Vijaya Sundaram

Poet, Musician, Teacher, and Amateur Visual Artist

What I wrote on FB today — Music, songs, rock classics, singer-songwriters
Someone shared this on a friend’s FB page, and I was instantly transported to the early 80s, when I was young, and listened to Led Zeppelin a lot (or at least the album on which this song appears).
I know I sound like an old fogey, but seriously, where ARE the real songs in popular music today? It’s all either trash-talk, or mushy.
Give me Pink Floyd, King Crimson, even Deep Purple, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, always Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Queen, Eric Clapton, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel.
And always, The Beatles.
Give me Suzanne Vega, always.
Joan Baez (even though her shrill trills set my teeth on edge)
Joni Mitchell (lovely songs, too high a voice for my taste, but beautiful, still).
Carole King
Don McLean
Even Nirvana, whose sound is inimitable.
Always, Bob Dylan!
And from before, and since, Pete Seeger.

Yes, there are others, of course. They’ll come to mind.
Form, sound, soul, structure, musicality, good taste (most of them, and some of them not all the time, but much of the time) — they’re all there.
And I’m not even at jazz music yet, or the old songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or soul.
Fortunately, there are good singer-songwriters out there, but they’re not making much either in terms of fame or money. That’s a shame.
Here are some songs about California (just because …):