Age
55 54 "album":
As this is my last entry for the draft and I still don't have an album, I'm going out with a flourish: the actual pick, a runner-up pick and an honorable mention.
Runner-up:
One of the things I enjoy about the internet is the abundance of rabbit holes. For example, when wikipedia first appeared, I used to spend hours going through random articles, and if I found one that piqued my interest, I would also go through most of if not all the links in the article as well. The drawback for me is that I very rarely track the course of events that lead me to particular points of interest. One such example is my runner-up song. The artist is
Norma Tanega, who's probably mostly remembered now for her song You're Dead, which was used for the TV show What We Do in the Shadows, but that wasn't the direct reason (It may have been in some thread here for all I remember). Whatever the exact reason was, I gave myself a quick internet tutorial on this woman and her music, which apparently has been around about as long as I have. I quickly cycled through the grainy youtube videos of her performances of Walkin' My Cat Named Dog and You're Dead, as well as the non-performance videos of most of the rest of her catalog, but it was one song in particular that I enjoyed the most:
A Street That Rhymes At 6 A.M.
Before I reveal my actual pick, here is my honorable mention:
This song actually entered my life back in 2011 but it grew on me over the years:
Jaan Pehechaan Ho by Mohammed Raffi. No doubt most of you will recognize it from other uses, but this version is from the Bollywood film in which it debuted. I find it catchy and infectious and made me wish I knew the language it's sung in.
Actual pick:
Towards the end of 2017, I learned that the Smithereens were going to be playing a venue near me, so I told my wife I wanted 2 tickets to their show as a birthday/Christmas present. About a week later, the band's lead singer passed away, prompting them to cancel their current shows while they regrouped.
As much as I have loved this band's music over the years, I also had fallen out of touch with their exploits, so when they released their last album in 2011, I hadn't really paid much attention. However, in whatever process it was in which my love of their music re-awoke, I found the song
Sorry. I don't know if this is healthy or not, but I will crank this song in the car if/when the Mrs. is on the warpath--without her around, of course. To me, it's one of the greatest songs of their entire catalog: