Today's featured shit

I listened to this album five times, and it still isn’t doing a lot for me. Johnny Foreigner does a great job on “Lea Room,” but other tracks on “Waited Up Til It Was Light” leave me a bit empty. Maybe 13 tracks was a little ambitious. Perhaps a solid 10 would have been better.

“Cranes and Cranes and Cranes and Cranes” is a fun title, but the song itself is way too fast for its own good and leaves me dizzy. The chorus is slower, and it lets you catch up, and then it takes off again. A good song for pop fans, I guess, but I keep falling behind.

The talent is all in the song titles, really. “Our Bipolar Friends,” “Salt, Pepa and Spinderella” and “Yes! You Talk Too Fast” are real men of genius titles, but there is nothing underneath. The equally clever “DJ’s Get Doubts” is an exception, however. It has strings, but they don’t sound ostentatious.

“Sometimes in the Bullring” is like driving on a bumpy freeway. It’s fun, but you wonder about the harm you’re doing to your car. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. At least I tried. C-

Compilations are always fun. This one is geared for kids. There are some covers, but everything rocks. Everything.

“Nellie the Elephant” is covered by Sgt. Major. Sgt. Major makes the song its own, but it’s still clearly a cover, the best of both worlds. Venerable Visqueen shows up to cover “Centerfield.” Put them in, coach. I thought I loved this song until I realized it was the original song that I like, not the cover. It’s like those Coors Light commercials in which they splice footage from NFL press conferences with a bunch of Coors Light drinking dorks asking stupid questions. They aren’t funny. It’s the press conference clips that are.

“Holiday Dinner Song” is neat. If you’re going to a pumpkin carving party, this is a great song to play in the background. “Pumpkin squash/oh my gosh” is just a sample of the great lyrics. Want one more? OK. “Who’s the boss?/Applesauce.” Good times.

However, nothing beats “Green Up Time.” It’s a good song in its own right, but then you see it’s sung by Mirah and Tara Jane O’Neill, and it gets 300 times better. Why was there not music like this when I was a kid? I’d rather have heard this than “Frosty the Snowman.” A