Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The Legend of Gram Parsons, in 12 Songs

      by

      A half-century after his death, listen to some of the singer-songwriter’s most soulful signature tunes, and some tributes and covers by artists he inspired.Harvey L. Silver/Corbis via Getty ImagesDear listeners,For quite some time, I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about an artist whose music means a lot to me: the singer-songwriter Gram Parsons.When I realized that the 50th anniversary of his death was this year — Sept. 19, to be exact — I thought it would be as good a time as any. Only I didn’t want to focus on the tragic and morbid details of Parsons’s death, as so many people have done for the past half-century. (Parsons died of a drug overdose at age 26 in a Joshua Tree motel.) I wanted to use the anniversary of his death, maybe a little paradoxically, as an occasion to argue that it should not be the defining element of his legacy. The music should be.My piece about Parsons was published on Thursday, but I wanted to use today’s Amplifier to delve even deeper into his music. That’s right: This newsletter is a Gramplifier. (I had to. I’m sorry.)A native of Winter Haven, Fla. — and born into a family that made its fortune in the citrus industry — Parsons sought to bridge the divide between the counterculture and the country-music establishment. A Southern boy with a rock ’n’ roll heart, he dreamed of a loftily named, utopian sound he liked to call “cosmic American music,” injecting traditional styles with a bit of the unknown. At his best — in his time with groups like the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, as well as in his later solo work — Parsons made that vision a reality. Though he didn’t find much commercial success while he was alive, his influence continues to ripple.Today’s playlist contains some of Parsons’s most soulful signature tunes, as well as some tributes and covers by artists he inspired, like Elvis Costello and, of course, his protégée and duet partner, Emmylou Harris, who has been one of the most persistent torchbearers of Parsons’s legacy.Parsons remains a kind of outlaw figure in the cultural imagination, suggesting an alternative to more complacent country rock, and if you’re unacquainted, discovering his catalog feels like dusting off some dazzling hidden gems. So cue up this playlist and get ready for the return of the grievous angel.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The International Submarine Band: “Luxury Liner”An early Parsons composition included on the International Submarine Band’s 1968 album “Safe at Home,” “Luxury Liner” is at once a rollicking road song and a tuneful confession of lonesomeness in the tradition of Parsons’s idol Hank Williams. Emmylou Harris would later help popularize the song — as she did with much of Parsons’s material — when she covered it as the title track of her 1976 album. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Byrds: “Hickory Wind”Parsons wrote two songs that appeared on “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” his only album with the Byrds, and one of them, “Hickory Wind,” is among his most enduringly beloved tracks. As the music critic Ben Fong-Torres put it in his 1991 biography of Parsons, named after this very tune, “What made the song so universal was its recognition of one of life’s big questions — Is that all there is? — combined with pleasant evocations of youth and the safety a kid felt being at home among the pines, the oak, and the brush.” (Listen on YouTube)3. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Hot Burrito #2”The Flying Burrito Brothers — the third band Parsons joined in as many years — melded country music and psychedelic rock seamlessly on their 1969 debut album, “The Gilded Palace of Sin.” “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow was perhaps the band member whose style best demonstrated this fusion: He played pedal steel through a fuzz-box, as though it were an electric guitar. (Listen on YouTube)4. Elvis Costello & the Attractions: “I’m Your Toy”Parsons was a huge inspiration for Elvis Costello’s 1981 country covers album, “Almost Blue,” and on it Costello offered his own renditions of two Parsons songs, including this arresting take on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ goofily titled classic “Hot Burrito #1.” Costello, though, decided to change the song’s name to reference a memorable lyric in the refrain: “I’m your toy, I’m your old boy/But I don’t want no one but you to love me.” (Listen on YouTube)5. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Sin City”We’re talking Los Angeles here, not Vegas. Perhaps the greatest example of the briefly simpatico songwriting partnership of Parsons and the former Byrd Chris Hillman, this twangy ballad captures the mood of late-60s Southern California burnout in the fiery spirit of the Louvin Brothers. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Wild Horses”For better and for worse, Parsons spent a lot of time in the late ’60s and early ’70s hanging out with the Rolling Stones, particularly Keith Richards (who admitted to Fong-Torres, “yes, maybe hanging around the Rolling Stones didn’t help him in his attitude towards drugs”). Parsons taught Richards a lot about American country music, though, and many people claim his influence can be heard on “Exile on Main St.” songs like “Sweet Virginia” and “Torn and Frayed.” That exchange could also be reciprocal, though, like when Richards let the Flying Burrito Brothers record his band’s new song “Wild Horses” before the Stones did. (Listen on YouTube)7. Gram Parsons: “Still Feeling Blue”For “GP,” his 1973 debut solo album, Parsons recruited much of his hero Elvis Presley’s red-hot old backing band: the guitarist James Burton, pianist Glen D. Hardin and drummer Ronnie Tutt. They lend an air of experience and polish to Parsons’s own compositions, like the lively country throwback “Still Feeling Blue.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Gram Parsons, “The New Soft Shoe”Ostensibly — if somewhat inscrutably — about the auto pioneer E.L. Cord, “The New Soft Shoe,” another highlight from “GP,” boasts one of the loveliest and most wistful melodies Parsons ever wrote. (Listen on YouTube)9. Gram Parsons, “The Return of the Grievous Angel”At a tour stop in Boston, a young poet named Tom Brown handed Parsons a sheet of vivid lyrics he’d written with Parsons in mind. They became the basis of the laid-back, lived-in “The Return of the Grievous Angel” — destined to become one of Parsons’s signature songs. (Listen on YouTube)10. Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”Emmylou Harris was an unknown folk singer on the Washington, D.C., club circuit when Parsons recruited her to sing backup on his solo records and tour with his band. After his death, she became a solo star in her own right, but she continued to pay tribute to Parsons throughout her career. This wrenching ballad from her major-label debut album, “Pieces of the Sky,” is about her processing the overwhelming grief of Parsons’s loss: “I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham,” she sings in her clarion voice, “if I thought I could see your face.” (Listen on YouTube)11. Gram Parsons: “$1000 Wedding”Here is Parsons at the peak of his powers as a conduit for emotion. Memories of a thwarted wedding and a subsequent bender swirl in an impressionistic recollection, not always told in a linear fashion but emotionally piercing nonetheless. “Supposed to be a funeral,” Parsons sings in a heartbreakingly weary voice. “It’s been a bad, bad day.” (Listen on YouTube)12. Gram Parsons: “In My Hour of Darkness”Each verse in this elegiac song is dedicated to someone in Parsons’s life who had recently passed away: first the actor Brandon deWilde (the young man who “went driving through the night”), then the guitarist Clarence White (“another young man safely strummed his silver-stringed guitar”), and finally the Los Angeles music scene fixture Sid Kaiser (“kind and wise with age”). There’s something haunting about Parsons writing this song so shortly before his own death, and it closes out “Grievous Angel” with both a spiritual warmth and the chill of premonition. (Listen on YouTube)Out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Legend of Gram Parsons” track listTrack 1: The International Submarine Band, “Luxury Liner”Track 2: The Byrds, “Hickory Wind”Track 3: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Hot Burrito #2”Track 4: Elvis Costello & the Attractions, “I’m Your Toy”Track 5: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Sin City”Track 6: The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Wild Horses”Track 7: Gram Parsons, “Still Feeling Blue”Track 8: Gram Parsons, “The New Soft Shoe”Track 9: Gram Parsons, “The Return of the Grievous Angel”Track 10. Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”Track 11: Gram Parsons, “$1000 Wedding”Track 12: Gram Parsons, “In My Hour of Darkness”Bonus TracksIn 1999, Emmylou Harris helped put together the richly reverent “Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons,” which showcased the breadth of the musicians who were influenced by Parsons — including Wilco, Beck and Sheryl Crow — and demonstrated how Parsons’s songs have echoed across generations. The great folk singer-songwriter Gillian Welch’s stirring take on “Hickory Wind” is one of the album’s finest moments, as is Lucinda Williams’s swaggering “Return of the Grievous Angel,” with backing vocals from the one and only David Crosby. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      ‘Melissa Etheridge: My Window’ Review: Musings on Life and Music

      by

      On Broadway, this rock concert spliced with memoir has gained a striking intimacy.In 1979, when Melissa Etheridge was an aspiring rock star getting ready to leave Leavenworth, Kan., for music school in Boston, she got a 12-string guitar. Her father made a macramé strap for it — a sturdy, intricate piece of knot work that was a portable souvenir of his love.“And this is it,” his Grammy Award-winning daughter said during her Broadway show, turning around to give everyone a view of the strap that held up her instrument.It was a charming moment, and in our high-definition, multi-screen world, refreshingly analog: just Etheridge, life-size and in three dimensions, sharing the room with us.Share it she does, superbly, in “Melissa Etheridge: My Window,” which opened Thursday at Circle in the Square Theater, just one block east of where an earlier version of the show ran Off Broadway last fall. On Broadway, this rock concert spliced with memoir has gained a striking intimacy, as if Etheridge had shrunk an arena to fit in the palm of her hand.A stage stretches across one end of the space, floor seats and a center aisle are where the theater’s thrust stage would usually be, and a tiny satellite stage sits behind them. Circle in the Square never struck me as a warm, embracing theater, but Etheridge makes it one, paying graceful, diligent attention to every section of the 726-seat audience, and occasionally coming down off the stage to sing and stroll.Written by Etheridge with her wife, Linda Wallem Etheridge, and directed once again by Amy Tinkham, this musically gorgeous, narratively bumpy show starts with Etheridge’s hit “Like the Way I Do,” ends with “Come to My Window” and fits 15 husky-voiced songs in between, including a trippily comical “Twisted Off to Paradise,” an arrestingly beautiful “Talking to My Angel” and a winking ode to her current gig, “On Broadway.” (Sound design is by Shannon Slaton.)On a set by Bruce Rodgers whose spareness serves the complexity of Olivia Sebesky’s projections, this is a visually slick production, with abundant jewel tones in Abigail Rosen Holmes’s saturated rock-show lighting, and Etheridge looking glamorous in costumes by Andrea Lauer.The show is shorter, more polished and more assured than it was Off Broadway — though Etheridge still seems undefended when she doesn’t have a guitar strapped across her or a piano in front of her. She also doesn’t speak memorized lines but rather tells versions of stories mapped out in the script. It’s a valid approach that sometimes leaves her fumbling for words.Kate Owens plays the small, clowning role of the Roadie, a character whom the audience loves but who I wish would desist from upstaging Etheridge with antics.Etheridge herself is very funny, and she knows how to handle a crowd. Such as when she got to the point in her life story when she fell for a woman who was married to a movie star — “a for real, for real movie star,” she added, for emphasis.“Who?” a voice called out, not that the performance is meant to be interactive.“Look it up,” Etheridge said, shrugging it off.Unlike her recently published memoir “Talking to My Angels,” which opens with a recollection of “a heroic dose of cannabis” that changed her understanding of herself and the universe, “My Window” proceeds chronologically, starting with Etheridge’s birth. (Projections show baby Missy with fabulous hair.) So the talk of what Etheridge calls “plant medicine” comes later.This is a passion of hers, so it belongs in a show about her. But the performance devolves into speechifying every time it comes up, except when it morphs into an enactment of experiencing an altered state — which, despite some vividly kinetic projections, can be as tiresome to watch onstage as it would be off.Surprisingly, the most starkly powerful part of the show Off Broadway — Etheridge recounting the death of her son Beckett, at age 21, in 2020 — works less well on Broadway.I cannot fault Etheridge for her stiffness in that delicate section at the performance I saw, or for reaching for words — like her blunt assessment, “He was difficult” — to convey her memories. But this is where relying on the script’s gentler, more contextual language could assuage what must be a terrible vulnerability.Logistics also undercut that scene. While Etheridge speaks from the large stage and the auditorium is plunged in darkness, a guitar is placed on the satellite stage by a technician who crosses in front of many people. No distraction should break the connection between Etheridge and her audience in that moment.She is, throughout “My Window,” a marvel with that audience.Back when her fame was rising, she told us in Act II, she started playing arenas and stadiums.“Thousands and thousands of people,” she said, “and the funny thing is, the more people there were, the further away y’all got.”On Broadway, they’re near enough again for her to commune with. And so she does.Melissa Etheridge: My WindowThrough Nov. 19 at Circle in the Square Theater, Manhattan; melissaetheridge.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Enough About Gram Parsons’s Death. It’s Time to Celebrate His Music.

      by

      The country-rock pioneer died 50 years ago at age 26 with two influential solo albums to his name, leaving a legion of “what if”s behind.More than almost any other musician, the country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons’s legacy is entwined with the story of his tragic death, 50 years ago this month.The details are sad, macabre and sordid enough to have inspired a movie titled “Grand Theft Parsons.” Let’s dispense with them here and be done with it: Parsons, a 26-year-old former member of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers who dreamed of creating a utopian genre that he called “cosmic American music,” was preparing for the release of his second solo album when he made a trip to his adopted sanctuary of Joshua Tree National Park.On his second day there, Parsons — a prodigious drinker and drug user who once attempted to kick heroin cold turkey while locked in a room with an also-detoxing Keith Richards — overdosed on morphine and could not be revived. His stepfather immediately arranged to have Parsons’s body flown to Louisiana, perhaps so he would stand a better chance of inheriting a chunk of Gram’s family fortune. More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Carlos’ Review: Santana’s Soulful Legacy

      by

      In Rudy Valdez’s poignant but shortsighted documentary, the guitarist’s magic comes alive in performances and childhood recollections.Since his breakthrough at the Fillmore in San Francisco and then a star-making performance at Woodstock in 1969, Carlos Santana’s fusion of improvisational Latin rock and blues has been regarded as transcendent.In the director Rudy Valdez’s poignant but shortsighted documentary, “Carlos,” that same magic comes alive through performance clips from various eras of the Mexican guitarist’s half-century-long career and commentary about his life offstage. Santana’s ethereal mood imbues the movie with a numinous feel — even a childhood anecdote that he shares about his father communicating to birds while playing the violin at sunset is delivered with an affecting cosmic touch.Although Santana, 76, reveals some raw details of his life — his father’s infidelity, experiencing sexual abuse as a child — the portrait, rendered primarily through interviews, leaves a lot out. For fans wondering about the anti-trans comments that he made at a show in July and then apologized for, there’s nothing in the documentary that mentions his political stances. The film presents Santana without critique.Other interviews can feel muted. His sisters, exhibiting hesitant body language, don’t seem like they want to say too much. His bandmate and second wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, is even quieter. Deeper insights from a rock critic or music historian would have enriched the film to fully convey not just what Santana’s legacy is but what it means. Still, this controlled documentary captivates as a soulful personal history, even if it doesn’t exactly transcend.CarlosRated R for coarse language, brief nudity and rock ’n’ roll drug talk. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 50 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Beyoncé’s Silvery, Shimmering Renaissance

      by

      .cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } .cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } .cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } A Silvery, Shimmering Summer of Beyoncé Her tour has rivaled the Olympics in economic scale and an earthquake in its power. Sept. 27, 2023, 5:49 […] More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Bruce Springsteen Postpones 2023 Shows Because of Peptic Ulcer Disease

      by

      A statement on the musician’s social media said he is continuing to recover from peptic ulcer disease, and will resume shows in 2024.Bruce Springsteen has postponed the remaining dates of his tour this year with the E Street Band while he continues to recover from peptic ulcer disease, a few weeks after he postponed eight shows for the same reason.In a statement posted to social media on Wednesday, Springsteen — who turned 74 last week — said that 14 more dates for the remainder of 2023, across Canada and in Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and the Los Angeles area, would be postponed “on doctor’s advice,” and that the dates would be rescheduled for next year. In all, Springsteen postponed 22 shows because of his illness.“Thanks to all my friends and fans for your good wishes, encouragement, and support,” Springsteen said in the statement. “I’m on the mend and can’t wait to see you all next year.”Springsteen’s latest tour is his first with the E Street Band since 2017, and has been on the road since February. After opening in Tampa, Fla., and making a first pass around the United States, it has been through Britain and Europe, including multiple shows in Italy, Germany, Sweden and Ireland. The tour returned to the United States briefly in August and early September before its previous postponement. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Terry Kirkman, Whose Band Was a Late-1960s Hit Machine, Dies at 83

      by

      A singer, songwriter and virtuoso musician, he was a founder of the clean-cut group the Association and wrote one of its biggest hits, “Cherish.”Terry Kirkman, a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter who was a founder of the 1960s pop group the Association, whose lush vocal harmonies and sugary melodic hooks propelled a string of indelible hits, including “Cherish” (which he wrote) and “Along Comes Mary,” died on Saturday at his home in Montclair, Calif. He was 83.His wife, Heidi Kirkman, said the cause was congestive heart failure.A gifted musician who could play up to two dozen instruments, Mr. Kirkman and Jules Alexander, a guitarist and songwriter, formed the six-member Association in 1965. With a folk-inflected sound that was both sunny and sophisticated, the Association proved a veritable AM radio hit factory in its late-1960s heyday.The band’s debut album, “And Then … Along Comes the Association,” released in 1966, spawned two signature hits of the era: “Along Comes Mary,” which hit No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 that June, and “Cherish,” which reached No. 1 in August. The group’s third album, “Insight Out,” released the next year, included two more Top 10 hits: “Never My Love” and “Windy,” the group’s second No. 1 record.Along the way, the Association made dozens of appearances on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and other television variety shows. It also made a mark on the big screen, recording four songs, including the title track for the 1969 film “Goodbye, Columbus,” starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw and based on a Philip Roth novella.The Association’s debut album, released in 1966, spawned two signature hits of the era, “Along Comes Mary” and “Cherish.”ValiantDespite the Association’s chart-topping success, the group was dismissed by some critics, in part because of its blazer-and-tie image and parent-friendly sound, which seemed dramatically out of step in a Los Angeles rock scene dominated by hard-edged, psychedelia-tinged bands like the Byrds and the Doors.In a fitting symbol of the Association’s curious place in the 1960s pop pantheon, the band opened the first night of the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 but stood out as an odd fit at a boundary-pushing musical showcase in which Jimi Hendrix famously ignited his Fender Stratocaster onstage after a mind-warping set.The three-day explosion of rock and paisley, held at the height of the so-called Summer of Love, is still celebrated as an apotheosis of the hippie era, thanks in part to “Monterey Pop,” the landmark 1968 documentary directed by D.A. Pennebaker.“It was an honor, it was historical, and it was really bad,” Mr. Kirkman said of the band’s Monterey performance in a 2015 interview with the music blogger Bo White. “We were the soundtrack and lighting check for the Monterey Pop Festival.”Their performance included a high-school-level comedy skit that they had used on television, in which the band members pretended to be robots booting up one by one. It was, Mr. Kirkman added, “one of the worst mistakes that we ever, ever, ever, ever did,” Mr. Kirkman added.He said that John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, who was one of the festival’s organizers, “just said to me bluntly a couple of years later, ‘So sorry you weren’t in the film. You didn’t fit the image.’”But the Association’s relatively square public profile also helped broaden its audience to multiple generations. Mr. Kirkman’s intricate compositions like “Cherish” and “Everything That Touches You” called to mind Burt Bacharach.Mr. Kirkman laid down the basis of “Cherish” in less than seven minutes, he said in a 2015 interview with the music website The College Crowd Digs Me, while sitting down with his first wife, Judith, who had just turned the television dial to “The Tonight Show.” “When I finished it, I was just barely into Johnny Carson’s monologue,” he said.A delicate, intricately crafted love song, “Cherish” became ever-present on oldies radio over the decades, and wove its way into countless movies and television shows.But, Mr. Kirkman told the site, “It’s not always a compliment,” adding, “‘Cherish’ has been used as a gag for being a kind of conservative, old-fashioned song in an otherwise hip movie.”This was particularly galling to Mr. Kirkman, a staunch liberal who included an antiwar song, “Requiem for the Masses,” as the B-side of the “Never My Love” single.“I am a natural-born civil rights activist from Kansas, and I was on the road with three guys who were really conservative, reactionary people,” he told Mr. White. “I stood back thinking, ‘That’s cool. That’s completely fair.’ You know, walk and talk, live your life. But it’s not the art that I want to make. I want the art to be about something besides jumping in the back seat, kiss me, doo-wop, doo-wop.”Terry Robert Kirkman was born on Dec. 12, 1939, in Salina, Kan., the youngest of two sons of Millard and Lois (Murphy) Kirkman. When he was a child his family moved to Chino, Calif., near Los Angeles, where his father managed an auto-parts store and his mother taught music.After receiving an associate degree in music at nearby Chaffey College, he became enmeshed in the flourishing scene at the Troubadour, the famed West Hollywood nightclub that served as a launching pad to stardom.Before long, Mr. Kirkman and Mr. Alexander — whom he had met at a party in Hawaii in 1962, when Mr. Alexander was in the Navy — formed a loose-knit folk ensemble called the Inner Tubes, featuring some 20 members, to perform at open-mic hootenanny nights at the club, with guest appearances by the likes of David Crosby and Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. The Inner Tubes eventually evolved into a 13-member band called the Men, which after a year winnowed down to the Association.In addition to his wife of 30 years, Mr. Kirkman is survived by his daughter, Alexandra Sasha Kirkman, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce, and two grandchildren.Mr. Kirkman left the Association in 1972, although he would later rejoin the band for tours in the 1980s and ’90s. He eventually retired from the music business and worked for decades as an addiction counselor.But he could never escape his most famous creation.“My whole name for 45 years was, ‘I would like you to meet Terry, he wrote “Cherish,”’” he told Mr. White. “That was my whole name.”He added, “I’m just going to shorten my name to Cherish.” More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’

      by

      Usher is headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, inspiring a playlist of fantastic “yeah” tracks.Usher said “Yeah!” to the Super Bowl halftime show.Scott Roth/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,On Sunday, the N.F.L., Roc Nation and Apple Music announced that Usher will headline the 2024 Super Bowl halftime show. Only one reaction will suffice: “Yeah!”Such was the refrain heard everywhere in 2004, when the singer’s enthusiastically titled club banger “Yeah!” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a whopping 12 weeks (only to be dethroned by “Burn,” the next single from his blockbuster album “Confessions”). Slick, strobe-lit and infectious, the smash featured a dexterous guest verse from Ludacris and production and assorted yeah!s and OK!s from Lil Jon. “Yeah!” remains irresistible — and among the most successful homages to one of pop music’s trustiest syllables.The word “yeah” — or, even more emphatically, “yeah!” — is so entwined with the history of modern pop that when the critic Bob Stanley published a 2014 book charting “the story of pop music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé,” he titled it “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Stanley was probably referencing the specific yeah!s that punctuate the iconic chorus of the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” but the phrase also captures something quintessential about the exuberance of popular music.“Yeah” is slangier, more irreverent and often more musical than “yes,” and it bypasses that pesky hissing sound, for one thing. “Yeah” is also younger than its stuffier counterpart “yea” (as in the opposite of “nay”); its earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1905 — not too long before the popularization of recorded music, incidentally. “Yeah” is both question (“yeah?”) and answer (“yeah!”). “Yeah!” can be used in a song as a vehicle for both percussion and melody, an easy call for audience participation or an ecstatic place holder for those moments when more complex language just won’t suffice.Am I suggesting that this glorious word is worthy of its own playlist? Oh, yeah!With Usher, Lil Jon and Ludacris as my inspiration (and with all due respect to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), I have chosen to limit today’s playlist to songs with “yeah” in the title, and specifically songs that revolve in some way around that particular lyric. This still left me with an eclectic collection to pull from, including songs from Daft Punk, Blackpink, LCD Soundsystem and the Pogues.Does this playlist also include a certain zany theme song from a certain 1980s teen comedy about playing hooky and hanging out with Connor from “Succession”? I think you know the word I’d use to answer that question.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris: “Yeah!”What van Gogh is to sunflowers, Lil Jon is to yeah!s. I cannot imagine — and do not even want to imagine — this song if he had not produced it and blessed it with his gravelly, prodigious exclamations. (Listen on YouTube)2. Daft Punk: “Oh Yeah”Perhaps the greatest musical qualifier of “yeah”: “Oh.” Gently ups the ante but doesn’t take too much attention from our prized word. (That attention-seeking “ooooh” is another story.) Daft Punk certainly knows how to spin that titular refrain into mind-numbing bliss on this hypnotic, bassy track from the duo’s 1997 debut, “Homework.” (Listen on YouTube)3. The Pogues: “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”Five yeahs in a song title? These guys mean business. This 1989 single finds the English rockers the Pogues at their most jubilant, leading the way toward a fist-pumping, shout-along chorus. It also features a midsong saxophone solo, which is basically the nonverbal sonic equivalent of “yeah!” (Listen on YouTube)4. Pavement: “Baby Yeah (Live)”The phrase “baby, yeaaaaahhhhh” comes to hold an almost talismanic power in this Pavement B-side (a personal favorite), released only as a live cut on the deluxe reissue of the band’s 1992 debut album, “Slanted and Enchanted.” (Listen on YouTube)5. The Magnetic Fields: “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!”A (very) darkly funny duet between the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson that relies upon the tension created by their contrasting vocal styles, “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” appeared on the group’s 1999 epic, “69 Love Songs.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Yolanda Adams: “Yeah”“Yeah” becomes a spiritual affirmation on this uplifting song from the gospel singer Yolanda Adams’s 1999 album, “Mountain High … Valley Low.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Blackpink: “Yeah Yeah Yeah”“Yeah” also transcends language barriers, as the K-pop girl group Blackpink remind us on this track from the 2022 album “Born Pink.” Most of the lyrics are sung in Korean, but the quartet deliver that catchy chorus in the universal language of “yeah.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Yello: “Oh Yeah”An early exploration of pitch-shifted vocals, the Swiss electronic group Yello’s absurdist “Oh Yeah” was used heavily, and memorably, in the 1986 comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Yello’s Boris Blank once recalled that the group’s vocalist Dieter Meier initially came up with more lyrics, but Blank told him that would make the song “too complicated.” Said Blank, “I had the idea of just this guy, a fat little monster sits there very relaxed and says, ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah.’” Sure! (Listen on YouTube)9. LCD Soundsystem: “Yeah (Crass Version)”Our grand finale is a nine-minute extravaganza of yeah (extravaganz-yeah?) from LCD Soundsystem. By the end of this mesmerizing 2004 single, on which James Murphy and company chant the titular word ad infinitum, “yeah” has transcended language, and maybe even music itself, to become a state of mind. (Listen on YouTube)Yeah, yeah,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’” track listTrack 1: Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris, “Yeah!”Track 2: Daft Punk, “Oh Yeah”Track 3: The Pogues, “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”Track 4: Pavement, “Baby Yeah (Live)”Track 5: The Magnetic Fields, “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!”Track 6: Yolanda Adams, “Yeah”Track 7: Blackpink, “Yeah Yeah Yeah”Track 8: Yello, “Oh Yeah”Track 9: LCD Soundsystem, “Yeah (Crass Version)”Bonus Tracks“Baby yeah: a seductive and sentimental call for human connection.” I thought I was alone in my obsession with that live recording of Pavement’s “Baby Yeah” until I read this beautiful, heart-wrenching n+1 essay by Anthony Veasna So.And, on a much lighter note: Watch the “CSI: Miami” star David Caruso, compelled by the power of Roger Daltrey’s “Yeah!” to deliver an endless string of mic-dropping one-liners. This video has 7.5 million views, and I believe that over the past decade or so I have been responsible for at least two million of them. More