Music Diary, Vol. -88

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 2-8, 2022

LYRICS: Johnny Rivers, "Memphis Tennessee"

SONG: 10 years after its release, this major-minor Dirty Projectors track is as eerie and powerful as ever. Somehow the title, with its double-negative assertion of thwarted violence, remains the opposite of reassuring.

LYRICS: Loretta Lynn, "The Pill"

SONG: I’m not sure why Ella Fitzgerald is the only one to have recorded this bittersweet, ambivalently sunny Randy Newman tune, but I’ll take it.

LYRICS: Luscious Jackson, "Strongman"

SONG: I love almost everything the Nashville songwriter Tristen does, but this sweet, sharp, jangly kiss-off to unnamed haters and “assassins” is the one I could listen to on repeat for days.

LYRICS: Fred Astaire (Gershwins), "Slap That Bass"

SONG: There are several great songs with the title "Hold On" (by Tom Waits, by H.E.R., by Alabama Shakes), but one of my favorites is this heart-wrenching Amy Correia tune about a junkie mom trying to sound reassuring even as the chords say she's spiraling.

LYRICS: Jerry Nelson (Milne/Fraser-Simpson), "Halfway Down the Stairs"

SONG: “The great red hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away like flesh.” With its pentatonic scale and unrhymed prose about environmental and economic desolation, Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s prelude for Lost in the Stars is the most haunting musical opener I know.

LYRICS: U2, "The Fly"

SONG: Released in 1984, this Special AKA banger was miraculously not outdated when, 6 years later, its title demand was met, I think because it sounds more like a celebration of inevitable justice than a cry of despair.

LYRICS: Joni Mitchell, "Little Green"

SONG: I’m playing this Judds classic in church today (wish me luck getting through it), and in preparing it I couldn’t help but notice its musical secret weapons: It hits its highest note on “halo” and saves its one big chord change for the word “heaven.”