500 Best-Loved Song Lyrics (Dover Song Collections)

"What are the words to that song?" is a common question, and trying hopelessly to remember a nagging, half-finished phrase can sometimes be enough to drive a person over the edge. It's a situation that 500 Best-Loved Song Lyrics, collected and edited by Ronald Herder, attempts to rectify. From "The Aba Daba Honeymoon" (by Arthur Fields and Walter Donovan, 1914) to "Zum Gali Gali" (Israeli work song), it covers scads of folk songs, hymns, and old-time show tunes. In the case of songs with multiple versions, Herder has chosen, as he puts it in his introduction, "the text that is most memorable, that captures the spirit of the original song the way we remembered it, that is truly 'best-loved.'" However, if the lyrics you're trying to remember are from a tune along the lines of "Proud Mary" or the theme song from the Brady Bunch, you're out of luck: in keeping with Dover Publications' standard practice, all of the included words are out of copyright, and that means they must be over 50 years old. But for Christmas carols, patriotic songs (you'll find all four verses of "The Star-Spangled Banner"), folk music, and the kind of old-time popular songs that accompany vintage cartoons from Disney and Warner Bros., this is a very useful little collection. The index is in the front, and all the songs are arranged alphabetically. One caveat: although several songs in foreign languages are provided, translations are not. (So what does "Zum Gali Gali" mean, anyway? You'll have to seek the answer elsewhere.) --Sarah Bryan Miller