For the past two years, I’ve spent a couple of weeks presenting each year’s “songs of the summer” — those inescapable, feel-good tracks dominating TV and radio airplay.
Inherent in my singling out those songs in July or August was the chauvinistic assumption that none of those songs would show up on my year-end best songs lists.
Next up in this week’s summer catch-up are some thoughts on the 2012 Emmy nominations.
I’ve chosen a track from Childish Gambino’s 2011 album Camp as my accompaniment because Gambino is the alter ego of actor Donald Glover, an actor on NBC’s Community, one of the shows I believe was wrongly shut out of the major nominations.
I’ve been doing theme weeks of one sort or another for months now. In fact, I just checked and the last non-theme weekday song I posted was on March 2. I figured I’d spend this week on a handful of unrelated songs for a change.
But as I started compiling the tracks, I wound up stumbling upon a theme (of sorts) anyway. This week I’ll be looking back on the summer from various angles, using these songs as entry points.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that I hadn’t featured today’s randomly selected song on the blog months ago.
‘Walcott,’ the penultimate song on Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut, is such a brilliant and infectious burst of creative energy — and so emblematic of the band’s sound and appeal — that I was sure I’d posted it already.
I suppose it’s fitting that my first Random Weekend selection after a week dedicated to my favorite country artist would be from the only true country album I owned before becoming a fan.
Tim McGraw’s And the Dancehall Doctors is a great country record for people who don’t like country music. It has a nice pop sheen, impressive instrumentation, solid songcraft, even a cover of Elton John’s ‘Tiny Dancer.’
