Donny Osmond – Medley of Hits
Great Songs Six Decades in Song: The Everlasting Charm of a Teen Idol’s Legacy The “Medley of Hits” in Donny Osmond’s Las Vegas residency is a dazzling, retrospective sprint through six decades…
Shaun Cassidy – My First Crush
An Enduring Melody of Innocence: The Timeless Echo of First Love A heartfelt, acoustic reflection on the indelible memory and pure emotion of a childhood infatuation, “My First Crush” is…
Nanci Griffith & James Hooker – Gulf Coast Highway
A beautiful, wistful portrait of enduring love clinging to a small piece of Texas coast. For those of us who came of age with the gentle, literate strains of what…
Secret Service – Flash In The Night
An Enduring Synth-Pop Ghost Story, Echoing the Melancholy of the Early Eighties. Ah, “Flash In The Night.” Just the name itself, with its metallic echo and urgent rhythm, instantly transports…
Secret Service – Ten O’clock Postman
An Irreplaceable Reminder of Anxious Hope in the Pre-Digital Age Oh, the memories this song evokes! It is a shimmering, perfectly crafted slice of late 70s/early 80s Euro Disco-Pop that…
Shaun Cassidy – Hard Love
The Echoes of a Hard-Won Heart: When Teen Idol Shaun Cassidy Dared to Bare His Soul Hard Love is an earnest rock ballad about the painful necessity of letting go…
Shaun Cassidy – Be My Baby
That Teenage Rush of Sound: The Heartbeat of a New Crush, Decades Later Oh, the mid-1970s. The air was thick with pop-rock, the scent of Tiger Beat magazine ink, and…
Sheryl Crow & Emmylou Harris – Juanita
A Pilgrimage to the Cosmic American Soul: Sheryl Crow & Emmylou Harris’s “Juanita” The collaboration between Sheryl Crow and the queen of Cosmic American Music, Emmylou Harris, on the song…
Ted Nugent – Stranglehold
An Anthem of Pure Signal: The Clash Between Art and Commerce on the Airwaves For a generation raised on the sprawling, conceptual soundscapes of progressive rock, Rush’s “The Spirit of…
Cliff Richard – Wired for Sound
That Joyous Isolation: The Personal Soundtrack of a New Decade The infectious synth-pop pulse of “Wired for Sound,” released by the evergreen Cliff Richard in August 1981, perfectly captured a…