The Top Five “Friday Five”s of 2016

How many of you just knew this would be the topic of my final Friday Five of 2016? I’ll be honest: I didn’t even know this would be the topic until just a minute ago. Anyway, I found all my Friday Fives for the year and sorted them by number of comments (realizing half of them would be mine). In true Top Five Fashion, I’ll start with #5…

Number 5: EBS Specials! (9/16/2016) I have a page that explains what an EBS Special is, in case you need a refresher. One of the songs, Don McLean’s “American Pie,” was given the label because it was not only played to death (and is still played to death on oldies stations nationwide), it was also analyzed to death, most notably by Bob Dearborn of WCFL radio in Chicago. Everyone likes it, though, so here it is.

Number 4: Five (plus a bonus) Songs With “Smoke” In The Title (10/28/16) You know how The Friday Five generally works by now: I get a word in my head and go looking for songs with that word in it, stop at five, and ask you to come up with others. Occasionally I decide, hey, let’s do six (or some other number greater than five). This was one of those days, because as I was writing the post with five, I thought of “Smokestack Lightnin'” by Chester Arthur Burnett, also known as Howlin’ Wolf. Here’s that one.

Number 3: “Moon” Songs (8/5/16) Decided the word for the day was “moon,” came up with five, and you came up with more. Here’s one I came up with, “Moondance” by Van Morrison.

Number 2: Even More “Rain” Songs (9/2/16) There are times I ended up doing a multiple of five, as in this case, where I did ten. There are a lot of songs about rain, and as I recall, you came up with a bunch more, including several people requesting “Rhythm of the Rain” by The Cascades, which was the first song I thought of when I did the original list (which I can’t find for some reason). One of the new songs was “Singin’ In The Rain,” from the movie of the same name, which I’d like to dedicate to the memory of Debbie Reynolds, who died yesterday. She was only twenty, maybe even nineteen, when she made the movie, and makes an appearance here at the beginning.

Number 1: “A” Songs (4/1/16) The date should tip you off that this was at the start of the A to Z Challenge. My theme for the challenge was “portmanteau words,” but seeing as how I published this after the portmanteau, people who arrived at the blog after I published this thought this was my theme. So I ended up with two themes this year. One of the songs in the post was “After The Love Is Gone” by Earth Wind & Fire, which I’d like to dedicate to the memory of Maurice White, a member of EWF who died this past year.

So, there’s the last Friday Five of 2016. Thanks for reading and commenting and making this worthwhile for me. For those of you I won’t see before tomorrow at midnight, Happy New Year!