SongChart

09/06/2026

SongChart Blog post #366 takes on John Mellencamp’s “Authority Song,” a fine little anthem for anybody who ever argued with the rules and was shocked to discover the rules had better lawyers. It’s loud, rebellious, wonderfully stubborn—and proof that fighting authority is usually more fun than beating it.

08/28/2026

Post #365. A song for every day of the year, and this one's about the day after.

"Layla" was Clapton chasing Pattie Boyd. "Old Love," written with Robert Cray twenty years later, is what came after the chase — a man trying to live in a house that still smells like someone else.

Never released as a single. Then he sat down with an acoustic on MTV Unplugged and turned it into something quieter and harder to shake: the Journeyman version is a man arguing with a memory; the Unplugged version is a man who quit arguing and started living with it.

Full story and the chord chart here 👇

August 28, 2026 ----- Chart #365 Hello Music Friends, No woman in the history of rock and roll ever got better songs out of her men than Pattie Boyd. George Harrison married her and wrote "Something." Eric Clapton fell for her while she was still married to his best friend and wrote "Layla," which i...

08/21/2026

This week’s SongChart takes on Cat Stevens’ beautiful and timeless “Father and Son,” a song that captures that age-old tug-of-war between youthful dreams and parental wisdom. It’s simple, emotional, and still hits home more than 50 years later. Give it a listen, grab the chart, and maybe call your dad — or your son.

August 21, 2026 ----- Chart #364 Hello Music Friends, The most famous father-and-son conversation in popular music is not about a father and son. It's about the Russian Revolution. I'll give you a minute with that one. In 1969 Cat Stevens was writing a musical called Revolussia, set in 1917 Russia,....

08/14/2026

In 1968 Herb Alpert asked Burt Bacharach a great question: got a song in a drawer somewhere that never got the right recording? Burt reached in and pulled out a tune about a guy who thinks his girl is cheating. Hal David rewrote the lyric, Herb sang it to his wife on a CBS special -- the first time America ever heard him sing a note -- and the switchboard lit up with people demanding a record that did not exist yet.

A month later it did. Four weeks at No. 1. First chart-topper for Herb, first for A&M Records, and the first American No. 1 for Bacharach and David.

August 14, 2026 ----- Chart #363 Hello Music Friends, Herb Alpert had a question he liked to ask great songwriters, and it's a beauty: is there a song tucked away in your drawer somewhere -- one that never got the right recording -- that you still find yourself whistling in the shower? He put that

08/07/2026

Poco spent a decade watching former members leave and become stars—then the guy who wasn’t supposed to sing wrote their biggest hit in about 30 minutes while paneling a wall. This week’s SongChart is “Crazy Love,” complete with placeholder lyrics that wisely never got replaced, a surprising Phil Hartman connection, and one of the great “finally!” stories in rock and roll.

August 7, 2026 ----- Chart #362 Hello Music Friends, Rusty Young was hired to be the guy in Poco who didn't sing. That was the deal. He played the pedal steel, the banjo, the dobro -- all the instruments that make a country-rock band sound like a country-rock band and none of the ones that

07/31/2026

Here's a great tune from 1967, revived for a second life by The Commitments, but make no mistake, it was James Carr who put the soul in this one. Enjoy post #361:

07/24/2026

Fats Domino made heartbreak swing; Cheap Trick plugged it into an amplifier and made it roar. This week’s Chart of the Week looks at how one deceptively simple song became a rock-and-roll classic twice.

July 24, 2026 ----- Chart #360 Hello music friends, Welcome back to another edition of Chart of the Week. This week we are going all the way back to the early days of rock and roll with one of the greats. Today’s feature is “Ain’t That a Shame” by Fats Domino. And before we are

07/17/2026

Hello Friday! Post #359 this week features a classic artist from Northern Ireland. A cheery tune that will brighten your day . . .on the bright side of the road.

July 17, 2026 ----- Chart #359 Hello music friends, Welcome back to another edition of Chart of the Week. This week we are returning to Van Morrison, and that is never a bad place to go. Today’s feature is “Bright Side of the Road,” a terrific Van Morrison song from his 1979 album Into the

07/10/2026

This week we have a 1976 hit from Rod Stewart. This one is not exactly PC by today's standards, but I'll bet you remember it. Post #358:

July 10, 2026 ----- Chart #358 Hello music friends, Welcome back to another edition of Chart of the Week. This week’s selection is a little different from many of the songs I feature here. It is a little racy, a little suggestive, and not exactly the kind of tune you would expect to hear at

07/03/2026

Happy 250th Birthday USA! Let's celebrate with a little Hank Williams Jr.

July 3, 2026 ----- Chart #357 Hello music friends, Welcome back to another edition of Chart of the Week. Since this one lands on July 3rd, right before Independence Day, I thought we needed something with a little red, white, blue, and maybe a brown paper bag in the back of a pickup truck. Today’s