Tag archive for ‘Lyric of the Week’
Old 97′s, “Barrier Reef”
Sex. Where would rock & roll be without it? Of course, not all sex is good sex. Just ask Rhett Miller, who wrote “Barrier Reef” about the sort of casual encounter that leaves you with nothing more than a hangover in the morning. “We had just done a gig in Dallas, right at the end [...]
Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd”
“I love a good man outside the law, just as much as I hate a bad man inside the law,” Woody Guthrie once wrote on a lyric sheet for his song “Pretty Boy Floyd.” The tale of Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd must have appealed to Guthrie. Floyd was an Oklahoma native who turned to [...]
The Doors, “L.A. Woman”
[photo credit: Wendell Hamick] “L.A. Woman,” the title track of the Doors final studio album with singer Jim Morrison, has gathered near-mythical status in Doors lore. Listeners have found all sorts of hidden meaning in the song’s seven-plus minutes, but the group’s keyboardist Ray Manzarek recently said that the album is simply a mash note [...]
Hayes Carll, “Another Like You”
For the past decade, Hayes Carll has spent the bulk of his time on the road, peddling his boozy, brainy country songs to audiences across the country. And like every road warrior, he’s got a few peculiar habits when it comes to passing the time between gigs. “I listen to a lot of right-wing talk [...]
Martin Sexton, “Fall Like Rain”
Martin Sexton is the guy John Mayer calls “one of the most treasured singer-songwriters I’ve ever heard in my life.” Mayer must have first become acquainted with the Syracuse, New York-born artist when he was busking in Harvard Square while Mayer was a student at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. The two Boston transplants have [...]
Etta James, “I’d Rather Go Blind”
Last Friday, the renowned blues and R&B singer Etta James died at a hospital in Riverside, California, outside L.A. James had battled health problems and years of drug abuse, but died from complications of leukemia. Though James had an early hit in her career with a song called “Dance With Me, Henry” (also known as [...]
Kevin Gordon, “Colfax”
Kevin Gordon may be one of the most accomplished but underrated songwriters and guitarists in Nashville. His music is a swampy concoction of the blues and a kind of working man’s poetry–probably a mix of a youth spent in Louisiana and the subsequent years studying poetry at the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop (where heavyweights like [...]
Jackson Browne, “These Days”
Though Jackson Browne is often associated today with the social and political consciousness of his songs, “These Days,” one of his earliest and often-covered compositions, deals with images of love, loss, and regret. “I wrote this when I was about sixteen, although not precisely in this form,” Browne says when introducing “These Days” on the [...]
Ray Charles And Betty Carter, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
In 1960, following the pop success of “What’d I Say,” Ray Charles signed a new record deal with ABC-Paramount. A new five-volume box set, Singular Genius: The Complete ABC Singles, from Concord Music Group covers this era, which followed his productive years at Atlantic Records. Charles’ post-”What’d I Say” career can be characterized by an [...]
The Smiths, “Half A Person”
The Smiths recorded “Half A Person” in January 1987 and released it as the b-side to the single “Shoplifters Of The World Unite” the following month. But the band would not see the year through. When their final album Strangeways, Here We Come was released in September, guitarist Johnny Marr had already left the group. [...]
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