Like pretty much every song on Elliott Smith’s self-titled 1995 album, ‘Single File’ is about heroin. Or at least it is using heroin as both a subject and a metaphor.
In this case, the lyrics describe a visit to a methadone clinic, where you wait in a “single file” line to receive your treatment for heroin addiction.
Here’s a great track from Eminem’s 2013 album The Marshall Mathers LP 2, a sequel to his breakthrough 2000 The Marshall Mathers LP.
I don’t know if it’s on me or Eminem, but this is the last album of his I really responded to. He followed it with Revival in 2017, an album I listened to twice and immediately forgot. Then came the surprise 2018 drop of Kamikaze, which I gave just one listen before tuning out.
‘Acuff-Rose’ is the second track on Uncle Tupelo’s seminal 1993 alt-country album Anodyne. This was the band’s fourth and final release, before its members went on to form Wilco and Sun Volt.
This track’s title refers to Nashville’s first country publishing house, formed in 1942 by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose. The two men vowed to start a company that would not take advantage of its artists, as so many labels at the time did.
This April, Ron Sexsmith will release his 16th studio album, Hermitage. The Canadian singer-songwriter has been putting out new music at a pretty good clip for 30 years now.
I joined the bandwagon 19 years ago, when an online group of Elvis Costello fans steered me to his 2001 album Blue Boy. I fell hard for that record, and as often happens with introductory albums, it remains one of my favorites of his.
Here’s an interesting track from Brad Paisley’s 2013 album Wheelhouse. It’s a modern-day gospel song by a man who is a regular churchgoer himself, but it’s told from the perspective of a non-believer.
Paisley spends the song’s first four verses mocking “those crazy Christians” for their devotion, but then has to give them credit for their commitment to caring for people they’ve never even met.
Meet Me In Montauk 