Category Archives: Music

Songs of 2024: Kate Pierson, Michigander, Lemonheads

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“Evil Love,” Kate Pierson

Fans of the B-52s have known for years that Kate Pierson is a world-class belter, but here she is at age 76, still singing like she has something to prove. “Evil Love” was one of the leadoff singles from her second solo album, and it’s a miniature pop gothic mansion of passion and intrigue. It’s a theatrical song; there’s real feeling here, but Pierson’s also playing a role, occupying an emotional space like any great singer would. 

“Giving Up,” Michigander 

Michigander is the nom-de-project of singer-songwriter Jason Singer; his specialty is spacious, catchy pop-rock, constructed around his distinctive, yearning vocals. There’s a distance in how Singer arranges the pieces of his musical constructions; you can imagine yourself climbing into the song and wandering through for a while, but there are clear boundaries, and you’ll eventually make it home okay. Here he interpolates an opening riff from Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll To Me” and points his band straight toward the sun for 3 minutes and fifteen seconds of big hooky heartbreak. Like all those who came before, he’s able to make it sound committed and careless, an off-hand kiss-off that masks the usual bitter sorrow. 

“Seven Out,” The Lemonheads 

If Michigander is an artist chomping at the bit to claim his corner of the modern pop landscape, then Evan Dando is perennially lost around the fringe, wandering through the wilderness as he assembles twigs and berries into something that resembles a song. He can’t help but craft catchy guitar-driven alternative tunes, even when there’s little lyrical clarity and the vocal borders on exhausted. “Seven Out” is a compelling listen because of those aforementioned hooks, but also because you can almost hear Dando losing interest in his own song as he plays it. 

In recent years, Dando has performed at varying levels of coherence as he plays his way through his own never-ending tour. His last album came out in 2020, and he’s spent most of the past few years trying to capitalize on the recent anniversaries of some of the Lemonheads’ iconic 90s releases. It’s hard to understand why a single like this exists–scratch that, why a “b-side” like this exists; it’s not even the A-side. (The A-side, “Fear of Living,” has more of a pulse but also feels like more of a failed attempt to capture old lightning in a bottle.) “Seven Out” gives one pause, if you give it a few minutes, because the same indie nonchalance that made Dando a 90s alternative darling now reads as outright exhaustion.

The Last Great Rolling Stones Song

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The last great Rolling Stones song is on their new album, Hackney Diamonds. 

Maybe it’s just their last “pretty good” song; it’s honestly hard to tell. The Stones exist in rarefied air, their every move somehow a reflection of and a reflection on everything they’ve done before. That’s not a big problem when they’re leading a stadium full of rich boomers through an hour-and-change of their deep catalog of hits. It’s more of a challenge when they deign to release something “new.” 

Everything surrounding this record tends to obscure the music itself, and being as they’re the Rolling fucking Stones, maybe they don’t require or even deserve anyone’s thoughts on anything they do anymore. It’s like trying to come to terms with a new Gospel or something. 

And I’m enjoying this album for what it is to me—a late-era swing through some recurring Stones tropes, delivered with unexpected energy and commitment. The album ends with a one-two-three punch of noteworthy moments—Keith Richards’ lone lead vocal contribution, a gospel-tinged rave-up featuring Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder, and Mick Jagger and Richards sharing a mic for what’s probably the last time in the studio, on a cover of Muddy Waters’ “Rolling Stone Blues.” 

“Driving Me Too Hard” is the tune before those three, and that’s the one where the rubber really seems to hit the road; the best moments on Hackney Diamonds exist independent of expectations, when the band is doing what they do better than anyone on the planet ever has or ever will. They’re being The Rolling Stones, which to me means a steamy brew of rock, soul, gospel, R&B and pop, one that sounds casual and detached but reveals hidden depths of feeling. 

“Tumbling Dice” is the easiest comparison to make here, and it has a similar melancholy swing, but it’s not a song asking for anything, and there’s not much glamour in the romance it sketches out. “Every time I give a little bit/You muscle in and take it all,” Jagger sings, resigned and a little tired. “You’ve emptied my eyes” is a beautiful image of emotional depletion that recurs in the chorus. 

There are good songs on Hackney Diamonds but right now I’m hearing more moments than anything else—tunes that hold my attention as a fan just long enough for me to get to an alchemy that pulls me in completely. An incredible chorus here, a smoky sax solo there. 

“Driving Me Too Hard” is the Stones firing on all cylinders one last time, in a way that’s both tossed-off and completely committed. Mick’s vocal is incredible and Keith’s harmony vocal is pushed right up next to his on the pre-choruses. The guitars seize down around a white-blues riff, piano colors in the emotional nuances in the background, and three old white British dudes make better music than anyone ever expected they could in the year of our lord 2023.

Indeed I Do

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Frank Wilson joined the team at Motown in 1963, first helping staff their Los Angeles office before relocating to Detroit to write and produce. He worked with Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops. He helped shepherd a late-sixties renaissance for Diana Ross and the Supremes, including “Love Child” and “Stoned Love.” In 1976, he left Motown to become a minister and gospel music producer. He died in 2012 at age 71. 

He also wrote and sang one of the rarest and most coveted soul singles ever. “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” was cut in 1965 for Motown’s subsidiary label Soul. There were 250 demo copies of the single produced in advance of a December 23, 1965 release. Then…nothing. “At least two, and maybe as many as five, copies survive,” according to Wikipedia, one of which reportedly remains in Berry Gordy’s personal collection. As Wilson recalled to writer Andy Rix: 

“I went to Detroit, and I hadn’t been in town more than a week”, Frank said. “We were standing backstage at the Fox Theater, [where] they were having a Motown Revue, and [Berry] said, ‘Frank, now you know I’m getting ready to release this record on you. We’re excited about it. But I want to ask you a question. Do you really want to be an artist, or do you want to be a writer and a producer?’ And it was right then and there I told him I wanted to be a writer and a producer. And it was decided that he would not release that record on me.”

The Northern Soul movement in England somehow rescued the song from obscurity, and it became one of their key anthems, an ideal distillation of the vibe they tirelessly sought night after night in clubs like Wigan Casino. Owing to the resurgence in popularity, Motown reissued the single in the UK in 1979 and again in 2004. It’s since featured on CD via several different Motown-produced compilations.

Back to Frank Wilson. If you search the song on YouTube, there used to be a shaky video of Wilson lip-syncing to the tune in the late 90s. Northern Soul historian, DJ and producer Ian Levine found Wilson and cultivated a friendship with him, leading to both the home video he filmed and Wilson’s sole live appearance to perform the song in front of a couple thousand Northern Soul fans in England. It’s sadly gone from the web, but it was incredible. 

More recently, Bruce Springsteen covered the song for his 2022 album Only the Strong Survive. It’s not a great record; most of it sounds like borderline karaoke. But this song translates unscathed, the backup singers recorded with an echo that make them sound angelic, a dash of gospel sprinkled back into the rhythm and blues. 

How did this one cut somehow survive near-extinction to become the center piece of a musical movement and the lead single from the Boss’ late-career soul covers album? It’s survived because it’s perfect. I’m not sure there’s any other way to describe it. If you have any affection in your heart for the sounds of the sixties, for Motown, for soul and R&B, or just for the sheer expression of joy, you will love it. 

Bruce’s version is good. It’s amazing that he’s chosen to include it and recognize not just a great lost soul cut, but a great lost soul singer and songwriter in Frank Wilson. But for the real stuff, you gotta go back to the source. 

Imagine that this song, this shining thing, has sat near the bottom of the dustbin of history for decades. Hear Wilson’s vocal, and hear the sound of a man with his entire life in front of him and countless songs in his heart. Consider that only the vagaries and disappointments of record label politics kept him from perhaps becoming one of the great soul performers. He records one single, and THIS is it. His one shot, and he blows the target into bits from the center on out. 

Think about Frank Wilson, decades after this singular moment has come and gone, standing in front of an adoring crowd and sounding exactly as he did in the prime of his youth. I can’t imagine that feeling–putting something into the world, watching it vanish, and then hearing it sung back at you with nothing but devotion.