Shades of love – the 10 best love songs

There are plenty of good love songs out there, but what makes a love song truly great?

First of all, the song must not only avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of sentimentality and cliché – not an easy task – but must go beneath the surface (the surface being where most popular music resides). Next, there must be conviction in the singer’s performance, an expressive potency that moves us, maybe even sends chills down your spine. Finally, the arrangement must reinforce the spirit of the song. Continue reading →

Humor in music

Dr. Demento, eminent radio host, specialized in humor in musicGiven how prominent humor is in our culture, it’s surprising that it doesn’t appear more often in music. With some exceptions, artists tend to steer clear of humor or use it sparingly. Joni Mitchell covered the jazz tune “Twisted,” a humorous take on split personality that ends with the line “Two heads are better than one.” Others have used humor to make a point in songs that aren’t humorous per se. Tori Amos uses a line from an Eagles song in “Springtime of His Voodoo” and sings “Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and I’m quite sure I’m in the wrong song.” In “The Waitress” she sings “I want to kill this waitress,” then “but I believe in peace, bitch.” And who can forget the name of her ill-fated band, Y Kant Tori Read? (This calls to mind the ironic band names launched by the punk movement, such as Dead Kennedys, Chrome Dinette, and perhaps the best of all, The The.) Continue reading →

The 10 best albums ever

Palm treeIf you had only ten albums to take with you to a desert island, what would offer you the greatest pleasure for the rest of your days? These would need to be albums that hold up to repeated listens, obviously—something that doesn’t easily bore you. My own choices are listed below in alphabetical order. Each of these albums is musically rich, covering a variety of styles from pop to jazz to neo-soul to rock to alternative. Continue reading →

The genius of Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, musical geniusJoni Mitchell rode to popularity during the folk music revival of the 1960s, but this musical genius grew far beyond the confines of that genre in the ensuing decades. Even today, in a song like “If I Had a Heart” from Shine, her music retains roots in the strophic structure that characterizes folk music: instead of “verse / chorus,” there is a series of verses ending with the same lyric. A good example of this pattern is “Amelia” from Hejira, where the hook that ends each verse is “Amelia, it was just a false alarm.” (Sometimes, as in “If I Had a Heart” or “Court and Spark,” Joni adds a contrasting bridge section.) Continue reading →