Readers, Friday was my final Water Cooler, and this is my last post at Naked Capitalism. Friday, I put up a couple of railroad songs, and you had a great time sharing more and more tunes on the same theme. So I thought it would be fun to do the same thing again, with a different mode of transport. Also, a post like this may serve as an amuse-bouche before the ginormous tasting menu of the coming week’s events.
For me, songs that features airplanes were pretty hard to find — perhaps the inherent reciprocation of trains makes them more suitable for popular rhythms — but I am sure you can do better in comments. At first I tried to be clever with the sequencing — Paper Planes should really be juxtaposed with Deportee — but then I just gave up and went with chronological. That reveals a strong bias toward the 60s and 70s, but I can’t help it if my generation had the best music!
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Flying Home (Ella Fitzgerald, 1947). Lyrics.
Come Fly with Me (Frank Sinatra, 1958). Lyrics.
Night Flying (James Brown, 1961). Instrumental.
Flight 505 (Rolling Stones, 1966). Lyrics.
The Letter (The Box Tops, 1967). Lyrics.
Back in the USSR (The Beatles, 1968). Lyrics.
Coming Into Los Angeles (Arlo Guthrie, 1969). Lyrics.
This Flight Tonight (Joni Mitchell, 1971). Lyrics.
Promised Land (Elvis Presley, 1975). Lyrics.
Mothership Connection (Parliament Funkadelic, 1976). Lyrics.
Jet Plane (Sonya Spence, 1978). Lyrics.
Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) (The Highwaymen, 1985). Lyrics.
Airportman (R.E.M., 1988). Lyrics.
Paper Planes (M.I.A., 2007). Lyrics.
Dallas (The Flatlanders, 2012). Lyrics.
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I feel that I have said farewell once, and I don’t care for performers who return to the stage again and again to milk the applause and collect more bouquets. With great appreciation for your careful reading and commentary over the many years, au revoir. Now let’s hear more airplane songs!
