Brandon's Buzz

Everything But the Girl — “Apron Strings [live]” (from Acoustic) —

The other night on Jeopardy! an answer popped up about “apron strings” and how they correlate metaphorically with a mother’s love, and A — ever the master of adorably mangled English idioms — announced he had never heard this expression theretofore. Because the above is one of my favorite songs ever, I had heard of the notion, and am thrilled to have a shattering piece of music to help enlighten my beloved. Ben Watt ably supports the ravishingly terrific Tracey Thorn — obliterating any doubts that these two are the most beautiful blend of British brilliance since Dave and Annie — in bringing to quiet, gently harrowing life this tale of a young woman’s desperation to have a child to call her own.

If you missed any of last week’s tunes, below is a quick recap:

MONDAY: Stevie Nicks & Lindsay Buckingham — “Twisted”
(from Twister [Music from the Motion Picture]) —

TUESDAY: Chris Wall — “Three Across” (from Tainted Angel) —

WEDNESDAY: Santana featuring Chris Daughtry — “Photograph”
(from Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time) —

THURSDAY: Patti LaBelle & Kristine W — “Land of the Living”
(from Classic Moments) —

FRIDAY: INXS — “Beautiful Girl”
(from Shine Like It Does: The Anthology (1979-1997) ) —

SATURDAY: Cyndi Lauper — “A Part Hate”
(from Hat Full of Stars) —

SUNDAY: Leona Lewis — “Brave” (from Echo) —

Leona Lewis — “Brave” (from Echo) —

For reasons that completely escape my comprehension, Lewis’ powerhouse sophomore album — an unexpectedly brilliant leap past an already-fabulous debut — has failed entirely to connect with audiences on this side of the pond. A tantalizing taste of what these foolish mortals are missing: Miss Leona, in full dazzling diva mode (replete with high-flying vocal acrobatics to die for) but masquerading as the meek ugly duckling and credibly selling an astonishingly powerful anthem of insecurity and of the suffocating struggle to overcome devastating doubt.

Cyndi Lauper — “A Part Hate” (from Hat Full of Stars) —

With all this hand-wringing over bullying (cyber- and otherwise), the horrifying recent rash of gay-related teen suicides, and the monumentally silly fight over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — c’mon Congress, we’re fighting two wars and counting, and we maintain military presences in dozens of other places around the world, so if folks are willing to fight and die for the sake of freedoms they can’t, as it now stands, even fully enjoy, they ought to have the right to get hot and heavy with a horny hippopotamus if they’re so inclined, without it being an ounce of your fucking business! — the topic of civil rights has stormed back to the forefront of the national conversation. (Doesn’t it figure, then, that — what, with a wacky witch running for the United States Senate and an illiterate Alaskan seriously pondering a presidential run — plain ol’ horse sense hasn’t?) Couching her message inside a fun, bopping beat (love that harmonica!), Lauper bravely rises to remind us — how funny that the collective we constantly seem to need it — that all radical change ever requires is one person deciding the time is now. (Incidentally, if you’re not otherwise booked later this evening, head on over to Brandon’s Buzz Radio at 9pm EDT for a special live chat with We Love Soaps’ main man Damon L. Jacobs, who is stopping by the show to discuss all of the above, as well as to preview his third annual “Give Up Your Shoulds” Day, which is taking place on November 1.)

INXS — “Beautiful Girl”
(from Shine Like It Does: The Anthology (1979-1997) ) —

A and I went to the movies last night to (finally!) catch up with the Wall Street sequel — my final verdict: Michael Douglas is fabulous, Shia LaBeouf holds his own, and the story is far too broad and too shallow for any of it to stick — and before the main event, we caught the trailer for Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway’s upcoming romantic drama Love and Other Drugs, which features this terrific tune, INXS’ final flirtation with top 40 stateside success. “Girl” by no means possesses the deceptive, intoxicating complexity of their late ’80s breakthrough smashes “Need You Tonight” and “Devil Inside,” but the late Michael Hutchence’s timeless, sweetly simple vocal work here is elegantly haunting.

This week, it’s Taylor Swift’s universe, and we all just live in it. ‘Nuff said:

Even though the set’s uptempo lead single “Mine” is neither half as interesting nor entertaining as “Love Story,” the cross-format smash which introduced her previous album, Speak Now, the third album the absolute hottest thing going right now in music — that sly, seemingly ubiquitous songstress Taylor Swift — is on track to shatter Shania Twain’s eight-year-old mark for the biggest sales week ever posted by a female country artist. Twain managed to move some 875,000 copies of her most recent studio effort Up! in its debut week in the fall of 2002; based on sales figures from the first couple of days, industry insiders are whispering loudly that Speak could well have been snatched up a staggering one million times by close of business on Sunday. (For a bit of perspective, this week’s number one record — Sugarland’s fascinating The Incredible Machine — sold just over 200,000 copies in its opening frame; Toby Keith and Lil Wayne also topped the chart this month, with first-week sales of 70,000 and 120,000, respectively.) There’s no doubting that Swift writes spectacularly strong, eminently relatable tunes (even though her ability to effectively sing them remains in serious question), and for an industry mired in tumult and searching desperately to regain its mojo, a week such as this serves as a powerful reminder that buyers can still be lured to their local record store in droves when given good reason. And for that, regardless of whatever faults her music may or may not wear proudly, Swift should be applauded. (If you’re looking for even more Swift, pick up your copy of Speak Now at Target, whose exclusive deluxe version of the album contains six bonus tracks, including the pop radio mix of “Mine.”)

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Patti LaBelle & Kristine W — “Land of the Living”
(from Classic Moments) —

A pair of peerless, powerfully piped gay icons from entirely different decades combine their exquisitely titanic talents and do what they do so brilliantly well: using song to celebrate and affirm life.

Santana featuring Chris Daughtry — “Photograph”
(from Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time) —

I was never a Def Leppard fan back in the day — pop fans in the late ’80s were pretty uniformly divided into two categories: George Michael acolytes and hair-metalheads (and I bet you can tell from regularly reading this blog which camp I fell headlong into) — and even though I’ll grudgingly admit that, for what they were, these guys wrote some pretty decent tunes, I don’t think you’ll find five people who would willingly call their guilty pleasure smash “Photograph” one of the great guitar classics of all time. (Certainly not on a par with Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” or Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” at any rate!) Nonetheless, Daughtry gamely steps in for Leppard’s leader Joe Elliott and, lushly enveloped by Santana’s typically deft strumming, owns this one from the opening note.

Chris Wall — “Three Across” (from Tainted Angel) —

The Buzz is in a small-town Texas mood this morning, and with good reason: the hands-down finest series currently airing on prime-time television — NBC and DirecTV’s magnificent masterpiece Friday Night Lights, an intense, all-heart, profoundly powerful study in societal and emotional contrasts within a football-obsessed burg in the Lone Star state — returns for its fifth (and, sniff, final) season tomorrow night on DirecTV’s the 101 channel (ahead of an NBC run in spring 2011), and as though my iPod magically knew all of this was taking place, it sent up toward my ears yesterday in a shuffle this tune, a sweetly superb dissection of life in the sticks. The story writes itself: boy loves girl, girl loves boy’s best friend, Bo and Luke comfort boy from TV land, and boy finds it difficult to decide which side of the fork — left (leaving behind the comforts of home for the old, cold real world) or right (staying put while the old, cold real world slowly invades anyhow) — to traverse.

Stevie Nicks & Lindsay Buckingham — “Twisted”
(from Twister [Music from the Motion Picture]) —

Ostensibly, rock’s premier tortured couple are simply setting to music the story of the film’s storm-chasing, thrill-seeking duo. But just like parallel meteors ripping through the fabric of an eternal night sky, any time Nicks and Buckingham fuse their senses and sensibilities together — whether within the familiar confines of Fleetwood Mac, or out on the open range unencumbered — all the esoterica and extraneity falls away, and all that matters is the consuming fire of their own vicious chemistry.

If you missed any of last week’s tunes, below is a quick recap:

MONDAY: Chantal Kreviazuk — “M (Next Train to the Moon)”
(from Colour Moving and Still) —

TUESDAY: Matisyahu — “One Day” (from Light) —

WEDNESDAY: Sugarland — “Incredible Machine”
(from The Incredible Machine) —

THURSDAY: Scala & Kolacny Brothers — “Creep”
(from Creep [Single]) —

FRIDAY: Nanci Griffith (with Darius Rucker) —
“Love at the Five and Dime” (from The Dust Bowl Symphony) —

SATURDAY: T’Pau — “Heart and Soul”
(from Heart and Soul: The Best of T’Pau) —

SUNDAY: Danielle Brisebois — “Five Friends”
(from Portable Life) —

Danielle Brisebois — “Five Friends” (from Portable Life) —

Cute li’l Stephanie Bunker from All in the Family became a bad-ass rocker chick with a sensitive soul when she grew up, and — wouldn’t you know — America yawned. Brisebois has achieved substantial success as an in-demand songwriter and producer, having landed hits with the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Natasha Bedingfield, and Leona Lewis, but her own magnificent work — the best chunk of which had the fabulously ill-timed bad fortune to fall into that deep dearth between the end of Courtney Love’s reign at the top of the heap and the start of Pink’s — has woefully fallen by the wayside. With a dazzling, dynamic performance here, Miss Danielle reminds us that even though we can ultimately only count on ourselves in this world, the ability to take that hand that you’ve been counting with, interlock it with someone else’s, and hold on for dear life, is still pretty damned essential.