In January, shortly after David Bowie shuffled off this mortal coil, I promised to take a deep dive into his catalog. For the next three weeks, I’ll do just that.
I’ll get more into my preparation in future posts, but for now I want to kick things off with a single from Bowie’s first album, self-titled and released in 1967.
Liz Phair’s self-titled 2003 album has been ripped by longtime fans and music critics alike as a crass attempt to sell out.
Phair initially turned in a set of tracks produced by Michael Penn, but Capitol Records, as the saying goes, didn’t hear a single. They teamed her up with hit songwriting/production team The Matrix to come up with some more commercial material.
I can’t write an introduction to today’s Random SOTD that’s as succinct and effective as this one from Genius.com:
“Ever write a song so great that the four greatest Outlaw Country singers of all time named their supergroup after it? No? Well, that’s because you’re not Jimmy Webb.”
Indeed, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson teamed up for three albums between the mid 80s and mid 90s as The Highwaymen, with this song as their inspiration.
After the sex scandal, Hamilton’s political career is on the rocks but it’s on a personal level that he is truly rocked when his son dies in a duel. The musical takes a somber turn as he and Eliza deal with the loss and eventually reconcile.
Then it’s back to politics, and Hamilton’s fateful decision to support Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr in the 1800 election. Jefferson wins, Burr is consumed with jealous rage and pins all of his failures on Hamilton, whom he challenges to a duel. You all know how that turns out.
In addition to his influence on America’s financial system and the whole killed-in-a-duel thing, Alexander Hamilton is noteworthy for being in the center of one of the nation’s first sex scandals.
Hamilton had an affair with a younger, married woman named Maria Reynolds, and paid off her husband in exchange for his silence about the matter. Eventually the details were leaked and to clear his name of charges of political corruption, Hamilton detailed the affair publicly.
That didn’t go over so well with his wife, Eliza.
Meet Me In Montauk 