I recently made playlists for each of my daughters, filled with songs I expected (and hoped) they would like. They have different musical sweet spots, overlapping with my own and a little bit with each other.
My younger daughter, Fiona, shares my love for gentle, melancholy songs. Aimee Mann, Simon & Garfunkel, that sort of thing. So I knew she’d be a perfect audience for my beloved Ron Sexsmith, who has made a career out of those kinds of songs.
‘Strangers in the Night,’ recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1966 for an album of the same name, reached #1 in both the U.S. and the UK. It won three Grammy awards, including Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The album became the most commercially successful in Sinatra’s career.
And yet Ol’ Blue Eyes hated the song. When he was first given the sheet music, he reportedly told his aid “I don’t want to sing this, it’s a piece of shit.”
At long last, today marks the release of Father of the Bride, Vampire Weekend’s fourth studio album. This is one of my most anticipated records of the year given the band’s stellar track record to date.
Early song releases have been promising, though a few of them were more like filler than actual songs. That’s fine with me. I don’t like hearing much of an album before I can hear the whole thing.
On a recent trip down a YouTube rabbit hole, I stumbled across this clip from the rehearsals of the 2017 hit musical The Greatest Showman. I’m surprised I haven’t encountered it before as it has amassed more than 40 million views already.
Apparently this was a presentation to the studio brass, the first time the cast had performed any of the songs for somebody outside of their inner circle. Keala Settle, who plays the bearded lady, was incredibly nervous about singing the film’s signature tune, ‘This is Me,’ in that setting.
Yesterday I wrote about the impressive debut album by Jade Bird. Two years ago, El Paso-based singer-songwriter Khalid put out an even better one in American Teen.
That album was fresh and exciting and sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard, due to Khalid’s youthful perspective (he was 17 at the time), his low-key delivery, and sparse, lovely musical landscapes.
Meet Me In Montauk 