Y is for….”You Wear It Well” by Rod Stewart. Half a phone call, a golden riff, and a masterclass in how to talk a girl round. It’s the delicious balance between Rod’s abjection and his geezer cheek that wins it, the knowledge that all this contrition might just be a put-on. And the knowledge, too, that in the end it’s the ambiguity, not the apology, that’ll get her back.
It’s just such a fantastic song, too. “I ain’t forgettin’ that you were once mine / Wrote that lyric without even tryin'” marries meta-pop cleverness with subtle sucker-punch pleading, and if you don’t grin at “I won’t object if you call collect”, then you might as well give up now and listen to Muse. Quittenton’s guitar, now achy, now triumphant, adds needed beef to Stewart’s masterful, but unusually coy, performance. And it all swings too, and hard! Rock and roll gets little finer.