Song of the Moment: Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

My music-listening habits have room for improvement. The most glaring flaw is that I tend not to explore the oeuvre of an artist when I hear a song I really, really, like. This makes sense in some cases (such as if the band is mostly terrible), but in general when you enjoy a song from a band or artist you are unfamiliar with you should try to listen to more of their music. Unless of course the song is Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer.

Peter Gabriel has released several songs that are quite excellent. Shock the Monkey, Big Time, and Solsbury Hill are all very good songs. If someone were to make me compilation CD with any of those songs I would tell the person "Including those selections from Peter Gabriel's repertoire was a good choice." However, if Sledgehammer were on the CD it would take make years before I got around to listening to any of the other tracks.

There are few songs I enjoy as much as Sledgehammer. I love the synthesized flute, how the intro leads into the first verse, and most of all the chorus. I have come to conclude that the chorus creates a sonic wave that stimulates the production of serotonin in my brain. If I like the song so much, why should I listen to any of his other work? I mean, time spent listening to other Peter Gabriel songs is time I could spend listening to Sledgehammer.

Recently I have been making a strong effort to listen to albums in their entirety, so the "I'm perfectly happy listening to this song, thank you very much" habit is on its way out. This is a good thing. Of course, maybe I'll find myself too impatient to listen to albums all the way through. If that happens you know what I'll be listening to.

Song of the Moment: Weird Al - Christmas at Ground Zero

I was a very large fan of Weird Al in elementary school and junior high. His music videos were an endless source of amusement and his ability to mock popular music by turning hit songs into odes to old TV shows and food tickled my funny bone. Then high school came. Sophomore year I was introduced to the blazing chops of Joe Satriani and immediately the unthinkable happened: I found something cooler than Weird Al. Though I am no longer what you would call a "fan" of Weird Al, his music has some positive traits that have held up well through time.

Weird Al is generally known as a curly-haired (and formerly mustachioed) goof ball that cranks out tunes that are fun for the whole family. While this is mostly accurate, it does not give any indication of his often dark sense of humor. His most well known songs are about benign topics such as the Amish or ice cream, but frequently scattered throughout his repertoire are some darker cuts, which I still find funny. In addition to his dark sense of humor, Weird Al has also written some pretty good style parodies of bands, genres, and eras of music. I don't think he's ever gotten enough credit for his ability to synthesize the essential characteristics of oeuvres into an original song, but then again, this is Weird Al I'm talking about.

This is all a long way for me to say that while Weird Al is not as funny to me as he once was, he is as funny once as he ever was: