Today is my birthday. This got me thinking about the surprising lack of birthday songs, especially good birthday songs. Everyone knows “Happy Birthday”. It’s the reigning king and probably won’t be unseated anytime in our lives, but the line of succession dries up pretty quickly after that. Everyone has a birthday, and most people celebrate…
I just got home from a family vacation with two teens and two tweens. Throughout the trip, the young people controlled the music, so I heard a lot of contemporary pop music. I noticed something as I was listening. Many of the songs sounded as if they were incomplete. Not all of them, but a…
I recently picked up a copy of The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You: 40th Anniversary Edition. It has a remastered version of the original 1981 album and a bonus disc of never before released songs recorded throughout the 70s. One of those songs is “Drift Away” recorded in 1974, just one year after Dobie Gray had…
There’s one holiday tradition we need to end. Every year, we can’t go on social media in December without being inundated with memes complaining about Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” They suggest everything from it becoming an unwanted earworm to it triggering PTSD. I’m no Mariah Carey fan. That’s not why…
I realized today that there’s only one more day before Christmas, but I haven’t listened to all of my Christmas music yet. I don’t think I’m going to get through it all this year. Does that mean I have too much? I only added one new album this year, Eric Clapton’s Happy Xmas. It’s solid…
I always wonder why any song about or featuring winter becomes a Christmas song. “Jingle Bells”, “Sleigh Ride” and “Winter Wonderland” have nothing to do with Christmas. We should be just as happy listening to them in February as we are in December. But we’re not, and I think that’s strange. Other holidays don’t co-opt…
