What It Feels Like For A Girl – Glee Cast – For all my problems with Glee, and I do have plenty of em, occasionally they will get it right musically (the show is unwatchable). The Streisand cover last season was one and this is another. One of Madonna’s last great songs is giving an exceptional switch with a boy lead singer and a boy choir travelling the question of gender curiosity. Well done. Shame about the rest.
Know Your Enemy – American Idiot – The highlight of the Broadway show and a very strong work out on one of Green Day’s strongest songs this decade -it really lends it self to multiple singers, changing from paranoid loner to group terrorism. Is that Green Day playing? It is so strong you’ve gotta wonder–
The Dream – Rufus Wainwright – I need more than a day or two to get used to a Rufus song so this is somewhere between I can’t hear its highly charged vocals and can hear the pianos hard pounding and deftly butterfly glissandos. I’ll get back to it.
Nobody’s Fault But Mine – Willie Nelson – Sure he wrote “Crazy” and sure he’s a national treasure but I have never been much of a fan and this is a straight drag. WTF -the thought of him playing this in concert could put me to sleep any night.
Plundered My Soul – The Rolling Stones – We’re not so excited just because this is a great Exile On Mainstreet outtake. We’re excited because it is a great outtake that stands alongside “Rocks Off” and “Shine A Light” not “Casino Boogie” or a great blues cover. It is an outtake that is a first? maybe second, but around there, tier Glimmer Twins song back when they were the greatest song writers. It has the melodic midpace of classic Stones, plus a great Jagger vocal, back up chick singer, an a horn so integrated by now into the band sound. And that harmonica (double track no doubt) and Richards on fire but the solo at the end? That’s Mick Taylor. SONG OF THE WEEK.
Bet I (feat. T.I. and Playboy Tre) – B.o.B – Bob is all over the place. After the over emotional “Airplane 2” I wrote about earlier today, this is much much better. Great backing track and hot, hot rap. Especially T.I.’s half way through. I have noticed this with Drake lately as well: it’s like they’ve taken Kanye West’s 808s lessons but just use it as a change up on the albums. I think it doesn’t work because it feels like the auto-tune of rapping. Anyway, this ain’t that. This is real.
Paris – Karen Nash – Sure, you’re thinking all those cool English myspace girls: Lily Allen, Katy Perry, Florence and Marina. But Kate started a bit earlier, 2007, and this is as good as the genre gets with a great rocky strings ending.
Dream About The Future – The Apples In Stereo – Why is there a chick singinglead/ Whatever -a highly arranged art-pop keeper though I miss the earlier stuff, before the elf from lord of rings joined em in the video. This is a touch too fussy for my tastes.
I’ve Seen It Slip Away – Merle Haggard – I LOVED Haggard back in the day. Even in the 90s. But his recorded work has suffered for awhile and he hasn’t recorded much worth listening to since The Peer Sessions. You in the market for a song about how they don’t make em like Presley, any more? Go ahead. I think nostalgia is bullshit. Presley was great live. Marissa Paternoster is great live. What’s Merle’s problem?
Fresh – Devo – Have you noticed it is the whipped drum sound that makes Devo Devo nowadays? This is a great little rocker and the drums are awesome.
Los Angeloser – Meatloaf – Todd says this doesn’t sound like Meatloaf but I disagree. It isn’t histrionic the way, say, “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” was but what it loses in orchestrations it makes up in humor and story telling and a Big Bopper rip that’ll have you smiling from ear to ear.