Sailing / Arthur’s Theme

There is something truly special about the voice and the music of Christopher Cross. Cheesy as most of his songs may seem, they are some of the most memorable from a time of flux in pop culture. Even now when I listen to Sailing, his debut mega hit from 1980, I am transported. Much like the feeling I’d described last year for a similar song by the Little River Band, this song really does (Take me away, to where I’ve always heard it could be. Just a dream and the wind to carry me, soon I will be free...) For that scared kid in the Poconos whose only friends were a blind dog and the teenaged characters in comic books, I would hear this song, close my eyes, and just wish I could be rescued from the mundane and carried away on the Titans’ T-Jet or a Legion Cruiser. In addition to Sailing, honorable mention is deserved for Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do), another song that brings to mind, for me, the childlike wonder of all the things I’d never imagined I’d ever find, like falling in love in New York City. Strangely I don’t really associate the song to the film with Dudley Moore and Liza Minelli, as amazing as it is; I get the continued reverence of a dreamer’s escapism in the beautiful horn solo that I feel when I hear Cross’s first hit, Sailing