Monthly Archives: January 2010

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Song of the Day #556: ‘It’s All Good’ – Bob Dylan

Yesterday I posted the first track on Dylan’s first album, so today I’ll post his most recent. I’m skipping the Christmas album as that’s more of a novelty and posting the final track of Dylan’s 2009 album, Together Through Life.

Dylan is known for excellent closing tracks and this one, while not on the level of his classic album finishers, is indeed one of the better songs on the album.

It’s funny to hear a wizened old dude like Dylan repeating the very modern phrase “It’s all good,” and of course he knows that.

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Vampire Weekend – Contra

Second albums are tough.

The concept of the sophomore slump is particularly valid in the music world, where many a promising debut is followed by something head-scratching or, worse, boring.

Often the artist spent years building up to the first release, honing the perfect batch of songs into something meaningful and thought out. And once the debut is a hit, pressure comes from the label (not to mention fans) to put out something else right away. So the result is a hastily thrown together group of songs, often chronicling the experience of fame itself, something nobody really cares to hear about.

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Song of the Day #555: ‘You’re No Good’ – Bob Dylan

It didn’t take me long to decide which artist would pick up the weekend mantle now that I’ve retired the Beatles Weekends. I wanted a) a legend, b) somebody who has recorded enough songs to provide ample fodder for the blog, and c) somebody whose songs would lend themselves to both musical and historic analysis.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dylan Weekends.

Through 554 songs on this blog, I’ve featured Bob Dylan nine times. Seven of those were tracks from his Bootleg albums and one was from his recent Christmas album. Which means I’ve made it a year and a half featuring just one proper studio release by Dylan. That doesn’t seem right. But rest assured, I’ll make up for it in the coming weeks.

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Song of the Day #554: ‘Make a Mistake’ – Brad Paisley

For the final installment of Brad Paisley week, I will demonstrate that Brad Paisley is one hell of a musician.

Reading his early reviews, it’s funny to see critics speculate whether a guy with his guitar chops could be taken seriously as a singer and writer of songs. This was before he became one of the top selling artists in country music, of course.

Paisley does play a mean guitar, but today’s song is meant to illustrate not just his skill but his desire to surround himself with top musicians.

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Song of the Day #553: ‘Famous People’ – Brad Paisley

For the fourth installment of my Brad Paisley theme week, I’m using one song to illustrate two different points: Brad Paisley has great taste in covers, and Brad Paisley is a terrific singer. This song could also have been used on the first day to support the ‘Brad Paisley is funny’ point, but because he didn’t write it, I didn’t find that appropriate.

Apparently it’s pretty commonplace in country music to perform other people’s songs… not in the Britney Spears sense where you have professional songwriters who churn out product for pretty faces to sing but in a friendly ‘pass the guitar around the room’ sort of way. It’s the spirit behind Lyle Lovett’s two albums of cover songs and the reason a wonderful songwriter like Brad Paisley still fits in a few covers on each of his albums.

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