Last night, Mac and I drove to Portland to catch Depeche Mode in concert. He’d intended to take his wife, but they had a miscommunication about dates. Turns out Pam’s in Taiwan right now haha, so Mac took me instead. The Depeche Mode concert was fine. It was just what you’d want from them. It …
My obsession with the music of Taylor Swift is no secret. I’ve been fan for more than a decade. I think she’s one of the great songrwiters — not just of her era, but of all time. I think the best way to demonstrate the quality of her writing is to listen to other performers …
Sinéad O’Connor has died. She was 56. I don’t usually get torn up about celebrity deaths — these people are complete strangers, after all — but I’ll admit this one makes me sad. You see, for 35 years I’ve considered Sinéad O’Connor my “soul artist”. Her music moves me. I first heard Sinéad during my …
Last week, I noticed that Apple Music had created an automatic playlist compiling my “most listened” songs from the past three years. I didn’t recognize one of the songs from 2018. (To be fair, I started using Apple Music at the end of December 2018, so it had very little data to go on.) While …
Often during the summer, I find myself drawn to Yacht Rock. This is the smooth, breezy music of folks like Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, and Kenny Loggins. It’s the kind of stuff my parents used to listen to on AM radio during the late 1970s and early 1980s. But the term “yacht rock” …
One of my favorite parts about learning Spanish so far has been discovering a world of new music. Thanks to José (one of the employees at the box factory), I’ve been exploring the various Mexican music stations in Portland. (I say Mexican because that’s the audience the stations cater to and the source of most …
I’ve had a rough 48 hours. Toto’s death has affected me more than you can probably guess. I knew it would. That cat was like a piece of me, and I feel her absence acutely. It hurts. “It always amazes me how emotional you are,” Kris told me last night at dinner. “You’re so much …
In early December, at the end of the Glee episode where the kids go to Sectionals, I was literally moved to tears by this song: Glee – Dog Days Are Over Some of my (very manly) tears came from all of the Glee soap opera that led up to this, but a lot of it …
Today marks the start of Blog Week in my life. I’m spending the next seven days focused on preparing Get Rich Slowly for my upcoming absence while Kris and I spend three weeks in Africa. While editing guest posts this morning, I’m listening to my “angsty eighties” mix. By sheer chance, the song “Southern” by …
Oh, how I look forward to the new year. Not because of resolutions or a fresh start or anything like that, but because that’s when DJ Earworm releases his annual mash-up of the year’s top 25 pop songs. I love it! This year’s remix isn’t as good as the 2009 version (which was simply amazing), …