Music Diary, Vol. 83

Week of Aug. 4-10, 2025

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.

LYRICS: Patti Smith, "Piss Factory"

SONG: Yip Harburg’s lyrics to this Great Depression classic are justly famous but I’ve become obsessed with Jay Gorney’s music, supposedly based on a Russian Jewish lullaby. What I hear is a beguiling major-minor ragtime progression with a wrenching melody, which Abbey Lincoln’s version serves beautifully.

ALBUM: Billy Joel's previous record was his commercial breakthrough but I've always slightly preferred his jazzier follow-up, particularly "Zanzibar" and "Rosalinda's Eyes." The mood is somehow lighter but the grooves hit harder on this one.

LYRICS: Dua Lipa (w/ Michel “Lindgren” Schulz, David Biral, UPSAHL, Denzel Baptiste, and Melanie Joy Fontana), “Good in Bed”

SONG: It has come to my attention that this perfect Kathleen Edwards tune from 2002—a hilariously mean yet somehow sweet kiss-off to a cheating lech, with a Lucinda-adjacent country-rock vibe—has scandalously few plays on streaming. Doing my part here to correct that.

ALBUM: João Gilberto's debut album is old enough to retire in the U.S. (or Brazil), but it still sounds as light and fresh as a spring breeze. To make music sound this effortless is no easy feat, but there's not a drop of sweat in even the briskest or busiest tunes here.

LYRICS: Nicole Atkins, "Darkness Falls So Quiet"

SONG: This and the C# minor are my favorite of Chopin’s waltzes, and not only because they are among the few I can (basically) play. This one has a slight edge only for its sunny Schubertian bridge, at 2:22 in this Rubinstein rendition.

ALBUM: I had mixed feelings about Emilia Perez, but its co-composer, Camille, is a fave, so I listened attentively to this EP of her own earnest, clearly heartfelt renditions of some of the score. Missing: the 2 best tunes (“El Mal,” “Las Damas que Pasan”).

LYRICS: Lola Young, "Messy"

SONG: This slow, haunting, Nino Rota-esque waltz is so prominent in In the Mood for Love—Wong Kar-wai employs it no fewer than 9 times in the film—that it’s startling to learn that it was originally written, by Shigeru Umebayashi, for the 1991 biopic Yumeji.

ALBUM: Spent the day listening to the late, great Cuban jazz pioneer Eddie Palmieri, who made the piano a percussive instrument like few others and led a series of killer bands from the keys. This mind-blowing 1975 record is the one I keep returning to.

LYRICS: Uncle Dave Macon, "Way Down the Old Plank Road"

SONG: It’s slight, but what I cherish about this Jon Batiste/Randy Newman duet on this Ray Charles tune (written by Doc Pomus) is the way they savor it; their shared warmth belies the song’s title. Also, Randy can’t resist throwing in a joke: “I sound like I’m dying.”

ALBUM: Love this album of Police covers by Juliana Hatfield. Her song choices are wild and her arrangements strike a nice balance between fidelity (all the repeats on "Can't Stand Losing You") and heterodoxy ("Roxanne" as sneering quasi-grunge).

LYRICS: Adia Victoria, "Sea of Sand"

SONG: Here’s my own take on one of Lennon’s trickier (and filthier) tunes, laid over a bit of Marcos Valle’s “Os Grillos.” (I only figured out later that both pieces were released in my birth year.)

ALBUM: This new account of Ravel’s string quartet by the Attaccca Quartet doesn’t just have the greatest album cover art ever—it’s also a riveting interpretation, lavishing equal attention on both the ghostly and raucous textures of this epochal work.

LYRICS: Jensen McRae, "Savannah"

SONG: Opened today’s service at Greenpoint Reformed Church with a lightly reharmonized rendition of this Violent Femmes classic. I mean, what if it was true?

ALBUM: I don’t know how he did it, but somehow Phil Keaggy was able, on this gorgeous 1978 collection, to go from twee folk to lite jazz and other typically cursed genres with elegant tunefulness and taste, and it all hangs together. God is in the details.