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Song of the Day #6,253: ‘Streetlights’ – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Jason Isbell’s sophomore album was released two years after his debut, in 2009, and marked a break from his Drive-By Truckers past. Rather than utilizing backing musicians and producers from his former band, he formed his own quartet.

Named the 400 Unit after the psychiatric unit of a hospital in Florence, Alabama, the band would be credited on most of Isbell’s future recordings. And they would help shift his music away from his Southern rock roots to a more folk rock/Americana sound. He named the album after the new band, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

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Song of the Day #6,252: ‘Brand New Kind of Actress’ – Jason Isbell

A month back, I promised a deep dive of singer-songwriter Jason Isbell’s catalog, and starting today I’m making good on that pledge. Over the next two weeks I’ll feature tracks from all ten of his solo albums.

Isbell got his start with the Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers. He was just 21, 15 years younger than the band’s founders, when he came under their wing as a protege and signed on as their third guitarist. He spent six years with the band, contributing on three albums as a guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, before going solo in 2007.

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Song of the Day #6,251: ‘The Power of Love’ – Huey Lewis and the News

On the week of August 17, 1985, Tears for Fears held the top spot with ‘Shout,’ which spent three weeks at #1.

Right behind it, on its way to its own #1 berth, was Huey Lewis and the News’ ‘The Power of Love,’ lead single of the soundtrack of blockbuster hit Back to the Future. The song plays early in the film as Marty McFly skateboards to school, followed shortly by Lewis himself in a cameo as an uptight school employee.

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Song of the Day #6,250: ‘Jive Talkin” – Bee Gees

Throwing back to the week of August 16, 1975, we find the Bee Gees atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Jive Talkin’.’ It was the band’s first #1 hit (and first in the top ten) since 1971’s ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.’ They would have seven more over the next four years.

This was the lead single of the album Main Course, the Bee Gees’ first gold album in the U.S. and the start of a massively successful run that made them one of the top-selling acts in history.

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Song of the Day #6,249: “Honey in the Honeycomb’ – Lena Horne

Today wraps up the posts about my recent Vincente Minnelli Marathon. I hope you got at least a taste of the director’s wide-ranging filmography. This was one of my most rewarding cinematic deep dives because I got to really immerse myself in the films of the 40s and 50s, two decades I haven’t explored nearly enough.

My final clip comes from Minnelli’s first film, the 1943 all-Black musical Cabin in the Sky. The beautiful Lena Horne appears in the film as Georgia Brown, the town’s notorious temptress, and ‘Honey in the Honeycomb’ is one of her two musical numbers.

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