Bllie Joe Armstrong & Norah Jones "Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine"

So this one garnered a lot of votes on the mvyradio Top 25 of 2013, which I found pretty interesting, since, when we opened the voting in mid-November, the record hadn't even been released yet!

I have often wondered if many of the people who vote are just enjoying the singles we play on the air, and voting on that basis, without hearing the full album.

And though I can offer my opinion that it IS deserving of being in the Top 25 (because I've heard the record), the way the voting went seems to confirm my suspicions.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Billie Joe Armstrong & Norah Jones "Long Time Gone"

I can't quite land on a feeling about this song.

If we play it on mvyradio, will folks tune in and go "What the hell is this oldies stuff?"

Or will it just feel similar to a She & Him track---it sounds retro, but is clearly modern enough to fit in the MVY playlist?

I will say, I respect the fact that both these artists, in their respective careers, have refused to be defined by the genres that made them famous, and are willing to go down paths that that traditional fans might find uncool/uninteresting.

So that does tip the "friendly feeling" scales for me.

But feeling good about the artists doesn't answer the original concern . . . what will it sound like to flip the dial to MVY and hear this?  Good or bad?


Hear the song on Youtube.

Norah Jones "Sunrise"

"Sounds like a siren."

Said by another grade schooler, I might have taken it as a slam on the song.  But he was no ordinary grade schooler.


I was a strangely adult-like small child.

I don't know if it was the product of being the oldest child in my family.  Or growing up in a neighborhood where the only kids to play with were older.  Or if it was because I was hyper-verbal.  Or that my parents stressed some very old-school patterns of etiquette.

Whatever the reason, I was a strangely adult-like small child.

Through much of my grade school and middle school years, I really felt like many of the friends I had hung out with me more because their parents liked me, than they did.  It wasn't unusual for me to find myself at the kitchen table, having some kind of thoughtful discourse with my friend's parents, while my peers were outside, you know, being kid-like.

Kids would look at me funny, because I used these phrases like "one fell swoop" that no normal kid would ever use.

In middle school we had to do a book report, using a biography.  While the age-appropriate kids read sports biographies, and the savvy kids opted for teacher-bait books about Harriet Tubman and Mark Twain, I read an autobiography of Sid Caesar.

You know, because middle school is when all kids really become interested in the golden age of live television, the roots of Jews in comedy and the recovery stories of alcoholic TV icons.

Eventually, my older-than-I-should-be thing evened out, and I'm a reasonably normal, age-appropriate 40-something.

But for many years back there, I wasn't speaking the same language as the other kids.


When I first started dating my wife, back in 2004, her nephew was a grade schooler in circumstances much like mine at that age.  In some ways, even more pronounced.

Where I was the oldest kid in my family, he was an only child.  Where my friends were older neighborhood kids, he spent a ton of time exclusively with adults.

And where I had an unusual interest in, depth of knowledge about, and amazing recall of TV comedy, he was same about monsters, creatures both real (like bugs) and mythological.

He could talk extensively on the topics, and wasn't shy to do so.


My wife's family was welcoming to me from the start.  And though they were familiar with MVY before even meeting me, when I appeared on the scene in 2004, they became regular listeners.

And that's where my nephew first heard Norah Jones.

His comment?

"Sounds like a siren."

Now, if a kid, listening to a radio station aimed at people 3 or more decades his senior, were to suggest that a singer or a song was "like a siren," you'd probably take that to mean that the music, so age-inappropriate for them, was ear-splittingly horrible.

But that's not what he meant.

He meant that this singer sounded like a Siren, the mythological creature who's beautiful singing voice entranced sailors before luring them and their ships to sail too close to the rocks, ultimately causing shipwreck and death.

That kind of Siren.

And of all the reviews and comments and press-churn over Norah Jones' rise to success, this description was more succinct and more spot-on than anything I'd come across.

No ordinary grade-schooler would have come up with that line.

So here's to being age-inappropriate, but perhaps extra-ordinary.

Hear the song on Youtube.

Electric Guest "This Head I Hold"

I love to introduce My Favorite Song We're Not Playing.

Sometimes, we end up adding them to mvyradio's rotation.

Sometimes, as good as they are, they don't quite fit.

I love the retro-Soul thing that seems to be happening.  There's a great mini-wave of young artists who are getting that vintage sound, right.

I've written about the station's relationship with soul before, so no need to delve again.  But in short, we like to have a dash of the sound in the mix, but often it doesn't fit at neatly as it should into the eclectic mix.

So what do you think, would this fit in the playlist, between say, "Tangled Up In Blue" and the new Norah Jones?


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Little Willies "For The Good Times"

So here was an awkward promo person situation. I asked:

"Are you still working The Little Willies project? I'm thinking of adding something from it."

The Little Willies is this group of New York Musicians who started getting together on a regular basis over a decade ago, first to perform Willie Nelson covers, later expanding their repertoire to covering lots of classic country songwriters. One of the members happened to concurrently have a breakthrough in her solo career: Norah Jones.

This is their second record. It's been floating around for a couple of months now. I liked it when I heard it---the free-wheeling love of the music is charmingly evident---but I wasn't in any rush to add something until I had some space to play with in the playlist.

The time, for me, was right. So I mentioned it to the guy working the record to me.

He handled it quite deftly.

"That's great, but I know (name of person at the label) would want me to mention, that Norah's new single will be here in a couple of weeks."

Ah, how awkward! You can't really have a Norah Jones side project get in the way of Norah Jones main project.

I know there are plenty of stations who would only be willing to play one song by an artist at a time. And if they added The Little Willies, they'd probably hold the add on the new, proper-Norah track.

We think that's silly.

So we're adding the Kris Kristofferson cover, "For The Good Times." And we'll most definitely add the new Norah when it arrives.

By the way, the new Norah Jones album sounds like it could be VERY interesting. It's produced by Danger Mouse.

Though I hear it is not a continuation of "Rome," I posted one of the Norah Jones tracks from that Danger Mouse project from last year, below, so you could get a possible flavor for how those two might connect, musically. "Rome" was Danger Mouse's tribute to spaghetti Western film music.


Hear "For The Good Times" on Youtube.


See a mini-documentary about The Little Willies on Youtube.


Hear the Rome track on Youtube.

Jesse Harris "The Secret Sun"

Today on The Lunch Hour, as I fill in for Barbara, I'm playing tracks from some of the nice comebacks to 2011. Most of them are from artists who hadn't been heard from in a while, who have new records.

But this is a song that made a comeback.

It was originally recorded several years ago, but since it appeared in a new Corona commercial, Jesse Harris was motivated to re-record it and re-release it.

It's a lovely little tune, about the little world lovers create and the special places we go.


Hear it on Youtube.


Hear the Corona commercial version on Youtube.


See the commercial on Youtube.

Norah Jones "Dear John"

Traditionally, the poor and the outsiders innovate. The establishment co-opts, then eventually ruins the form.

So I've been curious to watch large companies navigate the modern world of promotion, with viral marketing and social media and such. If they appropriate guerrilla techniques, will they use them wisely, or will they sing the tone-deaf note of crass cash grabs.

Not surprisingly, Norah Jones (and the people behind her) navigate this field with an appropriate amount of taste and restraint.

For her new album "Featuring" which compiles tracks of collaboration from throughout her career, her label has produced a short interview piece for each of the tracks on the record.

They're informative, and they make good use of the $$$ behind them with good production values and editing to make something interesting, that makes me want to listen more.

Listen to how engaging Ryan Adams can be, as he compares his writing style to Norah's, and explains who the two styles met and succeeded.

Nice work!

Jimmy Kimmel and Norah Jones "You Tube's 12 Days Of Christmas"

5 Great Christmas Tunes That Aren’t Really In The Christmas Spirit

Norah Jones was recently nominated for a Grammy for her duet with Willie Nelson, for the Christmas cover of "Oh Baby It's Cold Outside." No doubt, it made the Grammy cut, because it is a timeless cover of a timeless classic.

In fact, much of what Norah Jones does is timeless. Her songs often really sound like they could have been released any time between 1920 and 2011.

Maybe that's part of what makes her inclusion in this Jimmy Kimmel bit so funny. It is absolutely the least timeless piece of music Norah Jones has ever recorded.

When digital archeologists uncover the remains of 2009, and they find this clip, they will no doubt say "How quaint! The humans of 2009 viewed their viral videos through what they called a 'web site,' instead of their ocular-implanted microscreens! This 'YouTube' must've seemed very amazing to their puny 2009 brains."

It's unwieldy to sing this year, or any year in the future. But it should make you laugh today.

See the video, here