And you thought it would be a Metallica song. 🙂 My pick for the best song of all time lies very close to my heart. However, more than that, critics as well as people of all ages can relate to this song. Rolling Stones Magazine agrees with me as they too rate it as one of the all time best songs. Written the year of my birth (of course!), 1963, Co-Writer John Phillips had a dream about the song and woke up his wife, Michelle Phillips to help him write the song. They were living in New York at the time. Michelle missed the warmth that California provides, for the most part, year round. According to Wikipedia, “The lyrics of the song express the narrator’s longing for the warmth of California during a cold winter.” However, I have heard endless interviews and read endless articles that state it was written with Michelle’s longing for California in mind. I can relate to this so very much! Thus, one of the best known songs (world-wide) was born. 
I make no secret that moving to Virginia from California back in 1996 is one of ‘the great mistakes of my life’. I miss my home everyday. This song has been my mantra for many years. I listen to it often and it always takes me back……. back to the place that is not just a state, but an entity all its own.
When my children were very small, we would always play this song over and over on our way to the beach. The girls and I would sing and harmonize to the top of our lungs! The memories tied to this song are endless. Being a pudgy child, and thinking my pudginess would last forever, I remember seeing the lovely Cass Elliot (in my opinion the best Contralto to ever grace our earth) and thinking, “She is not skinny and she is pretty and famous, maybe I can be like that too!” Her untimely death was heartbreaking. Actually there is only one in the group still alive, Michelle Phillips. Then there is Denny Doherty. Yes, the lead singer of this ballad was actually Canadian! He is from Nova Scotia. And this I can guarantee, if I had been ‘of age’ at the time, I would have had a huge crush on him because he was gorgeous! 
Many bands have covered this song (I refuse to listen to covers of “California Dreamin’) and its use in movies and media is huge. This is a hit that just gives and gives. Most people over the age of twenty five years old not just know this song, but love it! How can you not love this song? While perhaps not the ‘best’ musically as in degree of difficulty, music is so much more than the degree of difficulty of the song. This song is not ‘deep’ but it it touches the deepest parts of the soul. Music is about touching, feelings, a story, moving the listener and so much more! I am sure it means something for everyone else. For me, it is my ‘theme song’. I am a California girl through and through and that is one thing that will never change. I love my home state. I adore the weather, the lifestyle, the open-minded people, the big freeways where people actually know how to drive. The way people drive in the Roanoke/ Salem area of Virginia is a topic all of it own Merritt. I miss being a day trip from the beach. I miss everything!
So enjoy what I consider to be the best song of all time, “California Dreamin’Â ” by The Mamma’s and The Pappa’s. My next post I will re cap the list, in order, and post some ‘honorable mentions’ and then put this blog into moth balls. So, until next time, K.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk
