30 June 2021 - Iggy Azalea ft. T.I. - Murda Bizness

Before she was all "Fancy", Iggy Azalea was establishing herself as pretty hard-edged.   We have featured Iggy Azalea on this blog several times - before AND after "Fancy".  

This song, her first collaboration with T.I., is one that we've missed, mostly because we never found a great spot to slot her in that flowed with the feeling we were going with - either in genre, or theme.  I've had this song sitting in my drafts for a couple of years.  

The song appears on her 2012 EP Glory and would serve as her debut single (although "Beat Down" came a few months earlier, that was Steve Aoki and Angger Dimas's single, not hers). For those not familiar with Steve Aoki, seeing a long-haired blonde Australian girl coming with an in-your-face style of hip hop was a bit of a shock.... but in a good way.  

Here she is performing the song live in 2013.  It is one of the first times she had ever performed live, and she absolutely brought the house DOWN.

29 June 2021 - Filter - Hey Man, Nice Shot

This song sounds really cool, right?  I mean, the guitar rift is one of the greatest from the mid-1990s.  Richard Patrick's delivery of his song is spot on.

So, listen to the song first with no preconceptions about what the song is about.  Just enjoy the song.

In January 1987, Robert Budd Dwyer, Pennsylvania State Treasurer, was convicted of bribery and was due to be sentenced for up to 55 years in prison.  The day before his sentencing, he held a press conference, maintaining his evidence.  At some point during the conference, he pulled out a revolver and took his own life, without injuring anyone else.

So, that's the "Nice Shot" Filter is referring to.  This song is about that incident.  There were rumors it was about Kurt Cobain.  Those are not true - the song was written in 1991.  

So, now listen to it again, with that in mind.  But here's a live version for you.

I won't be posting video of the incident.  If you want to see that sad, tragic spectacle, you can look for it yourself.  

28 June 2021 - Primal Scream - Loaded

I wanted to make sure I posted a band that Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor  has obviously never heard of.  

In all seriousness, this song, an acid house classic, was a top 20 UK hit for Primal Scream in 1990 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest dance songs of all time.  

I agree with that assessment - I played it on college radio the ONE NIGHT they let me do the dance show.  I don't think this was a contributing factor to me not doing that again (I made some questionable choices) but I thought it was great and I was certainly dancing to it in the studio, quite similarly to how I am dancing to it right now, as I write this.  

The song samples lines from the movie The Wild Angels.  

25 June 2021 - ABBA - Waterloo

Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus were looking to become better known songwriters.  Sure, they were known in Sweden, but not much outside.  So, how does a European group get attention for their songwriting?

Easy.  Enter the Eurovision Song Contest.  

Which this song won in 1974, as Sweden's entry.  And, it won handily.  

This single was the first credited to the group as ABBA, is is likely the only song ever to compare a relationship to a Napoleonic battle.  Usually, a song like this i.e. one that wins Eurovision isn't all that popular outside of Europe, but this song was different, igniting their fame worldwide.  

It is widely considered to be the greatest song to come out of a Eurovision competition.  

Of course, in order to QUALIFY for Eurovision, they had to perform the song for Sweden.  Which they did, at Melodifestivalen, a Swedish music festival for the purpose of picking the Eurovision competitor.  You might notice this version is a little different.  

By the way, lest you think I'm kidding about this Eurovision stuff, here are ABBA, watching the results come in, followed by them performing the song as winners.

24 June 2021 - Carrie Underwood - Jesus, Take The Wheel

This is exactly the type of post that Scott would have posted.  And yet, here I am, unapologetically posting country gospel.

Look, let's get it out of the way.  It's a pretty straight-forward modern country song, with pretty blatant Christian overtones.  It's about a woman praying she doesn't die when she hits a patch of black ice.  Moreover, it's a song that demands a broad vocal range.  

This song was American Idol winner Carrie Underwood's first Country #1 hit song (she would go on to have 15, so far).  It also crossed over and became a Top 5 Christian hit (a chart she would later top, twice), and a top twenty POP hit - a chart she had previously topped with her debut single.  This was her 2nd single.  

And yeah, it won several awards, including two Grammys.

To call this song influential and important is not hyperbole.  It set the direction of Underwood's music, away from the pop idol sphere in which Simon Cowell's greatest creation usually played, and it established her as a leading cross-genre artist for a generation. 

23 June 2021 - Amanda Seyfried - Little House

In 2012, I first posted music performed by Amanada Seyfried on Totally Covered.  The songs were from  a movie in which she had acted - Mamma Mia! - and inspired by another - Red Riding Hood.  These covers were, in a word, amazing.  Both of them.  The latter is still on heavy rotation for me, and the former was so good, I posted it again, unapologetically, on this blog.  

When I wrote that original post, I made a bit of a flippant comment - "A reminder that this is the same person who played the dumb blonde in Mean Girls".

Which is true.  She did.  

She has since been nominated for an Academy Award  (for Mank), and has continued to demonstrate that she is both a talented actress and musician with great depth.   Seyfried's discography is absolutely loaded with covers - many tied to her movies - but this song, from her 2010 film Dear John, is not only not a cover, SHE wrote it.  

22 June 2021 - Cyndi Lauper - True Colors

You know, we've gone this whole month and we haven't even acknowledged Pride Month.

This song, originally pitched to Anne Murray, was written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg about Kelly's mother.  When Cyndi Lauper got a hold of the song, it became something so much bigger - a song of empowerment and encouragement. 

It was also become an anthem of LGBTQ pride.  In fact, the song resonated with Lauper specifically because she had recently lost a good friend to AIDS - a good friend who had been ejected from his home at age 12 for the crime of being gay.  One of the great things that Lauper has done is founded the charity now known as True Colors United, a group dedicated to the unique problems of LGBTQ youth homelessness.  

She is a great person, and this is a great song.