100 years of “Rhapsody in Blue”

February 12, 2024

“Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin premiered 100 years ago today, on February 12, 1924.

Here’s the great pianist Yuja Wang with Camerata Salzburg conducted by Lionel Bringuier:

Tori Amos — Under the Pink

January 31, 2024

Tori Amos released her second album, Under the Pink, 30 years ago today in 1994.

The first song on the album, “Pretty Good Year,” starts out immaculately pretty but becomes furious...

I feel a special connection to “God” because watching this video was my introduction to Tori Amos. You can hear her being increasingly influenced by the grunge rock of the time:

If anything could be called her signature song, it’s “Cornflake Girl.” She said:

“Cornflake Girl” is about how I came to terms with the naive notion that all women are the good guys and men are always the bad guys. That, obviously, is not always the case. … Whenever they would seemingly instinctively attack men, I’d have to say, “I don’t automatically feel that way, I’m trying to rise above such feelings.” Hatred for men, en masse, is as poisonous a feeling as shame.

The last song on the album, “Yes, Anastasia,” is a beautiful and energizing 9-minute epic. The song ends with the refrain: “We’ll see how brave you are.” She said that line meant: “If you really want a challenge, just deal with yourself.”

Denny Laine of Paul McCartney and Wings has died

December 5, 2023

Denny Laine has died at age 79. He played guitar and sang on 7 albums by Paul McCartney and Wings in the ’70s. This is “Let Me Roll It,” from their 1973 album Band on the Run, one of my favorite songs by my favorite singer/songwriter:

He was the lead singer on the Moody Blues’ classic ’60s song “Go Now” (1964). Here he is singing it live while playing piano with Paul McCartney and Wings:

We’ve already said goodbye

But since you gotta go

Oh, you’d better go now …

Before you see me cry

Happy birthday to Joni Mitchell!

November 7, 2023

Joni Mitchell, the Canadian singer / songwriter / guitarist / pianist / genius, turns 80 today.

Here she is playing “Big Yellow Taxi” (“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”):

Rolling Stone recently ranked her the 9th greatest guitarist of all time, saying:

Joni Mitchell has reigned as rock’s ultimate acoustic guitarist for over 50 years, using alternate tunings to devise her own complex guitar language. “I wanted to play the guitar like an orchestra,” she told Rolling Stone in 1999. “I know I have a unique way of playing, but nobody seemed to notice. I found it kinda silly that they kept describing it as folk guitar when it was more like Duke Ellington.” After childhood polio weakened her left hand, she compensated by using over 50 different tunings. “I always thought of the top three strings as a horn section and the bottom three as a rhythm section.”

This is her great 1971 album Blue (free on her official YouTube channel):

Here’s a transcendently beautiful song, “Both Sides Now” (from the same concert as the first video). The way she changes just one word in the last line of each chorus is so moving.

10 years of Lorde’s Pure Heroine

September 27, 2023

10 years ago today, in 2013, Lorde put out her debut album, Pure Heroine. This is one of my favorite songs of hers, “400 Lux.”

So many young musical prodigies try to impress us with their talents by emulating adults. One of the great things about how this singer/songwriter from New Zealand broke into the public consciousness at age 16 is that she seemed to feel no need to aspire to mature respectability. She presented herself as a young person hanging out with other young people — but a unique young person who happens to be uncommonly reflective and expressive. Pure Heroine is a pop masterpiece precisely because it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be a masterpiece.