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Song of the Day #514: ‘Day Tripper’ – The Beatles

Here’s the flip side of that double-A single I mentioned yesterday, and while ‘Day Tripper’ wasn’t as big a hit as ‘We Can Work It Out’ (and isn’t as good a song) it’s still an excellent tune.

John was the principal author of ‘Day Tripper,’ though there are conflicting accounts about how much of a role Paul played. It’s funny how the two men are in agreement about the authorship of so many of their songs but once in awhile you come upon one that they can’t seem to agree on. Just a case of fuzzy memories, I suppose, because it’s not like either man needed a bigger piece of ‘Day Tripper’ to solidify his songwriting bona fides.

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Brad Paisley – American Saturday Night

For the longest time I had a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything that even resembled country music… it was the antithesis of the sort of “cool” music I was proud to like.

But then things got complicated, as things tend to do.

First it was the country detours by some of my favorite artists — Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue, for example. It was tempting to dismiss those albums as ill-advised experiments, but tickling the back of my brain was the complicating knowledge that ‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’ and ‘A Good Year For the Roses’ are really good songs.

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Song of the Day #513: ‘We Can Work It Out’ – The Beatles

This weekend I’ll highlight two more of The Beatles’ non-album tracks, starting with the more popular song on their 1965 double-A side release of ‘We Can Work It Out’ and ‘Day Tripper.’

Though Lennon and McCartney shared songwriting credit on every one of their songs, it was very rare that they actually collaborated. ‘We Can Work It Out’ was one of those infrequent collaborations — Paul wrote the verses and chorus while John contributed the bridge (“Life is very hard and there’s no time…”). For that reason, and because it’s so damn good, this is generally considered one of the band’s best songs.

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Song of the Day #512: ‘Close to You’ – Frank Sinatra

Today is my parents’ anniversary and I’m marking the occasion by featuring a song by their favorite singer, Frank Sinatra. My dad was a big Sinatra fan back in the 60s when he and my mom became a couple… he largely bypassed the rock music bursting on the scene in favor of ol’ blue eyes. He’s one of those guys who was already 60 when he was 18 (and now that he’s in his 60s he looks like he’s 38, so he’s all over the map).

My mom made room for Elvis and The Beatles but she, too, was a Sinatra fan at heart. She’s been a little more adventurous musically than he has (though I’m admittedly stretching the definition of “adventurous”) but come dinner time in that household, nine times out of ten it’s going to be Sinatra coming out of the speakers. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Song of the Day #511: ‘Crying’ – TV On the Radio

I took some birthday money and bought a bunch of new music right around this time last year. Actually, I even wrote a post about it… this one. Of the seven CDs I bought, two rose quickly to the top of the heap: Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad (the beginning of a beautiful friendship) and TV On the Radio’s Dear Science.

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