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Song of the Day #4,560: ‘Happiness’ – Taylor Swift

Following Taylor Swift’s last two album releases — Lover and Folklore — I spent a week counting down the tracks in order of my preference. I never expected this to be such a frequently occurring segment, but here we are, as Swift dropped her second straight surprise album of 2020 two week back.

Evermore is a sister record to Folklore, recorded with the same collaborators and in the same style. It feels more like Folklore: B-sides than a brand-new release, but it’s a strong collection in its own right. In keeping with the new tradition, I’ll spend the week ranking Evermore‘s songs from worst to best.

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Song of the Day #4,559: ‘I Zimbra’ – Talking Heads

Maybe it’s the David Byrne American Utopia movie released earlier this year, or maybe it’s pandemic-related, but I’ve been really digging on Talking Heads lately.

When today’s song — the opening track of the 1979 album Fear of Music — popped up as a Random Weekend selection, I was positively giddy. With lyrics based on a nonsensical Dadaist poem by Hugo Ball and music inspired by the African rhythms Byrne was increasingly drawn to, this song is unlike anything the band had done to that point, but still perfectly in character.

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Song of the Day #4,558: ‘How?’ – John Lennon

This track from John Lennon’s 1971 solo album Imagine is 18 days too late to officially mark the 40th anniversary of his death, but it will have to do.

It’s hard to believe that John Lennon has now been dead for exactly as long as he was alive. When I see that something happened in 1980, it doesn’t seem all that long ago, but then I realize we’re a full two decades into the new millennium. Damn, that happened fast.

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Song of the Day #4,556: ‘Shoals of Herring’ – Oscar Isaac

Continuing my countdown of every Coen Brothers movie…

#2. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
(down one spot from previous ranking)

I think it was the Coen Brothers’ third film, 1990’s Miller’s Crossing, that cemented them as my favorite filmmakers. I was a college freshman, interested in film as a career, when I sat in the theater and let this gorgeous, funny, dark, poetic film wash over me.

That same fall, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas came out. I’m not sure which I saw first, but I remember being amazed at how such completely different gangster films could both work so well. A couple of years later, I wrote a paper on mob movies for a film class, focusing on those two extraordinary achievements.

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