Songbird — Christine McVie

SONG OF THE DAY “Song­bird” by Chris­tine McVie. Writ­ten by Chris­tine McVie. MY TAKE I heard an acoustic (pos­si­bly live) ver­sion of this song on 105.9 The River’s Acoustic After Dark pro­gram two nights ago. This pro­gram is seri­ously the bane of my exis­tence because they play amaz­ing ver­sions of songs ALL THE TIME, and never say …

Scenes From An Italian Restaurant — Billy Joel

SONG OF THE DAY “Scenes From An Ital­ian Restau­rant” by Billy Joel (The Stranger, Colum­bia Records, 1977). Writ­ten by Billy Joel. MY TAKE First, I love how Billy Joel looks like a hoodrat in that photo I chose. Ridicu­lous. Now for seri­ous… This song was prob­a­bly milling around my world for a decade or so before I …

You’ve Made Me So Very Happy — Blood, Sweat & Tears

SONG OF THE DAY “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” by Blood, Sweat & Tears (Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1969). Writ­ten by Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Frank Wil­son and Berry Gordy. MY TAKE This is a song I’ve loved since child­hood. It’s really emo­tional, espe­cially the lead vocals (though I do get weepy from the amaz­ing brass section’s work …

Wild Night by John Mellencamp & Meshell Ndegeocello

SONG OF THE DAY “Wild Nights” by John Mel­len­camp & Me’shell Nde­geo­cello (Dance Naked, Mer­cury Records, 1994). Writ­ten by Van Mor­ri­son. MY TAKE Eek! I love John/ny Cougar Mel­len­camp! He was my first con­cert as a music-conscious teen. It was sum­mer at the beau­ti­ful Pine Knob (now DTE Music what­ever, I still call it Pine Knob), …

Fireflies — Owl City

SONG OF THE DAY “Fire­flies” (Ocean Eyes, Uni­ver­sal Repub­lic Records, 2009). Writ­ten by Adam Young. WHERE I HEARD IT It was fea­tured on this sea­son of So You Think You Can Dance (see the video of the per­for­mance below). INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia) — Owl City is a Sec­ond Wave syn­th­pop musi­cal project by Amer­i­can Adam Young. – Young started out …

Murder, He Says by Betty Hutton

SONG OF THE DAY “Mur­der, He Says” by Betty Hut­ton (1943). WHERE I HEARD IT There’s a chain of events that took me to this song, and it goes like this: (1) In 2003, I bought a DVD of Spike Jonz’s music video work, which included his video work for Bjork’s song “Oh So Quiet”. (2) I did …

Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri

SONG OF THE DAY “Jar of Hearts” by Christina Perri (sin­gle, iTunes release, 2010).Written by Christina Perri, Bar­rett Yeretsian, & Drew Lawrence. WHERE I HEARD IT This sea­son of So You Think You Can Dance, which I’ve now totally quit watch­ing because Alex “Freak­ing” Wong was per­ma­nently injured and, hon­estly, there’s no point to watch­ing that competition …

Wedding Playlists 10: The Love & Rock mix

1. “Fools in Love” by Joe Jack­son (4:23) — A very early hit (1979) from this her­alded and still active British new wave and pop star. You may think this song doesn’t belong on a love mix, but wait until the last line of lyrics. 2. “Let My Love Open The Door” by Pete Townsend …

Wedding Playlists 9: On The Road mix

1. Road To Nowhere by The Talk­ing Heads (4:28 ) — We thought this would be a funny set of lyrics to start out a road trip mix to! And we love the Talk­ing Heads! 2. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC (4:12 ) — Todd was raised on AC/DC, and has very slowly gotten …

Wedding Playlists 8: The Sing-A-Long mix

1.  When You’re Gone by The Cran­ber­ries (4:57) — This was our ode for five years of our rela­tion­ship as we sus­tained a long-distance rela­tion­ship. We’ would be remiss if we didn’t include at least one far­away love song on a mix about us! 2. Wouldn’t It Be Nice by Beach Boys (2:21) — A song …