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Song of the Day #6,070: ‘Careless Whisper’ – Wham! featuring George Michael

The week of February 16, 1985, gave us a classic pop hit, with Wham!’s ‘Careless Whisper’ spending its first of three weeks at #1.

The song was credited in the U.S. to “Wham! featuring George Michael” and in the UK to Michael as a solo artist, but it appeared on the duo’s sophomore album, Make It Big, and was released as that record’s second single. Interestingly, it was the only song on that album co-written by Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, yet it was the one attributed to Michael as a solo performer.

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Song of the Day #6,069: ‘Pick Up the Pieces’ – Average White Band

Throwing back to the week of February 15, 1975, we find Linda Ronstadt atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘You’re No Good.’ I featured the song, Ronstadt’s only #1 hit, a couple of years ago.

At #2 that week was ‘Pick Up the Pieces’ by the Average White Band, a Scottish funk outfit also known as AWB. The track is essentially an instrumental but for the background shouting of the title at various points. A week later the song reached #1, then dropped out of the top five.

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Song of the Day #6,068: ‘To Forget You (1971)’ – Z Berg feat. Ginnie Pallone Mollner

Continuing my look at notable 2024 films, today I’m covering the Horror movies.

Every year I seem to have 11 titles vying for my list of top ten movies — 11 films I can’t imagine not making the cut. But one always has to drop to the ranks of the runners-up.

This year that movie is Strange Darling, writer-director JT Mollner’s devilishly clever cat-and-mouse thriller about an encounter with a serial killer.

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Song of the Day #6,067: ‘The Moon is Blue’ – Colourbox

Continuing my look at notable 2024 films, today I’m covering the Action movies.

The only film of this batch I seriously considered for my top ten isn’t really an action movie, but I included it here because, as a pulpy crime thriller, it’s different enough from the dramas I mentioned yesterday.

That movie is Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding, a lesbian noir that pairs up the great Kristen Stewart with bodybuilder turned actress Katy O’Brien in a breakout performance. The two lovers get caught up in an organized crime ring run by Stewart’s character’s father (Ed Harris) and — naturally — things spiral out of control.

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Song of the Day #6,066: ‘Nocturne No. 2 in E-Flat, Op. 9, No. 2’ – Tzvi Erez

Continuing my look at notable 2024 films, today I’m covering the Dramas.

A few of these nearly cracked my top ten, including writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain. The fact that this movie might have just as easily fallen into the Comedy category is a testament to his excellent screenplay, which is alternately hilarious and touching.

A Real Pain follows two cousins who were once very close but have become estranged as their lives moved in different directions. They reunite to visit their recently deceased grandmother’s childhood home during a Holocaust tour through Poland. Eisenberg’s David is painfully reserved while Kieran Culkin’s Benji is an unpredictable extrovert.

The film gets a lot of mileage out of exploring the way these two personality types frustrate and reward each other. This is a lovely character study and a real feather in the cap of Eisenberg as a filmmaker.

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