I occasionally look at YouTube’s list of most-watched video clips of all-time just to see where the country is headed.
Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ holds onto the crown, and has now been viewed more than 1.5 BILLION times. To top that off, an alternate version of the song performed with Korean pop star Hyuna now sits in the 20th spot with an additional 343 million views. That takes “one-hit wonder” into a new stratosphere.
My old pal Brad Paisley has been in the news a lot the past week or so, and not in a good way.
A track on his new album, Wheelhouse, called ‘Accidental Racist’ has been vilified as racist itself, or at the very least tone deaf about race relations.
The track, a duet between Paisley and rapper LL Cool J, is an imagined conversation between a “Skynrd fan” with a confederate flag on his T-shirt and a black Starbucks employee who (presumably on his off hours) wears a do-rag, sagging pants and gold chains.
A few months back there was a brief moment where popular songs in the opposite key were all the rage. Minor key version of major key songs and major key versions of minor key songs hit YouTube in a wave.
The first one I heard was this major key rendition of R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion.’
Somehow this video — with all of its Basic Instinct goodness — escaped my attention in the several years since it was released.
Rumor had it that the track was addressed to Jay-Z after an alleged affair with Rihanna. All parties involved deny that.
Random Weekends are looking a lot like Elvis Costello Weekends this week.
Today’s track is another of the many bonus tracks Costello has released on the numerous reissues of his back catalog. I will let the man himself describe this version of the Imperial Bedroom track ‘Kid About It,’ as well as the story behind the writing of the song.
