Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields named his epic work 69 Love Songs because he needed an outsize numeral. He considered 100 but decided it was simply too much, so he chose 69, both for its graphic potential (“It’s a visual palindrome. It would make a good logo on a Broadway poster”) and because it was the next lowest number below 100 “that had another relevant meaning.” And he’s right. Sure, 72 is the number of beats-per-minute in the average human heart rate, and 98.6 is the average human temperature, but 69, nimble shorthand for an iconic–not to mention visually palindromic–act of mutual oral gratification, is the indisputable Big Kahuna between 50 and 100.

Beavis – “69″

It’s funny, then, that of the scads of 69-titled songs out there, those that specifically reference the act itself are relatively rare. At the forefront is T-Pain’s “69,” (“I’ve been doing tongue exercises,” he promises, before delivering the anatomically impossible suggestion: “I spread that booty so wide/ I can tell that shit’s spread by the look in her eyes.”), which makes me yearn for the relative purity of Rick James, whose “She Blew My Mind (69 Times)” comes off as a model of restraint next to T-Pain’s booty-spreadin’ exploits. And while the classic “96 Tears” was originally titled “69 Tears,” the Mysterians were forced to switch to 96 in order to thwart controversy. (Nevertheless, the part about, “And when the sun comes up, I’ll be on top/You’ll be right down there, lookin up” has been alleged to refer to a certain sex act and made it through unscathed.) By and large, though, the trend continues: most 69-titled songs refer to a year–in this case, 1969, the year of Woodstock, the first moon landing, the Manson killings, the Miracle Mets, and Altamont. (Some great songs have used the full name of the year, most notably the Stooges’ lethal “1969,” Boards of Canada’s typically creepy/dreamy “1969,” and Bo Diddley 1969,” which adds a little go-go dancing kick to his signature beat.

Bo Diddley changed his name (he was born Elias Otha Bates), and so did the grizzled French baritone Serge Gainsbourg, who started life as Lucien Ginsberg. The languid “69 Annee Erotique,” a duet with his lover Jane Birkin from a 1969 collaboration, is tamer than the record’s controversial hit, the soft-core moan-fest “Je t’aime Moi Non Plus” (some believed Ms. Birkin’s orgasmic trilling was authentic, making “Je t’aime” the “Kiss Kiss Kiss” of its day), but the song’s lusty message is never in doubt. Unlike “J’taime,” the Vatican was silent about “Annee Erotique,” presumably because the double entendre was too subtle. Mick Harvey of the Bad Seeds paid homage to Serge in the mid-’90s with Intoxicated Man and Pink Elephants, two collections of Gainsbourg songs sung in English, including, naturally, “69 Erotic Year.” (It sounds better en Francais.)

Serge Gainsbourg – “69 Année Érotique”

Random 69 fact: Charles Osborne hiccupped for 69 years and holds the record for “the Longest Attack of Hiccups” in the Guinness Book of World Records. No surprise that Guinness opted for “hiccups” and not “singultus,” the rarely used medical term for “hiccups,” but singultus would make a great title for the next Sigur Ros album (lowercase, natch, in a Druidic font).

The ever-popular “noun + numeral” song-title trope is well represented with 69. There’s “Alabama 69″ by Humble Pie, a shameless imagining of life during slavery, “Life 69″ by Hairy Chapter (that’s right, Hairy Chapter, German electric blues-ists circa. 1970), Rocket 69 by the Lee Harvey Oswald Band, which suggests the sound of Dr. Frank N.
Furter freed of the screen a la Purple Rose of Cairo and playing Vegas parking lots (“I’m full of beer and I’m hung like a steer, baby climb on!”), as well as an international trove, including Italian pop chanteuse Patty Pravo’s “Tripoli ’69,” Dutch rockers Peter Pan Speedrock’s “Black Beauty ’69″ and “October 69″ by Northern Ireland’s Jim Armstong Band.

Andy Partridge of XTC wrote songs about fictional dance crazes, like the Neon Shuffle and the Spinning Top, but they never caught on. Alvin Cash, a ’60s soul singer and a high school classmate of Tina Turner, could probably relate: his “Funky ’69,” a hip-shaking “future dance,” never became a craze, despite Cash’s impassioned exhortation to “whoop it now!” But it’s guaranteed to raise a smile. Evidently people had the idea that ’69 was going to be something special: The Customs Five, one of hundreds of below-the-radar American garage bands of the late ’60s, give us the rousing “Let’s Go in ’69,” from one of the many Pebbles compilations. Later covered by garage revivalists the Maggots, the song is a bracing cocktail of blurpy buitar, heavy ride cymbal and the sound of some kid who never made a career out of rock singing lead vocals. In the same primitive spirit is the loose-limbed garage funk of “Miss Free Love ’69″ by Hoodoo Gurus, who did have some hits. Many bands inspired by the primitive innocence of ’60s garage rock have mined similar territory, whether in a heavier grunge style, like the autobiographical “Born in ’69″ by Rocket From the Crypt, and “Sweet ’69″ by Vancouver’s Pink Mountaintops, which joyfully bludgeons the Bo Diddley beat into a lusty slice of tribal dance music. Babes in Toyland’s song of the same name is far more confrontational and dangerous sounding, due to Kat Bjelland’s searing vocal and a perfectly modulated breakdown graced with some of the niftiest cowbell this side of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” Rounding out the pack we have King Khan & the Shrines with “69 Faces of Love” and Swedish stoner rockers Greenleaf, who weigh in with “Vat 69,” a tribute to the venerable Scotch whisky.

Alvin Cash – “Funky ’69″

Customs Five – “Let’s Go In ’69″

Pink Mountaintops – “Sweet ’69″

Star 69, aka “call return,” has been a telephonic option since the early ’90s. Besides unleashing an untold tsunami of awkward moments, the catchy shortcut also inspired a number of songs and at least one band name. R.E.M. was there first with “Star 69″ from Monster, that clamorous blast of glam and guitar noise that would be the band’s last recorded work to approach sales expectations. “Star 69,” a song about persecution by telephone, barrels forward with added propulsion from Michael Stipe’s overlapping vocals, which bring a touch of youthful chaos to the proceedings, while in Fatboy Slim’s thumping house track of the same name, the entire lyric consists of a vocal sample from the Roland Clark song “I Get Deep” (“They know what is what, but they don’t know is what, they just strut. What the fuck?”). There’s no mention of phones, but the lyric is repeated at least 69 times.

R.E.M. – “Star 69″

Fatboy Slim – “Star 69″

Highway songs are a mainstay of the numerological canon, and 69 is no exception. “Highway 69, which runs north-south from Texas to Minnesota, is distinguished by its continual need for replacement highway signs due to the unchecked proliferation of male college students with dorm room walls to decorate. Bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson wrote the song and played it backed by the Yardbirds in 1966, before the band really hit its stride, and it’s been covered in all its swampy glory Big Bill Morganfield, son of the legendary Muddy Waters. The song has a title in common with a trippy number by the Fuzztones, New York revivalists circa 1989. And what’s a highway without a classic ride? “69 El Camino” by Southern Culture on the Skids is a reverb-drenched slice of deranged rockabilly that suggests the low rumble of a hot car you just wanna ride, ride, ride.

The breadth of songs inspired by 69 spans the globe, as well as nearly every genre known to man, from the cocktail jazz of George Shearing’s “Midnight on Cloud 69″ to the techno stylings of David Holmes (“69 Police) and Cloud 69 (“Sixty Nine Ways”), the hardcore thrash of Bury Your Dead (“69 Times the Charm”), South African grunge from Seether (“69 Tea”) and French punk from Charge 69 (“Charge 69,” their theme song). Not to mention bands like 69 Boyz and their salacious “Let Me Ride That Donkey” and Finland’s 69 Eyes, a glam-rock outfit in the spirit of Hanoi Rocks, led by a frontman whose nom du rock is Jyrki 69. By and large, the sound of 69 is heavy (Serge Gainsbourg is an obvious exception.) The number seems to stoke the fires of lust and desire, and in the case of Ministry’s “Psalm 69,” it unleashes the powers of hell. The ostensible title track from what is arguably Jourgensen & Co.’s ultimate statement, “Psalm 69″ is a sonic juggernaut, a spiky tapestry of creepy film samples, mock-sermon sound bites, pummeling guitar riffage, and Cookie Monster vocals (before they became a staple of death/speed/doom/black metal.) Perfectly fusing the most aggressive elements of hard rock, techno, hardcore, and industrial, this is one ingeniously well-calibrated death machine of a song. And you can dance to it.

Ministry – “Psalm 69″

To the man on the street, there is an obvious answer for top 69 song: “Summer of 69″ by Bryan Adams. For sheer name recognition, it trumps every song on this list. Now, I’m not going to fault it for being erroneously autobiographical; why should it matter if Adams would have been about 5 years old in 1969 when, according to the song, he’s making some pretty grown-up vows on his baby’s mama’s porch? Not an issue; let’s just say he’s playing a character. Besides, Bryan Adams is no stranger to controversy; he seems to divide people. To some, he’s utterly derivative, a third-rater. Robert Christgau wrote, “Maybe I’ll let Bruce Springsteen teach me how to hear John Cougar Mellencamp, but damned if I’m going to let John Cougar Mellencamp teach me how to hear Bryan Adams”; Jimmy Guterman wrote, “Bryan Adams’s derivativeness is rivaled only by his opportunism.” But others find his rough-hewn pipes and meat-and-potatoes rock really hit the spot. As for the song in question, though, it just never sunk its hooks into to me. Adams said its inspiration was Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” one of the icons of what critic Chuck Eddy calls “memory-rock songs,” and while the two share the young-fumblings imagery, Adams’s homage sounds packaged and pat compared to Seger’s classic. (“Run to You” and “Cuts Like a Knife,” however, still have the power to impress this foe of corporate rocking.)

Bryan Adams – “Summer of ’69″

Easily one of the best 69 songs I’ve come across comes from what I would consider an unlikely source: Poland. If you are hard-pressed to come up with a Polish rock band, you’re not alone. The Polish electronica/dance music scene has made inroads stateside, with the long-running Unsound Festival reaching our shores in 2010, but Warsaw’s punk, hard rock, and indie scene is largely unknown to most Americans, myself included. That’s why I was so intrigued to discover “Sixty-Nine Moles” by George Dorn Screams, a Warsaw-based quartet that describes itself as “Joy Divison meets Mazzy Star,” which ain’t a bad description. Their synth drone and somber, vibrato-free female vocals put me in mind of another European “indie-tronic” outfit, Lali Puna. From the opening wash of radio static, “69 Moles” has a warm, buzzy glow combined with a gently insistent quality, pulsing along like a more melancholy Stereolab. I’ve listened to the song at least 20 times, and I still don’t know what the 69 moles signify. Nor has my research revealed the identity of George Dorn, but no matter: a little mystery goes down just fine with Polish synth pop this seductive.

George Dorn Screams- “Sixty Nine Moles”

The biggest mystery behind the winning song for this hotly contested spot is why Captain Soul’s debut single, “T-Shirt 69,” is about as well known here as the Polish indie rock scene. True, the band–named after a Byrds instrumental–missed power pop’s brief mid-’70s heyday by about 25 years, but “T-Shirt 69″ is so downright stunning that it seems an injustice that it never even found its way into, say, some lame movie with Liv Tyler. Captain Soul was an English foursome that spent three years in contractual limbo with Sire Records before joining the Poptones label of Creation records founder Alan McGee in 2000. The band’s Byrds-derived name attests to one of its major influences, but as with Teenage Fanclub, the sound it incorporates is really the Byrds conflated with the Neil Young style of whomping guitar overdrive, along with a strong Big Star influence and a generous helping of West Coast harmonies. The spirit of deep and transcendent romantic yearning that courses through many of the best pop singles gives T-Shirt its urgency and poignancy: “I’m at your feet,” croons singer Adam Howorth, “but you’re out of reach.” The song’s origin is not surprising–a girl wearing a 69-emblazoned T-shirt caught Howorth’s eye–but the captivating result of that fleeting encounter is a feat of musical alchemy: turning a sad, empty feeling into four minutes of sheer glory.

Captain Soul – “T-Shirt 69″

Numerology is our pal Dave’s ill-advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. He’s been at it for close to three years now, 3 — the first odd, prime number as well as the number of sides on a triangle. As a child he was more obsessed with counting the sides of blocks instead of matching them to their respective hole. Legend has it that he drove teachers out of education with his theories on hexagon blocks.

Previously: No. 1, 2 (redux), 3, 4 (redux), 5-7, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 10, Again, 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, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Footnotes, 57, 58, 59 , 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68

“Oh, how happy we will be/ if we keep the ten commandments of love.”

the Moonglows

“One of a thousand pities that you can’t categorize

There are ten commandments of love”

Elvis Costello, “Pidjin English”

“She’s got the ten commandments tattooed on her arm.”

MC5, “Sister Anne”

Not nine. Not eleven. Ten commandments. No wonder ten-named songs are a solid lot: they are linked inextricably to the very basis of Judeo-Christian morality. Use 10 right, and you have a powerful weapon. Granted, it’s a heavy a subject to tackle head-on in a pop song, but in “The Ten Commandments of Love,” a valentine to fidelity and deep, abiding romance, the legendary doo-wop practitioners the Moonglows stirringly suggest a concept the average 1950s teenager could get cozy with. (True, the ˜Glows only enumerate nine commandments of love, but the background vocals cunningly fool the ear into thinking it’s heard the full decalogue.)

Harry Nilsson, no stranger to numerically titled songs (see “One” and “1941″), used the Ten Commandments as the basis for his “Ten Little Indians,” which he derived from the short poem-turned-schoolyard jingle that Agatha Christie borrowed for the title of one of her most popular mysteries. (The original title, published in the UK in 1939, used an appalling racial epithet instead of Indians, but the U.S. edition carried the title “And Then There Were None.”) Unlike the original poem, in which each little Indian dies from one form of random misadventure or another, in Nilsson’s version, which the Yardbirds covered, each one dies by breaking a commandment. The Beach Boys’ “Ten Little Indians,” one of their least successful singles, and deservedly so, uses the traditional sing-song melody of the playground to tell the story of a fickle “squaw” who resists nine eager suitors and their offers of moccasins, feathers and the like before settling on “the tenth little Indian boy.” Certainly a low point for a great group. Much more uplifting is “Ten Little Kids” by the Jayhawks, a joyful stomp that really is about kids, from their sublime Tomorrow the Green Grass. The densely churning “Ten Little Girls” by Curve (heck, all their songs are densely churning) diverts from the poem, dispatching the girls in question in one fell swoop.

“Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow/the drummer relaxes and waits between shows for his cinnamon girl”- - Neil Young, “Cinnamon Girl”

The nation’s oldest college athletics conference is the Big Ten, but R&B sax master Bull Moose Jackson had a far different, far from officially sanctioned kind of sport in mind on his signature “Big Ten Inch Record.” The caesura that follows “ten-inch” is all that’s needed to make Jackson’s song a classic of the double entendre, and it’s obvious why Aerosmith covered it in 1976, much to the delight of their male teenage fan base. Motley Crue’s premature ejaculation ode, “Ten Seconds to Love,” speaks to that same hormonally addled populace, only 1983-style: with phallus-as-loaded gun imagery and the assurance that it’s ok to be bad in bed and brag about it afterward. (Alice Cooper’s “10 Minutes to the Worm” has nothing to do with sex whatsoever, while Jefferson Airplane’s “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds” is a hard-charging complaint song that takes issue with “people laughing at my hair” and overpriced dope, among other things.)

Bull Moose Jackson – “Big Ten Inch”
XTC – “Ten Feet Tall”
the Stone Roses – “10 Storey Love Song”

We live in a base 10 world, so we lop things off in sets of ten. Ten’s a significant demarcation: it’s a ten-foot pole we wouldn’t touch something with; a deep breath we take before counting to 10. We make top 10 lists, rate people’s looks on a scale of 1 to 10 (the corn-rowed Bo Derek was the feminine ideal in 1977, so she was a “10,” a concept explored in Rich Creamy Paint’s “You’re a 10″). When we feel fantastic, larger than life, how do we feel? We feel 10 feet tall. Which brings me to XTC’s “Ten Feet Tall,” a scintillating and understated gem from the band’s watershed Drums & Wires that features as concise a four-bar guitar solo as has ever been attempted. It perfectly embodies the otherworldly sensation of dumbstruck rapture, while marking new creative territory for this endlessly inventive combo. The acoustic, jazz-chord-laden single was Colin Moulding’s attempt to subvert the band’s MO up to that point, what he called “Quirk, Jerk, Spiky, Crikey, Start, Stop,” and offer up something altogether smoother and sexier. The result speaks for itself: “Ten Feet Tall” remains one of XTC’s most delightful and understated creations. The Stone Roses’ “10 Storey Love Song” amps the love- as-height imagery to gargantuan proportions, from mere feet to stories. The hyperbole inherent in the song’s title is right in line with the over-the-top ambitions of Second Coming, the Stone Roses’ swan song, which was little more than a bevy of bloated blooze riffs utterly lacking the magic that characterized the band’s self-titled debut. That record, many contend, belongs among the greatest ever, while the pompously titled Second Coming is all but universally reviled, or at least characterized as a monumental disappointment. That said, “Ten Storey Love Song” is one of the record’s few standouts, imbued with a strong melody and a sense of proportion, even with its outsize emotions.

Footnote: the Velvet Underground voiced a similar sentiment with the also-ran “Love Makes You Feel Ten Foot Tall,” which ended up on Loaded: The Fully Loaded Edition.

Before attaining a brief ubiquity with their big-beat cover of the Stones’ “I’m Free,” the Soup Dragons were an enjoyably twee English indie band whose “Hang-Ten!” was a fizzy little thing that went pop, like Buzzcocks Lite. The song takes its title from the ‘60s surf term for riding a wave with all ten toes hanging off the board. Bowling never became the craze that surfing did, nor did it inspire tons of songs, but Raleigh, N.C., troubadours the Connells did refer to the strangely addictive pastime in “Ten Pins Down.” The title of “Box 10,” Jim Croce’s concise, affecting ditty of hard times in New York, refers to the address of the Sunday mission where he ends up after losing his earthly possessions to naivete and a cold-hearted woman. That Sunday mission might plausibly be in the vicinity of 10th Avenue, the site of Bruce Springsteen’s “10th Avenue Freeze-Out,” a staple of the band’s oeuvre that traces the origins of the E. Street Band in colorful if decidedly abstruse fashion. Clarence Clemons recently admitted he had no idea what it meant. Speaking of freezing, “10 Degrees and Getting Colder” by Gordon Lightfoot tells the tale of a down-on-his-luck musician trying to hitch a ride near Boulder Dam.

Fun 10 Fact: “Ten Bob Twist: (obs.) A portion of drugs, usually cannabis, bought for ten shillings sterling; half a quid deal.” – Rockspeak: The Dictionary of Rock Terms, compiled by Tom Hibbert.

“And if a 10-ton truck crashes into us, to die by your side what a heavenly way to die…” The Smiths, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “10 X 10″
(live @ Glasslands Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

Kleenex- “DC -10″
Blonde Redhead – “10″
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “10 x 10″
Beach House – “10 Mile Stereo”

Heavier and far more potentially lethal than a 10-ton truck, the DC-10 aircraft was taken out of production in 1989, roughly a decade after it was saluted with “DC-10″ by Kleenex. This unheralded all-female Swiss band (actually, they’re all unheralded) were forced to change their name (to Liliput) when leaned upon by tissue-industry thugs. The tough gals behind “DC-10″ would have likely appreciated Blonde Redhead’s caustic “10,” featuring yelped, half-spoken Sonically Youthful vocals. If you’re making a mixtape at home, I would suggest following “10″ with the sexy, strutting “10 x 10″ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs from the Is Is EP, and then, to take things down a notch, “10 Mile Stereo” by Beach House, a slice of elusive dream pop that shimmers like rainbows in a puddle.

M.I.A. – “$10″

Ten has turned up in a many an album title, and while these are not eligible for the top spot, they do merit mention. First and foremost, Ten is the title of the debut outing by Pearl Jam, which, more than any other record, including Nevermind, brought grunge into America’s living rooms. 10 the number is even more popular as an album title: L.L. Cool J, the Smithereens, the Guess Who, the Stranglers, Enuff Z’Nuff, Wet Wet Wet, and Asleep at the Wheel are just some of the acts that have all used it, and the second discrete semiprime also fits into Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, the Elvis Costello best-of Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How’s Your Fathers, and countless others.

A $10 bill used to be called a sawbuck because of the roman numeral X’s resemblance to a certain wood-holding device, but no one calls it that anymore; maybe that’s because it buys so little these days it doesn’t seem to deserve a jazzy nickname. Of course, M.I.A. wouldn’t agree with me: in “$10,” she sings “What can I get for $10? Anything you want,” a sentiment that would go down well with the protagonist of ZZ Top’s “Ten Dollar Man” from the less-than-essential Tejas LP (1977). Essential advice comes in the form of the Monochrome Set’s “Ten Don’ts For Honeymooners,” which begins with the sage declaration, “Don’t ski naked down Mount Everest/With lilies up your nose”

Don’t dance the polka in a dhoti
And whistle The Rite of Spring
Don’t recite Hamlet’s soliloquy
While munching onion rings

The Monochrome Set – “Ten Don’t For Honeymooners”

“It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?” Once a staple of the average Joe’s viewing habits, the 10:00 news inspired songs like “News at Ten” by the Vapors (of “Turning Japanese” fame.) Still, there’s probably no better song celebrating 10:00 than “Clock Strikes Ten” by Cheap Trick, the final track from the monumental At Budokan. “10 A.M. Automatic” by the Black Keys certainly owns the morning slot, while the Verlaines “All Joed Out” looks like the only song in existence to mention the rarified time of “10:00 in the afternoon.”

Something about 10 just seems to go with “years.” Warren Zevon (“After 10 long years they let him out of the home/ Excitable boy they all said”), The Who (“Ten years old with thoughts as bold as thoughts can be”) and the good old Grateful Dead (“I’ve been gambling hereabouts/ for 10 good solid years”) provide a few examples of this sturdy construction, while 10-years-titled songs abound, including the stately “Ten Years Ahead” by Swedish psych-pop prodigies The Soundtrack of Our Lives and Game Theory’s “Andy in 10 Years.” But the very best of this subset have a common denominator in the form of guitar legend Jimmy Page. One of them is “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” a song recorded by The Yardbirds for 1967′s Roger the Engineer, when Page shared lead guitar duties with Jeff Beck. Although the song was one of the band’s less successful singles, it stands as one of those rare songs from the psychedelic era that carries the hallmark sounds–the vaguely Middle Eastern modalities, mystical lyrics, like those referring to “sinking deep into the well of time,” disembodied voices and creepy laughter–but doesn’t sound at all dated. With its nifty structure and bevy of guitar sounds–stabbing, discordant, feedback-laden, explosive bursts–amid the songs’s juddering rhythms, “Happenings” just grabs you by the lapels, pins you against the wall, and slaps you into submission.

Yardbirds – “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”
Dusty Springfield – “I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten”

Before discussing top dog, it seems wise to heed Dusty Springfield’s advice when she sang, “I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten.” Because it’s a heady topic. When I first began brainstorming song ideas for this list, my “10″ song came to me right away. While there are several excellent contenders (the Yardbirds song in particular is certainly epic enough to take the crown), I am still inclined to stick with my original choice: “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin, off their monolithic Physical Graffiti. It encapsulates all that is great about Led Zeppelin: the sense of space, the majesty, the indelible melodies, guitar lines that fly too close to the sun, drums that shake you to your very foundation, and the whole thing filled with urgency, yearning, and, in this case, something like 14 separate guitar tracks during one especially rich sequence.

For the converted among you there will be no argument. For those who never got into the band–or simply never got their appeal, for those who hated “Stairway” or who were born too late for the band to truly enter your soul, etc., I say unto you only this: This one might make a believer out of you, at least a believer in the sublimity of the song itself. All you have to do is pretend you’ve never heard of Led Zeppelin or Robert Plant or that fish in the hotel room with the groupie in LA. Just pretend your friend brought this over and slapped it on your iPod, told you it was an outtake from Tool’s latest, and I defy you not to be moved.

Led Zeppelin – “Ten Years Gone”

Like any great Zep song, “Ten Years Gone” is an amazing feat, a miniature movie consisting only of sound. Every melodic excursion and turn within its six-minute confines sounds like it was written into the song, and yet there is a certain organic looseness that keeps it from sounding like the labored-over creation it clearly was. “Ten Years Gone” starts hushed and builds elegantly upon an insistent, Moebius strip kind of a lick, one that sounds better as all the melodic permutations of it are writ large, strategically, in the most perfect places. And Robert Plant delivers one of his most modulated performances, in this paean to a lover from the past who demanded he choose her or his music and lost the bet. When Plant finally wails a couple of “woo-woo, yeah-yeahs” like the banshee incarnate, it’s the perfect, the only sound that will do.

Led Zeppelin – “Ten Years Gone”
(live, 1976)

Numerology is our pal Dave’s ill-advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. We hear 60 is the new 40, and now we’re not even that impressed by his progress.

Previously: No. 1, 2 (redux), 3, 4 (redux), 5-7, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 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, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Footnotes, 57, 58, 59 , 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan, precipitating America’s entry into World War II and marking one of the pivotal dates of the 20th century. In an odd numerological coincidence, exactly 68 years after what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously called “a date which will live in infamy,” we probe the depths of #68 songs–more proof that despite all the heavy lifting entailed by this quest, we are fully in sync with the universe and doing exactly what needs to be done…

“She’s sixty-eight, but she says she’s twenty-four.¨

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more.” Bob Dylan, “Maggie’s Farm”

Slangily, 68 is an unreciprocated sexual act — a 69, only, “I’ll owe you one.” But the far more pervasive meaning of 68-titled songs follows an emerging trend in recent numerological surveys: namely, that as the numbers get higher, they start to coincide with critical years of the 20th century. Thus, 68 is firmly associated with 1968, a year marked by assassinations and war, civil unrest and violent upheaval the world over. 1967 had its Summer of Love, but by the time the summer of ’68 was over, the worm had turned: Kennedy and King were dead, Paris was burning, Soviet tanks had crushed resistance in Czechoslovakia. Not that these tragic events killed off the sense of giddiness stirred up by the countercultural revolution, but flower power had gone mainstream. Exhibit A: Happening ’68, a rock ‘n’ roll variety show overseen by Dick Clark, which ran for two seasons starting in 1968 and featured a mix of musical talent (James Brown, the Beach Boys, the Nazz) and Hollywood biggies like Don Rickles, Leonard Nimoy, and Sal Mineo. The show’s theme song, sung by Paul Revere & the Raiders, is not without its charms, with vocalist (and the show’s co-host) Mark Lindsay gruffly declaring that “something’s happening,” even if at that point most of it had already happened, and now it was being packaged for mass consumption.

Andy Timmons – “Happening ’68″

Desmond Dekker & the Aces – “Intensified Festival 68 (Music Like Dirt)”

The percolating “Intensified Festival 68 (Music Like Dirt)” by Desmond Dekker & the Aces beat out Toots & the Maytals to win the song competition of the third annual Jamaica Independence Festival in 1968. The following year, Dekker gave many people in the U.S. and the UK their first taste of reggae with his immortal single “The Israelites,” but he never repeated his success. Although the world would soon see the rise of reggae stars with names like Marley, Cliff, and Tosh, Dekker never took his proper place among them, giving credence to a quote I’ve heard attributed to David Bowie: “It doesn’t matter who does it first; it matters who does it second.” On “’68 Aka Only Time” Lemon Jelly samples a schmaltzy UK hit by New Zealand crooner John Rowles from, when else, 1968, taking the song’s title phrase and slowing it down till it spreads like syrup over the song’s brisk beats.

Lemon Jelly – “68 AKA Only Time”

Jawbox – “68″

Other key ingredients in the 68 stew include “68,” a taut churner from Jawbox, who came out of the Washington D.C., hardcore scene that spawned Fugazi and Minor Threat and earned the antipathy of purists by signing with a major label. Decades later, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about. Like the Jawbox song, the following are united by their seemingly arbitrary use of 68: “68 State,” the ominous opener of Gorillaz D Sides, a collection of unreleased songs and remixes; “68″ by synth-poppers Iris; “Peaceblaster ’68″ by the proggy jam band STS9; “68″ by the seriously 68-obsessed roots-rockers known as ’68 Comeback, from the delightfully named A Bridge Too Fuckin’ Far, and no list would be complete (well, this one wouldn’t) without “Sixty-Eight” by — are you ready for this? — Clay Polysorbate Masquerade Band Green.

The top contenders for the 68 spot come from opposite ends of the spectrum: one of these acts melded earnest rebellion, martial beats, and chant-like hooks, the other wafted sci-fi epics in special-effects-laden enormo-dome spectacles. Pink Floyd’s ascendancy to the status of Monolithic Rock Act was nothing like a done deal in the years after founder Syd Barrett wandered off into the acid mist. With David Gilmour picking up guitar duties, the band continued with the long-form compositions that would mark their later work. But before the breakthrough of Dark Side of the Moon, Floyd had yet to hit upon a sound that could claim the masses. Atom Heart Mother (1970) is very much in keeping with Floyd stylings to come, a mix of sighing pastoral and sprawling psychedelic commingling in suite-like formations, only at this stage the results weren’t buffed to the polished sheen. To hear “Summer ’68″ is to find the band in transition. Keyboardist Richard Wright, who would end up being virtually invisible, was at this point still allowed to sing lead vocals. (On Saucerful of Secrets, the band’s second LP, Wright sang more leads than Waters or Gilmour.) Nevertheless, Wright’s keyboard colorations are essential elements of many of the band’s best-known songs, and several of his compositions belong right there at the top, including “Us and Them.”

A confused or unoriginal You Tuber’s mash-up of “Summer ’68″ and Wizard of Oz footage

Pink Floyd – “Summer ’68″

“Summer ’68″ starts in sighing pastoral mode, with just Wright’s keyboards and his hushed vocals. The singer speaks directly to the girl he’s just spent the night with, in decidedly unsentimental fashion: “Would you like to say something before you leave?” Soon things shift, rather jarringly, into a swirling section with Beach Boys-like interlocking vocals intoning, “How do you feel?” In comes a bombastic brass theme that feels nautical, only instead of suggesting a graceful sloop a  la “John B” this feels like a foundering ship taking on water under a roiling sky. The song alternates between these sections, culminating with the declaration, “I’ve had enough for one day.” If the “Summer ’68″ can be read as a kiss-off to the excesses of the late ’60s, a rejection of the rock-star scene as a whole (“the music was too loud”) and the false intimacy of free love (“I hardly even like you”), history shows us the band had not yet been fully welcomed to the machine. What’s most notable about this fanciful collision of musical parts is that, lyrically, it’s uncharacteristically direct, eschewing the psychodrama and heady themes of later work and sticking close to a straightforward narrative.

A similarly titled song by the Charlie Daniels Band, “Summer of ’68,” takes a dim view of all that counterculture stuff. What starts out as a slightly bitter look back at “flower children” who tried to change the world (“Some folks blew their minds so bad/they couldn’t even concentrate”) ends up on a starkly jingoistic note (he sums up liberal politics with the line “save the whales and kill the babies”) before bringing it all home with a 9/11 reference that somehow connects to the summer of ’68. And to think that Daniels’ first national hit, “Uneasy Rider,” was a sympathetic story song about a long-haired, pot-smoking hippie who gets hassled by some good ol’ boys in a Mississippi watering hole.

The Welsh foursome known as the Alarm never broke through in the U.S., but in the UK the band had an impressive number of hits and an army of loyal fans. Critics called them a second-tier U2, incorporating the most bombastic, chest-beating elements of the Irish quartet while lacking any of its musical invention, sonic detail or lyrical prowess. Joe Strummer was characteristically blunt in his assessment: “The Alarm? The wrapping on a chocolate bar. They’re the imitation of a shadow of the Clash.” Joe probably had similar sentiments about Big Country, the Waterboys, and the scads of other earnestly keening bands that his band spawned. Even those who like the band acknowledge that every Alarm song is an anthem, a call to arms, a battle cry. Such a strategy is ultimately extremely limiting, but “Sixty-Eight Guns” is one of the band’s best anthems, with a compelling melody, pleasantly twangy guitar, flavorsome spaghetti-western-style brass accompaniment, and an inspired vocal by Mike Peters, all adding up to a rousing track, as long as you don’t examine it too closely.

The Alarm – “Sixty-Eight Guns”

After going back and forth considering the relative merits of “Sixty-Eight Guns” and “Summer ’68,” in the final analysis I feel more taken with the Alarm track, for a few reasons. For one, it’s a full-fledged band effort, and, in the spirit of the no. 51 contest, which pitted the best work of a pretty good band (New Model Army) against a lesser track by one of the greats (Jimi Hendrix), I’m inclined to go with the former. And on numerical merits, the Alarm wins hands-down: 68 is front and center; it refers to 68 actual things, rather than serving merely as an appendage in the title, and the number is essential to the chorus. With these high numbers, we often have to take what we can get, but this plenitude of sixty-eight-ness is most welcome. More generally, the Alarm earns points for true numerical inspiration: not only do they also perform a song called “Spirit of ’76,” the band itself arose from an earlier group called Seventeen, named after the Sex Pistols song of the same name. And I don’t have to tell you what 17 x 4 is, do I?

That’s right: 68 … our battle cry.

Numerology is our pal Dave’s ill-advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. We hear 60 is the new 40, and now we’re not even that impressed by his progress.

Previously: No. 1, 2 (redux), 3, 4 (redux), 5-7, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 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, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Footnotes, 57, 58, 59 , 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67

As I mentioned previously, Prof. Klein is a bit of a stickler about getting these Numerology pieces right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Instead of chalking early attempts up to the blogging learning curve like the rest of us, he stays awake at night, shaking with regret that low hanging fruit like the number 8 was not given its proper due. So today, as we all hold our breaths waiting to know if we’ll ever know how bad the U2-scored Spiderman musical can possibly suck, Dave gives the mark of the arachnids its due, and continues to rewrite history. (JK)

A few years ago, on 8-8-08, to be exact, the Times published an excellent tribute to the number 8, titled “Crazy Eights.” Readers learned about the “deranged Roman Emperor Elagabalus,” who held octal-themed dinners to which he’d invite eight very tall men, eight men with gout, eight men with hooked noses, and so on. Mary Queen of Scots decreed that no one with a rank lower than an earl or archbishop could eat more than eight dishes at one meal. Rather than try to compete with such erudition, I just tip my eight-cornered hat, offer up a toast (V-8, naturally) and proffer my own list of associations, which, as is my wont, is a lot less high-minded and a lot more contemporary: “Eight Arms to Hold You” was the original title of the Beatles’ Help. The 8-track, an endless loop of 1/4″ magnetic recording tape, is a low-fidelity icon invented by Bill Lear of Learjet fame. The boogie-woogie bugle boy of Company B played his horn “eight to the bar,” and Tobor the Eighth Man was an American adaptation of 8-Man, a Japanese cartoon from the mid-’60s starring what’s considered the first robotic manga character. Tobor (“robot” spelled backwards) derived extra strength by smoking “energy cigarettes.” Of course, these days, any purveyor of children’s entertainment who suggested such a plot point would be declared a Section 8, the Army term for a soldier who is too mentally addled to participate in war, as in this line from Full Metal Jacket: “I don’t think Leonard can hack it anymore. I think Leonard’s a Section 8.”

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