Today’s category is…
A Great Song That You Discovered After Everybody Else Already Heard It.
Here are the staff picks:
Dan Milliken: “Lord I Hope This Day is Good” – Don Williams
What can I say? I like to think I have a strong overview-type knowledge of country music, but I guess everyone’s got some inexplicable holes in their cultural patchwork. I’ve known of this classic by name for years and have listened through a fair amount of other Don Williams, but I’d never actually bothered to fire the song up until Leeann used it as her pick for one of these categories the other day. Good stuff, though.
Tara Seetharam: “Amen” – Edens Edge
This song was released months ago, but I just heard it for the first time on the radio the other week. There’s something about it – between the 90s-esque melody and the adorably written storyline – that totally hits my sweet spot.
Kevin Coyne: “Rolling in the Deep” – Adele
I don’t know how I missed this one, but in the last two weeks, I’ve played it more than all but seven songs on my iPod.
Leeann Ward: “Chasing Pavements” – Adele
Well, as indicated by their respective titles, her first album was recorded when she was 19 and her second album was released very recently at age 21, so it’s taken roughly 2 years for me to discover Adele, even though the rest of you have known about her for a while by now. Since I don’t live under a rock, I’ve of course heard her name, just not her music.
Since we’re on the subject of Adele lately, I didn’t discover her music until a couple months ago when “Rolling In The Deep” was released. After buying her first album, I cannot stop playing “Chasing Pavements”.
Maroon 5 – “She Will Be Loved”
Awesome, Dan! Lee Ann Womack has a great version too. I only heard it a year or so ago and fell in love with it.
I didn’t discover “Thinkin’ Problem” by David Ball until maybe a year ago.
There’s two sonbgs – both released while I was living in England
“Hello Darlin'” by Conway Twitty – this song received zero airplay on the BBC
“Easy Loving” by Freddie Hart – same story
I “discovered” Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” (and the rest of her music), a hit in 1961, because of Linda Ronstadt’s 1976 hit with “Crazy”. Linda’s led to an article on her in the 2/28/77 issue of Time Magazine. Towards the end of the aticle it says:
“She goes up against the memory of Patsy Cline’s recording of Willie Nelson’s Crazy. Cline’s version was said to be definitive. It pales next to Ronstadt’s.”
Since I was strictly into rock’n’roll when I began listening to music on the radio in the late 50’s, I don’t ever recall hearing a Patsy Cline song before reading the Time article. Now I love the music of both of these ladies.
Everything I mentioned in Day 24’s comments section probably suffices to answer this one as well. But perhaps the most pronounced example would be Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”.
Circa 1994, when the song first came out, my family was transitioning between Kids’ Praise tapes and their ilk (Psalty and the Donut Man) to asinine Scripture Memory tapes. I only became familiar with whatever managed to pop up on the radio when I was riding in the cars of friends’ parents.
So I only became at all familiar with songs that were truly ubiquitous, and even within those constraints there were rather astonishing holes.
Around 2007, when the first Rock Band game came out, I called up one of my college friends (attended circa ’99 to ’03) and said “Hey, d’ya know what’s awesome? Soundgarden’s ‘Black Hole Sun’.”
And he’s like, “Yeah, twelve years ago.”
“Easy Lovin” for me too. Just never heard the song until a couple weeks ago.
“Say it Right” – Nelly Furtado
Until I was 15, I only listened to country music. I had an elitist air about how I would only listen to country stations and watch country videos. Little did I know that there was a big, beautiful world of other music just waiting to be discovered. In my sophomore year of high school I started to braver and try the pop station. One of the first songs I heard was “Say it Right.” Between that and “Hot N Cold,” I was hooked on our pop station.
Now I listen to most genres of music. I believe that it’s good to be well rounded musically.
“Keep Bleeding” by Leona Lewis was one I really didn’t pick up on till about mid-2008.
I love how literally no one seems to dislike Adele now that she’s hit it big. It’s so refreshing to have an indisputably good act in mainstream pop again. (Which isn’t to say there’s no room for her to grow – you still can’t call 21 as great of an achievement as Blue or Tapestry or even Jagged Little Pill. But she’s on the right track.)
(Joni Mitchell’s Blue, not LeAnn Rimes’)
I would say Adele, esp. “Rolling In The Deep.”
It is one of the few songs I’ve heard constantly as of late that I don’t turn the dial away from, unless there’s a song from the remote past that’s on some other station nearby.
And Dan, I agree with you that her album 21 may not be another Blue or Tapestry; but with so much dreck out there, I’d settle for above-average, which is at least what 21 is (IMHO).
Rolling in the Deep as well, but I’m gonna go with a song that was apparently extremely overplayed back in the 90s that I just discovered, “Waterfalls” by TLC.
I caught on to “Rolling in the Deep” at the end of 2010 and it was my favorite song for five or six months. Her album, while I agree is not perfect, has been my favorite album the year… so far.
Evanescence – Bring Me To Life
I dont know if I discovered it late, but “Someone Like You” by Adele has only been in rotation on my itunes a couple months and has become the #1 song on my itunes-i cannot get enough of this girl. I love the album