The Random iTunes Fairy chose an interesting pair of songs this weekend. While yesterday’s track showcased the importance of the single, today’s selection is all about the deep cut.
The final track on Jenny Lewis’ 2005 album Rabbit-Fur Coat, ‘It Wasn’t Me’ is in no danger of winding up on the radio. But it’s a lovely little closing track, one that deserves to be heard. It’s the antithesis of a song like The Corrs’ ‘Breathless’ that was born to wind up on one of those NOW compilations.
To some degree, I have embraced the era of the single. While I still consider myself an “album guy” and wouldn’t consider not buying the latest album by any of my favorite artists, I have warmed up to the idea of owning individual songs.
This flies in the face of my vehement anti-‘greatest hits’ stance, because what is a collection of unrelated songs by a single artist if not a greatest hits collection? But my objection to those records has always been that they rob a listener of the deep album cuts that are often even better than the hits. I guess I’ve finally gotten around to acknowledging that sometimes (with some artists) the hits are all you need.
The Random iTunes Man is going all theme weekend on me.
Here’s another track from Elvis Costello, this time from the excellent Get Happy!!. Listening to it has me thinking I ranked this album too low on my list of favorite 80s records. Isn’t that always the case? Whatever you’re enjoying in the moment feels like the best thing ever, until you move on to the next thing.
That’s what makes lists kind of ridiculous. Of course it’s never stopped me from obsessively compiling them.
Elvis Costello has written so many songs that I’m sure not even he can keep up with them.
Indeed, in the liner notes for the reissue of Mighty Like a Rose, he admits that he forgot about this existence of today’s SOTD until it came up in a search of material from the recording sessions.
‘Just Another Mystery’ isn’t among Costello’s finest songs, by any means, but can you imagine creating something as fully realized as this and then just forgetting about it? He probably wrote three equally good songs the same day.
Before the release of his 2008 album, Way to Normal, Ben Folds decided to have some fun with his fans.
Because all albums inevitably leak onto the Internet weeks before their release, Folds figured he’d embrace that fact and leak it himself. Only he didn’t leak the actual album, but instead recorded joke version of six album tracks and put those out alongside a couple of “real” songs.
Meet Me In Montauk 