I have refused to join the Apple Music generation. Unlimited streaming access to virtually every song ever recorded might sound like a great thing, but the concept makes me uncomfortable.
I like the idea that I have a music collection — a library of artists and albums I have carefully cultivated over three and a half decades. A library that says a whole lot about who I am and how I’ve changed. A music collection is the soundtrack of your life. How can your soundtrack be every damn song ever?
R5 is a Los Angeles-based pop band made up of four siblings (Ross, Rocky, Riker and Rydel Lynch) and family friend Ellington Ratliff.
Ross Lynch is best known (in my household, anyway) as Austin from the Disney Channel sitcom Austin & Ally, a show about a pop star and the young woman who writes his songs. He is currently winning rave reviews for his performance as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the indie film My Friend Dahmer.
I heard Portugal. The Man’s ‘Feel It Still’ on the radio a couple of times before Sophia started promoting it, so I don’t owe this one entirely to her. But she did bring it front and center for me well before it reached its current hit status.
I assumed this was a relatively new band but in fact the Portland-based quintet has been recording since 2006 and this year released their eighth album. Sometimes overnight success takes more than a decade.
SZA is another artist I discovered through my daughter Sophia. While I haven’t listened to her debut full-length album CTRL (released this summer) in full, I like what I’ve heard.
SZA is the stage name of Solána Imani Rowe, a 27-year-old soul singer born in St. Louis, Missouri, but raised in a predominately white suburb of New Jersey. Raised by a Christian mother and Muslim father, she hopped between their faiths as a kid and now practices Islam. As a girl, she wore a hijab until bullying following the September 11th attacks forced her to stop.
I haven’t done a week of ‘What the Kids are Listening To’ songs in awhile, largely because I’m so unimpressed with what passes for hit music these days. ‘Bodak Yellow,’ seriously?
But I thought this would be a good time to dedicate a week to songs that my actual kids are listening to, specifically my 15-year-old daughter Sophia.
Sophia likes her share of music I find horrible (again, ‘Bodak Yellow,’ anyone?) but she has introduced me to a number of songs I quite enjoy. This week I’ll highlight five of them.
Meet Me In Montauk 