Top Fall Songs -- Readers Edition

To follow up Spinner's Songs for Fall: 15 Awesomely Autumnal Tracks list, we've raked up fall song suggestions from our readers into one seasonal stack of musical autumn foliage. You called it! So here's your sequel of mostly golden oldies and a gusty surprise appearance by Gwen Stefani. The consensus: Fall is a good season for lovin' and a bad season to be alone.

'Moondance'

Van Morrison

With its walking electric bass and classic earworm chorus, this is one of the Northern Irish singer-songwriter's most famous and most played tracks. Topping '70s charts or scoring a love scene in 'An American Werewolf in London,' Van Morrison gets romantic on falling leaves and blowing breezes, because "October skies" sure make for a "fantabulous night to make romance." Or, you know, "moondance," wink, wink.

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Steven Lawton, FilmMagic

'Autumn Leaves'

Nat "King" Cole

Lamenting over past "summer kisses" and dreading a lonely "winter's song" -- the baritone balladeer paints fall as a lukewarm limbo between warm happiness and cold despair. This 1956 version by Nat "King" Cole is less heart-wrenching than its older, French, Edith Piaf rendition, 'Les feuilles mortes,' ('The Dead Leaves', but is appropriately more somber than the upbeat 1993 Coldcut club cut. Oh, woe.

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'Ramble On'

Led Zeppelin

'Tis the season for ramblin' on under the "autumn moonlight" to look for that "fair girl" from the "darkest depths of Mordor" kidnapped by Gollum. Yep. Led Zeppelin's 1969 traveling tune was crafted under the influence of 'The Lord of the Rings' lit cycle. And it smells like rain and pain.

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Robert Plant

'September Song'

Frank Sinatra

This Kurt Weill standard has been sung by everyone from Bing Crosby to Eartha Kitt to Echo & the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch to Lou Reed. A song of seasonal metaphor for May-December romance, it gets very urgent around September, when the "weather turns the leaves to flame" and there's no time for "the waiting game." It's a proposition so nice, Old Blue Eyes recorded it twice.

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'Autumn Leaves'

Barbra Streisand

Our readers insisted that the EGOT winner's version of the song will "haunt you" and "expand your horizons," so here's the song again, this time with verses in English and French. Did Barbra Streisand get you bilingually sad yet?

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Frazer Harrison, Getty Images

'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay'

Otis Redding

Otis Redding's fall tune was written in the autumn of 1967 and recorded just days before his death in a plane crash that upcoming December. A beautiful tune with gloomy lyrics, as full of melody as it is full of stagnancy and displacement, there's a strange hope that comes when "tides roll away" or seasons change.

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'Forever Autumn'

Moody Blues

Here's another classic song about an autumn of lost love and winter looming ahead. Moody Blues will have you yearning to "fly south" with the birds because there's no one to kick "fallen leaves" with you. And then, they will lift you up with cascading flutes in a major key. Yes, it's confusing like that.

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Jason Sheldon, Redferns

'Autumn'

Edgar Winter Group

Whilst expressing very general lament over "cold" weather and "gray" buildings, the 1970s multi-instrumentalist and synthesizer pioneer blames autumn directly for taking away his lover along with his summer. Solution: Edgar Winter stays put in New England to ferment in his melancholy and write sad songs. Whatever works.

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Richard E. Aaron, Redferns

'Autumn Road'

James Taylor

The title cut off the folk rocker's 2002 album, James Taylor's song gets cheerful about roaming the October countryside, pitching tents next to some pines and traveling on. It's kind of like Led Zeppelin's 'Ramble On' but 40 years later and without hobbits.

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'Early Winter'

Gwen Stefani

Yes, we know that the song is called 'Early Winter,' but its sentiments and signifiers are heartbreakingly autumnal. Co-written with Keane's pianist Tim Rice-Oxley, Gwen Stefani's tune was released in 2007 and is rooted in the '80s of Billy Idol and Cyndi Lauper. It's a pop ballad about "leaves changing color" for an ill-fated couple. So cold.

Read 'Early Winter' Lyrics