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EARWORM! Soul Brothers No. 1 and 2
You don’t expect a superstar to be discovered by his own backup singer, but that’s a debt we owe to Bobby Byrd. The gospel-trained shouter not only boasted an earthy voice and a powerful sense of...
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EARWORM! The Lindsay Lohan Moment
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx She was so close. She was nearly there. And in 2003, just before she...
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EARWORM! The Great I AM
It’s hard at first to have much sympathy for the tale-teller of Neil Diamond’s 1971 hit “I Am … I Said.” He’s at the pinnacle but looking back to his earthbound days. Yet his ennui is not merely...
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EARWORM! You Are The Everything
xxx xxx Individuality is a curse. Not to lobby for some Puppet Masters hivemind, but the cage of our skulls can put us at odds with our habitat. We come to believe, each of us, that we are complete in...
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EARWORM! The Sorrow And The Shred
xx xx xx Buffalo Tom helped me grow up, and helped me get good at being sad. Do those amount to the same thing? Their dislocation, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, vibrated in tune with mine, and did...
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EARWORM! A Very Jewish Christmas
xx Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was not one of Santa’s reindeer and didn’t live on the North Pole. In fact, he was invented in 1939 by Robert L. May, a copywriter for Montgomery Ward department...
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EARWORM! … CDs Taken From My Car In A Burglary, Circa 2008
1. Belle & Sebastian: The Boy With the Arab Strap 2. Big Star: #1 Record/Radio City 3. Miles Davis: The Capitol/Blue Note Years 4. Neil Diamond: GOLD — Recorded Live At the Troubadour 5. The Best...
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EARWORM! The Angels Turn To Ashes
Dream lovers are wondrous things. In our thoughts, they grow magnified until perfected, until there is no simple way to tell their story anymore. They’re archetyped. Emmylou Harris, who has loved and...
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EARWORM! Angel And The Badman
She gave him a voice, he gave her stories. He gave her street cred, she gave him access. She gave him sweetness, he gave her menace. It wasn’t a partnership that had any right to flourish, but...
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EARWORM! It’s Your Very Last Chance To Hurt Me
They howled for me at just the right time. I’ve been an evangelist for Brooklyn-Boston postpunk group the Beatings for several years now, as the band that distilled the anger and displacement I felt...
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