Lyric puzzle

Hello, folks. This concept popped into my head a few days ago. I thought I'd share it here. It is similar to previous puzzles in which you are only given a series of initials and must figure out the full expression.

The twist here is that each letter in each puzzle is the first letter of a word in the first two verses of a popular song.

You must figure out the song title and original artist.

There are a few caveats:

- Contractions will count as one word. For example, 'I'm' would be represented with a sole 'I'. - All punctuation has been discarded. - 'Popular' implies songs that have been in the Top-40 in most English-speaking markets between 1970 to the present. I apologize for the regional bias.

Without further ado, here is the first set of puzzles:

spoiler space

Hey Jude; don't make it bad / Take a sad song and make it better.

That was Top-40 in 1968, maybe into the beginning of 1969. Was it still Top-40 by 1970? I think you may be violating your own rules.

Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

Methinks you caught me.

Revision 1: Top-40 songs between 1965 and present.

-Ray.

Spoiler

Spoiler

'You took your coat off and stood in the rain / you were always crazy like that'

'Foolish Games', Jewel

Spoiler

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'On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair' - 'Hotel California' by The Eagles

Wow, if some song I've never heard of is on this list, it kind of discourages me from working on the rest. But here's an idea!

Do you want to put years next to each set of initials? Perhaps along with your own subjective rating system on just how famous the song is?

For example, you could give Hey Jude and Hotel California 4 stars each, both for being really famous and for having famous, audible lyrics. On the other hand, the Jewel song probably deserves about 1 star. If I've heard it at all, I sure don't recognize the lyrics.

I was going to post an example like:

ISHTATR / AGOWIHH (1966, 4-star)

But I realized I don't know a quick way to look up the exact year for this song (prominently featured in The Big Chill).

Sounds like a good idea. I'll have to do that later on tonight, after getting home from work.

-Ray.

It'll probably be a lot more work for you than just writing some initials, but it'll be a lot easier for the puzzle solvers! (Wait till you try figuring out years of songs!)

At the risk of admitting I'm old, I think I could safely skip any songs considered (4-star) popular in the '90s and focus more on the late '70s / early '80s.

Want to know something? I had forgotten three of the songs after going back to write down the answers. I had to sit there for a few minutes and try and remember which songs they were. :

I thought this group liked hard puzzles? Hmmm...

As mentioned, I'll modify the puzzle tonight.

-Ray.

A mild hint of spoilage may follow

Actually, I had never heard of the song either. I just kept playing various combinations through my head. Initially, I thought it was some weird reference to MacArthur Park, then I thought maybe it was 'coat' instead of 'cake'. I tried a phrase on google and found the song.

It's interesting that after staring at the songs for a while, you see patterns that look pretty distinctive. I think that 'KM' and 'HM' together are probably 'kiss me, hold me' or 'kiss me, hug me'. Of course, not having solved the songs, though, so I don't know if that applies to the songs at hand. Likewise, CWM, in addition to being a valid Scrabble word, is probably Come With Me. Mark