george harrison

Playlist #283: Covers and Covers and Covers

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Happy Monday, folks! Though it’s a bit of a dreary one here in Northern Virginia. I assume it’s because of the Nor’easter or the El Nino or whatever. I’ve spent the morning jamming to an old collection of Elton John Covers (it’s called Two Rooms, if you’re curious), and it is the most 1991 collection I have ever heard. Anyway, here’s some covers!

  1. Kate Bush, “Rocket Man”: Why did she make this a reggae song? Why is there Northumbrian pipe in the last minute and a half of it? Because she’s Kate Fuckin’ Bush, that’s why.
  2. Santana, “Oye Como Va”: If you’re gonna cover Tito Puente, you go hard with it.
  3. Wilco, “Thirteen”: There are approximately seventeen billion covers of this Big Star tune, and each one offers just a little something different than the others. There’s a broken vulnerability to the music and Jeff Tweedy’s vocals here that I really like.
  4. Joe Cocker, “The Letter”: I always associate Joe Coker with powerful covers of others’ songs. He and his band just rip into this one for a barnstormer of a live show.
  5. Sturgill Simpson, “In Bloom”: Did you know this grunge mainstay could sound all country and soft? Neither did I until Sturgill Simpson covered it.
  6. Cake, “I Will Survive”: Dripping with 90s irony and not looking to make any friends, this song challenges the listener to meet it on its own terms and just rocks out with trumpet and electric guitar in the extended coda.
  7. Johnathan Coulton, “Baby Got Back”: Who doesn’t love the quirky white boy covering the Sir Mix-A-Lot classic?
  8. Harvey Danger, “Save It For Later”: Did you know Harvey Danger recorded more songs than just “Flagpole Sitta?” Did you even know the name of that song was “Flagpole Sitta?”
  9. Luna, “Most Of The Time”: I’ll admit, I did not expect this band to have a male lead singer. I guess that’s one of my own biases I need to reassess.
  10. George Harrison, “If Not For You”: Yeah, I’m ending the list with not one but two Dylan covers. Which I can do because it’s my website and my playlist. I can do whatever I want, and I want to end with a beautiful George Harrison cover of a great Bob Dylan song. So sue me.

Playlist #279

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Happy Monday, folks, or as happy as a world can be without Dolly Parton in it. It was a rough weekend in the Branco-Cottrell household, and this next weekend is looking to be even rougher. If you have a second, send a little prayer our way and be thinking of us, especially our dear old lady cat Cici.

  1. Dolly Parton, “Shine”: Dolly gets a lot of praise for her work as a songwriter, and rightly so. But she was also a great interpreter, taking other people’s songs and making them feel like her own. She does that with this classic Collective Soul number, turning it into a bluegrass stomper that blows the roof off in the last couple of minutes.
  2. Alabama Shakes, “Another Life”: This R&B number is a cross between a torch song and a barnburner, and I am here for it. And that one-note guitar solo? Channeling Neil Young in the best way possible.
  3. Camera Obscura, “Tears For Affairs”: Yes, it’s twee and Scottish and more than a little kitschy. But I unironically love this song and its little organ riff.
  4. The Rolling Stones, “Not Fade Away”: The Stones were great at picking excellent covers. This one still rocks, all these years later.
  5. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, “Room At The Top”: I know Echo isn’t everyone’s first pick for their favorite Tom Petty album; it’s not the first one I reach for when I’m in the mood to hear him, either. But damn if it doesn’t just tweak something in my brain the right way.
  6. Mike Doughty, “Grey Ghost”: I’ve listened to a lot of Mike Doughty (both with and without the rest of Soul Coughing), and this remains one of my absolute favorites of his. Just the rhythm and tension in this song…just perfect.
  7. George Harrison, “Wreck Of The Hesperus”: I love all the wordplay in this song. Cheeky George is my favorite George.
  8. Rufus Wainwright, “Going To A Town”: Watching all the nonsense the current administration gets up to on a weekly basis, this song hits especially hard. “I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down.” Yeah, I feel that.
  9. Mon Rovia, “Heavy Foot”: It’s a protest song done up in such pretty, simple instrumentation that you don’t even notice the lyrical content until much later.
  10. Jason Isbell, “Cover Me Up”: Still one of the most beautiful songs Isbell has written, and that is saying something.

Playlist #268

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Happy Monday, folks! The end of the school year is finally nigh; Wednesday is the last day of classes here in Northern Virginia, and it couldn’t have come any sooner. Of course, summer job starts next week, but it should be fun and fulfilling. Anyway, here’s a list of songs to get us through this partial week of classes and on into the sunny summer days.

  1. The Beach Boys, “All Summer Long”: Is there any band more connected with summer than the Beach Boys? I don’t think so. Every one of their songs just cries out “summer!” to me. And this is a pretty darn good summer song to me.
  2. Michigander, “Better”: I always like how full of hope this guy’s songs are. He fully acknowledges that life is often difficult at best and godawful at worst, but things can improve. Things can get better. And I think we all need to hear that sometimes.
  3. Marshall Tucker Band, “Fire On The Mountain”: There’s something about songs like this – deep-fried southern country rock with a hint of gothic undertones – that just tickles a particular need I have.
  4. Death Cab For Cutie, “The Flavor of Metal”: If you told me that I’d be listening to (and enjoying!) a new Death Cab For Cutie album in the Year of Our Lord 2026, I’d think you were smokin’ crack. But here we are.
  5. Harlem Shakes, “Strictly Game”: This is an upbeat, tap your toes and scream along to the chorus sort of song, perfect for that Monday morning pick-me-up.
  6. The Pretenders, “Middle Of The Road”: Chrissy Hinde remains one of the best rock vocalists in the biz. I will not be taking questions on this at this time.
  7. George Harrison, “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long”: I feel like Wednesday afternoon may never arrive. George Harrison gets it.
  8. Lucero, “On My Way Downtown”: I don’t know that, in my entire life, I have ever really made my way downtown for much of any reason. I tend to avoid the downtown areas of most cities unless it can’t be avoided. I certainly don’t go looking for bars downtown.
  9. Pearl Jam, “World Wide Suicide”: It’s just a sonic slap to the face, just the thing to wake you up and get you fired up on a Monday morning.
  10. The Ventures, “Pipeline”: Who doesn’t love instrumental surfer music? I’ll always dig the amount of reverb they’re able to plaster over everything; I aspire to that level of drenched reverby goodness.

Playlist #245

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Good morning and happy first Monday of the new year. Yes, the government took some extrajudicial actions down in Venezuela over the weekend, and we’re all scrambling figuring out how to deal with that, but in the meantime I’ve got some songs for you.

  1. The Cranberries, “Salvation”: A blistering blast of punky energy and the occasional horn? Yes, please.
  2. Lyle Lovett, “Lungs”: An old Townes Van Zandt song that, according to Lovett, Van Zandt said ought to be “shouted rather than sung.” Lovett sings it here anyway. It’s good, as Van Zandt songs tend to be.
  3. Rufus Wainwright, “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”: There’s just a…sadness to this song that I’ve always felt an affinity for. Maybe it’s the line, “You told me again you preferred handsome men/But for me you would make an exception.”
  4. George Harrison, “Marwa Blues”: Just a beautiful instrumental number off Brainwashed with some absolutely perfect slide guitar from George.
  5. Tom Waits, “(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night”: I think of this one as the flipside to a Bruce Springsteen song from about the same era: there’s a yearning there, like in Bruce songs, but a bitter sadness as well, not just a sense that there is no escape from this life but that even trying to escape from this life isn’t worth the effort.
  6. Better Than Ezra, “Desperately Wanting”: Drugs are bad, m’kay?
  7. Counting Crows, “Up All Night (Frankie Miller Goes to Hollywood)”: A lot of the songs on this particular list deal with longing and loss, I think. Did I do that on purpose? Man, who even knows anymore.
  8. Billy Bragg & Wilco, “When The Roses Bloom Again”: Going off to war always sucks. Always. And there are always unintended consequences.
  9. Brian Fallon, “Forget Me Not”: Brian Fallon remains one of my favorite songwriters of the past twenty or so years. There’s some Bruce in there, some doo-wop, and a lot of joy at just making music. And I will always dig that.
  10. Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”: Again, drugs are bad. The “white horse in her hip pocket” is a less-than-subtle reference to heroin, after all.

Playlist #241

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Happy Monday, folks! I’ve returned from sunny, warm Florida to a much chillier Northern Virginia. But it was a good trip! We relaxed and had a lot of fun, I got to see a friend from college whom I had not seen in over 20 years, and I slept quite a bit. And the Wife’s presentation went over well! Here’s some songs.

  1. MGMT, “Kids”: Yeah, it’s the only song I or probably any of you have ever heard from this band, but it’s a pretty good song. The Wife likes it, at any rate.
  2. Madison Cunningham, “Hospital”: So the album this song is off of won a Grammy for Best Folk Album? But this is very much not folk? Am I missing something? I think I must be missing something.
  3. Eve, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”: One of our Uber drivers in Florida was bumpin’ a throwback R&B radio station, and this was one of the songs that came up.
  4. George Harrison, “You”: In case your morning needed a little…extra texture (see, this is funny, since the name of the album this song came off of was Extra Texture) (explaining the joke always makes it funnier) (over-explaining the joke makes it even funnier).
  5. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Insider”: This song just about made me cry yesterday afternoon. Admittedly, I’d had a weird dream featuring my grandmother and hadn’t taken my medication yet, but the fact holds.
  6. The Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood”: A plinky little Casio cover of this song played over the plane speakers as we were boarding our flight home. The Wife and I looked at each other and immediately felt a million years old. The songs of our youth have become muzak.
  7. The National, “Rylan”: I still just absolutely love the drums for this song. As with most songs by the National, the drums are definitely the best part.
  8. Counting Crows, “Hard Candy”: The twelve-string jangle of this song heals something in my soul every time I hear it.
  9. Jet, “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”: Stomping, rollicking fun with a sleazy guitar riff. Good way to kick off your week.
  10. Traveling Wilburys, “Heading for the Light”: The second Traveling Wilburys song I learned to play (the first was “Handle With Care,” naturally) and a whole lot of fun. I should play that one again.

Playlist #237: Wrecks

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Happy Monday, folks. We’ve got a short week this week, what with Veterans Day happening tomorrow, but we’ve also got a historically-based playlist for you today. Starting with:

  1. Gordon Lightfoot, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”: Fifty years ago today, the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior, taking twenty-nine men with it. Lightfoot apparently wrote and recorded the song just a month later, and it was released in August of 1976, giving him the biggest hit of his career.
  2. Tom Petty, “You Wreck Me”: Is there a better Tom Petty album than Wildflowers? If so, I haven’t heard it (and neither, I’d assume, has anyone else, ’cause this is clearly his best album). That chorus is so good to sing along to.
  3. Pearl Jam, “Wreckage”: Pearl Jam’s latest studio album included this gem, an acoustic-based song that stands as one of the best they’ve written in the past fifteen, twenty years.
  4. Bruce Springsteen, “Wrecking Ball”: It’s a song about Giants Stadium in New Jersey. They were about to tear it down, and the Boss had to write a song in ode to it. It’s one of his better latter-day songs.
  5. George Harrison, “Wreck of the Hesperus”: Based on a Wordsworth poem about a shipwreck? Or a Procol Harum song of the same name? I dunno. It’s mostly George Harrison lamenting getting older, but still being able to rock out. It’s chock-full o’ puns, which is one of my favorite forms of song lyrics.
  6. Loose Fur, “Wreckroom”: Look, Loose Fur is weird. Just…really weird. But also nifty. Mostly weird.
  7. They Might Be Giants, “Wreck My Car”: Please do not wreck someone else’s car, even if they ask you to. That’s probably insurance fraud, and you don’t wanna be involved in that.
  8. Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs, “Wreckless Abandon”: Mike Campbell’s solo work is more workmanlike than anything he did with the Heartbreakers, but c’mon, not everyone is a songwriting dynamo like Tom Petty was.
  9. Emmylou Harris, “Wrecking Ball”: A different “Wrecking Ball” than the Bruce Springsteen one. It’s a beautiful song, though.
  10. Wreckless Eric, “Whole Wide World”: Featured to great effect in the movie Stranger than Fiction, it’s one of those three-chord garage rock songs that you can learn in two minutes and play all by yourself forever. We recommend turning the amplifier way up for this one.

Playlist #234

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Happy Tuesday, folks. Yesterday was Diwali, a Hindu holiday, and one that FCPS takes off now. So naturally, I spent the day taking various individuals to the doctor – the cat, my wife – and doing laundry. So much laundry. Where did we even get all these clothes? Anyway, here’s some songs to get you through the week.

  1. The Dead South, “In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company”: Whistling and stand-up bass and a title that’s entirely too long? Yup, hits a lot of points on the checklist.
  2. The Bridge City Sinners, “St. James’ Infirmary”: I was unaware I needed to hear a version of “St. James’ Infirmary” with the word “fuck” in it. And now I know.
  3. Glass Animals, “Heat Waves”: A random student walked by while I was playing the guitar outside last Friday and asked me if I knew how to play this song. I did not, so I looked it up. Seems easy enough to play, if a bit of a challenge for me to sing.
  4. Holly Golightly, “My Get Back”: How had I never listened to Holly Golightly until now? This is some good stuff. Blues-inflected, rough around the edges in just the right way. I dig it.
  5. Jakob Dylan, “Lend A Hand”: Spent most of yesterday listening to Dylan’s Women + Country on repeat for whatever reason, and this song still grabs me by the lapels and shakes me.
  6. Radiohead, “There, There (Live)”: The live Hail to the Thief versions are all great, especially this one, but I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t include “Drunken Punch Up At A Wedding.” Sad.
  7. George Harrison, “Stuck Inside A Cloud”: It still amazes me that Harrison was able to craft such beautiful, touching music while in the grips of cancer, dying from it. We need more folks like him.
  8. The Pixies, “Where Is My Head?”: So supposedly a Taylor Swift song sounds a lot like this song? And that’s a . . . bad thing? If she wants to become a Pixies cover act, I’d probably be okay with that.
  9. The Cranberries, “Salvation”: It’s a song where they basically chant “Salvation” in the chorus over and over again. Of course I love it.
  10. Elliott Smith, “Bottle Up And Explode!”: One of his best off XO, which is also his best album in my humble (and correct) opinion.

Playlist #197

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Happy Monday, folks! We finally made it through that nigh-unending January, sanity (mostly) intact. Here’s some songs to get us through the week.

  1. David Gray, “As I’m Leaving”: David Gray’s earlier stuff is much more striped down and folky. I kinda dig a lot of it, especially this piano ballad off the Lost Songs collection.
  2. You+Me, “From a Closet in Norway”: Maybe I’m just a sucker for acoustic-based folk-pop?
  3. Van Morrison, “Madame Joy”: This song is just so full of joy, it’s hard not to love. Van could rave it up sometimes.
  4. Wilco, “You Are My Face”: I love the breakdown in this song, where it totally changes tone and rhythm and becomes a completely different song for a couple of minutes. Great.
  5. Jackson Browne, “Downhill From Everywhere”: An actual environmental protest song, this time about the sea and how we’re all connected to it.
  6. Beck, “Lost Cause”: I know Sea Change is Beck’s big breakup album/Bob Dylan reference, and it’s good, and it sounds like he’s just being backed by the Flaming Lips the whole time (to the point that he took them out on tour as his opener and his backing band for the subsequent tour), but it does occasionally make me miss the whimsical, clearly-stoned-out-of-his-gourd Beck.
  7. Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”: Back on my folky acoustic bullshit, but it’s a damn good story song.
  8. George Harrison, “Not Guilty”: Solo George is the best George.
  9. The Gaslight Anthem, “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts”: Early Gaslight Anthem, with the band showing they have a softer, more sensitive side.
  10. Aimee Mann, “Stranger Into Starman”: A subdued ender for this particular playlist, but a perpetual favorite. Aimee Mann somehow became one of my favorite artists over the past few years, and I’m not sad about that at all.

Playlist #186

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Happy Monday, folks. Like many other individuals, I have decided to migrate from Twitter (still not gonna call it X, as that is stupid), that Nazi-amplifying hellsite, and over to Blue Sky! I have been posting regularly so far; we’ll see if that keeps up.

  1. Jessye DeSilva, “Let It Burn”: I think we can all agree that white supremacy is a huge issue in the United States today and that maybe, just maybe, burning it all down wouldn’t be a bad idea. And if that’s not a sentiment you can agree with, what the fuck are you doing here? Go away.
  2. David Gray, “After the Harvest”: It’s David Gray doing David Gray things, with delicate acoustic guitars picked over vaguely electronic beats. It ticks a few boxes in my head that give me that good dopamine hit, so this isn’t a complaint.
  3. Phil Collins, “I Don’t Care Anymore”: An effort to repeat the success of “In the Air Tonight”? I dunno, maybe. It has that same sort of minimalist drum/keyboard approach, the same dark theme, but more forceful singing (despite being about having no fucks left to give).
  4. Bon Iver, “S P E Y S I D E”: It’s weird hearing Bon Iver being almost…straightforward with a song after years of getting more and more cryptic and byzantine with his approach to lyrics specifically and music in general. I kinda dig it.
  5. George Harrison, “Not Guilty”: That little repeated guitar riff just eats its way into my head and won’t leave. I love it.
  6. The Velvet Underground, “Who Loves the Sun”: Hearing such bright, bouncy pop from the Velvet Underground always hits me weird. Like, these lyrics and those “Bop-ba-ba-ba”s shouldn’t be coming out of Lou Reed’s mouth.
  7. Patsy Cline, “I Fall to Pieces”: This woman had such a voice. And that shouldn’t be telling any of you anything you don’t already know.
  8. Lucero, “On My Way Downtown”: A song of drinking and regret and the promise of a better day.
  9. Mike Doughty, “Fort Hood”: Best use of “Let the Sunshine In” ever. Even better than the original “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” Fight me.
  10. The Mountain Goats, “No Children”: My wife’s favorite Mountain Goats song. Should I be worried?

The George Harrison Double Playlist

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Happy Monday, folks! As you read this, I am probably standing in line to ride a rollercoaster at Walt Disney World down in Florida. This week, I thought I’d make up for not doing a playlist last week and take care of this week’s playlist by offering a double playlist of my top twenty George Harrison songs!

Honorable Mentions: There are too many George Harrison songs (or Harrisongs, as I like to think of ’em) on a couple of his albums to list every single great tune. I mean, I could’ve easily just done a top ten of my favorite songs off of All Things Must Pass. That being said, here are some of the songs that don’t make the playlist proper, but are still damn good: “My Sweet Lord,” “Beware of Darkness,” “Apple Scruffs,” “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)”, “Crackerbox Palace” (it’s a weird one, trust me), “Dark Horse,” “The Devil’s Radio,” “I Got My Mind Set On You.” Also, please note there are no songs here from Wonderwall Music, because I’m not that much of a sadist. Okay, everyone good? Right, let’s go.

  1. “Isn’t It a Pity (Version 1)”: It’s the “na na”s in the background in the song’s coda that really get to me, ’cause is George just messing with McCartney and “Hey Jude” for shits and giggles? I wouldn’t put it past him. But such a beautiful song.
  2. “If Not For You”: Hey, it’s a Bob Dylan song! If you had that on your bingo card, you can go ahead and mark that square.
  3. “Art of Dying”: So I recently downloaded the super deluxe version of the 50th Anniversary Remaster of All Things Must Pass (it has 70 tracks. Seventy! I can listen to it for like a week straight without repeating any songs), and this particular remaster (more so than the one from twenty-some years back) really clears up the sound quality on the album and makes things a lot clearer. I dig it. This song just rips.
  4. “All Things Must Pass”: If there is a single song that sums up George Harrison as an individual and as a songwriter, I would put in a word for this one. It’s stately, but also down to earth, treats with eastern philosophy while not being too preachy, and has that sense of bittersweet honesty that I always sorta associate with George. It’s a great song.
  5. “Bangala Desh”: A great song for a great cause, and let’s not dock points for the fact that it inspired the whole charity single, “We Are the World” nonsense in the 80s, okay?
  6. “You”: It’s a simple song, almost lazy in its lyrics. George had that weakness sometimes. His songs are either clever satire, deep metaphysical meditations, or slapped together at the absolute last second because he needed a peppy single on the next record.
  7. “Any Road”: Brainwashed is my third-favorite George album (after All Things Must Pass and Cloud 9, naturally), and it’s got some of his best-written songs on it. This one is simple in its formation and endless clever in execution.
  8. “Stuck Inside a Cloud”: George, towards the end, had it pretty damn rough. Cancer is not a thing I would wish on my worst enemy (well, maybe on my worst enemy). He knew he was dying. And he still managed to write and record such a beautiful song.
  9. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”: This song is just such a goof. George loved the ukulele, and it’s front and center on this track.
  10. “Cloud 9”: From the comeback album(TM) in the late ’80s, when everything Jeff Lynne produced turned to solid gold (seriously, he did Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, the Heartbreakers’ Into the Great Wide Open, this one, and Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl, all in the space of like three or four years. And helped produce the first Traveling Wilburys record. Dude was on fire). It’s a slow burn, slide guitar seduction that would get me to drop my pants if someone tried using it on me.
  11. “When We Was Fab”: Ah, youth. The video for this particular song is great and just chock-full of Beatles Easter Eggs.
  12. “Wreck of the Hesperus”: George was funny as hell. If he wasn’t picking apart the foibles of modern society in songs like “P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)” or “Sue Me, Sue You Blues” or “Try Some Buy Some” (see further down this list for those last two), he was cracking jokes. The line “But I can still rock as good as Gibraltar” will never not be funny to me.
  13. “Not Guilty”: That little guitar riff he does in this song? Love it.
  14. “Cheer Down”: Speaking of cracking jokes, the title of this particular song remains funny to me. It’s a great pun, and the lyrics themselves are witty. This song was featured on the Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack!
  15. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)”: Was George a little hippie-dippie? Oh, yeah. But he honestly meant it when he said stuff like this, I think.
  16. “Sue Me, Sue You Blues”: He also meant stuff like this. The modern world was too capitalistic and crass for George. We didn’t deserve him.
  17. “Don’t Make Me Wait Too Long”: George knows how to write a damn good love song (see “Something” for that), and this one ain’t half bad.
  18. “Living in the Material World”: Of all of the Beatles, George was the one most fascinated with eastern philosophy and metaphysics, as we can see in this song. He also like racecar driving. Folks contain multitudes, y’know?
  19. “Try Some Buy Some”: Consumerism is bad!
  20. “All Those Years Ago”: The song George wrote about John Lennon after Lennon was shot. It features the other two Beatles on it as well, so that’s cool.