In general, the more recent my song the better the musicianship. Most of my most recent songs this year are instrumentals. No recordings yet, sorry. In terms of lyrics, I haven't written many since the early to mid 1990s, but some of those lyrics are still awesome. None of my hundreds of original songs have ever been professionally recorded yet.
Currently my guitar is still experiencing technical difficulties after it came back from a guitar shop in worse shape than I sent it. Hopefully that will be repaired soon (by a different shop), and hopefully somehow someday someone who is good at recording will do my songs justice with proper recordings on decent equipment. I cannot afford to pay for professional studio time at my current level of income, and unless some miracle happens somehow it does not look like my level of income is going to increase anytime soon.
I hope I can get decent recordings somehow while I can still play. I wish I had some quality recordings of my "best" songs to share with you all. There are two or three dozen videos and mp3 files of some of my older stuff online, but in general I play and sing better now live than anything you will find posted online anywhere. A radio station filmed me recently and put me on their YouTube channel (541RadioCom), but during that filming my guitar was experiencing the technical difficulties I mentioned above, so the songs aren't nearly as good as they could have been even if they still rock.
As for other peoples' music, one of my all time favorite songs by other people is the Beatles song Help! I frequently used to play along to that song a hundred times in a row. That would take about four hours nonstop. Here I am in Feb 2012 playing a cover of it while riding my bicycle inside a middle school gymnasium.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIrTjcHCNOc[/youtube]
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"When you ride over sharps, you get flats!"--The Bicycling Guitarist, May 13, 2008