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.
I haven’t done a week of ‘What the Kids are Listening To’ songs in awhile, largely because I’m so unimpressed with what passes for hit music these days. ‘Bodak Yellow,’ seriously?
But I thought this would be a good time to dedicate a week to songs that my actual kids are listening to, specifically my 15-year-old daughter Sophia.
Sophia likes her share of music I find horrible (again, ‘Bodak Yellow,’ anyone?) but she has introduced me to a number of songs I quite enjoy. This week I’ll highlight five of them.
Elvis Costello’s 1996 album All This Useless Beauty featured mostly songs he had initially written for other artists. ‘The Other End of the Telescope,’ for example, was written with Aimee Mann and first appeared on ‘Til Tuesday’s fine album Everything’s Different Now.
Today’s track, ‘Complicated Shadows,’ was written for Johnny Cash, though the Man in Black opted not to record it. He did, however, record two other Costello tunes, ‘The Big Light’ and ‘Hidden Shame,’ during his career.
