Songs about morning

A believer in the vicarious, substitutive powers of pop, I let these songs indulge in the all-nighter’s mixed affection for the morning sun. I’ve stayed up past dawn a few times, rarely of my own volition. During the COVID era I see no point in stretching my bedtime past 10:30 if I stay in, not when my little bones crick and creak six and a half hours later in preparation for a walk (the end of Daylight Savings Time has helped).

I love my top three: Noel with one of the purest and death-rattled of freestyle jams, sung in a wobbly boriqua English accent which does wonders for his humanity; Bill Withers anticipating a day so lovely it pushes him outside his singing range; and New Order’s bowing to a producer (Stephen Hague) results in a thick cinder block of an electronic arrangement (with rivulets of bass and rhythm guitars scratched through it) about a personal apocalypse Bernard Sumner in characteristic fashion refuses to name.

1. New Order – True Faith
2. Noel – Silent Morning
3. Bill Withers – Lovely Day
4. Juice Newton – Angel of the Morning
5. Roberta Flack – Till The Morning Comes
6. Gap Band – Early in the Morning
7. “Mississippi” John Hurt – Monday Morning Blues
8. Fleetwood Mac – Warm Ways
9. Johnny Cash – Good Morning, Friend
10. Nilsson – Gotta Get Up
11. Joni Mitchell – Morning Morgantown
12. Bob Dylan – New Morning
13. Nina Simone – In the Morning
14. George Strait – Amarillo By Morning
15. Lee Ann Womack – I May Hate Myself in the Morning
16. Neil Young – Till the Morning Comes
17. Dolly Parton – Light of a Clear Blue Morning
18. Hall and Oates – When the Morning Comes
19. Gene Kelly – Good Morning
20. The Supremes – Early Morning Love
21. Diana Ross – Touch Me in the Morning
22. The Velvet Underground – Sunday Morning
23. The Temptations – Love Woke Me Up This Morning
24. Big K.R.I.T. – Rise and Shine
25. Arcade Fire – Wake Up