Month: February 2024

You’re my sweet comic valentine

Posted on by brucehhackett

A lot of rock music lyrics tend to be about rebellion, sex, protest, fantasy, breakups, drugs and drinking, and sometimes just sheer nonsense.  But they’re also about friendship, peace, encouragement, hope and, yes, even true love. 

This week, my in-laws celebrated 65 years of marriage. Later this year, my wife and I will commemorate our 40th wedding anniversary. And this week, the lovebirds of the world will cuddle for another Valentines Day. 

All of these occasions, it seems to me, deserve a soundtrack of songs about romantic love… But what a job! There must be 10,000 love songs in the canon of popular music over the past century or so, and probably a thousand just from the classic rock era. I’ve sifted through the lists and have settled on 20 selections with lyrics that sing the praises of romance and affection. No doubt I’ve neglected one of your favorites, but I’m confident the songs found on the Spotify playlist at the end will do the trick.

Hey, you crazy kids — get a room!

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“Cupid,” Sam Cooke, 1961

The gifted crooner was also a fine songwriter, and his producers asked him to write a tune for a female singer they’d seen on a TV variety show, but once they heard Cooke sing it, they decided he should release it himself, and it reached #17 here and #7 in the UK in 1961.  Critics called it “the perfect pop song,” combining Latin, R&B, jazz and mainstream pop elements.  Sample lyrics:  “Cupid, draw back your bow, and let your arrow go straight to my lover’s heart for me, cupid, please hear my cry, and let your arrow fly straight to my lover’s heart for me…”

“I’m Stone in Love With You,” The Stylistics, 1972

Thom Bell was one of the most successful of the songwriters/producers responsible for the “Philadelphia Sound” artists in the Seventies (O’Jays, Spinners, Delfonics, Stylistics).  He specialized in love songs, and this beauty, sung in falsetto by lead vocalist Russell Thompkins, reached #10, one of five Bell-Stylistics collaborations to go Top Ten during their 1971-1974 heyday: “I’m just a man, an average man, doing everything the best I can, but if I could, I’d give the world to you, I would hold a meeting for the press to let them know, I did it all ’cause I’m stone in love with you…”

“Never My Love,” The Association, 1967

This timeless love song by composer brothers Donald and Richard Addrisi made three appearances in the Top 10 by three different artists between 1967 and 1974.  The Association’s version, an enormous #1 hit, came first, followed by The 5th Dimension’s #12 live rendition in 1971, and lastly, a #7 disco-ish version in 1974 by the European band Blue Swede.  Due in large part to these three separate successful recordings, “Never My Love” was named in 1999 by BMI as the second most played song on radio and TV in the 20th Century, behind The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” but ahead of The Beatles’ “Yesterday.”  Sample lyrics:  “You ask me if there’ll come a time when I grow tired of you, never my love, never my love, you wonder if this heart of mine will lose its desire for you, never my love, never my love…”

“You Make Loving Fun,” Fleetwood Mac, 1977

“Rumours,” one of the ten best-selling albums of the rock era, was full of tunes with lyrics about breakups, since two of Fleetwood Mac’s three songwriters (Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) were in the midst of a stormy split during recording sessions. But Christine McVie, who had just divorced her husband John McVie, was having an affair with paramour Curry Grant and wrote about it in this effervescent love song, which reached #9 as the album’s fourth single: “Sweet wonderful you, you make me happy with the things you do, oh, can it be so, this feeling follows me wherever I go, you, you make loving fun, it’s all I want to do…”

“You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1969

Motown singer Brenda Holloway wrote this love song with her sister Patrice, along with Motown songwriter-producer Frank Wilson and label mogul Berry Gordy.  Holloway managed to reach only #39 with her recording, but in 1969, the jazz-rock band Blood Sweat & Tears had an enormous #2 hit with it.  Sample lyrics:  “‘Cause you came and you took control, you touched my very soul, you always showed me that loving you is where it’s at, you’ve made me so very happy, I’m so glad you came into my life…”

“Just the Way You Are,” Billy Joel, 1977

When Joel heard the last line of the 1963 Four Seasons hit “Rag Doll, which went, “I love you just the way you are,” he decided it would make a great song title. He wrote it in 1976 as a love song to his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, but once they divorced, Joel didn’t sing it in concert for five years. In fact, he wasn’t sure it was a good fit with the other songs he’d written for his 1977 LP “The Stranger,” but it emerged as his first Top Ten hit, reaching #3 and becoming something of a cocktail lounge standard: “I said I love you, and that’s forever, and this I promise from the heart, /I couldn’t love you any better, I love you just the way you are…”

“The Best Is Yet to Come,” Frank Sinatra & Count Basie Orchestra, 1964

Ol’ Blue Eyes was known for many great romantic songs in the American songbook, and one of the better ones was this beauty, written in 1959 by Cy Coleman and lyricist Carolyn Leigh.  The songwriters first gave it to the young Tony Bennett, who recorded a decent rendition, but Sinatra’s 1964 recording backed by the Count Basie Orchestra remains the definitive version.  The lyrics tout newfound love while positively looking forward to even greater things:  “Out of the tree of life, I just picked me a plum, you came along and everything’s starting to hum, still, it’s a real good bet, the best is yet to come…”

“Happy Together,” The Turtles, 1967

Two guys named Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon, formerly in an obscure band called The Magicians, wrote “Happy Together” in 1966 and pitched it to more than a dozen artists before it was finally accepted and recorded by The Turtles, an LA-based band that had nine Top 20 hits between 1965 and 1969.  Their recording was #1 for three weeks in 1967. Sample lyrics:  “The only one for me is you, and you for me, so happy together, I can’t see me loving nobody but you for all my life, when you’re with me, baby, the skies will be blue for all my life…”

“Let’s Stay Together,” Al Green, 1972

Written and sung by Green, “Let’s Stay Together” emerged as one of the great R&B love songs of all time, holding on to the #1 spot for three weeks in late 1971/early 1972.  It also served as a comeback single for Tina Turner in 1983, reaching #26, jump-starting her solo career.  The lyrics weigh the choices of breaking up and making up, deciding the latter is preferrable:  “I, I’m so in love with you, whatever you want to do is all right with me, ’cause you make me feel so brand new, and I want to spend my life with you…”

“Only One,” James Taylor, 1985

Taylor has written plenty about love, though mostly wistful tunes about heartbreak.  Every so often, he finds himself in a good enough mood to write a happy love song like “Your Smiling Face,” or cover a familiar one like “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You).”  Also worthy of your attention is a little-known track from his 1985 LP “That’s Why I’m Here” called “Only One,” which features harmonies by Joni Mitchell:  “You are my only one, you are my only one, don’t be leaving me now, believe in me now, well, I’m telling you now, now you’re my only one…”

“I Will,” The Beatles, 1968

The celebrated White Album showed that The Beatles embraced, and could convincingly perform, a wide variety of musical genres:  blues, country-western, folk, dance-hall, avant-garde, you name it.  Their repertoire also had plenty of love songs, and although both Lennon and Harrison each wrote a few, it was usually McCartney who handled this assignment:  “P.S. I Love You,” “And I Love Her,” “Here, There and Everywhere”… and from The White Album, there’s the short-and-sweet “I Will”:   “Love you forever and forever, love you with all my heart, love you whenever we’re together, love you when we’re apart…”

“Crazy Love,” Van Morrison, 1970

Morrison is still touring and has released nearly 50 studio albums in his long career. In his early years, he was infatuated with poetic imagery (his “Astral Weeks” LP) and jazzy ballads like “Moondance” and “Tupelo Honey.”  On the “Moondance” LP, he offered a couple of timeless love songs, the best of which is “Crazy Love”:   “And when I’m returning from so far away, she gives me some sweet lovin’ to brighten up my day, yes it makes me righteous, yes it makes me feel whole, yes it makes me mellow down into my soul, she give me love, love, love, love, crazy love…”

“How Deep Is Your Love,” The Bee Gees, 1977

The Brothers Gibb were writing and recording songs for their next album when producer Robert Stigwood asked them to contribute songs for the soundtrack of a movie he was producing about the disco dance culture.  They offered three dance tracks — “More Than a Woman,” “Night Fever” and “Stayin’ Alive” — and this shimmering ballad, and they ended up as the anchor songs on the most successful movie soundtrack of all time, “Saturday Night Fever.”  All three Bee Gees have said this was their favorite from the LP:  “I believe in you, you know the door to my very soul, you’re the light in my deepest, darkest hour, you’re my savior when I fall, and you may not think I care for you, when you know down inside that I really do, and it’s me you need to show, how deep is your love…”

“For Once in My Life,” Stevie Wonder, 1968

Although this upbeat track became one of Stevie Wonder’s best loved among his early works, reaching #2 in 1968, it was actually recorded first by The Temptations as well as The Four Tops, but their versions went nowhere.  Wonder’s extraordinary harmonica solo, captured in his televised performance of the song on “The Ed Sullivan Show” that year, took “For Once in My Life” to another level:  “For once in my life, I have someone who needs me, someone I’ve needed so long, for once unafraid, I can go where life leads me, somehow I know I’ll be strong…”

“Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Elvis Presley, 1961

Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, seasoned New York songwriters on their own, were commissioned to team up to create a song for Elvis in 1961.  Little did they know “Can’t Help Falling in Love” would be not only the best-selling song of 1962, but recorded by dozens of other artists in the ensuing years. It reached the top of the charts a second time three decades later in a reggae arrangement by British band UB40. Sample lyric:  “Like a river flows surely to the sea, darling, so it goes, some things were meant to be, take my hand, take my whole life too, for I can’t help falling in love with you…”

“Sweethearts Together,” The Rolling Stones, 1994

There are precious few songs in the voluminous catalog written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that would qualify as romantic, but there are exceptions (“As Tears Go By,” “Wild Horses,” “Angie”).  Much later in their career arc, The Glimmer Twins surprised us by offering their prettiest ballad yet, “Sweethearts Together,” a tender ode to eternal love.  This one is a delightful break from their usual badass rock stance:  “Sweethearts together, we’ve only just begun, sweethearts together, so glad I found someone, sweethearts forever, two hearts together as one…”

“At Last,” Etta James, 1961

Mack Gordon and Harry Warren wrote this classic in 1941 for the Glenn Miller film “Orchestral Wives,” which flopped at the box office.  It languished for nearly 20 years before blues singer Etta James cut her smoldering rendition and made it the signature song of her impressive career.  I still hear “At Last” frequently at wedding receptions when the happy couple takes their first dance as husband and wife:   “I found a thrill to press my cheek to, a thrill that I had never known, you smiled, and then the spell was cast, and here we are in Heaven, for you are mine at last…”

“Fire at Midnight,” Jethro Tull, 1977

Regular readers of this blog know I will try to sneak in a Tull track whenever I can, and although the band isn’t exactly famous for love songs, Ian Anderson has written a few endearing tunes that qualify. On his back-to-nature LP “Songs From the Wood” in 1977, he concludes with this short piece that affectionately paints a picture of how much he enjoys coming home after a hard day and cuddling up with the woman he loves: “Kindled by the dying embers of another working day, /Go upstairs, take off your makeup, fold your clothes neatly away, /Me, I’ll sit and write this love song as I all too seldom do, /Build a little fire this midnight, it’s good to be back home with you…”

“Follow Me,” Mary Travers, 1970

At the rehearsal dinner before our wedding, this was the song I chose to sing to my wife-to-be. John Denver wrote it and recorded it in 1970 as an album track, and it caught the attention of Mary Travers as she was compiling songs for her solo debut following the breakup of Peter, Paul & Mary. It wasn’t a hit single, but I heard it on her “Mary” album in 1971 and learned to play it on guitar. I found it to be very touching, deftly capturing the idea of sharing your feelings and experiences with a lifetime partner: “Follow me where I go, what I do and who I know, make it part of you to be a part of me, /Follow me up and down, all the way and all around, take my hand and I will follow too…”

“Grow Old With Me,” Mary Chapin Carpenter, 1995

John Lennon was known mostly as an iconoclastic rocker, from his lusty rendition of “Twist and Shout” to the strident “Revolution” and much of his solo catalog, but wow, he could sure write some beautiful ballads as well — “In My Life,” “Julia,” “Imagine,” “Beautiful Boy,” to name just a few.  In the months before he was killed in 1980, he wrote several dozen songs, many of which, sadly, were recorded only in demo form.  The best of these is “Grow Old With Me,” which Lennon intended to be, in his words, “a new standard to be played at 50th anniversaries.”  Mary Chapin Carpenter offered a sublime cover version on the 1995 LP “Working Class Hero: A Tribute to John Lennon”: “Grow old along with me, two branches of one tree, face the setting sun, when the day is done, God bless our love, God bless our love, spending our lives together, man and wife together, world without end, world without end…”

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If the wind is right, you can sail away

Posted on by brucehhackett

Some people, it seems, are born to be out on the water. They might be paddling down a river, rowing across a lake, sailing around a harbor or opening the throttle on a speedboat. Or they might be career sailors on a freighter, or staff members on a cruise ship. For them, navigating a vessel through a body of water is a joy, a pastime, a lifestyle.

Me? Can’t say I’ve ever been much of a boat person. I’m a decent swimmer, so it’s certainly not a fear of drowning, but it somehow makes me a little uneasy to be out on the water for very long. I prefer keeping my feet planted on terra firma, watching the boats and ships come and go, as in the harbor in Santa Barbara pictured below.

Songwriters have been writing for centuries about traveling the high seas and the narrow waterways of the world. There’s something romantic about it (maybe that’s why they refer to boats as “she”), and boating offers an apt metaphor for negotiating the crests and troughs of life.

In perusing the songs of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, I’ve come up with a collection of 16 songs with boat or ship in the title, with another dozen that snuck on the list as honorable mentions. There’s a Spotify playlist at the end of the post, so you can listen as you read about these familiar and lesser-known songs about watercraft, and maybe provide a soundtrack for the next time you venture out across the water.  

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“If I Had a Boat,” Lyle Lovett, 1987

Houston-born Lovett has enjoyed a prolific career singing and writing folk, country, swing, rockabilly and Americana music over an award-winning career spanning four decades. From his highly praised second LP, “Pontiac,” which reached #12 on country charts in 1987, the opening track is this engaging tune on which the narrator fantasizes about owning a boat and a pony and living an easy life as a single man: “And if I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean, /And if I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat, /And we could all together go out on the ocean, Me upon my pony on my boat…”

“Ship of Fools,” Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, 1976

After nearly a decade as a struggling solo artist out of Detroit, rocker Bob Seger formed The Silver Bullet Band in 1976 and immediately hit pay dirt with the seminal “Night Moves” LP. The title track, “Mainstreet” and “Rock and Roll Never Forgets” got most of the airplay, but I’ve always enjoyed the deep track “Ship of Fools,” about an ill-fated fictional voyage where warning signs were ignored: “The wind came building from the cold northwest, and soon the waves began to crest, /Crashing ‘cross the forward deck, all hands lost, /I alone survived the sinking, I alone possessed the tools on that ship of fools…“

“Come On Down to My Boat,” Every Mother’s Son, 1967

Wes Farrell was a songwriter/producer with a number of hit songs in the ’60s and ’70s, including The McCoys’ “Hang On Sloopy,” Jay & The Americans’ “Come a Little Bit Closer,” The Shirrelles’ “Boys” and The Partridge Family’s “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted.” In 1967, he collaborated with Jerry Goldstein to write “Come On Down to My Boat,” a #6 hit for the New York pop group Every Mother’s Son. The narrator fancies a girl sitting on the dock who’s under the thumb of her father’s protective nature: “She smiled so nice like she wants to come with me uh, huh, /But she’s tied to the dock and she can’t get free, /Come on down to my boat, baby, come on down where we can play…”

“Boat Drinks,” Jimmy Buffett, 1979

Buffett wrote this party song on a cold February day in Boston when he was homesick for the warmer climate of Florida. He and his band figured they’d order boat drinks (mostly rum concoctions) to get their minds off how cold they were in New England: “Boat drinks, waitress, I need two more boat drinks, /Then I’m headin’ south ‘fore my dream shrinks, /I gotta go where it’s warm…” Although it was never released as a single, it was a popular track from his “Volcano” LP in 1979 and became a regular song in his concert set list. 

“River Boat Song,” J.J. Cale, 1989

Cale had a marvelously chill vocal delivery to match the easygoing blues shuffle that dominated his many songs in the 1970s, including hits like “After Midnight,” “Crazy Mama” and “Call Me the Breeze.” He sat out most of the 1980s, returning in 1989 with the more uptempo “Travel-Log” album, accompanied by the rock rhythm section of drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Tim Drummond. The LP includes songs of wanderlust like “River Boat Song,” about a lover who entertained on the Mississippi River: “I know she’s getting near, river captain, bring my baby home, /I get so lonesome since she’s been gone, /She’s been down in Tupelo, working the river boat song…”

“Wooden Ships,” Jefferson Airplane, 1969

In early 1969, David Crosby wrote the music for this classic song, and compatriots Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner collaborated on the lyrics, which explain how survivors of nuclear war might escape radioactive fallout by sailing away on wooden ships. Crosby, Stills and Nash recorded it for their eponymous debut LP, and then Kantner’s band Jefferson Airplane recorded their version for their “Volunteers” LP a few months later. Both groups performed the song in their Woodstock sets that summer. While the CSN version is more familiar, I decided to feature the Airplane’s rendition here instead: “Wooden ships on the water very free and easy, /Easy, you know the way it’s supposed to be, /Silver people on the shoreline, let us be, /Talkin’ ’bout very free and easy…”

“Longer Boats,” Cat Stevens, 1970

In the wake of the 1969 moon landing, Stevens remembers a lot of talk about the possibility of UFOs visiting Earth, and that was on his mind when he wrote “Longer Boats,” one of the songs for “Tea For the Tillerman,” his 1970 LP. ”I was making a plea for human unity in the face of external threats, either extraterrestrial or hostile forces, like when the Vikings in their long boats invaded Britain,” he said: “They’re coming to win us, they’re coming to win us, /Longer boats are coming to win us, hold on to the shore, /They’ll be taking the key from the door…”

“The Crystal Ship,” The Doors, 1967

From The Doors’ phenomenal debut LP comes this rather dark song of mystery Jim Morrison wrote to his then-girlfriend, with whom he had just broken up. The “crystal ship,” according to most interpretations, is not a seagoing vessel but a metaphor for sleep or a drug-induced haze. Critics called it one of the band’s most underrated tracks, building from a gentle intro to a more full-bodied arrangement by the end, and one of Morrison’s finest vocal performances. The lyrics clearly reflect the pain of a breakup, yet with hope of reconciliation: “The days are bright and filled with pain, enclose me in your gentle rain, the time you ran was too insane, we’ll meet again, we’ll meet again…”

“Boats Against the Current,” Eric Carmen, 1977

Carmen was the spark plug behind Cleveland’s favorite sons The Raspberries in the early ’70s, after which he went solo and had two bigs hits in 1975-76 with the treacly “All By Myself” and The Beach Boys knockoff “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again.” His sophomore LP in 1977 was problematic, taking four recording sessions to get the songs up to snuff, and still yielded only one minor hit, “She Did It.” The dramatic title track is a real standout, with philosophical lyrics about a changing relationship: “Tomorrow, we’re going to find what we’re after at last, feelings that we left in the past, /There’s romance in the sunset, we’re boats against the current to the end…” It was covered by the likes of Olivia Newton-John, Frankie Valli and Patti LaBelle, but as a single, Carmen’s original flopped at #88.

“Don’t Rock My Boat,” Bob Marley & The Wailers, 1970

Back in the late ’60s, when Marley was known only to fans of the then-new Jamaican reggae genre, The Wailers recorded several records that didn’t chart, including 1970’s “Soul Revolution Part II.” One track, “Don’t Rock My Boat,” was repackaged a few years later on their “African Herbsman” album in 1973, and then again in 1979 under a new title, “Satisfy My Soul,” when it reached #21 on UK charts as a single. The lyrics remind us that Marley prefers the calm, chill approach to life: “Oh, please don’t you rock my boat, /Because I don’t want my boat to be rocking, /I’m telling you that, oh woh, /I like it, I like it this, /So keep it steady, like this…”

“Slow Boat to China,” John Prine, 1984

“Guys and Dolls” composer Frank Loesser wrote the pop standard “(I’d Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China” in 1948, which was covered by many artists in the years since. Perhaps inspired by that tune, Prine wrote his own wry song called “Slow Boat to China” in 1984, which shared the idea of enjoying the romantically leisurely pace of a very long boat ride halfway around the world: “Let’s take a slow boat to China, leave from South Carolina, /Let’s take our time and go the long way, /On a junk boat to Thailand with your hand in my hand, /I sure hope we got something to say, /Well, this old boat’s got no sail, so won’t you please hold our mail…”

“Ship of Fools,” Robert Plant, 1988

Critics raved about this subtle track from Plant’s fourth solo LP, 1988’s “Now and Zen.” For the former lead singer of the biggest blues-rock band of them all, “Ship of Fools” was quite a departure, a lovely ballad in which the narrator questioned his desire to set sail away from the safe harbor where his lover lives: “Beneath a lover’s moon I’m waiting, I am the pilot of the storm, /Adrift in pleasure I may drown, I built this ship, it is my making, /And furthermore, my self control I can’t rely on anymore, /Turn this boat around, back to my loving ground, /Crazy on a ship of fools…”

“River Boat,” Allen Toussaint, 2017

Best known as a New Orleans songwriter, arranger, producer and pianist, Toussaint’s songs reached their widest audience when performed by others, most notably Glen Campbell’s #1 version of “Southern Nights.” Toussaint didn’t consider himself a performer and recorded on his own only sporadically. The swampy groove of “River Boat,” which didn’t surface until it was included on a posthumous compilation album in 2017, drew on the images of the paddlewheelers near his New Orleans home: “Rain just keeps on pouring, love just keeps on growing, /Opportunity knocking, big boat just keeps a-rocking…. River boat keeps on chugging and we just keep right on hugging, /We’ve got love…”

“There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon For New York,” Louis Armstrong, 1957

George and Ira Gershwin wrote the music and lyrics for the 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess,” which also became a Broadway musical and feature film. Armstrong joined forces with Ella Fitzgerald on several projects, including the jazzy material from “Porgy and Bess” in 1957, and Armstrong did a solo performance of “There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon For New York,” the number in which Bess is wooed by her drug dealer to join her in sailing from Charleston to The Big Apple while Porgy is in jail: “Come along with me, dat’s de place, /Don’t be a fool, come along, come along, /There’s a boat dat’s leavin’ soon for New York, /Come with me, dat’s where we belong, sister…”

“Ships in the Night,” Be-Bop Deluxe, 1976

Combining elements of progressive rock, glam rock and traditional hard rock, England’s Be-Bop Deluxe never made much a splash in the US, but their five LPs between 1974 and 1978 were well received in the UK. Most notably, their 1976 album “Sunburst Finish” reached #17 there, thanks to the attention given to the single “Ships in the Night,” which peaked at #23. Its lyrics speak of the absence of love being like ships passing each other by: “Without love, I have no pleasures, /Without love, my light is dim, /Without love, I have no treasures, /Without love, my chance is slim, /Without love, we are like ships in the night, /Without love, selling our souls down the river…”

“Rock the Boat,” The Hues Corporation, 1974

Songwriter Waldo Holmes came up with this tune full of metaphors about how loving arms can provide shelter from the stormy ocean waves. It didn’t get much attention until New York discos started playing the original Hues Corporation track, sparking its remix to boost the bass and drums, which helped make “Rock the Boat” one of the first disco songs to reach #1 on the US pop charts in the summer of 1974: “Our love is like a ship on the ocean, we’ve been sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion, /So I’d like to know where you got the notion, I said I’d like to know where you got the notion
to rock the boat (don’t rock the boat, baby), rock the boat (don’t tip the boat over)…”

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Honorable mentions:

“Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” James Taylor, 2020; ”Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” Peter, Paul & Mary, 1961; ”Boat on the Charles,” Told Rundgren, 1971; ”Ships,” Big Country, 1991; ”Last Boat Leaving,” Elvis Costello, 1989; ”On a Slow Boat to China,” Willie Nelson, 2009; ”Boat on the River,” Styx, 1979; ”The Boat That I Row,” Neil Diamond, 1966; ”Ships,” Ian Hunter, 1979; ”Six Months on a Leaky Boat,” Split Enz, 1982; ”Ships Passing Through the Night,” Jimi Hendrix, 2010.

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