Archive for May, 2011
Happy Birthday, Rosanne Cash!
Rosanne Cash was born to inspire. Whether it’s through the songs she’s written, books, essays and stories she’s penned, or her tireless work for causes close to her heart, her artistry has been a beacon for others to do better, create more thoughtfully, write more truthfully and give more wholly. Rosanne’s relationship with words is […]
Playing For Change: Songs Around the World, Part 2
Musicians from around the world blend their styles to inspire the world through songs on this CD/DVD collection.
Erykah Badu
Artists have never gotten a fair deal, because the industry was not designed for the artist to be rich. It was designed for us to entertain, and for the labels to prosper, because they had to foot the bill for this “lavish life” that we live. Which is, in all honesty, as much of a […]
Sarah Jarosz: Follow Me Down
Bluegrass, roots, Americana, folk … singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz covers all the bases on her gorgeous new release.
Happy Birthday, Stevie Wonder!
Ten seconds into the 1971 hit “If You Really Love Me,” Stevie Wonder lets out a little cry, roughly translated as “Aaa-ee-yeh!” It lasts about half a second, but in this musical pixel, you can glimpse the big picture of who Stevie is. The “Aaa-ee-yeh!” is pure joy. It’s unrestrained and soulful. It’s optimistic, especially […]
Peter Gabriel
If you have something that’s burning to come out of you, it’ll come out whether you’re on a bus or in a cathedral. But I always say that boredom and fatigue are the two great unrecognized creative challenges—and if the environment’s good, you have a little longer to play before boredom and fatigue show their […]
Indigo Girls
Amy Ray: I tend to write from a lot of different places, because I don’t like to write more than a few songs about one thing. I get bored easily, so I move around. But I tend to have lifelong things that I touch on. For one record, I kind of—I don’t know—have a short […]
“Happy Birthday to You”
It is the world’s most well-known and popular song. It has been sung hundreds of millions of times each year for over three-quarters of a century. It has been heard in outer space, at baseball stadiums, in movies and in domiciles from the White House to the most remote backwoods shack in Mississippi. It has […]
Rick Springfield
I always knew the music was good, I always believed in it and I still do. I think you’re right—I started resenting the fact that a lot of the attention was on the photos. The press started to grab that and go, “Oh, it’s because he’s cute, not because he writes good songs.” A lot […]
Matt Wertz: Weights & Wings
Soulful singer-songwriter Matt Wertz’s fourth album is a relationship-themed scrapbook of pop-rock gems.