This guy is a member of a band called Boyce Avenue, so I guess he doesn’t exactly fit in with the amateur YouTube players I’m trying to focus on this week, but this is a really good version of a really good song so I decided to include it.
It’s interesting how a straight-up pop/dance song can take on a different dimension when stripped down to its basics. Manzano isn’t even changing the melody or tempo of the song… he’s just playing it on an acoustic guitar. But it feels different.
I am wrapping up a week from hell and this is the closest I’ve been to running out of steam and not having a Song of the Day ready to roll. But I am not prepared to break a 205-song streak, so I must muscle through.
In order to buy myself some time, I’m going to take it easy this week and feature some cover songs by people on YouTube. This will save me the headache of dealing with the record label Nazis who keep pulling my videos, and I won’t spend a whole lot of time writing them up either.
I’ve always disliked Valentine’s Day. It’s the ultimate commercial holiday, designed to do nothing more than sell flowers and candy. Fortunately my wife feels the same way.
And yet, two of the most significant moments in our lives took place on February 14. The first was our engagement. I asked Alex to marry me on Valentine’s Day of 1996, coincidentally for the most part. We had bought the engagement ring a few days earlier and had planned to dine out that night, so I dropped on one knee during a stroll on South Beach and popped the question.
R.E.M.’s last four albums — Up, Reveal, Around the Sun and Accelerate — have been mild disappointments. Those records followed New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the excellent and underrated follow-up to Monster, and they were all recorded without drummer Bill Berry, who quit the band to live on his farm after surviving a brain aneurysm.
By no means is it a coincidence that R.E.M.’s weakest efforts followed the loss of Berry. I don’t know how much he contributed to the songwriting, but there is a chemistry in some bands that, once altered, can never be reclaimed.
R.E.M. followed Automatic for the People with the grunge and feedback overload of Monster, the most love-it-or-hate-it album in their catalog.
I fall into the “love” category, though I do lose patience for a couple of songs toward the end of the album. But the first ten songs are twisted and glorious, none more so than ‘Crush With Eyeliner.’
Meet Me In Montauk 