Gathering classic rock songs that share a common subject has been a pastime of mine since the early 1970s when I bought my first cassette tape deck.

Songs about food, cars, sex. Songs about countries, cities, streets. Songs about girls’ names, boys’ names, celebrities. My playlists on Spotify now have well over 100 themes represented.

Having recently explored songs in the rock music vault having to do with the signs of the zodiac, I realized I’d never put together a similar playlist of songs about the months of the year. Much like a list I compiled several years ago about days of the week — when I found there were way more choices for Saturday or Sunday than, say, Wednesday — I found some months are very well represented (September, December) while others have maybe one or two decent selections (March, October).

I’ve selected an eclectic dozen to commemorate each of the twelve months of the year, and I’ve also included another two dozen “honorable mentions to beef up that list. Feel free to listen along as you read.

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“January Stars,” Sting, 1993

The former bassist/vocalist of The Police went on quite a tear when he embarked on a solo career in 1985. The LPs “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” (1985), “Nothing But the Sun” (1987), “The Soul Cages” (1991) and especially “Ten Summoner’s Tales” (1993) were packed with compelling music that charted high on US album charts and produced ten Top 20 singles here. During sessions for “Summoner,” Sting wrote a song that he recorded twice with two completely different titles and lyrics. “Everybody Laughed But You” ended up on the LP, but the alternate version, entitled “January Stars,” appeared only on the “maxi-single” release with the big hit “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You.” It’s arguably a better set of lyrics and seemed an appropriate choice to feature as my “January” representative to the playlist: “And as I watched the mercury, and thought about the prophecy, /A new moon and an early thaw, /I watched the door for you, /January stars, January stars came true…”

“February Stars,” Foo Fighters, 1997

I have enormous respect for Dave Grohl, who played drums behind Kurt Cobain in Nirvana and then, in the wake of Cobain’s suicide, formed Foo Fighters, one of the most popular bands of the past quarter-century. Amazingly, he quickly broadened his talents from drums to become his new band’s guitarist, singer and chief songwriter as well. The first Foo Fighters release in 1995 was essentially a Grohl solo affair, but 1997’s “The Colour and The Shape” was the first true group effort, which reached the Top 10 and went multi-platinum, thanks to “Everlong,” “Monkey Wrench” and “My Hero.” Described at the time of its release as “alternative post-grunge rock,” the album featured some strong songwriting like “February Stars,” a track Grohl wrote “about just hanging on by your fingertips and hoping you don’t slip and fall.” It’s about a relationship that’s dwindling away, despite efforts to hang on to it, finally concluding that it just won’t last: “I’m hanging on here until I’m gone, /Right where I belong, just hanging on, /February stars, floating in the dark, /Temporary scars, February stars…”

“March, the Mad Scientist,” Jethro Tull, 1976

Almost from the beginning, Tull frontman Ian Anderson typically wrote more songs than would fit on whatever album the band was in the process of recording. By 1976, he had compiled a number of finished tracks, several of which had a Christmastime flavor to them. “I’ve always enjoyed the Yuletide season and have written often about it,” Anderson said. He decided to release an EP in England (though not in the US, where EPs were rarely issued) that gathered four holiday-related songs: “Ring Out, Solstice Bells” (which also appeared on the “Songs From the Wood” album a couple months later), “Christmas Song” (first released back in 1969), “Pan Dance” and “March, the Mad Scientist.” The latter, clocking in at a brief 1:48, focuses on the post-Christmas months: “April is summer-bound, and February’s blue, /But March, the mad scientist, brings a new change in ever-dancing colours…”

“April Come She Will,” Simon and Garfunkel, 1966

When bass, drums and electric guitar were grafted onto the original acoustic recording of “The Sound of Silence” and it became a #1 hit in early 1966, Simon and Garfunkel hurried into the studio to record the wistful songs Simon had written while living in London (including “I Am a Rock,” “Kathy’s Song,” “Richard Cory” and “April Come She Will”) and rush-released the LP “Sounds of Silence.” When director Mike Nichols chose to prominently use several Simon and Garfunkel songs in the soundtrack of “The Graduate,” in 1967, “April Come She Will” was among them because Nichols related to the lyrics about the sad arc of an affair that runs its course in six months, much like the tryst depicted in the film: “April, come she will… /May, she will stay… /June, she’ll change her tune… /July, she will fly… /August. die she must… /September I’ll remember…”

“Then Came the Last Days of May,” Blue Oyster Cult, 1972

Donald Roeser, Blue Oyster Cult’s guitarist/singer who went by the stage name Buck Dharma, wrote this harrowing tale of a drug deal gone bad that appears on the group’s 1972 self-titled debut LP. He recalls, “Back in 1969, the band was playing dances at Stony Brook University on Long Island.  Three students from the college had gone out to Tucson, Arizona, at the end of May to buy some bulk marijuana for resale. It turned out the guys they were meeting there never intended to sell them any pot. They just wanted to drive them out to the desert, steal their money and shoot them, which they did, although one kid managed to survive. I wrote the lyrics from the newspaper accounts”: “It wasn’t until the car suddenly stopped in the middle of a cold and barren plain, /And the other guy turned and spilled three boys’ blood, /Did they know a trap had been laid?…” The song was a regular part of the band’s in-concert set list for many years

“Atlanta June,” Pablo Cruise, 1977

This San Francisco-based band enjoyed some decent chart success in the late ’70s with a pair of albums (1977’s “A Place in the Sun” and 1978’s “Worlds Away) and a handful of singles (“Whatcha Gonna Do?” “Love Will Find a Way,” “I Go to Rio”). These days, they’re lumped in with what is derisively known as “yacht rock,” but for my money, they offered feel-good music professionally executed, and I still enjoy hearing them from time to time. There’s a deep track on “A Place in the Sun” called “Atlanta June” that I think deserves your attention, even though it’s about a woman named June rather than the month of June: “Come here baby and sit down with me, I got something on my mind, /And I’ve got to tell you how I feel ’cause I know I’ll soon be gone, /Atlanta, Atlanta June, I’ll be leaving you and Georgia soon, /But someday maybe I’ll find a way back to you, Atlanta June…”

“Black Day in July,” Gordon Lightfoot, 1968

An escalating conflict between police and Black residents of Detroit that began on July 23, 1967, was the subject of Lightfoot’s powerful, poignant song. In seven verses, he tells of the violence and government response that resulted in the deadliest civil disturbance in US history: “Motor City madness has touched the countryside, /And the people rise in anger and the streets begin to fill, /And there’s gunfire from the rooftops and the blood begins to spill, /Black Day in July…” Lightfoot wasn’t yet a big name in the US but the song, which appeared on his 1968 “Did She Mention My Name?” LP, was nonetheless banned from many radio stations. It was by far Lightfoot’s most vivid protest song, with prominent percussion and dominant minor chords that symbolized the tension of the events.

“First Day in August,” Carole King, 1972

One of the greatest songwriters of the 1960s, King fed infectious tunes to her then-husband lyricist Gerry Goffin, and together they cranked out dozens of songs for other artists to turn into big hits. Then in 1971, her “Tapestry” album made her the featured recording artist and became one of the best-selling albums of all time. The half-dozen albums that came after that masterpiece never quite measured up, but individual songs like “Been to Canaan,” “Sweet Seasons,” “Bitter With the Sweet” and “Jazzman” were very worthy additions to her repertoire. From her 1972 LP “Rhymes and Reasons” is a little forgotten gem called “First Day in August,” an intimate ballad that celebrates a loving relationship with these tender lyrics: “On the first day in August, I want to wake up by your side, /After sleeping with you on the last night in July, /In the morning, we’ll catch the sun rising, /And we’ll chase it from the mountains to the bottom of the sea…”

“September,” Earth, Wind and Fire, 1978

I deliberated a while about which of the many songs about September that turned up in my search would be the one I would feature here. I’ve always been partial to the old standard, “September in the Rain,” as sung by Frank Sinatra in 1961, or even “See You in September” by the sunshine-pop group The Happenings in 1966. But I pretty much had to go with the EW&F hit, which reached #6 in 1978 as the new single included on the group’s “Best Of, Vol. 1” LP. The infectious R&B tune was written by Maurice White and his occasional collaborator Alley Willis, who initially objected to White’s memorable “ba-dee-ya” nonsense lyric in the chorus, “but he taught me an important lesson about not letting the lyric get in the way of a great groove.” The significance of the 21st of September, said White’s wife, was it was the original due date of their son: “Our hearts were ringing in the key that our souls were singing as we danced in the night, /Remember how the stars stole the night away, /Ba-dee-ya, say do you remember, /Ba-dee-ya, dancing in September, /Ba-dee-ya, never was a cloudy day…”

“October Road,” James Taylor, 2002

After cranking out classic albums every year through the 1970s, and every two or three years in the ’80s and ’90s, Taylor started experiencing writer’s block by the 2000s. Indeed, he has released only two albums of new material in the past 25 years, and to my ears, they weren’t quite as consistent as we’ve come to expect from this talented tunesmith. The title track from his 2002 LP “October Road” has a fine country-funk arrangement going that sets it a notch higher than the album’s other tracks. Its lyrics do a marvelous job of capturing his time-honored image of “walking on a country road,” only this time as soothing medicine for a worn-out psyche damaged from too much fame and travel: “I got so low down, fed up, my God, I could hardly move, /Won’t you come on, my brother, get on up and help me find my groove, /Keep me walking, October road, /Keep me walking in the sunshine, yeah, little friend of mine, October road…”

“November Rain,” Guns ‘n Roses, 1991

While I’ve never been much of a fan of Guns ‘n Roses, it’s impossible to deny the majestic sweep of this tour de force from their “Use Your Illusion I” album. Like other epic rock songs of its era, “November Rain” uses mellower melodic passages offset by screaming guitar sections to create compelling drama over its nine-minute length. Significantly, it’s one of the longest songs to ever reach the Top Five of the US Top 40 pop chart. “We call it ‘the Layla song’,” joked guitarist Slash, referencing a similarly constructed rock song with a long, instrumental second part. Lead singer Axl Rose describes how a rainy day in the eleventh month can be so unpleasant: “When I look into your eyes, I can see a love restrained, /But, darlin’, when I hold you, don’t you know I feel the same? /’Cause nothing lasts forever, and we both know hearts can change, /And it’s hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain…”

“December 1963 (Oh What a Night),” The Four Seasons, 1975

Bob Gaudio, longtime member of The Four Seasons and a primary songwriter for them, said this song’s lyrics originally focused on December 5, 1933, the day that Prohibition was repealed, but his wife suggested he change the focus to December of 1963, when the two first met. “It was more in line with the kind of song The Four Seasons typically sang,” he said, “and it ended up being a good decision.” The group hadn’t had a Top Ten hit since 1967, and the release of their “Who Loves You” album in 1975 put them back on the charts in a big way, first with the title song (which peaked at #3) and then “December 1963,” which held the #1 slot for three weeks in early 1976: “Oh, what a night, late December, back in ’63, /What a very special time for me, as I remember, what a night, /Oh, what a night, you know, I didn’t even know her name, /But I was never gonna be the same, what a lady, what a night…”

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Honorable mentions:

“January,” Pilot, 1975; “January Friend,” Goo Goo Dolls, 1998; “February Seven,” Avett Brothers, 2012; “Waters of March,” Art Garfunkel, 1975; “Sometimes It Snows in April,” Prince, 1986; “Pieces of April,” Three Dog Night, 1972; “First of May,” James Taylor, 1988; “First of May,” The Bee Gees, 1968; “June Hymn,” The Decemberists, 2011; “July Morning,” Uriah Heep, 1971; “August,” Taylor Swift, 2020; “See You in September,” The Happenings, 1966; “September Grass,” James Taylor, 2002; “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” Green Day, 2004; “September Morn,” Neil Diamond, 1979; “September in the Rain,” Frank Sinatra, 1961; “October,” U2, 1981; “November Spawned a Monster,” Morrissey, 1990; “Denouncing November,” The Avett Brothers, 2006; “December,” Collective Soul, 1995; “A Long December,” Counting Crows, 1996; “December,” Norah Jones, 2009; “December Snow,” Moody Blues, 2003.

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Part of the fun in writing this blog each week has been in coming up with topics for playlists. I have upwards of 250 themed playlists I’ve created on Spotify, many of them focusing on a key word or idea (dreams, cars, money, rain, food, sex, whatever).

This week, I went looking for songs about planets, and I was kind of surprised to find only a few — so few, in fact, that I had to stray outside my normal ’60s/’70s/’80s comfort zone to grab a few titles from more recent years to round out the list. Most of these songs, in fact, aren’t really about the actual celestial orbs but instead other meanings of the words. But what the hell. It’s still a fun playlist of eclectic musical selections, and I hope you can dig on that.

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“Mercury Blues,” Steve Miller Band, 1976

K.C. Douglas, a Mississippi blues singer/guitarist, wrote and recorded “Mercury Boogie” (later re-named “Mercury Blues”) with his trio in 1948. Its lyrics praise not the planet closest to the sun but the Mercury automobile brand, which led Ford Motor Co. to buy the rights to the song and use it in commercials. It’s been covered by several different artists, including Alan Jackson (whose 1992 version reached #2 on country charts), David Lindley on his 1981 LP, and Steve Miller, who featured his rendition on the multiplatinum 1976 album “Fly Like an Eagle.”

“Mercury Poisoning,” Graham Parker, 1979

Parker was a British pub rocker with a raw, vital delivery of soul/rock/reggae songs in the late ’70s and early ’80s. His early albums on Mercury Records were critics’ favorites, but a lack of promotion by the label resulted in anemic chart performance in the U.S. After switching to Arista in 1979 and releasing his commercial zenith, “Squeezing Out Sparks,” Parker released the single, “Mercury Poisoning,” which chronicled his poor relationship with his former label: “Well I’ve got all the diseases, I’m breaking out in sweat, you bet, because I got Mercury poisoning, /It’s fatal and it don’t get better, /I got Mercury poisoning, the best kept secret in the West…”

“Venus,” Shocking Blue, 1970

Guitarist Robbie van Leeuwen of the Dutch group Shocking Blue wrote this infectious track in 1969. Once American promoter/label owner Jerry Ross released it in the US six months later, it soared to #1, as it did in eight other countries around the world. Fiery lead vocalist Mariska Veres sang the lyrics of passionate love using Venus, the Goddess of Love, as the symbol. The song is one of only a handful in Billboard history to became a worldwide #1 hit a second time in when British vocal group Bananarama put their dance-music spin on it in 1986.

“Venus and Mars,” Paul McCartney & Wings, 1975

McCartney and his band set up camp in New Orleans in early 1975 to write and record the follow-up to their enormously successful “Band On the Run” album. Said Paul at the time: “I had this whole idea about a fellow sitting in a cathedral waiting for this transport from space that was going to take him on a trip. The guy is a bit blotto and starts thinking about ‘A good friend of mine studies the stars, Venus and Mars are all right tonight.‘ Afterwards, somebody told me Venus and Mars had just eclipsed the sun, or something. I’m not exactly sure, but I guess they aligned themselves exactly for the first time in 2,000 years. I had no idea about all this going on.” It became the title track of the album. 

“I Feel the Earth Move,” Carole King, 1971

After a decade writing huge hit singles for other artists to record, King divorced her songwriting partner Gerry Goffin and moved to Los Angeles, where she began collaborating with lyricist Toni Stern on a collection of songs that would become “Tapestry,” one of the biggest selling albums of all time. “I Feel the Earth Move,” the album’s opener, was also one half of her double A-side single with “It’s Too Late,” which reached #1 in the summer of 1971. The lyrics equate romantic passion with an earthquake “whenever you’re around.”

“Last Night on Earth,” U2, 1997

U2’s 1997 LP “Pop” was another in a long line of #1 albums for the Irish band, but it hasn’t aged well, evidenced by the fact that the group rarely performs any of its material in concert anymore. Still, “Discothèque” and “Staring at the Sun” did admirably on the charts at the time of release. One of the last tracks completed for the album was this one written six years earlier for the “Achtung Baby” LP but instead shelved away. Bono hadn’t been satisfied with the lyrics and struggled to write new ones before the band headed out on a lengthy tour. He struck on the concept of someone living passionately “as if it’s the last night on Earth.”

“Ballrooms of Mars,” T. Rex, 1972

Marc Bolan’s career paralleled that of David Bowie, who both evolved from psychedelic folk to electric rock to become pioneers of the glam rock movement by 1972. Bolan and his band, T. Rex, had only limited commercial success in the U.S., with the “Electric Warrior” and “The Slider” LPs and the Top Ten single “Bang a Gong (Get It On),” but he was huge in England. From “The Slider” came a great track called “Ballrooms of Mars,” which capitalized on Bolan’s outré persona: “You gonna look fine, be primed for dancing, /You’re gonna trip and glide, all on the trembling plane, /Your diamond hands will be stacked with roses… and we’ll dance our lives away in the ballrooms of Mars…”

“Moving to Mars,” Coldplay, 2011

This captivating track, recorded for Coldplay’s 2011 LP “Mylo Xyloto” but left off the final track listing, was instead added as a bonus track to the three-song EP “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall.” Chris Martin said it was inspired by a documentary called “Moving to Mars” that told the story of a family from Southeast Asia moved against their will to England. “To them, it seemed as radical a move as being relocated to another planet,” he said, “which intrigued me enough to write a song about it.” He said he was disappointed it didn’t make it on the album: “And I heard it on the radio that one day we’ll be living in the stars, /And I heard it on a TV show that, somewhere up above and in my heart, /They’ll be tearing us apart, maybe moving us to Mars, /We won’t see the earth again…”

“Drops of Jupiter,” Train, 2000

San Francisco-based Train has had considerable success since forming in the mid-1990s, and one of their biggest hits was this title track from their second LP in 2001. Lead singer Pat Monahan said that the song was inspired by his late mother. “The process of creation wasn’t easy because I just couldn’t figure out what to write. But one day, about a year after she died, I woke up from a dream with the words ‘back in the atmosphere’ in a sort of mantra. I think it was just her way of saying what it was like. She was swimming past the planets, and she came to me here with drops of Jupiter in her hair.” It was a multi-platinum single for Train, peaking at #5.

“Jupiter Crash,” The Cure, 1996

This influential British band led by Robert Smith has been a factor since 1980, churning out dark edgy rock that has seen major success on both sides of the Atlantic. From The Cure’s 1996 LP “Wild Mood Swings,” Smith wrote this amazing track that uses the 1994 incident when a comet struck Jupiter as a metaphor for a failed sexual encounter. “Everyone expected that Jupiter would explode or something, but it wasn’t what was anticipated,” he called. “Relationships can be like that, this big buildup followed by a sense of disappointment. There next day, people were saying, ‘That was rubbish.’ It wasn’t. It was incredible, but it just wasn’t what was expected. That was the analogy.” “Meanwhile, millions of miles away in space, the incoming comet brushes Jupiter’s face, then disappears away with barely a trace…”

“Saturn,” Stevie Wonder, 1976

Wonder had been an astonishingly prolific and successful musician for many years, including winning two Album of the Year Grammys in the previous three years. Many observers, including Wonder himself, regarded his 1976 double album “Songs in the Key of Life” to be his supreme achievement. He had so many great songs representing a range of genres that he needed a third record, a 4-song EP, to fit them all. One of those was “Saturn,” a reflection on escapism, where Wonder imagined living on a distant planet: “Going back to Saturn where the rings all glow, rainbow, moonbeams and orange snow, /On Saturn, people live to be two hundred and five, /Going back to Saturn where the people smile, /Don’t need cars, ’cause we’ve learned to fly, /On Saturn, just to live, to us, is our natural high…”

“Anus of Uranus,” Klaatu, 1976

In the summer of 1976, rumors spread that The Beatles had secretly reunited and recorded an album under a fictional name. In fact, Klaatu was a real band from Canada who made progressive rock that sounded, at times, like psychedelic-era Beatles music. (In particular, check out “Sub-Rosa Subway,” which would have fit nicely on “Magical Mystery Tour.”) Capitol Records milked the opportunity by including no band information on the cover and remaining elusive to press inquiries. The group’s quasi-cosmic lyrics and song titles, which focused on interplanetary travel, included the whimsically scatalogical “Anus of Uranus”: “Playing cards on Venus in a cloudy room, pass a glass of ammonia, I got to get off soon, /Sunbathin’ on Mercury or jammin’ on Jupiter, which do you prefer?, /Anus of Uranus, he’s a friend of mine, he’s a first-rate party and a real fine time…”

“Valleys of Neptune,” Jimi Hendrix, 1969/2010

Hendrix began work on this piece under the title “Gypsy Blood” in February 1969, then wrote the lyrics under the title “Valleys of Neptune Arising” three months later. Hendrix made several attempts at recording it with different groups of backup players, from Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox to Stephen Stills and Buddy Miles and Steve Winwood. Hendrix died in 1970 without having completed the piece to his satisfaction, but finally, in 2010, it became the title track of an album of previously unreleased material. It’s an insightful tune, with lyrics that speak of a new era coming: “I see visions of sleeping peaks erupting, /Releasing all hell that will shake the Earth from end to end, /Singing about the new valleys of the sunrise, rainbow clean, /The world is gonna be singing about getting ready for the new tide, /The valleys of Neptune arising…”

“Pluto,” Jake Wesley Rogers, 2021

Rogers is one of the hottest new artists around, debuting in 2017 at only 21. The talented singer-songwriter composes songs that speak to his experiences growing up gay in Missouri, and yet they offer universal truths. His 2021 single “Pluto” touches on the celestial body’s status as the newest planet that later had that designation removed, and compares it to his own experience of having self-confidence that is jeopardized when others are critical: “When I was a kid, Pluto was still a planet, I’m still kinda sad about it, /Thought I was the shit ’til someone made me doubt it, I’m still kinda mad about it, /Hate on me, you might as well hate the sun for shining just a little too much, /Hate on me, maybe at the end of the day, you and me are both the same, /We just wanna be loved…”

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