“I think I learned years ago that you don’t get songs that have that long stride and that pivot-hinge ability if it’s too much diary entry.”— Leslie Feist Feist made this observation about her songwriting… Read More
“I don’t think people listen with their ears. I think they listen with their soul.”— Herb Alpert I heard Herb Alpert — the legendary trumpet player, producer and career-maker — say these words in the… Read More
Jools Holland is probably best known as the host of the long-running BBC music series Later …, which has been showcasing live performances since 1991. He’s also a bandleader and pianist, and was a founding… Read More
“It was a pudding, you know? It really was a pudding. It was a pudding of new ideas, and we were terribly excited, and I think we took it on our shoulders that we were… Read More
“Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.” — Lauren Bacall Lauren Bacall wrote these words for her memoir, which was published first as By Myself in 1978, and then revised and published in 2005… Read More
Goodness, did the boys in Keane actually look like boys when we glance back more than two decades to their breakthrough hit, Somewhere Only We Know. It seemed to be everywhere in 2004. The trio… Read More
“One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or… Read More
Here’s a moment of joy for you. Dozens of people dressed in red, wearing stockings and black sashes, waving their arms just like Kate Bush in the most famous video she made for her 1978… Read More
Jazz on a Summer’s Day was released in 1959, and was filmed the preceding summer at the Newport Jazz Festival. Its opening moments combine the dappled, reflected sunshine in a harbour with a jazzy rhythm…. Read More
Adam Walsh and I scratched another one for the books today, with the monthly trivia show for CBC Radio’s The Signal. You can listen to the whole thing right here. I thought it might be… Read More
“It’s an odd pairing. I’ve always loved the audience, but from a distance. Once you’ve elicited a strong response from an audience, you want it again. That kind of an energy is as addictive as… Read More
“I wanted to create a woman who would be representative of my mother’s generation, because these women are leaving us, and I feel a great debt of gratitude to them. Not only was I raised… Read More
Beirut is the band in which Zach Condon expresses his ideas, or gets a few things out of his system. Like, say, divorce. Perth is a song released on Beirut’s album No No No in… Read More
Ranking Roger would have been 63 this weekend. Roger Charlson was born in Birmingham on Feb. 21, 1963, and was still a teenager when his band — the Beat, or the English Beat, as we… Read More
Neil Hannon has been performing as the Divine Comedy since he was a young man in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s, and he’s still going strong. I think he’s a remarkable songwriter, and so… Read More