Music Diary, Vol. 60

For the rationale behind this mad effort, the initial post is here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. The full playlist is above, and also here.

Week of Feb. 23-Mar. 2, 2025

LYRICS: The Roches (Cole Porter), "It's Bad for Me"

SONG: The six-note melisma that Arlene Smith busts out three times in every chorus of this Chantels classic is a simple trick that gets me every time. It feels like a coil around the heart that tightens and relaxes like an impassioned farewell embrace.

ALBUM: I swear by Roberta Flack's peerlessly intimate debut, First Take, but her 1970 follow-up is no less essential. Some singers have big notes they climb to; she had looooooong notes that she spun out like silk, billowing and expressive, perfectly phrased.

LYRICS: David Bowie, "1984"

SONG: She was known mostly for her way with a ballad, but I also dig Roberta Flack’s take on this old-timey strut by Ralph MacDonald & William Salter. I like to imagine her singing this on Sesame Street or Electric Company (which I mean as a high compliment).

ALBUM: I somehow forgot how maximally entertaining this unofficial but absolutely canonical Prince record is. The grooves are deep and tight, the lyrics goofy and sexy, the sense of humor dark but delightful. And “Bob George” remains a stone-cold classic.

LYRICS: The Smiths, "This Charming Man"

SONG: The song that inspired Lori Lieberman to write “Killing Me Softly” (with Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel) was this slow, spare, exquisitely mournful Don McLean tune, arguably his best (though, let’s be real, still not as great as the song it spawned).

ALBUM: Sharon Van Etten’s flawless new record with her band, the Attachment Theory, occasionally puts me in mind of PJ Harvey backed by Arcade Fire or Echo & the Bunnymen. But really it’s all vintage Sharon, turned up to 11.

LYRICS: Sharon Van Etten, "Seventeen"

SONG: Ennio Morricone is mostly associated with twangy guitars, idiosyncratic orchestrations, minor keys—a generally badass sound. But his career was long and it also included this perky, flute-driven comedy theme. Your mileage may vary; I’ve come to love it.

ALBUM: It wasn't as big a pivot as her switch from CCM popster to chamber-pop songsmith, but this 2001 Sam Phillips record began her Nonesuch period with a stripped down, achingly beautiful sound, a noticeably deeper voice, and a newly pronounced tragic tone.

LYRICS: Robert Goulet (Lerner & Loewe), "C'est Moi"

SONG: Rush can legit rock, but I also love them when they veer closest to self-parody, as in this sprawling 1977 fantasy suite about Kubla Khan's pleasure dome, complete with woozy synths and a full complement of Peart percussion flourishes. I actually find it all very sweet.

ALBUM: Mdou Moctar's new record is an acoustic rethink of last year's mind-blowing FUNERAL FOR JUSTICE. I'm grooving hard on the trad textures he brings to these tunes but I do miss the vast rock sweep of the original, so I made a back-to-back playlist.

LYRICS: Sarah Stiles (David Yazbek), "What's Gonna Happen"

SONG: Because its main chorus is a three-chord proto-punk headbang, its vocals spat with perfectly tuneless brio by David Johansen, it's easy to overlook the dynamic range and emotional scope of this iconic New York Dolls single, which by the end is truly epic.

ALBUM: Some records feel timeless; some feel like they were made yesterday; others feel like they're somehow still happening in the present. All these are true of this deceptively casual-sounding, deeply layered 2000 classic by D'Angelo.

LYRICS: Tom Waits (w/ Kathleen Brennan), "God's Away on Business"

SONG: 2 of my fave things about this paranoid blues by Rev. Edward W. Clayborn: the way he often drops words out of the melody and lets the guitar “sing” them—it’s unmistakably sinister—and the way he slowly but surely speeds it up, like he’s getting worked up.

ALBUM: As with many streaming collections, there’s not much info about this newish collection of vintage cuts by Dorothy Love Coates and her Gospel Harmonettes, but I can’t argue with its consistent quality. This is rafter-shaking stuff, altar to apse.