Sultans of Swing, Dire Straits (1978)

Curious thing about anomalies - you never know when they're going to come along, or why they do, but eventually they do. Like Barack Obama, for instance. How did he get here, when the world was so mired in wrongness? Yet, here he is.

I look at Dire Straits the same way. The late 70s in music was not pretty. So much dreck. Out of the blue, there's Sultans of Swing - a song so nuanced and startling that people sucked it up as if starving. Maybe it's a law of the universe that, after a steady diet of junk food, an organism will want to snap out of its unhealthy ways if given the opportunity to reverse the damage. As Peter Buckley said in The Rough Guide to Rock, "Despite the prevailing trends of punk and disco, the band's well-crafted songwriting and skilled playing unexpectedly appealed to over 7 million record buyers."

According to an interview with Guitar World, which crowned the song #22 in its compilation of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time, Mark Knopfler wrote Sultans on a National Steel guitar in an open tuning, an arrangement he found "dull," and which he never played that way. A simple instrument change - to a '61 Stratocaster - made it into the thing of beauty it is today. (Muff Winwood, Steve's older brother, produced it.)

None other than Chet Atkins described what makes Knopfler's playing so distinctive. In addition to dispensing with the pick, "... he's a lefty playing right handed, so he's got a lot of power in his left hand. He can make a vibrato on multiple strings better than anyone I've heard," he says in his book Chet Atkins: Me and My Guitars. The two got such a kick out of each other they recorded an album (Neck and Neck) in 1989; here's a nifty clip of them playing together.

Right Down the Line, Gerry Rafferty (1978)

One of the most delicious singer-songwriters of the late 70s, who faded from view in part because he had no appetite for touring and his record label was sold out from under him, was the melodious Scotsman Gerry Rafferty. I once drove the West Virginia Turnpike listening to nothing but his music.

Rafferty first came to the public's attention for his stint in Stealers Wheel, which had a major hit with Stuck in the Middle With You. Earlier, he was part of a Glasgow folk trio that included the comic Billy Connolly, a group called the Humblebums. Sure, why not?

But Rafferty hit his stride as a solo artist, and Right Down the Line is actually just one of many songs that his fans love, other notable ones being Days Gone Down and, of course, Baker Street. One reason is there's always a lot going on in his songs instrumentally; they are works of art in themselves. In this, B.J. Cole's pedal steel guitar licks are extraordinary, the other guitar work is arresting in the atmospheric vein of another Scot, Mark Knopfler, and his vocals are stacked, so the vibrancy of his voice in the chorus is just stunning.

A YouTube commenter says, "I would love to meet the woman this song is about." Right Down the Line is that kind of song - a valentine that any woman would have wanted to receive from her man. In Rafferty's hands, it's pure delight.