Crucial Tracks
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RSS FeedAugust 9, 2026
What's a song you associate with your hometown?
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August 9, 2026
What song makes you feel like you're floating?
i probably am floating right now... you can't prove i'm not!
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On weekends I usually get caught up in other things and forget to post my daily song, but not today. Today I'm sharing one of my favorite songs by The Wonder Years.
August 9, 2026
What's a song you associate with your hometown?
Which song was the first one that made you realize music can give you goosebumps?
I remember listening to this when I was younger. My dad would take me and my bother roller skating and the neon lights would turn on when this song played. I remember trying to dance in my skates and just enjoying to feeling of joy.
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August 9, 2026
What's your favourite recording of a traditional song?
The other JoCoNauts understand why.
August 9, 2026
What's a song you associate with your hometown?
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What's a song you associate with your hometown?
Lots of options from the bigger names; Goo Goo Dolls, Snapcase, Copper. But Every Time I Die is probably my favorite of the bunch.
Kill the lights I’ve seen too much
August 9, 2026
I don't have anything for today's prompt. I'm just going to post this beautiful song. Janet Paschal has released a couple of singles so far this year and this is my favorite one. This is after years without releasing anything. I'm so glad Janet is back with new music.
What's a song you associate with your hometown?
The town I grew up in, like many a small provincial town, is slowly morphing into yet another satellite town. The pubs are closing, the high street is being dismantled, and soon enough it’ll just be retail parks and houses.
The town I grew up in still had some industry, a large bottling plant and whisky brewery dominated one end of the high street. The shops were varied, as were the pubs. The retail park had not yet been built.
The town I grew up in has a rich history as part of the shipbuilders of the Clyde. The Cutty Sark was built in my hometown. The Denny family were generous to the town.
We are a proud nation, us Scots, and it’s safe to say that I spent many a formative evening in the pubs of my home town, where, regardless of current music trends, one track was guaranteed to get everyone singing along. It still does.
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Chino’s vocals are so good here.
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August 8, 2026
Baby got a Nobel Prize. Almost 30 years ago.
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August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
This is a contentious one in my household. I love this song and everyone else hates it. Oh well. The song itself is called Salvation is Created by Bifrost Arts and is a beautiful re-imagining of an old Russian composition. To me, it carries the gloom and hope of Christmas better than any other.
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August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
It's a bit early, but shoutout to my wife's Christmas medly, and her biggest sheet music seller every year!
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Saw Jacob King last night so been working through his discography. So good. If you like the Microphones and Saintseneca, you will dig it.
Post one of your favorite weather-related songs.
This is a song that I came across a couple years ago. It’s haunting in that it just fills the space with a chill vibe.
August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favourite holiday / Christmas song.
Always good for a laugh. NSFW though.
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August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
The whole Home Alone soundtrack shaped my taste in Christmas music.
Somewhere in my memory, Carol of the Bells, Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree...
August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
Well, it’s 808 day, sooo…
August 8, 2026
This isn't my favorite song from The B-52s but I have a soft spot for it because it's Fred Schneider at his Fred Schneideriest. It's like he's doing an impression of himself.
August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
This song is usually only played at Christmas time, but it doesn't have the word "Christmas" in the lyrics. I listen to it all year long. It's one of my favorite songs of all-time. It was written in 1991 by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene. The melody is beautiful and lyrically it's one of the most meaningful and powerful songs ever written in my opinion. There have been many versions of this song, but my favorite version is the Gaither Vocal Band version. The guy who wrote the lyrics of this song, Mark Lowry, was a member of Gaither Vocal Band and he sang lead on this track.
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
But it's August!
I guess if you buy into it, Christmas can seem like the most wonderful time of the year, and if it's beginning to look a lot like that time of year, then it's usually when the same raft of songs appear on the radio.
Runner up: Marshmallow World because it's magical and fun!
I think for most people Christmas songs are more about memories, so for me it would have to be some Andy Williams as my parents had a couple of his LPs that they'd play on a Sunday morning whilst reading the papers.
If I'm being honest, Christmas doesn't seem quite as special as it used to, but with a son starting to understand what it's all about and some new traditions started it's starting to feel a little more special year by year. This song always reminds me of that.
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Apparently they are still going ... who knew? This had my ears at the time - as did the album - and still does. I can't fail to listen to Govinda and not feel uplifted.
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August 8, 2026
We just got home from the metric/broken social scene/stars show in Toronto and they played this and my heart soared.
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August 8, 2026
Tell us about your very favorite holiday / Christmas song.
I'm the trouble starter, punkin' instigator I'm the fear addicted, danger illustrated
talking politics with relatives on holiday table.
also why prompt this on August in the middle of a heatwave so cruel *shaking our heads*
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August 7, 2026
#365songs (219 / 365)
This is an interesting one. I picked up Shara Nova's first album as My Brightest Diamond, Bring Me The Workhorse, because she was the best part of the Decemberists' spotty overreach of a prog concept album The Hazards of Love. I think Workhorse is a better album than Hazards, possibly, but despite that "Freak Out" is one of my #365songs because it's the first one I think of when I think of Workhorse, I don't think it's one of the album's best songs. (The opener "Something of an End" would probably be my top choice for that honor.)
"Freak Out" sticks out because it came around when the notion of "production" was still kind of murky to me, and I think in a world where it'd been produced differently it'd be my favorite song on Workhorse. The problem is that the chorus isn't enough of a freakout and it doesn't center Nova's voice — the centerpiece of My Brightest Diamond and by far its strongest component — enough. Instead it's got a pretty anemic guitar line mixed too high and a bassline that doesn't do enough. The main thing I think it gets right is the drums, which do take a turn for the appropriately hectic.
I don't mean to bag on this song, which I think is decent. It's just that it's stuck in my memory as being a great song, or at least one I really like, that's held back by its production, and maybe the first such song I can remember ever hearing.
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August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
First that came to mind was La Yugular by Rosalía. That translates to the jugular and comes from an Islamic verse about Allah being closer to us than our jugular vein. The Arabic drives home this unrelenting prayer to the presence of the divine:
من أجلك أدمر السماء من أجلك أهدم الجحي فال وعود وال وعيد
Which loosely translates to no promises, no threats, just God or, it’s not about heaven or hell and never was as the final sung lines make clear: the divine isn’t contained in continents or galaxies but chooses to make itself home in our hearts and we lose ourselves in its love.
The whole song has that feel of prayer and awe and love. It almost always makes me sit back and breathe a bit deeper and, depending on the moment, might make my eyes a bit watery.
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August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
Well, baby, I've been here before I've seen this room and I've walked this floor You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya And I've seen your flag on the marble arch And love is not a victory march It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
I believe I said it before, but if there’s a band that had an incredible influence on my upbringing, this one was it. I could spend many days posting their music.
This one is far from my favorite, but I still love it.
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A serious earworm.
August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
If a prayer is just wishing for adults then iteration is what I want. It's a song about Donald Rumsfeld being put on trial for war crimes. This should apply to so many more evil psychos today.
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August 7, 2026
What’s a great song where the lyrics include counting ‘1, 2, 3, 4’?
Going with my first thought on this one.
August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
Simply beautiful song, "Don't give up", Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. Almost like a prayer and an answer all in one.
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August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
This one will work for this prompt. I think it's lovely.
August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
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August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
Maybe not quite a prayer, but it came to mind straightaway.
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
That isn't by Madonna? Hmmm (I mean like a prayer sure does feel uplifting, right? What a song!)
In that case I'll take a specific version of a song that always makes me feel uplifted and joyous —I don't pray, is that what it feels like for believers?
The original version of this lives on a classic album, a top 20 of all time candidate, even if the band have fallen into a bit of pastiche of themselves.
The Joshua Tree remains a stunningly good album, the song writing alone is clear, evocative, and I'll happily play it end to end from time to time. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For is one of the stand out tracks, anthemic, and hinting back to great soul love songs (River Deep, Mountain High anyone?), it could probably be seen as prayer like, prayer adjacent?
But during a set at Madison Square Garden they brought on a New York gospel choir, The New Voices of Freedom, who took that song and elevated into something that still gives me goosebumps. The soaring choir, the melodies, the underlying sense of elevated joy took a good song and elevated to a higher plane.
A celebration of music, a prayer to the power of bringing people in the shared experience of live music, a melding of genres that works so well it feels a little like U2 stole this song from a hymn book somewhere.
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August 7, 2026
Share a song that feels like a prayer.
preach
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August 6, 2026
#365songs (218 / 365)
A recommendation from my brother. The big draw for me is Andy Hull's voice, which reminds me very strongly of John Samson Fellows, but Manchester Orchestra's production is huge in a widescreen way that Samson Fellows's music never really even aspired to. So it's interesting to hear a voice like this over music like this.
The slower and more somber songs on The Million Masks of God are serviceable but suffer from sequencing that piles them disproportionately toward the end of the album, so they kind of start to blend together. Not so "Angel of Death," which is the second track and a great showcase for that widescreen production I talked about. The reason it's a great showcase is that it's got a proggy song structure with one hooky melody after another: minor-key verse, major-key chorus, looooong outro that's practically its own song. This album was apparently written after the death of a parent of one of the band members, and "Angel of Death" has a lot of compelling lines referencing lineages and impermanence and guilt and (of course) death that don't quite add up to more than the sum of their parts for me, but the music and the melodies and Andy Hull's voice are enough to bind everything together in a way that ensures this is still a great song.
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