song of the week

A riddle: a woman who does not exist burns a song onto a disc. At the same time, a woman who does exist—say, the woman who created the woman who does not exist—burns the same song onto the same disc. The song is full of longing, lush with strings, brimming with hope and despair, with such a romantic ache it casts a glance at parody. The song is for a …

This this this is the only song this ultimate song I WANT TO DO THIS TO YOU joy every moment life could feel like swallowing snakes each swallow baby sun, lick it, drown it, burst it, kick dress gold plate it, every all whole full whole all every this heat death expressionless happiness steamroller go go cheeseburger is the fun dying and borning earth magnets gold glass and maggots move …

Because I am so uptight, I NEED songs like this…drink a bunch of coffee and dance around my son’s Thomas the Train toys like Marc Bolan while my wife is on the couch working on her lesson plans. It turns a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon into an epic rock show. “You can’t be real,” Bolan says of rock n roll, “on that stage I’m in a realm of …

We’ve all had those songs that have saved us or gotten us through a dark or confused time, or that we’ve played so many times in a row that even after it’s over we keep hearing it in our heads, for me that song is Junior Kimbrough’s “Meet Me in the City.” It is so raw and human that I feel if I had to explain what it meant to be human …

Of all the power ballads from the ’80s glam scene, perhaps the most unique and interesting is Faster Pussycat’s “House of Pain.” Musically, it’s pretty standard. Open chords with individual strings plucked ever so gently, a simple boom-chick-boom drum beat, and in this case, a couple sad harmonica solos.

What makes it different is that it’s not a song about the girl that got away. No, this power ballad is about …

Simple and straightforward and nearly perfectly composed, this song reminds me of a great short story. A studio version is available for free from their website but I prefer this live (albeit in-studio) performance on YouTube.

I love how this song begins serenely and builds to an eruption of voice at the end before returning for a moment to the calm experienced at the beginning. The quiet moments, pauses, and vocal and …

Dear Readers,

I am writing this the week before Valentine’s Day. If this piece comes out the week of Valentine’s, then my choice of song is “It’s Oh So Quiet,” a Bjork song.

Remember that video where she sings about love, puts her finger to her lips, and goes all, “Shh. Shh.”? Then she flies into the air while the pedestrians start dancing and she just starts screaming and screaming?

That’s awesome.

If this …

There are two kinds of happiness. One is the conventional kind, derived from stability: a good job, preferably a career with an upward trajectory; a fortunate love life (of a committed, monogamous nature); family members who love and support you; or sufficient excess in one of these columns as to make up for lack in another. There is also the happiness of intensity of experience, of dizzying highs and crushing …

This has been my song of many weeks. Months. It has been months. It makes me want to move. It is involved with different sorts of movements. It makes me want to make things. Make moves. Banks’s moves her voice in many ways. Her rhyming is sharp, fast, and fierce. Her singing is rich and generous. “212” has lifted, loud, brave, playful, angry, smart, funny lyrics—that allow me to like …

I do not listen to new music. Behind a young woman on our way to work, black blouse and pencil skirt, and above the back of both knees is tattooed DAY IN on left knee and DAY OUT on right. Her strides imitate the staccato chorus of “Digital,” in idea more than effect, and I thought about it again on the subway home of an otherwise okay day at the …