Entertainment Weekly – September 01, 2019

Music

“Give Peace a Chance”
PLASTIC ONO BAND
Lie in a hotel bed for days on end,
invite the press and some famous art-
ist friends over, make up a few words
(anyone else know what a “shagism”
is?), and voilà: You get John Lennon
and Yoko Ono’s simple but effective
stomp-and-clap peace anthem
protesting the conflict in Vietnam.

“Honky Tonk Women”

THE ROLLING STONES

You’d never hear it in an actual honky-

tonk. But who cares about adhering

to musical genres when your cowbell-

clanging track about two previous

trysts (with a gin-soaked barroom

queen in Memphis and a divorcée in

New York City) tops the charts on

both sides of the Atlantic?

“Sweet Caroline”

NEIL DIAMOND

Somewhere bar patrons are drunk-

enly singing the call-and-response

hook to this now-ubiquitous hit, which

has been played during the eighth

inning at Fenway Park for more

than two decades. (Fun fact: Though

long thought to be about Caroline

Kennedy, Diamond stated in 2014 that

the song was inspired by his wife at

the time, Marcia, but he changed the

name in the hook because it called for

a three-syllable word instead of two.)

“Everyday People”

SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE

Different strokes for different folks,

but not when it comes to this crowd-

pleasing No. 1 hit about equality. From

the famed piano-and-chug-along-bass

fade-in, Sly and his funk-and-soul

outfit are here to tell you that, fat or

skinny, black or white, rich or poor—

and so on, and so on, and scooby

dooby doo—we’ve gotta live together.

“Aquarius/Let the Sunshine

In (The Flesh Failures)”

THE 5TH DIMENSION

This cover of songs from the

acclaimed Broadway musical Hair

embodied the peace-and-love ethos

of the times (“Harmony and under-

standing/Sympathy and trust abound-

ing/No more falsehoods or derisions”).

It also ended up being one of the

vocal group’s biggest hits.

“Get Together” The Youngbloods, “My Cherie Amour”

Stevie Wonder, “Can’t Find My Way Home” Blind Faith,

“One” Three Dog Night, “In the Ghetto” Elvis Presley

WHILE MEN LANDED ON THE MOON AND HIPPIES PARTIED AT

WOODSTOCK, RADIOS WERE BLASTING TUNES ABOUT PEACE, LOVE,

AND HAPPINESS. FIFTY YEARS LATER, WE COUNT DOWN THE

SONGS THAT SOUNDTRACKED IT ALL. BY EW STAFF

EARLY ON, BON IVER’S JUSTIN

Vernon always appeared slightly

bemused by fame; a man dragged

from the peaceful solitude of the

Wisconsin woods to klieg-lit

Grammy stages and Hawaiian song-

writing camps with Kanye. But

somewhere over the past decade, he

seems to have learned to make peace

with it, too—channeling the hushed,

hazy intimacy of his bedroom

balladry for the wide-lens audience

that unexpectedly embraced him.

Maybe that’s why Bon Iver’s

fourth full-length, i,i, feels as

confident as anything he’s ever

done: a dense, richly layered show-

case for his continued aversion to

the standard rules of grammar and

the deepening of his defiantly

uncommercial sound. The woozily

atmospheric James Blake collabora-

tion “iMi” erupts into a joyful

cacophony of horns; synths pulse

and stutter like sonar on the shim-

mering “Holyfields,”; the sweet

gospel falsetto of “U (Man Like)”

gets full-throated assists from both

the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and dad-

rock icon Bruce Hornsby, no less. If

that old fantasy of the lonesome

woodsman has been dispelled by

boldfaced guests and studio tricks,

Vernon’s voice has its own fresh

timbre on i,i. It’s the sound of

an artist set free to kill his caps-

lock key and follow his creative

impulses—wherever they lead. A–

Bon Iver

ALBUM i,i

L A B E L

+ GENRE Jagjaguwar Indie rock

REVIEW BY Leah Greenblatt

@Leahbats

PLAYLIST

↖ Clockwise

from top Stevie

Wonder, Sly

Stone, Yoko Ono,

and John Lennon

S

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