try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
(or: november 9, 16, and 23 — a thumbnail sketch)
posted at 2:59 pm by brandon in tuesdays in the record store with brandon
Life has been a bit crazy the past couple of weeks, but the record store report is back in action, and wouldn’t you know it’s just in time for the quarter’s three busiest frames. Holiday shopping season is in full swing, kids, and the music business is playing along mightily. Dig in:
Recent smashes from almost all of A’s favorite gals — Katy Perry (“Teenage Dream”), Sara Bareilles (“King of Anything”), Sugarland (“Stuck Like Glue”), and Ke$ha (“Take It Off”) — not to mention midlist hits from Maroon 5, OneRepublic, and Paramore, punctuate the track list for the new compilation Now That’s What I Call Music! 36. Also noteworthy from the Now folks: following up their pulse-pounding pair of discs celebrating the best of the ’80s, they have now turned their gaze to another decade with a strong new collection, Now That’s What I Call the 1990s, a masterful mix of grungy garage rock standards (Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” Collective Soul’s “Shine”), fair Lilith-era lovelies (Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You),” Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch”), and the passionate prom-night epics of the day (Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be,” Shawn Mullins’ “Lullaby”). Of course I have a few quibbles with the song selection here — let it suffice to say that “Missing” and “Mr. Jones” and “You Oughta Know” and “Hold My Hand” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” must land front-and-center spots on the inevitable Volume 2, no excuses — but if you ever doubted that the ’90s brought us every bit as much terrific tuneage as the decade it succeeded,
this record stands as a stark testimony to the fallacy of that argument.
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