Bruce Hornsby's hits definitely evoke a sort of hokey early alt-country fused with pop music. And yet, he remained in loyal to his hardcore fans. Over the course of roughly 18 albums in various incarnations of bands he's fronted too. So respected was he, across the musical spectrum, he even played 100 shows with the Grateful Dead. Songs like "Mandolin Rain" definitely come off cheesy, but multi-layered. One cannot ignore the musicality as well...
"Tell me I've sold out / Tell me I've sold out go ahead" Okay Butch, you sold out. But it's okay. You left us this wonderful nugget, this pop-punk singalong anthem. The Marvelous 3 was the short-lived brainchild of Butch Walker (Lead Singer/Guitarist), Doug Mitchell (Drums), and bassist Jayce Fincher. With this scream-along chorus, you know during their short tenure, a bunch of kids crowd surfed, skanked and slam-danced to this song on many...
This song should not have been a hit. There, I said it. This song is a sort of anthem... for paying your rent? By Australians? In a bizarre chorus that I can only imagine is two roommates arguing about the world at large ("How can we dance when the earth is turning?/How do we sleep while our beds are burning?") and their unpaid rent. At the very least one of them turns out to be the voice of reason! Digging deeper, it actually turns out to be a...
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...
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...
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...