Tag Archives: Lucinda Williams

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Song of the Day #1,375: ‘2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten’ – Lucinda Williams

Best Albums of the 90s – #3
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road – Lucinda Williams (1998)

I’ve written so often about Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels On a Gravel Road that I feel like I should just post a collection of links to those other posts rather than rehash all of those points again. (I won’t, though) Put simply, this album is the best evocation of a time, place and mindset that I’ve ever heard.

I’ve long been a fan of movies that immerse me in a new place — whether it’s a Maori tribe in New Zealand or an inner city neighborhood in New York. When a movie can capture the sights, sounds and smells — the complete experience — of someplace new, it becomes something transcendent, a sort of teleportation device.

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Song of the Day #1,275: ‘Copenhagen’ – Lucinda Williams

Top Ten Songs of 2011 – #5

Resuming my countdown of my top ten songs of last year, I arrive at a poignant track from Lucinda Williams latest album, Blessed.

Blessed came out early in 2011 and has been somewhat off my radar over the past several months as I listened to other new releases, but today’s SOTD, ‘Copenhagen,’ was an easy call for my top five.

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Song of the Day #1,138: ‘Ugly Truth’ – Lucinda Williams

I’ve already reviewed Lucinda Williams’ 2011 album, Blessed, so this will be more of a look-back. As I mentioned in last week’s R.E.M. post, it’s often only months after the fact that I know how I really feel about an album.

Without exception, Lucinda Williams’ albums have aged well. In fact, they are the musical equivalent of one of those movies that I need to see twice to really get. I liked just about every Coen Brothers movie after one viewing and loved them after two. Williams is in the same boat.

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Song of the Day #1,033: ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’ – Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams doesn’t record many covers. I count exactly two covers in her discography other than this one — a lovely version of Nick Drake’s ‘Which Will’ that appeared on Sweet Old World, and ‘Can’t Let Go,’ by Randy Weeks, which appears on Car Wheels On a Gravel Road, and which, to be honest, I didn’t know was a cover until I just looked it up.

So Williams choice to close out her 2008 album Little Honey with a rollicking version of AC/DC’s classic ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’ was unexpected. But certainly not unwelcome… Williams’ standard mode is melancholy blues but she rocks out with the best of them.

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Lucinda Williams – Blessed

Befriending Lucinda Williams might be hazardous to your health. Her albums are littered with songs about loved ones lost to suicide and disease. She mourns beautifully.

Williams’ newest release, Blessed, features two such tracks. The first is the wistful, poetic ‘Copenhagen,’ describing the moment she learned, while traveling abroad, about her manager’s sudden death. The second is ‘Seeing Black,’ an angry response to the suicide of her friend Vic Chesnutt.

Elsewhere, in ‘Soldier’s Song,’ she contrasts the experiences of an enlisted man in a war zone with that of his wife and child back home. It doesn’t end well for the soldier.

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