smelling, like blue hyacinths/And to me a storm started inside my head…/The old poet has died, Emina has died/The empty garden of jasmine was left behind/The pitcher is broken/The flowers have withered/The song about Emina, will never die

Guthrie was one of the most influential folk singer-songwriters in American history, a bridge between the old American ballads and traditional English and Scottish folk music of the nineteenth century and the folk revival of the mid-twentieth. From Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen and Jerry Garcia and well beyond, dozens of pivotal folk, rock, country and punk artists, in America and overseas, acknowledged him as a major influence. Guthrie said he wrote This Land Is Your Land because he was tired of hearing Irving Berlin’s God Bless America, preferring an anthem that stressed equality, as in his key lyric, “This land was made for you and me.” The song has had numerous cover versions, especially in the 1960s. It has also sparked more than a dozen foreign versions, from Canada to Turkey, from Sweden to Guyana, with lyricists substituting local geography and landmarks for those mentioned in the original American version.

This land is your land/This land is my land/From California/To the New York island/From the Redwood Forest/To the Gulf Stream waters/This land was made for you and me/As I went walking/That ribbon of highway/I saw above me that endless skyway/I saw below me that golden valley/This land was made for you and me/I roamed and rambled/And I′ve followed my footsteps/To the sparkling sands of/Her diamond deserts/And all around me/A voice was sounding/This land was made for you and me

Trzy Listy is a dramatic song, consisting of three drafts of a letter a woman is writing to her former lover. But the wrenching lyrics are no match for the drama that surrounds the song itself. Composed by Leon Boruński with lyrics by Jerzy Jurandot, the song was scheduled to debut as part of a Warsaw theater revue on September 3, 1939. But Hitler’s troops invaded Poland on September 1, putting an end to normal life and also lowering the curtain on a golden age of Polish song and cabaret. Under Nazi rule, Boruński and Jurandot, both Jewish, were confined in the Warsaw Ghetto, where for a brief time culture continued; in the ghetto they met the singer and actress Wiera Gran, who finally gave the song its opening performance, providing entertainment to a community living on borrowed time. Boruński was murdered by the Nazis, but Gran and Jurandot survived the war. In 1955 Gran finally recorded Trzy Listyin Paris.

It was very late/My God, what does it matter?/I simply didn’t notice the passing of time/I was sitting and thinking, how to write to him/and that I’m writing for the last time…/Farewell, I know everything/You won’t see me again, if you’re unhappy with me/Please burn this letter, so that it doesn’t fall into her hands/Burn it and forget me/Just tell me why/In return for so many days…/How could you…/Farewell, but know one thing/I hate you much more than I once loved you/And then I went through the letter, slowly and carefully, and tore it up/Oh, God, no!/I can’t say it like this!/Don’t let him know I’m suffering so much…

Though she grew up in a conservative Afghan family that found refuge in Iran, Elaha Soroor was destined for independence. She was 17 when the family returned to Afghanistan and she became a journalist, taught girls how to read, advocated for women’s rights and became a singer of Persian folk and pop songs. Even in the relatively liberal era before the return of the Taliban, smoking marijuana, partying and generally having a good time in a mischievous way was something only Afghan men could do. Women were and remain excluded and forbidden to take part to any kind of expression of hedonism and pleasure. In Charsi, Soroor (who now lives in London) challenges custom by inviting a man to smoke together and enjoy life in an equal way.

Hey, weed smoker with the come-to-bed eyes/You’re high as a kite!/Listen to your lover; I need to tell you something/You’re not my owner, handing out orders/And I’m not the napkin in your pocket/On which you can wipe your face any time you want/Let’s get high together on our love/I will show you what we can do as equals/Forget the macho stuff/It won’t help us to be happy together/Forget other people’s rules, and let’s drink!/Hey weed-smoker with the come-to-bed eyes/You’re high as a kite/Listen to your lover/Don’t listen to the mullah’s empty words/Let’s take to the dance floor like whirling dervishes/Doing religion the way drunks do!

Though the Everly Brothers (Don and Phil) were regarded as a rock and roll duo, there was always a country edge to their sound, from the Tennessee twang in their close-harmony singing to their steel-string acoustic guitars. From Bye-Bye Love in 1957 to Cathy’s Clown in 1960, they had one of the most feverish runs of any artists of their time—and that was just the opening chapter of their long career. The pinnacle was their ballad All I Have to Do Is Dream. Among many other distinctions, it was the only song to ever reach No. 1 simultaneously on three Billboard lists (Top 100, Best Selling in Stores and Most Played by Jockeys); and it later reached No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B list as well.

When I want you/In my arms/When I want you/And all your charms/Whenever I want you/All I have to do is dream/Dream… dream, dream/When I feel blue/In the night and I need you/To hold me tight/Whenever I want you/All I have to do is dream/I can make you mine/Taste your lips of wine/Any time, night or day/Only trouble is, gee whiz/I′m dreaming my life away/I need you so, that I could die/I love you so, and that is why/Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream… dream, dream, dream/Dream

Few artists can match the accumulation of triumphs and sorrows of Abdel Halim Hafez. Born in 1929, his mother died from childbirth complications and his father died shortly after; he lived in an orphanage for several years until his aunt and uncle took him in. But there was no denying his musical talent; he entered the Arabic Music Institute in Cairo at age 14 and rose to be one of the greatest Egyptian singers of all time, and a renowned actor. Known as “The Dark Nightingale,” he was adored by fans—filling not only arenas but also stadiums—and he became friend to kings and presidents. In 1974 he read Nizar Qabbani’s poem “The Coffee Cup Reader” and was so taken with it that he recruited the composer Mohamed El Mogy to put it to music; the project took two years and it was the last song Hafez would sing. A childhood parasitic illness had plagued him all his life and he died of liver failure in 1977, at age 47. Despite his many love songs, he never married.

She sat with fear in her eyes/Contemplating my overturned cup/She said, Don’t grieve, my child/You are destined to fall in love/My child, he who sacrifices himself for his beloved/Dies as a martyr/For so long, I’ve foretold and prophesized/But never have I read a cup like yours/Never have I seen sorrows similar to yours

For many critics and fans, Rumors, Fleetwood Mac’s eleventh studio album, is the band’s magnum opus. It won the 1978 Grammy for Album of the Year and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003. Of the 11 tracks on the original pressing, four (Go Your Own Way, Don’t Stop, You Make Loving Fun and Dreams) reached Billboard Top 10 status. Behind the scenes, perhaps the most salient fact is that during the album’s recording in Sausalito, California, all five band members (including two intra-band couples) had relationships in the process of unraveling. Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham were fighting constantly, stopping only when they worked on songs together. Against that backdrop, one day when Nicks wasn’t needed in the main studio, she took a keyboard and went into a separate sound room that had a black velvet bed and Victorian drapes. “I sat down on the bed with my keyboard,” she recalled. “I found a drum pattern, switched on my little cassette player and wrote Dreams in 10 minutes.” The band’s relationships passed into oblivion. Dreams passed into legend.

Now there you go again, you say you want your freedom/Well, who am I to keep you down?/It’s only right that you should play the way you feel it/But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness/Like a heartbeat, drives you mad/In the stillness of remembering what you had/And what you lost…/Oh, thunder only happens when it’s rainin’/Players only love you when they’re playin’/Say women, they will come and they will go/When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know/Now here I go again/I see the crystal visions/I keep the visions to myself/It’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams…

One of the classic male torch songs of all time, Operator stands out as one of Jim Croce’s most iconic works. The song is one side of a conversation with a telephone operator, as the narrator tries to reach his former girlfriend, “living in L.A., with my best old ex-friend Ray.” Croce said the song was inspired by his military service, during which he would often see lines of soldiers waiting to use an outdoor phone on base, some calling wives or sweethearts who had written Dear John letters. The song also captures a moment in time: When he asks the operator to forget about the call, he tells her, “You can keep the dime.” Operator relates a minor tragedy that preceded a major one: The following year Croce died in a plane crash at the height of his career.

Operator, well could you help me place this call?/See, the number on the matchbook is old and faded/She’s living in L.A.,with my best old ex-friend Ray/A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated/But isn’t that the way they say it goes?/Well let’s forget all that/And give me the number if you can find it/So I can call just to tell ’em I’m fine, and to show/I’ve overcome the blow/I’ve learned to take it well/I only wish my words could just convince myself/That it just wasn’t real/But that’s not the way it feels

People who lose parents during childhood often develop heightened empathy and resilience. Maaike Ouboter’s parents died when she was in high school and in 2013, at age 21, she channeled her feelings into the television show “The Best Singer-Songwriter in the Netherlands.” Dat ik je mis, her audition song, explored not only loss but also strength through memory. Within two days of the song’s broadcast it was Number 1 in the Netherlands; within six weeks it achieved platinum status. In 2015 she turned her star appearance into an album and Dutch critics are near unanimous in lauding her as a master lyricist who composes songs with layers of sadness and optimism—in her own words, “the lightness of melancholy.”

You kiss me, you hush me/You hug and reassure me/You catch me, you miss me/Forever comfort and unscare me/You call me, you hear me/You save and disrupt me/Believe me and rob me/You suppress me and daze me/You breathe and you live in me/Shiver and shake me/Confide in me as if you were alive/Protect me from bad dreams which turn up…/The way you speak to me, your laugh/Your voices softened like an angel’s/In my dreams, limitless voids flow through/You calm me, you tame me/You stir and you move me/I miss you, I miss you/I grab at and clasp you/I stir and command you/To stay with me in the dark nights…

Charly Garcia is one of the most important figures in the history of Latin American music, the father of Argentine “rock nacional,” a folk-rock pioneer, and a singer-songwriter of great depth. For more than 50 years he has had a commanding presence as a solo artist and as the central figure of three bands. Rasguña las Piedras was one of his most mythical songs and it spawned myriad interpretations of its meaning—the story of a girl buried alive who tried to scratch her way free and an homage to victims of Argentina’s 1970s dictatorship, among others. Garcia admits to liking the various theories but asserted that the song simply expresses the desire to cure the ills of society and also the urge of individuals to overcome the emotional weaknesses they carry inside.

Behind the walls/That were built up around you yesterday/I beg you to keep breathing/I rest my back/And hope you’ll hug me/Breaking through the wall of my days/And scratch the rocks/And scratch the rocks/And scratch the rocks until you get to me/Barely perceptible/I can hear your words/The rock ‘n roll bands are coming/And they will shake/The worn out walls a bit/And I can hear the questions in your voice…/And at last I can see your eyes/Crying at the bottom/And I start to love you with all my skin/And I dig until I can hug you/And my hands are bleeding/But know we’ll be free to grow