To get this month’s meta, all you had to do was “Take it From the Top.” SOUNDS OF SILENCE starts with “Hello Darkness my old friend,”  CANDLE IN THE WIND begins with “Goodbye Norma Jean” (or “Goodbye England’s Rose” for the Princess Di version), COMFORTABLY NUMB starts with “Hello, is there anybody in there,” and SEASONS IN THE SUN begins with “Goodbye to you my trusted friend.” Put them together and you get the Beatles song “Hello Goodbye.” Twice!

A total of 93 solvers found the answer, some of them while dealing with the aftermath of Sandy.  This month’s randomly selected winner of an MMMM coffee mug is Brent Holman from San Francisco, CA. Brent is one of only 15 solvers to get all 7 metas correct.

Many found the grid particularly challenging, but the meta not so tough, once you figured out what the title meant. The average user rating was 4.08 stars out of five.  On the difficulty side, the average rating was 3.2 out of 5.

Some feedback and musical clue suggestions:

Erik Agard (who runs his own contest puzzle here and is also 7 for 7) pointed me to a photo of Chief Keef and lyrics from Kanye West to make his point that rappers do wear POLO SHIRTS, which I had clued as [“Unlikely clothing choice for a rapper”]. I stand corrected.

Janie S. reminded me of the Cole Porter standard “C’est MAGNIFIQUE,” which was covered by an accordion-playing Joanie in an early Mad Men episode. Arnold R. and Eric P. mentioned that TAB HUNTER had a hit with “Young Love.” And Norm H. suggested URGE Overkill, the band that did “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.”

While constructing this meta, I tried to find a sequence of first words of songs that, when strung together, form an opening lyric for a different song. I am offering a free MMMM coffee mug to the best set of theme entries that fall into this pattern. Up for a challenge? Contest details can be found here.

The penultimate 2012 MMMM will be coming to you Tuesday December 4.  See you then!