Weekly Playlist 4/3

Every Friday, I share the highlights of what I’ve been listening to over the course of the week, from old favorites to new discoveries. Playlist best enjoyed in order.

Another week of coronavirus brings some sad news for the music industry — earlier this week, we lost Fountains of Wayne bassist and songwriter Adam Schlesinger to the virus, and today, the news broke that we’ve also lost Bill Withers to a heart condition. I singled out five of my favorite Crazy Ex-Girlfriend songs written by Schlesinger yesterday, and we’ll devote some time to Withers at the end.

It’s appropriate that this week’s admittedly bizarre playlist starts with something sad, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” by George Jones. It’s a heartbreaking love song, but for me, it’s also very much one that transports me to a certain time and place. A favorite pastime at a friend’s house is, naturally, the karaoke machine, and we’ve spent many a holiday drinking too much and staying up into the early hours of the morning belting out all of our favorites. Her dad died last year, and he was always a presence there — it was his house, after all — and many a Snapchat featured him sitting at the table patiently waiting his turn and enduring our ’90s pop. My husband knew he was a George Jones fan and sang “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with him a few times, and so despite being such a sad song, funnily enough, that song will always remind me of a house filled with cigarette smoke and laughter where everyone’s maybe more than a little bit drunk and more than a little bit loud.

Fortunately, it’s more upbeat from there — “Lust for Life” by indie band Girls, whose small catalogue is worth a dive if you like that track, and the darkly humorous “Excitable Boy” by Warren Zevon. “Human Touch” is a bit ironic in the time of social distancing, which Rick Springfield is all too aware of. He had some fun on Facebook this week reworking the lyrics, and it’s worth a watch if you’re a fan of the song. And how can you not be? It’s so catchy. Better than hit “Jessie’s Girl,” I dare say. Some of those sounds of the ’80s — and certainly the ‘70s — carry over into Foxy Shazam’s super fun “Holy Touch.” I detect snippets of bands like Sweet and Queen with a smidge of hair metal, and then we head into the time period proper with ELO and “Turn to Stone.” Nearly everything ELO put out was over-the-top in the most wonderful way, yet somehow, “Turn to Stone” is maybe one of their more subdued releases, at least by ELO standards. It’s also one of the most famous.

We close with “Bad Romance,” maybe the best Lady Gaga song. A dive back into Gaga’s debut left me a little frustrated this week — my feelings about it haven’t changed since it came out, which is that while it’s a fun pop album, there’s nothing about it that’s remarkable. I’ve always maintained that Lady Gaga, at least in her early career, was vastly overrated and that her fame came from her love of weird outfits. “Bad Romance” is fantastic and she’s proven her songwriting chops since, but does her early work live up to the hype she got at the time? Not so much.

While I didn’t get any Bill Withers squeezed on this playlist, I have to acknowledge that like “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” Withers’ “Lean on Me” is tied to strong memories for me. It became an anthem for some of my friends in high school tied to movie nights held after school by one of the religion teachers, and to this day, that song reminds me of those people. They’re the first ones I thought of when the news broke.

For your weekend reading, enjoy Rolling Stone’s profile of Withers, including a snippet that’s making the rounds on Twitter about the racism Withers encountered in the industry:

“I met my A&R guy, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I don’t like your music or any black music, period,’ ” says Withers. “I am proud of myself because I did not hit him. I met another executive who was looking at a photo of the Four Tops in a magazine. He actually said to me, ‘Look at these ugly niggers.’ ”

May both he and Schlesinger rest in peace, but may we enjoy their music for years and years to come.