Today’s #30DaySongChallenge pick is a two-fer! And I can’t think of any artist who deserves this kind of double-dipping more than The King of Soul, Otis Redding, an absolutely inimitable performer who always makes you want to go back for seconds. Last year, the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts published a study hypothesizing that there…
Read MoreThe lyrics to my #30DaySongChallenge pick today are not “utterly mysterious” in a strict sense. As a whole, I know what the song is about. It’s stated right there in the title. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson don’t want you, mamas, to let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Also, don’t let your babies…
Read MoreSelf-motivation is definitely NOT one my virtues. I don’t have a hard time being productive and getting excited about the things I already want to do, but (alas!) those are cases where motivation isn’t really necessary. It’s all the other droll, boring, and tedious things that require an extra push. I’ve heard of people with…
Read MoreToday’s pick was a hard one for some reason. At dinner last night with my girlfriend and her step-mom, I told them what today’s prompt would be and asked for suggestions. They were much quicker on the draw than I was, thankfully, because I had pretty much stalled at “Billie Jean.” (We’re exactly one week…
Read MoreFor a long time now, I have kept a running list of “Songs That I Would Cut Off A Limb To Have Written.” It’s not a super-long list because my standards are high, but I certainly do not have enough limbs to cover it. Most of the time, I find that it’s the lyrics of…
Read MoreI’m not sure if this counts as cheating in the unwritten #30DaySongChallenge Rule Book, but I’m picking one of my own songs for today. Like a lot of amateur songwriters, my songs have always tended toward the autobiographical, though I’d like to think that the stories and sentiments are universalizable. But even the songs that…
Read MoreHere’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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreNina 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…
Read More“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…
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