#150, "Everyday," Buddy Holly (1957)

150 Favorite Songs: #150, "Everyday," Buddy Holly (1957)

I think you could call "Everyday" my first-ever favorite song. I don't remember when I first heard it—I want to say during an episode of The Wonder Years or something, when I was a little kid, but that's probably not right. My dad was a huge Buddy Holly fan, though, and so his music has always sort of been around.

"Everyday" set a template that, looking at a lot of the other songs on this list, seems to be very much what I love best in music: Songs that are just a little bit melancholy and sad, but not overwrought. Life rolls on—and that melody seems to really capture the passage of time (it's probably the metronome in the background) in a way that just feels poignant. It's hard to explain, but maybe you know what I mean. It's hard for me to separate this song —any of Buddy Holly's music, really, but especially this song—from the perspective of being a kid. Maybe that's because I was a little kid when I first heard it, and maybe it's because Holly was so young himself when he died, but regardless, I always hear "Everyday" as a song about being young and realizing that time is moving forward, and being mostly excited about it—but you can't listen to that glockenspiel solo without being a little wistful. And he loves her, yeah, but she doesn't seem to love him back—which is okay, he says, because love like hers will come his way eventually.

I guess "Everyday" just sounds, to me, like a song about the way time moves on and things tend to be okay as it does, and finding some pretty melodies in that. It's the sort of song that it's hard to imagine anyone writing today, but that’s just fine, because it hasn't needed an update in the past sixty-some years.