Oh, how close we came to having a John Mayer song as the Random Weekend selection for frequent commenter Dana’s birthday! That would have been a fun twist given Dana’s Mayer bashing over the years.
But alas, Mr. Mayer arrives a day late. Maybe next year.
Today’s song is from the 2012 album Born and Raised, his fifth and one of his best. Influenced by Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the 70s Laurel Canyon scene, it’s a relaxed and lovely record.
[NOTE: I lost track of my dates and initially thought the 7th fell on a Saturday, so I wrote this post for Random Weekends. Rather than redo everything, I’m going to run this weekend’s posts today and tomorrow and post my final 2001 Decades album on Sunday.]
Happy birthday to frequent commenter Dana! Let’s spin the wheel and see what the Random iTunes Fairy has served up in celebration of your day.
Boy, Hamilton sure is brilliant. This ditty from early in Act Two runs less than two minutes and yet captures so much of what is smart, funny and musically interesting about the work.
Coming right after the emotional George Washington send-off ‘One Last Time,’ this playful track serves as King George’s exit and a shift from the Revolutionary period to the messier work of building a new government.
Today’s random selection is one of the most famous and beloved rock songs of all time. Chuck Berry’s brother Marvin first heard the track played by a young man named Marty McFly during the ‘Under the Sea’ dance at a Hill Valley, California, high school, and the rest is history.
‘Johnny B. Goode’ is a loosely autobiographical tale of Berry’s rise, though by all accounts he could read and write just fine. Berry says the original lyrics used “colored boy” instead of “country boy” but he knew it wouldn’t get any radio play in that form.
U2’s 2014 album Songs of Innocence is best remembered as the record Apple uploaded for free to every iTunes user, a move Tim Cook described as “the largest album release of all time.”
It was also a move that revealed just how little relevance U2 had to the new generation, as the predominant reaction by millions of young people was “What the hell is a U2 and why is it on my phone all of a sudden?”
Meet Me In Montauk 