Rapper Latto comes in at #14 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 with the song ‘Big Energy.’ The song was recently remixed as a collaboration with Mariah Carey, whose ‘Fantasy’ uses the same Tom Tom Club sample, so it might find its way into the top ten soon.
I didn’t think I’d ever heard of Latto, until I realized she shortened her name from the controversial Mulatto. I’m passingly familiar with her under that moniker, thanks to my daughter.
Elton John and Dua Lipa claim the 13th spot on this week’s Billboard Hot 100, with ‘Cold Heart (PNAU Remix),’ PNAU being the Australian electronic group responsible for the track.
Earlier in the year, this song returned Elton John Billboard’s Top Ten for the first time since 1997’s Princess Di-themed rewrite of ‘Candle in the Wind.’ However, this one feels like it should have an asterisk, because John’s portions of the song are culled from older recordings.
Returning to my look at ‘What the Kids are Listening To’ on this week’s Billboard Hot 100, I pick up with a pair of songs from Ed Sheeran. Sheeran’s ‘Bad Habits‘ and ‘Shivers‘ sit at #10 and #11, respectively, after peaking at #2 and #4.
That brings us to #12, and Doja Cat’s ‘Woman.’ This is the fourth single from Doja Cat’s 2021 album Planet Her, and the third to reach the top ten (it peaked at #9).
Today’s random selection comes from an EP that accompanied Lyle Lovett’s 2009 album Natural Forces. That album was half made up of Lovett’s covers of other Texas songwriters, and the EP — titled T For Texas, T From Tennessee — offered a sample of other tracks on the Lost Highway label.
Among the songs was today’s SOTD, actually titled ‘Lost Highway,’ a duet by Willie Nelson and Kurt Nilsen.
‘Wind Out’ (or ‘Windout’ as it appears on the album liner notes) is a track included on R.E.M.’s 1987 collection of odds and ends, Dead Letter Office.
In the album’s entertaining liner notes, written by guitarist Peter Buck with a fair amount of self-deprecating wit (thought not in this case), the song is described this way:
This is one of our earliest songs, written in the summer of 1980. We recorded it for our second album. In retrospect, I think that it would have fit on Reckoning very well, but at the time we decided not to included it.
> a soundtrack that shall remain nameless.
Meet Me In Montauk 