The Mecca 100 - #15-11

[littlebeast13]

<<< #20-16


#15. "Maureen" - Fountains of Wayne (2005)

Three years before Fountains of Wayne broke out into the mainstream with "Stacy's Mom," they released an album of previously unreleased material.... yes, this band had been around for a while. That double album, Out-of-State Plates, spawned this absolutely amazing Mecca earworm that was one of the highlights of the pre-2008 Mecca Radio blackout era. How the band did not like this enough to include it on a proper album release is beyond me. Have you ever twinned songs together subconsciously based on some common thread.... like "Arizona" and "Indiana Wants Me?" This song is half of the most bizarre twin set in my head... paired with Kool and the Gang's "Joanna." Why? Both were earworms at the same time, and both came with a very noticeable volume increase a few seconds after they started playing...




#14. "Let It Snow" - Darren Criss and Chris Colfer from the cast of Glee (2011)

The two Mecca Christmas CD's were each ten hours long, and had about 95% of their songs in common. Out of all the songs you can squeeze on a CD that long, only three of them made this countdown. This one was absolutely at the top, and the highlight of the holiday. My god, the issues I had trying to find out who performed this awesome version of the song, especially since I was looking for a guy and a girl duet. LOL! Nice job, guys!




#13. "Angels" - Robbie Williams (1997)

In TBone's final Boney Awards (sniff) for the year 2020, he included a Josh Groban song called "Angels" at #56. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a cover of the awesome Mecca earworm from the early 2000's from Robbie Williams, one of his first solo efforts after leaving the boy band Take That! There is a lot of controversy over just how much Williams and his collaborator Guy Chambers actually contributed to the writing of this song despite taking full credit, but there is no doubt this is a top notch love ballad. And incidentally, this song's twin in my mind is David Grey's "Babylon," since both songs were played nearly every night at that time, and the less I say about how much I despise that song, the better...




#12. "99%" - Leihoku (2014)

Our third and final Hawaiian artist in the countdown, and not to be confused with "Perfect Day's" Hoku, Leihoku isn't even popular enough to have her own Wikipedia page. Her songs did find their way into the retail muzak world (see next entry), and "99%" was one of two to appear on the Mecca CD's. This song didn't even make its way onto YouTube until six years ago! Criminal! Beautiful song, beautiful voice, and yes, a reference to the Nena song "99 Red Balloons!"




#11. "I Can't Go For That" - The Bird and The Bee (2010)

In 2010, indie pop duo The Bird and The Bee released an entire album of nothing but covers of Hall and Oates songs. This song was chosen out of that bunch to play in retail outlets across the country. Shortly after it made post-CD/pre-radio show Mecca Radio in late 2015, I had to check it out and found the comments of the YouTube video littered with employees of all kinds of retail and mall stores saying this played in their workplace all the time too. It was then I realized how corporate even commercial muzak was! Well, at least this was an excellent choice to include, as I absolutely adore the playful sounds as well as the adorable voice of singer Inara George... who as a commenter on my blog noted when I featured this one, raved about how she made it sound nasty! And yes, another song with a twin in my mind... "Rill Rill" by Sleigh Bells that appeared way at the beginning of this countdown, as both songs were nightly affairs at the same time...



I hope to wrap this up by splitting the Top 10 into pairs and posting them next Monday through Friday!