Monthly Archives: July 2022

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Song of the Day #5,120: ‘Running Up That Hill’ – Kate Bush

Stranger Things is a big deal in my house. Equal parts Stephen King and Steven Spielberg, the hit Netflix series is a winning blend of humor, horror and heart. My daughter Fiona has watched every season multiple times, and has bought enough merch to fund the series’ upcoming final chapter.

Fiona is so rabid about the show that her practice is to binge each new season without interruption starting the moment it drops. So for season three, that meant an 8-hour stretch starting at midnight. And I’ll add that we were on a family cruise vacation at the time. She’s crazy.

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Song of the Day #5,119: ‘The Moon and St. Christopher’ – Mary Chapin Carpenter

‘The Moon and St. Christopher’ is the final track on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 1990 album Shooting Straight in the Dark. It’s a beautiful, simple track that has a bit of that early 90s adult contemporary polish but could really have been written and recorded at any time.

Shooting Straight in the Dark was Carpenter’s third album and her first of three straight Platium releases to start the decade.

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Song of the Day #5,118: ‘My Shot (Rise Up Remix)’ – The Roots (feat. Busta Rhymes, Joell Ortiz & Nate Ruess)

Eight years ago, in the middle of the initial wave of Hamilton-mania, I posted a handful of songs from the Hamilton Mixtape, a project that saw the musical’s songs reinterpreted by a host of contemporary musicians.

It was a cool project that shed new light on great songs, and allowed Lin-Manuel Miranda to enlist some of the artists who inspired his work. It’s also the kind of novelty release you listen to once or twice and never revisit.

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Song of the Day #5,117: ‘About Damn Time’ – Lizzo

It’s been a minute since Lizzo dropped new music, and three years since her last studio album, 2019’s Cuz I Love You. But a whole new summer of Lizzo is on the horizon, with the planned release of her fourth album, Special, a week from today.

Setting the table is the rapper-singer’s fourth Top Five single, ‘About Damn Time,’ which has been burning up TikTok for awhile. This is a disco-funk banger that instantly brightens any room — in other words, a typical Lizzo song.

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Song of the Day #5,116: ‘Matilda’ – Harry Styles

The release of a new Harry Styles album is a bit like Christmas morning in my house, at least for my two daughters. They have both been Styles fans since his days with One Direction, have seen him in concert twice, and obsess over him as both an artist and a human man.

Being adjacent to all of that has made me pretty familiar with his musical output, enough to know that he’s the real deal. He has an appreciation for a wide range of artists, mostly from the 70s, that makes his work a fun exercise in “name that influence” while being fresh and enjoyable in its own right.

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