My Top 1000 Songs #874: All Of The Good Ones Are Taken

[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.]

By all rights, this is not a song I should like. For the title track on 1983's All Of The Good Ones Are Taken, Ian Hunter sheds the hard-rocking glam of his Mott The Hoople days and earlier solo records (not to mention his ever-present shades... good lord, the man has eyeballs!). What's left behind is an almost bland-ish slab of 70s AOR, reminiscent of mid/late 70s Kinks or Bad Company, completely anachronistic in the new wave/post-punk early 80s landscape.

Yet despite all that, the song manages to be great. Hunter's scratchy, lived-in vocals give it some comfortable familiarity; while the chorus hook has never left my consciousness. And any time I find myself in a situation where, alas, all the good ones are taken--be it at the Safeway produce aisle or ordering online tickets--I still start belting out the song in my head.