“Upside Down” is both a new beginning and a last gasp. Its 1980 release signaled the arrival of a redesigned, thoroughly modernized Diana Ross — a sleeker, sexier Miss Ross than we’d ever heard before, but despite the record’s massive success, one we’d never hear again. KSID::5041A04MZ043358
Jason Ankeny
Grand Funk’s ‘We’re an American Band’ brings the party to the people
“We’re an American Band” is rock’n’roll in its purest, uncut form. Big, loud and unapologetically primal, with the style and sophistication of a club-wielding caveman bludgeoning a sabertooth tiger, Grand Funk Railroad’s first number one single is an unabashed love letter to rock music as both lifestyle and lifeforce, a lurid yet lucid celebration of […]
Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb reconnect for a classic
“Wichita Lineman” is an American masterpiece — a timeless portrait of prairie-gothic isolation and desperation. Recorded in May 1968 by country-pop crossover sensation Glen Campbell, songwriter Jimmy Webb’s ballad of everyman angst spins blue-collar pathos into a haunting meditation on existential desire, culminating in one of most profound expressions of love and longing in the […]
The ecstasy and agony of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’
If you were conceived anytime after the summer of 1973, there’s a good chance you owe your existence to “Let’s Get It On.” Marvin Gaye’s smoldering celebration of libido and liberation possesses an aphrodisiacal power unmatched in the annals of popular music: no song is more universally synonymous with unbridled lust and longing, and no […]
How MTV buzz launched Blind Melon’s ‘No Rain’ into the stratosphere
No hit single is more symbiotically tied to its hit music video than “No Rain.” Blind Melon’s lone Top 40 entry and its fantastical Samuel Bayer-directed clip linger in the collective consciousness as conjoined twins: inseparable, indivisible, different but the same. Premiering on cable network MTV in mid-1993, close to a year after the release […]
How Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Free Bird’ earned its wings
“Free Bird” is the sacred text of Southern rock, and like all sacred texts, it is the object of both devotion and derision. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s elegiac magnum opus is so deeply burned into the collective musical consciousness, so inescapable across decades of nonstop radio airplay, that it’s all but impossible to separate the song from […]
Blues Traveler laughs all the way to the bank with its audacious ‘Hook’
“Hook” holds you in contempt for succumbing to its charms. Blues Traveler’s savagely satirical follow-up to its breakthrough single “Run-Around” skewers all facets of the hit-making machine, from creatively bankrupt artists to soulless corporate media outlets to listeners who gobble up whatever tripe the music industry conspires to shove down our throats — tripe including […]
OK Go’s ‘Here It Goes Again’ foretells pop music’s digital destiny
As a song, “Here It Goes Again” is a footnote. But as a marketing stunt, it’s a milestone — a harbinger of a world where fame and fortune are measured in views, likes and shares, not record sales, radio airplay or downloads. Released online roughly a year prior to the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, the […]
A toast to Dean Martin, the forever king of crooner cool
“You’re Nobody ‘Till Somebody Loves You” bottles for all eternity the essence of mid-20th century cool. Dean Martin’s 1960 classic is insouciance incarnate, a singularly swinging evocation of postwar America on the cusp of a new frontier. Sure, Martin’s pal Frank Sinatra was the matchless pop stylist, the Chairman of the Board, the undisputed leader […]
One-chord wonder: Why Junior Walker’s ‘Shotgun’ still hits the target
“Shotgun” is the Motown classic that sounds nothing at all like a Motown classic. Junior Walker and the All Stars’ roadhouse R&B juggernaut is untamed and unbound — a wild card in a catalog synonymous with sequinned style and silk-trimmed sophistication. Released on Motown’s Soul subsidiary in early 1965 (a pivotal year in the company’s […]
