“Men are what their mothers made them,” Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared, and with 1968’s Bakersfield Sound bildungsroman “Mama Tried,” Merle Haggard finally came to terms with the man his mother made — not just the transgressions he committed, but also the pleas and prayers he ignored, and the damage that was done. KSID::P1V201Y2P212S
Edwin Starr declares ‘War’ on the pop charts — and comes out the winner
“War” is a howl of psychic agony — a harrowing, hallucinatory broadside against America’s involvement in the decades-long conflict in Vietnam, and the immense human toll it exacted. KSID::d53Z0632F05391
LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’ gets the last laugh
“Party Rock Anthem,” the worldwide smash from electronic duo LMFAO’s sophomore album Sorry for Party Rocking, doesn’t make grand statements about American politics. It doesn’t show concern for people sleeping on the streets. It doesn’t consider our warming climate, or worry about daily commutes or paying bills. It offers neither commentary on the pains and […]
Red Rider plunges into the heart of darkness with ‘Lunatic Fringe’
Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat celebrated for saving thousands of lives during World War II, may seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for a classic rock mainstay, but the hit song Wallenberg sparked, Red Rider’s “Lunatic Fringe,” remains as earnestly powerful — and as sadly topical — as it did back in 1981. KSID::F32S03I520341L
‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ signals the beginning of the end for the Supremes
“You Can’t Hurry Love” boasts all the essential ingredients of the Supremes’ greatest Motown hits — all of them except for Florence Ballard, that is. Ballard, the talented but troubled Supremes vocalist pushed out of the spotlight by Motown brass in favor of Diana Ross, was absent for the session that produced “You Can’t Hurry […]
‘ABC’ spells success for the Jackson 5
When the Supremes’ Diana Ross introduced the world to five singing siblings from Gary, Ind., she lit the fuse on what would become one of America’s defining and most enduring musical families. Since 1969, we’ve known the Jackson 5 for a series of impeccable Motown Records singles spearheaded by an inchoate, irrepressible Michael Jackson: there’s […]
Vampire Weekend creates a ‘Holiday’ worth celebrating
The surface of Vampire Weekend’s “Holiday” is all sun, but darkness lurks underneath its ska-punk bounce. “It’s about a member of my family who gave up meat when we invaded Iraq,” lead singer Ezra Koenig explained to British music weekly NME in 2010. “They were horrified by what was happening, and they lost their taste […]
Johnny Cash returns to the scene of the crime to revamp ‘Folsom Prison Blues’
Johnny Cash opened the newspaper on the morning of July 18, 1986 to read that after 28 years, 57 albums and 13 number one hits, his days with Columbia Records were over. The 54-year-old Cash — the iconic Man in Black, whose cavernous baritone, plainspoken narratives and signature boom-chicka-boom rhythm revolutionized American music — was […]
J. Geils Band turns the page and tops the charts with ‘Centerfold’
“Where such men love, they have no desire, and where they desire, they cannot love,” Sigmund Freud wrote in 1925 to illuminate what he famously dubbed the Madonna-whore complex — i.e., the dichotomy between the women a man finds admirable and those he finds sexually desirable, and the schism at the heart of the J. […]
Diana Ross flips her career ‘Upside Down’ — and returns to the top
“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
