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Song of the Day #4,987: ‘The Winner Takes It All’ – ABBA

I’ve delayed my year-end movie posts as long as I can, hoping to fit in the last few titles on my watchlist. I managed to catch a couple of them, but I’m still missing some key films, including multiple Oscar nominees Drive My Car and The Worst Person in the World.

I can’t wait forever, though, so over the next four weeks I will offer up my favorite musical moments on screen last year, my favorite performances, and then my personal top ten list. That will take us right up to Oscar night, finally putting the 2021 film year to bed three months into 2022.

This week, I’ll cover the musical moments.

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Song of the Day #4,986: ‘Chips Ahoy!’ – The Hold Steady

I’m not sure how I came to own the 2006 album Boys and Girls in America by alternative rockers The Hold Steady, and I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it.

The band has made only one other appearance on the blog, in a post about a song they performed for the closing credits of a Game of Thrones episode.

Today’s song is the second track on the band’s third album, and it’s a wonderful Random Weekend find. It’s sharp, propulsive and fun.

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Song of the Day #4,985: ‘Boy Problems’ – Carly Rae Jepsen

Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2015 album Emotion is a rare bird — an audience-friendly pop confection considered a cult classic due to its low sales and small but devoted fan base.

This album is so bright and infectious, it should have been pouring out of radios and phones all over the world. Instead, it showed up on plenty of critics’ top ten lists but struggled to chart. The album sold better in Japan than in the United States or Jepsen’s native Canada.

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Song of the Day #4,984: ‘Gasoline (feat. Taylor Swift)’ – HAIM

I was struggling for a post to close out the week before I get to the 2021 movie-related content that will populate the blog for the next month or so.

Then I came across this Taylor Swift-assisted remix of the HAIM song ‘Gasoline,’ from their 2020 album Women in Music, Pt. III. That album was my favorite of 2020 and ‘Gasoline’ was my favorite song on it.

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Song of the Day #4,983: ‘Tera Surroor’ – Himesh Reshammiya

When writing recent posts about Michael Jackson and Meat Loaf, I had a chance to peruse the list of the world’s all-time top-selling albums. Most of the entries made sense, but one jumped out at me.

Apparently, the album that is second only to Jackson’s Thriller, with more than 55 million copies sold, is a 2006 release titled Aap Kaa Surroor by Indian actor/singer Himesh Reshammiya. It seems just about every one of those 55 million copies was sold in India, which explains why this is news to me. The album was Reshammiya’s first, and was followed up by his debut acting performance in a film of the same name.

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