Friendship Songs

If your heartstrings are not securely anchored, these tunes will surely tug them loose. "You've Got a Friend" helped cement James Taylor's status as the era's premier singer-songwriter (ironically, since he didn't write it). Brill Building geniuses Leiber & Stoller cowrote "Stand by Me" with Ben E. King, spawning a hit, a movie, and a second Top 10 trip. And the only song on this list that gets played every single day is by the least-known performer here: Gary Portnoy's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name (Cheers Theme)." Our friendship deepens in Next Steps, so come with us, won't you?

What says friendship like a duet? Flowers, maybe. But this isn't iFlowers, so you're gonna get some tuneage. Stevie Wonder and Sir Paul McCartney troweled on the metaphor in "Ebony and Ivory," but it worked. Simon & Garfunkel, whose own friendship has survived some ups and downs, craft a wistful ambience in "Old Friends." And John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John's "We Go Together" from Grease puts the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong right in your cranium. Now let's turn up the volume a bit in our Deep Cuts section…

Yes, Virginia, you can have friends with multiple piercings. Take post-grunge power poppers Weezer, for instance, with their amped-up "My Best Friend" from 2005's Make Believe. "Poprocks & Coke" (which, incidentally, aren't mentioned anywhere in the song) made its debut on Green Day's International Superhits!, despite not having been even a domestic hit (although it sure sounds like one). And the Ataris' fuzzed-out "In This Diary" touts the few, the happy few, in this band of brothers…or actually, in the brotherhood that is a band.

You might want to check your insulin level before you run through our entire Friendship Songs playlist; like bon bons, these are tasty a couple at a time, but may be a little rough on the system if consumed in excess. Spanning more than 50 years of recordings, from Judy Garland and Johnny Mercer's "Friendship" to the White Stripes' "We're Going to Be Friends," there's a sentiment here for every type of pal you might have — even fictional ones, like Woody and Buzz from Toy Story.