The streaming revolution has no doubt changed music listening for the better.
For a small monthly price, I now have practically every song or album I’ll ever want to hear at my fingertips. I can listen to new releases by artists I might have otherwise never heard, and I can dive deep into the catalogs of great artists, unburdened by the costs that used to come with being a completist.
I’m surprised I’ve never featured a song from Van Morrison’s 1997 album, The Healing Game. Not because it’s a favorite of mine — I don’t think I’ve heard it all the way through since my initial listens — but because I have a clear memory of buying it.
On Wednesday, I recalled my then-girlfriend, Alex, and I buying two copies of Billy Joel’s River of Dreams because we didn’t yet live together. Well, today’s album is likely the first one Alex and I bought after getting married.
Here’s a blast from the not-too-distant past — the opening track of V.V. Brown’s 2009 debut album, Travelling Like the Light. Brown is best known for that album’s breakout single ‘Shark in the Water,’ a song that still gets plenty of play in my family’s musical rotation.
While ‘Shark in the Water’ remains a staple, I haven’t revisited this album in about a decade, despite the glowing review I posted on this very site. Browsing through it now after this song popped up for today’s Random Weekend selection, I find it just as delightful as I did back then.
We have another chance for the Random iTunes Fairy to match a song to a milestone. Today is frequent commenter Dana’s birthday — Happy Birthday, Dana! — so he will have the chance to comment on a song chosen (randomly) just for him.
Let’s spin the dial…
Well, this is a rather funny outcome. This is a remixed version of a cut on Ron Sexsmith’s sixth studio album, 2002’s Cobblestone Runway. And I happen to have featured the original version already, so we have Dana’s first reaction on record.
This song appears toward the end of Disc One of Miranda Lambert’s 2016 The Weight of These Wings. It’s one of only two tracks on the double album not written by Lambert.
‘Covered Wagon’ is a cover of one of singer-songwriter Danny O’Keefe’s earliest songs. O’Keefe is a Seattle-based folk-rock performer whose work has been covered by a host of artists over the past 50 years. The one readers of this blog might know best is ‘The Road,’ performed by Jackson Browne on his Running on Empty album.
Meet Me In Montauk 