Top 18 Train Songs

I've emerged from an odd 14-hour period of sleeping and half-sleeping, interspersed with sitcom watching and cereal eating. To say this was one of the best 14-hour periods I can remember spending (alone) would not be an understatement. I want to particularly praise the creators of The Office and Trader Joe's Raisin Bran.

Now? I'm at the office and I have work to do, lots of it. Well, maybe just a little. The campus is teeming with the news of a (seemingly) overblown scandal. The weather is perfectly gloomy. I'm reminded of 1997. April, to be precise.

But I've temporarily sworn off the past. So no melancholy sentences about that magical/regrettable spring (the spring of Pavement and the first playoff appearance by the Timberwolves). You see, that wasn't a sentence - thus, the period goes after the right parenthesis.

I haven't written about music lately. It's time for a list. In honor of my trip to the train station tonight, here are the Top 18 Train Songs.

(this is not so much a list of old-timey "hobo" train songs; it's more a list of songs that invoke trains from my lifetime)

(also - this list is meant for train-as-train songs, not train-as-metaphor songs)

(and I thought of this list before they did... they just executed it first)

18. The Train - Tahiti 80
17. Peace Train - Cat Stevens
16. Albemarle Station - Silver Jews
15. 52 Stations - Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
14. Trains to Brazil - Guillemots
13. Marrakesh Express - Crosby, Stills, & Nash
12. Born on a Train - Magnetic Fields
11. National Express - The Divine Comedy
10. The Metro - Berlin
9. City of New Orleans - Steve Goodman
8. Love Train - The O'Jays
7. From A Late Night Train - The Blue Nile
6. Peace Train - 10,000 Maniacs
5. Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight & the Pips
4. I Often Dream of Trains - Robyn Hitchcock
3. Driver Eight - R.E.M.
2. Fear of Trains - Magnetic Fields
1. Freight Train Rain - Reivers