Music & More

Rihanna & Kanye West & Paul McCartney released FourFiveSeconds on video and download on January 28, 2015. This track will be on Rihanna's eighth album, executive produced by Kanye West; release date is uncertain. Rolling Stone reported that Kanye also intends to include the track on his next album. What the hell is Paul McCartney doing in this? His primary participation in the song and video seems to be instrumental only. In the Grammy performance (video below), Paul has a microphone and appears to be singing but he cannot be heard. Here is what we know. 1. The video is better than the song (it's an excellent video). 2. I like the song, but considering that Rihanna and Kanye are frequent flyers in the tabloids maybe it's not such a great idea to be "FourFiveSeconds from wildin' ." 3. McCartney has a writing credit for FourFiveSeconds, but like most songs on the pop charts, this one was written by committee*. I would guess that McCartney...

I love love love this guy. Bob Dylan is arguably the best living song writer of our time. And as a musician, singer, and performer, he may be the most enigmatic. In his MusiCares 2015 Person of the Year speech Dylan is funny, he is angry, he is a musicologist, he is an icon, he is an iconoclast, and he should never, never, ever read his reviews. Dylan may be 73 years old, but he is as sharp, maybe even more sharp, than he has ever been, perhaps having the benefit of all his many years of experience; and it is quite amazing the way he seems to have total recall of so many aspects of music and the music industry. After a star-studded tribute concert in which the likes of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Cheryl Crow, Jackson Browne, John Mellencamp, and Crosby, Stills and Nash sang the songs of Bob Dylan, Dylan took the stage for a few numbers of his own. This was followed by Dylan's speech, which ran about thirty minutes, and was funny, po...

Diana Krall's new album, Wallflower (her twelfth), out today, is a collection of well-loved pop songs mostly from the seventies. Diana says, “A lot of the songs on Wallflower are ones I grew up loving on the radio and on vinyl, songs I heard at home. These are songs I’ve been singing to myself for years. I just needed the lyric sheet to make sure I wasn’t singing the wrong words all this time. I got the 45 for “I’m Not In Love” by 10cc. I listened to Bryan Adams all the time. My parents and I both loved Linda Ronstadt, who was my inspiration to sing ‘Desperado.’ I even had a Peter Frampton poster on the wall. I was just a typical teenager hanging out with friends, not just listening to jazz." 1. California Dreamin' - "California Dreamin'" was written by John and Michelle Phillips and released by the Mamas & Papas in 1965. In this lush sounding update, Graham Nash adds backing vocals. The song starts out kind of dreamy and dramatic, but when the ba...