A popular album track from their second eponymous album, this song was written by Pete Doherty, who also sings the song.
The song uses music as an analogy for love. When you hear "I no longer hear the music", think "I am no longer in love with you." However, the song is much more than that. It is about the pain of loss, even if the loss is so right - but it doesn't ever erase the good times.
Still, it's one of those songs that make me tear up just a little bit, because we've all been there.
Let's not beat around the bush. This deep cut was made popular on the television show Parks and Recreation. It was one of Ron Swanson's favorite songs and appears twice during the series.
A tribute to the value of a good friend and how they can help with the pain of a heartbreak, Willie Nelson wrote it for his 1986 album, Good Times. The whole album was meant to be a departure from the Nashville sound that had pigeonholed him for the first decade of his career. In that respect, it was a success - Nelson became a superstar.
This song, which came out about the same time Jessica was on the MTV reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, was accompanied by a video that kind of mirrored the action on the show. Lachey himself appears in the video.
The song itself was a sweet love song, extoling the good feeling when you find that one person who is perfect, with whom you can be yourself. Written by Simpson, Billy Mann and Andy Marvel (her producers), it's not a remarkable or different pop song. It's just a solid midtempo pop tune with an element of funk to it.
You probably thought this was a Bette Midler song, didn't you.
Nope. Nanci Griffith did it two years earlier. It's a little bit folkier, with a different feel. This version of the Julie Gold-penned song was a big hit in Ireland, of all places.
Griffith passed away this past August, after two separate bouts with cancer. Her voice will be sorely missed.
50 Foot Wave are a power-pop trio founded in 2003. Principal lyricist Kristin Hersh (the other band members share songwriting credit), also the founder of the closest thing to open source the music industry has ever had, CASH Music, sees this project as somewhat mathematical - 50 feet is the wavelength of the lowest audible (to humans) F tone. But it's more than that - it's very much an emotional roller coaster.
This song, an early single by the group, is very much a bombastic thrill ride from start with finish, with unabated guitar and raspy growl by Hersh, bass by Bernard Georges, and the drumming of Rob Ahlers. The personal nature of the song - the lyricist tends to write and perform in first person - is clear.
And if I did it for Lorde, I have to do it for #1000
But yeah. New Lights song. The video itself is... provocative. Let's call it that. Drenched in red, it matches this blog.
The song, expected to be the first single off her next album (due next year) is described by the artist herself as "a banger about finding yourself." Which is absolutely something I would say.
As many of you know, I was really into shoegaze music in the 90's. Still am, in fact. When Lush started out, they were the epitome of shoegaze. Like, open the dictionary, turn to "shoegaze", and a picture of Lush is right there.
This was one of their first singles - and their first in the US when they finally released all their UK music here. When released, the song was actually a turn towards shoegaze - their earlier music had more of a post-punk feeling - with a lighter sound. In the mix, Miki Berenyi (lead) and Emma Anderson (backing (and songwriter, by the way)) were styled with slightly obscured vocals to invoke a dreamy feel.
This song is a deep cut from the 2007 album Boxer by Cincinatti band The National. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest modern love songs ever written. And, yet, it wasn't a single. Go figure.
The song is classic indie-pop, with a dark and brooding accompanyment alongside the sweet lyrics about what real love looks like.
A personal joy I get is when the live performance sounds so much like the studio one. On one hand, you want to see some unique elements - and you get that with this 2010 live performance - but also, you can see how tight the band is, and how much an extension of themselves this performance is.
"Slow Show" incorporated lyrics from their 2001 song, "29 Years", which was a more country-tinged song, but you can hear the future sound starting to develop.
It's pretty common that a band's debut single is their biggest. This is the case with We The Kings, a Florida power pop-rock band that hit glod - no, platinum - with their very first single. Released in 2008, the song spent THREE YEARS on charts all over the world.
Anyone who knows the Romeo and Juliet story - about a strong new love - can figure out the plot of this song without too much thought. The boy knows what he has with the girl and is fighting so hard for it. Not only lyrically, but the rises and falls of the pop-punk song in a musical manner convey the feeling of urgency and desperation.
Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy wrote a song that spoke to a lot of us as we were forcibly separated during the COVID-19 global pandemic. In his words:
“Missing Piece is a song about being separated from someone you love. It can be tough but when what you have is good you know that these separations are just small stuff; you’re both holding the line. It’s about the stillness you find when you are together." - Vance Joy
Written on a Zoom call with Joel Little - how pandemic of them - the song and video both capture that feeling of separation and the joy of reunion with the person that completes you.
The pride of Saratoga Springs, Phantogram, have evolved throughout their history. Their fourth album, Ceremony, released in 2020, was richer and more nuanced than their previous work, while still retaining an electronic edge.
This song, the first single of that album, was co-written by the two members of Phantogram - Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter - along with producer Boots and William Patrick Corgan - he usually goes by Billy - and was something of an alternative radio hit. Both Carter and usual vocalist Barthel contribute lead vocal to this song.
Lyrically, the song is brighter than most prior Phantogram fare, although it still teeters strongly on the dark side. It shows a maturity not seen before.
I am sitting here, writing this a week in advance. I have a very busy week next week, so I want to make sure I get every last post to you.
This 2014 song - which was certified platinum and has hit the charts a FEW times - was the debut single by BØRNS, who is, with that special character, American. Go figure. More recently, this song was featured in a TikTok challenge to kiss your best friend. That is something I wholeheartedly recommend.
The song has been described as "viral". It is a funky, strangely beautiful love song, a throwback to the days of glam rock. It grabs the listener with a haunting rhythm and drops right into a throbbing bassline.
Somehow, with a full band in a live performance, the song is even funkier and grander.
Do you know that feeling when your baby is back at home and you're not, and she lets you know she's missing you as badly as you are missing her, and you have to just get to her as fast as possible - so fast that a train won't cut it?
So does Alex Chilton, who perfectly put that feeling to music. He didn't write the song - Wayne Carson did - but the gruff, bluesy take that Chilton had on the song is the first and still the greatest.
That does not make the MGMT version of this song, the original, not good. It is. Really good. It is a trippy, fuzzed up trip that served as the group's first worldwide hit.
The song - an electric tale of love - is incredibly complex, and takes a fair bit of skill to perform. Which is why it's really impressive to see performed live.
This song, co-written by Richard Carpenter, went to #1 for 2 weeks in 1973. And, it wasn't even supposed to be a single - it was an album cut that ended up being a COUNTRY hit for Lynn Anderson when she covered it herself.
Lyrically, it's little more than a really simple love song - but isn't that what love is all about? Musically, although there's a full orchestra as part of the backing band, the song is dominated by the Wurlizer electric piano. Karen Carpenter's earnest, wholesome delivery really sells the song.
However, Robyn St. Clare of Australian jangle-pop band The Hummingbirds wrote the song. She and fellow Hummingbird and future Lemonhead (he brought the song with him) Nic Dalton recorded this song as part of their side project, Love Positions. The song is incredible simple. It's a love song that succintly expresses the feeling of warmth and security one finds in true love.
The original arrangement of the song is sparse - St. Clare on vocal, Dalton on guitar. There's a lot of beauty in the light arrangement.
When this song came out, Berlin hadn't been heard from much in a couple of years - and had never had a top 20 hit, although a few of their songs (most recently "No More Words") had been minor US hits.
This song was different. The love theme from the movie Top Gun, it won the Academy Award for songwriter Giorgio Moroder - who was asked by Jerry Bruckheimer to write the song for the film.
Berlin was not the first choice for the song - The Motels, actually - but when they passed, Moroder thought of Berlin - he had produced "No More Words". and, frankly, he made the right choice. Teri Nunn was more than capable of what is considered to be one of the greatest key changes in music history (time code: 2:48), something Martha Davis of The Motels could not do.
The song itself is one that is well known to this day.
HOW can I ignore this? Even if I'm a couple of days late.
You see, Lights's sophmore album, Siberia, was released on October 4th, 2011. It's ten years old. And I had a complete blind spot to it - largely because I didn't really (at the time) love her first album. My former co-author Scott quite famously called me out on this. In fact, I didn't discover this record until THIS YEAR.
Before I wrote this post, I did something I don't do very often anymore to any album. I listened to Siberia end to end. It has quickly become one of my favorite albums, ever, and this listening didn't do anything to change that. It is both dark and, well, light at the same time. The music is stark and brooding at points, but Lights's vocal and lyrics bring the tone way up.
This is a song I often forget is on Siberia and was reminded of on my listening. The title gives the subject away - often in life, things happen - LOVE happens - when the timing is right and two people with different trajectories come together in the same point in time. It is a beautiful and meaningful work of art.
The Barry Manilow version of this song was not the first - David Martin did that. But Manilow made this song his own, and this is how he did it. First, he sang the hell out of it. He just did. No argument. But what he added - the sweet whistle at the beginning, a few lyrical changes - really made the song into the classic song that it is.
Credit, however, needs to go to the original songwriters - Christian Arnold, Geoff Morrow, and David Martin - who really captured in their lyrics what being in love really is. It is one of the most pure and beautiful representations of this in music.
It's been a long time since we visited Cher Lloyd, performer of the most perfect pop song. Fight me.
But she actually did that twice, because with her second album, Sorry I'm Late, the 3rd place finisher on X Factor really found a new maturity and strength in her already strong voice. It was a little weird to hear the words "Cher Lloyd" and "critical acclaim" in the same sentence, and yet, with this song.....
So, maybe I have to say she's got two perfect and very different pop songs.
So, I was curious. I mean, this is a great and emotional tour de force of a song - that, by the way, she co-wrote. But, what happens if you strip all the production out - if you have Cher and a microphone and a sparser accompanyment?
You hear her emotion more. You hear everything she threw into this song so much more.
In 2017, I wrote a post about one of the songs that made me start the Totally Covered blog. I wrote it from the cover perspective. Today, I wanted to give you the other side.
In 1988, Austin TX singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams released a self-titled album. There were a lot of great songs you know (The Grammy-winning "Passionate Kisses", famously covered by Mary Chapin Carpenter, comes to mind). However, few songs reach the influence of this song, released as a single in 1989.
The story of the song, with harmonica, guitar and a sharp drum backing, is simple - a woman is taking increasingly absurd measures to prevent herself from falling in love with someone. The brilliance of this song is that the object of her affection is not assigned any fault, anywhere - it's just an internal fight she's having with herself. It is the truest musical representation of fighting one's personal feelings I've ever heard.
I called the song "achy" and "desperate" when I wrote about it on the covers blog. Both are accurate terms, but it's a lot more than that.
This might be the first spoken word piece I've ever posted here.
What a lot of people don't know is that this poem, written and performed by Gil Scott-Heron, was a response to someone else's poem. Poetry group The Last Poets had released a piece called "When The Revolution Comes", in which they implied, and by implied, I mean, said right out, that most people will watch the revolution on TV.
What Gil Scott-Heron didn't realize is that he had written a rallying cry, using a phrase from the 1960's Black Power movement. He wrote a poem that resonated far greater than Black Power, or any one movement. He wrote and performed a piece that is used to this day to motivate crowds and drive protests, despite its dated 1970 references.
Listen to the line repeated twice at about 1:30 and tell me this song doesn't still resonate today.
We've spoken in the past about the ladies of t.A.T.u. We've spoken about the solo career of Lena Katina. Julia Volkova has one as well. Unfortunately, this is where we have to jump break......
Let's start with the obvious reason I'm posting this.
It's a Quebec band writing about Brooklyn. There is no other reason.
Youri Zaragoza is an excellent and unusual vocalist who brings a pained tone to this interesting and deep song. The song was co-written by the four gentlemen/band members, and it's not so much about one of the four best boroughs of New York City, but more of a love song.
Here's the band performing the song live in 2008. From what we can tell from social media and subsequent videos, the keyboardist left soon after to do other things.
The Easybeats were the first Australian band to have a hit outside of Australia.
This was not that hit, but it was a minor international hit for another band. This version, featuring a guest vocal by Steve Marriott of the group Small Faces, hit #22 in Australia in 1968. The song itself is a lot of fun and oft-covered for that very reason.
It's also one of my favorite songs from the 1960's, and not just because of INXS and Jimmy Barnes.
Billy Joel followed up his huge HUGE hit album An Innocent Man with a greatest hits album, which, for someone supposedly in the prime of their career, is a lame move. But, at that time, I considered Billy Joel to be pretty lame.
When he followed that with 1986's The Bridge, I didn't consider him quite so lame. You see, this song came out at a time when I was starting to branch out in musical taste - and discovering new artists that were outside the mainstream. I had already rejected Billy Joel's music as pretty boring and bland. When I first heard this song, however, it changed my perception a little. It was a song with a little soul - a little emotion. Perhaps it's the fact that it's a guitar-driven and not piano-driven song - but it resonated with me.
I'm not a Billy Joel fan to this day. This song, however, still hits.
Last week, my favorite Romanian band, Fine, It's Pink, released a new single.
Isn't it natural to have a favorite Romanian band? It isn't? Well, maybe we need to normalize that.
Anyway, they're a terrific band no matter where they are from. Ioana Lefter has a unique, rich voice unlike any other I've heard. The song is deep and also accessible. I hope this is the song that is their bridge to acceptance outside of Romania, but if not, at least you can enjoy it.
This is probably Fugazi's best known song. The band's debut single is an absolute classic, still remembered fondly more than 30 years after its initial release.
Written by Ian MacKaye about not making the same mistakes he made with his previous band, Embrace (you hear it now, don't you), it combines elements of punk, ska, and straight ahead rock. Fugazi helped define the Washington DC hardcore scene of the 80s and 90s, with this song being a major reason for that.
Look, sometimes, the post is about the song - and this one, an early single by Dave Grohl's post-Nirvana band is certainly a gem in and of itself. It's a lighthearted pop-rock song, and a top 20 hit in the US at that.
But c'mon. This post is all about this video. It's a huge Mentos commercial parody, and a damned near perfect one at that.
To compare, here's the 2nd commerical they parody.
And here's the first.
The band certainly played this fun and happy song live, but they stopped for a while. If you watched this live video, you can probably understand why, as many rolls of Mentos are thrown on stage. I don't know if you've ever had a roll of Mentos thrown at you, but they hurt.
They do perform it now, probably because people don't get the reference anymore.
In 1990, it was time for Edie Brickell & New Bohemians to release their second album, Ghost of a Dog. Their debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, was a blockbuster, but also, that put a lot of pressure on the band to follow up that unexpectedly successful album.
Which, in my opinion, they did brilliantly. I personally think the 2nd album was better than the 1st. Unfortunately, it didn't sell nearly as well, and ended up, at least temporarily, breaking up the band.
This song was the lead single from the 2nd album, and while it got a fair bit of MTV airplay, it didn't lead to a whole lot more than that. Still, the song is complex and interesting, grabbing your ears tightly and not letting go. It remains one of my favorites to this day.
Note: This song had previously been posted in 2012 - as part of a larger post. It's important enough that it deserves its own treatment.
For once, I didn't need a special character for French words.
You see, this song was commissed by The Pokémon Company to commemorate 25 years of Pokémon. Why? Because Louane fit the fun image of Pokémon - in the words of Colin Palmer, vice president of marketing for The Pokémon Company International
“Louane is an exciting addition to the growing roster of talented artists from around the world helping us celebrate 25 years of Pokémon. Game Girl,’ with its French and English lyrics, is not only an amazing pop anthem for Pokémon Trainers, but also represents the global resonance of Pokémon with international fans.”
And, Louane - real name Anne Peichert - grew up playing the game. She did write this lighthearted, lovely pop song expressly for the occasion of the anniversary, with bilingual lyrics, both of which she sings without foreign accent in either, which takes talent. The song's title is clearly a play on the Nintendo Game Boy, for which several Pokémon games were quite popular.
The song will be included on Pokémon 25: The Album, released worldwide in October, so hopefully Louane will get some deserved attention outside of France, where she is a superstar.
"Sirens Call" was the 2013 debut single by Toulouse, France duo Cats On Trees, and it's a delight.
It's also their biggest hit to date, a top 5 hit in both Belgium and their native France.
The duo consists of Nina Goern, on vocals and piano, and Yohan Hennequin, on drums. The two of them take those instruments to the fullest, filling all the aural space with their music. Lyrically, it's in English, but passionate and longing.
It is very tempting to think that a duo might be resorting to studio tricks to give their song such a rich sound. Here they are, live in 2014, proving that they are not doing that. They are just that talented.
Yep. It is. Lilly Wood and the Prick are definitely French, but they perform primarily in English.
"But I thought this was artists you discovered because that French Canadian woman you constantly post about is in heavy rotation. However, you've posted Lilly Wood and the Prick before."
Yes, yes I have. Thanks for reading. However, you may recall that post was mostly about Robin Schulz. This one isn't. This post is about a band that keeps getting suggested to me, and not about a Robin Schulz remix (although, to be completely fair, that song is included in the suggestions).
Can I get on with it, please?
Thank you.
Lilly Wood and the Prick are a folk duo formed in France. Neither of them is named Lilly Wood. They got together in 2006 to be a songwriting duo, and ended up making a lot of great music. Their first big hit was their first single - "Prayer In C" (see above link) - released two years prior to this, but their biggest and best known hit worldwide - "Prayer In C" (see above link. I explain it all there) - was yet to come.
By the time they released this song, a minor hit for them, in 2012, they had migrated a bit from the folk sound and branched out into a more disco sound. It worked for them here, and it continued to work for them.
Happy birthday to Mathilde Gerner, who turns 25 today.
Who is Mathilde Gerner? She is the French singer better known by her stage name, Hoshi. But you probably guessed that already.
So named because of her love of Japanese culture, Hoshi writes and performs songs with deep and complex emotion. She's been part of the music scene in France for a decade, between reality music competitions, street music, and finally recording her own music on her own terms.
She's an underappreciated gem, and thanks to Spotify for pointing her out to me.
So, this week, I decided to share it all with you. So, without further ado, music I've discovered solely because Cœur de Pirate is in heavy rotation.
We start with Kyo, a group of French guys who shared a love of American grunge and decided to make a band out of it. They formed in the early 2000's, took an extended hiatus, and have now come back. This is their latest single, and it is a banger. The opening rift is a clear lookback to "Lithium", with the rest of the song hitting some 90's alternative vibes. Lyrically, it's something of a sad and painful song, with the sentiment "Je ne veux pas rester seul" - I don't want to be alone - repeated throughout.
It was a little cruel of me to start with this song, because the video is actually Chapter 2 in a story. You would have met the characters in Chapter 1. I'll have to post that sometime.
Imagine 17 year old me, rushing to the record store on the day that Maria McKee released her first solo album.
Yes, this is what I was listening to as a teenager. And that album was really the third Lone Justice album - with a lot of the same personnel. I was a huge Lone Justice fan (still am). So, I had high expectations of this, and it did not let me down. The first two songs were a heck of a one-two punch. This was the 2nd single and 2nd track. It was a slower, but beautiful and emotion-filled song.
But that first track - I think I wore my cassette out on this track. It was the powerhouse vocal I had come to expect from Maria McKee. There is no video for this song that I could find, but I couldn't not share it, because it's spectacular - right from the first guitar that predated "Laid" by James by several years. The song just builds and builds, and showcases McKee's vocal range throughout.
Literally. This song has been out for a WEEK. It was a midnight release on September 2nd, and I had listened to it no less than 30 times by 2am. I even tweeted about it.
I stayed up late to listen to the new @beatricepirate song like thirty times.
If you had asked me in February if the term "la chanson française" was going to be used more than once on this blog in 2021, I would have said you were crazy. And yet, here I am, copying and pasting that damn œ for like the fifth time this year. (I went back and looked. It's the seventh time, which might even beat my Charli XCX rate of posting).
But now I am going to tell you why this one is different and it has absolutely nothing to do with Béatrice Martin's pregnancy. You see, I started down this journey into francophone music near the end of February, when I really wanted to find an artist that sang in French who was also Canadian to feature in my little #MapleLeafMarch thing. And, I stumbled about this one accidentally - when I was researching another post by another artist that I'll gush over another day - and did a deeper dive.
What I found was an incredibly complex artist that had a foot in the modern world and another in a classic French music world. Her entire catalog was spectacular and unlike anything I had ever heard - a lot of piano, for sure, and a lot of words I did not understand. In fact, French had been a language that completely baffled me, despite my background in romance languages.
During this deep dive, some new music was released, literally all of which has been covered on this blog. It's all been exceptional.
Then came September 2nd, and a new song was released, and I was excited to hear it. What I heard, however.... it was far far far more than I expected. You see, in a life, there are songs you may hear that just make you stop and remember where you are. These are songs that you can hear over and over again, and never get sick of them. They are songs that change the way you look at music forever.
I've had that feeling a few times in my life, and I can tell you exactly where I was when I first heard each one of them. From the disco-tinged opening violin strains of this song, to the very last "tremble", this song had me. I urge you to listen to this song. You are going to forget it's entirely in French.
The video was recorded in Lachine, QC, Canada, at the famous lighthouse there, and no, none of those balloons went in the water. It also looks to me like it was done in one take, without edits, but I have no proof of that.
(Update: 9 September): Since I wrote this, literally today, her new album Impossible à aimer was announced, including this song, to be released October 15th.
12 year old me did not know this song was about female masturbation. I just knew that I loved the song. And yet this song was on the PMRC's "Filthiest 15" list of truly filthy, filthy songs. That's right. The "Parental Advisory" sticker on some albums is largely due to this song.
It was, despite that, a huge hit song. And why wouldn't it be? It's darned catchy. The video, which is probably part of the song's overall appeal, is considerably more wholesome than this filthy, filthy song.
Is it more obviously filthy in its acoustic version? Maybe. It's more obvious to me that I should have realized what the song was about at 12.
I seriously, SERIOUSLY debated whether or not to post this song. The 2nd verse, in a modern era, is really troubling. Indeed, the Canadian Broadcast Services Council has banned the song in an unedited form, because of that lyric. And I don't really disagree with that decision.
In context, I decided to do it. Here's why:
1) the narrator of the song is intended to be an ignorant man. The use of that one slur IS intentional, and not complementary to the narrator. Mark Knopfler intentionally wrote an ignorant character you are supposed to despise.
2) from a historical standpoint, coming four years after the advent of MTV, it was the first big hit song to acknowledge that channel's influence.
3) MTV still uses Sting's "I Want My MTV" that he sang for this song in their promotional materials.
4) I wanted to illustrate how far we have come as a society since 1985. That slur was just casually tossed about in the 1980s - and today, it's horrifying to hear.
Forgetting that lyric for a moment, the song itself is great, combining the 80s synth sound with some terrific guitar work. The song itself is a gem, the video iconic.
What happens when a couple of prog-rock veteran guitarists get together and make a straight-ahead rock album? Well, that's what Steve Howe of Yes and Steve Hackett of Genesis did when they got together and formed GTR.
The project was short-lived, but yielded one pretty good album. Also featuring Jonathan Mover from Marillion on drums and Max Bacon on vocals, it was quite the superproject. This was their debut single and went to #14 in 1986. The band fell apart when their studio sound - sans keyboards (because Steve Howe was sick of that sound from his time in Asia) - didn't work live.
But let's go back to this song. It's a standard 80's rock song - less prog, more straightahead - but that doesn't make it bad. It's a good song. Co-written by Hackett and Howe, and produced by another Yes/Asia alum, Geoff Downes, it's a song that sounds dated and yet still present.
It is rare that I can share one of my favorite songs of all time, by one of my favorite bands of all time. I know that's not true, but just listen. Then I'll talk about it. The song is that good.
Mary's Danish was a LA band that released three studio albums and a live EP. Yes, I own all of them. This is from their last, 1992's American Standard. The band was short-lived, which is odd (and completely the fault of their record label, Morgan Creek), because the dual lead vocals from Gretchen Seager and Julie Ritter were legendary - they didn't both sing lead on EVERY song, as their voices tended to hit different styles - Grethen tended towards the harder pop/rock songs, whereas Julie had a bit of a twang that lent itself to a folksier/bluesier sound - but they sure did on this one. Guitarist David King passed away this summer, so they are unlikely to reform again.
But they left behind many versions of this song. Take this one, a B-side to this very single. It's an alternate take that some call "acoustic" but was probably the demo.
The band made the rounds of the late night talk shows, and performed this song many times. Let's start with Leno. The Tonight Show was recorded in the band's hometown Los Angeles, and boy, did Jay ever look uncomfortable introducing them....
Get out of here with your Burbank propaganda.
Next, we go to Letterman. Dave was far more comfortable introducing them. I know that because I watched it live. This recording cuts off his intro.
Also, do you remember CD longboxes?! Man, those were the days.
(postscript: if you want to read the heartbreaking story of why Mary's Danish broke up, go here. They say it far better than we could)
People who know me well know what my favorite albums are. If you read this blog last year, I revealed that Velveteen by UK hitmakers (who did next to nothing Stateside) Transvision Vamp is high on that list. At that time, I posted a really REALLY angry song - my favorite song on that album.
But here's the thing that makes that album so perfect. There are no bad songs on there. NONE. They released two other albums - this was their second - and they were all good. This one was borderline perfect.
This song was a hit in the UK and Australia in 1989 and 1990, respectively - and it's a quiet tribute to a lot of pop icons throughout the ages - it's a song full of name drops. Wendy James can deliver quiet and she can deliver loud, and she proves it on this album.
Santigold is one of a new wave of avant garde artists that have given new life to traditional genres, like pop, rock, and R&B, fusing them all with an electronic sound and lyrical depth not seen previously. This fusion brings a new sound - one that eschews genre.
This song - co-written by Santigold - dives into the subject of the degradation of American culture while we, the keepers, are asleep at the wheel. I do encourage you to not listen to the lyrics the first time you listen. It's an aurally interesting upbeat pop song, different than anything you've heard before.
In 2005, a discouraged actress from Sacramento, CA made an album with a couple of singles that got MTV airplay. She was 16 at the time, and since this was her only full-length album, it seems early for her career to peak.....
The song itself is pretty standard fair bubblegum pop/rock, but it's earnestly performed. Larson co-wrote about half the album, but not this song.
OK, let's stop being coy. We all saw Captain Marvel. We all saw Avengers: Endgame. We all read this post so we know Brie Larson can sing.
I said she was 16. The album was released in October 2005, about two weeks after her 16th birthday, but was originally slated to be released in 2004..... so, do the math, people. This performance from January 2005 would put this future Academy Award winner at 15. Her stage presence is a bellweather for the greatness to come.
