My awareness of Warren Zevon begins and ends with his classic ‘Werewolves of London,’ released on the 1978 album Excitable Boy. That song got a lot of airplay when I was young, and really got a boost when Martin Scorsese had Tom Cruise peacock around a pool table to it in 1986’s The Color of Money.
That was Zevon’s third of 12 studio albums, in a career that spanned 24 years and saw him collaborate with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, David Letterman and R.E.M.
I’m continuing my Decades series over the next two weeks, writing about some of the 2003 albums that didn’t crack my top ten. Most of these records are completely new to me. A few are in my music library but neglected enough that I’m treating them as new.
Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below falls into the latter category. I know the big songs from this album very well (‘Hey Ya,’ ‘The Rooster,’ ‘The Way You Move‘) but the rest haven’t stuck with me. And listening to it again this week, that didn’t really change.
I write these posts about a week or so in advance, and when preparing this one, it hit me that I’m about to get to the stretch of posts spanning Election Day and its aftermath. Gulp.
Four years ago, I spent the lead-up to the election posting songs from the 30 Days, 30 Songs project, in which artists took musical shots at Donald Trump in the name of raising money and turning out the vote.
It didn’t work, obviously.
‘The Wicked MEssenger’ is a track from Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding, the first record he released after his mysterious motorcycle accident a year earlier.
Dylas has said the accident gave him an excuse to “get out of the rat race” after a two-year span that saw the release of three classic, era-defining releases (Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde). John Wesley Harding was a far quieter, less mind-bending album than that trio.
When I was at the height of my Rufus Wainwright mania, in the mid-2000s, my go-to answer for “favorite album ever” was Wainwright’s Want One. So it’s kind of a no-brainer as my #1 album of 2003.
Wainwright has released only two pop albums in the last 13 years, detouring into opera and piano instrumentals, so my devotion has waned. I couldn’t really get into the album he released this year, Unfollow the Rules.
Meet Me In Montauk 