Music Diary, Vol. -86

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

Week of May 9-15, 2022

LYRICS: Paul McCartney, "Junk"

SONG: If “Step Right Up” is the essential track to grok early Tom Waits, I nominate this ramshackle shanty as the skeleton key that unlocks his later dispensation as the bard of the bone machine (also Marc Ribot contributes my fave guitar solo ever).

LYRICS: Public Enemy, "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"

SONG: Forget Psycho or Torn Curtain, I don't think Bernard Herrmann ever composed a more headlong, hair-raising piece of nightmare fuel than this, for the 1951 noir On Dangerous Ground. French horns have never sounded so menacing.

LYRICS: Audra McDonald (Flaherty & Ahrens), "Your Daddy's Son"

SONG: You can absolutely hear why The Verve inadvisedly lifted this for their own epochal hit; the space opened up by Andrew Oldham’s lush, hypnotic orchestration really does make you want to sing, and not necessarily anything by the Stones.

LYRICS: Jesse Winchester, "That's What Makes You Strong"

SONG: Even without words, Sondheim can break your heart.

LYRICS: Stubby Kaye & Johnny Silver (Frank Loesser), "Guys and Dolls"

SONG: This Big Bill Broonzy classic isn’t just a hilarious novelty song; it’s also got a gimlet-eyed folk wisdom that puts me in mind of Beckett, if he’d been a blues man.

LYRICS: Magnetic Fields, "If There's Such a Thing as Love"

SONG: No bass or drums, just jangly guitars and ethereal vocals? This shouldn’t work as beautifully as it does but this 1991 track by English dream pop band the Carousel (discovered via the now-defunct blog Little Hits) is absolutely transporting.

LYRICS: The Beatles, "Norwegian Wood"

SONG: With a horn riff seemingly borrowed from Waits’ “Way Down in the Hole,” a guitar solo worthy of Ribot, and a vocal that suggests Shirley Bassey, this Kimbra track is the one that won me over to her multifaceted genius.