The Perfect Song

A few days ago, my buddy and I were sitting around playing a little guitar, and after we had exhausted every possible solo we could play over a simple 1 2 5 chord progression, we stopped our "song", and Jay commented on how what we had just played sounded very similar to "Nobody's Fool" by Kenny Loggins (who incidentally is playing at The Birchmere later this summer.)

He then went on to tell me how he thinks that "Nobody's Fool" is as close to the perfect pop song ever written in the history of recorded music. I immediately laughed, but then started to actually give it some serious thought, realizing that it does fit the perfect pop song formula. About 3 1/2 minutes, ridiculously catchy, a roughly 30 second bridge, over-produced, on a movie soundtrack (Caddyshack 2 - I know I remember the opening scene with Jonathan Silverman running through Bushwood Country Club searching for a soda,) and written in the 1980s. As an aside, Loggins was last at Wolf Trap in 2003...why is he playing the Birchmere at a whopping $75 per ticket? He should come back to us where he belongs.

Ok back on topic. Our perfect song discussion prompted me to search other music blogs for alternate interpretations of the "perfect song," and noticed that Bob Boilen, host of NPR's "All Songs Considered" pulled a pretty entertaining youtube video for his blog on April 11, which chronicles Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live and Carrie Brownstein's attempts to construct the perfect song. So check that out. But my OFFICIAL video of the week is this mash up of clips from 80s and 90s comedies (The Great Outdoors, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Twins, Beverly Hills Cop, etc) set to the sweet sound of Kenny Loggin's "Nobody's Fool." This will give you a chance to either deny or confirm my friend's bold allegation that this is the best pop song of all time, which in turn will inspire me to either play more, or quit the guitar all together.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend.

Graham