With the Thanksgiving holiday looming ahead in all its turkeylicious, cranberry sauce-drenched glory, I’ve decided to go obvious and give thanks for great music with a playlist of 10 of my favorite songs expressing gratitude, whether it’s for friendship, love, a great party or the gift of a fiber optic Jesus.
1. “Thank You for Being a Friend,” Andrew Gold, All This and Heaven Too (1978).
Gold’s hit reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in ’78, but the warm soft-rock number made pop culture history after it was shaved down to 46 seconds and recorded by singer Cynthia Fee for The Golden Girls. I watched a few hours of Golden Girls reruns on the Hallmark Channel recently and I let “Thank You for Being a Friend” — arguably the pinnacle of TV theme songs — play through every time. Yes, I watched six episodes in a row — so what? Golden Girls is ’80s sitcom gold (no pun intended) and bad old-lady fashion aside, it holds up rather well over time. Thus, this shout out is dedicated to the song and the show.
2. “Thank You,” Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II (1969)
Delicate swells of Hammond organ by John Paul Jones, the bright, full-bodied strumming of Jimmy Page on his Vox 12-string guitar, and Robert Plant’s vocals serenading like a soft caress, then growing stronger with his passion — Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” is a flawless love song for a hard rockin’ band, with poetic lyricism like, “And so today my world it smiles / your hand in mine, we walk the miles / Thanks to you it will be done / for you to me are the only one.”
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2009.