The hundreds of “four walls” titles in existence testify to the fact that songs are still pretty much written the way they have been for centuries, and by this I mean in rooms. “Four Walls” by country crooner Jim Reeves is the high-water mark of this arcane subgenre. In his comforting baritone, he sings that the walls are “closing in on me” and you wonder why David Lynch hasn’t used this song yet. In the world of jazz, four is often invoked to signify the 4/4 time signature. That was the reasoning behind the titles of two classics, Miles Davis’s “Four” and “Four on Six” by Wes Montgomery (covered scintillatingly by pianist Wynton Kelly, a cohort of Miles Davis). Nina Simone’s “Four Women” inveighs against stereotypes of African-American women (“4 Men” is a blazing track from Kitchens of Distinction, a vastly underappreciated band that members of Radiohead have cited as a significant influence); and then there’s “Four Day Creep” an old blues number by Ida Cox, wherein the singer declares, “I’m gonna buy me a bulldog to watch my man while he sleeps/Men are so doggone crooked/afraid he might make a four-day creep.” Ms. Cox’s song was covered by the likes of Charlie Christian, Humble Pie, Leslie West, Brownie Magee, and many others. Robert Johnson’s “From Four Until Late,” which details one of the choice segments of your typical four-day creep, was a favorite of Cream, Peter Green, as well as aficionados of the blues who weren’t British and legendary. “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)” is a stirring Tom Waits number with a “waltzing matilda” refrain that tugs at the heart like a rainy day. In an interview, Waits succinctly summed up the origins of the song: “Uh, well I met this girl named Matilda. And uh, I had a little too much to drink that night. This is about throwing up in a foreign country.”

Stereolab - "Difficult Fourth Title" (Live @ the BBC)
Elastica - "Four Wheeling" (Live @ the BBC)

Two songs that were rewritten with a pronounced “fourientation” for BBC 1 Radio sessions include Elastica’s “Four Wheeling”—pretty much “Car Song” with a new name—and Stereolab’s much more satisfying “Difficult Fourth Title,” an alternate version of “Contact” from Switched On Stereolab with a strummed intro that could pass for Galaxy 500 (more on them later). The Beatles’ “Two of Us” is one of the greatest two-songs ever. “Four of Us” does not have the same ring, but that didn’t stop late-in-their-career Four Tops and John Sebastian from trying.

Despite the fact that since 1897, the term “four-letter word” has officially signified a distinct class of taboo expressions, most songwriters since roughly the time of Cilla Black’s “Work is Just a Four-Letter Word” (later covered by the Smiths) have taken the position that the only four-letter word of interest is “love.” Joan Baez was the most prominent exponent of this belief, with her version of Dylan’s “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word,” and Cheap Trick, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and ace film scorer Roy Budd have all echoed that precise sentiment. Still, there are contrarians: Kim Wilde qualifies the point in her UK top 10 hit “Four Letter Word” (which, like “Kids in America,” was written by her father and brother), saying that love is only a four letter word “when it says goodbye.” Other dissenters include Cake (“Friend is Just a Four Letter Word”), Lostprophets (“Five is Just a Four Letter Word”), Bad English (“Heaven is Just a Four Letter Word”), and Pop Will Eat Itself, leading lights of the short-lived British musical subculture known as grebo, who declared themselves to be a four-letter word.

Here’s a final random smattering: “Four Letters” from the Volcano Suns’ All Night Lotus Party, “4th Dimensional Transaction” by MGMT, “Four Skies” by Arto Lindsay, “Four Corners” by the Skatalites, and “Four Yorkshiremen,” a Monty Python sketch in which the title characters reminisce about who had the worse childhood: (“We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.”)

Bob Dylan - "Positively 4th Street"

Some of you might say I’ve got a lot of nerve…for not giving top honors to “Positively 4th Street,” the 1965 Bob Dylan single that Dave Marsh termed “an icy hipster bitch session,” and which is a flat-out classic. The reason I choose not to give the nod to Bob is for his ambiguous use of 4. Much speculation has been devoted to determining whether the 4th Street of the title refers to Greenwich Village or Minnesota, as well as, of course, uncovering the target of the song’s unremitting scorn. (Popular theories say it’s either Edie Sedgwick or any number of purist folkie types who were offended by Dylan’s change of musical direction.) In any case, as character assassination goes, it is unparalleled; as a 4 song, it leaves something to be desired. For its four-minute length, P4S is about as nastily direct and unambiguous as can be; only the title is obtuse. That’s Dylan for you. I can just see him writing this screed (working title: “You Got a Lotta Nerve”) then chuckling to himself as he comes up with a red herring title that will keep the rabid fans wondering for decades, and all the better to keep his mystery intact.

I stayed inside on the fourth of July

I pulled the shades so I didn’t have to see the sky

And I decided to have a bed-in

But I forgot to invite anybody

Galaxie 500 - "Fourth of July"

Today’s the fourth of July

Another June has gone by

And when they light up our town

I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky

Aimee Mann - "4th of July"

Your ultimate 4th of July song tells more about you than your favorite Christmas song ever will. So how do you roll? “Fourth of July” by U2? Get out—nobody likes that song. Soundgarden’s “Fourth of July” from Superunknown? Not one of their best. Maybe yours is a proggy sort of patriotism, of the Spock’s Beard variety, or perhaps you prefer the sepia-toned psychedelia of “Mister Fourth of July” by Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies. But I doubt it. By my calculations, you’re either a cynic or a romantic, and if you’re the former, you’re choosing Galaxie 500 or Aimee Mann, and if you’re the latter, there’s only one choice.

Bruce Springsteen - "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"

“4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” reminds us of the high level at which Bruce Springsteen was operating before Born to Run made him an instant legend. People write this stuff too often, but damn it, you really can almost smell the cheap beer and hear the gulls overhead, from the very first guitar frills (almost like a continuation of the tweet-tweets at the tail end of “Layla”) to a final phrase that could almost segue into “And Then He Kissed Me.” The crowning touch to the compelling musical atmosphere is the sound of Danny Federici’s accordion pervading the song like mist, a sound made more poignant in the wake of Federici’s death earlier this year. In the minds of his critics, Springsteen is a bellower devoid of subtlety, but “Sandy” has a quiet power that belies the image of Bruce as a chest-beater in constant overdrive. This is a complex construction, with verses full of switchblade lovers, greasers, cops, and factory girls who promise to unsnap their jeans, and a chorus that sends the whole thing heavenward.

Extra points for the use of “aurora,” a word that has never appeared in the annals of Dylan or Morrison.

A final note: Just a few days ago, a notice appeared in the Times announcing the death of an Asbury Park resident in her mid-90s, born Marie Castello. Better known as Madame Marie, she was the fortuneteller who became part of rock ‘n’ roll legend when she was immortalized in the best-known line of our winning song:

“I heard the cops finally busted Madame Marie/For telling fortunes better than they do.”

Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. The higher the digit, the lonelier the climb.

Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 , 47, 48, 49 , 50, 51