I was shocked to see that I hadn’t already featured Jack Johnson’s ‘Upside Down’ as a Song of the Day.
Surely I’ve done a theme week on music from kids’ movies over the past five and a half years, right? How could this one have missed the cut?
I’m not a big fan of Jack Johnson. His laid-back Hawaiian beach bum vibe doesn’t really do it for me, and I find his music redundant. But this song is a blast.
It’s hard to go wrong when a Barenaked Ladies song pops up on Random Weekends.
No matter the album, their songs are interesting thematically and musically, and almost always enjoyable listening (I’ll make an exception for the handful of lame-ass songs written by bassist Jim Creeggan).
I feel a little bit more in the know about today’s song, #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, because I just read about it in Rolling Stone.
For example, I know that Passenger is the stage name of British singer-songwriter Michael David Rosenberg, who has spent years busking in various countries.
The song sitting at #4 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 is a perfect illustration of why I’m featuring this hit parade once per month.
Apparently ‘Say Something’ has caused quite a stir for months without managing to be heard by me even once.
The piano ballad was released twice before, once on a solo record by Ian Axel in 2011 and again by Axel’s indie band A Great Big World in 2013. But it wasn’t until Christina Aguilera performed the track with the band on The Voice that it took off.
As soon as I saw that a Jason Derulo song was #3 on the charts this week, I wondered how long the track would run before he said his own name.
That’s my one impression of the Miami-born singer — that he speaks or sings his own name in every song of his I’ve ever heard.
This one turns out to be an exception. He was a woman say it instead, right at the beginning. I guess that’s artistic growth.
Meet Me In Montauk 