Continuing my sneak peek at some new developments on the site, I direct you to the new ‘Albums’ index.
That is where you’ll find my in-depth coverage of specific albums, including those I have given the ‘one post per track’ treatment (longtime readers will recall the less-than-enthusiastic response I got for dedicating so much time to Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs and Lucinda Williams’ The Ghosts of Highway 20).
My mother will be happy to see Frank Sinatra’s Watertown given a nice display.
I’ve been sprucing up this site over the past couple of months, mostly in the background: cleaning up expired YouTube embeds, cross-linking posts, building landing pages for my various collections.
This week I’m calling attention to some of those new features, in the hopes that both established and new readers will find it easier to navigate the site.
During the week of September 6, 1966, The Supremes held the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘You Can’t Hurry Love,’ covered on the blog a full 17 years ago. At #2 was Donovan’s ‘Sunshine Superman,’ which appeared just last year.
At #3 that week was The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine,’ the lone single released by the band from that year’s Revolver. Normally, The Beatles would release a non-album song as a promotional single accompanying a new release, but in 1966 they were burned out enough to just go with an album track.
Throwing back to the week of September 5, 1956, we find Elvis Presley atop the Billboard Top 100 with ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’ This was the first of seven straight weeks at #1 for the song.
This was Presley’s top-performing song of 1956, a year that saw the release of ‘Hound Dog,’ ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ ‘Love Me Tender,’ and many more.
Concluding my ranking of the songs on Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend…
#3. ‘The Governor’s Waltz’
This beautiful track sounds like it could have appeared on either of Bridgers’ first two albums, which is part of why it became an early favorite. As much as I admire the ambition and growth on display in Lost Weekend, I don’t see it as the equal of Stranger in the Alps or Punisher. Not yet, anyway… I’ve certainly spent a lot more time with those albums than this one. ‘The Governor’s Waltz’ is the record’s Paul Mescal track, and while it throws some shade at his new girlfriend Gracie Abrams, it mostly finds Bridgers exploring her own failure to connect.
Meet Me In Montauk 