Ken Tucker
Appearances
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
Teddy Swims had a big hit last year with the song Lose Control, which showcased his gruff but supple ballad singing. The Georgia-born singer has clearly been influenced by southern soul men like Al Green and Bobby Blue Bland. On his new album titled I've Tried Everything But Therapy Part 2, Swims offers a new set of love songs that demonstrate the depth of his romanticism.
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
On Are You Even Real?, he's so swept away he wonders whether he's dreaming the object of his adoration.
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
Where Teddy Swims offers up his vocals with glowing clarity, Benjamin Booker opts to reduce his singing to just another instrument in the mix of songs and styles found on his new album called Lower. On his previous albums, Booker grappled with then-current events such as the Black Lives Matter protests.
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
The lyrics on his new album are more obscure, hinting at deep emotions whose rawness is either matched by or buried beneath layers of distorted guitars and keyboards. There's a beauty in the kind of musical chaos Booker creates. One of the best examples of this is Same Kind of Loneliness. A few years ago, Benjamin Booker opened for Neil Young on a few of Young's tour dates.
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
Young himself is now showcasing a new band called the Chrome Hearts that includes Willie Nelson's son Micah on guitar and the great organist Spooner Oldham, who was part of the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section and co-writer of hits like the box tops Cry Like a Baby. To judge from the band's booming first single, Big Change, however, Neil Young isn't seeking out pop or country sounds.
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
He aims to have the Chrome Hearts sound at least as grungy as his usual backup, Crazy Horse, and the noise they make is powerful.
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
Big change is coming, Young chants over and over. Given the timing of the release and the image of Young waving an American flag in the video, there's an inescapable feeling that he's talking about the recent presidential election, though it's impossible to tell whether he thinks the changes are welcome or ominous.
Fresh Air
The Political Battle For The Bros
Like Teddy Swims and Benjamin Booker, Neil Young is letting loose with some big emotions, but letting you judge how to interpret them.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
Teddy Swims had a big hit last year with the song Lose Control, which showcased his gruff but supple ballad singing. The Georgia-born singer has clearly been influenced by southern soul men like Al Green and Bobby Blue Bland. On his new album titled I've Tried Everything But Therapy Part Two, Swims offers a new set of love songs that demonstrate the depth of his romanticism.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
On Are You Even Real, he's so swept away he wonders whether he's dreaming the object of his adoration.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
Where Teddy Swims offers up his vocals with glowing clarity, Benjamin Booker opts to reduce his singing to just another instrument in the mix of songs and styles found on his new album called Blower. On his previous albums, Booker grappled with then-current events such as the Black Lives Matter protests.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
The lyrics on his new album are more obscure, hinting at deep emotions whose rawness is either matched by or buried beneath layers of distorted guitars and keyboards. There's a beauty in the kind of musical chaos Booker creates. One of the best examples of this is Same Kind of Loneliness. A few years ago, Benjamin Booker opened for Neil Young on a few of Young's tour dates.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
Young himself is now showcasing a new band called the Chrome Hearts that includes Willie Nelson's son Micah on guitar and the great organist Spooner Oldham, who was part of the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section and co-writer of hits like the box tops Cry Like a Baby. To judge from the band's booming first single, Big Change, however, Neil Young isn't seeking out pop or country sounds.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
He aims to have the Chrome Hearts sound at least as grungy as his usual backup, Crazy Horse, and the noise they make is powerful.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
Big change is coming, Young chants over and over. Given the timing of the release and the image of Young waving an American flag in the video, there's an inescapable feeling that he's talking about the recent presidential election, though it's impossible to tell whether he thinks the changes are welcome or ominous.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?
Like Teddy Swims and Benjamin Booker, Neil Young is letting loose with some big emotions, but letting you judge how to interpret them.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Why does it feel significant? Why do I have to tell you about it? In two short sentences, Lucy Dacus summarizes decades of motivation behind singer-songwriter pop music. It's that mixture of confession and melody that creates an illusion of intimacy, the feeling that we really know the artist. Indeed, feeling is what Dacus' new album is all about. It could not be more feely.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
It's called Forever is a Feeling, and I'm happy to say that her general mood is romantic and optimistic. On the song Best Guess, she sings her affection to a close friend who's become a lover. Dacus's small, intimate voice is tailor-made to be heard whispering in the ears of fans glued to the small screens of their phones. Even her proclamations of passion are subtle and modest.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
A song called Ankles reaches back to a time when a woman showing a bit of her ankle was considered daringly erotic. Dacus takes pleasure in transporting this feeling to a contemporary context.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Lucy Dacus and Jeffrey Lewis both compose acoustic-based singer-songwriter music in which the first-person singular is deployed to announce emotions and opinions. But they could not be more different. For 20 years now, Lewis has been eloquent, crass, romantic, and realistic, frequently all in the same song.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
When he writes a confessional lyric, he exposes more than a well-turned ankle, not bothering with artful metaphors.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Lewis's new album is called The Even More Freewheeling Jeffrey Lewis, the title and cover photo a nod to Bob Dylan's early New York City folky days. A dedicated New Yorker himself, Lewis gets louder and more low-down on this album's centerpiece, a great song about just how painful daily existence can be called Sometimes Life Hits You.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
This is the musical equivalent of hitting your thumb with a hammer, and on the less radio-friendly version of that song, Lewis inserts a pungent four-letter curse between the words ow and that hurts. Lucy Dacus makes clear that she, too, has experienced moments when, in Jeffrey Lewis's phrase, life hits you like a chisel to the chest. Both of these artists have their flaws.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
Lewis is sometimes too yammeringly self-absorbed. Dacus is sometimes too much of a monotone mumbler. Each can flatten music that ought to sound more airy and buoyant. But their best songs answer Dacus's question that began this review. Why do I have to tell you about it?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham
For both Dacus and Lewis, the answer is because it feels good to unburden yourself and maybe lift a burden or confirm a feeling for your listeners as well.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
Beatle fans have known of Ringo Starr's love of country music ever since he had the Fab Four cover the Buck Owens hit Act Naturally in 1965, singing a rare lead vocal. Look Up isn't even Ringo's first country album. That was way back in 1970.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
While producer T-Bone Burnett has written most of the music here, he and Ringo have selected some clever new songs, including a couple by an old pro, Billy Swan. Swan will forever be known for one beautiful number one hit, I Can Help, from 1974. Swan's always charming songwriting yields this lovely interlude called You Want Some.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
What makes Ringo such an effective country vocalist? Well, the rhythmic sense that made him a great rock drummer guides the way he phrases, giving a country lyric the air necessary to breathe life into the story it's telling.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
Freed from the demands of rock and roll volume when singing with the Beatles, Ringo's crooning possesses the kind of relaxed authority that usually only a genius like Willie Nelson or Ray Charles can make sound so easy.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
Ringo spent a good chunk of his post-Beatle career fronting a series of what he calls his all-star bands with a rotating cast of rock stars.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
The 11 songs on Look Up feature less glitzy but no less strong support from Nashville vets like bassist Dennis Crouch, pedal steel player Paul Franklin, and younger budding stars like guitarist-singer Molly Tuttle and bluegrass guitar phenomenon Billy Strings. Strings' most recent album, released late last year, Highway Prayers, has brought him a larger audience than Bluegrass usually attracts.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
The biggest guest star on this album is Alison Krauss, with whom Ringo hits an emotional peak on this collection called Thankful.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
The gratitude that Ringo expresses on Thankful is what has made him such a beloved figure. He always came across as the most modest Beatle, grateful he'd lucked into being a member of the most influential rock band in history.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
But his underrated talent, his quietly persistent hard work over the years, it's all contributed to the strength of this collection, in which Ringo Starr emphasizes the value of simple, straightforward sincerity.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
The year in pop music 2024 pivoted around a trio of women, hitmakers whose various successes hinged upon assertions of creative ambition and admissions of romantic weakness. Foremost among them is the British songwriter Charli XCX.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
Her album, Brat, sought to redefine brattiness, less as irritating behavior than as an insistence that petulance can be justified frustration and anger, that you don't get to define her feelings. Charli's collaborations with other women on the remix version of the album, including Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande, suggested a growing army of artists ready to take up her cause.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
Keeping things light while also serving as an example of ferocious willfulness was Sabrina Carpenter, whose album title, Short and Sweet, referred both to Carpenter herself and the concise, clever hits she makes.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
Listening to her cooing vocals and seeing her wiggly videos, I had to reach way back to Mae West to come up with a comparable example of a woman who wraps her steely command in such a deceptively saucy tone.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
That's Please, Please, Please, Carpenter's pleading, not pleading warning to a boyfriend that he's got to treat her right. The third member of my 2024 power grouping is Chapel Roan. Her mixture of singer-songwriter details, dance-pop grooves, and lovely ballads really caught on as the admiration of her peers increased.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
She was an opening act on Olivia Rodrigo's tour and is a guest on Sabrina Carpenter's Netflix Christmas special. No wonder she proclaimed, I'm your favorite artist's favorite artist. One of her catchiest songs is the emotionally complex Good Luck Babe, in which Roan encourages a straight woman who seems to have a crush on her to feel free to express her desires more openly.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
If you're thinking I've forgotten a certain woman, one around whom so much of not just the music industry but the culture industry revolves, well, I did enjoy a lot of Taylor Swift's album The Tortured Poets Department. But I'd be lying if I didn't say I enjoyed a book about her even more. Rob Sheffield's Heartbreak is the National Anthem, How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
It's the year's best critical appraisal of pop stardom disguised as a fan's ecstatic notes. Finally, I want to remind you of a woman who is not a hitmaker, whose 2024 work was among the year's finest. Arriving in an election year, Carsey Blanton's glowingly political collection, After the Revolution, tried to imagine a better world after a period of upheaval and chaos.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
Where the other artists I played locate their feminism in dance pop, Carsey Blanton mixes folk and rock distinctively. And her version of sexual politics is broad enough to encompass a class critique as well.
Fresh Air
Comedian Ronny Chieng Didn't Tell His Parents He Got A 'Daily Show' Job
While Blanton is singing from the sidelines of superstardom, some stars might do well to listen to her for an example of how to make good music that also refers to subjects other than self-care. Nothing wrong with expanding your already huge base by being even more ambitious in the new year.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
In 1978, that was most people's introduction to David Thomas' voice, the central sound of Per Ubu, on the opening song of their debut album, The Modern Dance. Everything Thomas would do for the next 47 years was already in place. The high-pitched growl and prickly phrasing, his stop-start way of blurting out the lyrics, the surrealist approach to imagery.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
The band's personnel would change regularly over the decades. The one pair ubu constant was David Thomas. His singing, his songwriting, and his immense physical presence on stage. Not for Nothing was one of his pre-ubu stage names, Crocus Behemoth.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Thomas's death at age 71 brings to a close one of the most significant avant-garde experiments ever conducted within the confines of pop music. Emerging from Cleveland, the band was as inspired by the clanking sounds of the city's industrial factories as it was by the blues that David Thomas loved. As he said more than once, we don't promote chaos, we preserve it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Over the years, certain themes recurred in Thomas' songwriting. He wrote lyrics that revealed a deep knowledge of 20th century hard-boiled fiction.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Novelists like Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, and James Crumley would have covered their ears at Pere Hubu's noise, but they'd recognize a kindred spirit in the man who wrote repeatedly about desperate getaways in the ink-black night, about cynical men and tough women trying to make emotional connections.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
In the extraordinary song called Irene from 2014's Carnival of Souls album, Thomas steals a phrase from 50s rocker Screamin' Jay Hawkins to tell Irene he thinks their love is probably doomed. For a few moments, the harsh clatter of peru-bu music subsides. His croon only underlines his despair. I put a spell on you
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
Thomas's go-to facial expression was the scowl. He liked to come off crotchety and did not suffer fools gladly. In his later years, he'd sing while seated in a chair on stage, like a king surveying his subjects, like, in fact, the Mad King Ubu in Alfred Jari's 19th century absurdist play that inspired the band's name.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
This pair ubu enunciated like a man caught mumbling in a dream to convey the sound of distraction, confusion, or pure bliss. In the song Mandy from the 2013 album Lady from Shanghai, Thomas sings the line, I could sleep for a thousand years.
Fresh Air
Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'
David Thomas and his band have been recording a new album. He knew it was to be his last. We will endeavor to continue with mixing and finalizing the new album so that his last music is available to all. I cannot wait to hear it.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Coming up, we hear some new Christmas songs. This is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
There are two ways to go when recording Christmas music, devout or irreverent. By devout, I don't mean somberly religious as much as I mean sincere and respectful. Few pop performers do devout sincerity more assiduously than Ben Folds, whose earnest tone is ideal for holiday songs.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
There are two ways to go when recording Christmas music, devout or irreverent. By devout, I don't mean somberly religious as much as I mean sincere and respectful. Few pop performers do devout sincerity more assiduously than Ben Folds, whose earnest tone is ideal for holiday songs.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Folds has a new album called Slayer, as in Christmas Slay, though I'm sure, given his puckish sense of humor, he meant the title to echo the name of the thrash metal band Slayer, spelled differently, and authors of albums such as Rain in Blood. Ben Folds, by contrast, wants to reign in heaven, blessed to sing his new would-be Christmas standard called Christmastime Rhyme.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
Folds has a new album called Slayer, as in Christmas Slay, though I'm sure, given his puckish sense of humor, he meant the title to echo the name of the thrash metal band Slayer, spelled differently, and authors of albums such as Rain in Blood. Ben Folds, by contrast, wants to reign in heaven, blessed to sing his new would-be Christmas standard called Christmas Time Rhyme.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
The sentimentality that is inherent in much country music gives it an ideal base upon which to build holiday music, and the four-member country act Little Big Town has now created The Christmas Record, a straightforward title for a briskly sung collection that mixes standards with original material, such as their single, Glow.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
The sentimentality that is inherent in much country music gives it an ideal base upon which to build holiday music, and the four-member country act Little Big Town has now created The Christmas Record, a straightforward title for a briskly sung collection that mixes standards with original material, such as their single, Glow.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
One of Little Big Town's better choices of country covers is their version of a song I wish more people listened to at this time of year, Merle Haggard's lovely song, If We Make It Through December.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
One of Little Big Town's better choices of country covers is their version of a song I wish more people listened to at this time of year, Merle Haggard's lovely song, If We Make It Through December.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
My final selection of new Christmas music is a duet between a very famous pop star and a very famous football player. No, no, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey have not cut their version of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. I'm talking about Travis's brother Jason Kelsey and his duet with Stevie Nicks, doing Ron Sexsmith's beautiful holiday song, Maybe This Christmas.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
My final selection of new Christmas music is a duet between a very famous pop star and a very famous football player. No, no, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey have not cut their version of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. I'm talking about Travis's brother Jason Kelsey and his duet with Stevie Nicks, doing Ron Sexsmith's beautiful holiday song, Maybe This Christmas.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
That surprisingly effective Kelsey- Stevie duet is part of an album called A Philly Special Christmas Party, a Philadelphia Eagles charity fundraiser. Thinking back to the start of this review, all of my new examples are devout, not irreverent. Maybe next year someone will come up with a new novelty Christmas hit, but as it stands, this year is well served by some very soothing music.
Fresh Air
Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
That surprisingly effective Kelsey-Stevie duet is part of an album called A Philly Special Christmas Party, a Philadelphia Eagles charity fundraiser. Thinking back to the start of this review, all of my new examples are devout, not irreverent. Maybe next year someone will come up with a new novelty Christmas hit. But as it stands, this year is well served by some very soothing music.