Reporter's Notebook

A reader sends a lovely email on parenthood:

A recent Track of the Day mentioned in passing John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy.” That got me thinking about the many songs I own that were written by a songwriter about their own children.

Both “Beautiful Boy” and Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” always makes me cry a little. Blue Ivy got immortalized by both her parents—“Blue” by Beyonce and “Glory” by Jay-Z. The award for most unintentionally ironic song about a child definitely goes to Loudon Wainwright III’s “Rufus is a Tit Man.” Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” perfectly captures what every new parent wants to shout to every stranger they meet.

There are lots more, but my favorite song in this genre is Paul Simon’s “St. Judy’s Comet” [seen above]. Most of these type of songs are about how much the parent loves their child. But Simon’s song deals with that most dreaded of parental tasks—trying to get your kid to sleep. I’ve always loved his self deprecating lyrics “If I can’t sing my boy to sleep, it makes your famous daddy look so dumb.” After all, if even Paul Simon had trouble, I could certainly cut myself some slack.

If you have a favorite song about parenthood and a memory attached to it, drop me an email.

A reader submitted this Trina song for our groupthink playlist of greatest, weirdest running songs—which may come as a surprise to any fans of mainstream rap circa the late ‘90s and early aughts. To be fair, our reader did designate it for our “best running tracks” list—surely a more fitting home for Da Baddest Bitch. I suppose we broadened the scope of our main playlist with our latest update, and honestly, who am I to turn away Trina on the grounds of mere semantics?

We had some more readers chime in this week with their own go-to songs to run to: “Rock (Superstar)” by Cypress Hill; Dengue Fever’s “We Were Gonna”; “Move Your Feet” by Junior Senior; and “Keep Hope Alive” by The Crystal Method, among others.

Check out the full haul in our comprehensive playlist on Spotify—now clocking in at more than six hours. If you don’t quite feel up to running 36 miles or so, try the hour-long editor’s playlist for the selections I found especially promising.

Red Simpson wasn’t the most famous of the Bakersfield Sound singers, but Simpson, who died Friday at 81, had one of the more entertaining niches: truck songs. In fact, the young singer-songwriter got a contract from Capitol Records just to sing them, William Grimes writes in an obituary: “The genre was a country staple, but the expansion of the Interstate highway system and the growing popularity of CB radio lent extra romance to the trucking life, reflected in hits like“Phantom 309” by Red Sovine, “A Tombstone Every Mile” by Dick Curless and “Six Days on the Road” by Dave Dudley.”

Those songs, as well as many of Simpson’s big hits, fit the standard conventions:

“Roll Truck Roll,” “Diesel Smoke and Dangerous Curves,” “Country Western Truck Drivin’ Singer,” “Awful Lot to Learn About Truck Drivin,’” “The Flyin’ Saucer Man and the Truck Driver.” The songs are a little formulaic (though often redeemed by their wit): References to missing home, fast women, faster curves, hard drinking, gallons of coffee, and the very real dangers of truck driving. Many are self-referential, mentioning other truck songs and even Simpson’s own.

But Simpson’s biggest hit was “I’m a Truck,” which is at once the logical endpoint of the genre and also a hilarious subversion of it. “Hello, I’m a truck,” the narrator intones to kick things off, then mocks his braggart operator:

Well there he sits in that cafe drinking coffee and telling lies,
Probably telling 'em how he topped that hill 10 miles back.
He ought to tell 'em how he missed a gear
And that Volkswagen bus full of hippies passed us like I was sitting up on jacks!
Or how we took that curve over on 66—
Hadn't been for me hanging on the shoulder we'd both wound up in the ditch.

There’s even a little bit of the classic tomcatting: “Why couldn't we have put me next to that little pink Mack sittin' over there?” the truck wonders. “Gosh, she's got pretty mud flaps, and talk about stacked, they’re both chromed.” This delightfully weird little tune reached No. 4 on the country charts in 1972, and stayed on the charts for 17 weeks.

Now, just as Simpson foretold, he’s no doubt playing “I’m a Truck” on the bandstand in truck driver’s heaven.

Is Adele a snooze? Maybe! Is she music’s Donald Trump? That seems harsh. She may be deep in her feels on “Hello,” but it’s a dynamic song with more emotional range than gray. See what it sounds like in the hands of a decidedly not-glum act—D.C.’s Backyard Band:

This cover falls squarely within the delightful go-go tradition of bands covering overwrought ballads by mainstream pop stars. I’m thinking of “Pieces of Me,” an Ashlee Simpson single that peaked briefly in 2004 before settling into used-bin obscurity. Rare Essence topped D.C. radio charts in 2012 with a redeeming cover. The song belongs to them now.

A reader remembers David Bowie:

I’m a big 1960s-1970s rock fan. I was in a garage rock band in the 1970s in high school, and I can recall hours of fun playing the riff from “Rebel, Rebel” (Bowie created that riff himself). Some of my favorite songs of his are “Kooks,” “What in the World,” and “Absolute Beginners.”

As a punk rock fan of the Ramones, I always credited them for inventing the punk guitar sound, but last year, I realized that they stole their trademark buzzsaw sound off of a Bowie song!  Listen to “Hang On to Yourself” from Ziggy Stardust and then listen to songs from the Ramones first album; you will hear the same riff repeatedly.

A few years ago, I was watching Family Guy, and Peter Griffin stopped the cartoon for what he claimed was the “gayest” rock video ever: Bowie and Jagger doing “Dancing in the Streets.” It is rather gay, I would say (not that there is anything wrong with that), but also fun, energetic, and worth checking out.

A couple of months ago, my teenage son—who does not know much about classic rock—discovered a great Bowie album that I was not familiar with: Black Tie, White Noise. I have been dancing to that in my living room almost every day. Check out especially the title track and the cover of Cream’s “I Feel Free”—much better than the Cream version. Incredibly, every track on the album is great—no weaknesses.

A reader in New Bern, North Carolina, recommends a long, slow-starting track that was originally two separate songs—good to play in the background of a lazy Sunday:

“Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" is the opening track on the double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. The first part, “Funeral for a Friend,” is an instrumental created by John while thinking of what kind of music he would like at his funeral. This first half segues into “Love Lies Bleeding.” In the Eagle Vision documentary, Classic Albums: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John said the two songs were not written as one piece, but fit together since
“Funeral for a Friend” ends in the key of A, and “Love Lies Bleeding” opens in A, and the two were played as one elongated piece when recorded.

The grandiose introduction to “Funeral for a Friend” was performed on ARP synthesizer (erroneously credited as A.R.P.) by the album's engineer, David Hentschel, who John recalled overdubbed track after track of music and synthetic atmospheric effects until the mini-opus was complete. With lyrics like “And love lies bleeding in my hand/Oh, it kills me to think of you with another man,” Elton John uses death symbolism as an angry take on a breakup song.

Our reader adds, “I saw Elton in concert in Savannah in 2013—he still has it.”

On Monday, I wondered whether the surprising Kanye West track released on New Year’s Day was meant to signal that the rapper who’d spent most of 2015 making headlines for fatherhood, fashion, and presidential ambitions was refocusing on the art form that made him famous. Today, there’s more evidence that that’s the case: As announced by Kim Kardashian on Twitter, the man who The Atlantic once labeled “American Mozart” seems to be reviving the weekly single series that preceded his 2010 masterwork My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Listen to the unembeddable track here.

Like his first 2016 song, “Facts,” this week’s “Real Friends” and “No More Parties in LA” (which seems to be just a preview snippet) see West throwing himself back into the fractious and vibrant rap landscape he’d seemed to be ignoring. The main preoccupation here is about knowing who to trust when you’re as in demand as West is; Kendrick Lamar and Ty Dolla $ign, both featured, apparently have passed the test. He also takes some barely veiled shots at Drake, as is fashionable: “To be honest, dawg I ain't feelin' your energy.”

The wistful piano and soupy-soul beats sound very pre-Yeezus—these aren’t noise experiments—as does West’s laid-back tone. After the long holiday break, you may or may not be able to relate here:

I'm a deadbeat cousin, I hate family reunions
Fuck the church up, I'm drinkin' at the communion
Spillin' free wine, now my tux is ruined

Stay good, regardless.

I hope you have a nice weekend.

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) January 8, 2016

A reader writes:

Erm, the two songs on my running list that stand out the most as simultaneously weird and motivating are Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” and Mika’s “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful).” That last one always makes me smile and do odd “jazz hands” type movements if it comes on at the right point in my run. I know ...

After Christmas, we started airing a bunch of daily tracks that center on the “weirdest, greatest songs on your playlist”—seven so far. Here’s the latest from a reader:

Hi there! I have two recommendations for your running playlist compilation. (Fantastic idea, by the way.)

The first is Animal Collective’s “Rabbit.” I love this song because it’s mesmerizing, gets you in the moment, and is perfect for a bit of mid-run energy: just a bit over two minutes, with a propulsive time signature largely in 3/4; folksy and earthy and strange and surreal, but with childlike earnestness; then subduing just as quickly as it made itself aware. To me, it’s the embodiment of “runner’s high.”

The song’s music video, seen above, goes from “weird” to “batshit” pretty quickly. The reader’s second pick:

For those moments when you’re worn out but feeling great and wanting to run so hard just one last time that it’s as if you might leave your body behind: “Sæglópur” by Sigur Ros. It is an avalanche of existential awareness. It is optimism in all its desolate glory. It is the sunlight all dazzling your eyes, and your brain is racing, trying to decide whether to stay or to go. Once the chorus hits its first and then second time while you’re running hard, I think you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

The rest of our reader recommendations are here, which we’re planning to curate into a Spotify playlist soon.

Another reader adds to our “weirdest, greatest” series:

Cannot believe I’m admitting this, much less inflicting it on anyone else, but my race-day running playlist has one epic, utterly ridiculous track: MmmmBOP. I put it late in the mix, because after all the great, rhythmic stuff that gets me through 12 or 13 miles, there is nothing better than the track that just cracks you up. Pure joy.

Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop

A reader writes:

The most under-appreciated running song is Saul Williams’s version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” It’s the same great, recognizable drum as the U2 version, but with a much harder, more aggressive edge. (Also, “List of Demands” by Saul Williams might be the best running/workout song of all time.)

Many more reader recommendations here.

A reader adds several suggestions to the work-out series sparked by Adrienne:

I’m a spinning instructor and an electronic music aficionado, so I’ve given a fair bit of thought to which throbbing songs will best fit with my classes while still being somewhat interesting. Dubstep works well for spin, i.e. trying to time hard efforts to “the drop.” A couple really fun and motivational songs I always turn to on my playlists:

“As Serious As Your Life” by Four Tet
“White Noise/Red Meat” by Dada Life
“Ghost” by Neutral Milk Hotel [embedded above]
“Shipping up to Boston” by The Dropkick Murphys

Embed these in your playlist and watch your fitness increase by 17%.

I can definitely vouch for “Ghost”; all of Neutral Milk Hotel’s Aeroplane Over the Sea is bracing to run to.