Arts and Entertainment
Song of the Day 6/11: Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, “I Went to a Party”
Nick Lowe has been playing and touring with surf-rock revivalists Los Straitjackets for a decade now, and he’s finally done an album with them. “Indoor Safari” is set for release in September, and a leadoff single was released yesterday. I know new music is El Somnambulo’s beat, but I figure he won’t mind a band […]
Song of the Day 6/10: Imagine Dragons, “Sharks”
Donald Trump’s fear of sharks is well-documented, but I think it’s confined to the oceanic sort. That’s not the kind of shark Imagine Dragons sang about in this 2022 single, a No. 12 hit on Billboard’s rock chart, but the video’s casino scenes make me wonder if it’s about him anyway.
Song of the Day 6/9: The Sundays, “Summertime”
Americans insist on regarding “summer” as the period between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. That’s the astronomical definition of summer, but it’s not the only one. The length of the astronomical seasons varies, so meteorologists break the year into three-month segments. For record-keeping purposes, summer consists of June, July and August, which pretty […]
Song of the Day 6/7: Chuck Wood, “Seven Days Too Long”
I like soul music on Fridays as much as the next guy, but sometimes I get tired of the same old songs. So I turn to Northern Soul, the British movement born in the ’70s that kept alive obscure ’60s singles that never made the charts in the U.S. when they were released. A lot […]
Song of the Day 6/6: Jim Radford, “The Shores of Normandy”
Certain minds think alike. Mike Dinsmore posted this in the Open Thread while I was writing it up. It’s worth hearing twice. Jim Radford was a British folksinger and peace activist who was just 15 when he served as a cabin boy aboard a tugboat that took part in the D-Day flotilla 80 years ago […]
Song of the Day 6/4: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
Cyndi Lauper announced her tour this fall will be her last. The now-70-year-old singer released the girl power anthem that defined her career in 1983 with a video that became an MTV landmark thanks to her sassy attitude and quirky thrift-shop wardrobe, a look Madonna swiped for her role in “Desperately Seeking Susan.” The video […]
Song of the Day 6/3: Gladstone, “A Piece of Paper”
June 1 marked the 25th anniversary of the launch of Napster, the file-sharing network that destroyed the music industry as everyone knew it. Stories marking the date mostly focus on the its negative effects on artists and record labels, but a few acknowledge why it spread so fast and so far – it was the […]
Song of the Day 5/31: Nazareth, “Guilty”
Yes, that’s Scottish rockers Nazareth covering Randy Newman on their breakthrough 1975 LP, “Hair of the Dog.” The tune, from Newman’s controversial “Rednecks” album of the year before, got lots of blues covers back then, notably by Bonnie Raitt and Joe Cocker. Though Nazareth is lumped into the hard rock genre, it covered lots of […]
‘Bulo’s Fave Tunes: May, 2024
My kind of month. Tons o’ diversity. So many cool songs that I’m calling an audible and releasing this list two days early–already have a couple for June in the can: I know, I know. Had one of her songs on here last month. I like this one more: My kind of newgrass! Do we […]
Song of the Day 5/29: Gotye, “Somebody That I Used to Know”
This song has been having a moment – I’ve heard it recently not only on the radio but on the supermarket muzak, and it showed up in my YouTube feed. I thought this was just the random output of an algorithm that decided the No. 1 hit of the year in 2012 was ripe for […]
Song of the Day 5/28: Iron Butterfly, “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida”
Doug Ingle, who wrote, sang and played organ on “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida,” Iron Butterfly’s iconic 1968 hit, died last week at age 78. Ingle was the last surviving member of the lineup that recorded it. The 17-minute title track took up one entire side of the band’s second album and was a lot better known back in […]
Song of the Day 5/27: Richard Sherman, “Feed the Birds”
Richard Sherman, who died last week at 95, penned the lyrics to hundreds of Disney songs from 1960 to 1973 while he and his composer brother, Robert, were employed as staff songwriters for the studio. They churned out the songs for more than a dozen films, both animated and live-action, while also finding time to […]
Song of the Day 5/24: Amy Winehouse, “Love Is a Losing Game”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona We’ve heard a whole lot about Amy Winehouse’s troubled behavior before she died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 at age 27. It sounds like we learn more than we need to about her personal relationships in the new biographical movie “Back to Black.” But you know what would good to […]
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