King of America

Certain Songs #665: The I Don’t Cares – “King of America”

October 10, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Wild Stab
Year: 2016

It’s a weird quirk of the alphabet that the most recent music by one of my all-time heroes, Paul Westerberg, shows up before The Replacements or his solo work in Certain Songs, but here we are.

Because it showed up on the heels of the Replacements reunion, and because it showed up instead of any new Replacements songs, the I Don’t Cares Wild Stab album coulda been the biggest pop culture FU to fans since John From Cincinnati, but instead, I think its Westerberg’s strongest record since 2000’s Stereo/Mono .

Certain Songs #411: The Costello Show – “Suit of Lights”

January 4, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: King of America
Year: 1986

King of America was supposed to be half recorded with The Attractions and half recorded with The Confederates, the crack backing band that T-Bone Burnett rustled up for him early in 1985.

But things weren’t working out with The Attractions, as too many years too close together were finally taking their toll musically and emotionally.

That is, except for “Suit of Lights,” the folk-rock masterpiece that is the one recording with The Attractions that actually made it on King of America.

Certain Songs #410: The Costello Show – “Brilliant Mistake”

January 3, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: King of America
Year: 1986

After the insanely prolific first five years of Elvis Costello’s recording career, eventually something had to give, and it turned out that something was quality control, as he followed up Imperial Bedroom with a pair of relative duds, signified by the titles he gave them.

1983’s Punch The Clock was shrill and full of uninteresting horns, though it gave him his first ever U.S. Top 40 hit with the cloying “Everyday I Write The Book,” and is probably worth me revisiting at some point. And Goodbye Cruel World was just dull.

So Elvis did two things: he took a year off, and he started recording again without The Attractions. The result was the stunning King of America, the first of two records that made 1986 arguably the best year of his career.