Music As I See It in 2019 So Far

I was planning to devote this article to listing various upcoming album releases this year from different acts I've come to like and follow.  Unfortunately, the only album I could identify is Beck's Hyperspace: he just released a single from it, while at the same time announcing the new album...and I don't know when it's coming out.  That's okay, there is so much old music I haven't heard from my favorite bands and solo artists that I can occupy my listening time with them.  I just checked out Simon and Garfunkel's penultimate album Bookends...it's long been my favorite of this duo from the 60s, containing brilliant songs like America, Bookends, Hazy Shade of Winter, and Fakin' It.  I've also been listening a bit to the great 1968 Rolling Stones album Beggars Banquet, featuring my own personal favorites Street Fighting Man and Prodigal Son. And, of course, I do very much like Paul McCartney's 2018 album Egypt Station, the track Caesar Rock still my favorite song of 2019 so far with his Happy With You a solid second.  And I'm also listening to Antonin Dvorak's 9th "New World" Symphony in E-Minor...the second "Largo" movement is very compelling, but the whole thing is incredible, quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite classical works...

It's a shame, I suppose, that I never did get to care very much for either country or hip-hop music, since especially here in northern Florida these two genres dominate the popular music scene.  This past weekend C&W icon Garth Brooks gave a concert at the University of Florida football stadium and you would have thought it was the Second Coming by how folks reacted to it on Facebook...I never did care for Brooks and this adulation hit me hard that the kind of music I like is no longer widely followed by the population at large.  Well, they can have theirs and I'll enjoy mine...as long as they don't impose their tastes on me, that's all I ask: it's bad enough to hear crap that now passes as "popular" music on so many commercials nowadays...