Thursday, April 17, 2008

Favorite Music Quotes

Where do you go for great music?  With the rise of the new corporate model for music - the 360 deal - where the ugly record company behemoth gets a piece of everything you ever do and American Idol is the supposed standard of finding new talent, where is the great music?  Sheesh, three of the people still there on American Idol are industry plants or failed performers who already sold their souls to the corporate machine. 

I wanted to remind myself of why a day without real music is like a day without sunshine.  How a good song can remind you that there is something inspiring in music.  Something that is transcendent and picks you up and turns you around.

I went to Emusic and started finding some great music off the beaten track and I come across a gem of a record by Justin Townes Earle.  Turns out he's Steve's kid and he's good.  Really good.  Nebraska era Springsteen good.  His first CD, The Good Life, is one of the best records I have heard in a while.

And the lyrics.  Man, the lyrics are evocative, powerful and close to the bone.  That led me to wondering outside of the routine of the supposed classics that are shoved at us, where are the great lyrics in popular music? 

Three to get us started:

Justin T. Earle  - "So I think I can be lonesome far away in another town"

Counting Crows - "I want to be the last thing that you hear when you're falling asleep"

The Connells - "You can't have the world as it once was with Cowboys and Santa Claus"

Anyone else have some great lyrics that speak deeply to you?

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