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Song of the Day #3,930: ‘Grinding All My Life’ – Nipsey Hussle

When rapper Nipsey Hussle was murdered last week, shot outside his Los Angeles clothing store, several of my Facebook friends were distraught. A lot of celebrities I follow on Instagram were similarly shaken, posting moving tributes to a man whose music and message had moved them.

All of those people are younger and blacker than me, and I’ve never been much of a rap fan, so I guess it’s no surprise that I live in a different world, one where I had never heard the name Nipsey Hussle until this tragic incident.

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Song of the Day #3,929: ‘Hotwax’ – Beck

‘Hotwax,’ the second track on Beck’s breakthrough 1996 album Odelay, sums up the genre-busting weirdness of that album quite nicely.

This song mixes a blues guitar riff with hip-hop beats, rapped lyrics and a Spanish-language chorus, and emerges as something wholly unique. Or at least as unique as everything else on Odelay, which is full of sonic mind-fucks like this.

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Song of the Day #3,928: ‘The Circle Game’ – Joni Mitchell

This early Joni Mitchell song is one of her most popular, having been covered by more than 200 artists. It follows a boy through childhood, comparing the passage of time to a carousel.

Mitchell released this song on her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon, a few years after it had already shown up on albums by Buffy Sainte-Marie and Tom Rush.

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Song of the Day #3,927: ‘Without You’ – Badfinger

I know Badfinger’s most famous song, 1970’s ‘Without You,’ pretty well, though probably not through their original version. Harry Nilsson’s version reached #1 for a month in early 1972, and Mariah Carey had an international hit with the song in 1994, a week after Nilsson’s death.

The original version, featured today, has a definite late-60s Beatles vibe, appropriate because Badfinger was the first band signed to The Beatles’ Apple label and the band recorded songs written by Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Apparently Nilsson thought this was a Beatles track when he first heard it.

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Song of the Day #3,926: ‘To Hell & Back’ – Maren Morris

Maren Morris is having a moment. The Nashville singer is coming off of the top five smash ‘The Middle’ (with producer/DJ Zedd) and just dropped ‘GIRL,’ her second full-length album to high sales and critical acclaim.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with Morris’ debut album, Hero, though I liked it well enough. I’m enjoying Girl a lot more.

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