Category: Music
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The sweetest sounds: Remembering Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the music of innocence
When Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys died on Thursday (June 11) at the age of 82, his family announced the sad news in a brief Instagram post, omitting where, when, or how he passed away. They asked for privacy. But Wilson’s genius was never a secret — certainly not…
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The most popular love songs of the 1960s and 1970s
“If music be the food of love, play on,” says Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night. Music, pop music, certainly overflowed with love back in the 1960s and 1970. There was no dearth of love in music from the 1950s — I love songs like Walk the Line by Johnny Cash,…
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Year-end chartbusters 50 years ago
What were the most popular songs constantly on air 50 years ago? These were the Top 10 songs in Britain and America at the end of December 1969.
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Hits of May 1966
It’s amazing how much data has been preserved from the past. While listening to music today, I wondered what were the most popular songs during this week in 1966. That year came to my mind because it was such an exciting time in pop music.
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Pop music and hit parades
The first regular UK singles chart was published on this day, November 14, in 1952 by the New Musical Express, reminds the website On This Day. Someone has duly posted that on Twitter including even a scanned copy of the newspaper clipping “announcing the first record hit parade”. Yes, that’s what we…
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Forever Fats Domino
Blueberry Hills belongs with Elvis Presley’s Are You Lonesome Tonight?, Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust, and Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and It Ain’t Me Babe among the sweetest, saddest love songs of all time. And now the voice and piano behind Blueberry Hill is dead. Fats…
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Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate
I have loved Bob Dylan from the time I heard Blowin’ in the Wind way back in the Sixties. But Bob Dylan Nobel laureate! Winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature! Call me old-fashioned. I prefer to read literature and listen to music. Dylan’s songs may be poems set…
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Elvis and the Beatles
Thank you for the music, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Peter, Paul and Mary, Drifters, Everly Brothers, Mamas and Papas, and too many to name here. I love you all, but most of all I love…
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PS I love you, Beatles
On this day, on October 5, in 1962, the Beatles’ first single, Love Me Do, was released with PS I Love You on the flip side in Britain. The rest is history. Philip Larkin summed it up most memorably in his poem, Annus Mirabilis:Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen sixty-three(which was rather…
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