Today’s Random Weekend selection is a short transitional track from the Hamilton soundtrack. ‘Schuyler Defeated’ lasts only a minute but, like every song in the Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical, it has plenty to say.
Musically a reprise of show-stopper ‘The Schuyler Sisters,’ this song sees Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law defeated in the Senate by Aaron Burr, who to this point has been Hamilton’s friend.
The best album I’ve heard this year — and a safe bet to hold that crown through year’s end — is Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Unveiled as an HBO movie before being released as a proper album, Lemonade details the effects of infidelity on a marriage, from anger and denial through healing and forgiveness.
While some maintain that artists shouldn’t be equated with their work, I think it’s pretty clear that this song cycle is about Jay-Z and Beyoncé. The fact that Jay-Z basically holed up in a bunker for the first month or so after Lemonade‘s release feels like confirmation.
At the start of the year, if you’d told me I’d be more excited by new Rihanna and Ariana Grande albums than the newest Paul Simon release, I’d have called you crazy. But that’s the case.
Simon’s 13th solo studio release, Stranger to Stranger, comes five years after the late-career triumph So Beautiful Or So What. I was surprised to see that album came out way back in 2011. It still feels vital and fresh, and unfortunately this new release lives in its shadow.
It’s a familiar phenomenon — the Disney child starlet releasing her first real “grown-up” album, embracing frank sexuality in a bid to shock the pop culture system and free her of those PG shackles.
Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera made the move in the early 2000s. Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez did it in the past couple of years. And now it’s Ariana Grande’s turn.
Fallen Angels is the unlikeliest Bob Dylan album since the album he released a year earlier, Shadows in the Night. Both records are tours through the Great American Songbook, specifically standards once recorded by Frank Sinatra.
I call these albums unlikely, but the truth is Dylan fans know there’s no such thing. By now, the man has released music in every genre short of opera, and don’t be surprised if he announces his take on La Boheme for the Fall.
