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: Thoughlong 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 PresleyWHILE 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 IverALBUM i,i
L A B E L
+ GENRE Jagjaguwar Indie rock
REVIEW BY Leah Greenblatt
@LeahbatsPLAYLIST
↖ Clockwise
from top Stevie
Wonder, Sly
Stone, Yoko Ono,
and John Lennon