My Top 1000 Songs #476: Boy With The Arab Strap

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

The title track from Belle & Sebastian's 1998 LP The Boy WIth The Arab Strap is just...jubilant? I dunno. Some songs are easy to explain why you love them. But this isn't a track I can associate with any particular time in my life, just one of those pretty, bouncy little tunes--unadulterated musical sunshine--that feels like it's been in my head forever. Maybe it's that Nick Drake vibe (it's always conjured "Hazy Jane II" for me), or the endlessly perky piano, or just that pleasant wandering-about-the-city lyrical motif. But any day I hear this song is gonna be a good day.

A lovely performance in 2015:

And from the 2020 live album: