Each January I like to check out the annual Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll, now in its 44th year, to get a sense of what critics thought of the previous year in music.
It usually leans a little more toward infuriating than illuminating, as critics tend to flock toward the same obvious choices. If Kanye West farts on record, it has a 100% chance of making the top ten in this poll. That said, I have also discovered some great songs there that I wouldn’t have otherwise heard.
Sometimes a Random iTunes Weekend selection pops up and I just got nothing. No feelings about the band or the song one way or the other. No anecdote about how the selection made it to my music library in the first place. Nothing.
Such is the case with today’s SOTD, ‘Mind Eraser’ by The Black Keys. Fine song, reminiscent of every other Black Keys song I’ve heard, but that’s it.
The Hunger Games soundtrack is the gift that keeps on gving, popping up on Random Weekends to deliver somber ballads appropriate to the film’s dystopian Appalachian setting.
Today’s example is from Punch Brothers, a “progressive bluegrass” band that formed a decade ago in Brooklyn (of course).
It’s lovely, like most of the album.
Yesterday I wrote that Beyoncé’s Lemonade topped nearly every 2016 top ten list. But it only made it to #2 on mine because Miranda Lambert released her best album yet, continuing her pattern of topping herself with every new release.
The Weight of These Wings is a double album and the first creative output for Lambert since her divorce from fellow country superstar Blake Shelton, and it continues the tradition of great break-up albums.
Beyoncé’s Lemonade has been declared the album of the year by unanimous decree. I don’t think I read a single top ten list that didn’t put the “visual album” at the top, and with good reason.
Nobody else has the power to bend popular culture to her whim the way Beyoncé does. Adele and Taylor Swift might sell more albums, but they don’t inspire hundreds of political and cultural think pieces. They don’t spark protests on both sides of hot button issues.
Meet Me In Montauk 