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Song of the Day #563: ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ – Bob Dylan

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan contains several early classics, including ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘Masters of War’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.’ But for my money the best song on the album is today’s SOTD, ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.’

This song is such a fabulous combination of scathing lyrics and melancholy music… it’s hard to know what to feel when you listen to it. I mean, if you just read the song without playing it, you might expect the finished product to sound like some sort of tirade — not unlike Dylan’s future hit ‘Positively 4th Street.’

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Song of the Day #562: ‘Girl From the North Country’ – Bob Dylan

There are many potential ways to go about these Dylan weekends. I could present the songs randomly, thematically, chronologically, alphabetically… you name it. In order to lend some organization to the process, I’ve decided to highlight, in pairs, tracks from my favorite Dylan albums according to order of release.

I won’t cover every one of his albums — his work from the mid-70s to the mid-80s is better left forgotten — and I’ll restrict myself to the studio albums, leaving the bootleg records (worthy of a series all their own) aside for the time being. But that still gives me close to 20 albums to work with, encompassing one of the most extraordinary careers in the business.

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Song of the Day #561: ‘A Comet Appears’ – The Shins

If I had to pick one band in my CD collection that I’m not obsessed with but probably should be, it would be The Shins. Listening to their three sublime albums, I never cease to be fascinated by the clever songwriting and offbeat, elegant production.

And they’ve gotten better and better, with the hesitant indie pop of their debut Oh, Inverted World giving way to the more confident Chutes Too Narrow and culminating in Wincing the Night Away, the 2007 album that ranks as one of the best pop records of that decade.

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Song of the Day #560: ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ – Sinead O’Connor

It’s not every songwriter who can write matter-of-factly about their personal problems and spin it into addictive pop music. Sinead O’Connor pulled that off in spades on her breakthrough album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, with no better example than her hit ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’

The first line is a beauty: “It seems years since you held the baby while I wrecked the bedroom.” Such an evocative image, and it feels so real. And these lines, from the chorus, feel less like lyrics and more like something from an apology letter: “If I treated you mean, I really didn’t mean to. But you know how it is and how a pregnancy can change you.”

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Song of the Day #559: ‘Lights Out’ – Santogold

I chose today’s song not because I had anything particularly interesting to say about it but because I hadn’t paid much attention to this album in a long time and I figured it was due a little love.

I did stumble across an interesting tidbit while preparing for this blog entry, though.

Apparently Santogold (which is the stage name of Santi White) changed her name to Santigold a year ago after she was sued by Santo Gold, a company that produced a bizarre infomercial in the mid-80’s selling a money-making opportunity related to gold jewelery and a wrestling movie called Blood Circus.

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