Someone started a thread about perfect movies.

[rownesheck]

Well, what songs would you describe as perfect? I've got 2 right off the top of my head, both from Soundgarden:

Birth Ritual
and
The Day I Tried to Live

What's your's?

[underpants]

1. "Ripple" by the Dead or "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve

RIP Robert Hunter

[volstork]

2. Here are a few:

Graceland-- Paul Simon
Baba O'Riley-- The Who
Solsbury Hill-- Peter Gabriel
The Man That Got Away-- Judy Garland
Half a World Away-- REM
Ticket to Ride-- The Beatles

[DUgosh]

3. Glen Campbell's

Whicita Lineman

[The Polack MSgt]

14. +++

Great choice.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

4. The Urge for Going (Tom Rush), Wasn't Born to Follow (Byrds),

To Try for the Sun (Donovan), Book of Days (Enya), Under Pressure (Queen/Bowie), Then Heavy People (Kate Bush), Tears (Chameleons). I'll stop there.

[Hoyt]

5. "For a Spanish Guitar" by Gene Clark is my favorite song of all time, without reservation.

The whole song is prefect, but these two verses are just perfect:

And the laughter of children employed
By the fantasies not yet destroyed
By the dogmas of those they avoid
Knowing not what they are

Just to laugh through the columns of trees
To soar like a seagull in breeze
To stand in the rain if you please
Or to never be found


According to Rolling Stone:

It's been widely reported that Bob Dylan had this to say about "For a Spanish Guitar," arguably Gene Clark's greatest effort: &quot It's) something I or anybody else would have been proud to have written."

Against gracefully descending guitar chords, Clark distills Dylan's poetic mysticism down to its emotional essence. In the song, he examines the troubadour's plight: his or her effort to draw in the great wide world of beggars, laughing children and seagulls, and to render that world in song and strings. Clark muses, as best he can, that "the answers they cannot explain/ pulsate from my soul through my brain/ in a Spanish guitar."

[shenmue]

6. "Cemet'ry Gates," The Smiths

[OilemFirchen]

7. "Take This Waltz", Leonard Cohen

"Where is My Mind", Pixies
"Desperados Under The Eaves", Warren Zevon

[Cartoonist]

8. Accidents

This song has it all.
Piano solo, guitar solo, unique lyrics about death and life, and musical styles both old and new.

[NRaleighLiberal]

9. any song from Miles Davis Kind of Blue

Pat Metheny composition The Way Up
Because, Something, Revolution, Here Comes the Sun...Beatles

[world wide wally]

10. Three come to mind when you say perfect:

Perfect top 40 song : Maggie Mae by Rod Stewart
Perfect feel good song: Jessica by The Allman Brothers
Perfect cry in your beer song: Love in Vain by The Rolling Stones

[Bob Loblaw]

11. Here's a few

"Into the Mystic" Van Morrison
"Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" Crosby, Stills & Nash
"Seven Little Indians" John Hiatt
"Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore"
John Prine
"Sweet Dreams" Patsy Cline

[GReedDiamond]

12. "Box of Rain" by The Grateful Dead...

...and as already mentioned above "Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell.

[The Polack MSgt]

13. Patsy Cline had a perfect sad country song

I fall to pieces

Lou Rawls cut a perfect 60s blues soaked soul crooner

I have several other candidates, but these 2 songs are so exactly the archetypical versions of that music