Your Top 5
Songs About The Weekend
Your Top 5 was born out of my love of music and reading and the book and film High Fidelity. Each week, I ask a new guest to give me their top 5 tracks or artists relative to a topic.
This week’s Your Top 5 topic is about something we all love, the weekend. No, not The Weeknd, although “Blinding Lights” does slap. A lot of songs out there discuss the weekend, so there may be some obvious ones on my list in particular, but my special guest this week is inimitable Brad Kyle who pens the excellent Front Row & Backstage.
Brad’s Top 5
Meet Roscoe. He’s a middle-manager at Samsung, and he, his laptop, and his decidedly retro sensibilities are “driving” home after a tough Friday at work.
His weekend plans? Well, whatever they may be, they’ll be accompanied (and maybe inspired by), and super-charged by his Weekend Playlist of choice, and it goes a little something like this. Push “play,” and hop aboard:
1. Rubinoos, “Drivin’ Music,” 1977
1970: Bay area teens, Jon Rubin and Tommy Dunbar, form a band in their Berkeley high school in order to play for a dance. Inspired by siblings’ 45s and the Cruisin’ vintage-radio compilation LP series, Jon and the Rubinoos play rock and roll oldies for anyone who’d listen.
Songs included covers of Chubby Checker, Bill Haley and the Comets, The Dovells, the Troggs, Little Eva, the Chiffons, and others. The die is cast.
Cut to 1977 and their debut album on Beserkley Records, which led to their second in 1979, Back to the Drawing Board, and this nod to top-down groovin’ with the AM radio or the tape deck turned to 11. “You don’t have to touch the cruise control, ‘cause we got it set to rock’n’roll!” Written by Rubin, Dunbar, and James Gangwer.
Rubinoos: They’re Raspberries’ punky but polite little brothers. And, both those “R” bands are planted solidly on my Mt. Rushmore of Power Pop. Let the weekend begin!
2. Spanky & Our Gang, “Lazy Day,” 1967
Terwilliger the cat wakes up Roscoe with some nuzzling on a Saturday morning. The first song he hears on his radio will blueprint his new day!
Spanky & Our Gang are slotted firmly and happily in the sub-genre of Sunshine Pop, joining such breezy, melody-rich and harmony-filled aggregates as Harper’s Bizarre, The Association, Milliennium, Mamas & Papas, 5th Dimension, The Sunshine Company, Left Banke, the Tandyn Almer canon, Sagittarius, plus much of that late-’60s period Beach Boys and Jan & Dean. Power pop and sunshine pop sit firmly in my boss ride of catchy, sing-a-long music, and have for decades!
Roscoe tosses his board in the back seat of his ride, and he’s off to his favorite place!
3. Chicago, “Saturday in the Park,” 1972
According to Songfacts.com, “Chicago’s main songwriter, Robert Lamm, wrote this song after a particularly exhilarating 4th of July spent in New York’s Central Park, where there were steel drum players, singers, dancers and jugglers. Lamm and Peter Cetera sing on the track.”
Saturday turns into Sunday, and Roscoe’s wonderful weekend continues with Terwilliger the cat getting fed his favorite nom-noms and, surprisingly, gets rewarded with spending the day with Roscoe at the park! Off we go!
4. Michael Buble, “It’s a Beautiful Day,” 2013
It’s a beautiful day, and I can’t stop myself from smiling. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is up, and the music’s playing!
The perfect day for Roscoe continues, as a kite-flying contest is accompanied by some musicians in the bandstand playing a happy-go-lucky Michael Buble song from 2013. Ignore the lyrics on this one, as he’s cynically celebrating leaving his lady. We haven’t time for all that now…it’s a rousing, feel-good song punched up with spritely horns and propulsive arrangement, despite Buble’s, Alan Chang’s and Amy S. Foster’s happy-to-be-breaking-up lyrics!
This one’s such a happy song, you may find yourself skipping in spite of yourself…ha! I haven’t skipped since high school….Senior Skip Day. What?! Then, what were we supposed to be doing? Well, that explains the empty home room with a teacher laughing.
5. The Monkees, “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” 1967
“Pleasant Valley Sunday” fittingly caps off our weekend with the song that Carole King says (in her autobiography) exemplifies the new life that she and her husband and songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin, had earned from their songwriting royalties: Moving, in the ‘60s, from New York City to West Orange, New Jersey, where one of the major thoroughfares in town is called Pleasant Valley Way.
Goffin disliked their new suburban life, and wrote lyrics to document the feeling that became “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” The lyrics are a social commentary on status symbols, the boredom and conformity of life in suburbia, and the old “keeping up with the Joneses” stereotype.
Roscoe and Terwilliger roll their way home, happily remembering their care-free weekend, and, as they ready themselves for another work week, already are looking forward to next weekend!
My Top 5
I have this weird quirk, and not many people know this about me, but if a song is about a day of the week or a holiday, it can only be played on that day or holiday season1. So “Monday” by Wilco, cannot be played on Wednesday, and “Wednesday” by Drive-By Truckers, cannot be played on Monday. If “Feliz Navidad” comes on in April, I don’t wanna hear it. It’s just my weird superstition. If those songs come on and its not that day or season, I smash that skip button so fast—no matter how badly I want to hear the song.
As you can imagine, “Friday I’m in Love” must be played on Friday. Bonus points if it comes on while I am driving home from work, there is no better feeling and no better way to begin your weekend, than that song on your ride home.
Is it about drugs or is it about taking day trips to the countryside, or is it both?! In any event, I included this song because the weekend is short, and so are day trips, and so is weekend drug use. Also, my guitar lessons were always Saturday mornings when I was a teenager and the first riff my guitar teacher, Matt, taught me was the one from “Day Tripper.”
The combination of the shortness if a weekend and my nostalgia for when I was first learning the guitar is the reason why this song makes my list.
Bay City Rollers—Saturday Night
I would be remiss to not add this absolute banger on my list. I mean, it’s in the name. This song also really takes me back to being in the house I grew up in, my mom would often play this song and other similarly situated songs around the house on the weekend. We had one of those full audio interfaces in the faux wood cabinet and glass. Ironically, I also have a full hi-fi interface on a rack system in my home as well—some things change, some don’t.
The weekend is for soccer, or football, as it is called everywhere else on this planet—and that includes in the UK. I know my weekends are soon to be jam packed with soccer, between rec and travel, Saturday and Sunday might as well be black holes. I do enjoy coaching and watching my kids play though, so there’s that.
While not the best Iron Maiden track by more than a country mile, this song has some epic solos, and probably the least inspired Bruce Dickinson vocals I have ever heard. The lyrical content though, is pretty neat. You see, in a lot of places, soccer hooligans and hooliganism is a real problem. Sometimes they get out of hand and a wee bit violent—all over a game. That’s the main gist of this weekend-based track.
Some of the things that you've done
You feel so ashamed
After all it's only a game Isn't it?
And after all the adrenalin's gone
What you gonna do on Monday?
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do on Monday?
Wilco—One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)
I cannot think of a better song that encapsulates the *feeling* of Sunday better than this 12-minute long journey through peaceful solitude. Can you honestly think of a song that essentially exudes mindfulness? That’s the feeling this Wilco track evokes for me. It is me waking up on a clear and sunny Sunday morning, pouring my coffee, and sitting on the patio and contemplating.
It’s just a few simple repeated lead notes played on an acoustic guitar and a soft piano progression with very minimal, but poetic, lyrics sung by the master of soft vocals, Jeff Tweedy. I encourage everyone to spin this track on this coming Sunday morning and tell me it doesn’t evoke a peaceful easy feelin’.
Next week I will be Top 5ing with another Music Stack luminary we all know and love with a new an exciting topic. Want to be included in an upcoming edition? Feel free to shoot me a DM or comment below—don’t forget to include your top 5 for this week’s topic!
If I limited to the actual holiday, you might as well subtract every Christmas song except on Christmas Day, and where does it end, can I only listen to The Last Waltz on Thanksgiving Day?! I have given this a lot of thought, folks.
 | A guest post by
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Thanks for asking, Christopher! It was fun to create a tech middle-manager with a rad, skatin' cat to accompany a fun weekend Playlist! I enjoyed your list, too! I love how, when given a Playlist topic, so many different artists and songs can be conjured by different people, and a fabulous Playlist can emerge each time!
1. Workin' for the Weekend - Loverboy - This one was an anthem when I was in my 20s!
2. Switchin' to Glide - The Kings - Same as above! "Nothing matters but the weekend from a Tuesday point of view!"
3. Beautiful Sunday - Daniel Boone - This one was big when I was a child. It SO captures a sunny Sunday!
4. Saturday Night - Brian Wilson featuring Nate Ruess - Really captures spending a relaxing night with good friends.
5. Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting - Elton John (also Kenny Wayne Shepherd's recent version!) There's nothing like the reckless abandon of Saturday nights when we are young!
Top Five and Top Ten lists are my bag! I'd love to be included in a future post!