The 500 - #108 - Hunky Dory - David Bowie

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #108
Album Title: Hunky Dory
Artist: David Bowie
Genre: Art Rock, Pop Rock
Recorded: Trident Studios, London, England

Released: December, 1971
My age at release: Five
How familiar was I with it before this week: Fairly
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #88, rising 20 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Life On Mars?

As this ongoing nine-and-a-half-year album project suggests, I am fascinated by music. I’m drawn to the pull of a strong melody, the jolt of an unexpected and clever chord change, or the electricity that happens when extraordinarily talented musicians lock into something that feels almost transcendent. However, the thing that truly defines my love of music is most often found in the lyrics.

I’ve also realized that I’m drawn to songs that don’t give everything away. The ones that feel layered, allusive  and sometimes surreal. Songs where a line sends your thoughts somewhere else. Perhaps to an obscure reference from a book or to a moment in history, a lyric or even a songwriter's catalogue. I've sometimes joked that I like lyrics that make me do homework. Sometimes that statement means actual research, but often it is just describes the time I will spend turning the words over and over in my head.

Some songs stick with you long enough that they feel like lifelong companions. They are the ones that linger, shift, and change over time. Songs that ask you to participate with or ponder their ambiguity. There are songs that resonated with you at age 17 because you thought you understood them, but don’t really become clear until you’re 45. And then you hear them at 60, and everything takes on a new shape.

Among my favourites is Life On Mars?, from David Bowie's fourth studio record, Hunky Dory. The song  has everything I love about music. The melody borders on the theatrical, but it never quite settles. It features excellent musicians, as Bowie has always bolstered his art with legendary talent. This record includes the players who will soon become "The Spiders of Mars" on his next record. Ziggy Stardust (#35 on The 500) They include Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey. The opening piano for Life On Mars? was improvised in the studio by keyboard virtuoso and rock journeyman Rick Wakeman.

According to Wakeman:

"One of the most memorable and enjoyable experiences I had in the studio was the week I spent with David Bowie and his band in Trident Studios recording Hunky Dory. David gave me free reign to play what I liked on the piano to his wonderful songs and that was particularly prevalent when it came to Life On Mars? when he just said 'do what you like' and I did."  (Link to conversation and an acoustic piano version by Wakeman)

Underneath that wonderful melody, the chord progression quietly subverts expectation. Instead of neatly resolving, it keeps shifting, moving through changes that feel just unfamiliar enough to keep you off balance. The result is something both beautiful and unsettling. A complete breakdown of the "line cliches" and "functional harmony" in Life On Mars? can be found here, if you're a nerd (like me) for that kind of stuff.

So, by my entirely subjective and deeply unofficial checklist of “incredible music,” we’ve officially checked the first three requirements.

• Engaging Melody
• Clever Chord Progressions
• Excellent Musicianship

And the lyrics? Well, to fully appreciate what Bowie was trying to accomplish we need to rewind the clock to 1967 when he was a struggling musician. In fact, he had only recently rebranded himself as Bowie, given that his birth name, David Jones, could easily be confused with pop music celebrity Davy Jones of The Monkees.

Monkee and '60's heartthrob Davy Jones. 

Bowie had just released his first, self-titled record which was lauded by critics but remained commercially unsuccessful. His publishing company, Essex Music, had just received a copy of Comme D'Habitude by Claude François -- a song that eventually became Frank Sinatra’s smash recording of My Way.

Album cover for Comme D'Habitude by Claude François.

Bowie was approached to write the English lyrics to the melody and demos of his version, Even A Fool Learns To Love, can still be found online. However, the French publisher rejected Bowie's version and it was Canada’s Paul Anka whose words made their way to crooner Sinatra. The song became an English language hit in March, 1969.

Album cover for My Way, as performed by Frank Sinatra

By 1970, Bowie was touring the United States, travelling from New York to Los Angeles by bus, a journey that nudged him back into writing. This time, he leaned away from rock and roll toward something more theatrical. Back at Trident Studios in London, he revisited his failed attempt at My Way, slowly reshaping those ideas into Life on Mars?, which Bowie jokingly dubbed "My Way On Mars" in a later interview.

Album cover for the single, Life On Mars? released 18
months after Hunky Dory, when Bowie had become much
more famous.

In fact, Bowie gives a cheeky nod to Sinatra on the back cover of the Hunky Dory album cover. The words "*inspired by Frankie" appear next to the track listing for Life on Mars?

Back cover and close-up of dedication on Hunky Dory.

Which brings me back to those lyrics that still entrance and fascinate me decades after first hearing them. They sidestep easy interpretation and drift through a series of surreal, loosely connected scenes that blend everyday frustration with strange imagery and seemingly disconnected references.

The original handwritten lyrics to Life On Mars?

At its most literal, the song follows a bored, frustrated young girl who escapes escalating hostility in her family home by retreating to a movie theatre. Once there, she finds herself alone and realizes that the world on the screen is "a saddening bore" -- just as strange, disconnected, and unsatisfying as her own.

Opening lyrics to Life On Mars?

However, there is so much more present in those words. The lyrics are a mirror and a cultural commentary that work as well today as they did in 1971. The lines are sometimes fragmented, humorously exaggerated, and, sometimes, seemingly meaningless. The images pile up, jumping from one idea to the next, until the story stops feeling literal and starts to feel emotional. By the time Bowie asks, “Is there life on Mars?”, it doesn’t sound like a question about existence on a different planet, it sounds like a question about whether there’s anything more than this very moment we find ourselves in.

Album jacket for single of Life On Mars?

And tucked inside all that surreal imagery is one of my favourite Bowie winks. It's the line that the film his protagonist watches is “about to be writ again.” It’s a sly, almost throwaway moment, but it reveals the whole engine of the song. Bowie isn’t just describing a film that feels repetitive, absurd, or over‑scripted and he’s not just acknowledging his own act of writing and rewriting. He has left the door open for us. The question at the heart of the song is one we get to ask and answer again and again.

Is there something more than this?

And maybe that’s the real brilliance of Life on Mars?. The song isn’t finished. It’s still being written... by Bowie, by culture, by you and me – by anyone who presses play and lets those first piano chords tilt the world just slightly off its axis.

The 500 - #109 - Aftermath - The Rolling Stones

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #109
Album Title: Aftermath
Artist: The Rolling Stones
Genre: Rock & Roll, Blues Rock, Art Rock
Recorded: RCA Studios, Hollywood, USA

Released: April, 1966
My age at release: Eight months
How familiar was I with it before this week: A couple of songs
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #330, dropping 221 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Paint It Black

Like many of this generation, I’m on several group text threads. Some are made up of close, dear friends and our conversations are varied. Others are looser and organized around sports, comedy, or specific shared interests. These threads have mixed demographics. They are populated by both good friends,  acquaintances, and even strangers. Among them are “threaders” who  enjoy sharing their scores from a variety of daily word games -- Wordle, Connections, Quordle, and Reunion. There are some participants whom I have never met. In one of the groups there’s a guy I know, but not particularly well. He is, without fail, regularly angry.

Every time he weighs in, I think of the Grandpa Simpson "yells at cloud" meme. According to him, social media is ruining everything. The world is falling apart. Kids these days are hopeless. Apparently, Blue Jays players wear too much jewelry, and for some reason that’s a sign of cultural decay. Some of his comments are delivered loudly and with a bitterness wildly out of proportion with his complaints.

The other day he fired off another take that felt like a shot across my bow, and, as I have a few times before, I clapped back. Not angrily, or at least not consciously, but with a sarcastic edge that maybe went a touch too far. I gleaned this by the way the rest of the group reacted: “Wow, Hodgy shows his teeth,” someone joked. Another chimed in: “I’m staying out of this one.”

Undeterred, he followed up with a explanatory message, doubling down and justifying his point. I didn’t reply. I just moved on. Besides, my wife wanted to catch our current favourite show on television. Granted, watching the superhero satire The Boys probably wasn’t the best choice as it only magnified what I was trying to leave behind. It’s wildly entertaining for the less squeamish, but it’s also a grim mirror of our moment, where outrage is amplified, rewarded, and, so far, unresolved.

The next day, a couple of friends from that chat group checked in. They didn't say anything directly, but I could tell these were "you good?" inquiries. This was kind and I appreciated it. I wasn’t upset. I didn’t feel wronged. I wasn’t harboring resentment. I still don’t. I’ll keep chatting in that group about hockey and music, sending jokes and harmless memes. I also know, without illusion, that I am not changing this guy’s opinions, temperament, or default negativity with a single sarcastic retort.

And yet here I am, writing about it. I do see the contradiction there.

Which brings me, oddly enough, to the Rolling Stones’ Aftermath. an album soaked in sarcasm and bitterness, lyrically abrasive, often confrontational, and a little misogynistic. Aftermath doesn’t invite you in. It pushes back at you. It argues. It sneers. It insists on having the last word.

Maybe that’s what put me on edge. Or maybe listening to Aftermath simply sharpened my awareness of a tone I recognize too well...the satisfaction of winning an argument, the hollow little triumph of being right, the way sarcasm can feel sharp and clever in the moment, but leave a faint, bitter aftertaste once the noise dies down and everyone moves on.

Part of what makes Aftermath such an interesting listen is that it exists in two forms. The original U.K. version, released in April of 1966, runs longer with 14 tracks, while the American version, released two months later, trims down to 10 shared songs and adds just one more. But what an addition it is! That extra song went on to become a signature piece for the London-based rockers, Paint It Black.  It went to #1 for 11 weeks in 1966 and is a hit that they still play at concerts as recently as last summer.

60 years ago this week.

Paint It Black is one of the darker songs on Aftermath. While much of the album argues (Doncha Bother Me), sneers (Stupid Girl), and asserts control (Under My Thumb), Paint It Black sounds singularly fixated. There’s no smirk in it, no sense of winning. Its themes of grief and alienation appropriately fitted the era in which it was written. In 1966, post-war optimism was fading, The Kennedy Assassination was a vivid memory, and the war in Vietnam was escalating.

Album jacket for the single, Paint It Black.

Listening to both versions of Aftermath, especially the U.S. label with Paint It Black, I couldn’t help but notice how easily sarcasm and negativity can slip into certainty and disposition and then how quickly certainty can curdle into abrasion. Aftermath doesn’t ask you to agree with it. It dares you to. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why my patience ran a little thinner than usual, and why a single group text exchange became hotter than it should.

Aftermath, it turns out, is less interested in reconciliation than it is in having the last word. I suppose that is also my default setting. And perhaps "yelling at clouds" is necessary sometimes. 

The 500 - #110 - Loaded - The Velvet Underground

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #110
Album Title: Loaded
Artist: The Velvet Underground
Genre: Rock, Pop, Proto Punk
Recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, USA

Released: November, 1970
My age at release: 5
How familiar was I with it before this week: A couple of songs
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #242, dropping 132 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Sweet Jane

As a teen, I became an avid record shopper. I worked part-time jobs from the age of 14 and always set aside money for my weekend trips downtown to the record stores, especially the used bins at Dr. Disc. Discovering music felt like a pursuit, almost a sport.

Teenage friendships are always a little competitive. We wanted to win at sports, board games, cards, and, perhaps most importantly, we wanted to be the first to uncover a new band. There was real status in putting a record on the turntable at a house party and having it win over the room. It was also humbling to put one on and have someone else switch it off mid-song because the crowd had deemed it lame.

A house party from the 1980s - from the internet, but perfectly
reminiscent of the ones I attended.

With that realization came something stranger -- possessiveness. We wanted the bands we had discovered to succeed...but not too much. We wanted our “finds’ to remain reachable by playing at small, intimate venues, and drifting into the pub next door after a concert to mingle with the crowd. In some unspoken way, we wanted them to remain ours, our special thing, shared only among those who were "in the know".

Marillion, a band I discovered in 1983 was one of those
bands I wanted to keep within my circle of friends.

When a new record from one of “your” bands hit the shelves, it usually came with a complication. A single might slip onto the radio, or a video would start popping up on MuchMusic (Canada's version of MTV). Of course, you were happy to have new material and you wanted the record to sell well enough to keep the band afloat and fund another tour. But what you didn’t want was a hit. Not a real one.

In 1985, Marillion had its first bona-fide hit with Kayleigh.
I was excited for them, but also worried it meant mainstream popularity.

Nothing triggered indignation faster than seeing that music escape your circle. If someone from another clique, one with, in our estimation, terrible taste, suddenly showed up wearing that band’s T‑shirt, it felt like a violation. The voice in your head would scream "Poser!", "Tourist!", "Bandwagon Jumper!" You’d known about this band for years. You’d earned the knowledge that only comes from discovering a rare EP in a dusty record shop or late‑night listens dissecting the lyrics from one of their deepest cuts. Their sudden popularity in the commercial world didn’t feel like success; it felt like theft.

Loaded, the fourth studio release from The Velvet Underground, was conceived as an album full of hits. The band, already close to fracturing, and effectively doing so after the record came out, had been pushed by Atlantic Records to write songs with clear commercial potential. The title works on multiple levels. It is a nod to the slang term (loaded) for intoxication on alcohol or drugs, and a more literal raison d’etre...deliver an album "loaded" with songs that might top the charts.

The Velvet Underground in 1970. (l-r) Doug Yule, Lou Reed,
Sterling Morrison and Maureen (Moe) Tucker.

It didn’t succeed, at least not in the way Atlantic Records had hoped. None of the three singles released from Loaded managed to crack the Top 40. What the band did create, however, was an enormously enjoyable pop record and one that moves easily and pleasantly through multiple genres. It has also steadily grown in stature over time. In retrospect, Loaded sounds less like a failed bid for commercial relevance and more like a quiet triumph, its reputation solidified by the acclaim of critics and its high placement (#110) on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 2012 list.

Musically, Loaded casts a wide net and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it repeatedly in preparation for this blog post. The album moves comfortably between straightforward rock and roll and gentler pop, drawing heavily on early‑'60s radio sounds that Lou Reed, the band’s primary vocalist and leader, clearly absorbed as a listener long before he became a songwriter. There are traces of garage rock in the lean guitar work, folk‑rock in the conversational vocals, simple chord progressions, and even a touch of country and soul in the album’s looser rhythms and warm harmonies. Unlike earlier Velvet Underground records, which often leaned into confrontation or abstraction, Loaded feels grounded in familiar genres. It’s an album that sounds intentionally approachable, as if the Velvet Underground were testing how close they could move toward the mainstream while still sounding unmistakably like themselves.

Lou Reed played his final show with the Velvet Underground on
August 23, 1970 - before Loaded was released.

So, I can’t help but wonder if there was a teenager like me in 1970. Someone who had discovered The Velvet Underground with their 1967 debut (#13 on The 500), who had grown alongside them through White Light/White Heat (#293) and the self‑titled third record (#316). When that imaginary teen first heard the pop sensibilities creeping into Loaded, did he/she worry that tourists and poseurs and bandwagon jumpers from high school were about to start sporting Velvet Underground T‑shirts, absent‑mindedly humming the melody to Sweet Jane? I want that Velvet fan to know something: You’re not alone. The 1985 version of me feels your pain.

The 500 - #111 - The Bends - Radiohead

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #111
Album Title: The Bends
Artist: Radiohead
Genre: Alt Rock, BritPop, Post Grunge
Recorded: Three London Studios, including Abbey Road

Released: March, 1995
My age at release: 29
How familiar was I with it before this week: Very
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #276, dropping 165 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Just

To say I was obsessed with Radiohead’s second release, The Bends, would be an overstatement. But, for about six weeks in the summer of 1995, it was a dominant part of my daily soundtrack. That record followed me everywhere, from late-night runs and city drives to the stereo humming in my first solo apartment. It literally arrived at a moment when everything in my life felt unstable and unfinished, but also on the brink of profound transition.

Radiohead in 1995

It was a strange hinge-point. My world was changing and I was trying, often clumsily, to change with it. There was possibility everywhere, but also the unmistakable feeling that I was letting go of things I might never get back. I was turning 30, and from the dramatic heights of that moment (laughable now from the vantage point of 60), it felt like an expiry date. I was convinced I’d aged out of relevance, a relic lingering in a world that had already moved on. That feeling lined up perfectly with The Bends, especially the record's third single release, Fake Plastic Trees. The song’s lyrics and sound captured the weariness and exhaustion of a routine life, without raging against adulthood, just sagging under their combined heft. "Gravity always wins."

The summer of 1995, at a road hockey tournament
 in Victoria Park, London, Ontario.

That summer, I was still working at a bar, slinging drinks and chicken wings, watching the staff skew younger with every passing month. I’d been accepted to Teacher’s College. So it was an exciting time, but that came with so much second guessing. It meant giving up my apartment, draining my savings, and hauling myself from London to Thunder Bay. It meant trading a lucrative, comfortable gig for a flyer on something resembling a real career. What if I failed? What if I didn't fit in the education world? What if this was the moment future-me would point to and say, “That’s where it all went sideways.”

Clearing tables at the bar in 1995.

On top of that, I’d just ended a nine-year relationship. At that time, we both knew that breaking up was the right decision. Neither of us was in a good place to support the other. However, it still felt like I'd cracked my life open on purpose and was convincing myself there was something better waiting for me. Thom Yorke's lyrics from Just, the fourth single on The Bends, always seemed to find the right, fragile moment to remind me that I'd made a grievous error.

That’s where The Bends lived. An album about pressure, dislocation, and the low-grade panic of becoming someone you’re not sure you recognize yet. It didn’t offer answers. Instead, it poked and prodded. It made me question things I thought I’d already decided. Yorke’s voice sounded both accusatory and exhausted, like it was asking whether my new ambitions were salvation or just another reckless gamble.

In those summer weeks, as my move to Thunder Bay drew near,  The Bends simultaneously served dual purposes. It was certainly comforting “escape” music, but also diagnostic. Rogue lyrics seemed to know how to name my anxiety and accompanied my doubt. Yet, somehow, listening to The Bends also made it easier to keep moving. It got me through difficult days, and pushed me onwards.

Packing up for Teacher's College.

From where I sit now, all of that anxiety feels comically ridiculous.  I wasn’t a relic at 30. I wasn’t blowing up my life. I was turning a page...granted, with far more internal drama than the moment required. But maybe that intensity mattered. Maybe taking it all so seriously was the point.

Everything worked out. The move to Thunder Bay led to a career I love. I managed to win the girl back. The risks paid off. And the things I feared I was losing? Most of them were just shedding their earlier shapes. I didn’t know that then. I only knew I was experiencing a dozen conflicting emotions, often in the same day. Fear and excitement, grief and restlessness, doubt fighting with determination, loneliness brushing up against a quiet, stubborn hope, all of it sharpened by a pressure that somehow kept me moving.

That’s why The Bends still makes sense to me. It was a companion at a time when I needed to scare myself into action. Admittedly, I took everything far too seriously then and every choice felt permanent while every potential misstep seemed catastrophic. But maybe that intensity was necessary. Maybe the fear, the pressure, and the overthinking were just the cost of committing fully. In the end, things worked out not in spite of that anxiety, but because of it.

As for that long-ago breakup, after reuniting, we married and we're both Radiohead fans, enjoying several listens to The Bends this past weekend, clearly framing it in a different context -- as an extraodinarily good record.

The 500 - #112 - If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears - The Mama's And The Papa's

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #112
Album Title: If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears
Artist: The Mama's and The Papa's
Genre: Folk Rock, Pop Rock, Sunshine Pop
Recorded: Western Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California

Released: February, 1966
My age at release: 7 months
How familiar was I with it before this week: A couple of songs
Is it on the 2020 list? No

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Spanish Harlem

Before we even get to the music, we need to talk about the apostrophe.

Not the fantastic Frank Zappa record from 1974 and not, as my students often protest, whether they can use “it’s” correctly.

"But, Mr. H., if a bone belongs to your dog... why don't you write 'It's bone'?"

Because  the dog prefers its bones without an apostrophe.

Seriously, I’m talking about decorative apostrophes; rogue apostrophes; apostrophes that seem to have been sprinkled on a page as if delivered by a pepper shaker. The ones that are just there, doing nothing, contributing nothing except, perhaps, silently daring English aficionados to notice. Such is the case with the album jacket for the debut record from "The Mama’s and the Papa’s"; If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears.

Alternative album cover for the group's debut record.
(l-r) Cass Elliot, Denny Doherty, John Phillips and Michelle Phillips.

Now, I want to be very clear: I know it is not wise, kind, or good etiquette to point out other people’s bad grammar. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am reminded of the Quentin Crisp quote (and later Sting lyric), “It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile.”

Fair enough, it takes a gentleman to smile politely in the face of ignorance, but it requires an English teacher to whisper: “You don’t need that apostrophe.”

Of course, that Crisp quote is a little pompous, too, isn’t it? The idea that noticing something, quietly judging it and then making sure people know that you could have commented, but chose not to because you are a gentleman is a tad arrogant.

Book cover for Crisp's autobiography.

Now, I am someone who deeply believes grammar matters, not just because it makes us smarter, but because it helps us understand each other. It is also my job to help students improve their writing, and that includes correcting their grammar in a slow, methodical way. One can not bombard a 12-year-old with every grammar rule. Instead, we work our way through rules throughout the year and add them to a growing checklist we use to proofread our work.

The checklist my students are currently using.

The Mamas and Papas album cover provides me with a wonderful teaching opportunity. I plan to show it to my students during an upcoming grammar lesson and ask them if they can spot the editing mistake. Showing students real‑world grammar errors is a powerful way to make learning feel tangible and relevant. However, it once (almost) backfired on me.

I was walking home from the YMCA in downtown London when I noticed that a new pizza shop had opened. The sign read “Pizza Round’s”...with a superfluous apostrophe. I snapped a photo with my phone, fully intending to use it in a future Grade 4 writing lesson.

Pizza Round's restaurant sign, with additional apostrophe.

A few days later, a lovely, sweet and kind student in my class asked if she could hand out coupons to the class from her parents’ new restaurant which was, as you've probably already guessed, the aforementioned “Pizza Round’s”. Needless to say, that "teachable moment" was shelved, permanently.

Which brings us to The Mamas & the Papas, a band whose debut album contains some of the most glorious vocal harmonies of the 1960s, and whose name would eventually be spelled without apostrophes. Interestingly, however, it wasn’t a grammar error that prompted the album’s reprinting in 1966.

It was the toilet.

That spring, records were quietly pulled from store shelves when the original cover, featuring the band posed in a bathtub, with a toilet clearly visible in the corner, was deemed indecent. As a result, original pressings of the album became instant collector’s items, with some copies later fetching as much as $300 at auction. Subsequent releases featured a strategically placed white rectangle listing the album’s hit singles -- Monday, Monday and California Dreamin’ -- carefully obliterating the offending facility.

Alternate cover, showing members  (l-r) Denny Doherty, Cass Elliot, 
John Phillips and Michelle Phillips. 

Once I got past the grammar error, I settled in to listen to a beautifully crafted record and one that is easy and pleasant to listen to. The quartet's harmonies are spectacular and I most enjoyed the track Spanish Harlem, which was originally recorded by soul legend Ben E. King.

Lyric from Spanish Harlem.

In the hands of The Mamas and the Papas, the melody, much like the rose in the song’s lyrics. unfolds slowly and patiently. Elliot’s voice enters not to dominate, but to deepen. It’s a song about noticing beauty where you least expect it, and that feels like a far better use of my attention than searching for grammatical missteps.

(Mama) Cass Elliot.

Speaking of which, I’ll finish this post here and send it off to my father, who edits my work weekly. I trust that if any rogue apostrophes have slipped through, he’ll find them and fix them, with a gentlemanly smile. Maybe I should put one in just for fun.