Music Diary, Vol. 43

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 Nov. 4-10, 2024

LYRICS: Meredith Willson, "Iowa Stubborn"

SONG: For much the same reason “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” is my fave Springsteen, this early Tom Petty hit (which I’m pretty sure was how I first heard him) has the kind of breezy, unfussed pop-soul sound I would love to have heard more from him.

ALBUM: I recognize and relish many of Quincy Jones’s eras and styles (including the TV themes), but I especially love him in full Ellington/Basie bandleader mode, as on this exquisite, lovingly orchestrated 1962 collection. Not a wasted note.

LYRICS: Paul Simon, "American Tune"

SONG: Minor keys are for protest songs—think “Masters of War” or “You Haven’t Done Nothin’.” This Queen Bey banger, a kind of protest anthem, thunders forth in a defiant D minor, as if to suggest steely resolve against steep odds. Sounds about right.

ALBUM: It starts out on the open road and ends in a sad Detroit café. Among its other firsts and breakthroughs, was this maybe the record in which Joni, Canada’s greatest export, truly became American, with all the promise and baggage that entails?

LYRICS: Stevie Wonder, "Pastime Paradise"

SONG: This Everything But The Girl track has stood me in good stead through many hard times. To wit: “It’s time to hold your loved ones while the chains are loosed and the world runs wild.”

ALBUM: Is this jazz oratorio Wynton Marsalis’s masterpiece? All I know is that the performance he led at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion back in 1997 sent me out into the night haunted and transformed, and that a fresh replay only confirms its richness.

LYRICS: Stevie Wonder, "He's Misstra Know-It-All"

SONG: The Coalhouse, Mother, Tateh, and Sarah songs all land hard and strong in the current Ragtime revival. But I’d forgotten how much I love Younger Brother’s songs with Emma Goldman, tracing his revolutionary arc, starting with this heart-rending conversion.

ALBUM: It’s not just the songs but the sound—expansive, reverberant, sensuous, unsettled—that make this 1971 Marvin Gaye masterpiece memorable. Few protest records also happen to be so haunting.

LYRICS: Queen of Jeans, "Take It All Away"

SONG: It’s not really a tango (it starts with a taste of one), but this Shakira classic is a favorite from the period when she was making rocky pop with twangy surf guitar, grinding accordion, and Andalusian cadences—an intoxicating blend.

ALBUM: It’s easy to write off Durand Jones & The Indications as a mere neo-soul retread, but I’d say the familiarity of their vintage sound makes it harder to do something distinctive with it—and this smoking band clears that high bar.

LYRICS: John Prine, "Angel From Montgomery"

SONG: This vintage jam from Novos Baianas sandwiches some sharp, garrulous verses about a relationship gone wrong within its plucky Brazilian pop choruses—a Trojan horse of regret unloading at a party without killing the vibe.

ALBUM: Sometimes I think in our reverence for Sondheim we over-classicize him, as if he wrote prim, hermetic art songs. What hits me every time I spin this great cast album is the groovy organ, the funk guitar, the bossa touches—i.e., its irreducible 1970-ness.

LYRICS: Paul Simon, "Questions for the Angels"

SONG: Many renditions of this quasi-quietist gospel standard are the equivalent of a smiley face emoji, but not Mavis Staples and Levon Helm’s slow, anguished version, which sounds closer to impassioned despair than blessed assurance.

ALBUM: The Texas streetcorner gospel singer Washington Phillips, who accompanied himself on an autoharp-like instrument he apparently called a manzarene, made a series of 78s in the late 1920s that still glisten with beatific conviction.