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Song of the Day #5,916: ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ – The Animals

The week of September 12, 1964, was smack in the middle of a three-week run at #1 for one of the greatest folk rock songs of all time: The Animals’ ‘The House of the Rising Sun.’

This was just the second single for the young English band, and it would be their only #1 hit in both the U.S. and their native UK.

The song’s origin dates back so far nobody is really sure when it was written, though it bears similarities to folk songs from the 1600s. But The Animals’ version owes the most to Bob Dylan’s recording.

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Song of the Day #5,915: ‘The Little Shoemaker’ – The Gaylords

Throwing back to the week of September 11, 1954, we find two repeats atop the Billboard chart: The Crew Cuts’ ‘Sh-Boom‘ and Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Hey There.’

At #3 was vocal trio The Gaylords with ‘The Little Shoemaker,’ a song based on the French tune ‘Le petit cordonnier’ by Rudi Revil.

The song certainly has a European flair, with two of the choruses sung in Italian (maybe they had too much trouble singing in French?).

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Song of the Day #5,914: ‘I Can’t Get My Head Around It’ – Aimee Mann

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…

#6 – The Forgotten Arm – Aimee Mann

Aimee Mann’s fifth solo release is a concept album about a romance between Vietnam vet boxer John and his girlfriend Caroline. Set in the 70s, it depicts the couple’s struggle with John’s alcoholism.

Though the songs shape the narrative, they are general enough to work as standalone tracks, and Mann serves up a great batch of her signature melancholy mid-tempo pop.

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Song of the Day #5,913: ‘Flowers’ – Brad Paisley

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…

#7 – Time Well Wasted – Brad Paisley

This is the first album on my list that I didn’t hear in 2005. Brad Paisley, and country music in general, just weren’t on my radar that year.

It was four years later when I first heard Paisley’s American Saturday Night that I became an instant fan. And that sent me right to his back catalog to catch up with everything I’d missed.

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Song of the Day #5,912: ‘Obtener un Si’ – Shakira

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…

#8 – Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1 & Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 – Shakira

Today’s pick is a bit of a cheat, in that I’m squeezing two albums into one slot. But Shakira’s two-volume project, separated by five months, certainly feels like one extended album.

Fijacion Oral, the first (and better) volume, is performed entirely in Spanish, while Oral Fixation is fully English-language. The albums share a few titles but mostly tread different territory.

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