Wednesdays are the new Mondays, baby!

1. Redbone, “Wevoka”: Monday was Indigenous People’s Day, after all, so what better way to kick off our playlist for this week than a song from the Native American rock band Redbone?
2. Stevie Nicks, “The Lighthouse”: If you told me that, in her late 70s, Stevie Nicks would release a maximalist pop song supporting women’s rights just weeks before the 2024 presidential election, I’d have said that…sounds about right, actually.
3. Juan Luis Guerra, “Ojala Que Lluave Cafe”: A Dominican Republic singer-songwriter writes about only being able to move home if it starts raining rice and coffee. It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking song that includes a children’s choir.
4. Teddy Swims, “Lose Control”: This man’s got some pipes. There’s something about the big white guy with face tattoos who can really belt that I kinda dig.
5. Tom Petty, “Won’t Back Down”: I’ve been immersing myself in Tom Petty again lately. This song will still remain long after America is a distant dream in some ancient textbook.
6. Adele, “Rolling in the Deep”: Is it a four-chord pop song? Yes. Does Adele just whip ass at singing the hell out of it anyway? Oh my, yes.
7. Soundgarden, “Black Hole Sun”: My favorite part of this song is the guy who does the backing vocals singing, “Black hole sun, black hole sun!” in the background towards the end of the song. I don’t know why, but the guy’s tone just cracks me up every single time.
8. Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City”: Nebraska remains my undisputed favorite Springsteen album. Sure, it’s very spare and stark, but I kinda like that about it, and the way he plays the guitar on some of them – like “Atlantic City,” for instance – fills in the corners of the song in a way that make a full band treatment absolutely unnecessary.
9. Paul McCartney, “My Brave Face”: No idea why McCartney wrote a song about trying to get back on the horse after a divorce while he was still married to and deeply in love with Linda, but it’s a decent one.
10. The Wallflowers, “Sleepwalker”: Did they ever write a better song than this? I don’t think they did.