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…
We all have various ways we can divide our lives into segments. Befores and afters. Well, for me, one of those chronological divisors is before and after hearing Janis Joplin singing a rock song. Her vocal chords are a sledgehammer applied directly to my heart . A blunt force weapon to render listeners into little piles…
I’m pretty sure if I had been about 14 in 1982 when “I Melt With You” had been a hit, I would have considered it the greatest song of all time. And I appear to not be the only one with that disposition: search Spotify or YouTube and you’ll find dozens of unironic covers of…
As previously mentioned I have a soft spot for most boy bands. In particular, I enjoy those that bring a power pop edge to their performance. Thus, it should not surprise you but I actually kind of dug the Jonas Brothers. Seriously. After the band broke up, and I didn’t devote much effort to following the various…
What if you took a perfectly ordinary life and happy romance and transformed it into something fatalistic? You get Lana Del Ray and her first single, “Video Games.” I remember hearing this song for the first time and not getting whether it was a joke or a true artistic statement of purpose. Time has proved…