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Song of the Day #5,372: ‘Change’ – Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey’s big smile on the cover art of 2017’s Lust For Life is the first indication that this collection will differ from her previous work. Would the melancholy queen actually sound happy for a change?

I don’t know if I’d go that far, but this is a brighter and more optimistic record than its predecessors. Sonically, it reaches back to the hip-hop influences of Born to Die and comes the closest to a traditional pop album that Del Rey is likely going to get. She even has features on five tracks.

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Song of the Day #5,371: ‘Say Goodbye to Hollywood’ – Billy Joel

Just when I was dissing the Random iTunes Fairy for offering up a dreadful song yesterday, she bounces back with a sterling selection today.

‘Say Goodbye to Hollywood’ is the opening track of Billy Joel’s 1976 Turnstiles, his fourth album and the one released a year before he reached mega-stardom with The Stranger. This is one of my favorite Joel albums, even if several of its best songs sound even better on the 1981 live release Songs in the Attic.

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Song of the Day #5,370: ‘Never Again’ – Justin Timberlake

Last Sunday, I asked for thoughts on how to proceed with weekend posts as Random Weekends passes its 11th anniversary.

The consensus was nearly unanimous: a return to Ron Sexsmith Weekends. Stay tuned next week for a deep dive into his earlier, unreleased material.

All kidding aside, so far I’ve heard suggestions to keep things as they are, to serve up a ‘classic rewind’ feature, or to limit the random selections to new artists rather than music already in my collection.

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Song of the Day #5,369: ‘Freak’ – Lana Del Rey

Just a year after the release of Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey was back with her fourth album, Honeymoon. The record split the difference, musically, between Born to Die and Ultraviolence, blending the trip-hop elements of the former with the moody balladry of the latter.

It was her most fully realized work yet, and the one that turned me from a casual listener into a superfan.

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Song of the Day #5,368: ‘Shades of Cool’ – Lana Del Rey

Though her first album was a big hit both commercially and critically, Lana Del Rey was often the target of sexist attacks and questions about her authenticity.

Detractors suggested she was a pre-packaged studio product, apparently unable to accept that a woman could look like a model and be a great songwriter. Some critics even jumped on the fact that she had changed her name as evidence of some deception, presumably without lobbing the same attack at Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder or any number of modern pop stars.

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