Music can say more than words.¹ And regularly, the words that are used in songs are able to communicate so much that a piece of narrative literature of equivalent length simply cannot convey. During the week-end I read a short story where this characteristic of music was used to great effect. In the wholesome tale “Let All the Children Boogie” by Sam J. Miller, references to the music and lyrics of David Bowie and Iggy Pop were employed with great effect to communicate dreams, emotions, and hope.² The change of perspective on the world and life that this brief adventure of two young outcasts in the early nineties can engender in the reader was, according to my opinion, in large part due to the use of those musical references. And such a change of perspective – including some of the same themes! – can also occur when listening to our topic of this week’s blog, the song “Time” by the British rock band Pink Floyd from their acclaimed as well as wildly successful 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon.³

Continue reading You Can’t Outrun the Clock: A Look at Pink Floyd’s “Time” →

2024, what a year! It was, like, a whole 12 months… In that time span some artists released records and others didn’t. And the former are lucky, because they are eligible to be on the list which relays my favorite albums of the previous calendar year! Remember how I struggled last year to confine this list to ten entries and had to settle for fifteen? Well, this year that did not happen, thankfully. This year I ended up with twenty albums. But before I reveal the list, I would be amiss to not first dedicate a few words on its – naturally painstaking – compilation and on some of the throughlines that can be said to characterize last year’s music. Because, as you might have guessed, this list is not (merely) meant to display my ridiculously refined tastes but to provide you all with some of the excellent music produced in 2024 that you might have missed and which can hopefully help with a good start of the new year.

Continue reading My Favorite Albums of 2024 →

Music with a grown-up subject matter is nothing new, of course. The protest songs addressing the various wars of the latter half of the previous century, as well as the many struggles for legal emancipation and social acceptance at the time – which are still carried on today – spoke to the experiences of those living through these events or who found themselves inhabiting the polities involved.¹ And the great ladies of country music have always sung about the less than ideal parts of adult relationships – including the affairs, substance troubles, and other setbacks with their significant others.² But what I mean with the genre – or perhaps subgenre – ‘music for grown-ups’ are songs that speak to the responsibilities that growing up entails and the more mundane happenings that come with it – the less dramatic, so to speak. These songs can be found in any genre. But the last few years I have heard a bunch of relevant tracks and albums that can be said to occupy their own niche and therefore deserve their own label and a blog on Bildungblocks!

Continue reading Music for the Rut of Everyday Life →

Music is amazing. It can move a person, make them happy or angry, and inspire them to do great things – both the good and the bad variety – while existing as mere sound waves.¹ And this should not be surprising, as those sound waves are the work of artists who, in every phase of the creative process, use their experience, their imagination, and other inspirations to fashion this art. They write the lyrics and the music, contemplate the most fitting arrangements, and play, sing and mix the tracks that will eventually reach our ears. And sometimes, sometimes they manage to create songs that are instant classics. As is the case, at least in my opinion, with these ten songs from 2023.

Continue reading My Favorite Songs of 2023 →

It is often argued that there should not be quarrels in matters of taste.¹ But this is, in my opinion, too negative of a way to talk about taste. Because being confronted with different tastes – whether one quarrels about them or not – can open vista’s on beautiful, important, and tasteful things that one up until that moment had never considered but which subsequently bring a lot of joy, happiness or poignancy in one’s life.² And this is the spirit in which I compiled this list; so the reader can enjoy new music which would otherwise never have crossed their path! As it is a rather cumbersome task to keep up with all the music that is released. And I would have never managed to do this myself if it weren’t for the efforts of the editors at the unsurpassed music website Allmusic.com.³ Their monthly recommendations were my guide in determining which music I wanted to try out, and I can recommend this section to everyone. Finally a side note pertaining to this list: These are the best albums out of the one’s that I have managed to hear in the last twelve months, and it is entirely possible that I did miss a lot of beautiful music.

Continue reading My Favorite Albums of 2023 →