I wanted to write about music in 2023. The truth is that I’m not connected to the tunes of this decade as I was with even the 1990s. And it’s not for lack of effort.
My wife and I were in a pizzeria this month. There was a screen showing some current music videos. Much of it sounded annoyingly similar to me. Musician Rick Beato has regularly said the same about today’s Top 40. But is he just an old man yelling at the clouds?
Arthur has posted end-of-the-year music mashups for a long time. The first of this year’s iteration… This is what he said: “This year, I felt my familiarity with the songs was the lowest ever: While I recognised many artists, I was unfamiliar with the songs themselves—apart from Luke Combs’ cover of ‘Fast Car,’ and that was only because I know the original.” This is no knock on Combs, but it isn’t a transformative cover, though I’m glad Tracy Chapman will benefit monetarily.
I recognized another song, Get Him Back by Olivia Rodrigo, only because of this commercial.
I hear some non-Top 40 fare, notably on CBS Saturday Morning’s Saturday Sessions. I’ve even bought music directly due to artists’ appearances on the show, such as Regina Spektor and Jason Isbell.
Still, I’m impressed and somewhat jealous of the impressive coterie of albums on J. Eric Smith’s Best Of album list. Here’s the New York Times’ roster, of which I own exactly one, Paul Simon’s Seven Psalms; older artists tend not to be as prolific. Seven Psalms trailer.
Conversely
Also, I purchased Brandy Clark’s eponymous album after seeing her on Saturday Sessions; listen to Dear Insecurity.
But much of what I did buy was OLD music. After seeing the musical, I snatched up the Million Dollar Quartet music; here’s a sample. A few were five-packs of Warner/Elektra/Atlantic artists such as Bonnie Raitt and Dr. John.
My favorite, though, was early Randy Newman. I never owned his first album, and I discovered Bet No One Hurt This Bad and Cowboy, both covered by Three Dog Night, are on this collection.
According to Wikipedia, Newman said in this 2017 podcast, that “he signed away the publishing rights on his first album, does not see any money from people doing covers of those songs, and advised people getting into the business to never sign away their publishing.”
I’m okay not being up-to-date in this arena, though. I have a LOT of music from the previous century.
The question
From the annual quiz:
What was your greatest musical discovery?
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I’ve used this song before, Elephant Talk by King Crimson, but I usually cite the B verse.
Talk, talk, it’s only talkDebates, discussionsThese are words with a D this timeDialog, duologue, diatribeDissention, declamationDouble talk, double talk
Randy Newman’s song “Birmingham” was voted by official folk to be the Magic City’s theme song long ago….the chorus was great for that: “Birmingham, Birmingham, Greatest city in Alabam….” However nobody listened to the verses before the vote apparently. They included mean dogs, racist people and ungenerous descriptions of citizens. Within days Randy’s song had to be UNvoted the town song. The powers that be were powerfully surprised to have to admit publicly they didn’t get the satire.