Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Sonic Sorcery: "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"

This beautiful song was written by the always stellar Carole King and her then songwriting partner & husband Gerry Goffin (for context, if my history is correct, King wrote the music while Goffin & King shared lyric duties for this song).

It was first recorded & released by The Shirelles in 1960 and went to #1 on the charts (despite being banned from many radio stations for being too sexually suggestive), and was subsequently recorded by Brenda Lee, Ben E, King, Dusty Springfield, Cher, The Four Seasons, & more through the 60s (and many more in later decades, from Roberta Flack to Amy Winehouse), and Carole King included a slower version on her ground-breaking album "Tapestry" in 1971 with backup vocals supplied by none other than James Taylor and Joni Mitchell.

The song has since landed on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" as well as taking the #3 slot on their "100 Greatest Girl Songs" list.

Let's dive into this classic.

Monday, April 26, 2021

Sonic Sorcery: Exploring Sam Cooke's Classic "You Send Me"

Here in our 4th piece in the series, we'll look at Sam Cooke's timeless classic, "You Send Me", which was written by Sam (though credited to Sam's brother) in 1955 and recorded & released it 2 years later as Cooke's debut single. The song met with massive commercial & critical success (it was #1 on both the R&B and Pop charts) and has since been listed on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list as well as the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock-n-Roll" list.

You can also read my tribute to Sam Cooke.

Let's dive in.