#9 Dream

Some people are simply born with more or higher quality raw materials. Some of those people do little or nothing with those materials. And some of them work with and on them until they get to the point where they can literally write an utterly perfect pop song in their sleep.


Because there's never enough examples of artists who don't understand their own work as fully as others do, here's John Lennon talking about this song:

That's what I call craftsmanship writing, meaning, you know, I just churned that out. I'm not putting it down, it's just what it is, but I just sat down and wrote it, you know, with no real inspiration, based on a dream I'd had.

"Churned that out." Completely in keeping with John Lennon being the only person in history who didn't like the sound of John Lennon's own voice.

Pictures of Lily

I've liked very few of David Bowie's covers: he's one of those artists whose own identity is so strong and, conventional and actual wisdom somewhat to the contrary, so sui generis that his covers rarely rise to the level of the original, much less surpass.

I'm not going to say this surpasses the original, since you can't surpass perfection, but taking it in a dream pop direction was pretty brilliant, as it works both sonically and thematically.