Seven songs for a summer night

In an attempt to jump start myself back into more regular blogging, I thought I'd do the old "seven songs you're into right now" meme. Some of these are what you might expect me to be listening to right now, others may surprise you. And only one of these is a current release.

1) You're Nothing Without Me / Belinda Carlisle
Reading the Belinda Carlisle book got me on a Belinda kick (or was it the other way around? Really, it hardly matters.) This little-known track from her little-known album Live Your Life Be Free is one of my favorite Belinda tracks. I always think of my friend Jeff when I hear this song - "you're nuttin' without me...you're nuttin' without me."



2) It's Here / Kim Wilde
Kim Wilde is dramatically underrated. Her output is also amazingly uneven, but when she is good, she is oh-so-good. I had never heard this song until just recently - and it has vaulted into my top 5 Kim Wilde songs. Infectious in a way that only pop songs from the late 80s/early 90s can be, it has a soaring chorus and a killer middle eight. As XO so rightly put it, great albums are full of songs with great middle eights.



3) Snowbird / Mark Eitzel
It's no secret that I'm a bit of an Anne Murray fan (more on that later.) Guess what, I am so over the mockery, I can't even tell you. Her voice is pleasant and I have fond memories of hearing her songs from my youth. Mark Eitzel's take on her first hit, "Snowbird," slows it down some, but it certainly doesn't detract. It does what any good cover should - put it's own stamp on the song while making you appreciate the original all over again.

4) Come On Come On / Mary Chapin Carpenter
Truth be told, I never much liked this Mary Chapin Carpenter song. The last song on the Come On Come On album, it ended the album with a whimper rather than a bang. But as a friend of mine put it, "songs are like clothes, not always great when they're brand-new, a bit too stiff and shiny. After you've worn them a while, you can realize all of a sudden how nicely they fit." This is certainly true of "Come On Come On" - it suits my 38 year-old self so much better than my 21 year-old self. It's a perfect example of a sad song that really leaves you a little bit better off than when you started.



5) Alone In New York / Chatham County Line
I'm not a huge fan of roots music or Americana, but I recently discovered Chatham County Line via my friend Jason and boy am I glad I did. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and Dolly's bluegrass albums were top notch (it's Dolly, what do you expect?) but apart from that, I just have never really gotten around to listening to much of it. This is a standout track fromt he Wildwood album, it's a sober and melancholy affair, setting itself apart from the pop frenzy that has really characterized this summer. Much like October Project, I wish I had discovered them in the fall because, really, this is autumn music through and through.



6) Trouble in Shangri-La / Stevie Nicks
Stevie shimmered back in 2001 with her most classic-Stevie-Nicks-sounding song since who knows when. Obtuse lyrics + great melody = Stevie at her best. It almost makes me wonder if this song wasn't from the vaults - with Stevie, anything is possible. But it is latter day Stevie that didn't just not disappoint, it made you think that maybe she still had some spark and fire left in her after all. Props to Matt for putting this song back on my radar for reasons well known to him.

7) Who's Leaving Who? / Anne Murray
So about this Anne Murray thing. I discovered this song, as I have blogged before, when two friends independently of each other sent me a link to a download of the long out of print vinyl 12" single of this 1986 Anne Murray song. Talk about getting out of your pop-country rut - she is positively synth-tastic on this song. It's almost, as Heidi put it, "disco Anne Murray" (which ranks a close second to her comparing Debbie Harry at the True Colors Tour to "Anne Murray gone hard.") And then, I discovered the video. It's non-embeddable (bastards) but seriously click the link. The crowd at the Anne Murray show I went to was nowhere near that animated.

And guess what? This is my 1,400th post. As Cher would say, follow this you bitches!

Dividing line

There are SO MANY good songs out this year. Seriously, I have 29 songs on my "best of 2010" list so far this year and the year's only half over. I think I struggled to put together a list half that long in 2009. There are also so many good "summer songs" - the new Kylie album is full of them, but there are others as well. I don't want to give away the goods too soon as I may actually do a summer songs post in late August after just skipping the whole thing last year, but The Bird & The Bee kicked it off with "Heard It On The Radio." Since then, there's been a seemingly never ending flow of good music.

I don't know what makes a summer song, but I know it when I hear it in much the same way I know a good autumn song when I hear one. It's not often that a song is both, but when one manages that feat, it's sweet, sweet bliss. Such a song is "Lakes Can Be Lethal" by the British indie-pop band Delays.

I really need to have heard this song in about two months because it somehow seems to capture the "feeling" of late August/early September while still managing to be a summer song as well. I'm not totally sold on the album yet which I've been buying piecemeal on eMusic. The falsetto, not surprisingly, gets me every time.


Instead, I blew the last $4.45 of my iTunes credit from my birthday (thanks Mary!) on this wonder that I didn't even know existed until this morning!



Anne Murray ditching country/pop for a synth-laden album in 1986? Who knew? Clearly not me or I would have snatched this puppy up years ago!

(thanks to Steve for putting "Lakes Can Be Lethal" on my radar and to Jason & Lucas for the Anne Murray insanity)

Christmas warble

It's time for a Christmas set from one of my guiltiest of all guilty pleasures.

Everyone has to get into the Christmas act, and while surfing around Amazon.com the other day, I came across yet ANOTHER Anne Murray Christmas album. Turns out this is her 7th holiday collection, and actually, it's a bit of a cheat. Fifteen tracks, but ten of them are collected from her previous six Christmas albums. That leaves five new tracks.

This proves to be a tactical error for Anne Murray. While she has always had a fantastic voice, and the voice that sings these new songs is unmistakeably Anne Murray, the new songs suffer the same fate as a lot of those duets on her Duets: Friends & Legends. While good, you can tell that Anne Murray does not have quite the vocal chops she had in the past. This is certainly not her fault, but when you listen to her newly recorded version of "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" and then compare it to "Winter Wonderland" which has been around forever, you can't help but feel like you're listening to your grandmother sing "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree." Again, that is not Anne's fault - it's just what happens to your voice as it ages. You become a bit of a warbler.

But Anne is such a class act, we'll forgive her for that. We'll even forgive her the frosted hair and the gradual morph into Katherine Chancellor from The Young & The Restless.

I'm fond of saying that nothing says Christmas like Kenny & Dolly. I'd be willing to add Anne Murray to that definitive Christmas list.