Sometimes an artist puts out just one song that blows you away while everything else he/she does just kind of lies there. This isn’t the same as a one-hit wonder, because often these songs aren’t hits. It’s more of a one-wow wonder, a song that stands so far above its peers that it may as well be the only thing the person ever releases.
Pete Yorn’s ‘Just Another’ is among my favorite one-wow wonders.
I remember a cartoon that ran in Rolling Stone in 1990. Called “Mr. Guthrie’s Homeroom,” it depicted a classroom with Woody Guthrie standing at the blackboard. In the front row taking notes sits Bob Dylan. Behind Dylan, and leaning over to copy off Dylan’s paper, is Bruce Springsteen. And copying from Bruce Springsteen’s paper is John Mellencamp. (I was hoping I’d find it through the magic of the Web, but all I found was a reference to it and details of the issue in which it ran.)
This cartoon came to mind recently when I picked up Little Voice, the debut CD by Sara Bareilles. Only in this version it would be Joni Mitchell teaching the class, Tori Amos in the first seat, Fiona Apple behind her and Sara Bareilles in the back row. Throw in Nellie McKay and Rachael Yamagata while you’re at it.
When I told Alex this week would be a tribute to the music of our courtship, she immediately guessed two of the songs I was featuring. The first was ‘Galileo’. The second was this one.
Randy Newman has been away for awhile, and right when the country needed him most.
His last album of original songs, Bad Love, was released in 1999. And so the first decade of the 21st century had thus far gone unchronicled by America’s finest musical satirist. That is truly a shame, because George Bush has certainly deserved an earful.
He finally gets it in the centerpiece song of Newman’s excellent new album Harps and Angels. That song is ‘A Few Words in Defense of Our Country‘ and anyone who knows Randy Newman knows defense isn’t what’s really on his mind.
R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People came out in 1992 and remains a high point in their storied career. I seesaw between this album and Fables of the Reconstruction when filling the top spot on my ‘Favorite R.E.M. Albums’ list (something I’ve compiled on more than one occasion — here’s the latest).
