This one's been waiting for a few months--years, actually, by now. One week a local newspaper reported what eighteen elementary school students wrote about their favorite songs. The Internet can do better than that. Here is a PLAYLIST of as many of their favorite songs as Google could find.
Not all of the students specified the writer or performer of the song. Some songs have been recorded by more than one band, and some completely different songs have the same name, so there are no guarantees that the music linked here is necessarily what the students had in mind. But this web site has tried.
1. "In the Eye of the Storm" (Ryan Stevenson)
2. "Flower Shops" by Ernest and Morgan Wallen
3. "We Own the Night" by Disney (sorry!)
4. "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus
5. "Look What You Have Done": The student credited Anne Wilson. What Google has is sung by Tasha Layton. The student said that the song is suitable for church, and starts low and goes high in pitch, so it sounds as if this is the right song.
6. "We Will Rock You" by Queen. Yes, believe it or not, the young share some favorites with the older.
7. "Joke's On You" by Charlotte Lawrence
8. "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins
9. "Coal Town" by Taylor Ray Holbrook. Authenticated by a student from Jonesville, which is near places mentioned in the song.
10. "County Line" by Chase Matthew
11. "You've Got a Friend in Me" by Randy Newman
12. 'Ghost Riders" by Johnny Cash. (The correct name is "Riders in the Sky," but does anybody not know which song the student meant?)
13. "Savage Love" by Jason Derulo. Seriously. Parents let children listen to that? The third-grade student wrote, "I like it because there is a dance to it. The dance is very fun and cheerful."
14. "You Are My Sunshine"...The student mentioned who sang the version person had in mind, all right. Per late grandmother did, and then later the student sang it for the grandmother. In memory of all the grandmothers who have sung this song to grandchildren, here is a recording by Jasmine Thompson.
15. "Bless the Lord." This is a song I've been known to sing, and this is how it goes...It's been kicking around for years. The Youtube versions I found have been are jazzed-up interpretations by charismatic church choirs. I can't imagine a person who didn't already know the tune learning it from the videos. A person who can read basic musical notation--we are talking about autoharp music, not even scored for guitar--can learn the song from this book:
The book is recommended because, from music written for the autoharp, a person with minimal skills can adapt the song to anything else the person plays.
However, it's likely that the student was thinking of a new, copyrighted, popular song, properly called "Ten Thousand Reasons," by Matt Redman.
16. "What a Friend We Have in Jesus"
17. "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift
18. "All I Want" by Kodaline
19. "God on the Mountain" is the name of a song by Gloria and Bill Gaither. Lots of people have recorded it since they did, but their version has to be considered official.
Should I add a favorite to make a nice even number? I remember making lists of my current favorite songs several times, in elementary school, often actually in school while daydreaming away the hours the teachers spent repeating things for the most intentionally slow learners. What I remember is that there was no overlap. Each time I made a list the songs were my favorites of what I'd heard that week.
One song, however, was consistently the favorite of the songs my siblings and I used to sing. It was our favorite to sing, with or without arm movement, with or without chickens. (The chickens' participation was their own idea. We were singing Sunday School songs one evening, and the chickens gathered around to listen. Realizing that they actually enjoyed our songs, we started practicing as we brought them into their coop for the night. Their acts, which were of course simple things like chirping or stepping forward on cue, were things they did that we taught them to repeat as part of the rotuine.) It was the favorite of people who invited us to sing it first. I think it may have been the favorite of the pet chickens who had parts in our renditions of it, too. This Youtube video is a little more polished than our performances usually were, with an instrumental accompaniment and all...
20. "His Banner Over Me Is Love" is in that Mel Bay songbook, too, though we were singing it before that book was printed.
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