Category Archives: song of the day

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Song of the Day #1,122: ‘Find Yourself’ – Brad Paisley

Brad Paisley’s second contribution to the Cars soundtrack was ‘Find Yourself,’ a ballad that played over the film’s end credits.

This is another song I really loved from that album despite having no idea who performed it. It’s such an achingly pretty song, and it works as both a specific comment on the movie’s plot and as a philosophy that applies to all of our lives.

Country music lyrics are often bashed as too corny or too on-the-nose, but I think the best of them are profound in their simple wisdom. And the puns and double meanings that typify the art form are often worthy of a clever wordsmith like Elvis Costello.

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Song of the Day #1,121: ‘Behind the Clouds’ – Brad Paisley

It turns out that before I “discovered” Brad Paisley in 2009, I had already heard and loved two of his songs.

The soundtrack to Pixar’s 2006 film Cars was their first to include songs from a multitude of artists. Randy Newman wrote the score and contributed his standard tear-jerking show-stopper but the film also featured tunes by Sheryl Crow, Chuck Berry, Rascal Flatts and John Mayer.

And two songs by some country singer whose name I never bothered to look up.

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Song of the Day #1,120: ‘The House That Built Me’ – Dia Frampton & Miranda Lambert

In the final episode of The Voice, when all the voting was done and the network just needed to burn 55 minutes before revealing the winner, each of the finalists got to perform with an established artist.

Javier Colon sang ‘Landslide’ with the legendary Stevie Nicks, whose voice is showing signs of age but who still commands the stage with her very awesomeness. Vicci Martinez performed with the guy from Train, one of her favorite groups. Beverly McClellan sang with some guy I’d never heard of before and further established that, no matter how strong her voice is, she can’t command an audience’s attention for more than 20 seconds.

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Song of the Day #1,119: ‘This Love’ – Team Blake

The rapport between the coaches or judges is a key factor on all of these talent competitions. I’ve never watched American Idol but even from afar I could tell that the Simon Cowell/Paula Abdul dynamic made for much better television than a poor fit like Ellen DeGeneres.

Through luck or good casting, The Voice wound up with a set of coaches with strong chemistry, both as a group and in individual pairings. It was fun to see them sharing glances, wondering who would press the button first during the blind auditions. Blake suggested than one contestant choose him over Cee-Lo because “he’ll dress you up like Batman.”

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Song of the Day #1,118: ‘Love is a Battlefield’ – Cee-Lo Green & Vicci Martinez

One of the neat aspects of The Voice was seeing the coaches and contestants perform together. During the first few weeks of the series they performed as teams but once they were down to the final four, we were treated to duets by each coach and his or her one remaining singer.

Dia Frampton and Blake Shelton delivered a charming but mostly forgettable rendition of Tom Petty‘s ‘I Won’t Back Down.’ Adam Levine and Javier Colon traded falsettos while singing Michael Jackson’s ‘Man in the Mirror,’ a song they both love but I hate. And Christina Aguilera and Beverly McLellan performed a lovely acoustic version of Aguilera’s moving ‘Beautiful’ with Linda Perry, the song’s writer, accompanying on guitar.

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