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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Don Henley

  • Silly love songs…

    “Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs… What’s wrong with that?”

    I had an interesting experience yesterday. I happened to run across a Facebook profile for a woman who is friends with a lot of my friends. She also happens to be married to a guy I used to have a big crush on. My crush went unrequited, of course. I looked at her pictures with her husband, a man who both charmed and tormented me when we were little kids and was immediately reminded of a silly love song by Garth Brooks. The song was “Unanswered Prayers”. I’d post it here, but apparently Garth Brooks is very protective of his copyrights and there aren’t any videos of him doing that song on YouTube. I suppose I could find a cover version, but instead I’ll just say the sentiment of that song fit the way I felt yesterday. I had a lot of crushes back in the day, but am actually kind of glad none of them panned out.

    As I gave my husband, Bill, a big kiss last night as a thank you for choosing me, another silly love song immediately popped into my head. That song was “The Last Worthless Evening” by Don Henley. I’d post that song here, but again, Don Henley is apparently protective of his copyright and I can’t find any suitable videos on YouTube. The point is, it’s a sweet song and sort of sums up how I feel about Bill. When I found Bill, I found a man who made the pain of all those unrequited crushes go away. I haven’t had a “worthless evening” since.

    This morning, as I sat in my office thinking about today’s post, I realized that both “Unanswered Prayers” and “The Last Worthless Evening” were recorded by guys with enormous egos. Shoot, Garth Brooks won’t even let you download his songs unless you visit Walmart’s official Web site. I guess he figures he gets more money if you buy them on CD, since you can’t just buy one song. It’s his right to do that, but I’m not enough of a fan to buy one of his CDs or download from Walmart’s site.

    I am a fan of Don Henley’s and actually own several of his studio albums and he does let you download from iTunes or Amazon, though he doesn’t want you using his music on YouTube. But I would buy a CD by Don Henley… or at least I would before he and the rest of the Eagles got into bed with Walmart. Garth Brooks also got into bed with Walmart back in 2005, when he signed a deal making Walmart the only place you can buy his music. Since I loathe Walmart, I refuse to buy anything there, so any artist who only sells music at Walmart will not have a place in my library.

    The Eagles have since made their 2007 album Long Road Out of Eden available elsewhere, but the damage is done. I found it very hypocritical that Don Henley was such an outspoken advocate for environmental causes and yet he got involved with a business that is responsible for so many trees losing their lives due to Walmart’s enormous stores. It’s not that I’m such a big environmentalist. I just don’t like hypocrisy and I don’t like not having a choice as to where I buy things.

    So then I started thinking about “Silly Love Songs”, a love song by Paul McCartney and Wings. And what do you know? I actually found a video for that song…

    And this song, while maybe as schmaltzy as “Unanswered Prayers” and “The Last Worthless Evening”, doesn’t take itself too seriously. God bless Paul McCartney for his lighthearted silly love songs. And thank God for “Unanswered Prayers” and “The Last Worthless Evening” because they make me appreciate “Silly Love Songs” all the more.

    Have a great weekend, y’all!

  • New Release of the Week 6/16/09: George Harrison

    Harrison

    It’s about time that the Quiet Beatle was rewarded with a compilation that was worthy of the thirty-odd good years of music he gave us. For the longest time, the only hits album Harrison had was “The Best of George Harrison”, and that cut off somewhere in the mid-Seventies. Today, that changes. “Let it Roll: Songs by George Harrison” contains not only Seventies classics like “My Sweet Lord” and “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)”, but adds in Eighties favorites like “Got My Mind Set on You” and “All Those Years Ago”, and tosses in a few tracks from the Harrison-founded Concert for Bangladesh. Don’t know why it took so long for something like this to (pardon the pun) come together, but George fans can now rejoice. If only they’d thrown in a couple of Traveling Wilburys songs. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers.

    Here’s some other stuff hitting record store racks (real and virtual) today.

    Jonas Brothers Lines, Vines & Trying Times: I bet you guys were expecting this to be the new release of the week, eh? Well, I try to slot albums I actually have a chance at buying in that space (which is why The Black Eyed Peas didn’t make it in last week), and I can’t say that you’ll ever catch me buying a Jonas Brothers CD. Not that they need any help, mind you. Aside from it’s cutesly rhyme-y title and the threat of a “darker” Jonas Brothers, this album contains a cameo from the rapper Common. I hope he got paid a LOT of money to destroy his own career.

    Don Henley The Very Best of Don Henley: The last Don Henley hits compilation came out in late 1995. Since then, Don’s released exactly ONE studio album. So the point of this album is…so we can hear “Taking You Home” alongside “The Boys of Summer” and “Dirty Laundry”? This album comes in a regular 14-track version as well as a deluxe 20-track version, which contains four extra tracks as well as a DVD containing six videos. I still don’t get why anyone would want this. If you have the last Henley comp, “Actual Miles”, you can get his one other studio album, “Inside Job”, for less than five bucks used. Oh, the mysteries of the music business…

    Michael Buble Michael Buble Meets Madison Square Garden: In lieu of a new studio album, fans of the standards-crooning Canadian can feast on this CD/DVD combo, which features Buble adapting his smoove pipes to songs ranging from Billy Paul’s “Me & Mrs. Jones” to Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, from one of his sellout dates at the World’s Most Famous Arena. Thank God for concerts, because no one’s going there to see the sports teams anymore.

    Will Downing Classique: Speaking of smoove, Downing has been one of R&B’s more consistent balladeers, picking up the slack after the loss of legends like Barry White and Luther Vandross. He was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder that briefly confined him to a wheelchair (is it me or do male R&B singers have shitty luck?), but now he’s back and still as romantic as ever. Unlike his normally covers-heavy albums, “Classique” contains mostly original and self-written songs.

    A complete list of this week’s releases can be found here.

  • Infatueighties #62: “King of Pain”

    For those who are actually following this and wonder where #63 went, it’s “The Boys of Summer” by Don Henley, which I already discussed at length here. Let’s move on to one of the only artists viewed as being as pretentious as Mr. Henley. Yes, folks, that would be Gordon Sumner, who you know better as Sting. Sting, along with Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland, was a member of The Police, who recorded the song you find at #62: “King of Pain”. See how it all ties together?

    Anyway, there are quite a few Police songs that I wanted to include in here (Side 1 of “Zenyatta Mondatta” might be my favorite side of an album ever), but “King of Pain” gets the nod because it’s the song that best marries the highbrow intelligence of many of Sting’s lyrics to a simple yet effective pop tune. How effective? I was 7 when this record came out and I loved it despite the fact that I had no bloody idea what The Police were talking about. “There’s a blind man looking for a shadown of doubt”? Whaaa???

    Anyway, “Synchronicity” is one of only a handful of albums (I can only think of six) with more than one song on this list, a testament to the legacy The Police left in only five short years of making records. Sting saving the rainforests may have muted their impact somewhat, but these were the records that turned me on to rock music. So let’s temporarily forget about the pompous ass-iness, the tantric sex and the cash-grabbing reunion tour (although they were quite good when I saw them) and remember how damn good this song is.