30 April 2026 (Special Edition) - David Allan Coe - Take This Job and Shove It / Take This Job and Shove It Too

To be fair, he DID write it, and he DID record it first - in 1978.  It's HIS song. 

And, after Johnny Paycheck made it a monster hit and everyone assumed he wrote the song - and Johnny Paycheck HIMSELF implied this was true and definitely downplayed the actual songwriter - David Allan Coe wrote a sequel.

I'm not saying this was the reason, but Johnny Paycheck would never have another #1 hit song. 

30 April 2026 (Special Edition) - David Allan Coe - You Never Even Called Me By My Name

It feels a little weird to pay tribute to a great outlaw country singer-songwriter like David Allan Coe - whose biggest hit wasn't made popular by his own recording of the song. ("Take This Job And Shove It", by Johnny Paycheck, by the way). 

But no.  This perfect country and western song - co-written by Steve Goodman and an uncredited-by-choice John Prine, would end up being Coe's biggest personally recorded hit song. It hit #8 on the Country charts in 1975, and ended up being one of the biggest hits of the year.

This live performance of the song - despite the fact that he didn't write it - illustrates just how great a storyteller Coe was.  

David Allan Coe passed away yesterday.  His voice and his songwriting will be missed. 

30 April 2026 - *NSYNC - It's Gonna Be Me

Roses are red

The skies are grey

But come tomorrow....

Justin Timberlake is absolutely saying "me".  

OK, I'm clearly posting this because it's gonna be May.  But also, it's a fun song.  It was also the ONLY #1 song by *NSYNC - and they charted a LOT.  This was their biggest hit, and it still endures every late April to this day. 

Here they are performing it "live".

29 April 2026 - Carla dal Forno - Going Out

 Wikipedia calls Australian artist Carla dal Forno an "electro-pop singer".

Yeah.  Maybe.

But she's much more than that. 

Her latest album, Confession, was released on Friday, and it is one of my favorites of 2026 so far.  It's dreamy and skilled.  Her fourth solo album (after three as lead vocalist for the band F Ingers (and a release or two with Mole House)), it is a lush masterpiece.

Today's song leads off the album, and it is an ethereal opus that sets the tone for the entire album.  

28 April 2026 - Eaves Wilder - Hurricane Girl

Sometimes this blog feels like ad copy.  I'm sometimes parroting facts from the artist's Wikipedia page... or worse, their official bio, rather than telling you how it makes me feel. And, with all the new music I hear, I sometimes get apathetic about it.  I'm going to try not to do that this week.

I heard Eaves Wilder's debut album Little Miss Sunshine last week, and it was part of a streak of albums I had listened to after a long streak of albums that were just meh.  This album is delightful.  The title came from an ironic nickname given to the artist - she admits herself that she was "a bitch".  The album itself is full of songs that are nature-themed in title - referencing types of weather and land - kind of going through her own imposter syndrome like a meteorologist.  

The results should erase any self-doubt she has.    

This performance, released last week, shows that Wilder can play a guitar just like she's ringin' a bell. And she's still really young.  In her early 20s, she's already showing performance and songwriting maturity beyond her years. 

27 April 2026 - A "Look At Me Now" Special

Look, I have a very hard time listening to Chris Brown since his incident with RiRi.  

I came around on this song - which was produced by Diplo and Afrojack - for two reasons.  

The first were the guest stars on this track, who STOLE the track.  STOLE.  Busta Rhymes and his speedrap is the thing of legend. Lil Wayne proves to be his equal.  And their participation made this song a huge hit - one of the biggest of 2011, on top of the fact that it was just a huge hit in its own right. 

Busta Rhymes has performed the song with Chris Brown - live - and he's just as great with the speedrap live as he was in the studio.

To be fair, Justin Bieber doing the Busta Rhymes part is somehow just as impressive. 

He also does the Chris Brown part, though.

But really, you came here for reason 2:

A couple of months after this single was released, a couple of Berkeley School of Music students named Amy and Nick - who happen to have been in a band called Karmin at the time - recorded a version of this song - with Amy singing ALL THREE PARTS. 

It's epic.  And they thought they had butchered it. 

Yes, we did this on Totally Covered fourteen years ago.  Don't @ me. 

Fast forward fifteen years. 

Karmin died. But Amy and Nick got married.... and are still together.  So that's nice.  And they're still making music as Qveen Herby.

But they did revive Karmin just once. And yes, they are wearing the same outfits. 

That doesn't mean that Qveen Herby hasn't still been performing the song. 

And not the sanitized version.

Oops, she said "on my dick".

24 April 2026 - Videoclub - Amour Plastique

Honestly, I spent the last two days referencing this song and this video, I feel we need to talk about it.

I think we all know that the two members of Videoclub were a couple, both musically and romantically.  This was their first single, one of their best known songs, and while it spoke of what seems like love, it's really talking about a superficial love, with little depth.    

I'd like to think Adèle and Matthieu had more than just this, but that's the song. 

Fast forward to 2021, a couple of months before Matthieu would leave Videoclub, and this very sad acoustic version of the song.

Neither of them is happy.

Four years later, when Adèle performed the song at a festival in France, she's back to being happy. 

And the crowd clearly took her side.