I love gospel music, which in every instance I think is best heard live.   Gospel music is the music of praise, of solicitation, of lamentation, of supplication and...

I’ve written a fair number of songs in my life, some of them pretty good, most of them average. My experience with songwriting is of two kinds: either (1)...

There was a brief moment of time, after the demise of albums with liner-notes and before the Internet, when it really was possible to be genuinely stymied by a...

This time last year, I was blogging (the 2014 iteration of) the 30 Day Song Challenge, as I’ve done for the last several summers. So I was listening to...

Earworms are funny creatures, really. When you find yourself infected with one, it can be either a blessing or a curse. Earworms feed on our obsessive-compulsive tendencies, they activate...

It seems like bad juju to pick the theme song to your life before you’ve finished living it, but oh well. [*throws salt over shoulder*] I miss the days...

I suspect today’s will be the most difficult prompt of the month, because it requires me to step outside of myself and try to think about what others think about what I...

I’ve made no secret over the years about my dislike for NashVegas wunderkind and fake-country recording artist Taylor Swift.  She even made it into my “Uncanny Valley” series on this blog...

First, let’s just get something straight right away: The Rolling Stones is the greatest band of all time.  Full stop. Several years ago, my favorite music magazine No Depression ran a...

If you’ve ever lived close to a train track, which I have for many of the years of my adult life, you know exactly what it means to love...

There are any number of songs by the late, great Michael Jackson that make me want to dance. Most of them, in fact.  In addition to being a phenomenal and...

Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of musical theater.  This may be due in part to the fact that I seem to lack whatever aesthetic gene or neuron...

I had some major blog snafus this past week, so I’m waaay behind on the 30 Day Song Challenge!  What that means for you, readers, is that the entries...

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...

Since I started doing this Challenge regularly each summer, I’ve learned to loosen my grip a bit on categories like “favorite” and “least favorite” when it comes to songs,...

The hardest thing about picking a “least favorite” song, in my view, is that the pick needs to be something that you actually hear on a semi-regular basis.  There are...