I can’t write an introduction to today’s Random SOTD that’s as succinct and effective as this one from Genius.com:
“Ever write a song so great that the four greatest Outlaw Country singers of all time named their supergroup after it? No? Well, that’s because you’re not Jimmy Webb.”
Indeed, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson teamed up for three albums between the mid 80s and mid 90s as The Highwaymen, with this song as their inspiration.
I’ve posted only five Sting songs over the years, and two of those were ‘Englishman in New York.’ As I posted in my first ‘Englishman in New York’ Song of the Day entry, the guy just generally bugs me. He’s a major talent, no doubt, but I can’t spent a lot of time listening to him.
The post linked above led to a lively discussion about artists who rub you the wrong way, including my sister’s confession that she hates my beloved Fiona Apple. Good reading.
Here’s a great track from Dar Williams’ 2000 album, The Green World. Yoko Ono has taken a lot of shit over the years for breaking up The Beatles, the sort of female-shaming that wouldn’t fly so easily these days.
Williams is a great feminist songwriter (see ‘When I Was a Boy,’ one of my very favorite songs) and she takes up for Yoko here quite nicely.
I generally don’t have much patience for Sufjan Stevens, one of the indie-ist of indie artists. But today’s Random SOTD, the first track from his 2010 album The Age of Adz, is lovely.
Here’s an example of Random Weekends at their best. This track from Barenaked Ladies Are Men, the band’s final album before the departure of Steven Page, is a lovely find — one I’ve probably heard before but I sure can’t remember when.
Released in 2007 as a companion piece to the previous year’s Barenaked Ladies Are Me, this album received generally strong reviews. But for some reason, though I’m a big fan of most of the band’s catalog, I just never took to it. And when Page left a couple of years later, so did I.
Meet Me In Montauk 