Disc Two of The Ghosts of Highway 20 kicks off with the title track. Fittingly, this song serves as the thematic underpinning of the whole album.
Highway 20 is a stretch of road that touches on all of these sad southern stories, all of this grace and pain, and Williams can look back and vividly recollect every mile. Williams counts Flannery O’Connor as an influence, and that southern gothic quality is all over this album.
The final track of Disc One of Lucinda Williams’ The Ghosts of Highway 20 is, lyrically, the most impressive so far. Also the most gut-wrenching.
Williams recalls her own childhood in Louisiana with sweet nostalgia. She paints a picture of carefree days spent mostly outside, and loving parents who got angry only over little things like spilled milk or a slamming screen door.
Track six on Lucinda Williams’ The Ghosts of Highway 20 is another lyrical downer. But according to Tom Overby, Williams’ husband and manager, it’s a “groovy little blues jam.”
Overby has posted lengthy write-ups of every song on the album to Williams’ Facebook page over the past few weeks, offering insight into the recording process and origin of each. I wish every artist would do that.
I’m surprised that this is the first track from Kate Bush’s 1985 album Hounds of Love I’ve featured on the blog. Through nearly 3,000 songs, I would have expected at least the great ‘Running Up That Hill’ to have its moment in the spotlight.
The truth is, I’ve only really gotten into the first handful of songs on the record, but they’re all great. Perhaps my favorite of all of them is today’s random selection, ‘Mother Stands For Comfort.’
During the 2000s, Brad Paisley put out five or six albums that were just chock full of great, fun songs like today’s Random iTunes Selection.
‘Easy Money’ is catchy, funny and sly like so much of Paisley’s work. Songs like this feel like they were written and recorded in a day, and I mean that as a compliment.
Meet Me In Montauk 