‘What About Georgia’ is the second track on Miranda Lambert’s debut album, 2005’s Kerosene. She was 22 at the time and fresh off her third-place finish on the TV competition Nashville Star.
This song was written about another contestant on the show, Travis Howard, with whom Lambert has collaborated on many songs. Here’s how she explains the song’s origin:
‘All I Wanna Do’ is the song that launched Sheryl Crow into the public eye, and remains the biggest hit of her career. The track won Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, both well-earned.
I was going to use today’s blog entry to praise Crow’s excellent lyrics, because this song is an explosion of wonderful imagery and flawless characterization. But a little research revealed that the credit for those lyrics belongs to poet Wyn Cooper instead.
I haven’t listened to the Hunger Games soundtrack very often in the five years since its release. I bought it for a couple of Taylor Swift songs and a track by Pistol Annies, and I’ve given short shrift to the rest.
My mistake, I’m discovering, as a few of these tunes pop up on Random iTunes Weekends and turn out to be quite good. Here, Alabama-born The Secret Sisters deliver a mournful track, the sad delivery of which runs counter to its message of hope.
Last week I defended Bob Dylan’s foray into the music of Frank Sinatra, but today’s random iTunes selection serves as a nice reminder that nobody sings a Sinatra song like Sinatra.
‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ is a Cole Porter tune originally written for the Broadway music Anything Goes. That was in the mid 1930s. Sinatra recorded two studio versions of the song, one in 1953 and one in 1962 (the latter is the version below). Funny that this song was already an oldie when Frank sang it for the first time.
I was about to write something about thoroughly gay Rufus Wainwright’s decision was to recreate Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall concert song for song. But the sentiment seemed familiar. And sure enough, two years ago another song from this album popped up on a Random Weekend and prompted that very sentiment.
In fact, I’m pleased enough with the little joke I told then that I am simply going to repeat it now:
Meet Me In Montauk 