America’s favorite train wreck just keeps on wrecking. Britney Spears was released from the hospital today following a confrontation earlier in the week that found her in a fit of hysterics. Apparently everyone’s favorite fake doctor Dr. Phil arrived on the scene to help Spears out and rumors abound that she may appear on his show on Monday. Hurrah. Perhaps sooner than later she will inspire a song called “Hey Girl, Nice Shot” if ya get what I mean.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, Lenny Kravitz has a new album! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! Sorry, just got carried away there. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, I did.
The first single, “I’ll Be Waiting,” is actually rather pretty, though is it just me or did the melody in the first verse instantly make you think of his 1993 song “Believe”? Just sayin’.
…and in this case, it all started with a friend of mine spotting Soul Asylum’s “Misery” on one of my never-ending series of iPod shuffles on MySpace, then asking, “Isn’t ‘The Best of Soul Asylum’ an oxymoron?” As a fan of the band since the first time I heard “Cartoon” and “Sometime to Return” from back in their stint on A&M Records, I immediately provided her with links to the videos for both those songs – which you can find here and here, respectively – and threw in the video for 1990’s “Easy Street” as well.
I also stood up for “Somebody to Shove,” which was the single that preceded the dead-to-me-now “Runaway Train,” but in the process of scouring YouTube to find all of these clips, I happened upon a live performance from a band called Traphiq doing a version of “Shove” which absolutely blew me away. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did…and since I enjoyed it enough to immediately head over to their MySpace page and send them a friend request, I’m sure they hope the same thing.
…but kind of awesome to see how a guy like Nick Lowe can evolve from one of the most rockin’ guys of the ’70s new wave scene into one of the most respected singer/songwriters of his generation. Dig how, even almost thirty years later, “Cruel To Be Kind” can still make you smile…and not just because the music and video are running a second apart from each other.