My Top 1000 Songs #777: The Walking Song

[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.]

As an unabashed Turtlemaniac, I've always found the lack of critical respect for the Turtles inexplicable. They had a run of drop-dead-perfect 60s pop singles; a few albums that hold together as both fun and artistically rich (particularly 1968's playful Battle of the Bands and 1969's Ray Davies-produced Turtle Soup); and of course frontmen Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (as Flo & Eddie) had a highly respectable run as supporting vocalists for myriad acts from Springsteen to T.Rex to Zappa.

That said, one of my favorite Turtles tracks is a silly little guilty pleasure. A deep cut from 1967's Happy Together--and admittedly far less durable than the timeless title track--it's a campy hoot, the narrative of an aimless dude encountering random passerby--the sad girl, the mean old rich guy, the contented flower girl (who leaves me a little teary-eyed)--as he struggles to discern the meaning of life. It climaxes in a round, each differently-voiced character singing at once. And with a parting "Hi, how are you?" our narrator is off to figure it all out. Silly 60s profundity, and a spectacular vocal showcase to boot.