This Sunday’s Oscar show promises few surprises. So many other awards have been given out by now that the Academy basically just confirms what we already know.
While the acting awards are pretty much sewn up, along with Best Director, the Best Picture prize is a source of some suspense. American Hustle seems to have faded from its front-runner status, but will it be 12 Years a Slave or Gravity that scores the come-from-behind win?
I was shocked to see that I hadn’t already featured Jack Johnson’s ‘Upside Down’ as a Song of the Day.
Surely I’ve done a theme week on music from kids’ movies over the past five and a half years, right? How could this one have missed the cut?
I’m not a big fan of Jack Johnson. His laid-back Hawaiian beach bum vibe doesn’t really do it for me, and I find his music redundant. But this song is a blast.
It’s hard to go wrong when a Barenaked Ladies song pops up on Random Weekends.
No matter the album, their songs are interesting thematically and musically, and almost always enjoyable listening (I’ll make an exception for the handful of lame-ass songs written by bassist Jim Creeggan).
I feel a little bit more in the know about today’s song, #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, because I just read about it in Rolling Stone.
For example, I know that Passenger is the stage name of British singer-songwriter Michael David Rosenberg, who has spent years busking in various countries.
The song sitting at #4 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 is a perfect illustration of why I’m featuring this hit parade once per month.
Apparently ‘Say Something’ has caused quite a stir for months without managing to be heard by me even once.
The piano ballad was released twice before, once on a solo record by Ian Axel in 2011 and again by Axel’s indie band A Great Big World in 2013. But it wasn’t until Christina Aguilera performed the track with the band on The Voice that it took off.
