Arts and Entertainment
Song of the Day 11/16: Major Lance, “Since I Lost My Baby’s Love”
El Somnambulo isn’t the only one who loves the soul music of the ’60s. There’s an entire scene built around it in England known as Northern Soul. The name has nothing to do with where the music comes from but rather where its fans reside: the northern industrial part of England, especially Manchester, where people […]
Song of the Day 11/15: Roberta Flack, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”
Roberta Flack, the first person to win back-to-back Record of the Year Grammies, announced that she can no longer sing. The 85-year-old chanteuse is suffering from ALS, which is also robbing her of her speaking ability. This song gave Flack, who spent several years teaching music and singing in Washington, DC, clubs before going pro […]
Song of the Day 11/14: Bruce Springsteen, “One Step Up”
Martin Luther King’s moral arc of the universe is, by definition, not a straight line. Sometimes it takes two steps back. The third single from “Tunnel of Love,” Springsteen’s 1987 album about the breakup of his marriage to Julianne Phillips, reached No. 13. Springsteen plays all the instruments on the song except the drum machine. […]
Song of the Day 11/13: Jerry Butler, “Only the Strong Survive”
Bruce Springsteen has just released an album of the ’60s R&B songs he grew up listening to, with this as the title track. While Bruce does a passable job on them, mainly they made me want to listen to the originals again. Springsteen isn’t even the biggest name to cover what became Jerry Butler’s highest-charting […]
Song of the Day 11/12: The Kinks, “Victoria”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona A lot is going on with the British monarchy. There’s a third King Charles after 337 years. The second Queen Elizabeth, it turns out, couldn’t live forever. The “red-headed stepchild” is still sulking loudly in California. Diana fixation is coming back with a new season of “The Crown,” although she’s […]
Song of the Day 11/11: Eric Bogle, “No Man’s Land (The Green Fields of France)”
At 11 a.m. France fell silent for one minute to mark the end of World War I on the Western Front. It’s a solemn day — nearly 1.4 million French soldiers died in the conflict and the northeastern part of the country was devastated by four years of warfare — marked by military parades and […]
Song of the Day 11/10: Al Kooper, “Brand New Day”
Al Kooper spent the ’60s and ’70s showing that he could do almost anything musically, from writing songs to playing as a sideman for Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and dozens of others, to founding Blood, Sweat & Tears. Amid everything else, Kooper found time to write and record two songs for the […]
Song of the Day 11/9: Ten Years After, “You Can’t Win Them All”
Nationally, Democrats did better than expected, if not as well as hoped. “You Can’t Win Them All” was included on the 1972 album “Rock and Roll Music to the World,” Ten Years After’s seventh LP and last one to chart in the UK as blues-rock faded in popularity.
Song of the Day 11/8: The 4 Seasons, “Let’s Hang On!”
Yes, the party in power typically loses seats in midterm elections, but history can guide us only so far — in the World Series, teams that won game 3 to take a 2-1 lead had captured the championship more than 60% of the time. That didn’t help the Phillies. Nobody knows how this election will […]
Song of the Day 11/7: Wilson Phillips, “Hold On”
Don’t make yourself miserable. Try to remember that these midterms are going to be a shitshow by Republican design, and that making liberals suffer is part of the point. They are miserable people and they don’t actually love company, they just want everyone else to be as miserable as they are because they’re, y’know, assholes. […]
Song of the Day 11/6: Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, “Don’t Give Up”
I don’t need to be in America to know that Democrats are demoralized about the midterms — our site traffic took a dive after the primaries, a sure sign of progressive malaise. This song is for them. Peter Gabriel released this duet on his “So” album in 1986. At that point Margaret Thatcher, who infamously […]
Song of the Day 11/5: The Five Stairsteps, “O-o-h Child”
Before the Jacksons stole their title, the Five Stairsteps were known as the First Family of Soul. The five children of Chicago police detective Clarence Burke Sr. went from winning a talent contest in 1965 to a contract with Curtis Mayfield’s record company and a five-year run of nine Top 10 hits on the R&B […]
Song of the Day 11/3: Dr. Feelgood, “Roxette”
Without Dr. Feelgood, punk rock never happens. The Ramones played fast, but they weren’t threatening. Neither were the dozens of British bands in the back-to-basics pub rock scene, where country rock and R&B provided good-time music for drinkers. Dr. Feelgood was something beyond that. Hailing from Canvey, a dingy English seaside town, snarling front man […]
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