friday random ten, 2006 edition

1. George Lopez, "Si Se Puede." You'd think by the time we get to 2006, it wouldn't be hard to find videos for the tracks, but shuffle play seems to have come up with the less-popular selections. So the video for this is from a different George Lopez skit. My son and his wife have been trying to convince me for years that George Lopez is funny. I've come to agree with them.

2. T.I., "What You Know." This won a Grammy, hit the top of the R&B/Hip-Hop charts, and went multi-platinum. I betcha most people over the age of, oh, I don't know, 45, have never ever heard it.

3. Pink, "Nobody Knows." Pink bounces back and forth between uptempo braggadocchio and slow-jam confessional. This is the latter.

4. Gnarls Barkley, "Who Cares." Not a remake of the Gershwin song.

5. Nellie McKay, "Cupcake." Here's another one of those burgeoning stars who has bigger "hits" than the one that shows up here. Which means the video in this case is for "The Dog Song."

6. Kimya Dawson, "The Competition." While Dawson gets no real video at all, just one of those YouTube posts that features a still of the album cover while the song plays in the background. At least this time it's the right song. I wonder if this is one of those "the world is made up of two kinds of people" things ... "people who find Nellie McKay charming and irresistible, and those who feel the same way about Kimya Dawson." I'm both.

7. Bob Dylan, "Thunder on the Mountain." The guy has written a billion songs that are classics of popular music, and all anyone wanted to talk about was how he gave a shoutout to Alicia Keys, as if they were surprised he'd heard of her. Heck, I bet Dylan's heard of T.I.

8. Thurston Moore, "Dirt Raga." Peter Walker is a folk guitarist, now in his seventies, who recorded an album popular with hippies in the mid-60s, Rainy Day Raga. While he never quit playing, he mostly disappeared from the recording scene, but his influence was strong enough that a tribute album was probably inevitable. Here, the Sonic Youth guitarist demonstrates where he picked up some of his licks.

9. Todd Snider, "The Devil You Know." Here's another one where I can't find a video of the song, which was the title track from the album and is a rocker with fire. So the video link is to my favorite Snider song from that same album, "Carla," which made this list a year ago and so was ineligible this time around.

10. Willie Nelson, "Hallelujah." Willie becomes the 923rd person to record the Leonard Cohen classic. Unlike many of the others, he never made a video of his version, so one last time, I cheated on the video link ... it's Jeff Buckley. I dare say you won't often find two singers as different as Jeff Buckley and Willie Nelson.

Bonus track:

Comments

[Tomás]

"I dare say you won't often find two singers as different as..."

Try Kris Kristofferson and Al Green, both singing the former's "For the Good Times." Incidentally, Willie Nelson has an even sadder version on his "Willie Nelson Sings Kris Kristofferson" album.