The other day, I wanted to hear the seasonally-appropriate Hold Steady song “How a Resurrection Really Feels” (“She crashed into the Easter Mass, with her hair done up in broken glass, She was limping left on broken heels and she said ‘Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?'”), so I punched it up on iTunes by sorting the music library alphabetically by song title. Which meant that, after the song finished, I got to hear every song in my collection that starts with the word “How.”
It occurred to me that this might be the basis for one of those Internet “meme” things. “How” is, of course, one of the six elements every news story is supposed to have, along with “Who,” “What,” “Where,” “When,” and “Why.” So, in the usual manner of such things, here are six songs from my library, one starting with each of those question words:
- Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? by U2. Maybe the best tune from Acthung Baby
- (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? by Elvis Costello. If you think using the parenthetical is cheating, then I’ll go with “What Else Would You Have Me Be?” by Lucero.
- Where Is My Mind? by the Pixies. The least popular of the six words, but a worthy track.
- When Will You Come Back Home? by Ryan Adams. One of those fragile ballads off Cold Roses.
- Why Should You Come When I Call? by Counting Crows. One of about two good songs off Hard Candy.
- How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live? by Bruce Springsteen. Amazingly, I have three versions of this, all live from the Seeger Sessions tour.
It was harder than I thought it would be, at least in the strong version where all the titles need to be questions. There are a lot of great songs starting with one of those words, but most of them are statements or descriptions (“Where the Streets Have No Name,” “When I Get to the Border,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” the aforementioned Hold Steady track).
I guess I ought to “tag” people to do this, but I suck at that part. So, well, if you’ve got enough songs at hand to do this, I encourage you to play along, either in the comments, or by posting a list to your own blog/ journal/ whatever. Or don’t. It’s all good.