The Eclectic Playlist Series enters its eighth year. Many things were very different eight years ago, but the guidelines here remain the same: I feature 20 songs each month, and look to spread the songs out somewhat evenly among the decades. I also aim for male-female balance, but I don’t mind it if there are more songs sung by women than men in a given month–consider it a small gesture towards symbolically overcoming rock’n’roll’s longstanding misogyny. And then there’s the primary rule, self-imposed from the beginning, that no artist can be featured more than once in a calendar year. As the years have gone by I have also done my best to keep introducing artists who haven’t previously been featured here; I like at least half of the artists in each new mix to be making their EPS debut but that doesn’t always work out. (The passing years have made this increasingly challenging.) This month, for instance, there are only seven new artists. Conversely, here in January, Kate Bush moves quickly into the all-time lead, having been featured once each year to date, including, now, 2021.
With those guidelines in place, the playlists are otherwise constructed via intuition alone. I don’t have any concrete theme in mind when I start, and I don’t purposefully juxtapose songs based on lyrical similarities. When, say, “If You Change Your Mind” arrives two songs after “Baby, Don’t Change Your Mind,” which itself comes after “I Meant What I Said,” I consider it a bonus; I don’t usually plan this kind of thing, although I don’t rule out that there’s some unconscious architecting going on. The same goes for the segues. I will rule out songs that just don’t fit next to each other because of how one ends and the other begins, but when a really great segue occurs (for instance, this month: “Song For Zula” into “Uncle Alvarez”), it’s almost always a happy accident. And the immediate lyrical reference to “Ring of Fire” right after a song from Rosanne Cash? Definitely an accident, but an enjoyable one.
And so, for those who haven’t lost interest, here we go:
“This One” – Paul McCartney (Flowers in the Dirt, 1989)
“The Dirt” – Waxahatchee (Ivy Tripp, 2015)
“Couldn’t Believe a Word” – The 45s (single, 1979)
“Linger” – Jonatha Brooke (Steady Pull, 2001)
“Fall On You” – Moby Grape (Moby Grape, 1967)
“Teardrop” – Massive Attack (Mezzanine, 1998)
“Three of a Perfect Pair” – King Crimson (Three of a Perfect Pair, 1984)
“I Meant What I Said” – Rosehip Teahouse (Fine EP, 2020)
“Baby, Don’t Change Your Mind” – The Stylistics (Fabulous, 1976)
“My Maudlin Career” – Camera Obscura (My Maudlin Career, 2009)
“If You Change Your Mind” – Roseanne Cash (King’s Record Shop, 1987)
“Song For Zula” – Phosphorescent (Muchacho, 2013)
“Uncle Alvarez” – Liz Phair (Whitechocolatespaceegg, 1998)
“Girl Don’t Come” – Sandie Shaw (single, 1964)
“‘Long As You Know You’re Living Yours” – Keith Jarrett (Belonging, 1974)
“Astronaut” – Ass Ponys (Some Stupid With a Flare Gun, 2000)
“Wuthering Heights” – Kate Bush ([new vocal] The Whole Story, 1986)
“Romeo’s Seance” – Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet (The Juliet Letters, 1993)
“Sparrow Song” – Acrylics (Lives and Treasure, 2010)
“Bulbs” – Van Morrison (Veedon Fleece, 1974)
Bonus explanatory notes:
* Earlier this month I posted a playlist on Spotify featuring Paul McCartney, noting how many excellent and overlooked songs he’s written in his long post-Beatles career. I started that playlist with the same song that starts us off here: “This One,” from 1989’s Flowers in the Dirt. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head for weeks. You’ve been warned.
* I somehow missed the kerfuffle way back when over the similarity between Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” and Keith Jarrett’s “‘Long as You Know You’re Living Yours,” which came out six years earlier, in 1974. Jarrett brought a lawsuit, or at least threatened a lawsuit (the internet record is fuzzy on this), and in any case did up end with a songwriting credit. The two songs are clearly related in vibe and musical details, even if sticklers can find no note-for-note melodic plagiarism. The Dan later admitted they were big fans of the Jarrett tune and did in fact find more than a little inspiration there for “Gaucho.” In the end, both songs are wonderful. Me, I say it takes no small talent to do what Becker and Fagan did to the Garrett tune to create “Gaucho”; it’s right for them to have credited Jarrett, and this takes nothing away from their own artistry.
* Rosehip Teahouse is a five-piece band from Cardiff, fronted by Faye Rogers and trafficking in a bittersweet, echoey, guitar-washed vibe that I find very appealing. “I Meant What I Said” is a song from their debut EP, called Fine, released in December. You can listen to it, and buy it, via Bandcamp. A brand new video for a second track from the EP, “No Gloom,” just came out this week. The band was originally scheduled to play in Austin at SXSW last year; this year, they will participate in the virtual SXSW that’s happening in March.
* While Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” is wondrous classic–written by an 18-year-old!–I always found her teenaged voice to be a little harsh in conjunction with the song’s melody and vocal range. Perhaps Bush herself thought as much in retrospect; how else to explain her re-recording of the song in 1986, in conjunction with the release of a “best of” collection that year. The song was remixed but presents as largely the same, except the vocal. And wow: to hear Bush, in full command of her mature voice, revisiting this remarkable song is, to me, goosebump-inducing. I could listen to this over and over, for all the subtle grandeur of her phrasing and intonation. “Wuthering Heights” was her first-ever single, and a smash hit in the UK, although not even released as a single in the US. Fun fact: Bush was inspired initially by a BBC production of Wuthering Heights; she later read the book, and then discovered that she and Emily Brontë have the same birthday.
* I love Liz Phair’s whitechocolatespaceegg to pieces, and have always been particularly captivated by “Uncle Alvarez,” for reasons that seem to be beyond my conscious awareness. I still eagerly await her forthcoming album, Soberish, slated however vaguely for release this year.
* I have a soft spot for Ohio’s Ass Ponys from my years of living in Cincinnati right around when the band was having their major-label moment in the mid-’90s. As melodic as they could be, the Ponys were too quirky a band to satisfy A&M’s commercial needs. Some Stupid With a Flare Gun was their first post-A&M album, released in 2000. That album’s title comes from the lyrics to “Smoke On The Water,” for those keeping score at home.
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