Martina Stoessel was an Argentine child star who got her start on a show called Patito Feo, which translates to "ugly duckling".
At some point, she moved from TV to music. She was an instant hit in Argentina and the Spanish-speaking world.
With her fourth album, Cupido, released in 2023, Tini, as she is known professionally, has hit an international audience. This was the NINTH single from the album..... which was released a month after the single. No, I'm not kidding.
Tini teamed with La Joaqui on the song, which is a women's empowerment anthem specifically tied to the dance floor, which is appropriate, because Steve Aoki's beats make this an absolute banger. The song was a hit in the Spanish-speaking world but also on Hulu, where ads for the song were EVERYWHERE.
I stumbled across this album by Heavenly, called Tragic Tiger's Sad Meltdown, which is really just a few songs and a lot of sonic experimentation. This song itself is part of an 11 minute long track that includes a recording of the ocean, which is absolutely amazing. I've supported Heavenly on Bandcamp, and you can as well.
The whole album, including this song, is luscious and minimalish ambient folk music with a hint of spoken word.
But who is Heavenly?
Looking at the credits on the track (courtesy of Spotify) gives us some clues.
Heavenly is Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily Hutchence-Geldof, the daughter of the late Michael Hutchence of WGP Hall of Fame inductee INXS and British television personality Paula Yates. Her father passed away when she was 1, and her mother when she was 4. At that time, the father of Paula Yates's three elder children, Bob Geldof, took foster and eventually adoptive custody of Heavenly - hence the hyphenate.
Given the deaths of her parents (as well as her half sister Peaches), that makes that album title hit a little harder (I presume she's the titular tragic Tiger).
Anyway, she's made some beautiful music and we hope to hear more.
This may very well be one of the strangest songs we've ever posted on here.
In 1987, influential British label 4AD Records released a compilation album containing a bunch of songs their artists had recorded. That alsum was called Lonely Is An Eyesore, and it is a classic. The vision of label head Ivo Watts-Russell, it was intended to introduce the small label to the masses, and included a videocassette version of the album, with a music video to accompany each song. Put a pin in that, because it's important later.
4AD had featured mostly British and European artists (before you go there, yes, Dead Can Dance was Australian) but had not signed an American band until soon before this compilation was released. In 1986, they signed a four-piece minimalist pop-rock band from Newport, Rhode Island and broke that streak.
Let's rewind now, to 1985. Throwing Muses had released a cassette called The Doghouse Cassette, with a lot of their early songs, many of which the band ended up rerecording for a number of albums for years to come. One of the songs on this album was called "Fish", and it was a surreal masterpiece. As the story goes, it quickly became Ivo Watts-Russell's favorite song, and he couldn't get enough of the song.... so much so, that he made a lyric from the song the title of his prized cornerstone of a compilation album.
So, for its inclusion on Lonely Is An Eyesore, a video for this song was recorded in a loft in Boston and also at the New England Aquarium (that's where the fish came from). It shows the song and band in all its glory: David Narcizo with his military drumming (note the lack of cymbals), Leslie Langston's heavier-than-expected bassline, Tanya Donelly's ringing guitar and perfect harmonies that almost don't sound like harmonies.....
I can't just put Kristin Hersh in a list. Hersh's haunting vocals weave through the verses paint a vivid picture of vulnerability and introspection. The lyrics are poetic and enigmatic, to say the least. Her (and Donelly's) guitar to open the song and throughout are both delicate and relentless, and are a lot more complex than they sound. The most noteworthy thing about this completely surreal song is that she wrote the whole thing. It all started off with a hand-made Jesus on a crucifix on the wall of an apartment Hersh crashed in. Apparently, ir looked like a fish to her.
That speaks directly to her unparallel songwriting genius. Who else could turn I remember this quote someone once wrote about her.
"Kristin wrote the song... She is one of the most overlooked songwriters of her generation (which also happens to be my generation)". - Me, 4 March 2012
Is it hard to pick a favorite song by my favorite band? Absolutely it is. This song floats to the top - for all the reasons I've mentioned and so much more. It is a song that encapsulates the band - the minimalist yet technically tricky style, the surreal lyrics open to broad intrepretation, the award-winning video.
As I've said before, Throwing Muses were the first band I saw live, in 1989, and this song was absolutely on their setlist. I saw them in Hartford, indoors, in September, and not at a summer outdoor music festival in Glastonbury, but the song and performance were the same.
This is our 1,400th post, and for that, I wanted to share a story with y'all.
I was a DJ at WSBU, the Saint Bonaventure University college radio station, from 1990 until 1993.
Now, we were a classic rock formatted station - not the so-called "alternative" or "college music" format you saw at most university radio stations of that time period. The classic rock format was underrepresented in the rural Southern Tier of New York state - we literally had a country station on the university's front lawn - and so that decision was made. However, as a concession to all us punks, the late night hours - 11PM until 7AM - were dedicated to that fringe music that wasn't so popular on rock radio in the early 90's.
We used to get all the best fringe music from all the record labels, including all the Warner Bros. imprints. I already talked about the greatest thing we ever got from Elektra Records (apologies to Jonathan Falls, who was kind enough to hand me our station's copy of the "Counting Backwards" single by Throwing Muses (who were signed to Sire Records, which was also a Warner imprint) so I could debut it on my show (and lent me his copy of Lonely Is An Eyesore which I'm going to have to write about someday soon)).
As I came back to school for my second year, in the fall of 1991, the album Abort by a band from Boston called Tribe that I had never heard of showed up at the station. I don't know that I was the first to play this album, but when I did, I played the very first track, which was not the single, but rather a song called "Here At The Home." This was a band with harmonzied vocals that still managed to rock really hard.
I was blown away, needless to say, and played that song a lot for the next couple of years. And, well, we're still talking about it now, so I guess I'm still playing it.
What I didn't know then was that this was their 2nd album - mostly made up of songs from their self-produced first album. The title of that album? Here At The Home.
Here they are at Boston College performing the song in 1993.
Anyone who answered anything besides "Santa Monica" can sit down. It legitimately was.
You've probably heard their 2nd biggest hit, and might be surprised to know that that song - this song - was really not that far behind "Santa Monica" in airplay - Santa Monica popped into the top 30 on pop radio, whereas this song bubbled just under - and actually did BETTER on alternative music charts.
The song was written by the band and co-producted by Neal Avron (this was something of a breakthrough for him) and lead vocalist Art Alexakis, whose last name I had to literally look at three times to make sure I spelled it correctly (I did). Alexakis was the primary lyricist here, and he wrote this as a romantic song - which it is. Released in 1997, it became a fan favorite in a hurry.
Because it's a great song.
The West Hills he is referencing in this song are the Southwest Hills neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, which happens to be in the Tualatin Mountains, also known as the West Hills. We hear it's a really nice neighborhood.
Everclear is a band that is still touring and still making music. This video is from a show in Harrisburg, PA, recorded in March 2023. Two things of note:
1) Art makes it very clear this song is about love, and it is. It absolutely is.
2) Art was disagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2016 - that's a disease that statistically hits women more but hits men much harder. It likely took a lot of energy to perform, and he did so without compromise, which I greatly respect.
More impressively, they performed the song twice that day. Here's an acoustic performance of the same song during a meet and greet on the SAME DAY. I've always loved acoustic versions of this song, because I think its strength is in the raw and loving emotion of its lyrics, and they shine more here.
This post has been sitting in draft for over three years. It was by far our oldest draft.
The song, however, is too good to stay in draft forever.
Andy Gibb, the younger brother of the Bee Gees, passed away in 1988 at the age of 30. He was 19 when this was released and 18 when he recorded it. Written and co-produced by his brother Barry, the song features Joe Walsh of the Eagles on guitar and a clear Barry background vocal. The song was Grammy-nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male (which it lost to a James Taylor song).
Andy Gibb himself recieved a Best New Artist nomination in 1978 on the strength of this song - another award he lost, this to Debby Boone (which we get. "You Light Up My Life" was the biggest theft of a hit song of all time and NO, Kasey Cisyk was NOT nominated, and that's not really Boone's fault, which we already said here.). The song spent 16 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 - a record at the time - and four non-contiguous weeks on top of the charts. He was also a frequent subject of the covers and centerfolds of the teen magazines of the time, like Tiger Beat. He was the Johnathan Taylor Thomas or whoever the kids like nowadays of his time.
Unfortunately, with his fame came the temptations of drug use - which he defeated, but not before they damaged his heart. He passed away of natural causes in 1988, while attempting a comeback, and his huge voice, which impressed most who heard it, is missed.
It's been said it is nearly impossible to follow up a gigantic hit debut single with anything nearly as successful.
Kris Kross had a monstrous debut single with "Jump" and faced the nearly impossible. They followed it up with a top 20 worldwide hit that got a ton of airplay and sold more than a half million copies. They did it not simply by wearing their pants backwards, but by dropping dope rhymes written by Jermaine Dupri, who also produced their track.
The Daddy Mac and the late Mac Daddy had skills. They were better at dropping rhymes than people twice their ages (they were 12 when they recorded this). They brought pride to Atlanta, and their music, even their second single, endures to this day.
They were 12 when they recorded this, but they didn't stay 12, and their voices changed, and, as can be seen by this video, they didn't change at the same times. One Chris had his deeper voice already here - but the other didn't really.
