Song of the Day
Discover a different song every day. There's no limit to the artists, genres and albums; it's a great way to find something new to listen to.
Oct 6, 2008
from the album Flashpoint (1991)
Dontcha just love Mick's way of stating the obvious?!! Over the duh-duh-di-dum introduction, he considers it necessary to inform us "We're gonna do a bit of a blues for ya now."It's a well laid-back version of the old Willie Dixon classic, which they'd first covered as a single way back in '64. Here, Eric Clapton guests for the guitar solos.
Messrs. Watts and Wyman hold it all together, as dependable as ever, allowing everyone else to (over) indulge however they see fit. There's some tasty slide guitar, and the tinkling piano pays a fitting tribute to the late Sixth Stone, Ian Stewart. Mick blows a fruity harp part. Wrinkles aside, we could almost be back in the Crawdaddy Club!
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Oct 5, 2008
from the album Broken Boy Soldiers (2006)
This song is the most striking, considering its use of power chords, something White is not known for using (though Benson is). This, as well as Benson's vocal, concretes the Raconteurs as more than a Jack White pet project.The lyrics are charming, probably more so with Benson's vocals. In fact, the contrast made by Benson's cool voice and White's Plant-esque howl create a pleasing effect. The bridge is also unique to the Raconteurs, with its ooh-ooh-ing and the high-hat drumming probably more familiar to Flamin' Groovies fans.
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Oct 4, 2008
from the album Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 (1988)
Keltner's drums and that inevitable barrage of guitars lead us into this high-octane Carl Perkins style rocker. "Oh yay!" E.L.Otis takes the main vocal and pummels in some Jerry Lee piano, with Nelson digging out some half-forgotten guitar breaks and solos from his early Rutles heyday. If the chorus doesn't get you "twisted, shakin', rattled", then maybe Roy's legendary grrrowl will do the job. Mercy!Session drummer Jim Keltner, of course, was no stranger to rock 'n' roll. Amongst his many distinguished contributions to many distinguished projects, he'd played for a former companion Nelson Wilbury's, one Dr Winston O'Boogie, back in '75 on the LP named after the genre. His loose 'n' easy yet rock-solid style fits the Wilbury groove perfectly, though it wasn't till last year's box set re-release that he was officially rebaptised as 'Buster Sidebury'.
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Oct 3, 2008
from the album Station to Station (1976)
Some lightly flanged jazz chords introduce the only cover song on the album, "Wild is the Wind". Although the song was written by the team of Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington and not Bowie, the song still serves as a complement to "Word on a Wing" in its themes of devotion and desperation. Both 6-string and 12-string acoustic guitars strum away mournfully over a tastefullly minimal backing as Bowie begs his lover "give me more than one caress / Satisfy this hungriness."Bowie's singing goes for full dramatic effect, moving up an octave at a moment's notice to emphasize a surge of passion. This is especially evident in the moment where his love makes him "hear the sound of mandolins" and the last syllable of "mandolins" is delivered in a trilling falsetto that closely replicates the sound of the named instrument.
His voice trembles more as the song continues, concluding in one last declaration that his love is wild as the wind. As his voice reaches its highest register in the song, the acoustic strumming becomes faster and more insistent, and the album ends with one last fadeout as the band continues to play.
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Oct 2, 2008
from the album GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (1990)
"Marble Tulip Juicy Tree" is a fine alternative rock song with a flailing vocal from Gene. The reverse-sounding guitars are a nice touch as is the sound of the full band raging away. The solo loses its way a little towards the end but it doesn't detract from the song too much.A speech by the Maharishi Lawrence E. Curtin (apparently) adds a spiritual note before an acoustic outro and wah guitars fade things out (another nice touch).
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Oct 1, 2008
"Tonight's The Night - Part II"
from the album Tonight's the Night (1975)
Just in case you still haven't got what we've been telling you for the whole damn album, we'll spell it out once more: mess with smack, you'll wind up like Bruce. The lyric is identical (apart from when Young misses or switches the odd line, or someone forgets to stop singing their strained backing part).If "Part 1" chugged along like a freight train, the slightly longer reprise sounds like someone's put a hammer to the wheels. Everyone's doing their own thing, trying to exorcise their personal grief any way they can.
Again, the recording levels fluctuate dangerously into the red, but somehow it manages to hold together as a congruent if messy whole.
Pretty much like the album itself.
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Sep 30, 2008
from the album Jarvis (2006)
Adolescence in Hell is the theme. Harassing schoolmates, a dodgy Sunday school teacher and the local radio DJ are obstacles that the heroine needs to sort out on her own, with just her radio as support, and the idea that sex is "something you do when you've run out of things to say."By the end of the song's four and a half minutes, "Big Julie" apparently rules the world. This is one of only a few happy endings on this record. But even here it's only what could be - she isn't guaranteed happiness, even though she damn well deserves it.
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Sep 29, 2008
"Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker)"
from the album Tommy (1969)
"Eyesight To The Blind" is a song originally written by Sonny Boy Williamson. The Who used this song as an melodic, upbeat track, rather than the original which was quite heavy rhythm & blues.This song is not a favourite of mine, to be truthful. It is one of the weaker songs of the album, which is to be expected as it wasn't written for the album's purpose.
I believe it sounds unfit for the tone of the album, and while the band makes the most of it, it is, in the end a bad choice and I do not recommend it to anybody.
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Sep 28, 2008
from the album Shout at the Devil (1983)
Returning home one night, Sixx and his friends ran into some guys looking for trouble. They wouldn't stop, and because Sixx was a kid raised on the street, there was trouble. The police intervened, and during the mini-riot the bassist struck an officer and was accused of assault.In the song "Knock 'Em Dead, Kid," Sixx rises as the new lord of the streets; in reality, the police had to be bribed with the money from the next day's performance to avoid prosecution.
In the heat of the night
You went and blackened my eyes
Well now I'm back and I'm coming your way
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Sep 27, 2008
from the album 1999 (1982)
This one chugs and churns along to a catchy keyboard riff and a rigid, but somehow still funky, drum pattern, but beware: beneath this playful tale of sultry shenanigans, lurks a man in pain — and not just the kind induced during kinky foreplay. There is the strange sense of vulnerability present here, evinced by His Royal squeals and moans as well as his self-pitying lyrics.Not for the kids. Not because they won't understand it, but because they might see themselves in the tortured protagonist.
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Sep 26, 2008
from the album Born to Run (1975)
The title track, and the only song to emerge from the 914 Studios sessions that started the recording of the album in 1974. "Born To Run" is also actually the only song on this album to include the two early E Streeters Ernest "Boom" Carter (drums) and David Sancious (organ and piano), both of whom left the band after these first sessions. The two felt that they were going nowhere as part of Springsteen's backing band. Boy were they wrong!"Born To Run" has surfaced in at least 8 different versions with different arrangements through the years - some with double-tracked vocals, some with strings, and even a version with female background vocals.
(In 1985, at some point during Springsteen's tour to support the Born In The U.S.A. album, he rearranged the song into an acoustic solo ballad -just him, a guitar and a harmonica. A brilliant version with this arrangement was released on the Chimes of Freedom EP in 1988. With the song originally being an up-tempo rock song, it is nice to have a low-key acoustic version, because it gives you more of a chance to really feel the lyrics, and the mood of the song.)
And boy, what lyrics: desperation, love, broken dreams, and of course, a car, give the setting for this "Born To Run," which is really, even when seen objectively, a true rock classic.
The song got its premier outing as early as May 1974 (along with the CD's next track, "She's The One") at Harvard Square Theater, the show seen by Jon Landau who was so impressed that he gave up writing about music to become Bruce's trusted manager and friend.
"Born To Run" has been widely covered by other artists, maybe most notably by Roger Daltrey of the Who, Melissa Etheridge, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood (!).
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Sep 25, 2008
from the album Funeral (2004)
The anthem. The wordless chorus, sung by the whole band, will require a lobotomy to be removed from your head — like something a hip Up With People would've sung at early Super Bowl halftime shows. The inspirational lyrics help this tune nearly pass for gospel and beg to be sung along with, although you'll have to supply the handclaps, particularly on the swinging Motownesque coda.Read whole album review (all songs)
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Sep 24, 2008
from the album Shotter's Nation (2007)
Described by Doherty as "the placenta of 'Fuck Forever'" (even borrowing that song's lyric "It's one and the same"), this slowed-down and achingly beautiful self-mythology is tear-inducing and inspiring at the same time.Each verse is blissful, and had it been written at a different time, this song would have served as another pivotal track on Babyshambles' debut album, as it is perhaps the only song on Shotter's Nation that sounds anything like what was on Down In Albion.
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Sep 23, 2008
from the album Blood on the Tracks (1975)
The first song about separation on the album is also one of many of Dylan's that can be seen as multi-dimensional. The establishment of exact time and space is not clear through most of this song, with Dylan jumping back and forth to different points of view in the narrative. The fragmentation of time accentuates the fragmentation of the relationships between the characters in the sweeping tale.Read whole album review (all songs)
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Sep 22, 2008
from the album Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols (1977)
Was punk music born in the UK or the US? Even now punks don't agree. Mötley Crüe recorded a cover of this song in 1991 and, in the chorus, Vince Neil sang "anarchy in the USA" instead of "anarchy in the UK."I am an Antichrist
I am an anarchist
Don't know what I want
But I know how to get it
I wanna destroy the passerby
(The TV show The Young Ones (broadcast from 1982 to 1984) would mock this tendency of punks to destroy, with the character of Vivian always demolishing everything in sight.)
Punks were often described as nihilists, but they did believe in something, and just defined themselves by the things they were not.
Sung with haughtiness and violence, "Anarchy In The U.K." sounds like a warning, as if the bogey man was coming to undermine society.
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Sep 21, 2008
from the album Revolver (1966)
If the recording innovations on the rest of the album were/are too subtle to be picked up by anyone but the most acute - or informed - of listeners, "Tomorrow Never Knows" stands out as pure experimentation.From the droning introduction to John's distant, tinny vocal (recorded through a spinning Hammond Organ speaker!) to Ringo's surreal drum pattern, virtually none of the sounds was spared from electronic manipulation in some way. Not only that, there's only one chord in the whole song!
Each of the band submitted homemade tape-loops, which were incorporated into the recording by engineers holding them with pencils into the studio machines. It is truly the bridge to "Strawberry Fields" and the whole of the subsequent Sgt Pepper album.
The words are taken from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, via American acid-guru Timothy Leary, and talk about universal consciousness, peace, harmony and love. Ringo provided the title (it was originally called "The Void").
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is a soundtrack for the ideology of its generation and is, for me at least, one of the greatest of all The Beatles' great songs.
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Sep 20, 2008
from the album Appetite for Destruction (1987)
In a hard world there are always losers, and Michelle is one: her father is a porn actor, her mother was addicted to heroin but passed away, and Michelle is a teenaged cocaine addict and party animal. Eager to be loved, she puts up with sex:Someday you'll find someone
That'll fall in love with you
But oh the time it takes
When you're all alone
Time goes by and everything improves; Michelle got clean and leads a quiet life. Still, love was the hardest thing to get, and her old acquaintances encourage her to keep up the fight.
Honey don't stop trying
And you'll get what you deserve
It's a dark song, accelerating in the chorus where Rose preaches to his Michelle.
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Sep 19, 2008
"Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam [live]"
from the album MTV Unplugged in New York (1994)
"Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam is a cover of the Vaselines by Nirvana. There are also two other versions of the song on the box set.This is my favorite version of the song out of all of them. It's another mellow song from Nirvana. It doesn't really have a happy or a sad mood, it is more of just a neutral/mellowed out mood.
There is a variety of guitar throughout this song. You can clearly pick out the different sounds. Kurt Cobain's singing is a little bit different this time. He doesn't use the raspy voice that he does most of the time. In this song, he sings very clearly.
"Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam" really is a pretty good song, but then again so are all Nirvana songs.
Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam
Cause sunbeams are never made like me
Don't expect me to cry
For all the reasons you had to die
Don't ever ask your love of me
Dont expect me to cry
Dont expect me to lie
Dont expect me to die for thee
When I heard this song, I thought about my parents and how I feel they view me. It seems as if they just pretend to love me. "Dont expect me to cry" fits the situation, because that is what it seems like their objective is. "Don't expect me to lie" fits it because my parents always think I'm lying about everything for no reason.
"Don't expect me to die for thee" makes sense as well. My parents treat me bad and disrespect me, but they expect me to take a bullet for them. More literally, they expect me to respect them. I see "Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam" as a symbol. Once again, I am not saying that this is a 100% definite meaning. This is just my interpretation from the song. You may have gotten something different.
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Sep 18, 2008
from the album Aftermath (1966)
This song was not on American version of Aftermath but was later released on the compilation album Flowers."Take It Or Leave It" is a kind of song you can imagine Andrew Loog Oldham wanting to produce: a slightly cheesy ballad, and a chorus with harmony.
The Searchers, one of the 60s' most successful British pop bands with a clean-cut image, recorded the song, reaching number 31 in the UK charts.
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Sep 17, 2008
from the album I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)
This is more like it. A very stripped down, lilting melody and strong lyrics. Again, Emmylou Harris is on the song (to its detriment, in my opinion, as I have a radio session version of it without her that I prefer). I just don't think her voice and Conor's voice go together than well, no matter how much he admires her. They sound like they are from different centuries.Read whole album review (all songs)
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Sep 16, 2008
from the album GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (1990)
First album, first song: "You Fucked Up" is a full-on metal assault with a great breakdown chorus and suitably offensive lyrics. The wah-drenched solo adds to the inherent chaos of the song.As with a lot of songs on this album, there is the feeling that they probably rehearsed it a couple of times and thought, "That'll do. Press record!" That isn't a criticism though; irrespective of what would come over the next decade and a half, "You Fucked Up" is a brilliant song and a great way to start an album and a career.
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Sep 15, 2008
from the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972)
The original album ends with this reflective, but ultimately positive end to the sordid tale of Ziggy. "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" starts off quietly, in fact acoustic guitar only for the first verse, with its reference to time taking a cigarette and putting it in your mouth.But the song builds up to an impassioned, full-band crescendo, and by the end Bowie is declaring "You're not alone!"
The horns, introduced in the chorus, give this track its feeling of theatre and drama, and the strings (a.k.a. Starman) return for the finale.
The song, and with it the album, finish with a traditional orchestral finale, signalling, as it has done for centuries now, the end of the performance.
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Sep 14, 2008
from the album Led Zeppelin II (1969)
This song is no lemon."The Lemon Song" is a 12-bar blues song with a twist. In between the verses is a brilliant guitar solo by Page which will renew your faith that a weird British guy can play a six-string to a nub.
It's a relaxing song. You can anticipate the note that comes after the sequence you just listened to, and in that you can enjoy the song. It may seem simple, but sometimes in life the simple things are the most enjoyable. "The Lemon Song" is not an exception to the rule.
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Sep 13, 2008
from the album 1999 (1982)
According to some, "Little Red Corvette" was a willful attempt at crossover status, an unabashed play for the heart of guitar rock radio. But if Prince's intention was to abandon altogether the soulful world of dreamy R&B balladry, he failed.And so a cute label like "Smokey Robinson meets early Rolling Stones" doesn't quite do the tune justice, partly because this is no gimmick, and partly because such a "half-and-half" wording suggests a kind of compromise — and nothing about this song smacks of compromise. Not its "ladykiller met his match," story, not its hazy thicket of keyboard chord changes, not its multi-layered vocal coda. And certainly not the goosebump-inducing guitar solo courtesy of Dez Dickerson. This is rock and this is soul. Deal with it.
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Sep 12, 2008
from the album Tommy (1969)
"Welcome" is good but forgettable, and doesn't strike many chords when you try to remember it later. It is a song about Tommy's expansion of his religious following and his subsequent housing of his followers.It is another simplistic song that really does soothe the savage beast. It's calm, with a light timbre and can mellow you out when you need it to. It is quiet and subtle and soft; relaxing and conventional, which make it the complete opposite of the following song.
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Sep 11, 2008
from the album Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 (1988)
Lucky Bob, apparently, wanted to do a Prince number: "He loves your sexy body, he loves your dirty mind..." Whilst the end result ain't exactly 'Little Red Corvette', the car/sex double innuendos are well-worthy of Paisley Park, and Bob has more fun with the vocal since 'Lucky Wilbury's 115th Dream':You don't need no wax-job
You're smooth enough for me
and, my personal favourite:
Let me drive your pick-up truck
And park it where the sun don't shine!
The Wilbury brothers do him proud with the backing vocal, with second cousin Keltner as dependable as ever on drums. Jim Hornbury (twice removed) times the sax-appeal to the minute of the midnight hour.
As the object of desire's most attractive attributes get listed towards the end of the track, we get the band's working name of "Tremblin' Wilburys" thrown in, right between her "big refrigerator" and "marble earrings". It had to be changed, of course: "it's a [-'kin] dirty world!"
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Sep 10, 2008
from the album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006)
Having both the most energy of all the songs and the most poignant wording, this is a stellar topper to the album.Cause over there there's broken bones
There's only music, so that there's new ringtones
This single sentiment alone is enough to make anybody sadly relate to Turner's repeated line "there ain't no romance around here."
However, as stated earlier, the theme of social hypocrisy is recreated and finished nicely, with a bluntness that few who have seen people struggle to fit in will miss:
Well over there there's friends of mine
What can I say, I've known them for a long long time
And they might overstep the line
But you just cannot get angry in the same way
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Sep 9, 2008
from the album Flashpoint (1991)
Keith Richards' classic guitar intro sounds out from a barrage of pyrotechnics. To say the crowd went wild would be one of the most clichéd understatements ever written. Lights/Music/ACTION! There they were, in they kick.Let's face it, the track was written to be a show-opener: if you've got it, flaunt it.
And flaunt it they certainly did: this is a rollicking version! One of the nice things about Flashpoint, unlike many live albums, is that the crowd-noise comes through pretty high in the mix. It does really help to give that sense of (re)being there. You only have to close your eyes to see Mick camping it up ("you make a dead man cum" — what a line!) or Keith twisting into some ridiculous note-tweaking posture or other. A final "start me up!" and a deadstop finish. The crowd goes wilder!
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Sep 8, 2008
from the album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
Spector's fragile, tinkling 'musical-box' piano intro, slowly fading up from nothing, comes as a big contrast after "Remember"'s incessant pounding and explosive finish.Lennon may have spent the majority of the album debunking and disassociating himself from all things religious, but the lyric of "Love" reads like a direct follow-on from the Epistle of Saint Paul (the apostle, not the Beatle): "Three things remain: Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love." [1 Corinthians 13]. "Love is Real, Love is Free" [Lennon].
Maybe it's all you've got left when you've lost faith and hope.
It's not religion, of course (Imagine none of 'em — John would be the first to take to task those who call for his sanctification), but it is deeply spiritual in its directness. Similar passages can doubtless be found in any collection of sacred teachings. The simple clarity of the words is echoed by the piano/guitar accompaniment and Lennon's voice, untouched by production trickery, is shiveringly, poignantly beautiful. Love is all things to all people, "you and me"; love is giving and taking, "wanting ... needing".
As he'd already observed an earlier johncarnation, "Love is all you need!"
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Sep 7, 2008
from the album Jarvis (2006)
The lone solid drumbeat intro is quickly joined by glammy, trashy guitar chords and a line about "an altercation." It is immediately realized that you're back in the dark stuff. The menacing hooligans have their way, and Jarvis vows to be a vengeful spirit after they do him in.He goes on to blame the parents and informs them that their kids are just "maggots without the sense to become flies." The police are no help in this story as they're busy "putting bullets in someone's head for no particular reason." This could be considered by some as the one throwaway or filler track on Jarvis, but I wouldn't consider "Fat Children" that - it stays. And it works. While this one is about going down fighting, the next one is a different matter.
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