For the first 10 seconds, the song sounds like it’s building to something monumental: thundering piano chords, sweeping synth washes, and a swelling echo like you’re down in a vast ravine. And then, at 0:11 … click. It all switches off like a lamp—a finger-snap and a meek “Hey,” as the melody downshifts to two-finger [...] Read more

In their 1931 Tin Pan Alley standard “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” songwriters Lew Brown and Ray Henderson questioned the value of a dime at the height of the Great Depression: “Life is just a bowl of cherries/ Don’t take it serious—it’s too mysterious/ You work, you save, you worry so/ But you [...] Read more