Ah, nothing like a little Bob Marley to close out the weekend. ‘Waiting in Vain,’ a slow jam exploration of unrequited love, appeared on Marley’s 1977 album Exodus.
My knowledge of Marley’s discography is restricted to the greatest hits collection Legend, the top-selling reggae album of all-time. That record collects all of Marley’s best-known hits but has been criticized for leaving out his more challenging political work.
Ellie Goulding returns to the blog, two and a half years since her last Random Weekend appearance. The English singer-songwriter released four albums between 2010 and 2020, but her debut Lights remains the only one I’ve heard.
I haven’t really heard this one either, to be honest. Lights is in my iTunes library because my wife bought it back in 2011. I’ve never shared her appreciation of Goulding (and, despite her early interest, I don’t think she has listened to this album in years).
This week’s final Encanto selection is ‘What Else Can I Do?,’ the awakening song of eldest sister Isabela Madrigal (Diane Guerrero). Isabela is the perfect, pretty princess, and this track finds her breaking through the facade and embracing her pricklier side.
Lin-Manuel Miranda brings a neat pop-rock vibe to this track (channeling the “90s rock en español movement,” he says) and the film’s animators do a great job bringing the song to vivid life.
Today we have the song that propelled the Encanto soundtrack to the top of the charts and became a cultural phenomenon (to the extent that anything can do that these days).
‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ is now the highest-charting Disney single since 1995, when Aladdin‘s ‘A Whole New World’ reached #1. ‘Bruno’ currently sits at #2, kept from the top spot by Adele’s ‘Easy On Me,’ which has perched there for 10 straight weeks. Will Bruno unseat the queen? I wouldn’t bet against him.
Each of the Madrigal sisters in Disney’s Encanto gets a song to dramatize her inner conflict. We heard Maribel’s yesterday, and today it’s Jessica Darrow’s Luisa, the middle child who is gifted with superhuman strength.
As Spider-Man knows, with great power comes great responsibility, and Luisa is buckling under the pressure she feels to literally carry the weight of her family’s expectations. Her song, ‘Surface Pressure,’ is all about how she manages, and fails to manage, that burden.
Meet Me In Montauk 