Skip to main content

Glen Campbell

 122

Glen Campbell 

 


Glen Campbell

Glen Campbell is a former session guitarist who became one of the biggest stars of the 1960's and 1970's thanks to his sweet & lush country-pop. From 1961 with his debut single "Turn Around, Look At Me" to his final album Adiós in 2017, Campbell left one of the biggest legacies in country music. My personal favorites are "Galveston" & his cover of "Gentle on My Mind." Campbell may not be "pure" country but his fusion of country mannerisms with pop melodies & production techniques made him a force to be reckoned with- not to mention paved the way for the likes of John Denver... and dare I say T.Swift? He had a string of top ten hits with songs like "By the I Get to Phoenix," "I Wanna Live," "Wichita Lineman," "Southern Nights," & probably his best known hit "Rhinestone Cowboy." He was a successful solo artist from the early '60s on until the late '80s before the radio hits ran dry & he began to focus on live performances. He was born & raised in Arkansas & received his first guitar when he was four-years-old. When he was 22, he moved to L.A. where he got the reputation as a great guitarist & became a session musician before breaking solo... & the rest is history. In 2011, at the age of 75, he announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Despite this, Campbell still kept busy-  releasing 2011's Ghost on the Canvas, 2013's See You There, & 2017's Adiós. There's a lot to unpack with a discography this deep- luckily most of the good stuff has been packaged nicely in a four-disc set simply titled The Legacy (1961-2017). If you do anything- check out his amazing guitar pickin' in this live studio performance. His catalogue is a treasure chest that keeps giving. His music never grows old and always rewards the listener. There's a lot to it... A lot to unscramble.

It's

Glen Campbell

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Björk

28 Björk Björk If Billie Holiday is an American treasure, well, if you were to put that treasure underwater, froze it, thawed it out centuries into the future and doused some acid & baking soda on it, out of that treasure chest would come Björk. Originally gaining fame in her home of Iceland with her band, the Sugarcubes, Björk was bound to break solo & she did just that with 1993's Debut . Following that was 1995's Post , 97's Homogenic , 2001's Vespertine, 2004's  Medúlla , 2007's Volta , 2011's Biophilia  (the first album where I was truly a fan), 2015's Vulnicura and 2017's Utopia . There's a lot to unpack there... you can't skip her first three or four albums, they're all amazing. I like Volta  just because it seems to be the loosest (and most fun) album she has. Vulnicura  was her break up album, with Björk expressing that the album reflects her feelings before and after her breakup and the healing process. Her legacy...

Eels

91 EELS EELS After a couple of song-rich, keyboard-dominated albums released under the Man Called E moniker, Mark Everett morphed into the trio Eels with 1996’s [DreamWorks Records released] Beautiful Freak . At its best, the debut gave a trip-hop twist to the California singer/songwriter tradition; at its worst, it suggests one more bummed-out wise guy’s take on Beck’s collage-style rock. With a sense of humor that skews toward cynicism that’s alleviated occasionally by bouts of sincerity, Everett is not the likeliest subject to make a transcendent album about death. But he nearly pulls it off on 1998’s Electro-Shock Blues . The music is somber but not sedate, with bursts of saxophone, off-kilter orchestration, and outright noise evoking the turbulence beneath the deadpan vocals. The singer battles not only depression but also his penchant for irony, and his struggle to move beyond them makes for a fascinating if sometimes morbidly downcast listen. On 2000’s Daisies of the ...

Elton John

93 Elton John Elton John The Elton Run is a great road-trip game: Using the radio’s scan and seek buttons, see how long you can keep a continuous streak of Elton hits rolling. It’s been proven possible to follow the Elton Run up I-95 from Virginia all the way to Boston. The hazard: One sixth of your listening will be devoted to “ Your Song ,” Elton’s most overplayed standard even though everybody is over it at this point (Sample lyrics: “If I was a sculptor / But then again, no,” I think we can all agree we don’t need to hear that cheesy line anymore.) But Elton has a staggering number of hits; At least one in the Top 40 every year from 1970 through 1995 (!). With his electric boots and mohair suits, he’s the prima of all donnas, sitting like a princess perched in his electric chair. He entertains by picking brains. He sells his soul by dropping names. And for all his camp flamboyance, he’s aged into the most beloved entertainer on earth. Elton’s got about a million compilatio...