Rihanna is featured on three of the top 12 tracks in this week’s Billboard Hot 100. Love her or hate her, there’s no denying the woman is a hitmaker.
Me, I’m a fan. I won’t get into her latest album, Anti, here because I’ll save that discussion for an upcoming theme week on this year’s album releases, but suffice it to say it’s her best work since 2009’s Rated R, and the most ambitious record of her career.
The song at #7 this week, Mike Posner’s ‘I Took a Pill in Ibiza,’ is a good example of what I was writing about just yesterday.
Here’s a track that started its life as a slow, acoustic ballad about the loneliness of fame. But it didn’t hit the Top Ten in that form. It took the EDM producing team SeeB speeding it up and laying it over a beat to pull that off.
I usually know what to expect from these Billboard Hot 100 selections. I might not be familiar with Desiigner’s ‘Panda’ but I have a pretty good idea going in what I’m going to get.
Sometimes, though, I’m completely in the dark until I hit play on the YouTube video. Those are the most exciting Songs of the Day, because for a brief moment I live in a moment where I might be about to hear something extraordinary. Or something shitty. It’s Schrodinger’s Cat for music lovers.
I love me some Tom Petty.
Recently I bought several of Petty’s early albums at bargain basement prices on Amazon, more as a show of support than anything. None of those albums live up to his best work — Damn the Torpedoes, Full Moon Fever, Southern Accents and Wildflowers — but they are all thoroughly listenable.
Here’s the lesser-known (or at least lesser-known to me) Taylor Swift song from the original Hunger Games soundtrack. Her other contribution, ‘Safe & Sound,’ is a haunting track featuring backing vocals by the Civil Wars.
This one has a more typical Swift-ian sound, and is therefore less of a stylistic fit for the movie. Catchy song, though.
Meet Me In Montauk 