Arts and Entertainment
Song of the Day 8/23: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”
The Everly Brothers were the greatest duo in rock ‘n’ roll history (Hall & Oates had more Top 40 singles than the Everlys’ 26, but c’mon). They helped establish some foundational elements of rock ‘n’ roll, among them close harmonies, a country twang — and brother acts who don’t get along. Don Everly, who died […]
Song of the Day 8/22: Crabmeat Thompson, “Small Wonder”
Readers of the News Journal might not know this, but Delaware folksinger and raconteur Jerry “Crabmeat” Thompson died in June. I first heard this from friends who saw it on social media, but the only obituary I could find ran a month later in the Middletown Transcript. Back in the days when I worked the […]
Song of the Day 8/19: Bo Burnham, “Welcome to the Internet”
Bo Burnham is usually classified as a comedian, but he’s just as easily categorized as a musician, one in the tradition of Tom Lehrer with a tad of Kurt Weill thrown in. (Song of the Day featured his songs about Jeff Bezos last month.) Listen to how accurately he skewers what we’ve done to ourselves […]
Song of the Day 8/18: Elvis Costello, “Blame It on Cain”
From Elvis’ first album, with Clover backing him. John McFee’s jazzy guitar and Costello’s delivery of his cryptic lyrics dominate the track. Nobody’s ever come up with a satisfying explanation of the song’s meaning, and I can’t find any record of Costello ever having said, but it’s pretty clear somebody is passing the buck. The […]
Song of the Day 8/17: The Felice Brothers, “Jazz on the Autobahn”
WXPN has had this tune in heavy rotation since it dropped two months ago, but I didn’t hear it until this weekend. The Felice Brothers, who began with a trio of upstate brothers who moved to Brooklyn to busk in the subways, made their national mark with their first album in 2008. Their sound got […]
Song of the Day 8/16: Bob Dylan, “Masters of War”
Who lost the war in Afghanistan? Certainly not the defense industry, which got the lion’s share of the trillion dollars the country wasted waging it. Big win for them. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which seemed to awaken Americans to the fact that they could be incinerated at a moment’s notice, was still fresh when Dylan […]
Song of the Day 8/14: Nanci Griffith, “Tecumseh Valley”
Nanci Griffith was an accomplished singer and songwriter who broke through after moving from her native Austin to Nashville in 1985, but her greatest acclaim came with her Grammy-winning 1993 album “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” covering other singer-songwriters who, like her, worked musical territory between folk and country that produced a literate hybrid we now […]
Song of the Day 8/13: Bruce Springsteen, “I’m Goin’ Down”
Enough with the ersatz Bruce — let’s play some of the real thing. Springsteen recorded this track with the E Street Band in 1982, at the same Power Station sessions at which the full-band versions of the songs on “Nebraska” were recorded (they were later scrapped in favor of the four-track demos they worked from, […]
Song of the Day 8/12: Marah, “Point Breeze”
Yesterday’s post about Jack Antonoff’s solo project Bleachers included the tune he recorded with Bruce Springsteen, and I mentioned how much it sounded like one of Springsteen’s late-period moody ballads. It reminded me that bands used to emulate a much different Springsteen — the R&B-influenced sound of the band he used to record his first […]
Song of the Day 8/11: Bleachers, “Stop Making It Hurt”
I heard this song on the radio the other day and, being a sucker for major-key pop song with a good hook, I looked up who did it, because I had never heard of Bleachers. Turns out the guy, real name Jack Antonoff, was the guitarist for Fun, which had a big hit in 2012 […]
Song of the Day 8/10: Carole King, “It’s Too Late”
Yes, we take requests — we don’t always fulfill them, but we take them — and Jason330 suggested this as the response to the UN report on climate change that concluded we’re already fucked. Might as well stay in bed all morning — not just to pass the time, but to minimize your carbon footprint, […]
Song of the Day 8/9: Kool & the Gang, “Get Down on It”
Dennis “D.T.” Thomas, alto saxophone player and founding member of Kool & the Gang, died Saturday, and while the obituaries listed the band’s numerous hit records and various lifetime achievement awards, one honor was conspicuous by its absence: They are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My theory about Hall of Fame […]
Song of the Day 8/5: Chicago, “Dialogue (Part I & II)”
The progressive-vs.-moderate dichotomy is back in the news because Bernie Sanders ally Nina Turner lost an Ohio primary to a more moderate (and more local) woman who was backed by Hillary and made her support for Biden a major theme in her campaign. It seems fresh, but that dichotomy has existed as long as the […]
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