Ah, Tift Merritt. I find this woman’s voice, and her songwriting, as emotionally satisfying as pretty much any music I own. She exudes thoughtfulness and sensitivity, but with an underlying grittiness. Just sublime.
Today’s Random Weekend selection is the closing track of Merritt’s 2008 album, Another Country. She has been so consistently good that I can make an argument for that album being her best, her “worst” or anything in between.
I’m often amazed by how prolific the great musical artists were in their early days. Looking at the output of a Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder or The Beatles, I can only imagine how great it must have been to be a fan hearing new, incredible material year after year.
David Bowie released what might be his best album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in June of 1972, just six months after Hunky Dory. And his next classic album (stay tuned ’til next week) came out less than a year after this one. To put it in terms Hamilton fans will appreciate, the man was non-stop!
Bowie followed up The Man Who Sold the World with the very different Hunky Dory. Where the former was a hard rock exercise, all grungy guitars, the latter is filled with delicate piano pop.
Hunky Dory is one of two Bowie albums I already owned. I bought it for the three hits — ‘Changes,’ ‘Queen Bitch’ and ‘Life on Mars?’ — but never gave the rest of the tracks a very careful listen.
When I decided to take a deep dive into David Bowie’s catalog, I started by Googling every list of his “best albums” I could find. My goal was to come up with a top ten that averaged out those lists.
Bowie released 27 studio albums over the course of his career, but the same dozen or so dominated every list I found. In the end, I settled on 13 albums that I bought (or already owned) and studied for the purposes of these theme weeks.
David Bowie’s second album was, like his debut, titled David Bowie.
Released in 1969, it is most notable for the inclusion of ‘Space Oddity,’ a song that would become a theme of sorts for Bowie. The record was re-released three years later under the title Space Oddity to capitalize on the song’s success.
Meet Me In Montauk 