Fewer well-known artists than you’d think have songs named after numbers, so this exercise has introduced me to quite a few new performers.
It’s hard to tell just yet whether I’ve stumbled across any bands or solo acts I’ll listen to beyond their contribution of ’12’ or ‘Twenty nine’ or whatever, but there’s always a chance.
Take the English alt-rock band Mansun, which recorded for a decade starting in the mid-90s. I doubt I’ll ever seek them out again, but parts of ‘Six’ are intriguing.
Finding 31 numbered songs wasn’t easy, especially because my goal was to have as broad a range of genres and voices as possible.
It would have been quite simple if I’d embraced heavy metal, as those bands seem to have recorded a song for just about every number. I don’t know if that’s a hallmark of the genre or a coincidence, but if you want to hear angry white men shouting numbers, you are in luck. It’s like Sesame Street in hell.
Our fourth numbered song comes from Givin’ It Up,the 2006 collaboration between jazz artists Al Jarreau and George Benson.
The album featured appearances by Jill Scott and Paul McCartney, among others, and songs by Billie Holiday, John Legend, Daryl Hall and Sam Cooke, in addition to Jarreau’s own compositions. It won two Grammys, one for a Benson instrumental performance and one for the vocal performance by the duo and Jill Scott.
‘Three’ turned out to be a more difficult find than I expected when compiling my list of 31 Numbered Songs.
After quite a bit of searching, I narrowed it down to a 6-minute emo dirge by “post-rock” band Athletics and a 2009 Britney Spears electropop track about the joy of threesomes.
Call me crazy, but I’m going with the dirge.
I have a pretty extensive music collection, but nowhere near extensive enough to provide fodder for 31 songs named after the numbers one through 31.
So one of the great things about this challenge is how it has forced me to discover new music by artists I’d never even heard of.
Meet Me In Montauk 