Leigh M. Johnson

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 18: A Song That Every Bar Band Should Know

I’d give roughly 10 to 1 odds that you don’t know who that guy is in the picture to the left. That’s Rupert Holmes (born David Goldstein), British composer, singer-songwriter, musician, playwright, and novelist. He won two Tony Awards for his musical Drood and has released no fewer than 16 albums over the course of…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 17: A Song You Hear Often On The Radio

A little more than a year ago, Memphis got a second classic hip-hop radio station when Cumulus switched the format of WKIM from talk radio to “100% Throwback.” For the first week or so that WKIM (“The Vibe”) was on air, I listened to it nonstop and, since then, it remains one of the pre-set…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 16: A Song You Used To Love But Now Hate

The vault of go-to stories that, in one way or another, capture something of what we understand to be the American experience is both deep and diverse.  There are the Horatio Alger-esque “bootstraps” stories. There are “The New Colossus” stories of immigrants, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. There are the “underdog” stories of athletes and artists,…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 20: A Song You Listen To When You’re Angry

NOTE: I’ve gotten behind in my posts for the 30 Day Song Challenge, so the next few days are going to be short and sweet, so I can get caught back up. If I choose to listen to music when I’m angry, more often than not I’m looking for some kind of cathartic release, rather…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 19: A Song That Bar Bands Should Stop Playing

For the most part, bar band songs become “bar band songs” in the first place because they’re the sort that people can hear over and over again without tiring of them. So I don’t really have a beef with most bar band songs.  I wish that Beale Street bands didn’t play “Sweet Home Alabama” so frequently,…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 22: A Song You Want Played at Your Wedding

I won’t ever get married– partly because I object to the state institution of marriage, but also because I’m old and ornery and too attached to my own independence now– so today’s prompt is a bit of a strange one to answer. For the record, I love weddings, I love couples who pledge their lives…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 21: A Song That Is Best Heard Live

Most of the kinds of music I like– blues, gospel, country, rock n’ roll– are better heard live.  I don’t know if this is true of all genres of music.  I’ve heard my jazz-loving and classical-loving friends speak of some of their favorite albums as if the recording were absolutely perfect, as if no “live”…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 11: A Song From Your Favorite Band

My favorite band, The Rolling Stones, has probably appeared more often than any other band or artist in my 30 Day Song Challenge picks over the last several years. Their music sits right in the center of my sweet spot.  It’s great “pop,”of course,  but it’s messy, sloppy, lazy even. All rock n’ roll is formulaic, but…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 9: A Song That Makes You Want To Dance

Every person should have a song that makes them involuntarily raise up out of their chair and shout to the entire world “This. Is. My. Sooonnnggg!” whenever somebody punches its magic numbers into a jukebox. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of your body beginning to move on its own– foot tapping, hips swaying, head bobbing,…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 8: A Song You Know All The Words To

I don’t really consider it a particular accomplishment to know all the words to a song. In fact, I’d happily give up some of the space currently being used in my brain as song-lyric storage if I could consistently remember how to spell avocado or where I left my keys. The truth is that I…

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