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Song of the Day #596: ‘She’s Everything’ – Brad Paisley

Today is my wedding anniversary… lucky number thirteen. I’ve now spent more than a third of my life married and just about half of my life with this wonderful woman. And those percentages will keep on creeping up. The way time is flying these days, I know 15 and 20 will be upon us in a blink.

And that prospect absolutely thrills me. I’m baffled by those men (and women) who fear commitment and view marriage as a restricting thing. On the contrary, I find it perfectly liberating. It’s a powerful and freeing thing to completely be yourself with another person, for better or worse. I suppose some people are able to do that with just anybody, but for me it doesn’t come easy.

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Song of the Day #595: ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ – Bob Dylan

I deliberately avoided mentioning ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ in my write-up of Highway 61 Revisited yesterday because I didn’t want to steal the thunder from today’s post. That’s a bit like writing about Michaelangelo works displayed in Florence without mentioning the David.

For all of the many genres and musical styles Dylan has explored, all of the topics he’s covered, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ remains in many ways the quintessential Dylan song. It was voted as the #1 song of all-time in a Rolling Stone survey of musicians and critics published in 2004. And whether or not you share that opinion, it’s impossible to deny that it’s one of the few songs that unquestionably deserves to be in the running.

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Song of the Day #594: ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ – Bob Dylan

In late August of 1965, five months after the release of Bringing It All Back Home, Bob Dylan unleashed Highway 61 Revisited upon the world. Let me repeat that… five months after Bringing It All Back Home. Two of the finest albums not just in this man’s discography but in all of recorded musical history were released within a half year of each other.

That’s like if Steven Spielberg has released Jaws in July and Raiders of the Lost Ark in December. It almost doesn’t seem fair (and it gets even crazier, as I’ll point out next week).

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Song of the Day #593: ‘Clutch’ – Shea Seger

Here’s one for the “where are they now?” file. Of course, nobody really knew where Shea Seger was then either. Then would be 2001, when she released her first (and only) album, The May Street Project.

Seger is an interesting mix of a Norah Jones-style balladeer and a hip-hop sensibility. She strikes me as a more accessible version of Ani DiFranco or Tori Amos, which if you think about it is a really great thing to be. I don’t know if I can think of anybody recording today who fits that niche. The May Street Project was well-received critically and Seger had a minor hit with today’s SOTD.

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Song of the Day #592: ‘The Road to Ensenada’ – Lyle Lovett

Last September, during a Lyle Lovett theme week, I singled out one song from his album The Road the Ensenada and promised to highlight two other songs — the album’s best — on future dates. I fulfilled half of the promise in November, when I featured ‘Her First Mistake‘ as a Song of the Day. Today I complete the mission.

For my money, the title track of The Road the Ensenada is possibly the finest song Lovett has ever written, and among the finest I’ve ever heard. That’s high praise for a relatively simple song but Lovett is no stranger to high praise, at least from this corner.

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