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Tag Archives: music

Live in ’25

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December 31, 2025
America, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Rock
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“I have a show tonight for the band that’s probably gonna have my album of the year, but instead of prepping more for that, I spent last night watching Mario Balotelli highlights and listening to ‘Supersonic’ on repeat, then made myself tea for the first time this season because it’s finally not 900 degrees outside. Think it’s fair to say I’m catching up to the rest of you lot in excitement now.” – RKID, the oldest, not older – 27/8/2025

Having plied his trade playing up front in the aughts for Manchester City FC and Liverpool, among many other places, Balotelli provided a comfortable parallel: as the guy who created the unlikeliest Premier League-winning goal in history with what is literally his only league assist to date in five seasons, he has shocked the world, too.

One year to the date of the first official reunion announcement, the aforementioned premier brother texted the group of people who would go on to see a reunited Oasis[1] at MetLife Stadium over Labor Day Weekend, sixteen years after the tumultuous last tour and Paris break-up: Oasis Live ’25 was real. What do you believe in? Here’s one way I found out an answer I’d forgotten.

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Need A Little Time To Wake Up

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August 31, 2025
Sports
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For a few years, since at least the early pandemic but perhaps dating a little earlier, I’ve kept a note in my phone, the start of which you see above. It’s called “Things I will pay top dollar for,” with “top dollar” essentially being the amount I am willing to pay that will not bankrupt me. The list is fairly extensive, and you can’t see the rest of it.

As you may have guessed based on the timing and general tenor of the so far text-heavy image and preceding graf, tonight I get to cross the top item, the very reason for its creation, off of that list.

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Dry summer/then comes the fall

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August 10, 2023
America, Blues, Folk, Gambling, Jazz, Movies, Music, Politics, Pop, Pop Culture, Religion, Rock
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“You’re still there, huh? We’re gonna do one more song, and that’s it.” His golden, overdriven guitar tone[1] was perfect. He’d already bettered Dylan in some respects; why not trying out Marvin at something way after midnight?

There’s a thing about certain Canadians (two’s a company; three’s a crowd; more: that’s a trend), A few tend to write better songs about the United States than Americans can. Familiarity breeds contempt, or something like it, but from pastoral documentation, à la Neil Young[2] and Joni Mitchell, to the psychodramaticism of The Weeknd and poptimism of Carly Rae Jepsen, some friends from The North hold the mirror up to Americans better than we can do unto ourselves. 

You wanted a hit? Baby, maybe, he just did hits: “The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” fit the bill. Having backed The Hawk, Ronnie Hawkins, and then Bob Dylan, Jaime Royal Robertson, who died on Wednesday at 80, ran the gamut of roles in early rock bands. Later, he’d end up having to try to save his bandmates, and then himself. He knew how to get the best out of those around him, when the bells were ringing.

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Now It Catches The Gleam/Of The Morning’s First Beam

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August 18, 2019
America, Blues, Folk, Jazz, Music, Pop, R&B, Religion, Rock
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(Public domain, hopefully? Let us know if this is a problem)

After the fact, he would simply refer to the performance as “beautiful” in an attempt to deflect accusations of controversy in the face of a divided nation. A few months after that, around the change of the calendar, he would roll out his true protest, the finest electric guitar symphony ever conceived, in what would end up being the only showcase for his talents that were actually on his terms. He would be dead within the year, nobody the wiser.

But in this moment, at 9 am the morning after the damn thing was supposed to end on the saturated grounds that were never as good as they looked on film long after the fact to the millions upon millions who were nostalgic for something that never was, he was free. He hoped only for as much as that for everyone else. Fifty years ago today, at right around the time this post is publishing, Jimi Hendrix played the longest set of his career at Woodstock, a sloppy, convoluted mess which nevertheless gave us an interpretation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that has confounded and inspired ever since.

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All That Glitters Is Not Gold

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January 29, 2018
America, Hip-Hip, Music, Politics, R&B
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After I saw the 2018 Album of the Year Grammy nominees, I told myself that I wouldn’t be mad if any of the artists nominated won the highly coveted award. There were no glaring insults to the culture-at-large, à la Beck or Mumford & Sons. There was Bruno Mars, Lorde, Jay-Z, Childish Gambino and, of course, Kendrick Lamar. All of these artists released albums that seeped through popular culture (though you could argue that the extent of Lorde’s and Childish Gambino’s impacts was less pronounced than the other three nominees).

Despite having a lineup of albums that had their valid arguments and did not seem personally imported into the category by John Lennon impersonator and Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, the final win for Bruno Mars’ resounding coronation changed my earlier assertion that I would not fault the Grammys for awarding something like 24K Magic for Album of the Year. The more I began to reflect on Bruno’s win and what it meant, the more I began to question why we should even pay attention.

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Taking It To The Heart

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October 3, 2017
America, Folk, Music, Rock
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Via Stereogum

A funny thing about growing up with parents ceaselessly devoted to the music they like:  after a certain point, the idea of a “soundtrack” to growing up dissipates, and you’re left with a pastiche of sounds that, without warning, can trigger any number of nostalgic thoughts years, even decades, later. You didn’t ask for this, but it’s what you got. You live with it, and eventually, hopefully, you become grateful for it.

Along with a handful of other artists, I don’t remember the first time I ever heard Tom Petty because he was always just there. Not to make an assumption on your behalf, dear reader, but I’ve got a feeling that, unlike most of the rest of them for me[1], you likely don’t remember the first time you heard Petty either. He’s always been there, for all of us, which made it all the more devastating when word officially came down late Monday night that Petty had passed away at the age of 66.

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You’re Not Vain

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November 19, 2015
America, Music, Pop, Pop Culture, Rock
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In case you haven’t heard – or are willfully ignoring it, like the group of people who attempt to avoid discovering the victor of the Super Bowl every year – one of the great mysteries of pop music has finally come undone, albeit partially. In an interview with PEOPLE magazine, singer-songwriter and proto-Taylor Swift Carly Simon has revealed that the second verse, at the very least, of her seminal hit “You’re So Vain” is, as many suspected, about Warren Beatty. With a great sigh of relief, I’m certain, James Taylor can rock himself to sleep, and Mick Jagger has finally achieved some level of satisfaction, depending on the geography of his egotism in 2015.

What Simon also did in revealing Beatty as her muse, however, was take some of the intimacy out of listening to music. To be frank, I’d really rather she wouldn’t have done that. It isn’t so much that she’s ruined “You’re So Vain” – the classic rock stations in Charlotte, North Carolina, that seem to think Simon only ever released one song already achieved that in my youth – but she did manage to remind us that, as much as we want to feel closer to the musicians we love, they are eternally out of reach, mingling with people more famous than we in parties on yachts, dressed in white clothing after Labor Day like the bourgeois bottles on the top shelf that they are.

To be clear, I’m only half-serious, but that half is deadly serious.

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On Top of the Hill: Bob Dylan’s Electric Dream

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July 25, 2015
America, Folk, Music, Rock
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Imagine being the world’s biggest pop star at 24, an icon of one musical genre and the reluctant voice of a stifled, conflicted generation. At just the time your organic rise became meteoric, you re-discovered an old passion for electrified rock and roll, the kind you used to play rambunctiously before leaving it behind in Minnesota.

To people of a certain age or inclination, July 25, 1965, is a date of considerable magnitude. On that date, in Newport, Rhode Island, the most influential songwriter of the twentieth century made perhaps the most important decision of his life, one which has left an indelible effect on pop music and American life.

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Songs for the Summer: Memorial Day Warm-Up

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May 21, 2015
Music
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Memorial Day Weekend is on the horizon¹, and that means we are officially entering Summer Jam Season™. It’s time to break out your sunglasses, sun tan lotion and tracks that someone else has deemed “Songs of the Summer.” Of course, no two songs define the season from person-to-person if we’re being honest here. No outlet can definitively tell you how to relax by the pool, take in the rolling waves of the beach or ride your bike through the piping hot city streets. Plus, the Summer Jam Season™ changes and morphs throughout time. Whatever is hot during Memorial Day Weekend is going to be well past its sell-by date once we hit the dog days of August.

We here at TwH are not in the business of declaring something as THE Song of the Summer – there are a ton of other places for that. We’re just here to guide you to some songs you might want to add to your Spotify, iTunes or that little upstart streaming app with a teal logo, for the summer. We’ll give you updates as the summer progresses.

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