2 April 2025 - Soccer Mommy - bloodstream

The hardest part of Maple Leaf March is the great music being made in the other 190-odd nations in the world. 

And usually, if you look at my Spotify stats for March, my most listened to artist is almost always going to be Canadian.  

Not this year.  

2-10, absolutely Canadian.  

#1 was an AMERICAN artist and I'm frankly a little surprised, but not a lot. My family would not be surprised, I would assume.

3 of my top 4 listened to songs in the last month are by one artist - Soccer Mommy. 

And two of them are "Driver".  Yeah, one of them is the stripped version from Jimmy Kimmel Live. 

The third is this song, the opening track and 4th single from her experimental and groundbreaking 2020 album color theory, where she incorporated a bunch of chunky downstroked chords with a number of weird samples and unusual synth choices.  They all work, by the way - the entire album is incredible, end-to-end, with this being my favorite of a great collection. 

Hey, if you end up loving this song as much as I do, you can sing along with the official karaoke.

Anyway, you know we're coming at you with a couple of live versions, and this first one is something of a historic doozy.  color theory was released at the end of February 2020. As part of the promotional tour, Soccer Mommy was supposed to do an NPR Tiny Desk Concert.

Then a pandemic happened. And, well, NPR stopped hosting these. However, they had the idea to have artists do these concerts from their own homes..... and THIS was the FIRST one, in March 2020.   

"bloodstream" was the first song she played and it's beautiful in its acoustic format.. 

Live music did return, and this performance from 2021 of the song - with Sophie in a cape! - is one of my favorites, truly illustrating the chunky guitar rifts.  

1 April 2025 - Laura Branigan - Gloria | Umberto Tozzi - Gloria | Jonathan King - Gloria

Well, #MapleLeafMarch is over for another year.  Guess it's time to get back to the American artists we all love.

Never mind that I'm writing this in January the same day I wrote this post.   I should really be working on a Monday post.  Oh well.  

The reason I wanted to put this today is that my birthday is in March.  And, because of what I do in March, I posted this song on my birthday.  This year, as I was researching the other post, I realized that I was the same age as Laura Branigan was when she passed away in 2004.   Which means I'm older than she was now.   

This cover - of an Italian song - was her biggest hit by far, and at the time of its release, it spent 36 weeks on the Billboard chart, which, at the time, was longer than any song by a female artist had ever been there.  It peaked at #2 in 1982, kept from the top spot by the juggernaut that was [checks notes] Toni Basil.  

I mention it was an Italian cover.  The original was performed by Umberto Tozzi, who also was co-writer on the song.

It should sound really familiar, but lyrically, it's very different. This is a love song.   Branigan's version was about a woman out of control.  

Tozzi DID record an English version of his song, with lyrics translated by Jonathan King.   THIS retained the love song aspect of the lyrics.

It's not the same song exactly as the Italian version, either - it's very much an imaginary woman here.

By the way, Jonathan King recorded his version as well, and it was a minor UK hit.  It's barely worth mentioning.  His songwriting was good, though.  

But back to Laura Branigan.

In January 2019, the St. Louis Blues were in last place in the NHL Western Conference, so they.... adopted a theme song and went on a 19-game winning streak.  They ended up making the playoffs, and won the Stanley Cup in seven games that year.

So, yeah, "Play Gloria!" is a thing in St. Louis now.