I'm just an album guy at heart. If I like an artist or band I tend to like more than one song on the album. So it's really about my favorite albums of the year, and the 100 songs I have chosen here are mostly grouped with at least two or more of what I think are premium cuts of songs from the same album.
My favorite song of 2019 is There Goes My Miracle by Bruce Springsteen from his Western Stars album. Bruce once said that with his plain voice and looks he better be a damn good songwriter if he was going to make it in the music business. I think his vocals have actually improved over the years as Bruce works so hard in everything he does. His vocal on There Goes My Miracle got the hairs on the back of my neck to attention the first time I heard the song. I think the song's a masterpiece of writing, arrangement and a simply fantastic vocal that drives the emotion of the song.
Another song that got me literally tinkling with pure joy was Street Song by The Whofrom their just released album, WHO. Street Song is an instant classic in my mind because Pete Townshend throws in a little bit of everything that you would associate with the sound of the band in the 1970's. Roger Daltrey's vocal is outstanding, but the thing that brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it (very loudly in my earphones), was Zak Starkey's (son of Ringo) drumming. Zak doesn't imitate his godfather Keith Moon, but the spirit of Keith just came back like a wave through Zak's drumming! Keith Moon is in fact my favorite drummer of all-time because of his unique double tom-toms sound that just rolls like no other in rock. In the 1970's, you could be in any car with crappy speakers and a song from Who's Nextwould come on the radio and you could hear Keith's drumming just like it was making the car hum down the road.
2019 goes down as the year the 'California Sound' made a comeback. Composers such as Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb come to mind that hark back to a time and sound of great songwriting combined in pop with sweeping orchestrations and in rock 'n' roll with great harmony and electric guitars blending with acoustic guitars.
In Western Stars, Bruce embodies Bacharach and Webb and channels Wichita Lineman. In the folk rock documentary, Echo in the Canyon, Jakob Dylan does a similar exploration of groups like The Byrds as the California Sound evolved from beach music to folk rock. Both albums are peppered through my favorites playlist this year.
I have to mention, Dan Auerbach. First for his producing Yola Carter'sWalk Through Fire a vocal tour de force by the young British singer-songwriter. Her song, Lonely the Night takes me back to mid-60's English pop like Dusty Springfield and is a must listen. Second, Dan reunites with Patrick Carney and The Black Keys to make a great rock album also featured here and aptly titled, Let's Rock.
Album making is hard work combined with the talent to pull it off. It's a special magic to write, sing, play, and produce 10 or so songs woven together as an album and out into the world. A good album is a great find, a great album is a treasure for life.
So here's 100 songs I really liked this year and mixed together to represent some good and great albums by some fine rock 'n' rollers and Americana musicians in 2019. Enjoy my friends and here's to more great music in 2020!
Yola Carter is a 35 year old British singer-songwriter who's just around the corner from being the next Americana sensation. Thanks to her performance at AmericanaFest 2016 that eventually led to her getting her hooked up with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and solo act sensation himself (check out his 2017 Waiting on a Song album). Auerbach has produced Yola's new album, Walk Through Fire, just released in February.
For this week's blog, I was working on featuring new music releases from January - March of this year, and had to put that on the digital shelf once I started listening to Walk Through Fire. Like so many people who hear her sing for the first time, I was simply knocked out. Auerbach was no exception, who instantly wanted to collaborate with her at his Easy Eye Sound studio and label in Nashville.
The result is a stunning album. Auerbach's influence as Producer who brought in a wealth of Nashville talent to support this project brings a very Waiting on a Song vibe without diminishing Yola's towering voice range across the album.
It is so rare for me to like every song on an album these days that it takes me back to my first listen to Carol King's Tapestry album in 1971. I'm not comparing the two, but Walk Through Fire is so well crafted as it goes to the deep well of American music and pre-digital recording.
Some would call this album 'Country Soul' but let's just embrace the entire palette of American music that has influenced this young woman as an example of why the Americana genre is thriving today, despite no mainstream radio time.
For the playlist this week, I have included all 12 songs from Walk Through Fire, and several songs from her 2016 EP, Orphan Offering, and then some tracks recorded at live shows or radio streaming events. Maybe this is your first listen of Yola Carter, it won't be you last! Enjoy my friends.
Now with that said, let's go back to take a listen to some of the best songs from last year. In putting this post and playlist together, I looked at several top lists from the "Best songs of 2017" on the Internet. Current stars such as Kendrick Lamar, Chris Stapleton, Harry Styles, and St. Vincent came up, as well as many other artists who I have never heard of before. I'm thinking, with rap, pop and country pop as the main music plays on the airwaves, who's going to dive into my 2017 list of 100 songs? I'm the guy who likes acoustic music, or as some might say, "the old white guy who listens to banjos and mandolins."
So from the pick of the names above, you'd probably peg me as a Chris Stapleton guy, well no. I know he's a gifted singer-songwriter but he just doesn't have that "it" factor for me– maybe a little too much stereotypical male country voice. Then why do I like Meryl Haggard? Again, maybe it's as simple as just having the magical "it" that draws you to an artist that you can't always explain. Then for things that I can explain, like the sound of the female singing voice as in the perfect harmony of The Secret Sisters that is simply one of the most beautiful things in the world.
I first started the Monday Monday Music blog two years ago on January 5, 2015 as a writing exercise that I designed for myself, to improve my writing in my educational consultant business. Writing this blog has been fun and given me a confidence to keep writing in other areas. Last summer, I began to research and write most everyday towards the completion of my first book called, Transformation by Design: The Integration of Learning Design, Physical Space Design and Digital Space Design. I believe all my current writings have changed my life from what I was doing just a couple years ago. And in the spirit of a 62 year old upstart, to paraphrase what many accomplished writers have said in one way or another, "I've only written to myself for myself." My music playlists, like my writings here are an extension of my passion for music that I have curated for me, but are also equally fueled with a motivation and great hope that you're reading and listening to both.
The first song on the playlist is Prisoner, by Ryan Adams. I rarely record video at concerts because they look and sound like crap, but I like this one. I was sitting in the fourth row at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara on June 1, 2017. The video does look like crap, but my phone magically picked up the sound better than usual. Here's me, becoming a new big fan of Ryan Adams in the moment, not to mention one of the best albums of 2017, Prisoner. The next song from the same album is, To Be Without You and is my favorite song of 2017. I love this album!
Speaking of albums, you can see from the 24 album covers collage that I put together at the top of the post, I'm an album guy. I think it is very important that you at least "skim and scan" an album, and one thing Youtube is very useful for before you purchase. Liam Gallagher's solo debut, As You Were, is a good example. I started skimming it on YouTube, but quickly settled in for a deeper listen and really enjoyed most of the tracks on the album.
The concept of a record album is such a wonderful thing. You may buy an album for a hit song but yet, have a mini collection of the musicians' work at that moment during their time in a recording studio together. If you make the time to listen, there's magic in the deeper cuts as many albums are unique unto themselves from an artist's or band's total catalog. Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain comes to mind for example. In fact from my list of 100 here, many of the songs represent those cuts so often overlooked in the media.
Here's my Top 10 songs released in 2017 (and hard to cut that down from 100), but these are the songs that give me a special rush (just add Christmas headphones) and get better the more you hear them.
To Be Without You - Ryan Adams, Prisoner
If We Were Vampires - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The Nashville Sound
King of a One Horse Town - Dan Auerbach, Waiting on a Song
Helpless - John Mayer, The Search for Everything
Mississippi - The Secret Sisters, You Don't Own Me Anymore
Beach Boys - Weezer, Pacific Daydream
The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness - The National, Sleep Well Beast
Hollywood - Lee Ann Womack, The Lonely, The Lonesome & The Gone
Paper Crown - Liam Gallagher, Liam Gallagher
Carry Me - The Secret Sisters, You Don't Own Me Anymore
So I'm hoping you at least you skim and scan this playlist as I've purposely scattered each artist or band's songs around as a linear shuffle (my basic technique for most of my YouTube playlists). Enjoy my friends and here's to listening to new and old music in 2018!
I haven't posted since my June 5th blog on Ryan Adams, but I'm now back after listening to a ton of new music that has come out from January-June of this year. I've been gathering, shifting and putting together a playlist of now 73 of my favorite new (or newly recorded) songs to share with you from a core list of artists. Growing up in the 1960's and 70's, the album was king and I want to still embrace that. Here are my Top 5 mid-year picks.
If you follow my blog you know you're going to get a good dose of Americana music (as reflected in my picks above), but I've got rock, pop, blues and jazz gems to share in this blog as well. I like to think I've developed an eclectic palette for music over the years and I guess that goes along with my indulgences with food and drink as well. I'm banking that you also like to mix it up and not just listen to one genre of music like all the narrow programmed radio and streamed stations out there. Beyond NPR and some college stations , I just had to let radio go...
This leads me to my latest listening habits from the DELIVERY side of the music industry and thoughts of my convenience and dealing with CD's and MP3's from buying, ripping and even storing music. You see, I want the technology to work better for me on my ongoing streaming quest for easy access to music. So, In the last six months I've developed two priorities for my music listening pleasure.
I want any song or album available to me on all my devices anywhere, anytime; and,
I want to save money with my music dollar.
In the past, I've tried and dropped iTunes, Pandora, Spotify and Sirius. I then started creating a MP3 musical vault of all my CD's and new purchases on a backup hard drive and loaded them all onto my phone for offline listening in the car or on a jog. Not a bad plan, but a bit of a hassle to get everything to my phone. What I discovered was that it wasn't enough. I didn't have to listen to FM radio in the car, but I (only) had about 3000 offline songs. I had essentially created my own narrow band music station and found myself hitting skip, skip, skip on the car steering wheel button! What I needed was at least 25,000 songs to get to that wide and endless river of deep music cuts. Believe me, when you get into your 60's you want to hear songs that you've never heard before.
So last Christmas, Mary Kit got me/us the Amazon Echo. We are already Amazon Prime members ($99 per year) and decided to get Amazon Music Unlimited. If you are an Amazon Prime member, Amazon Music Unlimited is $79.00 a year or $6.58 a month. I buy at least one CD a month (say $9.99) so, if I started using Amazon Music Unlimited and stopped buying CD's, I'd be ahead money wise. Not only that, For the price of one CD, I really get unlimited music (Amazon says, "tens of millions" songs) on my computer, phone and Echo and that meets my two requirements above!
Download the iPhone and iPad App @ iTunes or the Android Phone and Tablets App @ Google Play
With Amazon Echo, you just ask, "Alexa, play Jason Isbell, The Nashville Sound." Alexa then plays the whole album. You can tell Alexa to "skip" and it goes to the next song, something my 5 year old granddaughter does all the time with her favorite movie soundtrack albums. Get the larger model ($179) shown here, it has a better speaker.
What is really cool about the iPhone/Android Phone Amazon Music app is that you can download songs to your phone and play them offline without using any of your data minutes from your phone carrier (thank you Shawna McIntosh for that tip)! The Amazon Music app stores the downloaded song in the app but just to let you know, it is not a MP3 or music file that you can then download to your computer hard drive. However, I've been doing a test by watching my data minute use while in the car or on that jog and so far, see no need to even download to the phone app as I've got plenty of data minutes left at the end of the month, yippee!
Here's a little brief of my music listening process these days and how I sometimes turn that into a blog.
I think about an artist or band I like and search that name in the Amazon Music app whether I'm using my computer or smartphone. Say it's, The Plimsouls. I view all their albums and hit the + sign to add an album and all its songs to MY MUSIC. As of this writing, I now have 250+ artists and comedians, 1868 albums, 25,061 songs in 46 genres. (I did it!)
For new material, I go to the HOME screen and go to NEW RELEASES and NEWLY RELEASED ALBUMS. Then, it's about how much time do you have?
For a blog, I usually search and listen to an album's songs in Amazon Music. Do I listen to every song start to finish, are you kidding? I probably listened to 50+ albums for this blog, it does take time, but for me, it's a treasure hunt. When you find a song or better yet, a new album with a bunch of good songs, I stop and smell the music, take it in and + it.
For the album songs that make the cut, I then often go to YouTube and search for the artist and song. If the artist/band has a high quality audio recording video or better, a high quality session or concert song video, it then goes into my YouTube Playlist for the blog. Also, go to my blog about how to block YouTube advertisements just because you can!
So you're thinking, "dude's got a lot of time," maybe but it's a passion and hey, you took the time to read this, now maybe make the time to listen to my Playlists. At the least, I saved you some time with some excellent sorting and shifting of what I believe to be some damn good music and thanks for being a Monday Monday Music reader.
Now this particular Playlist below is a big one (multiple hours in the making), but I DON'T have crazy expectations that you're going to listen to every song. May I suggest my little technique for each song before you skip: play the beginning 15-20 seconds, if it hooks you continue listening, if not skip to the middle and then the last third of the song. You know what you like, but sometimes give a song a chance. For example, I've never been into fast and loud 3-chord headbanging rock, but bands like Japandroids are turning my ear their way.
Enjoy this new music including several old songs newly recorded by different musicians! And, a special thank you to Glen Campbell for some really memorable songs!
Oh and one last thing, I'm thinking about buying a new turntable and starting to purchase a very "fine wine" collection of vinyl records again for that special sit down "smell and taste the music" time. I was reading somewhere that Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection had just been re-released on vinyl. I was telling my friend Mark this past week how I wore out Neil Young's After the Goldrush in my bedroom in 1970. I'm thinking I kind of want to come back around to that pure analog experience too!
2019 goes down as the year the 'California Sound' made a comeback. Composers such as Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb come to mind that hark back to a time and sound of great songwriting combined in pop with sweeping orchestrations and in rock 'n' roll with great harmony and electric guitars blending with acoustic guitars.
In Western Stars, Bruce embodies Bacharach and Webb and channels Wichita Lineman. In the folk rock documentary, Echo in the Canyon, Jakob Dylan does a similar exploration of groups like The Byrds as the California Sound evolved from beach music to folk rock. Both albums are peppered through my favorites playlist this year.
