5 June 2025 - Future Islands - Seasons (Waiting On You)

Future Islands is a power-pop group that eschews the guitar and replaces it with solid synth.

This song, from their 4th album Singles, was the consensus best single of 2014, and I totally get it.  It's strong yet beautiful, forceful and emotional. 

It's a great song.

Their debut television performance of the song in 2014 was on The Late Show With David Letterman, and let's be honest, I posted this song for THIS performance. 

It's legendary.... if not for just the dancing, or Sam Herring's death metal growls.   

But also, don't they have the look of a band that, well, any of us could be in?  They're just normal guys.

4 June 2025 - Lionel Richie - Stuck On You

Lionel Richie's 1983 album Can't Slow Down yielded five US Top 10 hits - all five of them also hits worldwide.   Four of them were blandish 80's pop songs that you likely know.  One was a county-pop masterpiece.

"Stuck on You". written by Richie, was the 4th single from the album, and it was very different.  It would be also his first trip to the US Country Music charts - which is just wild. 

It's a very sweet love song, and the best thing on Can't Slow Down.

So when he performed the song more than 30 years later - and not only sang but played piano - it's not a shock that music fans from all walks know the words. 

But also, Lionel Richie is probably better known by the kids today as an American Idol judge.... and he joined his other two judges on the season finale this year to reprise a song that sounds more country than most modern counrty music.   

And it was pretty amazing. 

3 June 2025 - Courtney Barnett - Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go To The Party

I was always a little afraid to give Australian artist Courtney Barnett a try.  I can't give you a good reason why.  I think her debut album - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit - was so universally acclaimed that I was intimidated to even give it a try. 

I need not have been.  As part of my 1000-albums-in-a-year project, I listened to that album.

That album is one of the best I have ever heard, and certainly the best I've heard so far on my list.  This fun song was a highlight for me.

In a first for this blog....

The way a music video usually works is - the artist is lip-syncing and the studio version of the song is dubbed over top - and they certainly did the dubbing for this video...... but it wasn't a lip-sync.  She REALLY performed the song, and posted the original recording as well. 

Shockingly, Barnett and her band have performed this song A LOT, and they all sound impeccable and pretty much the same....

Except for this one, an acoustic version by just her, which is somehow just as thrilling.