‘The Day and the Time’ is a track from Shakira’s 2005 album Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, an English-language record that was released five months after Fijación Oral, Vol. 1, a Spanish-language counterpart.
Most of the songs on each album are unique, but two overlap. Today’s track is the English-language version of a song called ‘Dia Especial.’ The same music is used but Shakira’s vocal track is replaced.
Barenaked Ladies probably spent about five minutes writing this song from their 2003 album Everything to Everyone. It’s goofily catchy but gets old about 30 seconds in.
Apparently this intentionally superficial ditty was written in response to comments then-President George W. Bush made in the aftermath of 9/11. He encouraged Americans to “go shopping” as a way to both help the economy and not let the fear of terrorism keep them from living life as they always had.
‘All Night’ is the penultimate track on Beyoncé’s extraordinary 2016 “visual album” Lemonade. The early single ‘Formation’ closes things out, but this track is the emotional resolution, and on of the album’s best songs.
Much was made of the anger on Lemonade‘s early tracks (“he better call Becky with the good hair”), and people initially thought the album might even be Beyoncé’s very public way of leaving Jay-Z.
Ah, one of my favorite things, a holiday that falls on a Random Weekend. A chance to spin the wheel and come up with a match that’s surprisingly appropriate, hysterically inappropriate, or somewhere in between.
Before I find out which it is, let me wish a heartfelt Happy Mother’s Day to my own beloved mother, who brightens every day with her warmth, wit and wisdom.
‘Murder by Numbers,’ the final track on The Police’s classic 1983 album Synchronicity, wasn’t originally intended for the album’s lineup. Indeed, it was left off of some LP releases of the album, though it appeared on cassette and CD.
The song started as the B-side of Synchronicity‘s most popular track, ‘Every Breath You Take.’
‘Murder by Numbers’ was co-written by guitarist Andy Summers, whose only other songwriting contribution on the album was ‘Mother,’ by far the record’s worst track. He did just fine here, though, coming up with a seductive jazz-pop arrangement.
I recently made playlists for each of my daughters, filled with songs I expected (and hoped) they would like. They have different musical sweet spots, overlapping with my own and a little bit with each other.
My younger daughter, Fiona, shares my love for gentle, melancholy songs. Aimee Mann, Simon & Garfunkel, that sort of thing. So I knew she’d be a perfect audience for my beloved Ron Sexsmith, who has made a career out of those kinds of songs.
‘Strangers in the Night,’ recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1966 for an album of the same name, reached #1 in both the U.S. and the UK. It won three Grammy awards, including Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The album became the most commercially successful in Sinatra’s career.
And yet Ol’ Blue Eyes hated the song. When he was first given the sheet music, he reportedly told his aid “I don’t want to sing this, it’s a piece of shit.”
