The 5th Dimension - Requiem 820 Latham

Half megaballad, half dirge, this track is among the best of Jimmy Webb’s catalogue of pants-pissingly awesome songs.  There are people who will tell you that Richard Harris’ version of this song is the best, but fuck those people - this is unquestionably the quintessential version of this track.  The arrangement is lush and huge, the vocal performance is dripping with tears/cologne, and the drum production is MEGA.  The real standout though is the songwriting itself; in particular the aching and hallucinatory lyrics.  Who but Jimmy Webb could pen a song about a brief love affair that presumably took place in New York and turn it into a space opera involving gods, glaciers, dead planets and immortality?  This guy feels things that most of us might not even ever read about.

‘When we stopped the clock on that cold rock / Mixed our hot young blood with granite dust / And I raised my head to kiss the sweat / That hung like honey from your goddess brow’

If I could rattle off prose like this on demand, I would be perenially scented by the musk of lovely ladies.  Until that day, I’ll just steal lines from this to make ‘em swoon.