I apologize to all the artists who'll be mortified to learn that a boomer who is not their parents likes their music.
It all started with a song you'll expect to find on my list. The song, Coldplay's "Clocks", isn't on it, but has a place of honor in the story of how I finally came to terms with the fact that I was an adult.
The year was 2003. We were sitting in the theater, watching the trailer for the live-action adaptation of Peter Pan, scored with "Clocks". Imagine the sense of peace that came over me when I found myself sympathizing with Mr. and Mrs. Darling, over their missing kids. "I. Am. An. Adult," I thought. "And I'm good with that."
Yes, I'm an adult, and a boomer besides. And now, here we are with this list.
Artists I was predisposed to listen to (e.g. Mogwai, Jose González, Magnetic Fields, Neko Case, The New Pornographers) don't count. Ditto obvious song choices like Coldplay's "Clocks", "It's Been Awhile" from Staind, and "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People.
Millennials, prepare to be mortified.
Happy; Pharrell Williams: Because who doesn't want more old-school Motown sound? The universality is as infectious as the groove, and Williams' cool jazz style contrasts beautifully with the unfettered joy of the lyrics.
Rumour Has It; Adele: It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it (boomers shall understand), but the beat is supplied by war drums, as befits a song about gossip in the Information Age.
Take A Bow; Rihanna: And, in an age when everybody crafts their personal dramas to be reality-show-ready, Rihanna delivers the ultimate insult: "You look so dumb right now".
Somewhere Only We Know; Keane: A striking moment in millennial culture, this realization that privacy just might save you, and your relationship, too.
Bust Your Windows; Jazmine Sullivan: It was supposed to work -- it was. Jazmine Sullivan, hoping against hope that her target is thinking the same thing.
Mas; Kinky: Polyrythmic grooves for those who missed music in the vein of Santana's early work. I first heard this track in Episode 6 of Kingpin -- the drug family soap opera miniseries, not the Farrelly Brothers flick.
The Man Who Can't Be Moved; The Script: Remarkably sweet-natured for a song that's borderline stalker-ish. Aside from that, Daniel O'Donoghue has one of the lushest voices on this list, and the group harmonies are something I'll never tire of.
99 Problems; Danger Mouse: This version comes from Mouse's The Grey Album, which featured mashups of songs from Jay-Z's The Black Album and The Beatles' self-titled record, popularly known as The White Album. I expect this choice can be viewed as misogynistic, and I reckon it is, coming out of some mouths. That said, the titular line has become a catchphrase used by people on all points of the gender spectrum, which feels like nothing so much as empowerment.
The Infanta; The Decemberists: The Decemberists are the sort of band about which you think, "They sound insufferable" when you first read about them. Then, somebody spins their debut album, and you realize that Picaresque will forever be the album that every music/drama/art/dance geek needed in high school, and needs still.
His Yoke Is Easy from The Messiah by George Friderich Handel, The Academy of St. Martin In the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner: I've posted before about one of my most influential choral conductors, who once told me that, "Handel was a German who wrote Italian operas for the English." He meant far more than English audiences. It is beyond curious that a race of people so determined to avoid awkwardness that they make every moment more awkward, should interpret this portion of The Messiah with such unfettered joy, and defiance. Speaking of awkward, the interwebs wil tell you that the lyric here reads, "His burthen is light". But, what is a "burthen"? Is it some kind of burqa for childbearing women? For newborn babies? Or, is it simply some rotten ingredient in the word salad of some semi-literate gatekeeper? The truth is, if you want any sense of what these lyrics mean, you have to go to the source -- Jesus Himself, as quoted in Matthew 11:28-30. Now that you get it, click the link, and crank it up. For your sweater-knitting auntie, for your bullet-journaling frenemy, for every "25 Things ..." blog post, for the Nazis past and present, play this one loud.
Merry Christmas, Baby, Otis Redding: In a season that's so often about temporary glitz and empty promises, it's good to remember that it's not Christmas unless it's got soul.
Redding doesn't bother to hide his anguish here. He's clearly thinking of other Christmases that weren't so merry, wondering if this one, too, will evaporate before his eyes. For someone like this, you shouldn't say it if you don't mean it.
What Child Is This, Paul Horn: With a choir of soprano, alto, and bass flutes, and a primitive octave splitter called a Multivider, jazz titan, Paul Horn (Chico Hamilton Quintet), created one of the least-known but most enduring holiday albums ever recorded.
The big reverb and parallel fifths would put this right at home on any Game of Thrones soundtrack, while the Scotch snaps in the bass give it a sort of traditional Christmas feel. But, his articulation -- so liquid he could almost be scatting -- puts the stamp of a jazzer all over this piece. The whole album is like this -- a heady brew of musical influences.
Christmas In Hollis, Run-D.M.C.: (above): I'm hardly a connoisseur of this genre. What I do remember is this: While the media threatened us with nightmare images of wilding teens, and super predators, super-strengthened by crack, or angel dust, or ... whatever, Run-D.M.C. presented an almost-suburban story of naughty elves, a Christmas miracle, and as much traditional, Southern food as you could eat.
What followed years later was the discrediting of some doctoral candidate's super-predator theory, the acquittal of the so-called Central Park five, and the international exposure of Donald Trump, whose newspaper fanned the flames, as a liar, a bigot, and full-time attention-seeker.
Meanwhile, Run-D.M.C. are probably home for Christmas, rejoicing because they know exactly what's on the menu.
Drosselmeyer's Gifts from The Nutcracker, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Ernest Ansermet: Let's, once and for all, abandon the notion that The Nutcracker is merely bland, holiday fare for the kiddies. Russian culture -- about which Russia's president seems entirely clueless -- won't let you have that. And it shouldn't.
See, sometimes, we expect more than we should from mere human effort. Sometimes, gifts offer us more fear and frustration than uncomplicated joy.
These are probably good things to remember for those who celebrate the birth of someone who promised, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Christmastime Is Here, Vince Guaraldi Trio: Maybe it's that the melody starts on a note that begs to be resolved. Maybe it's the fact that they never quite hit the high notes on the head. In other words, maybe there was a method to Vince Guaraldi's madness.
None of that satisfactorily explains how a genius of cool jazz got a group of kids to deliver a performance suffused with melancholy.
Way back in 1965, The Vince Guaraldi Trio, and a handful of kids figured out how to say, in the language of music, exactly what Christmas means to some of us. I see you, Linus, and this performance gives me chills every time I hear it.
There's a corner of Twitter where people whose gravest concern was having zits for the Homecoming dance, tell themselves scary stories of How Bad It Was back then, assuming that all who read these dystopian fantasies not only Know What Is Meant, but agree wholeheartedly, with an accompanying shiver down their spines.
Personally, I liked it just fine when kids didn't kill other kids for shutting them out of the in crowd, and English folk rockers could sing a carol about Jesus's birth, a capella, in Latin, taking it to Number 1 on the charts, albeit in their home country. Do They Know It's Christmas, Band Aid: When this single was released, I was deeply moved, as were many.
Older, ostensibly wiser friends strove to burst my bubble. They counseled that Band Aid's efforts were useless, that food sat rotting on the docks because the organizers hadn't the brains to do it right. Work harder, they said. Make money and spend it. There is nothing else. Your heroes are hopelessly filthy.
No.
See, we have no right to expect humans and human effort to be perfect. Purity culture was as ugly then as it is now.
There's more to life than getting and spending, and Band Aid proves it. The initial effort served as the springboard for major charitable projects by Bob Geldof, Midge Ure, and Bono -- efforts that continue to this day.
"We let in light, and we banish shade", the song goes. It's not just talking about flipping a switch.
Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem, Dailey and Vincent: (above): Number One with a bullet -- or, maybe, it's a Bible. And why?
Because too many conservatives are dreading any kind of overtly-religious end to this countdown, even as they exploit the religious right in a last-ditch effort to grab more money, more power.
Forget about it.
See, physics may be the reason for the season, but Jesus is the reason Christians call it Christmas. All the ideological squeamishness (read: hypocrisy) on conservatives' part won't change that.
So, Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays -- take your pick. May the coming year give you enough courage to use the holiday greetings your conscience dictates, no matter who else is listening.
For millennials, this one will be far too on-the-nose. For baby boomers like me, who stopped listening to commercial radio and video some time in the 90s, this could not be more perfect. The cool, jazz-inflected groove and old-school soul vocals make this song feel like a homecoming of sorts.
I hereby apologize to all millennials for straying outside my lane. You know us older drivers.
Here's Pharrell Williams and a cast of luminaries with "Happy".
I had read that Prince was a huge Joni Mitchell fan. In interviews, he mentioned Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, an entire album that sounds like its title; his favorite local record store reported that Mitchell's Hejira was among the last records he purchased, in support of Record Store Day.
So, it was no surprise to hear that he had covered Mitchell; the surprise came when my heart gave a horrible thump at those first unmoored chords, fluttering like birds until they landed on the tonic. What was this?
The arrangement settles in to old-school R and B, with some tantalizing hints of classic country, while Prince's vocal continues the high flying with a stunning falsetto. You've never heard Joni Mitchell like this.
Attitude problems notwithstanding, this is the most brilliant and innovative Joni Mitchell cover I've ever heard. Here's Prince with "A Case Of You".
Because I'm old and I don't find it that relatable, I don't pay attention to current popular music. So, naturally, I missed the most infectious slice of R and B to come along since Marvin Gaye last charted.
While I acknowledge that the verses are somewhat like Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" in terms of their backbeat, and their light, somewhat jazzy articulation, there's not enough concrete similarity to justify a lawsuit.
Gaye's 1965 hit, "Ain't That Peculiar" has also been alleged to be a source for this song, but that claim is even more ludicrous.
For most folks, all it takes to declare that songs "sound alike" is for the songs to be in the same key (See Creedence's "Green River", The Hollies' "Long Cool Woman", and Dwight Twilley Band's "I'm On Fire"). And all it takes to force songs into the same key is some software.
Yes, there's a version of this out there somewhere that's been forced into the key of E, just to make the case for plagiarism.
Here come bad news
Talkin' this and that
Anyway, here, for the consideration of old people everywhere (but certainly not as old as my parents), is Pharrell Williams with my current obsession, "Happy".
