3 Minutes, 49 Seconds

We hadn't been dating long when I learned of my future wife's love of Kenny Loggins. It was late 2006 or early 2007, and the term "Yacht Rock" was just emerging into the popular consciousness. I bought her the 1982 album High Adventure at Cheapo Records, and we danced along to "Heart to Heart" and "This is It." Soon we began revisiting songs from our early childhood: "Sailing," "Reminiscing," "How Long?," "Baby, Come Back," and "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)." About five years ago I began making a concerted effort to learn more about Yacht Rock (YR from here forward), and discovered the Yacht or Nyacht podcast and website, which was created by  the four guys who coined the term back in 2005 - J.D. Ryznar, Steve Huey, Hunter Stair, and David Lyons - in response to a growing misunderstanding over what constitutes YR and what doesn't. It seems that some people (even including seasoned music ...

Here's the cover art and tracklist for my annual compilation. Inspired by Stranger Things , I designed it to look like an '80s radio station promo compilation. You can listen to it on YouTube Music here . 1. Djo - "Lonesome Is a State of Mind" 2. The Honeydogs - "Kill Switch" 3. Elton John & Brandi Carlisle - "The River Man" 4. Kathleen Edwards - "Billionaire" 5. Pete Droge - "Fade Away Blue" 6. David Mead - "Confidence Man" 7. Rhett Miller - "A Little Song" 8. Mammoth - "All In Good Time" 9. Vicious Vicious - "Karmic Trouble" 10. Sloan - "Fortune Teller" 11. Ivy - "Heartbreak" 12. Jonas Brothers - "Tables" 13. Taylor Swift - "Opalite" 14. Jay Som (feat. Jim Adkins) - "Float" 15. Motion City Soundtrack - "Things Like This" 16. Post Animal - "Pie in the Sky"

  Sometimes an artist just needs 12  more  songs to summarize their career. Case in point... Collective Soul released a pretty decent best of compilation - 7even Year Itch: 1994-2001 - nearly a quarter of a century ago, but there's been nothing to summarize their output since then. Considering that output consists of seven albums and a couple of EPs, we've got our work cut out for us. (Since the band stopped having "hits" in 2009, most of these are just my personal preference, though I did give the singles first consideration). 1. "Better Now" (from Youth , 2004) "Better Now" is buzzy burst of optimism that has stood the test of time/\. 2. "There's a Way" (from Youth , 2004) Great riff, great chorus, great bridge, great song. 3. "What Can I Give You" (from Afterwords , 2007) Fascinating structure on this one: It starts out somewhat pedestrian, then goes into a soaring chorus followed by an even more melodic post-chorus, the...

I suppose I should have known the saga of REO Speedwagon couldn't end with a whimper. Before I get into the latest developments, here's a brief review of what's happened so far: In September 2024 came the announcement that the band was effectively breaking up at the end of the year. Apparently, frontman Kevin Cronin ruled that bassist Bruce Hall was no longer fit to continue touring following back surgery in summer 2024. Hall felt otherwise. Here we learned that REO had essentially become a three-way partnership between Cronin, Hall, and Doughty (who retired from touring in January 2023) following the departure of original members Alan Gratzer and Gary Richrath in 1988. Doughty sided with Hall, so Cronin was outvoted 2-1. No Bruce Hall, no REO Speedwagon. In December 2024 Cronin revealed he would continue performing REO Speedwagon songs with the two musicians who replaced Doughty and Hall, as well as Brian Hitt and Dave Amato (who replaced Gratzer and Richrath), with the on...

We started at the end, and now we finish at the beginning.  Billy Joel's first solo album has a reputation as a sort of curiousity in his catalog. For one, it was quite hard to find for a long while, as it was initually released on a small label called Family Productions and was very spottily distributed. Another bit of intrigue was that the album was initially mastered at the wrong speed, with the main effect being Billy's vocals - which were already much higher-pitched than what we'd become used to - being pitched up to near Alvin and the Chipmunks levels. In 1983, with Billy at the height of his commerical success, the album was remixed, and given some overdubs and edits. That stands today as the "offical" version, though neither the fans nor Billy himself are happy with it. So I suppose a caveat to this entire review is that Cold Spring Harbor is not the album it was intended to be. That said, I'm going to attempt to take it at face value, using the widel...

For the longest time, I mistook  Piano Man as being Billy Joel's third album instead of his second. When compared with Streetlife Serenade , it just seems so much more realized and complete. Each song lived-in and thought-through. While not a perfect album, it seems like a logical lead-in to his run of classic records that started with Turnstiles . I don't know if my confusion speaks more to the unevenness of Streetlife Serenade or to the quality of Piano Man , but for the purposes of this review, let's say it's the latter. As a whole, Piano Man feels like a collection of lost songs from Broadway productions. I say "productions" plural becasue this is not a concept album. The songs are all over the place thematically and musically, but what they share in common is a theatricality of presentation and a focus on storytelling. To my mind the album is anchored by three epics that come at the beginning, middle, and end. First is the semiautobigraphical "Piano...