Song of the Week Archives - Page 3 of 9

Scott Miller, ‘Someday/Sometime’

Posted on November 3, 2017November 3, 2017 by Editor

In the age of endless arguments over musical authenticity, it’s always the people with the textbook “credibility” that seem to care the least about the nature of their backgrounds. Scott Miller, an actual cattle rancher, certainly doesn’t: Though tending to 200 acres of farmland and a bunch of resident cows is one of his day jobs, he doesn’t make it his main selling point in the peanut gallery of ideas (otherwise known as the Internet). Notably, he doesn’t parade around with a lasso and chaps, to prove his right to sing songs with folksy, country roots; nor does he walk around in Western getups, eager to put his provenance on display. That’s because he doesn’t need to — his authenticity just spills from the songs on Ladies Auxiliary, his newest LP. Recorded exclusively with women as his creative partners and instrumentalists, it explores love and loss with a gentle, mindful, and sometimes humorous hand.

“Someday/Sometime” is no exception. Expertly simple in construction but stirringly complex in the cadre of emotions it rouses, Miller has admitted that the song was written imagining the life of the father of a friend who committed suicide and left two children behind. Indeed, there’s a solemnity to the message, but it doesn’t spell out the tragic events. Instead, it examines what’s at stake in the day-to-day toils of existence. “Sometimes the worst thing is the truth, sometimes your best will still not do,” he sings. That sentiment could apply to someone gone too soon; it could apply to someone still barreling through the ups and the downs. And it’s as authentically human as can be.

Dori Freeman, ‘Just Say It Now’

Posted on October 20, 2017October 20, 2017 by Editor

There’s nothing quite like a sad song that isn’t actually sad at all, or a happy song that’s anything but. It feels good to condition the emotions and not let things get too caught up in the predictable, the status quo. We’re programmed to think that minor keys and slow acoustics always mean that lyrics just as somber are to come; and we’re equally used to hearing sprightly tales alongside fast beats and carefree picking. But when music really gets interesting, is when this formula is dismissed completely: Often a tool of bluegrass, the instruments can walk a much different line than the brain, painting a more complex picture of the human experience. It’s rare that anything is cut and dry, anyway, and, like some mournful words paired with a dancing fiddle, there are usually two sides to everything … at least.

Dori Freeman, on Letters Never Read, knows this well. Many of her songs play with the ability to be many things at one time and unveil their true vulnerability once they have captured us within their inherent melodies. “Just Say It Now” is an ode to just getting the band aid ripped off before the pain is too intense, and it sounds delicate and light — a go-lucky sing-along with a gauzy, Lauren Canyon chug. “Just say it now before the silence makes me cry,” she sings. “From the beginning, I knew you would say goodbye.” Her voice is sharp and ethereal, pastoral and crisp, able to carry the task of complexity easily within a two-and-a-half-minute frame. Maybe the best sad songs are the ones that make us smile, too.

Jessica Lea Mayfield, ‘Sorry Is Gone’

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Editor

The last thing that women need to do is say we’re sorry.

In the past week, in the wake of numerous “scandals” dripping out of Hollywood, this is a more relevant statement than ever. Don’t get me wrong: The allegations against Harvey Weinstein are scandalous, but it’s a loaded word. “Scandal” sounds dramatic, out of the norm, something suited for television. Truth is, the actions made by Weinstein weren’t scandalous at all — they were, quite devastatingly, something that women endure far, far too often. The real scandal is the cover up and a climate that lets men systemically abuse women, day after day, minute after minute. And a climate that somehow demands that women apologize for what is done to them, not the other way around.

Jessica Lea Mayfield, who endured abuse in her own marital relationship, says something that all women should chant on — “Sorry Is Gone.” And it’s just that: The sorry should be, and is, out of our vocabulary, when we’re the ones who are the victims. “I deserve to occupy this space without feeling like I don’t belong,” she sings. “I’m done excusing myself.” Her rootsiness, gleaned from playing in her family’s bluegrass band as a child, is gone, too. But in this context, the raw aggression and angsty chug of guitar screams, appropriately, for independence from the life she left behind. It’s okay to start over, and it’s okay to start speaking up at any moment, be it five minutes or five years later. It’s never too late, but the time has come for Mayfield — and the rest of us — to just stop apologizing.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, ‘American Girl’

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Editor

I didn’t grow up in a small town. I came of age on the streets of New York City, with Central Park as the nearest green patch, and in Boston’s Back Bay. But for whatever reason, I often fantasized about being that girl I always pictured lived in the land of a country song: It seemed romantic and foreign, to spend your nights out in some sun-kissed field, with soil under your nails, not city dirt. I wondered what it felt like to want to get away from where you were from and not be in a place — like New York City — where life was a constant battle just to be heard.

When I discovered Tom Petty, I found a different girl altogether. The person at the center of “American Girl” felt not like a fantasy, but someone I knew — someone who looked at dreams like a child at a giant ice cream cone, ready to tackle what’s ahead but nowhere near certain of where to start. I remember dancing to that song in my mother’s apartment that overlooked 65th Street with some friends who had come in to visit from my camp in Maine. We were from all over the country, towns big and small, but we all knew what it felt like to be “raised on promises,” as Petty sang. And we all loved a good melody that you weren’t afraid to dance to. This one didn’t just feel danceable; it felt cathartic. We were all American girls and boys with different hopes and ideas, and somehow Petty knew how to soothe our souls and fuel our fantasies without ever talking down to us. The song is “American Girl,” but it didn’t feel exclusive to gender. It was just … all of us.

I put this song on the day after Petty died, dancing around with my four-year-old son. He loved the melody, of course, but sang it as, “he was an American girl,” with a little young-kid lisp and a smile. The gender didn’t matter. He’s an “American Girl,” too.

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, ‘If I Could Talk to a Younger Me’

Posted on September 29, 2017October 11, 2018 by Editor

It’s good to be reminded, sometimes, of the important things — the ones we so easily forget. Between the breakfast coffee and the toothbrush before bed, a day can swing by in what seems shorter than a few breaths. It’s a cliché thing that, most memorably, we once needed Ferris Bueller to cement into our brains: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Pop culture has a way of being pretty poignant. Preach, Ferris.

Abigail Washburn and Béla Fleck, two of our modern masters of the banjo who happen to also be married with a child, handle this concept of the fast drip of time more elegantly on “If I Could Talk to a Younger Me,” from their forthcoming LP, Echo in the Valley. Emotive and ethereal, Washburn sends a message out into the universe … to her self, to her offspring, to whomever might tune their ear to her songs. “If I could talk to a younger me, I’d tell me to go slow,” she sings, as the banjo plucks furiously in an instrumental duet. “This time on earth, it moves so fast, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.” These aren’t complicated lyrics cased in metaphor, but a rather simple reminder to take a moment — as Ferris would say — to stop and look around once in a while. And it never hurts, especially if you’re Washburn and Fleck, to do this in a way that makes that time on earth sound just a little bit more beautiful.

The Lone Bellow, ‘Is It Ever Gonna Be Easy’

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Editor

Sometimes, when the aggravation of modern life and stresses of our daily existence are all just too much, it helps to scream. To yell. To holler out loud — primal, guttural, true. It’s a release that can make us feel in control by letting go, if only for a minute, and if the neighbors don’t freak out and call the cops.

In many ways, that’s what the Lone Bellow is — a sort of musical holler in favor of catharsis. On their first offerings, it manifested itself in a collection of sing-along, gospel-folk explosions: Zach Williams, Kanene Donehey Pipkin, and Brian Elmquist all, well, bellow along, reaching the rafters with a room of sound that could be almost borderline too earnest if you didn’t have the stomach for sincerity over sarcasm or snark. With producer Dave Cobb on board, the trio has found a way to blend their penchant for soulful roots amalgams with an outlook more comfortable embracing the darker side of life through their new LP, Walk into a Storm. And now they’re even better at belting it all out in a way that looks to use those rumbling vocal chords for a little healing. This is especially true on “Is It Ever Gonna Be Easy,” a chugging, swanky admission that it likely never will. “Try to be a better man, but I don’t try all that much,” admits Williams with his band mates joining in on harmony — with Cobb’s touch, the song is sonically more adventurous than they’ve been, allowing for warm ’70s vibes and lush Lauren Canyon touches. Is it ever gonna be easy? Probably not, but that’s life, so let out a little yell, or a lone bellow, and see what happens.

Michaela Anne, ‘What Good Is Water’

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Editor

We spend our lives taking care of things: plants, pets, children, parents, siblings, spouses. We pay the bills and buy the groceries; we do the work and push the papers. Part of that is duty, part is choice, and another part is that, while nurturing others, we can ignore that eternal need within ourselves to make sure all is well and all is good. That we’re okay. That we can breathe. Maybe in a day and age when an insult or a career-ruining jab is just a click or Tweet away, it’s easy to understand why we’re constantly consumed by self-doubt and yet so easily neglect ourselves — it’s all so close, yet so far away. The tools are there to keep going, but we keep picking the wrong ones.

Michaela Anne’s “What Good Is Water,” from last year’s Bright Lights and the Fame, turns that battle into a stirring, moody folk mediation: Like an ignored cactus on the windowsill, it’s not so much about what it would take to keep things thriving, but why we chose to abandon them in the first place. “What good is water, if you don’t have will,” asks Anne, who brings the song’s restless emotions to life in a new black-and-white music video. There’s nothing in life more vital than a sip of water, but it’s easy to knock anything that keeps the heart beating — from a cold drink to a warm embrace — completely off the table and let it shatter at your feet. “What Good Is Water” is a reminder to never let your well, whatever it might be full of, run completely dry.

Caroline Spence, ‘All the Beds I’ve Made’ (acoustic)

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Editor

There are only so many words and casual phrases in the English language, but a great song can challenge the way we think about the finality of the tools we are given. Sometimes, if it’s smart enough, it can even unfold new meanings within repeated listens or flip a cliché on its head. “All the Beds I’ve Made,” a track from the Nashville-based songwriter Caroline Spence, does both.

Appearing on the Secret Garden EP, her forthcoming collection of B-sides from March’s Spades and Roses, “All the Beds I’ve Made” thinks about the multi-faceted meaning of this phrase. It’s a metaphor we all know — making our own beds and lying in them — but it’s a physical act, too — tucking in the sheets to cover the multitude of sins that exist beneath those cotton fibers and pulling the blankets over one too many mistakes. It’s the mornings we’ve woken up in a bed not our own, and it’s the dark roads of our own making, with the streetlights smashed at our own hand.

“There’s no wrong side to get up on,” she sings, her vocals crystalline and striking to the core. “No ghost keeping me awake. Honey, this love’s gonna make up for all the beds I’ve made.” Spence uses carefully curated language to get across an entire backstory: Rough roads and mistakes have led her here, to a place of romantic contentment, and that’s all part of a story. She’s made her bed, but she’s not trying to smooth out the wrinkles, either. Life is beautiful, but it’s messy, too.

John Prine, ‘Sweet Revenge’

Posted on August 25, 2017April 8, 2020 by Editor

So, yeah, everyone is talking about Taylor Swift. This is an undeniable fact and a constant that will exist from now until the release of her sixth record in three months; it will surely dominate the cultural landscape until we’re all sick of her Reputation … Swift included. This anticipation is a electrifying thing — those bubbles of excitement are not unlike the thrill of waiting on the touch of a new lover — but the machine in which music is released these days is also exhausting, and so often the chorus that envelops a body of work is much louder than the songs themselves. As Swift knows, her reputation precedes her. And surrounds her. And tweets at her and …

Of course, there is music out there now other than what belongs to Swift, and some of it are true bits of treasure. John Prine’s September ’78 was dug up like a literal one: The legendary songwriter found the recording in his basement, a live document of his ’70s swagger and prolific prime. Included in the collection is “Sweet Revenge,” a song full of Prine-ian wisdom, the lyric video for which is premiering exclusively here. Somewhat like Swift, Prine wrote “Sweet Revenge” and the album of the same name as a bit of sonic retribution. His label wasn’t happy with the commercial reception to his second LP, so he dropped a veritable masterpiece to set them straight and silence them once and for all. Swift might experience a different kind of detractor — in the form of tabloids, gossip blogs, and maybe a Kardashian or two — but she could take some marching orders from the ever-sage Prine: “Through rock and through stone, the black wind still moans. Sweet revenge. Sweet revenge, without fail.”