Category Archives: random weekends

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Song of the Day #3,375: ‘Long Way To Go’ – Ben Folds

Today’s Random iTunes Selection comes from Ben Folds’ 2015 album So There, a collaboration with chamber music ensemble yMusic. The album contains eight pop songs as well as Folds’ three-movement ‘Concerto for Piano and Orchestra’ (which I’ll admit, I listened to only once). The songs are mostly great, though.

‘Long Way To Go’ is an interesting track, in that it seems to be about itself. When Folds sings “we got just five minutes” there are exactly five minutes left in the song. Likewise with the “just three minutes” and “just one minute” verses. So is the whole song about getting to the end of the song? Or did Folds just time things out that way as an added challenge while writing about something more universal?

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Song of the Day #3,369: ‘Tears of Rage’ – Bob Dylan

A nice Random Weekend selection today from Bob Dylan’s album The Basement Tapes, which was released in 1975 but largely recorded in 1966. Dylan was backed by members of The Band on many of these songs, which were recorded in various homes in Woodstock, New York.

‘Tears of Rage,’ the closing track of Disc One, was written by Dylan and Richard Manuel. It is widely interpreted as an indictment of American materialism in the aftermath of the Vietnam war.

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Song of the Day #3,368: ‘Possession (Piano Version)’ – Sarah McLachlan

Today’s Random Weekend selection is the best-known song from one of the best albums of the 90s, Sarah McLachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. This is a bonus track, a piano and vocals version of lead single ‘Possession.’ It strips away the glorious production of the original but is no less powerful. Maybe more so.

McLachlan wrote this song in the voice of an obsessed fan, something she unfortunately had plenty of back in the day.

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Song of the Day #3,362: ‘Corazon’ – Titán

Today’s Random Weekend selection marks the sixth time a song from the Amores Perros soundtrack has been featured on the blog. Three of the other five were also Random Weekend picks. Guess the Random iTunes Fairy has a thing for Mexican films.

Amores Perros remains my favorite Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu film, even after the man won back-to-back Best Director Oscars for Birdman and The Revenant. Amores Perros was his feature length debut and in my opinion he never topped it.

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Song of the Day #3,361: ‘This is the Time’ – Billy Joel

A few weeks after Billy Joel won the Montauk Madness competition, the Randon iTunes Fairy has served up a song aimed at making all of us regret that outcome.

Billy Joel has written and recorded dozens of excellent songs and a handful of real stinkers. ‘This is the Time,’ from 1986’s otherwise fine album The Bridge, might be the stinkiest.

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