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Blue Sky Riders - Finally Home For Christmas Listen to the Finally Home For Christmas Sampler They say, "Kenny Loggins, Georgia Middleman and Gary Burr bring their brilliant harmony style to this brand new EP of holiday classics. Done in the cascading acoustic guitar and shimmering mandolin style of their critically acclaimed debut album, Finally Home, they have created a holiday celebration of song that will warm the heart of any lover of classic pop or cool country." We say that Blue Sky Riders is a trio with a great sounding female vocalist. Kenny Loggins brings the same sort of good-time vibe that Loggins and Messina were known for. Together, they have a warm acoustic sound combined with impeccable three-part harmonies that just makes you feel good. This four song EP joins the previously released single, "Oh Holy Night" to add some cheer to your Christmas playlist. Their full length debut, Finally Home released earlier this year, is reminiscent of Su...

Melody Gardot, August 7, 2006, Ortlieb's Jazzhaus, Philadelphia This consideration of the best albums of the new Millennium was inspired by the WXPN survey and countdown, which this year tallies the 885 greatest songs of the new Millennium. Every October since 2004 they have done a listener survey and played back the results in the form of a countdown of the 885 best whatever; it started with best songs and since then they've done albums, artists, musical moments, road trip songs and so on. We still prefer to listen to albums, rather than songs, so we looked at our year-end best albums lists for 2001 to present, and compiled a rough list of about forty albums. From there, the final ten pretty much picked themselves. The only requirement was that the artists had to be ones that have been played on WXPN. In order to participate in the survey, we had to select a song that best represents each album; some were easy and some were hard. In any case, we include all ten songs h...

Bruce Springsteen will release his 18th studio album on January 14th. High Hopes is not exactly the follow-up to Wrecking Ball. It's more of an odds and sods record. Before we get into the new album, the big news, for the Bruce faithful, is that there will be a limited special edition of High Hopes, exclusive to Amazon that "also includes a live DVD of Bruce and the E Street Band performing the entire "Born In The U.S.A." album in London, England, during the historic Wrecking Ball World Tour," and according to Amazon, "This version will be available for a LIMITED TIME ONLY." According to Bruce, writing on his website, High Hopes contains "some of our best unreleased material from the past decade. I felt they were among the best of my writing and deserved a proper studio recording." The centerpiece of the project is eight songs featuring guitarist Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine). Morello was filling in for Steve Van Zandt during...

The top three on Billboard's Hot 100 this week looks like this: 1. "Royals" - Lorde (87M views) 2. "Roar" - Katy Perry (176M views) 3. "Wrecking Ball" - Miley Cyrus (291M views) Totally unknown at this time last year, Lorde (Ella Yelich-O'Connor), a sixteen year old singer-songwriter from New Zealand, muscled aside two of the behemoths of the pop chart, not only displacing Miley Cyrus after "Wrecking Ball" had spent but two weeks in the top spot, but owning the Hot 100, this being the fifth consecutive week for "Royals" at number one. Update 11/16/2013 - "Royals" is still number one, for the sixth consecutive week. Update 11/23/2013 - "Royals" is still number one, for the seventh consecutive week. Update 11/30/2013 - "Royals" is still number one, for the eighth consecutive week. Update 12/07/2013 - "Royals" is still number one, for the ninth consecutive week. On November ...

Photos courtesy of Eilidh McKellar Finding talented new singer-songwriters is one of my driving passions in life, and there are so many good ones surfacing, every day it seems, it's hard, no, it's impossible to listen to them all, much less write about them. Direct Current Music does such a great job at this, that they are pretty much the web's authority on new singer-songwriters, and I think that DC would agree that the UK has been especially blessed with talent. Just when it seems like you've heard so much folk, chamber-folk, neo-folk and alt-folk that it all starts to blur, along comes Eilidh McKellar, a nineteen year-old singer, guitarist, and songwriter from Edinburgh, playing electric, guitar-based rock that is utterly without affect, like a breath of fresh air, blowing in from Scotland by way of California. Or Louisiana. Her name Eilidh is of Scottish and Gaelic origin and is pronounced "Ay-lay". She has just released her first single, "Summe...