#2. "Here Comes the Sun" (The Beatles)

Have you ever had a song literally stop you in your tracks?  Where you're in the middle of something, and suddenly you hear a piece of music that commands your attention so completely you have to stop whatever you're doing and just listen?
I've had it happen three times in my life.  Once was in early 1982 when I was 4 years old.  
I remember it had been a cold, exceptionally damp winter, and it had overstayed its welcome by creeping into what should have been spring.  As much as I enjoyed snow, hot chocolate, and the smell of woodsmoke, I'd had it with frozen gloom.  The weather had been making every adult I'd encountered cranky, and it also had been keeping me from finishing an outdoors project that I'd started earlier in the fall, which made me cranky.  (A relative of ours in Western NC had a small creek running through her property, and I got it in my head that we should have a creek at our house, too.  So, I borrowed a little pickaxe from my dad's tool shed, and I started digging my own "creek" in our backyard: a 6-inch wide, 4-foot long mini-trench that I just assumed would fill with running water after a good rain.  It didn't quite work out like that.  And when my dad kind of stumbled upon it—or into it—while mowing the grass later that spring, he logically assumed some animal had destroyed a patch of his yard, and he filled it back in.)
Anyway, I remember getting up this one morning, and it was like someone had flipped a switch: it had been cold and disgusting the day before, but suddenly it was warm and sunny.  The South is notoriously fickle when it comes to March-April weather; however, this felt like spring had officially sprung.
My mom sensed it, too.  She opened every window in the house, turned on the radio, and started her spring cleaning routine while I finished watching my daily episode of Sesame Street over a bowl of Cheerios.  
Normally, I would have been glued to the set, watching Big Bird trying to convince the grown-ups that his pal Mr. Snuffleupagus wasn't imaginary.  But then I heard a song with this beautiful plucked guitar line coming from the radio, and I immediately turned off the T.V. so I could listen.  The DJ (the late Russ Cassell on WFBC-FM out of Greenville, SC) made a brief announcement about a listener requesting "the perfect spring song," and then came the refrain: Here comes the sun / Doo-doo-doo-doo / Here comes the sun / I say, it's alright... 
I sat in front of our stereo, transfixed as the verses unfolded.  Every time I thought the song had gotten as good as it could get, some new layer of vocals or strings would drop in, and it would get even better.  But nothing prepared me for the descending bridge section (Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...) with its syncopated handclaps and Moog synth buzzing away.  I think my jaw literally dropped.  It somehow was gorgeous, cheerful, and rocking, all at the same time.  I'd never heard anything like it.
I didn't budge until the very end.  After the very last droplets of guitar had faded, I ran into the kitchen where my mom was mopping the floor and started trying to describe it to her.  I sang a few bars of what I could remember, when she put down the mop and went right to her record collection.  
"Is this it?" she asked, dropping the needle on the B-side of Abbey Road (1969).
And there it was again, pouring out of the speakers in glorious, static-less stereo.
She gave me a kiss on my noggin.  "You have good taste in music, kiddo," she told me.
Years later, reading about what had inspired George Harrison to write "Here Comes the Sun," I discovered that his muse had been a spring day after a long period of dreariness, not unlike how I'd first experienced the song.
Apparently, winter in England had been particularly long in 1969.  Furthermore, Harrison and his bandmates had been mired in endless meetings with accountants regarding The Beatles' cash-bleeding venture, Apple Corps Ltd.  In short, Harrison was burnt out.  
So in the middle of the tedium, along came a pleasant spring day, and Harrison decided to blow off his business meetings and hang out at his pal Eric Clapton's house instead.  
As he stated in his autobiography I, Me, Mine (1980), "The relief of not having to go and see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric's acoustic guitars and wrote 'Here Comes The Sun'."