The Top Five “Me And...” Songs

5. “Me and the Major” – Belle & Sebastian: Belle & Sebastian’s 1996 masterpiece If You’re Feeling Sinister is the Indie Rock album that comes closest to approaching Bob Dylan’s mid-60s classics. Though Dylan’s snarl provides an edgy quality to even his prettiest ballads, Stuart Murdoch’s soft, pretty croon often belies powerful messages included in his lyrics. “Me and the Major” is particularly Dylanesque in with a driving rock beat and prominent harmonica and a metaphorical lyric reflecting on the difference between generations. Murdoch sings about his relationship with “the Major,” probably referring to then-Prime Minister of the UK John Major, a child of the 60s who did lots of drugs and is compensating for that by being extra authoritative with the youth of the nation. At the end, Murdoch dismisses the major and leaves to has some fun with people his own age.



4. “Me & My Uncle” – The Grateful Dead: “Me & My Uncle” has the distinction being the song most played by the Grateful Dead in many live performances. The Dead performed “Me & My Uncle” 616 times between 1966 and 1994, and I can understand why. The song’s loose structure and lack of chorus leaves a lot of room for variation. It’s a classic road trip song with a darkly comic twist, when Jerry leaves his dead uncle by the side of the road and makes off with gold they stole from some West Texas Cowboys.



3. “Me and the Bean” – Spoon: “Me and the Bean,” recorded for 2000’s Girls Can Tell, is one of the most eerily minimalist songs in Spoon’s catalogue and predicted the direction the band would go in on their most recent album Transference. People have speculated that the Bean in this song refers to Francis Bean Cobain, and it’s possible that the song is a tribute to Nirvana. Britt Daniel’s voice sounds remarkably similar to Kurt Cobain’s on the track and the song shares a similar verse structure and wordless chorus to Nirvana’s “Lithium.” Daniel posits himself as Cobain, who will be a shadow on his daughter for the rest of her life, and the Bean as his unwitting successor.



2. “Me and Bobby McGee” – Janis Joplin: Sure, the song was written by Kris Kristofferson, it’s impossible to think about the song without thinking about the way Janis’s warble gradually shifts into a wail and the trip to rock city with the key change in the last verse. Bobby can be a boy or a girl or something more symbolic, but Janis’s pleasure in recounting her time with Bobby and her pain when singing about how he left is so real that it doesn’t matter. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” and without Bobby, Janis is just “me.” The song is a perfect metaphor for the good time idealism of the sixties fading into the harsh realism of the 70s.



1. “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard” – Paul Simon: Is “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” the happiest song ever written? It has bright major chords, tales of youthful mischief gleefully delivered by Simon and a fucking WHISTLE SOLO! “Me and Julio” is among the purest 2 minutes and 45 seconds of pop bliss ever recorded. It’s full of nostalgia for a bygone time, when Paul and Julio could do what they wanted without a care in the world, but it isn’t bogged down by the knowledge that the good times would eventually end. The song was used to amazing effect in The Royal Tenenbaums, further canonizing the song as the premier anthem for youthful tomfoolery.

Honorable Mentions:
“Me and My Girlfriend” – 2Pac: Hint: it’s about his 45, not about a girl
“Me and the Devil Blues” – Robert Johnson: A legend-building delta blues classic
“Elevators (Me and You)” – Outkast: Sort of cheating, because it doesn’t start with “Me and” but it’s a classic.
“Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard” - !!!: The title says it all.