“When All Is Said and Done”: A Playlist

I’d always loved this ABBA song from their final album, The Visitors. Like all ABBA songs, it was immensely tuneful and catchy and had a hint of longing and heartache in the subtext. But it also displayed them as a mature group of songwriters composing for a more sophisticated audience than during their “Ring Ring” or “Honey Honey” days.

I also felt that the theme of accepting loss and moving on — transcending, adapting and coping — fit perfectly with my song cycle of original material ENDLESS STREET: A SPIRITUAL TRAVELOGUE, the collection onto which it will eventually appear in solid form. But once we had a studio version, which we recorded back in 2011 and left sitting forever, I felt that it had to go *somewhere* in the interim, and Ce N’est Pas Un Album: Hoards of Slaughter Sheep provided that milieu.

I had recorded the keyboards to a click track, and then Paul Galiszewski added his drums in Matthew Paul Morris’s studio up in Keyport back in 2010 or 2011. A few months later, I got Tom Briant into the studio to add his guitar parts. I think he also did the bass line. (I know it wasn’t Jacque, and I’m fairly certain that it’s not Julian’s bass.)

What made me so happy about the song was our ability to preserve the pop sensibility while adding just enough of a rock ethos to the song to make it fit alongside the more Americana/roots-rock elements of Endless Street. Granted, this is still the most synth-heavy piece in the collection, but it feels like synth rock. Paul loved the homage I paid to Van Halen’s “Jump” in the outro. One doesn’t typically associate ABBA with rock music, but, well, there it is for you now.

This playlist takes some of the best synth rock of the 80s (and a few items from the 90s and aughts) for a really fun playlist. Sure, it feels less serious-minded than the other playlists I’ve crafted for Endless Street, but we can’t be moping around and singing about Johnstown all the time, can we, Bruce? Sometimes we just gotta dance in the dark.

Playlist Contest below. CLICK HERE to listen on Spotify!

The Random Hubiak Band/When All is Said and Done

Van Halen/Jump

Stevie Nicks/If Anyone Falls

Rick Springfield/Human Touch

Pat Benatar/Shadows of the Night

Asia/Don’t Cry

The Alan Parsons Project/Games People Play

Bon Jovi/Runaway

Frida/I Know There’s Something Going On

Bruce Springsteen/Dancing In the Dark

Emerson, Lake & Powell/Touch and Go

Kim Carnes/Voyeur

Eurythmics/I Love You Like a Ball and Chain

The Killers/When You Were Young

Darryl Hall/Dreamtime

Manfred Mann/Going Underground

The Alarm/Rain in the Summertime

Queensrÿche/Silent Lucidity

The Hooters/And We Danced

Van Halen/Dreams

Bonnie Tyler/Ravishing

David Bowie/Modern Love

Cyndi Lauper/Change of Heart

Duran Duran/Faster Than Light

Pat Benatar/We Live for Love

Asia/Only Time Will Tell

Bruck Cockburn/Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Rick Springfield/State of the Heart

The Fixx/Secret Separation

Electric Light Orchestra/Hold On Tight

Donna Summer/Cold Love

Bon Jovi/She Don’t Know Me

Journey/Only the Young

The Alan Parsons Project/In The Real World

ABBA/When All is Said and Done