Song of the Day #197: ‘Once it Was Alright Now (Farmer Joe) – Laura Nyro

nyroI’d never heard of Laura Nyro until about a year ago. She’s another of those influential and mega-talented artists who faded into obscurity because they never achieved much commercial popularity. Some of her songs were big hits, but always for other people.

It seems Nyro was something of a savant when it came to songwriting. She was just 20 years old when she released Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, the groundbreaking album that features this song. She leaped between keys and time signatures within her songs in a way not done very often before or since.

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Song of the Day #196: ‘Jackie’ – Sinead O’Connor

sinead2My first exposure to Sinead O’Connor came from her huge hit I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, which had its heavier moments but was mostly a collection of ballads.

She was clearly a songwriter and singer to be reckoned with based on that album alone, but it wasn’t until I got her debut album The Lion and the Cobra that I realized exactly how special a talent she was.

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Song of the Day #195: ‘Full of Grace’ – Sarah McLachlan

mclachI wrote yesterday about the use of songs in movies and TV shows, and today’s song is a splendid example. Though I bought Sarah McLachlan’s Surfacing album when it first came out and knew it pretty well, I will always associate ‘Full of Grace’ with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Buffy fans out there already know what I’m talking about. At the end of Season Two (possibly the best season of television’s best show) Buffy is forced to kill Angel, the vampire she loves. She then boards a bus and leaves Sunnydale without saying a word to her friends or mother, and this is the song that plays over the final montage.

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Chinese come through with Josh Rouse song

tudou_logoSo I tracked down an online version of Josh Rouse’s ‘My Love Has Gone,’ which I mentioned the other day in my tirade about YouTube’s copyright Nazis.

I found it on Tudou.com, China’s version of YouTube, which apparently serves up five times the volume of video every day than YouTube. Gotta love the Chinese.

Josh Rouse – ‘My Love Has Gone’ from Nashville

Song of the Day #194: ‘This Time Tomorrow’ – The Kinks

kinksSo I’m looking up the lyrics to today’s song, The Kinks’ ‘This Time Tomorrow,’ on songmeanings.net, one of my favorite sites for such things. The site invites readers to post interpretations of the lyrics and often the comments are quite astute.

And right at the top of the ‘This Time Tomorrow’ thread is the following comment from a person calling himself Jason Bourne:

i bet a bunch of n00bs will comment on this once Darjeeling Limited comes out.

Bite me, Jason Bourne.

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