The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Music News
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on January 01, 2026, 04:44:24 pm ---The Top 100 Songs of 2025 - According to Billboard magazine.
--- End quote ---
Sabrina Carpenter was the guest human on "The Muppet Show." She and Kermit did a duet of "Islands in the Stream." ;D
Jeff Wrangler:
I guess this isn't really music news, but it seemed like a nice place to post this.
I know it's funny, but a fake band inspired me to pay more attention to real bands. :laugh:
A couple of years ago I was watching "Eddie and the Cruisers," the "Cruisers" being a fake band for the movie. In the scene where Eddie (Michael Pare) is singing (lip synching) "On the Dark Side," I noticed the band's drummer over Pare's shoulder. I don't know if David Wilson, who played Kenny Hopkins, the band's drummer, could really play drums, of if he was just "acting" it, but I thought he looked pretty good at it.
Anyway, after watching that scene, I started to pay attention to the drums in songs I heard on the radio--and lots of them sounded pretty good to my untrained ear.
From the drums, I went on to listening for the keyboards (I imagine by the 1980's a lot of that was electronic), and even for violins--I can't say if they're "real" violins or not. You can even hear clarinets in some songs.
While I don't much particularly care for John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane," there is some amazing (to me) acoustic guitar work (at least I think it's acoustic--sounds like it to me) in that song, and I wonder if it's Mellencamp himself playing the guitar.
(Thanks to vinyl album liner notes, I know it's Bryan Adams himself playing rhythm guitar on "Summer of '69.")
So who writes this stuff anyway?
CellarDweller:
Neil Sedaka dies at 86
Neil Sedaka (March 13, 1939 ? February 27, 2026) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Beginning his music career in 1957, he sold millions of records worldwide and wrote or co-wrote over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard Greenfield and Phil Cody.
After a short-lived tenure as a founding member of the doo-wop group the Tokens, Sedaka achieved a string of hit singles over the late 1950s and early 1960s
Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 singles of Neil Sedaka.
Year Song Title Peak Position on Billboard Top 40 Chart
1958 - "The Diary" #14
1959 - "Oh! Carol!" #9
1960 - "Stairway to Heaven" #9
1960 - "You Mean Everything To Me" #17
1960 - "Run Samson Run" #28
1961 - "Calendar Girl" #4
1961 - "Little Devil" #11
1961 - "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" #6
1962 - "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" #1
1962 - "Next Door To An Angel" #5
1963 - "Alice In Wonderland" #17
1963 - "Let's Go Steady Again" #26
1963 - "Bad Girl" #33
1972 - "That's When The Music Takes Me" #27
1974 - "Laughter In The Rain" #1
1975 - "The Immigrant" #22
1975 - "Bad Blood" #1
1975 - "Breakin' Up Is Hard To Do" #8
1976 - "Love In The Shadows" #16
1976 - "Steppin' Out" #36
1980 - "Should've Never Let You Go" #19
serious crayons:
I glanced over the list, saw "Stairway to Heaven," and at first assumed Neil Sedaka must have been doing a cover of the Led Zeppelin version, which seemed like an odd pairing. Then I noticed the year and realized that couldn't be true. And of course, it turned out to be a different "Stairway to Heaven."
Front-Ranger:
Interesting article in the NYT Magazine's latest issue on sync music (I thought it was called synth music, but apparently that's something different). I'm gifting it to you:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/magazine/sync-music-songwriters-video.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TFA.b6TC.BWznUV73rmHi&smid=url-share
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version