I’m not sure if I’ve ever officially commented on “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” by Bruce Springsteen on this site, so let me do that right now: It’s one of my favorite songs of all time, if not my favorite. I also think that the studio version is more or less perfect, unassailable. There’s so much…
Bruce Springsteen’s two most beloved albums are the Borns: to Run and in the USA. The former (his third album) was the album that propelled him to mega-fame and contains two tracks that Rolling Stone later ranked in the top 100 songs of all time, Born to Run and Thunder Road. The latter (his seventh album)…
“Every one of Joel’s songs — including the happy ones — are ultimately about loneliness.” – Chuck Klosterman For a singer known best as a Tin Pan Alley-inspired, Broadway-loving, pop balladeer, Billy Joel has a pretty big dark streak. You may not hear it in “Just the Way You Are” or “Uptown Girl,” but Joel’s…
Up here in Boston, we’re in the midst of a 90’s music renaissance. Or so I’m told. Sometime a year or two ago, the local press wrote enough about this purported revival to power a hot air balloon, and they flew that baby as far as it would go. Meanwhile, as a recent transplant to…
Public service announcement courtesy of EarnThis.net! The short version: a talented new indie band from the Netherlands is now accepting short story submissions so that they can pick one and write a soundtrack for it. Read their official announcement here and see details below. ~ All Shall Be Well (And All Shall Be Well And…
Topping the UK charts is as easy as a² + b² = c². The Music Information Retrieval (MIR) team at the University of Bristol recently announced to the world that they had devised a mathematical formula that indicates what qualities of a song are important, and to what degrees, in determining whether that song will…
Tell me if this sounds familiar: Pop/rock group makes a hit, gets unjustly labeled as a “one-hit wonder,” releases a dark and emotional masterpiece that witnesses the band crumbling, breaks up soon afterwards, disappears for years despite some generous re-appraisals of their later work, finally re-appears. Trick question! I described (at least) two bands. Weezer…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed the past year, regardless of when it was released. Hammersmith Odeon, London ’75 Album, 2005 In his retrospective of The Arctic Monkeys’ first three albums, Grant cites a theory about artists’ third albums. As Coldplay…
Need a last-minute Christmas gift for yourself? Look, Jews et al., any occasion you can come up with is fine — Scientologists have Freedom Day to look forward to on the 30th — just find a reason and make sure you’ve got The Whole Shebang ready to tap on New Year’s Eve. This is the…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed this year, regardless of when it was released. #13 Larry And His Flask Self-described “hillbilly band” I remember reading an article somewhere — maybe it was in the thought-provoking Ripped — that the role of…