Five Songs to Soundtrack Your Thanksgiving Dinner

Watching those calories this holiday season? Perhaps you’ve run out of eating pants? Ease up, reader! Thanksgiving is the time for food, and we’ve got you covered on music. Below, we’ve created the soundtrack to your Thanksgiving dinner. Cue up the songs below, get cozy-sprawled on your living room floor, and let the tryptophan take over....  read more

Fear of Flying: The Most Inappropriate Songs for In-Flight Radio

A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak on some panels at Diversafest in Tulsa, Okla. On my flight back home to Atlanta, both my iPod and laptop were dead, so I decided to check out some in-flight radio. I surfed the dozen or so stations until—as we reached cruising altitude—I settled on one with a ’50/early-’60s golden-oldies format. After tunes from Dion & the Belmonts, The Platters and—if I remember correctly—The Shangri-Las, what should come on but Santo & Johnny’s classic 1959 instrumental “Sleepwalk.”  Now, normally, I love “Sleepwalk”—it’s one of the most wistful, nostalgic, emotive pieces...  read more

The Day The Music Was Re-Born: 17 tracks in Memory of Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper

  Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper—though always lumped together because of the cruel hand they were dealt one winter night in 1959—were really a varied bunch of musicians, all with different sounds and all at different stages in their respective careers. But the three were tied together by the bonds of rock ’n’ roll, still in its nascent stage, still magical and—mostly—unjaded.  Don McLean dubbed their tragedy “the day the music died” in his legendary tribute song “American Pie,” and he was right, in a way. For rock ’n’ roll, that crash was—on a smaller scale—like the Kennedy...  read more