The Top-10 Songs of all (My) Time, Part 3

It’s important to the world-at-large that I finish this project where I tell you my favorite ten songs of all time. Remember, these are my all-time favorite songs and was born of Rolling Stones‘s attempt to define the 100 Greatest Songs and 100 Greatest Albums of all time, which I believe is impossible. My full rationale is here. Impossible because your opinion, and my opinion, and my barber’s opinion …it’s all about “where you were when” and so no list can ever be right (or wrong).

If you were an 18-year-old college freshman in 1967 smoking your first doobie in your dorm room with a girl who you’ll eventually marry and raise a family with, and Bob Dylan was on the record player, well, chances are, Bob Dylan songs and albums will be in your top-10.  If you were the future George and Lorraine McFly at the Under the Sea Dance in 1955 and you just punched your bully, Biff, and have your first kiss on the dance floor, then “Earth Angel”, The Penguin’s version of “Earth Angel”, is going to be in your top-10 and you’ll never appreciate Dylan.

Enough of the pre-amble (I would be a terrible Casey Kacem replacement) … on with my #8.

#8 – “Hey Ladies” by The Beastie Boys

This is my “Dylan Moment” (see above). The song, dissected below/below in the full Paul’s Boutique sample journey, captures everything brilliant about The Beastie’s (I can call them “the Beasties” without the “Boys” because I’m a fanboy) second album, Paul’s Boutique. For me, the timeline (“where I was when” …see above, again) is thus…

• 8th Grade – Licensed to Ill is released and The Beastie Boys become the rap album for every middle-class suburban (asshole) white kid and The Beasties are everywhere on MTV and SNL and Midnight Special and they kinda represent a lifestyle (not a great one)
• 10th Grade (Summer of 1988) – Don is forced to move because of his Dad’s job change and it wasn’t easy on Don, what with a new school and leaving all his friends and his childhood home.
• Summer between 10th and 11th Grade (Summer of 1989) – The Beastie Boys release Paul’s Boutique and it’s not …I mean, not even close …to what Licensed to Ill was. Licensed to Ill was old skool hip-hop. Paul’s Boutique was the most unique, funky, yet hip-hoppy, album and unlike anything anyone had done before. Impressionable Don loved it immediately. Loved everything about it. “Hey Ladies” is the first single and the video is, well, hilarious ..and stylish …and cool as hell. Don can’t find many friends who like Paul’s Boutique. Don’s cousin, Scott, back in Don’s home town, also likes it. So there’s 1 other person who loves it.
• Summer of 1989 – Fall of 1991 – Critics don’t like Paul’s Boutique. Fans of The Beastie Boys really, really don’t like Paul’s Boutique. Many articles are written about this being the end of The Beastie Boys. But how could that be? Don memorized the entire CD from beginning to end. Every word. Every drop. Every sample. Don knows at least a dozen people who like this album. Nooooo! This can’t be the end of The Beastie Boys.
• Fall of 1991, Don starts his freshman year at Michigan State – Don hears lots of college guys playing Paul’s Boutique at parties along with Nirvana and Pearl Jam (2 albums that dominated college campuses starting in the fall of 1991).
• Spring of 1992, Don rushes, pledges, and joins a fraternity and meets 2 guys (Dave, Ben) that would become his lifelong best friends and both of them LOVE The Beastie Boys and LOVE Paul’s Boutique and Don realizes he’s not alone.  This album is brilliant. Don was right all along. But, it’s still a pretty popular belief that The Beasties are “over” because they strayed from their frat-guy asshole-guy formula that made Licensed to Ill so popular, and they’ll never recover. Case in point …The Beastie Boys can’t even get booked for a proper tour …not even as an opening act …not on hip-hop tours and not on their own so they embark on a college tour…ouch …they were multi-platinum and on-top-of-the-world from 1986-1987 …oh, how the mighty have fallen.
• May 17th, 1992 – The Beastie Boys play a concert at the MSU Auditorium and the place is packed to the rafters and, to this day, I’ve never experienced a venue so joyful and so happy to be together watching “their band.” I remember wondering if the place would be half-full. The Beastie Boys had just released Check Your Head the month before. I loved it, of course, but it was different again from Paul’s Boutique and from Licensed to Ill.  But the rest, as they say, is history. MSU Auditorium was sold out, btw. And here’s a guy with the actual, terrible audio of the show and, yes, I listened to it.

Look at the Setlist from that show (linked here and also copy/pasted below). I wish I had a photographic memory. Or I wish I had an iPhone and could’ve videotaped the entire thing. It’s one of my best, fuzzy memories.  My two new fraternity brothers, Dave and Ben, who would become two of my best friends, my cousin Scott who I thought was the only other Beastie Boy fan I knew for a while … we realized it wasn’t just us, but it was everyone. Everyone recognized The Beastie Boys were brilliant and different and completely unique. Their evolution from pure hip-hop to a sound all their own …it was complete. 

And turns out their college-tour comeback may have been the best idea, ever.

So, “Hey Ladies” is my 8th-ranked favorite song off my 3rd-ranked album of all time and the story above is proof, again, that “best ever lists” are subjective every time …period. How could my 20-year-old son ever experience Paul’s Boutique and “Hey Ladies” the way I did?

“Hey Ladies” is a combination of timing, milestones, a video, personality, attitude, cool, and genius-level music and mixing. It’s just one song from Paul’s Boutique that captures why that album was unlike anything that came before it. To appreciate it, allow yourself to travel back in time to 1989 and consider how different Paul’s Boutique was. Now, watch the video below to understand.

Read about my 10th and 9th Top-Songs of All-Time here and here. Stay tuned for #7.

Setlist from MSU Auditorium, May 17th, 1992

To All the Girls
Slow and Low
Shake Your Rump
Pass the Mic (new song from Check Your Head only a month old)
Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun
Rhymin & Stealin
Time for Livin’
Egg Raid on Mojo
In 3’s
Pow
Live at P.J.’s
Stand Together
Posse in Effect
A Year and a Day
Play Video
The Sounds of Science
Finger Lickin’ Good
High Plains Drifter
So What’cha Want
Paul Revere
The Maestro
Groove Holmes
Something’s Got to Give
Lighten Up
Gratitude
Stand Up
(Minor Threat cover)
Time to Get Ill
Shadrach