With an entire day devoted to the vast, ceremonious, celebration of love, it's quite easy to overlook President's Day. But while Valentine's Day gets all the press and glory (and presents!), we'd be completely remiss not to at least acknowledge the men who helped shape who we are today. Without presidents, we'd be, well, presidentless.
And although we know it's not until Monday, let's not forget that today is actually our illustrious sixteenth President's birthday. And what better way to tribute the man in the big ass hat than to list off five songs mentioning old Abe?
5. Best Friends Forever - "My Head In Front of Your Head" Nobody is going to argue with a couple of girls singing about how much they're in love with Abraham Lincoln. It's a great song to kick of this list because we couldn't find a better line about Lincoln than, "I would have done your shopping for you and bought your long pants."
4. Rainer Maria - "The Contents of Lincoln's Pocket" You'll have to excuse the terrible quality of this video from the bands last show. Either way, it's a song about Abraham Lincoln's pockets, which meshes well with the last song that mentioned the length of his pants.
3. Bob Dylan - "Talkin World War III Blues" The goofy Bob Dylan, remember him? Great guy, wrote some great songs, even if half of them made no sense. This one includes the line "Half the people can be part right all the time, some of the people can be all right part of the time but all the people can't be all right all the time, I think Abraham Lincoln said that." We thought about researching the line to see if it was true, but decided it was probably just the whimsy of Dylan and his half-assed history lessons that came up with that. Besides old Bob and Old Abe shared some crazy poofy hairdos together, that's a good enough bond.
2. Sufjan Stevens - "Decatur" Remember Sufjan Stevens? Yeah, he used to be a big deal. We kind of forgot about him until this list came up though, namely because it's difficult to forget the image of Civil War ghosts clapping and a line like, "Stephen A. Douglas was a great debater but Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator." It's good stuff, even if that whole 50 states thing was a gimic.
1. Marvin Gaye - "Abraham, Martin, John" None of the other songs on this list carry a real emotional weight except Marvin Gaye's rendition of "Abraham, Martin, John." It's a catalog of important people doing important things, so we found it fitting to include it here, especially considering the overall goofiness of the other tracks.
