Today is my sister’s birthday, and you all know what it means when a birthday falls on a Random Weekend. Time to spin the wheel and see what the Random iTunes Fairy has in store by way of celebration.
And it’s… ‘Shattered,’ the final track on The Rolling Stones’ 1978 album Some Girls. This album, which embraced the dominant disco sound of the era, was critically acclaimed and became the band’s top-selling album.
One of the most rewarding deep dives I’ve done on the blog was of David Bowie, back in 2016 a few months after his death. I didn’t cover all 25 of his studio albums, but I did get to the 15 with the most acclaim and/or notoriety.
Because I hadn’t yet joined the streaming revolution at the time, I wound up buying the Bowie albums I didn’t already own, and as a result they now form a decent sized chunk of my increasingly outdated iTunes collection.
Here’s a song from Sheryl Crow’s 2008 album Detours, an album written and recorded after her 2006 breast cancer diagnosis.
‘Make It Go Away (Radiation Song)’ is rather obviously about her bout with cancer, and specifically the multiple radiation treatments she underwent to battle it. She made a full recovery, and soon thereafter split from boyfriend and fellow cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. Detours was written about that tumultuous period in her life.
Here’s a track from David Bowie’s 1970 album The Man Who Sold the World. When I wrote about this album during my 2016 Bowie deep dive, I said it sounded like a White Stripes song recorded five years before Jack White was born.
What I didn’t say at the time was that hard-edged guitar sound was courtesy of Mick Ronson, who is also believed to be the writer of this song, despite Bowie getting sole credit in the liner notes.
If you want to feel old, consider that U2 is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. During that span, they’ve released 14 albums and sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide. They are among the most revered and successful bands in popular music history.
And yet, they feel almost completely irrelevant these days. It’s been four years since their last release, the unmemorable Songs of Experience, and 15 years since their last bona fide hit, 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
Meet Me In Montauk 