All Entries in the "lyrically speaking" Category
Lyrically Speaking: War
There was a time in the mid-’80s when I lived and breathed for Bob Marley tunes. I was in college when the reggae great died in 1981, and, soon after, his tunes were all I played on my car cassette player. I went through phases of which Marley album was my favorite: “Catch a [...]
Lyrically Speaking: Round Here
It’s not often that I feature a hit song in a Lyrically Speaking entry. It’s not that I have anything against hits, it’s just that usually even an artist with a hit has better songs than the one that gets the most airplay on the radio. And that’s probably the case here with the [...]
Lyrically Speaking: Too Long at the Fair
I found Bonnie Raitt’s “Give It Up” among a bunch of albums that my Mom had in her condo, shortly after she and my Dad divorced when I was about 16. The albums were significant because when they “amicably” split, one of the things they involved the kids in was the Big Record Split-Up, you [...]
>Lyrically Speaking: For the Turnstiles
> I’m not sure how I ended up with the album “Decade.” I think I bought it from a used record store on one of the many excursions into Cambridge as a teen. My friends and I, or even sometimes me on my own, would drive into Harvard Square and spend hours walking the streets [...]
>Lyrically Speaking: Charlie Darwin
> With a new album, “Smart Flesh,” ready to hit the streets on Feb. 22, I figured it would be nice to give some kudos to Low Anthem’s surely most popular song from its 2009 album, “Oh My God Charlie Darwin.” It’s a song that despite how many times you hear it, it still sends [...]
>Lyrically Speaking: April the 14th, Part 1
> Pity us poor Gillian Welch fans! We keep tapping our toes, checking our watches, paging through our calendars waiting for the next album to drop. I mean, she’s got plenty of time to help her partner David Rawlings put out a nifty album, fly ‘cross country to Portland to sing back-up on nearly every [...]
>Lyrically Speaking: For No One
> It almost feels like cheating to pick a Beatles song for this feature. I mean, just because everyone knows every note, every lyric by heart — does that mean I shouldn’t be able to share my thoughts? I say no. Yes, I could have pretty much picked any song from their epic discography, but [...]
>Lyrically Speaking: Drunken Angel
> Blaze Foley Some songs just grab you the moment you hear them. That’s how I came to “Drunken Angel,” one of Lucinda Williams’ best songs. The tune, off her famously popular 1998 album “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” is a tribute to Texas folk-blues singer Blaze Foley. I had never heard of [...]
>Lyrically Speaking: Mission in the Rain
> ”Mission in the Rain” is my favorite Jerry-penned Grateful Dead song… That’s how I was going to start this Lyrically Speaking entry. But I could just hear in my head Deadheads everywhere grumbling and huffing and puffing, and decided just to get the disclaimer* out of the way, right up top, to help ease their [...]
>Lyrically Speaking: 2002
> A song’s lyrics don’t have to be overly poetic to be great. In fact, for me a story song, in which we can empathize with someone’s situation or one that places us in a situation past or present, can be just as moving as one that delves deeply into artistic verbiage or clever wordplay. [...]
