Category Archives: song of the day

by

Song of the Day #3,064: ’24K Magic’ – Bruno Mars

bruno_mars_24k_magicRounding out Billboard’s top five are two more blog repeats — twenty one pilots with ‘Heathens’ and DJ Snake feat. Justin Bieber with ‘Let Me Love You.’ It’s been two months since I last did a Billboard countdown and yet half the top ten is intact. I guess you don’t see a lot of chart movement in the fall.

At #6 is Bruno Mars with ’24K Magic,’ his claim to retake the pop music throne after the runaway success of ‘Uptown Funk.’ And given that that track was actually a Mark Ronson tune, it’s actually been four years and two Super Bowl performances since Mars released his last album.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #3,063: ‘Starboy’ – The Weeknd feat. Daft Punk

the_weeknd_starboyThe Chainsmokers’ ‘Closer’ — already featured here — sits at Billboard’s #2 spot this week. At #3 is The Weeknd with ‘Starboy,’ the first single from his upcoming album of the same name.

‘Starboy’ (as the video makes crystal clear) is about The Weeknd coming to terms with his fame and moving past the persona he inhabited on his previous chart-toppers. At the beginning of the video, he literally kills the crazy-haired version of himself that fans came to know and love on ‘Can’t Feel My Face.’

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #3,062: ‘Black Beatles’ – Rae Sremmurd feat. Gucci Mane

rae_sremmurdWelcome to the final 2016 installment of ‘What the Kids Are Listening To.’ Over the next two weeks I’ll take one last spin through Billboard’s Hot 100 to take the pop culture pulse.

In the #1 spot this week is ‘Black Beatles’ by Rae Sremmurd. What is a Rae Sremmurd, you ask (or at least I do)? It’s a hip-hop duo from Tupelo, Mississippi, whose stage name is their label — EarDrummers — spelled backward.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #3,061: ‘Lazy Flies’ – Beck

mutationsBeck’s 1998 album Mutations remains one of my favorites. It’s a ramshackle, melancholy collection that proved to be a precursor to the lovely, sad-sack classics, Sea Change and Morning Phase, to come in the decades that followed.

Mutations isn’t as polished as those albums but it’s beautifully produced, sustaining an uneasy, almost post-apocalyptic, mood. It’s the soundtrack of the Earth depicted in the first half of WALL-E.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #3,060: ‘No Words’ – Wings

wings_band_on_the_runI don’t know much about Wings and I’ve never listened to Band On the Run — the only album of theirs I own — all the way through. So today’s Random iTunes selection was new to me.

Listening to it, it struck me as very much a cousin to late-era Beatles, something that would have felt at home on Abbey Road. Which makes sense, because it was presumably written by Paul McCartney.

Continue reading →