The greatest Pop song yet written and recorded.

One of my very favorite early-60’s songs/records is "On Broadway", sung by The Drifters, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s Brill Building songwriting team competition: Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. The song/recording is very haunting, and hearing it never fails to "return me to" the time of it’s release. I remember hearing it coming out of the transistor radio under my pillow at night. 😊 By the way, playing the guitar solo in the song is none other than Phil Spector!

@loomisjohnson: Speaking of Phil Spector, you may know he didn’t write the orchestra charts for his recordings/productions, that was done by his arranger Jack Nitzsche. Guess who wrote the orchestral/string arrangement for "Expecting To Fly", and produced the whole recording? Jack Nitzsche. Jack in one reason Neil’s Harvest album is as good as it is, as well as the 1971 s/t Crazy Horse album, produced by Jack and Bruce Botnick.

@tylermunns: I absolutely loved Bobby Vee’s recording of "Take Good Care Of My Baby" and "Go Away Little Girl" by Steve Lawrence. I had them on 45 RPM singles back then, and still do. That’s one reason I could never own only a Linn Sondek. 😉

I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to be surrounded by fellow song and songwriter lovers! I’m tempted to start a thread dedicated to a related topic: Power Pop. That idea came to me after listening to the one Fastball album I own, which opens with a killer Power Pop song: "The Way".

Has anyone else heard "One Hit Wonders Of The World Unite" by the Canadian group Badger? Here ’tis, but be forewarned: the sound quality is terrible.

bahttps://youtu.be/yjfqmK_xPPI?si=JIyIG-rJc162izNknd

Spector and Nitzche produced some truly great music, but in their personal lives they were not nice people.

^ Spector was Spector. I'm glad he made all his music before he became what he became. I've never heard anything bad about Jack Nitsche, though.

On the list;

Kinks - Waterloo Sunset

Devo - Gut Feeling

I. Berlin - Blue Skies

Zappa - Stevie's Spanking

Joni Mitchell - Edith and The Kingpin

G. Greshwin - Summertime

Phil Spector’s vision was original. He was a producer, not an arranger/transcriber.  

He was also no dummy when it came to pop songs.  
“To Know Him Is To Love Him,” with it’s clever bridge chord progression/melody was written solely by Spector.  
He wrote one of my favorite songs ever, “Spanish Harlem” with lyricist Jerry Leiber.
Randy Newman played the “Jack Nitzsche role” on the brilliant Nitzsche-produced music for the soundtrack of the film Performance.  
In that same role as arranger, Randy Newman wrote the absolutely brilliant orchestral arrangement for Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller’s masterpiece, “Is That All There Is?” with brilliant vocals by Peggy Lee.