Month: June 2018

Here’s the thing about anger: it’s complicated. If expended in the wrong direction, or if indulged for too long, it can be futile, all-consuming, and self-defeating. You can’t concentrate. You lose sleep. You eat crappy food. You’re truculent and prickly. You bite when you should only bark. On the other hand, if well-managed and judiciously…

The transition from the late-60’s to the early-70’s was a tumultuous time in this country. We were quagmired in a directionless and immoral war. The economy was stagnant, on the precipice of a major recession. At home, domestic society was fraying at the seams. Women, Blacks, and the LGBT community were fighting for progress against…

Nina Simone, perhaps one of the most unique female voices of all time, famously refused the label of “jazz,” once commenting that it was “a white term to define black people.” Instead, she called her sound “black classical music,” emphasizing her virtuosity as a pianist over her stellar talent as a singer, the latter of…

“Karaoke” is a portmanteau of two Japanese words, kara (“empty”) and oke (“orchestra”). The first karaoke machine was invented by Daisuko Inoue in 1971, and it has since become a staple of nightlife across the globe. The idea of providing music lovers an instrumental version (an “empty orchestra”) of their favorite songs is genius, really, and I…

First, a clarification: It appears that I misread the prompt list and mixed up Day 15 and Day 16. So, what follows is the post for what should have been my pick yesterday. And you can see yesterday‘s post for what should have been my pick for today. Second, a caveat: I’ve written a lot on…

There are plenty of reasons to prejudicially favor the “original” recording of a song, even when it may not be the “best” version. American pop music has a long and ugly history of artistic appropriation and theft, after all. Sometimes the original version of a song captures a historical moment or the spirit of a…

There’s a lot of music to love, and just as much to hate, from the 80’s.  I love most of the 80’s top-40 pop, but I hate the synthesizer sound. I love most of the glam-rock power ballads, but never really got into the quirky, moody “alternative” stuff. I love 80’s R&B and hip-hop, but…

I’m not a big fan of the category “guilty pleasure” when it comes to music. Unlike other pleasures, which can lead to illegal, immoral, or unhealthy actions, there isn’t anything about taking pleasure in music that ought to make one feel “guilty” as far as I can tell. You like what you like. Taste is…

It’s really no mystery to anyone who knows me how much I dislike Taylor Swift. She’s my pick for today. Barf. It genuinely pains me to spend any time or space at all writing on this otherwise-respectable blog about Taylor Swift.  I’m sure she’s a nice person in real life, and for charity’s sake I’ll…

I have a certifiably unhealthy obsession with sad songs.  I think they’re the most beautiful things that human beings create, and I think you can learn far more truth about the complex, convoluted tragicomedy that is human life and community from sad songs than from all the rest of our creations combined.  Among the reasons…