My next Fiona Apple selection comes from a tribute album released last August honoring the career of Don Heffington, a Los Angeles drummer and songwriter who died of leukemia in 2021.
That album, titled Tonight I’ll Go Down Swingin’, features 20 tracks by artists who knew and/or worked with Heffington, including Jackson Browne and the actor John C. Reilly.
It’s tough being a fan of an artist who is the opposite of prolific. Take Fiona Apple, one of my very favorites — she has released just five albums in 30 years.
Given that dearth of content, any new recording by Ms. Apple is a cause for celebration. And recent months have seen a flurry of such activity, at least by her standards. I don’t know if a new album is forthcoming (it’s been five years since her last, 2020’s acclaimed Fetch the Bolt Cutters), but maybe her renewed interest in hitting the studio is a good sign.
It has become commonplace for people of my generation to celebrate the 80s as the last great decade for music, and in conversation for the greatest musical decade, period. I tend to lean that way myself.
It makes sense that the music that scored your coming of age will hold a special place in your heart. I’m sure every generation feels that way about its formative decade.
But take a look at the Hot 100 top five the week of May 25, 1985, and tell me the 80s shouldn’t be in the conversation.
Throwing back to the week of May 24, 1975, we find Earth, Wind & Fire atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Shining Star,’ the band’s only chart-topping hit. I posted that song during my Decades look at the albums of 1975.
At #2 that week was ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls’ by Freddy Fender, an American Tejano singer. Fender started his career in 1960 but was sidelined when a marijuana possession charge landed him in jail for three years. My lord!
My final Mission: Impossible ranked list will cover one of the series’ most celebrated aspects: the STUNTS.
These are generally distinct from the set pieces, though sometimes a set piece can contain a stunt. What matters here is that Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, the world’s biggest movie star, performs a death-defying act that would normally only be attempted by an anonymous stunt man.
Cruise doing his own stunts is not a gimmick or an ego trip. It makes the action in these films visceral, because no cutaways or camera trickery are required to distract us from on-set sleight of hand. And, most important, it allows Cruise to act while doing these wild things, bringing a sense of drama and humor to the scenes that would be absent if we couldn’t see the performer’s face.
Meet Me In Montauk 