Torch Ballads & Jukebox Music
May 3, 2013
The Song I Could Not Stop Singing: On “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” 2
by John Hobart
There came upon me, not rationally but massively, the conviction that if I continued to sing this song then my parents would die. And yet I could not stop singing it. There I would be, walking blithely through the house, or walking blithely across the garden, and then realize that for the last few seconds, I had, yet again, been singing of Maxwell Edison and his homicidal hammer, and a great dread would invade me, because it meant, this singing, the removal of my parents from the world.
February 13, 2013
The Kid Is Alright: On Teddy Wayne’s The Love Song of Jonny Valentine 1
by Elizabeth Minkel
Does it matter to us how culture is made? Won’t we swallow the cooked-up laboratory celebrity just as easily as the authentic talent?
January 10, 2013
Beautiful and Exciting and Profoundly Different: On Beck’s Song Reader 2
by Alan Levinovitz
I have just channeled Beck’s spirit through printed paper! The first versions of Beck’s songs I hear are my own! This is an amazing feeling.
October 24, 2012
Frankly Singing 5
by Chantel Tattoli
Two weeks ago, I told my father I’d been assigned to report Frank Sinatra, Jr.’s concert, told him I had a second press pass for a photographer. My father heard me loud and clear. He went out and bought a telescopic Nikon. It was at that point that dread began to gnaw on his daughter.
July 24, 2012
Chuck Berry, Neoclassicist 16
by Stephen Akey
Blues, country and western, Johnsonian neoclassicism: these are the traditions that nurture Chuck Berry’s lyrical art. But really, who gives a damn about the categories when you’re listening to something as smoking as “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”?
April 6, 2012
Becoming James Brown: On RJ Smith’s The One 3
by Philip Eil
What Brown wanted to do was lay down a strutting, macho anthem marked by explosions of brass and a guitar that sounds like chrome wheels spinning. He hums a melody to the sax player and a bass line to the bassist. He thumps out a beat for the drummer. He watches a trumpet player struggle, fires him, then re-hires him moments later. And when the singer is ready, he screams out a set of lyrics scratched on a sheet of paper. The song is called “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”