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Song of the Day #1,123: ‘DLZ’ – TV On the Radio

Often I’ll check out a song I like on YouTube, considering it for a blog post or just giving it a listen at work, and I’ll see a bunch of comments along these lines:

“Who’s here because they saw this on The Shield??”
“Just heard this song in Justified and had to look it up!”
“Loved when this played at the end of House!”

It used to be considered selling out when a band gave its music to a TV show or commercial. These days it’s just smart marketing. And it works, based on the number of people who find their way from their TV sets to a YouTube clip of the song.

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Song of the Day #1,122: ‘Find Yourself’ – Brad Paisley

Brad Paisley’s second contribution to the Cars soundtrack was ‘Find Yourself,’ a ballad that played over the film’s end credits.

This is another song I really loved from that album despite having no idea who performed it. It’s such an achingly pretty song, and it works as both a specific comment on the movie’s plot and as a philosophy that applies to all of our lives.

Country music lyrics are often bashed as too corny or too on-the-nose, but I think the best of them are profound in their simple wisdom. And the puns and double meanings that typify the art form are often worthy of a clever wordsmith like Elvis Costello.

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Song of the Day #1,121: ‘Behind the Clouds’ – Brad Paisley

It turns out that before I “discovered” Brad Paisley in 2009, I had already heard and loved two of his songs.

The soundtrack to Pixar’s 2006 film Cars was their first to include songs from a multitude of artists. Randy Newman wrote the score and contributed his standard tear-jerking show-stopper but the film also featured tunes by Sheryl Crow, Chuck Berry, Rascal Flatts and John Mayer.

And two songs by some country singer whose name I never bothered to look up.

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Song of the Day #1,120: ‘The House That Built Me’ – Dia Frampton & Miranda Lambert

In the final episode of The Voice, when all the voting was done and the network just needed to burn 55 minutes before revealing the winner, each of the finalists got to perform with an established artist.

Javier Colon sang ‘Landslide’ with the legendary Stevie Nicks, whose voice is showing signs of age but who still commands the stage with her very awesomeness. Vicci Martinez performed with the guy from Train, one of her favorite groups. Beverly McClellan sang with some guy I’d never heard of before and further established that, no matter how strong her voice is, she can’t command an audience’s attention for more than 20 seconds.

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Song of the Day #1,119: ‘This Love’ – Team Blake

The rapport between the coaches or judges is a key factor on all of these talent competitions. I’ve never watched American Idol but even from afar I could tell that the Simon Cowell/Paula Abdul dynamic made for much better television than a poor fit like Ellen DeGeneres.

Through luck or good casting, The Voice wound up with a set of coaches with strong chemistry, both as a group and in individual pairings. It was fun to see them sharing glances, wondering who would press the button first during the blind auditions. Blake suggested than one contestant choose him over Cee-Lo because “he’ll dress you up like Batman.”

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