Brandon's Buzz

The canny scheduling of the year’s most anticipated pop novelty punctuates this week’s (rather muted) action on the new release wall. Take a gander:

What Sony must be praying will make a suitable last-minute stocking stuffer arrives this week with the controversial release of Michael, a collection of ten newly-completed recordings culled from the supposedly deep vaults of the dearly departed King of Pop, Michael Jackson. There is a considerable amount of heat swirling around this record, with more than a few whispers that it’s not actually Michael’s voice on these tracks. And call me naive, but I choose to believe that the current curators of his estate wouldn’t dare risk tarnishing Jackson’s magnificent musical legacy by taking that kind of greedy risk. (Nor do I believe top-flight folks like 50 Cent, Akon, and Lenny Kravitz — all of whom make guest appearances here — would play along with such a ruse.) Having said that, Mike was notoriously prolific and always laying down something on tape; there are said to be hundreds of unreleased Jackson recordings laying around waiting to see the light of day, so you can bet Michael won’t be the last such posthumous release.

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Red Hot Chili Peppers — “Californication” (from Greatest Hits) —

“space may be the final frontier /

but it’s made in a Hollywood basement /

and Cobain, can you hear this sphere /

singin’ songs off station to station…?”

Everything But the Girl — “Missing [Todd Terry Mix]”
(from Amplified Heart) —

Not many things will impel me to turn off the iPod and displace my earphones from my skull while I’m at the gym (I’ve long fancied myself a masterful maker of mixtapes, and my workout mixes are legendary, if I do say so myself), but with a fun melange of Foo Fighters, Fergie, and even a little Last Goodnight, I took a leap of faith and entrusted my aural entertainment this morning to the local Planet Fitness while I borrowed their equipment for an electrifying elliptical ride. It was a good call, and I was rewarded thusly: when I took to the locker room to clean up after the fact, the comfortably compelling throb of this club classic’s entrancing opening notes spilled from the speakers, and I was instantly carried back to the spectacular spring of 1996, when this thing became one of its decade’s defining smashes. Don’t even try convincing me that “Missing” isn’t one of the ten best songs ever, because I’m not buying: Tracey Thorn’s thrilling ode to sexually charged desperation (and the art of ineffective stalking, natch) still packs the same potent punch it did fifteen years ago, and I spent the rest of the afternoon humming it, happily.

Jon McLaughlin — “We All Need Saving” (from OK Now) —

As a daily viewer of more than one ABC soap opera, I have been subjected of late to a continual barrage of commercials advertising the network’s upcoming prime time series Off the Map, which premieres Wednesday, January 12, and whose typically telegenic cast features one Zach Gilford, late of Friday Night Lights, NBC’s extraordinary epic about small-town ordinariness. A fair amount of said commercials feature this stunning scorcher — the triumphant closing track from McLaughlin’s strong second album — reminding me anew of the graceful, exquisite yearning that lay beneath McLaughlin’s uniquely tender tenor. (If Wikipedia is to be believed, this tune also popped up in ads for NBC’s The Event earlier this fall.) Apropos of the man and the song: utterly gorgeous.

Celine Dion — “Have a Heart” (from Unison) —

I’ll tell you, the more time I spend with Celine’s more recent efforts, the harder I long for the days when she worked with staggering material like this, when she wrapped her miraculous, voracious voice around songs that are more than just empty, hollow vessels for emotionless, multi-octave wailing.

If you missed any of last week’s tunes, below is a quick recap:

MONDAY: Blake Shelton — “Ol’ Red”
(from Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton) —

TUESDAY: Daniel Bedingfield — “Blown It Again”
(from Gotta Get Thru This) —

WEDNESDAY: Cyndi Lauper — “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
(from She’s So Unusual) —

THURSDAY: Zac Brown Band — “Colder Weather”
(from You Get What You Give) —

FRIDAY: Natasha Bedingfield — “Little Too Much”
(from Strip Me) —

SATURDAY: Kenny Loggins (with Stevie Nicks) —
“Whenever I Call You Friend” (from The Essential Kenny Loggins) —

SUNDAY: Dolly Parton — “Think About Love”
(from The Essential Dolly Parton) —

Dolly Parton — “Think About Love”
(from The Essential Dolly Parton) —

A took a trip to San Antonio yesterday afternoon to see Miss Dolly’s musical 9 to 5, and he requested that I make what I assume to be one of the show’s songs today’s dispatch from the hive. I, however, was not familiar with the tune he chose, but having literally grown up with Parton’s music, it wasn’t at all difficult to pick one I did know. Coming as it does from Dolly’s often-underrated pop-leaning years — long before Shania ever even knew what a midriff was, Parton and Juice Newton practically invented the notion of the megasmash country crossover, honey — this gem sometimes gets overlooked when compilers set out to assemble Dolly best-ofs, but I say you’ll be hard-pressed to find a catchier ringer in her repertoire.

Kenny Loggins (with Stevie Nicks) — “Whenever I Call You Friend”
(from The Essential Kenny Loggins) —

I got myself in an easy rock mood yesterday morning while driving to finish up Christmas shopping and couldn’t shake it for the whole of the day. Loggins co-wrote this all-time classic with the magnificent Melissa Manchester in 1977, and if my understanding of history is indeed accurate, Manchester was more than a little irate about getting passed over for the then-white-hot Nicks — who, concurrently, was riding a rollicking rocketship called Fleetwood Mac — when it came time to select a duet partner and lay the tune down on tape. But, and I say the following as a card-carrying Manchester fan: take one listen to the heavenly harmonies that Loggins and Nicks manage to create here, and then just try to convince me it wasn’t the absolutely correct call.

Natasha Bedingfield — “Little Too Much” (from Strip Me) —

Tuesday, we heard from her brother Daniel, and today, it’s Natasha’s turn: I fear it’s going to get buried in the mind-blowing crush of late-year albums currently jockeying for position on the record store’s new release wall — not quite sure why they didn’t hold this until February or March, particularly since top 40 radio is thus far cool toward the lovely lead single — but I spun Natty’s brand new CD twice straight through today and found it to be ravishingly terrific, a wondrous whale of a pop record. (A quick scan of the behind-the-scenes credits reveals a cadre of creative aces — John Shanks, Ryan Tedder, and the divine Danielle Brisebois, among them — whose sonic fingerprints on this material are quite easy to identify in retrospect.) “Too Much,” the record’s dynamite opening track, handily sets the tone for Strip — in short, love is all there is, and it’s worth the risk every time — and creates a theme for Bedingfield to explore fully for the remainder. She’s battling divas at both poles of the pop spectrum, with Rihanna (back to her loud and rowdy roots) at one end and La Swift (so pure, it floats) at the other; time will soon tell just how smart Bedingfield and company were to play this one straight down the middle.

Zac Brown Band — “Colder Weather”
(from You Get What You Give) —

In preparation of my annual best-of-year music roundup, I’ve spent the past few days catching up with the handful of records that have slipped through the cracks of my attention. As a proudly gay man with a primary penchant for bucketfuls of angst in his aural entertainment, I know I am hardly in Brown’s general target demographic. But this tune — a devastating survey of a man running like the wind from the frozen ghost (real or perceived) of a woman he loved in another lifetime, and an astonishing anomaly on what is otherwise a fairly upbeat record — quite literally reaches out from the stereo speakers and slaps your soul out of its complacency. A natural successor to “Fire and Rain” (with a soupcon of “Please Come to Boston” tossed in, just for good measure), “Weather” plays like the greatest song James Taylor never had the balls to write. (And it may not sound like it, depending on your particular vantage point, but I absolutely mean that as a compliment!)

The post-Thanksgiving hangover has faded, and it’s pretty much all downhill from here, with only a handful of major releases left on the calendar before the clock strikes twelve and all the rest of this fall’s new records jockeying for berths in Christmas stockings the world over. Take a peek:

• Those infernal, insufferable Black Eyed Peas are back on the block with The Beginning, which includes their heinous reinvention of Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes’ Oscar-winning theme song from Dirty Dancing. (It’s bad enough that them flipin’ Glee kids had to go and fuck with this inviolable classic from my childhood, but listening to Fergie try this one on for size literally makes me want to puncture my poor eardrums with a chewed-up Bic pen cap.)
• Speaking of those chirpin’ churren from McKinley High’s New Directions: Glee: The Music, Volume 4, the latest collection of covers from Fox’s smash television series, contains a handful of highlights from this season’s first half, including the cast’s exhilarating take on Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and newcomer Darren Criss’ sweetly affecting remake of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.”

 

• Her terrific 2008 album Rockferry was a Grammy-winning sensation
  that had us all begging for mercy; this week, my favorite Welsh goddess this side of Bonnie Tyler — the divine Duffy — follows up her debut with a sophomore effort, Endlessly.

 

• Led by their current radio smash “Rhythm of Love,” those pesky
  Plain White T’s return with their latest record, Wonders of the Younger

 

• She’s been playing it cool in the four years since her explosive breakthrough with 2007’s The Reminder, but Feist is back this week with the new CD/DVD combo Look At What the Light Did Now, which documents the making of Reminder and contains live performances captured on the world tour she mounted to support the record.

 

• Anybody out there remember El DeBarge? The terrific work he turned in with the family band that bore his surname landed them a string of huge hits in the mid-to-late ’80s, and he returns to the spotlight with a new solo effort, Second Chance.

 

• As was tipped off in yesterday’s dispatch from the hive, the fabulous Natasha Bedingfield is back this week with her third album, Strip Me.

 

• Country icon Tim McGraw neatly ties up nearly two decades of consistent success with a new two-disc retrospective entitled, simply, Number One Hits.
• Up-and-coming singer/songwriter Diane Birch returns this week with a new digital EP, The Velveteen Age, which includes a funky cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ brilliant breakthrough “Kiss Them for Me.”
• If you missed its very limited theatrical run this past summer, don’t fail to catch up with the new documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty —
  a stirring (and surprisingly gripping) chronicle of the return to prominence of Disney’s animation division, which had become an embarrassing afterthought in the years since Walt had passed on, and which, thanks to a series of key personnel moves and creative risktaking, enjoyed a staggering renaissance beginning with the arrival of 1989’s Oscar-winning instant classic The Little Mermaid — on DVD.
• Finally, head on down to your local Barnes and Noble this week and pick up their exclusive DVD edition of Davd Gray‘s recent appearance on PBS’ magnificent music series Live from the Artists’ Den. (And since you’re there anyway, go ahead and pick up similar exclusive Den DVDs from Patty Griffin and the ferocious Tori Amos; I dare you to tell me you wouldn’t love to spend the rest of the year bisecting the corners of that equilateral triangle!)

Cyndi Lauper — “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
(from She’s So Unusual) —

In ways too multiple to enumerate, Lauper was the original Lady GaGa. And, in much the same way that GaGa’s garishness and excess often distracts from the fact that she can be quite a potent performer, Lauper let herself get boxed in for far too long in the early days of her career by her wacky-chick shtick. (Only time will tell if Gags will be able to diversify her Day-Glowing discography as handsomely in the years to come as Lauper has managed to.) Watching those misbegotten misfits Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj stumble over themselves mangling this magnificent tune during last weekend’s painfully overbaked VH1 Divas special reminded me not only of what a pristinely perfect pop record “Girls” was, is, and always will be, but also of how easy Lauper made brilliant look.

Daniel Bedingfield — “Blown It Again” (from Gotta Get Thru This) —

His fabulously foxy sister Natasha is still kicking ass (indeed,
her third album is due in stores today), but, for whatever odd reason, Danny himself — last heard from in 2004, with a spectacular second album that wasn’t even deemed worthy of release stateside — has seemingly fallen completely off the grid. Consider this a smoke signal, imploring him to phone home.