Who is Adam Schlesinger? Find out this week, as I explore some of my favorite tracks by the power pop savant. I became a fan of Adams Schlesinger five or six times without realizing I did. Adam is a songwriter, producer, band-leader, and performer who writes absolutely astounding pop hooks and tunes. Where other great pop…
Chances are that you remember Hanson for their smash single, “Mmmbop.” And if you hadn’t followed their career afterwards, it would be perfectly reasonable to predict that the mop-tops fizzled away. One hit wonders from a marketing machine, right? (Spotify seconds this: “Mmmbop” has more than 20x the number of plays than any of their other tracks.) Yet,…
When I was in college, I read an article describing how Chuck Berry still performed regularly and with energy at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis. I promised to go and see him before he stopped. It seemed like one of the few ways I could create an authentic link between myself and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll: To witness,…
Every now and then I will go and revisit the music that I listened to in high school. My buddy Tyler burned three CDs for me but had a good combo of pop, alt rock, and pop punk, and these albums were like a Bible to me. I didn’t love every song, but they became the soundtrack…
This Valentine’s Day I find myself in a joyful marriage with a lovely wife. And if that wasn’t enough, I have a second Valentine: my adorable, seven-month old daughter. To counterbalance that, I am going to choose one of the saddest love songs of all time as my Song of the Day. I have complained…
I know that The Doors are supposed to be this monumental, influential band… that their references to spirituality and drug use were groundbreaking… that there are plenty of people who adore Jim Morrison as a poet and singular voice ahead of his time… But The Doors have never really done it for me. They rock hard, and sumptuously, but…
“You gotta hear this one song, it’ll change your life I swear.” There is a certain age of people, about 30-35 years old right now, for whom Garden State was one of the formative movies of their generation. I’m one of them. Andrew Largeman as played by Zach Braff, revisits his childhood home after a decade away for his…
When I was nine or so, my church had an opening for a choral day camp during the summer. My dad was an active member of the church choir, and so I somehow got picked for the camp. For some reason, I have a bunch of specific memories of this camp: I made friends with a cool kid a…
What could have been a completely average and forgettable pop punk song is instead one of the more distinct tracks I’ve heard. Instead of the normal vocal line for the verses, Steriogram’s lead singer showcases a squeaky high-pitched talk-singing at a breakneck pace. It has the aesthetic quality of someone “scatting” in jazz, or beat boxing in a cappella. It…
Is there a more distinctive singer in pop history than Macy Gray? Janis Joplin comes to mind, but even she is not quite so unique. So rather than opine on Gray’s one hit, a sentimental ballad with an earworm chorus, I’m going to try and describe Grays voice: It’s certainly quite raspy. In fact, Wikipedia…