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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Brad Paisley

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 4: #70-61 “We’re singing out of tune, but I still want to sing with you…”

    The best songs of 2010 according to me. Part, the fourth:

    #70
    #70: “I NEED A DOLLAR” by ALOE BLACC.
    The title pretty much covers it. What I think I love most about this song is that it sounds like it could have been written in the 1930s, but it’s very clearly about now. The L.A.-based rapper went full-tilt retro-soul for his latest album Good Things, which includes a horned-up (as in brass) cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.” “I Need a Dollar” first found a big audience via the HBO Series How to Make It In America. And just looking at the song lists for the show’s episodes is enough to make me miss HBO.

    #69
    #69: “GOD AND SATAN” by BIFFY CLYRO.
    In which the under-rated (at least here in the U.S.) Scottish band invokes both the light and dark sides of the cosmos in contemplating the mechanics of a complicated relationship. It’s also just a sweet, sorta sad song. “When the seesaw snaps and splinters in two, don’t come crying to me. I’ll only see your good side, and believe it’s a miracle.”

    #68
    #68: “MY OWN SINKING SHIP” by GOOD OLD WAR.
    Three guys, a guitar, and an accordion = a tiny slice of folk-rock heaven. From the group’s self-titled sophomore album. The Philly trio cites CS&N as a primary influence, and you can see why here. I love lead singer Keith Goodwin’s dance moves in the later verses. I think he stole them from me.

    #67
    #67: “BANG BANG BANG” by MARK RONSON & THE BUSINESS INTL.
    Mark Ronson is the producer who re-introduced live horns to Top 40 radio a couple years ago via Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album. Here, sidekicked by rapper Q-Tip (looking sharp!) and MNDR’s Amanda Warner, he re-invents the French-Canadian folk song “Alouette” with Hasselhoffian swagger and the cutting edge audio-visual technology of 1982. A song about plucking skylark feathers turns into a rejection of authoritarian lies and greed. Sweet!

    #66
    #66: “HANG WITH ME” by ROBYN.
    Implausibly, some of this year’s smartest music was dance pop, and the smartest, best dance pop this year came from Sweden’s own Robin Carlsson, or Robyn. And I would love to hang with Robyn, but I’d almost certainly fall recklessly, headlessly in love with her. Robyn coulda been a Britney. She scored an international hit as a teenager with a Max Martin song, but in the years since, has released new music only sporadically. She formed her own label a couple years ago and this year put out Body Talk Pts. 1-3, not just the best dance pop record(s) of the year, but maybe the year’s best album period, Kanye be damned. I love this song’s intimacy. It’s as genuine as it is unexpected.

    #65
    #65: “AMERICAN SATURDAY NIGHT” by BRAD PAISLEY.
    Toby Keith talks about the USA shoving a boot up the ass of the rest of the world. Brad Paisley talks about America as a curated collection of the rest of the world’s most awesome things. Like Amstel Light and the Beatles.

    #64
    #64: “DO YOU LOVE ME?” by GUSTER.
    From the Massachusetts trio’s perfectly titled sixth studio album Easy Wonderful, maybe the best non-Christmas-song Christmas song ever. Dooooo-do-do-do. Doot Doot d-do d-do. Dooooo-do-do-do. Doot Doot d-do d-do. Ding Dong Ding Dong. Guster: Making dorky cool since the mid-90s.

    #63
    #63: “RIDE” by NAPPY ROOTS.
    From The Pursuit of Nappyness, their second album since returning from a five year mid-decade recording hiatus. “Can’t let their friends know they’re not doing good, so you lay low, focus on your kids, and hope somebody remembers something that you did…” A lot of hip-hop is driven by people who’ve never had it, and who’ll do anything to get it. Here’s a song by a group that had it once, has since lost it, and is now re-evaluating. Economists say that the recession ended sometime in 2009. For hip-hop, it’s just arrived.

    #62
    #62: “CRASH YEARS” by THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS.
    There’s a video for this song, and it’s nice enough, but you don’t get to see the band – this very big band – rocking this song out in it they way they do here. I love the big sound of the toms. I love the cello/bass line (which get stuck in my head for days on end). Also: LIVE WHISTLING. “Tonight will be an open mic!”

    #61
    #61: “HEARTBEAT SONG” by THE FUTUREHEADS.
    “It’s like a cartwheel in my head but my legs are made of lead…” Their lyrics are fun, their melodies are catchy, their stage presence is nerdy, and their tempos are often frantic. Although on their earlier albums they demonstrated a knack for arty vocal arrangements and stranger song structures, on their fourth album The Chaos, they show that they can do the whole straightforward power-pop thing pretty damn well too.

    In the next installment: Smoking, drinking, clubbing, and double-entendre-laden not-so-fine dining

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 3: #80-71 “You’re a big old wuss if you don’t jump in…””

    Huzzah! The third installment!

    #80
    #80: “WATER” by BRAD PAISLEY.
    “Grab your swimming trunks, ice up that old Igloo, and drive until the map turns blue…” All I really need, this time of year, is to not be driving home in an ugly snowstorm with this Brad Paisley song stuck in my head. Don’t get me wrong – I love this song. But in the middle of this Wisconsin blizzard, it hurts.

    #79
    #79: “FOR THE SUMMER” by RAY LaMONTAGNE & THE PARIAH DOGS.
    This is the point in the road trip where it dawns on you that you’re never going to actually get to your where you’re going no matter how long you keep driving, so you pull off to the shoulder and have yourself a good cry. Until that State Trooper stops by and tells you to move along. At which point you, y’know, move along.

    #78
    #78: “LITTLE WHITE CHURCH” by LITTLE BIG TOWN.
    This is exactly what I would expect an Alabama weddin’ would look like. Huzzah for the gleeful perpetuation of stereotypes by the stereotyped. (Did I mention my huge collection of Broadway cast albums? It’s HUGE. It’s bigger than Cher, even.) Also: If you squint your eyes real hard, Little Big Town looks exactly like ABBA.

    #77
    #77: “SHINE A LIGHT” by McFLY featuring TAIO CRUZ.
    Still teenagers when their debut album hit #1 in the UK in 2004, McFly were a boy band more Bay City Rollers than Backstreet Boys, their songs owing more to Big Star and the Beatles than Max Martin and Dr. Luke. Things have changed. Their latest, co-written with reigning king of android pop Taio Cruz (who guests here on vocals) sounds more like a bid to become the UK’s answer to Maroon 5. And it’s awesome. And the video has lots of shiny stuff.

    #76
    #76: “DO-WAH-DOO” by KATE NASH.
    The retro-pop lament of the nice girl. Literate and lonely, she holds no illusions about that “other” girl that all the boys think is so sweet. “Everybody thinks that she’s a lady. But I don’t. I think that girl’s shady.” Boys can be so dumb. First of all: Hurray for in-flight choreography! But wait – so Kate’s crushing on a boy who’s a flight attendant? Err… okay.

    #75
    #75: “ONE LIFE STAND” by HOT CHIP.
    This is a band I should have loved from the start – five dorky British guys with synthesizers and an abiding devotion to the music of Devo – but they didn’t win me over until the release of their 5th album earlier this year. This is the title track from that album One Life Stand. And of all the LPs I picked up this year, it’s probably the one that’s logged the most mileage on my turntable: a collection of sincerely dorky and supremely dance-able songs about marriage and family.

    Hot Chip – One Life Stand
    Uploaded by EMI_Music. – See the latest featured music videos.

    #74
    #74: “PRAYIN’” by PLAN B.
    The provocative British rapper transformed himself into an old-school soul singer for his latest album, an operatic R&B concept record about love, betrayal, crime and punishment. And he put some amazing visuals out to go along with it. The album’s called The Defamation of Strickland Banks, and Plan B has talked about putting together a feature film around it, building it out of the videos for the album’s songs. And from what I’ve seen so far, Plan B’s videos kick the asses of Ne-Yo’s and Kanye’s latest excursions into grandiose short-filmmaking.

    #73
    #73: “THE HOUSE THAT BUILT ME” by MIRANDA LAMBERT.
    “If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave… won’t take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.” Another fine country tearjerker.

    #72
    #72: “NIGHT & DAY” by CHIEF.
    The sound of the band Chief falls roughly halfway between Eagles and the Church (just down the block from Fleet Foxes), 70s-style arena rock melodies, layers upon layers of guitars and other strings, and gorgeous four-part harmonies. The video’s great too, a sort of baroque dinner theater cabaret (with stylized stage violence!)

    #71
    #71: “BETTER THAN TODAY” by KYLIE MINOGUE.
    For the third single from her awesome latest album Aphrodite, the international superstar songstress comes down with a severe case of Pac Man Fever. And it’s drivin’ me crazy. Also, I’m going out of my mind. (In a good way.)

    Next time around: The recession comes to hip-hop. And R&B. And indie rock.

  • Paisley, Brown, and Church: Country Songs That Rawk!

    Every couple of weeks, I make a couple of new mix CDs to listen to on my 40-or-so-minute each way commute to work, basically culling my current favorite tracks to create my very own Lorentz-centric Top 40 radio station. Just like any other Top 40 radio station, it’s all about the hits (hits with me, anyway): the playlist is necessarily limited (I can rarely fit more than 20 songs on a CD) and repetitive (the CD ends, it starts over). I love it. It drives my kids nuts. Just the other day, when the latest a-ha single “Butterfly, Butterfly” came on, my oldest (who invariably gravitates to “Take On Me” whenever there’s a karaoke machine nearby) begged me to skip it. I didn’t then, but eventually, I will. And that will be when I know it’s time for a new mix CD.

    Lately, my morning commute mix CDs have been filling up with a surprising number of country songs. Now, while I’m certainly not one to dismiss country as a genre – I grew up with Kenny Rogers and the Oak Ridge Boys, and thanks to my Dad, I have a very deep love and respect for Willie Nelson – I’m no aficionado either. And as much as I’d like to say I keep an open mind, I have to admit that I’m more open-minded when we’re talking about Scandinavian dance pop than when we’re talking about guys named Garth and Randy who like to wear cowboy hats. I don’t know if it’s the music that’s changing or if it’s just me, but there’s just a lot of country music out there right now that’s, y’know, really good. And I’m not just talking about hipster-approved alternative country. That’s all fine too, but I’m talking about actual country hits. You know, country songs that are genuinely popular with country audiences, and increasingly with pop-crossover audiences as well.

    For instance, Brad Paisley‘s “Water”, the fourth single from his 2009 album American Saturday Night which recently enjoyed a stay at the top of the country charts

    Brad Paisley “Water”

    What I love about this song – and all of Brad Paisley‘s songs really – is how he never wastes a verse. There’s nothing throwaway about how he builds a story, or in this case, builds a monument to something as almost cheesily simple, common, and universal as water. I mean, how dorky does this idea seem on paper? Hey guys, let’s do a song about how great water is. (While we’re at it, why not a song about how cool it is to see stuff?) But verse by verse, he details his ongoing “love affair with water” with images from snapshots that could be sitting in just about anybody’s photo album – the “inflatable pool full of Dad’s hot air” – until you realize that while he might be stating the obvious, sometimes the obvious thing is the easiest to take for granted, and it needs to be stated. Moreover, the song’s joyous invitation to hop into the car and “drive until the map turns blue” has taken on an unintentional and tragic urgency with news of the BP oil spill and its disgusting political and environmental implications casting a depressing pall over this summer season.

    Like Brad Paisley, Georgia’s Zac Brown Band is currently riding on an album that’s destined to be regarded not just as one of the great country albums, but just one of the great albums of its time, period. Although they’ve been sending hits up the country charts and the Billboard Hot 100 since their major label debut The Foundation was released two years ago, it was their amazing 2010 Grammy Awards ceremony performance of their signature hit “Chicken Fried” done as a medley with “America the Beautiful” all dressed up in defiantly ragged harmonies, that established once and for all the force of nature this band is. Although their previous hits have had something of a novelty factor to them, this year they’ve sent two gorgeous ballads up the charts: “Highway 20 Ride”, a heartbreaking post-divorce father-to-son confessional, and “Free”, a song about being young, broke, and in love, and living out on the road – a song feels as big and endless as the road itself, and even gives a musical nod to Van Morrison’s classic “Into the Mystic.” Even as “Free” is still making its way up the Hot 100 (where it entered the Top 40 a couple weeks ago), the album’s sixth single “Different Kind of Fine” – a light-hearted romp celebrating a fine specimen of true country womanhood – has just landed on the country charts. I double-dog dare you not to dig it.

    Zac Brown Band “Different Kind of Fine”

    With his full beard and trademark knit caps, Zac Brown is one of those guys that’s made country radio playlists safe for guys who don’t wear cowboy hats. North Carolina native singer-songwriter Eric Church is a baseball hat kinda guy with a great voice – a boyish, impish, and immediately lovable tenor that he uses to fine effect on songs about love and how nice it is to be naughty. But for its decidedly un-PC celebration of liquor and death sticks, Church’s latest single “Smoke a Little Smoke” barely even qualifies as country, sounding like cross between a Ry Cooder electric blues and a Collective Soul arena rock anthem circa 1993, with all the requisite post-grunge quiet-loud-quiet dynamics. Country as a genre has proven itself relatively slow to evolve. But with the ongoing popular success of Eric Church (and Zac Brown and Brad Paisley), the fish may, in fact, be growing a small set of legs.

    Eric Church “Smoke a Little Smoke”