she & him

Playlist #243: Holiday Playlist

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Happy Monday, folks! It’s the week of Christmas, so here’s a playlist full of some of my favorite Christmas songs.

  1. Darlene Love, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”: Just the absolute best Christmas song ever. You can keep your Wham! and your Mariah Carey, just leave me Darlene Love.
  2. She & Him, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”: This song seems like it was tailor-made for this band. Zoey Deschanel just has a lovely voice made for this kind of song.
  3. The Eagles, “Please Come Home For Christmas”: The guitar work in this song always gets to me. It’s very well-done and Don Henley sounds particularly impassioned.
  4. The Royal Guardsmen, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”: Is it technically a Christmas song? Not really. Is Christmas the only time I listen to it because it was on a tape of Christmas songs we listened to constantly when I was a kid? Yes.
  5. Elvis Presley, “Blue Christmas”: I’m not much of an Elvis fan, but I really dig this song. It’s just fun.
  6. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Christmas All Over Again”: Speaking of fun Christmas songs, of course Tom Petty turns in one for the books. It’s just a good time from start to finish.
  7. Neko Case, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”: “Charlie, I’m pregnant,” the song begins, and just gets worse and sadder from there. Neko doesn’t even try to sing it like Tom Waits, instead making it all her own and turning this into one of the absolute saddest Christmas songs I’ve ever heard.
  8. My Morning Jacket, “X-Mas Curtain”: Just what, exactly, is a Christmas Curtain? I imagine something involving snowmen and giant snowflakes and maybe a Santa Claus, but I honestly don’t know, and I’m not sure this song makes it any clearer.
  9. Andrew Bird, “So Much Wine, Merry Christmas”: I love playing this one on guitar, and have even halfway managed to play the solo for it. It’s lovely.
  10. The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York”: It’s a dreary picture of a dreary town in a dreary decade, but it feels hopeful despite all that. Kinda reminds me in a small way of the Mountain Goats’ “This Year,” with its defiant tone and resistance to the turning of the world.

Playlist #238

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Happy Monday, folks! The air is becoming crisper, it’s a little colder in the morning, and all the leaves have fallen off the trees and are now piled up everywhere. It’s actually feeling like fall! I’m here for it.

  1. Mavis Staples, “Anthem”: Mavis Staples’s latest album includes three straight-up amazing covers at the end, including this one. It takes some guts to cover Leonard Cohen, and to choose a Cohen cover that isn’t “Hallelujah.” Her vocals have the gravity to pull it off.
  2. Lord Huron, “Meet Me In The Woods”: Obsessed with this album still, and especially with this song. I probably listen to it at least three or four times a week.
  3. Dan Auerbach, “Trouble Weighs A Ton”: There’s something about a song that’s just a voice and an acoustic guitar that speaks to something primal in me.
  4. Fiona Apple, “Fast As You Can”: This woman and her music are criminally underrated (see what I did there? Because her best-known song is still probably “Criminal”).
  5. The Police, “Masoko Tanga”: A lyric-less song off their debut that features Sting hootin’ and hollerin’ and carryin’ on with yelps and mumbles and all sorts of vocalizations.
  6. Mark Knopfler, “Speedway At Nazareth”: Just the way this song builds and builds to its climactic coda, it’s just…*chef’s kiss*
  7. Fastball, “You’re An Ocean”: Less well-known than their first couple of hits, but still bouncy and fun and a good listen.
  8. The Like, “I Can See It In Your Eyes”: They do the girl group style up right for the 2000s.
  9. She & Him, “I Should Have Known Better”: If I ever do a Beatles cover, I hope I do it half as well as they did.
  10. Ben Harper & The Blind Boys Of Alabama, “Satisfied Mind”: The Blind Boy’s actual hoots in the verses just send me every time. Love it.

Playlist #86 – Merry Christmas!

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Happy Monday before Christmas, everyone. I have a brand-new playlist for your enjoyment.

  1. Shirley Temple, “I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ For Christmas”: This song tells me that Shirley Temple knows that old adage: snitches get stitches. Don’t mess with Shirley T.
  2. Gayla Peevey, “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas”: And only a hippopotamus will do, you know.
  3. Frank Sinatra, “Mistletoe And Holly”: It’s a classic for a reason.
  4. Darlene Love, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”: The best Christmas song ever recorded. I will be taking no questions at this time.
  5. She & Him, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree”: I have a soft spot for Zoey Deschanel and M. Ward’s warm ‘n’ fuzzy pop.
  6. Jeremy Messersmith, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”: Apparently about a nuclear apocalypse? Who knew?
  7. Jackson Browne, “The Rebel Jesus”: It’s always interesting to hear a non-Christian’s point of view on Christianity, even if what he points out is way less comfortable and far more accurate than you’d care to admit.
  8. Run-DMC, “Christmas In Hollis”: Tell Argyle to bring the car around, we’re goin’ clubbin’.
  9. Elton John, “Step Into Christmas”: Figured out how to play this one on the guitar just last week. Loads of fun.
  10. The Both, “Nothing Left To Do (Let’s Make This Christmas Blue)”: I’m a sucker for Aimee Mann. And Ted Leo. Together, they can do no wrong, as far as I’m concerned.

Playlist #56

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Another school year is winding towards a close. Here in Northern Virginia, seniors are taking their final exams this week, and they graduate next week. Week after that, school’s over for everyone else. It’s been a…challenging year, to say the least. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

Support me on Patreon! I’m about to release the song for May, and it’s a good one, if I do say so myself.

  1. Maria McKee, “Never Be You”: This song was written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, and man, does it sound like it. Classic late ’70s/early ’80s Heartbreakers tone and style, through and through. I’d never heard this song before this weekend, but it’s good.
  2. The Black Keys, “Burn The Damn Thing Down”: Bluesy? Or Bloozy? It’s good, either way.
  3. Mike Doughty, “Fort Hood”: It takes some chutzpah to totally lift the coda from “Age of Aquarius” and use it as your chorus, but Mr. M. Doughty pulls it off.
  4. The National, “The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness”: They don’t usually do guitar solos, but they do one here, and it makes you wish they did them more often.
  5. Wilco, “The Thanks I Get”: Still the best Rod Stewart song Rod’s never sang.
  6. She & Him, “This Is Not A Test”: Fun and poppy. Whenever I need a pick-me-up, I still go back to this album. It’s just fun.
  7. Franz Ferdinand, “Do You Want To”: I’ll never understand how these guys aren’t bigger than they are. They do great, straight-ahead rock numbers with lots of arch humor and and nudging asides.
  8. Bruce Springsteen, “Radio Nowhere”: Even on later Boss albums, you can still usually find a good track or two. This one’s pretty solid. Avoid the remake of “Ghost of Tom Joad” he did with Tom Morello on 2013’s High Hopes. Those two are two great tastes that don’t taste great together.
  9. The Jayhawks, “I’d Run Away”: Love me some two-part harmony.
  10. Mark Knopfler, “Speedway at Nazareth”: I just love how this song builds. Not just in terms of the music – though the build to that coda is fantastic – but lyrically as well. Just a master class in how to write a great song.