Top 5?

A friend issued a challenge--what are your top five songs of all time.

Impossible.

How does a girl who grew up listening to The Sounds of the Sixties, Arthur Fielder, The Statler Brothers and who trained as a classical pianist and violinist and then discovered pop and rock limit herself to five songs????

So, this list can't be trimmed much more than this.  Here goes:

Edelweiss--the best version is the one sung by Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music

Red Sovine's Teddy Bear was a favorite when I was a kid.  I'm a daddy's girl and he listened to country music when Mom wasn't around.

Liebestraum and The Spinning Song were 2 that my mom used to play on piano when I was a kid.  So they have to be on the list.

My grandmother played both piano and organ.  I loved to hear her play Hold That Tiger and Wheels.

One of the staples of orchestra when I was in sixth through eighth grade was Sweet Caroline.  You'd think I would have tired of it but no, I love it even now.

I still remember how hard I worked on Moonlight Sonata for my piano solo in eighth grade.  And I still remember how wonderful Mr. Travis was when I got all tripped up memory-wise with the piece so he let me finish with my music.

The Shostakovitch--Symphony No.5, Allegro Non Troppo.  I was just 13 when I was selected to perform with a special orchestra at a convention in Chicago.  This was the last piece in our performance and I can still remember the exuberance when we nailed it! 

When I was 17 my senior solo was Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major.  I found it on a tape or record and made myself a tape to listen to every night before bed.  The piece was too long to perform completely at competition.  My judge was wonderful about the length.  My one sad note is that I was fiercely independent that year and insisted on going to state competition on the bus with friends rather than with my dad.  Stupid girl.  I hurt Dad terribly and didn't get to share the experience with him :-(

A couple of songs stand out for the college years like The Haircut Song by Ray Stevens and The Unicorn Song by the Irish Rovers.  But if I had to cut to just one I would choose When You Say Nothing at All by Keith Whitley.

You know how there are some songs that bowl you the first time you hear them and then you can remember for years to come where you were when you first heard the song?  I have one of those--Garth Brooks' The Dance.  I had just pulled into the driveway at home after a long night at work.  I was in my 82 Cutlass (Light Jadestone with a white vinyl top).  And then the song came on.  I didn't want to miss any of it so I sat in the driveway to hear it to the end.  Wow.

Widor's Toccata was always special to me.  My cousin was just a teenager when he played it as the recessional for my parents wedding.  I was lucky to get him to play for my wedding as well and of course, that had to be our recessional too.

I Can Only Imagine by Mercy Me caught my heart when I first heard it.  It gained importance when it just happened to be the song that was playing when my husband held our youngest daughter for the first time.

The first time I heard Sissy's Song by Alan Jackson  I was driving in my car.  I was reduced to tears.  I was flooded with memories from when my sister died.

So there you have it.   A little country, a little classical, a little pop.    A list of my musical memories.

Maybe one day I'll write up my "B list" of songs.  I wonder if I can cut the list to a top 50?