SONG.REVIEWS
Greatest of All Time!Screamin' Jay Hawkins meant to record a polite ballad. A producer got the whole band drunk instead, and Hawkins screamed, grunted, and blacked out his way into one of the most covered songs in American music -- then had to relearn it from his own record.
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Greatest of All Time!Elvis Presley's manager wanted the publishing rights to Dolly Parton's farewell song in exchange for a recording. She said no on the spot -- and eighteen years later, Whitney Houston's version became one of the best-selling singles in history.
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Greatest of All Time!Luther Vandross spent years singing and arranging vocals behind other artists -- Bowie and Chic among them -- before he wrote and produced the record that made him a star on his own.
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Ledisi, playing Mahalia Jackson in Ava DuVernay's Selma, sings the hymn for the film and its 2014 soundtrack -- a performance that has to work as drama as well as gospel, and mostly does.
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Bruno Mars' bolero-turned-single re-entered the Hot 100 top 10 seven months after release, on the strength of a Spanish-language version and a genre swerve that shouldn't have worked on paper.
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Drake and Don Toliver's 'Encore'-week entry builds its hook directly out of Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' melody, debuts at No. 5 on streaming muscle and a borrowed earworm, and never does much with either.
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