Day 108: Your favorite song by a band/artist whose name begins with “C”.

“Hollywood” – Collective Soul

There are actually many songs by Collective Soul that were contenders for this post. But I kept coming back to “Hollywood.”

I’ve mentioned this song before. And, I’ll say again what I said then: I liked this song the first time I heard it.

And it’s not just because it sounds like “Magic” by the Cars.

Granted, the chord structure of the intro and verses might have some resemblance to “Magic.” Okay, they might be the same chords. Okay they’re the same chords!

You’d have to be asleep at the switch to be unaware of my affinity of The Cars. (More on that in a few days.) But that chord progression is actually only a small part of why I like the song. Truth be told, it’s “Hollywood”‘s chorus that really does it for me.

Ed Roland and his various and sundry guitarists through the years have been very good at coming up with really catchy guitar hooks and riffs. Which is a very good thing. Roland’s singing voice, while decent, doesn’t have much variety, and the “sound” of the band doesn’t change much song to song, so without those hooks, they’d probably have a whole lot of nothin’. But, you add those hooks into the mix, and what you get is a lot of hits and a lot of good, catchy songs.

Such is the case with “Hollywood.” There’s a guitar line in among the rest of the chorus’ instruments that I think really drives the song. And that’s what takes it to the level of a standout track for me. I’ve been known to listen to the song two or three times in a row, which is something I don’t do too often.

Collective Soul has been behind some other really good songs that I considered for this post. They have the high-energy song down pat. (They even have a song called “Energy” which was a candidate for today’s posts. Other candidates included “Precious Declaration,” “Gel” and “Tremble For My Beloved.” All have those prominent, catchy riffs I was talking about. But in truth, the list of possibilities was pretty long.

I won’t bore you with the whole list. It would start to sound like Bubba’s list of things you can make from shrimp in Forrest Gump. Which would force me to start quoting things from the movie. And nobody wants that, do they?

So listen to some Collective Soul instead. It’s a better use of your time.