‘Blinded By the Light’ is the first track on the first album by Bruce Springsteen, kicking off 1972’s Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ with a burst of folk-rock word salad. It was also the first single he released, though it didn’t perform very well.
Not until the British rock group Manfred Mann’s Earth Band got a hold of it, anyway.
I have refused to join the Apple Music generation. Unlimited streaming access to virtually every song ever recorded might sound like a great thing, but the concept makes me uncomfortable.
I like the idea that I have a music collection — a library of artists and albums I have carefully cultivated over three and a half decades. A library that says a whole lot about who I am and how I’ve changed. A music collection is the soundtrack of your life. How can your soundtrack be every damn song ever?
R5 is a Los Angeles-based pop band made up of four siblings (Ross, Rocky, Riker and Rydel Lynch) and family friend Ellington Ratliff.
Ross Lynch is best known (in my household, anyway) as Austin from the Disney Channel sitcom Austin & Ally, a show about a pop star and the young woman who writes his songs. He is currently winning rave reviews for his performance as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the indie film My Friend Dahmer.
I heard Portugal. The Man’s ‘Feel It Still’ on the radio a couple of times before Sophia started promoting it, so I don’t owe this one entirely to her. But she did bring it front and center for me well before it reached its current hit status.
I assumed this was a relatively new band but in fact the Portland-based quintet has been recording since 2006 and this year released their eighth album. Sometimes overnight success takes more than a decade.
SZA is another artist I discovered through my daughter Sophia. While I haven’t listened to her debut full-length album CTRL (released this summer) in full, I like what I’ve heard.
SZA is the stage name of Solána Imani Rowe, a 27-year-old soul singer born in St. Louis, Missouri, but raised in a predominately white suburb of New Jersey. Raised by a Christian mother and Muslim father, she hopped between their faiths as a kid and now practices Islam. As a girl, she wore a hijab until bullying following the September 11th attacks forced her to stop.
Meet Me In Montauk 