My Top 1000 Songs #175: Beatle Boots

Love Tractor were among the Southern guitar bands that dominated my college radio DJ days, my obsession with R.E.M. sprouting to include acts like the Connells and Guadalcanal Diary. Love Tractor didn't get the same attention on my show, as their early recordings were predominantly instrumentals. But this vocal track from 1987's This Ain't No Outerspace Ship was an instant favorite, a mainstay of my show for weeks. It's the sort of song that, on a strictly objective level, shouldn't be this high on a list of favorites (really, just one notch behind Led Zeppelin? you may be thinking)--but is so tethered to a part of my life that it takes on particular emotional resonance.

It's a sweet, guileless little love song, with an infectious, jangly guitar riff and some alternatingly joyous and bittersweet lyrics ("I heard you singing out of key on your way home last night, well does this mean you're hurting down inside?"). But it's the incongruous yet delirious title refrain, sung in a disarming falsetto, that gets me singing along every time I play it, and has randomly popped into my head at unexpected moments for the past 35 years.