Your browser is not supported.

Kings of Leon a lot more if I hadn’t heard so many mediocre covers of their songs before I’d heard the originals. But then again, maybe I wouldn’t.

He’s somewhat famous in our circle for liking nearly every movie he’s ever seen. Seriously. In the 10-odd years I’ve known him, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’s said he didn’t like a movie.

The reason I bring that up is to give you context when I say I like every kind of music: I am about music the way my friend is about movies. I can find something to like in just about every piece of music, and rarely meet a piece I don’t like. Nevertheless, though it’s shorter than most, I too have a musical shitlist.

It is exceedingly rare for me to take a song or composition in instant and total dislike, but when it happens…well. Edwyn Collins’ A Girl Like You is one, and one I heard today, Demi Lovato’s Skyscraper, is another.

This song, while a “heartfelt” acknowledgement of her struggle with a myriad of mental and physical issues—and good for her, seriously, for getting past them—is a caricature. It’s overwrought, heavy-handed, and Lovato’s delivery of the word “skyscraper” sets my teeth on edge.

I hate this song. It makes me want to stick my fingers in my ears—kinda dangerous when you’re driving, like I was when I first heard this song. Like I said, kudos to Demi Lovato for coming out the better from a very tough time in her life, but the song still sucks.

One of my pet peeves is the bastardization of music for the purposes of crass commercialism. Specifically, using music whose sound invokes a certain mood that its lyrics don’t match—often times actively oppose—in TV commercials.

One example is the use of Nick Drake’s Pink Moon—a song many believe was either Drake’s suicide note to the world, or at the least a song about death—in a VW Cabrio commercial about driving on a summer night.

The latest affront is the LL Bean backpack sale commercial that features the Harry McClintock recording of Big Rock Candy Mountain which was on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? sound track. This song is about a hobo’s idea of utopia, not about recapturing some kind of lost feeling by going camping with your family:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks

You’d think the people putting together these ads would actually listen to the music they choose before they put it in an ad that gets seen by millions on national television, but that bit of good sense is evidently too far-fetched. &_&

sycophantic love fest that is sure to come the next few days, Lileks offers us some perspective:

But musically? As I said, Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam had a far greater influence, and Prince a greater talent. Yes, he’s odd – a smaller, more agreeable set of demons, though, and he has an inexhaustible desire to create without freeze-drying every note into a crystalline framework, with every manufactured Yelp and Yip dropped in at the expected perfect moment.

I wouldn’t have felt any of this if the event wasn’t being treated as a near-fatal blow to Western Culture in some quarters. He called himself the King of Pop – after which fame and sales ebbed. Of the many lessons in his life, that may be the oldest.

That said: it’s no shame to have your best work behind you. It’s a pity to die young. It’s a testament to the work you did to be mourned by millions.

Talent of his caliber will be missed. And has been, truth be told, since around 1992.

Since this afternoon, my local mix station has been playing Michael Jackson every hour, on the hour in memoriam. I can only imagine that popular radio stations all over the world are doing something similar. When I went out to dinner this evening, the jukebox at the restaurant played 4 or 5 of his songs in the mere hour and a half I was there.

If there was a way to keep track of these things, I’d be interested to know just how much play, radio and otherwise, Michael Jackson got today. The numbers have got to be insane.

Michael Jackson died this afternoon—he was hospitalized earlier today after going into cardiac arrest.

For as much of a moonbat as he was in his later years, he was responsible for some of the best, most timeless pop songs of our time—I was just listening to Billie Jean on my stereo yesterday and wondering why they don’t make songs like that anymore. Talent of his caliber will be missed.

in March, I got The Whitest Boy Alive’s sophomore effort, Rules, an album I had really been looking forward to.

Rules does not disappoint, but it is frankly not as good as WBA’s debut, Dreams, which is one of my favorite rock records. All in all, it’s quite good—make sure to check out Rollercoaster Ride, High on the Heels and Island—and I would recommend it.

is the Massimo Faraò Trio’s Classic Jazz Lounge, a collection of jazz arrangements of famous classical pieces. Just gorgeous. Get it.

you probably grew up watching the Peanuts animated specials, and instantly recognize that unforgettable piano piece, Linus & Lucy. Linus & Lucy is actually a single track off renowned jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi’s 1965 score to A Charlie Brown Christmas, which became beloved of jazz fans everywhere, and which is the only Christmas music I have absolutely no problem listening to in the middle of June.

Having been exposed to it at such an early age, Guaraldi’s is the sound I viscerally associate with jazz piano. Warm, charming, improvisational. Just beautiful.

I also acquired a few other Guaraldi recordings, including the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s eponymous debut, Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus and From All Sides, his 1963 collaboration with Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete: great stuff from start to finish. Don’t miss it.