The Greatest Song Ever Written

I was 11 years old the first time I heard the greatest song ever written. It would have been in 1968. I was in my bedroom in St. Petersburg, Florida listening to the radio when suddenly the sound of ocean waves poured into my room—focused by a slow, gentle rhythm of bass and acoustic guitars.

I’d never heard a song like this. All the songs I listened to tried to be like me—or tried to be the things I aspired to be: young, sexy, proud. This song didn’t try to be any of those things. What I heard in Ottis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” was the voice of an old soul:

“Sittin’ in the morning sun.

I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes.”

I didn’t like it at first. It was raw, sad, full of emotions I was too young to understand.

But the song evoked an image --like no other song I’ve heard before or sense. It was real. It was authentic. Most songs are show-off songs. They might tell a good story, but the image they evoke is egotistical. In this song, the singer, Otis Redding, disappears, and the character, the everyman, or every person comes forward.

Look like nothing's gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same…

Who is the person sitting on the dock of the bay, trying to make sense of things after traveling 3000 miles?

Maybe he’s a farmer turning away from the spreadsheet, because all his forcasts are useless now with senseless MAGA tariffs.

Maybe she’s a woman who’s just had a miscarriage and MAGA republicans want to arrest her for it under draconian anti-abortion laws.

Maybe they’re a high school graduate working three jobs, but still can’t pay the rent and buy groceries.

Maybe she’s a mother driving her trans daughter across state lines trying to get the health care she needs.

Maybe it’s a Black father who’s son just came home from school crying because the teacher told him he has to change the way he wears his hair.

The person sitting on the dock of the bay is anyone MAGA Republicans want to demonize and scapegoat to distract us from their power grabs.

And I’ll tell you who isn’t sitting on the dock of the bay: Billionaire tech bros. If they need time to reflect on their problems, they don’t go to San Francisco. They migrate to whatever version of The White Lotus they choose.

Heather Cox Richardson and other great thinkers talk about American History as an argument between democratic forces who see intrinsic value in everyone—and those who see us only as tools for the oligarchy.

For people like Elon Musk, Thomas Jefferson was wrong to write about all people as being created equal. They think of themselves pinnacle of civilization, and the rest of us as useless non-character actors in their oligarchical games. They have all the agency, all the creativity, all the humanity—and the rest of us are just what dead weight.

We can’t really know all the threads that weave together to form our values, But I want to entertain the possibility that this song nudged me into the democratic camp. If so, it’s also possible that I take the cross-country rides that I do because of the values expressed in this song.

I can tell you that some of my fondest memories from bike touring are meeting people in folding chairs sitting by bodies of water with fishing poles, quiet and intense. I just don’t have any photos to show you. Those quiet moments seemed so sacred, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt them.