Monthly Archives: July 2009

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Song of the Day #358: ‘Climbing Up the Walls’ – Sarah Slean

sarahsleanI’m an album person, to a fault. Sometimes I’ll buy a whole album because I like one or two songs and allow it to occupy precious space in my collection as essentially a bloated CD single. Other times I won’t buy a CD despite loving a song or two because I want to avoid the above scenario.

What I haven’t done, to this point, is just buy the songs I like on iTunes. The primary reason for this is that I do almost all of my music listening in the car and I don’t have an effective way to play MP3s on that stereo system. I suppose I could download songs and burn them to mix CDs but that seems like more trouble than its worth (it isn’t, I know, but it seems that way).

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Song of the Day #357: ‘The Guns of Brixton’ – The Clash

theclashMy first exposure to the classic Clash album London Calling was in a Rolling Stone issue on the ‘Best Albums of the 80s.’ I was familiar with most of their selections — including (in order) Prince’s Purple Rain, U2’s The Joshua Tree, Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, Paul Simon’s Graceland, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., Michael Jackson’s Thriller, R.E.M.’s Murmur and Tracy Chapman’s debut album.

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Song of the Day #356: ‘Shut Up and Drive’ – Rihanna

rihanna_supI continue to be endlessly impressed with Rihanna’s last album, Good Girl Gone Bad. To put it in terms of Michael Jackson, which seems to be required these days, it’s as chock full of hits as Thriller.

I just picked up Rihanna’s previous album, A Girl Like Me, and though I haven’t had a chance to listen to it all the way through yet, the first single ‘SOS’ is as groovily infectious as the new stuff. I don’t know how she has managed to float to the top of all the similar singers out there. She doesn’t write any of her songs so it’s probably a matter of her (or her management, or both) recognizing top songwriting and producing talent and lining her up with the right people. She also has a great presence and is a strong performer, so maybe it’s the writers and producers who want to be in business with her.

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Song of the Day #355: ‘God Protect Your Soul’ – Ed Harcourt

edharcourtOn my bookshelf I have a stack of CDs I don’t want. Most I picked up on a whim or a magazine recommendation, often at a used CD shop, then discovered they weren’t my cup of tea. Others were gifts.

Some are a complete mystery to me — they found their way into my possession and now won’t leave… I can’t get anybody to buy them back and I can’t bring myself to throw a working CD in the garbage. So they sit in a pile, untouched for months or years, cheap plastic reminders that things are never as orderly as I want them to be.

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Song of the Day #354: ‘A Whole New World’ – Aladdin and Jasmine

aladdinUntil about a decade ago, animated films (particularly Disney animated films) were — almost without exception — musicals. At a time when Hollywood couldn’t make a live-action musical that more than ten people would watch, Disney cranked out classics such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King and made hundreds of millions of dollars as audiences flocked to see people (and crabs and lions and dishware) belt out songs between dialogue.

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