It was probably the late Nineties, just before my high school graduation. I was at a wedding for my good friend Elijah's family. Growing up together, he and I shared lots of music with each other. He was a brother from another mother. Most days we hung out, we definitely rocked out to some heavy metal and bobbed our heads to tons of old school hip-hop. But we both had soft spots for R&B ballads, those tunes we wanted to sing to our...
"Show Me Love", the 1997 hit that Robyn penned with Swedish hit-maker Max Martin ("...Baby One More Time") was a track off her debut album "Robyn is Here". My girlfriend at the time had the CD and would repeatedly play it in her bedroom after school while we'd hang out. I didn't realize it at the time, but this song would earworm it's way into my heart. Today, Robyn has moved from Britney Spears territory into a firm Kylie Minogue-like existence...
"Make my nipples hard, let's go!" I have no clue which back-up singer said this to Gregg Alexander while recording his only studio release Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too (1999), but it completely sets the tone for the entire record. I bought this CD at a K-Mart knockoff store in my hometown merely because of the one-hit wonder "You Get What You Give". And make no mistake, I firmly expected it to be a $15 single. I had no idea the riches that...
Who would've thought Jeff Lyne's biggest hit in the U.S. would be the song he dedicated to NASA's Skylab Space Station? A looped drum sample from "On the Run" is the backbone for this clap-inducing tune. The album "Discovery" in 1979 was definitely where the band pushed wholeheartedly from orchestral space pop into pure disco territory. A few tunes of theirs leaned disco including "Evil Woman" (1975 - Face the Music) and "Livin' Thing" (1976 - A...
Star-Lord's Sony Walkman. Total nostalgia trip. When the opening bass thumps of "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone starts busting through those orange foam pads, or the "Ooga Chaka" chant of Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling", you instantly know the Awesome Mix Vol. 1 is going to be the real deal. "Guardians of the Galaxy"'s soundtrack was a pop cultural phenomenon that essentially caught traction with lots of folks not only for the nostalgia...
The time has come for my inaugural #FridayFind guilty pleasure pick. And what better artist to start out with than Toto, and their amazing #1 hit "Africa". Why has this tune endured for me? Partially because the lyrics make absolutely no sense. I have no idea why a woman coming on a mid-day flight has any damn thing to do with rains in another country. And I don't know why a man cares about Mount Kilimanjaro's similarities to Mount Olympus. My...
Music is the great equalizer. Many forms of art still remain relatively unattainable to the masses without a big money commitment. But radio and home stereo ownership exploded music into pretty much any American home as long as you wanted it. I was raised in a home that was dominated with music. My father proudly built his stereo setup which included an enviable vinyl record collection, of which I inherited half. My collection has expanded quite...
