Author Archives

by

Song of the Day #1,143: ‘Everybody’s Here’ – Brad Paisley

American Saturday Night is so chock full of good songs that I could dedicate the next four weekends to it and not hit all of the highlights.

I could pair up the jack-rabbit guitar workout of the hilarious ‘Catch All the Fish’ with the delicate ballad ‘Anything Like Me,’ in which Paisley imagines all the trouble his young son will get into over the years if he takes after his old man.

Certainly I should find room to highlight ‘The Pants,’ in which Paisley exposes macho chauvinists the world over as the helpless babies they really are. Or the title song, a celebration of our melting pot, with its wonderful audience shout-along moment (“Little Italy, Chinatown, sittin’ there side by side… live from New York, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!”) that makes you think every time you hear it how great Paisley must be in concert.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #1,142: ‘She’s Her Own Woman’ – Brad Paisley

Brad Paisley followed his instrumental album, Play, with the finest release of his career (to date), 2009’s American Saturday Night. This is the album that originally brought Paisley to my attention.

After seeing both Time magazine and Slate.com rank American Saturday Night as the best album of the year — of any genre — I figured I had to give it a try. I was hooked instantly.

As the theory goes, the album that introduces you to a favorite artist tends to be your favorite of his albums. That’s certainly the case here, and there is no better introduction to Brad Paisley than American Saturday Night.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #1,141: ‘Hair’ – Lady Gaga

Lady GaGa’s second full-length album, Born This Way, arrived with such fanfare and hype that it couldn’t help but disappoint. It sold well (in part because of a mega-discounted Web deal) but nobody got all that excited about it.

And I’m kind of happy about that. Not because I don’t like Lady GaGa — I do — but because bringing her down to earth might be the best way to shift her focus from the pageantry to the music. GaGa’s music, as it turns out, it actually damn good. And Born This Way shows more promise of a long career than the admittedly addictive pop flash of her Fame records.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #1,140: ‘Little Miss’ – Sugarland

Sugarland’s 2010 Incredible Machine is an album I never got around to ranking or reviewing, primarily because I never got around to listening to it more than twice.

The band’s 2008 album, Love On the Inside, was a breath of fresh air that really made an impact. This was one of the rare country albums that I took to before I drank the Brad Paisley Kool-Aid a year or so later.

Love On the Inside is full of charm, wit and spirit. Kristian Bush, half of the under-appreciated Billy Pilgrim, brought some of that band’s sound to his work with Jennifer Nettles, and Nettles’ brassy twang suited the collection splendidly. The album deservedly put Sugarland on a superstar pedestal.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #1,139: ‘Leave Her Alone’ – Steven Page

Two years ago I did a theme week on Barenaked Ladies and, in my final post, lamented the fact that lead singer and co-writer Steven Page had left the band. Would they be able to carry on without him in anything like the fashion they had established over the first fifteen years of their existence? And what would Page accomplish on his own?

Two years later, we have our answers. Barenaked Ladies released All in Good Time, their first Page-less album, to generally good reviews, though a couple of early pans and lack of enthusiasm over the song snippets I’ve heard kept me from buying the album.

And Steven Page released a solo album, Page One, that’s better than almost anything Barenaked Ladies ever put out.

Continue reading →