Top Ten Eagles Songs: Take It to the Limit (#3)

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We're in rarified air now. The top three of my all-time favorite Eagles songs. I go way back to the days when Eagles albums and ticket prices were six bucks, so these are the songs that have stuck out for me over the decades. #3: Take It to the Limit Wowza. Wowza. Wowza. This song has just about everything that you could want in a song. Let's start with Randy Meisner's phenomenal singing. There are probably people to this day who hate this guy for the delivery he gives in this song. It is spine-tingling. That high note (which he held longer in concert -- see the live clip linked below) just capped one of the most beautiful and thrilling vocal performances of the 1970s on any record. The thing with songs that are this well known, and this well sung, is that the lyrics tend to get lost. We all know "Take It to the Limit," so every now and then it's good to step back, forget that you know it, and listen to it the way a connoisseur would savor a rare vintage wine. That's when great lines such as the opening, "All alone at the end of the evening and the bright lights have faded to blue," or "you know I've always been a dreamer" pop out at you. It makes a trusty familiar song great yet once again. I'd like to think that the thing that makes "Take It to the Limit" so enduring is that brilliant and rare combination of delivery, lyrics, and harmonies (the Eagles were always good at harmonies), and not just "yeah, yeah, I've heard this song 10 million times but I'm not sick of it." I may have heard it 10 million times but I'll never get sick of it. So put me on a highway.... Take It to the Limit Written by Randy Meisner, Don Henley, & Glenn Frey Lead vocals: Randy Meisner From One of These Nights, 1975