Ned Rorem: Visits to St. Elizabeth’s

Ned Rorem: Visits to St. Elizabeth’s

Marrying Words to Music  I began this series for the No Song is Safe From Us blog with an attempt to define what a song is at a time when the word is widely used in everyday speech to connote all music and also to attempt to try to understand...
Dock Boggs: Sugar Baby

Dock Boggs: Sugar Baby

Can Song Be Explained in a World Where Everything’s a Song? Having become a huge fan of NYFOS only somewhat recently (within the last four seasons), I was thrilled to be asked to contribute a week of posts to No Song is Safe from Us. But I must confess to feeling...
Donald Fagen: On the Dunes

Donald Fagen: On the Dunes

Our final Fagen song this week is from his astonishing solo album Kamakiriad. It’s a concept album: a long, shaggy, sci-fi romp in a futuristic car. The songs have a loose, funky, jiggly joy that make this album perfect on a long car trip, or when you’re cleaning...
Donald Fagen: Time Out of Mind

Donald Fagen: Time Out of Mind

This wasn’t the first cut on the Gaucho album to speak to me; it took me a while to warm up to it. It is, in fact, not exactly a warm song. But suddenly I couldn’t get enough of it. It’s understated, boppy, and subtle as hell. The lyrics, like so many of...