I like when my Random Weekends produce a song that is new to me.
This one comes from the Hunger Games soundtrack, which I bought due to the presence of Pistol Annies, Neko Case, Arcade Fire, Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift. I think I listened to the whole thing through only once.
I don’t know who The Carolina Chocolate Drops are, but this is a nice enough track. It does a good job channeling the Appalachian dystopia of the book and film.
Here’s a lovely track from Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy, the 1989 album that rescued him from his mid-80s slump.
Dylan followed Oh Mercy a year later with the uninspired and downright goofy Under the Red Sky and then it would be nine years before his late career renaissance kicked off with 1997’s Time Out of Mind.
‘Home’ is a track from Tim McGraw’s great album, Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors. Just about every song on this album is a winner.
The beginning of this song has always struck me as very similar to the opening notes of Elvis Costello’s ‘You Bowed Down.’ You can compare for yourself here.
I doubt the composers of this song copied Costello, and the notes aren’t exact anyway, but it has always distracted me.
One of the hazards of Random Weekends is that you can wind up with a snippet of a song that doesn’t work out of context.
Such is the case with today’s SOTD, ‘I Was Wrong,’ by Badly Drawn Boy. This minute-long track segues into its companion song, ‘You Were Right,’ which I featured on the blog more than five years ago.
This past week I dedicated a lot of time to the crop of pop divas who dominate the charts. But I’d trade every one of them for Pink, who doesn’t sell as many records but produces much more resonant music.
I’ve been meaning to buy (do I have to say “download” these days?) Pink’s early albums because I’m a huge fan of her most recent releases, Funhouse and The Truth About Love. Usually when I latch on to somebody’s new material I start digging back into their earlier work but I haven’t gotten around to that with Pink. Gotta do that.
Meet Me In Montauk 