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Song of the Day #5,786: ‘Cassandra’ – Taylor Swift

Continuing the tracklist of my version of Taylor Swift’s latest album…

Taylor Swift’s Asylum
Track #3: ‘Cassandra’

Much of The Tortured Poets Department sounds like the malformed child of folklore and Midnights. ‘Cassandra,’ produced by Aaron Dessner, is a gorgeous exception — this one is pure folklore, with a haunting piano playing under a spooky tale of betrayal and anger.

I try not to go too far down the rabbit hole of references to Swift’s personal life, but this song feels to me very much about the Reputation period, when she was painted by many as a villain only to be exonerated later.

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Song of the Day #5,785: ‘The Black Dog’ – Taylor Swift

Continuing the tracklist of my version of Taylor Swift’s latest album…

Taylor Swift’s Asylum
Track #2: ‘The Black Dog’

When I first heard this song, the opener of the second half of The Tortured Poets Department, I immediately thought it was better than most of the “official” album. So I’m giving it a prime spot in my Asylum edit.

The chorus of ‘The Black Dog’ owes a bit too much to the excellent ‘Betty,’ but I really like the turn it takes at the end with the “old habits die screaming” line, giving a jolt of energy to a batch of songs that are often quite sleepy.

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Song of the Day #5,784: ‘The Bolter’ – Taylor Swift

The release of a highly anticipated album by a major artist is cause for celebration in these parts. And those album drops typically result in a countdown of my favorite tracks (as with Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter last month) or even a song-by-song dissection (as with Lana Del Rey’s Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd last year).

Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, has been a trickier prospect. For one thing, the album — after the surprise 2 a.m. drop of its unpublicized second half — features 31 tracks and runs for more than two hours. And while I’m not categorically opposed to turning a month and a half over to one album, I don’t relish the idea either.

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Song of the Day #5,783: ‘Hello, Dolly!’ – Louis Armstrong

For almost the entirety of 1964 so far, in these Throwback Weekends, The Beatles have dominated the Hot 100. The band owned the top of the chart for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs reaching #1.

So who finally dethroned the Fab Four? Would you believe it was 62-year-old jazz legend Louis Armstrong with a demo of the title track from the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!?

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Song of the Day #5,782: ‘Cross Over The Bridge’ – Patti Page

Throwing back to the week of May 1, 1954, we find two repeats topping Billboard’s singles chart: Perry Como’s ‘Wanted’ and Jo Stafford’s ‘Make Love to Me.’ This was the fifth straight week that those songs occupied the top two spots, with Como in #1 for four of them.

At #3 is ‘Cross Over the Bridge,’ a song originally written in 1945 by Bennie Benjamin and George David Weiss. The recording that received the most success was this one, by singer Patti Page. Page was the top-selling female performer of the 50s, having already scored four #1 hits before this one made it to #2.

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