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Song of the Day #4,358: ‘Babyface’ – U2

When U2 released Zooropa, its eighth studio album and my #9 album of 1993, the band was coming off a run of blockbuster albums that sold 10+ million units apiece. The Joshua Tree, Rattle and Hum and Achtung Baby had cemented the Irish rockers as the world’s biggest band.

So this album’s left turn in the direction of electronic dance music was unexpected and risky. But it paid off, both creatively and commercially. Zooropa didn’t sell as well as its predecessors, but it did move 7 million copies and it won a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

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Song of the Day #4,357: ‘Who Am I (What’s My Name)?’ – Snoop Doggy Dogg

It’s time for the next installment of my Decades series, wherein I dive into the albums from a certain year across four decades. Currently I’m on the 3’s, having covered 1973 and 1983. That brings us to 1993, the year I turned 21.

I generally have a pretty low opinion of the 90s as a musical decade, at least in terms of what dominated the radio and the charts. But I hope to unearth some gems.

As always, I will start by counting down my own favorite albums of 1993 before highlighting ten albums new to me that received critical/commercial acclaim.

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Song of the Day #4,356: ‘Gold in Them Hills (Remix)’ – Ron Sexsmith w/ Chris Martin

We have another chance for the Random iTunes Fairy to match a song to a milestone. Today is frequent commenter Dana’s birthday — Happy Birthday, Dana! — so he will have the chance to comment on a song chosen (randomly) just for him.

Let’s spin the dial…

Well, this is a rather funny outcome. This is a remixed version of a cut on Ron Sexsmith’s sixth studio album, 2002’s Cobblestone Runway. And I happen to have featured the original version already, so we have Dana’s first reaction on record.

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Song of the Day #4,355: ‘Covered Wagon’ – Miranda Lambert

This song appears toward the end of Disc One of Miranda Lambert’s 2016 The Weight of These Wings. It’s one of only two tracks on the double album not written by Lambert.

‘Covered Wagon’ is a cover of one of singer-songwriter Danny O’Keefe’s earliest songs. O’Keefe is a Seattle-based folk-rock performer whose work has been covered by a host of artists over the past 50 years. The one readers of this blog might know best is ‘The Road,’ performed by Jackson Browne on his Running on Empty album.

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Song of the Day #4,354: ‘You and I’ – Leon Ames and Mary Astor

Of all the classic musicals I’ve watched as part of my quarantine project, the one that most surprised and delighted me is 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis, directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Judy Garland. The two met on the set of this film and later married.

Meet Me in St. Louis is based on a series of short stories written by Sally Benson and published in The New Yorker. The film follows a year in the life of a St. Louis family, the Smiths, during the run-up to the 1904 World’s Fair.

It’s a heartfelt helping of warm nostalgia, like a scene from Disney’s Carousel of Progress come to life, but it has a compelling dark streak and a hint of sensuality. AFI places it at #10 on their list of the 25 greatest musicals of all time.

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