The late great Sinéad O’Connor was born on this date in 1966. Several of her songs are included on today’s playlist.
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In early 1980 newspaper The Village Voice published the results of its poll of 155 music critics. Voted the best album of 1979 was Graham Parker & The Rumour’s Squeezing Out Sparks. The rest of the top ten was:
Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps
The Clash – The Clash
Talking Heads – Fear of Music
Elvis Costello – Armed Forces
Van Morrison – Into the Music
The B-52s – The B-52s
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Damn the Torpedoes
Pere Ubu – Dub Housing
Donna Summer – Bad Girls Graham Parker
was born on this date in 1950. A handful of his songs are included on today’s playlist.
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In the same room where Ian Fleming wrote James Bond novels Sting of The Police wrote what he called a “nasty little song” about his feelings of jealousy and obsession over his first wife following their divorce. I’m not sure if hearing the song everywhere helped him get over those feelings, but the money the song generated may have lifted his spirits.
Sting was born on this date in 1951. Lotsa Police songs on today’s playlist.
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Lotsa Madonna on today’s playlist, as today is her 65th birthday.
https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/05VIjj71xBqWJKyjrg7KJC?utm_source=generator
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Devo’s “Whip It” was inspired by a magazine article about how to be a better wife. The song’s cowriter and bassist for the band, Gerald Casale, said he’d found that story in a 1962 issue of The Family Handyman and thought it was funny. He decided to write a song that parodied the idea of whipping your problems away. Casale also drew from communist propaganda posters and a 1973 novel by Thomas Pynchon called Gravity’s Rainbow, which mocks capitalist slogans with satirical limericks.He wrote lyrics that taken out of context sound like motivational clichés: When a good time turns around, you must whip it. Give the past a slip. Whip it into shape. Get straight. Go forward. Move ahead. And my personal favorite: Before the cream sits out too long, you must whip it.
Jerry Casale turns 75 today. A couple of Devo tracks, including their biggest hit, “Whip It,” are included on today’s playlist.
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As today is the birthday of Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins, several songs from their breakthrough album The Trinity Session are sprinkled throughout today’s playlist.
In his excellent autobiography Le Freak, Chic’s Nile Rodgers writes how his group’s record label wanted to capture the magic Rodgers and his music partner Bernard Edwards brought to their group to other acts on the Atlantic Records roster, such as The Rolling Stones and Bette Midler. Nile turned down the acts that were firmly established, as with them less attention would be paid to the song’s writers and producers. He wanted to work with a lesser known act. Atlantic Records president Jerry Greenberg suggested a group of sisters who “stick together like birds of a feather,” and so it came to be that Rodgers and Edwards wrote and produced the We Are Family album for Sister Sledge. I think you know what happened next.
Today’s playlist celebrates the birthday of Sister Sledge lead vocalist Kathy Sledge by including several tracks from that classic album.