Today is the 34th birthday of Josh Groban, a guy who’s sold more than 25 million albums worldwide. As such, you’re probably pretty sick of listening to his music, right?
No, of course you’re not, which is why we’ve compiled a playlist of 20 songs from his back catalog as a tribute to the birthday boy. Give it a spin, won’t you?
Having said that, however, we also thought we’d use the majority of this space to pay tribute to a side of Groban’s career that doesn’t get nearly as much attention: his work as a comedian.
No, he’s not a stand-up comedian – although his between-song banter at his concerts does often have the audience in stitches – but Josh Groban is a pretty funny guy, and since we suspect that a lot of you may not have known this about him, we’ve put together a collection of clips to spotlight his comedy chops.
20 years ago, Jewel Kilcher – the “Kilcher” is silent – released her debut album, Pieces of You, to general indifference.
No, seriously.
Not that it didn’t eventually go platinum 12 times over, of course, but if you look back at Jewel’s chart history, you can see how the Pieces of You story unfolds, and it’s a considerably longer tale than you might’ve realized.
Although the album first landed on record store shelves on February 28, 1995, to say that it was something less than an overnight success is a significant understatement: the first single from the album, “Who Will Save Your Soul,” didn’t even see release until June of the following year. Once that happened, though, the buzz on Jewel began to build. After that song resulted in her first top-20 single (it topped out at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100), she scored an even bigger hit with the follow-up single, “You Were Meant for Me,” which went all the way to #2, and she matched its success with “Foolish Games.”
25 fresh tracks including new songs from Shakey Graves, First Aid Kit, Rhiannon Giddens, Ryan Bingham and more.
It was released forty years ago this week and I didn't even know it came out.
I was living in Sandy, Utah and there was only one rock station in Salt Lake and they didn't play the new stuff and I was over Zeppelin anyway.
That's right, I was burned out, couldn't hear "D'yer Mak'er" one more time. They're rewriting history and extolling the virtues of "Houses Of The Holy" but the truth is despite the hits it was a bit of a disappointment, certainly artistically, it was safe whereas everything before it was unexpected with rough edges that pushed the envelope. It was like the band was on a premature victory lap.
And then came "Physical Graffiti."
15 years ago today, The Darkness – yes, the band that once ordered you to get your hands off of their woman, mother***er – performed their first concert.
Hailing from Suffolk, England, The Darkness rose from the ashes of a band called Empire, which Justin Hawkins once summed up with the words, “Great drummer, great guitarist, great bassist, terrible keyboard player.” Both Justin and his brother Dan were in Empire, but – believe it or not – Dan was the singer in that particular outfit, and it’s been said that Justin’s shift into the role of frontman came after he attended a New Year’s Eve bash in 2000 and blew everyone away during a karaoke competition with his performance of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
14 years ago today, Coldplay officially became a big deal on the British music scene by taking home the awards for both Best British Group and Best British Album – for Parachutes – at the 2001 BRIT Awards, a ceremony generally described as the UK equivalent of the Grammy Awards.
Now, when we say that they officially became a big deal that night, it’s not to say that Coldplay weren’t well on their way to achieving prominence on the pop charts. Indeed, by that point, they’d already secured two top-10 singles in the UK – “Yellow” (#4) and “Trouble (#10) – and Parachutes had long since proved to be an unqualified success. Still, there’s a whole new level of credibility that comes with being named Best British Group, and there’s little question that Coldplay took their new street cred and ran with it.
I want to paint a picture
Botticelli * style
Instead of Venus on a clam *
I'd paint this flower child
And paint she does! In fact, she considers herself "a painter who writes songs." We're honoring her artistry by giving away a signed and framed self-portrait giclee taken from the cover of Love Has Many Faces. Limited to a numbered run of 50 prints worldwide, you'll most certainly want to enter to win the only one we've got here.
This week, we’ve got a plethora of albums getting the 180-gram vinyl treatment…probably. Once you get into double digits, you’re safe in calling it a plethora, right? Because we’re talking about 10 albums here, and that certainly seems like it should be plethora-worthy, even if there are only two artists represented within those 10 albums.
