Results of Ruminations

During my sojourn south this summer, I did what I now consider an important tradition for my writing retreats: I bought a new album. Now, I should say that when I say "new", I don't mean "newly released" or even, necessarily, new to me. I mean, I buy what I'm interested in hearing at the time, regardless of its newness. In this case, I picked up Metallica by, no surprise here, Metallica. I've always liked the radio friendly, but I was curious to see if there was something more on the album itself. And though I listened to a podcast about the album Master of Puppets, I wasn't sure if I wanted their earlier stuff, middle of the road, or new sounds. I went with the safe bet and snagged their self-titled (often called "the Black album"). I regret it not. The album is fantastic, but that's old news. (The thing came out in, what, '91?) The cuts that didn't make it to mainstream radio aren't surprises ("Throug...

This is the fourth music video analysis (the others are all found here ). These essays try to use the visual medium to help encode an interpretation that the text both supports and obscures, allowing the director of the music video to provide an additional analytical lens. I'm looking at an artist whose music I stumbled into because of the instrumental work that she's best known for. The album, Shatter Me , features the eponymous track with singer Lzzy Hale, even though most of the tracks on Lindsey Stirling's records don't have a lot of vocals. There's a soft spot in my heart for Stirling's stuff because it is the music that most galvanizes me when I'm trying to write. I'm almost afraid of listening to it for fear that its power will be broken, but whenever a track from Shatter Me comes into my playlist, I find my ability to focus is heightened. (I have a hypothesis for why this happens, but it's immaterial here.) The Set Up This is the musi...

What was your first album? Not the first one you listened to, but the first one you wanted and, therefore, received? Purchased or got as a gift? When I was in sixth grade, my music teacher, Mr. Harvey, introduced us to a new album that he was enjoying called Return to Pooh Corner . It was by a guy named Kenny Loggins (whom I didn't know and hadn't heard of but, since my dad was a musician, I figured--in that 11-year old logic that a sixth grader possesses--that the two men likely worked together). That Christmas, I asked for my first album. Today, my Spotify "Discovery Weekly" playlist pulled up " The Last Unicorn " from the Return to Pooh Corner album and I decided to listen to it. Wow. It sounds like a theme song that belongs on a late eighties' animated film, which is good, because that's exactly what it's covering. I didn't like the cartoon (it scandalized me when it said "damn", as if I were back in 1939 when Gone ...