Songs for Surviving the Pandemic(s), Always Stand By Me Mind (??) Edition

[Other installments are accessible from the bottom of this page. A table of contents with song lists for this series appears at?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/songs-surviving-pandemics-year-end-sale-annual-report-chmielewski/?published=t.]

ALWAYS ON MY MIND

I heard the Pet Shop Boys cool cover of Always On My Mind (1987) on the radio the other day, and it was still on my mind as I contemplated the significance of today being the 20th wedding anniversary for Soo and me. Perfect song for the occasion? I reviewed the lyrics. I had been thinking it went “You are always on my mind.” I sure misremembered it.?It’s really “You were always on my mind,” and filled with after the fact when-it’s-too-late revelations. Still, a song so well-crafted that it is hard to find a bad version of it. Here are the boys in the animal store doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MSPnFCUghc.

STAND BY ME

“Stand By Me” is the song that is always 'always on my mind,' always (stop with the always already!), when I think of my life with Soo. It was written by Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and is another tune that is so well-written it is hard to mess up. Inspiration came from an old spiritual, “Stand By Me Father,” that was co-written by Sam Cooke for the Soul Stirrers; an old gospel hymn by the Rev. Charles Albert Tindley (wrote "We Shall Overcome") titled “Stand by Me”; and the beginning of Psalm 46: “God is our refuge?and strength, an ever-present?help?in trouble. ?Therefore we will not fear,?though the earth give way and the mountains fall?into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar?and foam and the mountains quake?with their surging.” Amen.

My go to version is Stand By Me, John Lennon (1975), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RdATJ_6870.

Thank you, Soo, for always standing by me.