#1. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (The Rolling Stones)

It's December 1981, a few days before my 4th birthday.  I'm standing with my grandmother at the counter of the Record Bar music store in the Asheville Mall, trying to tell the teenage girl behind the cash register—who is nice enough, but obviously wishing she were someplace else—which singles I want.
The first is "Trouble" by Lindsey Buckingham.  (Out of stock.  She gives us a listless shrug.)  And the second is a song I'd heard on the radio about a week before that had stopped me in my tracks and now can't get out of my head.  Problem is, I don't know the song title or who performed it—you know, exactly what every disinterested record store clerk wants to hear from a customer.
The only thing I can articulate about the song: "It sounds like mean bees."
As I've mentioned in other posts, my late grandmother worked stocking records and tapes for Sky City, a former regional department store.  She was no stranger to kids shuffling up to her and mumbling lyrics to the latest Go-Go's single or wanting to know which Ozzy album had "Crazy Train" on it.
So my grandma makes a suggestion.
"Sing it to her, Mikey."
By "sing," I know exactly what she's driving at: I re-created music with my mouth all the time as a kid.  (Think: a toddler version of Michael Winslow from the Police Academy movies.)  My family referred to it as "singing" because beatboxing wasn't really a thing back then.  I'd usually make up my own songs and imitate the sounds of guitar, drums, bass, and synths—not to mention the pops and cracks of a vinyl record if I also was pretending that my song was playing on a turntable.  But I'd often imitate stuff from the radio, too.
So there, in the middle of Record Bar, I start "singing" the riff that had lured me away from playing with my building blocks the week before, imitating the buzzing "mean bees" guitar sound as best I can: uhn-uhn...uh-uh-uhhhhhh-uh-uhn-uhn...
"Does that ring a bell?" my grandma asks the girl, who is standing there dumbfounded.
Eventually, the manager (who is barely out of his teens himself) comes strolling over to take a listen.  He listens with a half-smile and then asks me to perform it one more time.  At this point, I'm starting to get a bit self-conscious.  He starts tapping his pen on his clipboard in time with my riff, and a look of recognition suddenly beams across his face.
"I'm pretty sure that's 'Satisfaction' by the Stones," he drawls.  "That's an old song, little man.  Where'd you hear that?"
At this point, I go into shy mode and hide behind my grandma's legs, where I convince myself that I am invisible to everyone...

Obviously, the store didn't have "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones available as a single because the song had been released 16 years earlier in 1965.  
But, to my ears, it didn't sound all that different from the punk rock and New Wave that was starting to get airplay in those days.  That Keith Richards guitar lick had the same attitude and primal crunch as the raw, unapologetic rock coming out of London and New York, circa 1981.
Mick Jagger's sneering anti-consumerism/vagabond lyrics did, too, even though I didn't understand a single word he was saying until I was a teenager.  Probably a good thing, because the words are raunchy.  Especially the part where he's trying to bed a groupie, but she rejects him because she's "on a losing streak."  Crass?  Absolutely.  But you can't argue with its honest snapshot of a performer's life on the road.
The story behind the song is the stuff of rock legend, too, meaning you have to take it with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila.
The Stones played Jack Russell Memorial Stadium in Clearwater, FL, on May 6, 1965.  They were four songs into the show when a group of young concertgoers got into it with local law enforcement, and all hell broke loose.  The show was shut down, and local politicians basically vowed never to let another rock band perform there again.
Back at the band's hotel that night (some sources say "motel"—probably because it sounds seedier), an exhausted Richards fell fast asleep with his guitar beside him and a tape recorder on the nightstand.  The next morning, he woke up to find the tape had spooled all the way to the end, even though he didn't recall turning the recorder on at any point.
When he ran the tape back, well, you might guess where this is going.
"So I put it back to the beginning and pushed play and there, in some sort of ghostly version, is [the opening lines to 'Satisfaction']," Richards told NPR's Terry Gross in 2010.  "It was a whole verse of it.  And after that, there's 40 minutes of me snoring.  But there's the song in its embryo, and I actually dreamt the damned thing."
As for the famous fuzz tone that makes the song the ugly, glorious thing that it is, Richards never intended to keep that guitar line on the final track.  Instead, he envisioned a Stax-style horn section, not unlike Otis Redding's late 1965 rendition of the song.  He only used his Gibson Maestro fuzzbox pedal in the studio to mimic the sound of saxophones, fully intending to overdub horns at a later date.
But as he noted in a video to fans from 2004, "The record company and management slipped it out.  They said 'this is a hit; why talk to them, they're on the road (promoting the album Out of Our Heads)?'  And I can't argue with that."

#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'."

#3. "Superstition" (Stevie Wonder)

My entire world as a little kid centered around Sesame Street.  My day didn't officially begin until I was sitting in front of the T.V., singing Come and play / everything's a-okay with a mouthful of Cheerios.
Way back in the day, our local ABC-TV affiliate in Western North Carolina had some sort of arrangement with PBS to broadcast Sesame Street weekday mornings in the time slot after Good Morning America.  Occasionally, they would dig into the vaults and rebroadcast episodes from early in the show's run.  (As the MuppetWiki site reminded me, Sesame Street used to shoot 130 episodes a year, even though it aired 260 days a year, which meant you were going to see some re-runs along the way.)
I remember waking up one summer morning (pretty sure it was July 1981), and the humidity was already stifling.  I wasn't in the best mood anyway because my mom had signed me up for a week-long vacation Bible school retreat, and my enthusiasm for having to pack into my pastor's station wagon every morning with 10 other kids for the 30-minute drive to Camp Lutheridge was nil to none.  Actually, I remember days #1 and 2 of the retreat weren't too bad: I met kids from other towns, we sang songs, ate peanut butter sandwiches, and some nice adults helped us make artsy-fartsy shakers out of dried lima beans and paper plates.  But when I found out there was a day #3 (and a day #4, and a day #5), well, that just felt like overkill.
Anyway, I remember being "difficult" that morning.  I didn't want breakfast, and I definitely didn't want to get out of my pajamas.  So my mom told me to go watch some Sesame Street until I snapped out of it.
I grumpily played "One of These Things (is Not Like the Others)" and watched Big Bird and Mr. Hooper spin educational-comedy gold, and then suddenly, there was Stevie Wonder on the screen.
I sat there, mesmerized as he and his band launched into a gritty rendition of his song "Superstition" from the fantastic Talking Book (1972).  It was unlike anything I'd ever seen or heard before.  I mean, here was this cat, looking as slick and cool as axle grease on a snow cone, churning out some of the deepest funk ever broadcast at 9 in the morning on a Wednesday.  It blew my little mind wide open.  And it shook me out of my doldrums.
(Sidebar: this is the main difference I see between today's Sesame Street and the show that I used to know: the show that I fell in love with was a funky, try-anything endeavor.  It was a safe haven for children, but it wasn't sanitized to the point of being sterile.  It didn't totally ignore that the world is often a big, scary place; it just taught little ones how to be smart and brave in an adult-sized world.)

Years later, I learned that Wonder's performance had originally aired in 1973.  Watching it again online as an adult, it still feels as fresh and vital as the day I saw it at age 3 (and even back then, the footage was already 8 years old).  That's not only a testament to Wonder as a consummate musician and performer, but a testament to the universal and enduring power of this song.  

Lyrically, "Superstition" is pretty much just a string of allusions to nonsense beliefs: broken mirrors bringing misfortune, unlucky number 13, etc.  As he told NPR's Deborah Williams back in December 2000, he came up with the vocal melody and merely plugged in the first words that popped into his head.
"The first thing that I put down were the drums and then after that I put the Clavinet down, and really, I just started singing the melody.  Probably the first thing—the only thing I can remember that I said that I remember keeping was the line 'Wash your face and hands'."

Honestly, he could have sung any old lyrics to that groove, and it still would have been a hit.  The backing track on this song is a thing of marvel.  With the exception of the horn section, Wonder played every single instrument: the interweaving Clavinet lines that sound like dueling rock guitars (more on that in a sec), the agile synth bass, and those strutting drums.  It's an exercise in arranging and rhythm that I don't think Wonder himself has ever bested.

Bar trivia factoid: Wonder actually wrote "Superstition" for his buddy, guitarist Jeff Beck.  Beck had guested on Wonder's song "Lookin' for Another Pure Love," so to return the favor, Wonder came up with "Superstition" for Beck and his new group (Beck, Bogert & Appice) to include on their upcoming album.

But then Motown/Tamla chief Berry Gordy heard the song, and he urged Wonder to record it himself instead, envisioning it as the centerpiece of the upcoming Talking Book.  So Wonder acquiesced and recorded his own rendition, using his Clavinet to recreate the chunky riff that he'd written with Beck's guitar in mind.

In short, there was a delay in the release of Beck, Bogert & Appice's album, so Motown/Tamla seized the opportunity to push out Wonder's "Superstition" in October 1972 before his pal's version could drop.  As you might imagine, there were some hurt feelings.  But considering Wonder guested on Beck's album Blow by Blow a few years later, I'd say all was forgiven and forgotten.

#4. "Good Vibrations" (The Beach Boys)

At age 10, I was obsessed with the song "Good Vibrations."  The watery-sounding organ, the buzzsaw cellos, the eerie Electro-Theremin, and those sunny layers of signature Beach Boys vocals.  
Actually, I still can't get enough of that moment before the last chorus, where the group hits that ahhhhhh! and it hangs in the air like mist, just before the hook comes exploding back in.  Gives me chills, every time.
Throughout our 4th grade year, my buddy Bill and I would trade mixtapes, sharing whatever we were listening to at the time.  Usually, it was stuff like The Fat Boys, Beastie Boys, or Run DMC.  But, this one time, Bill got really into surf music right before Spring Break, and he brought me this mix of Jan & Dean and Beach Boys songs, dubbed from his mom's old vinyl.  I remember he kind of front-loaded the tape with their early 60s "party songs" ("Surfin' Safari," "Surfin' USA," "Surf City").  But then sitting in the middle of the mix was also the 1966 single "Good Vibrations."
Now, it's not as if it was the first time I'd heard "Good Vibrations"; it was a staple on oldies radio.  But there was something about hearing it in context of those other songs.  It was richer, deeper.  Important.  It seemed so out of place, I even wondered if Bill had let the tape run and recorded it by accident.  
In fact, the more I listened to the track (and I listened to it/analyzed it dozens of times that Spring Break), the more it reminded me of a slightly-psychedelic reimagining of my favorite piece of classical music as a kid: George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."  Both songs seemed to be built from carefully constructed segments, which, taken on their own, were stunning in their level of detail.  But when the pieces were assembled, end-to-end, the result was even more astounding.
It didn't surprise me at all when the mastermind behind "Good Vibrations," Brian Wilson, recorded a solo tribute album to Gershwin in 2010 and had this to say about "Rhapsody in Blue" to NPR's Audie Cornish: "(When I was 4) my grandmother put on 'Rhapsody in Blue' for me, and had me lay down by the record player.  I just remember I loved it so much…The arranging, the impetus, the excitement, the beauty.  It was just an absolute work of art."
After hearing that conversation on All Things Considered, I started looking for more articles and interviews about Wilson's process.  And I discovered that my observations at age 10 weren't that far off.
Wilson worked on "Good Vibrations" in modules, breaking the song down into small bits, which he'd pore over with his group of choice studio musicians ("The Wrecking Crew"), sometimes recording a section a dozen times at one of four different recording studios around Los Angeles before they achieved the sound he heard in his head.  Then, when all of the individual pieces were recorded to his liking, he connected them all into what he called his "pocket symphony."  
In all, it took seven months of work and $50K—the most ever spent recording a "pop" single at that point—before "Good Vibrations" saw the light of day in October 1966.  But, in the end, who really cares about facts and figures when you're talking about something this timeless and priceless?
All I can say is, the world will always be a little better off because of the genius of Brian Wilson.

#5. "What's Going On" (Marvin Gaye)

It was 1970.  Marvin Gaye was on a self-imposed hiatus from recording following the death of his friend/singing partner Tammi Terrell, and apart from occasionally producing the vocal group The Originals, he didn't even want to set foot inside the studio.  
In the meantime, he was receiving letters from his little brother, Frankie, who was fighting in Vietnam.  In the correspondence, he'd tell Marvin about the unsettling things he was experiencing.
As Frankie Gaye told biographer David Ritz for the liner notes of The Best of Marvin Gaye anthology (1995), "The war sickened me.  It seemed useless, wrong, and unjust.  I relayed all this to Marvin."
Around the same time, Renaldo "Obie" Benson of The Four Tops had witnessed a crowd of young protestors get roughed up by cops in Berkeley, CA, where the group had just finished performing a show.  Benson told songwriter Al Cleveland about what he'd seen, and Cleveland started writing a new composition about social ills with the intent of having The Four Tops perform it.
But the other members of Benson's group shied away from doing a "protest song."  So while hanging out with Gaye during a round of golf, Benson and Cleveland decided to pitch him the song instead.  Gaye initially thought it might be a good vehicle for The Originals.  But after a lot of cajoling from Benson, Gaye ultimately decided to record and produce the single himself.
Along the way, Gaye added additional lyrics, pulling inspiration from his little brother's letters, and embellished the melody to fit his own style.  The result: one of the most soulful commentaries on the Vietnam era ever recorded.  In fact, it's less of a protest song (he's not really pointing fingers at anyone), and more of a rhetorical question to humanity: what are we doing to one another?
It's a favorite of mine because the message and the music come together so perfectly.  Its deeply funky groove perfectly captures the reality of the young soldier who comes home to his inner city neighborhood, looking for comfort, only to find unrest at every turn.  At the same time, the lush orchestration and the multi-tracked vocals, which create a whole chorus of Marvins, almost border on the sacred.  It's simply one of the most moving, heartfelt pieces of popular music ever recorded.
Regarding Gaye's vocals, the whole idea of him harmonizing/duetting with himself came about as a happy accident.  As recording engineer Ken Sands notes in a July 2011 article in Sound on Sound online, they had recorded two, separate takes for the lead vocal, and Gaye wanted to listen and evaluate which one he thought was best.  Instead of outputting each take as a separate demo track, Sands just created a single stereo track, with Take #1 in one channel and Take #2 in the other, giving Gaye the ability to pan back and forth between speakers and/or listen to both takes simultaneously for easier comparison.  It was when everyone heard the playback with two Marvins sharing the lead that they realized they'd stumbled upon something magnificent.
Said Sands, "As it turned out, singing against himself worked, but I'm not going to take credit for thinking things through and saying, 'This is what I want to happen'...A lot of brilliance is bred of happenstance."

"Instant Karma!" (John Lennon)

When I first heard John Lennon's 1970 single "Instant Karma!" as a little kid, I had no clue what karma was.  (I'd venture that was true of most listeners.)  But, my God, the sound of this song.  It was my first introduction to producer Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" and unlike anything I'd ever heard.  There was so much reverb and yet so much punch—particularly Alan White's drums.  (His drum fills alone make the song a classic.)  
But you also can't ignore that vital piano line and ardent chorus of singers backing Lennon's throat-ripping vocal: Well we all shine on / Like the moon and the stars and the sun.  There's a galaxy of beauty in that sentiment.  
It's impossible not to feel fantastic after hearing this rallying cry for humanity to get its act together.

"Hungry Heart" (Bruce Springsteen)

I've always respected Bruce Springsteen.  I hear the blue collar poetry of an album like Born to Run or even Born in the U.S.A., and it makes me realize how intelligent and important to American music he is.
But I have a really hard time getting into (most of) his music.  His bordering-on-Broadway productions, like "Thunder Road" or "Jungleland," or stripped-to-the-bone numbers, like the title track from 1982's Nebraska, just never resonated with me.  And that has always frustrated me.  Because when I consider his musical pedigree, it's all stuff I like: Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie...  I think he loses me when things take a turn for the Bernstein.  (I just prefer my leather jackets and knife fights without the choreography, I guess.)
In fact, I've often wondered what Springsteen's populist lyrics would sound like in the context of punk.
Speaking of, the one Springsteen song that I really love has a punk rock connection.  In 1979, Springsteen saw The Ramones play his hometown of Asbury Park, NJ, and met frontman Joey Ramone after the show.  Ramone asked him to write a song for The Ramones, and Springsteen came up with "Hungry Heart."  But when Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, heard the composition, he convinced him to keep it for his next album, 1980's The River.  Pretty good advice, considering it was Springsteen's first Top 5 single.
Anyway, there's no risk of anyone confusing "Hungry Heart" for The Ramones.  The feel is very 1960s "Wall of Sound," which creates the perfect backdrop for Springsteen's portrait of a guy who is torn between wanting to settle down and wanting to roam.  
Musically, it walks a fine line between elation and frustration for three taut minutes with its insistent piano, soaring soul organ, and thundering, reverb-y drums.  And then there's Springsteen's fervent vocal, which seems as indebted to Ronnie Spector on "Be My Baby" as it does Roy Orbison on "Running Scared."  
In short, it's dramatic and stirring with a hefty helping of melancholy.  It's the stuff of French art films, set in working-class America.