The 500 - #107 - Portrait of a Legend - Sam Cooke

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: #107
Album Title: Portrait of a Legend (1951-1964)
Artist: Sam Cooke
Genre: Soul, R&B, Gospel
Recorded: Multiple Studios

Released: June, 2004
My age at release: 39, but songs were recorded before I was born
How familiar was I with it before this week: Fairly
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #307, dropping 200 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: A Change Is Gonna Come

There are songs we attach to artists. These are the signature pieces that feel inseparable from the person who recorded them. You hear the opening notes and you don’t just think of the song, you think of them. A few that immediately come to mind for me...(and are also, unsurprisingly, on The 500 list) include:

• Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
• Purple Rain - Prince
• Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
• Stairway To Heaven - Led Zeppelin
• (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Rolling Stones

And then there are few, legendary songs that don't quite stay put. They still belong to an artist, but they outgrow him or her. They become something else...something that doesn’t feel locked to a single moment or a single voice.

It is often said that "history repeats itself". I’ve never been sure that’s true and  believe it is more accurate to say that "history echoes". The same shapes return, the same tensions surface, but never in exactly the same way. Some songs work like that, too. They don’t just mark a moment, they wait for the next one. Such is the case I will make for A Change Is Gonna Come, the 29th track on the 30 song anthology from Sam Cooke, Portrait of a Legend (1951-1964).

Label to the 45 RPM single for A Change Is Gonna Come.

The story of this song began on October 8, 1963. Sam Cooke and his entourage of musicians and family members arrived in Shreveport, Louisiana for a pre-booked reservation at the local Holiday Inn. They had just finished performing as the headliners at the Municipal Auditorium on a bill that included many other African American artists.

A battered poster from the October 8th show.

When they reached the front desk, they were told there were no vacancies. The explanation rang hollow and Cooke immediately recognized what was happening. He refused to accept the situation quietly and demanded to see the manager, standing his ground even as those around him, including his wife, urged caution. Eventually, the group left, but frustration spilled out as horns blared and words were shouted into the night. By the time they reached another motel downtown, the police were already waiting. Cooke and others were arrested for disturbing the peace.

Postcard for the Holiday Inn at 1906 North Market St. in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The next day, a New York Times headline reduced the incident to something easily dismissed...and woefully myopic: “Negro Band Leader Held in Shreveport.”

However, within Black communities, the reaction was anything but placid. There was outrage born from the understanding that this wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a larger, familiar pattern in the Jim Crow South.

Jim Crow laws were a system of state and local laws
in the American South that enforced racial segregation
and denied Black Americans basic rights.

After his release, Cooke reflected on the protest song Blowing In The Wind, which had been released by Bob Dylan that autumn of 1963. Cooke was moved by Dylan's lyrics, but also wondered how such a poignant anthem for civil rights had been penned by a white musician. He would later say he was ashamed that he had not written something so important himself.

Lyrics to Blowing In The Wind - Bob Dylan.

Cooke was further influenced by the message in the now-famous I Have A Dream speech that had been delivered earlier that summer in Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  As winter approached, Cooke sat down to write A Change Is Gonna Come, reportedly completing it in less than an hour on his guitar. Not content with his initial, stripped down version, Cooke wanted it to be recorded with a full orchestra with each verse presented as a different movement. The string section would carry the first, the horns the second and the timpani delivering the bridge. In the final movement, it all comes together However, instead of swelling to a big crescendo, it remains restrained. It is the sound of waiting...waiting for the change that is "gonna come".

Lyrics to A Change Is Gonna Come.

A Change Is Gonna Come delivered the cultural gut-punch Cooke intended and it was embraced by the Civil Rights Movement and audiences in general, placing well on contemporary music charts. However, it is a song that was not tied down by that generation. It has continued to resonate for more than 50 years.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his I Have A Dream speech.

Wisely, Cooke speaks in general truths and not specifics. He does not name a place, a law, an event or a protest. He has penned a song that seems to hold hope, anger, defiance and uncertainty in equal measures. Consequently, the line "it's been a long time coming" can fit any generation. In 1964, it sounded like a promise and in each subsequent decade it echoed like a necessary reflection.

Sam Cooke recording in a smoky studio, 1960s.

In the 1970s, the song settled into an era still grappling with the promises of the ’60s. By the 1980s, when I first heard it, it was appearing in documentaries and biopics, becoming a kind of shorthand for unfinished business. In the 1990s, as contemporary black artists recorded their own versions, the recording took on an educational role, offering moral clarity as the century closed. In the 2000s, it surfaced again, aligning with the optimism of the Obama era. And in 2020, it returned once more, sounding as relevant as ever during a summer marked by the deaths of young black men at the hands of police.

More than half a century later, Shreveport finally atoned for the blatant racism with an apology delivered from a festival stage, offered to Cooke’s daughter, Mary. The world was very different from the one her father had stood on that fateful night in 1963.  And though the events could not be undone, the city’s acknowledgement of a big social wrong was a sure sign that change had indeed come.  Hopefully, similar gestures will continue in order to craft a better world.

Mary Cooke accepting the key to the city and an apology
on stage in Shreveport, June 22, 2019.

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.