Today we begin kicking off the rrspin.com second anniversary party and what better way to start than with music.

Before I began to fall asleep late Friday night or early this morning I was thinking about news songs and what my favorite ones are. The top 10 I have chosen either are directly about the news or have references to the news. There are two in the list that were knocked out by other contenders simply because I hadn't heard them before but liked them better than the two I considered. Those two songs are Mr. Reporter by The Kinks and Six O'clock News by John Prine. These two songs knocked out contenders We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel and Smithers-Jones by The Jam, which has a brief reference to a timid, punctual man who always stops at a corner shop to buy the Times, presumably the London Times.

We still have a way to go before the July 20 anniversary date but I thought this would be a good way to get the party started.

Number 10: Have You Forgotten by Darryl Worley. In this song he talks about the censorship of the images from 9-11.

Number 9: Space Oddity by David Bowie. “The papers want to know whose shirt you wear.”

Number 8: Six O'Clock News, a song about a suicide by Prine.

Number 7: No Time to Cry by Iris Dement. Her voice is so haunting and this song about the death of her father brings home the reality of what we see in the news: “Now I sit down on the sofa and I watch the evening news: There's a half a dozen tragedies from which to pick and choose. The baby that was missing was found in a ditch today and there's bombs a flying and people dying not so far away.”

Number 6: Cult of Personality by Living Colour. A hard rocking song which in the video a girl is mesmerized by the television. There are so many news clips in this video that it was hard to pass up.

The final five become more difficult to choose, especially since I'm a huge Dylan fan and I could actually include my favorite Dylan song, Idiot Wind, in this because the song begins, “Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press.”

So I'm trying hard not to let my favoritism to Dylan overrule my picks. With that said here are the top five.

Number 5: Where Were You. This song holds special significance to myself and my family since my mother found her sister unconscious on September 11, 2001. My aunt had written World Trade Center on a piece of paper so we knew she had seen at least a portion of the coverage. My mother during that week had to make a tough decision and after listening to the advice of doctors decided to pull my aunt from life support. When I played this song for my mother, we both had tears in our eyes. I like Alan Jackson's line: “I'm just a singer of simple songs. I'm not a real political man. I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran.”

Number 4: Dirty Laundry by Don Henley. “I make my living off the evening news,” and the line, “Kick 'em when they're up, kick 'em when they're down,” just makes it complete, along with the line about the bubble headed bleach blond who can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye.

Number 3: Ballad of a Thin Man by Dylan. Purportedly a song about a person who had interviewed him. It starts: “You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand. You see somebody naked and you say, 'Who is that man?' You try so hard but you don't understand just what you'll say when you get home. Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?”

Number 2: A Day in the Life by The Beatles. My favorite Beatles song. Written from events read in a newspaper. “I read the news today, oh boy.”

Number 1. Mr. Reporter by The Kinks. I had not heard this song until this morning and it has immediately become my favorite journalism song, starting out: “Hey, Mr. Reporter, how 'bout talking about yourself? Do you like what you're doing or is it that you can do nothing else?”

I've actually had someone ask the same form of that question to me so it immediately hit me in the face.

The line I really like in this song is this one: “The reason I am stupid, is because I read you every day. You misquote all of the true things because they rub you the wrong way.”

This is one of the top accusations of the press, that some of the things we write are based on our likes and dislikes. I guess if that were true many of us wouldn't sit through dry council meetings and court proceedings.

Welcome to the anniversary party.