Greatest Song Evah 5/23/25

Home

It would be inaccurate to call Home the best known song by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, if only because despite the fact that most people are familiar with the song a large number of them do not know the name of the artist behind the song. There was a period of a few years in which it was a frequently used needle drop. It served as a soundtrack for montages, movie trailers, commercial transitions in sport telecasts, etc. It’s easy to see why. The song is filled with touches that make it such a joyful experience: the whistling, the trumpet flair at the end of the chorus, the upbeat lyrics.

The song is structured as a dialogue between a couple who are head over heels in love with each other, and the lyrics convey the idea of being so gaga over your partner that it’s difficult to articulate without sounding tongue tied. “Holy moly, me oh my, you’re the apple of my eye.” It culminates with the sentiment expressed in the chorus. “Home is wherever I’m with you.” And the spoken word bridge is quite lovely as well.

The feel good vibes are in full evidence in the song’s video as well. It looks like a full communal experience, helped by the fact that there appear to be approximately 74 members of the Magnetic Zeros. (By the way, there is no actual Edward Sharpe in the band.) If they had been born a couple of generations earlier I could picture them traveling the country in a cramped VW microbus. You can’t help but smile watching this.

It would also be inaccurate to call them a one hit wonder, as despite the song’s ubiquity it did not actually chart in the United States. The album that this song appears on, Up From Below, is a fantastic record. It is filled with some great bangers. Oddly enough, as much as I love both the song & the album I have never taken the time to explore anything else in their discography. Nothing else they released has made much of an impact, but their one magical moment as more than enough.

Programming Note

I am going to take advantage of the holiday weekend - which also happens to be my birthday weekend (don’t worry, you don’t gotta get me nuthin’) - and skip Monday’s newsletter next week. I’ll be back on Wednesday.

Tying A Bow On Season 50

Virtually every criticism of SNL has its roots in one truism: every fan of the show thinks of the Glory Days as whichever era was the first time they began watching the show. That’s a natural human reaction in the same way that baseball was never as good as it was when you were 8 years old or music was never as good as it was when you first started to really get into it. But keep in mind that all of the recurring problems with the show have always been there. This past season was no different.

A good way to look at it is like this. The show always has a talented cast, often a deep one. Even the worst season is bound to have more than a dozen sketches that will eventually be considered classics. Even the worst individual episode is bound to have at least one or two funny sketches. Well, maybe not the Elon Musk episode, but there is always an exception that proves the rule.

My immediate reaction about season 50 is that it was a below average one, but who knows if it will look better in retrospect years from now, particularly if several of the current cast members go on to have Poehler/Ferrell type careers. This was always going to be an unusual year due to the 50th anniversary celebration, but it also took a turn in November. The show was as stunned by the election results as everyone else was. Suddenly the feel good atmosphere - Maya is back! - was gone and SNL needed to pivot.

I’ve expended a lot of mental energy playing the Who Will Return Next Year? game, so I won’t repeat myself here other than to say that there was a moment in the season finale that made me go hmmm. Talk of who will replace Lorne died down once he made it clear that he had no plans of retiring after season 50 as many had assumed. When that discourse was taking place the two names most commonly mentioned as successors to the throne were Tina Fey and Seth Meyers, which both made sense. It’s likely that NBC will wish to keep it in the family. To take over the show, however, either of them would likely need to drop their other gigs. In the season ending Weekend Update joke swap there were a couple of jokes referencing Colin Jost’s demands to take over the show. That’s interesting. There might be more to that joke than appears.

As for my final power rankings of the year, here are my top 3 cast members of season 50, with all due respect to Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman.

1. Andrew Dismukes - He’s got a great talent for portraying irrationally confident characters, plus he makes for an outstanding oddball.

2. Heidi Gardner - After all these years, she remains a star on the Update desk. No one has a better knack for creating a character of such specificity in only 3 minutes.

3. Kenan Thompson - Kenan is SNL; SNL is Kenan. There are some weeks where he barely appears, but even in an episode in which he only does a quick pop-in, there is no more comforting presence than his.

Rookie Of the Year - Ashley Padilla - She looks to be Gardner’s heir apparent, she has the same character building abilities.

Top 5 episodes:

1. John Mulaney

2. Martin Short

3. Nate Bargatze

4. Mikey Madison

5. Lady Gaga

3 worst:

1. Shane Gillis

2. Jean Smart (it pains me to rate her episode so low)

3. Paul Mescal

My favorite new recurring characters/bits of the year:

1. Sabado Gigante - I love the audacity of parodying a show that ended its run 10 years ago

2. Miss Eggy

One final note. According to IMDB, there has been a total of 990 episodes, which means that episode #1000 is coming, if the show follows it’s normal schedule it would be the first one in January. It’s unlikely that this milestone will come with a splashy celebration so soon after the 50th anniversary gala, but I would suspect that Lorne will make a point to hire a big name host that week.

And The Green Flag Flies

I have mentioned in the past that the qualifying process for the Indy 500 is vastly different from when I was a kid & there would be as many as 45-50 drivers vying for the 33 spots in the field. In recent years there have only been 34 drivers attempting to qualify, meaning that only 1 man is sent home. If anything, that makes bump day even more tense. It’s one thing to have more than a dozen competitors have their dream dashed; there is at least a shared camaraderie among the bumped drivers. I can’t imagine how agonizing of a day it must be for the 34th fastest qualifier.

For the record, rookie driver Jacob Abel was the last man out. The shocker was that a different rookie won the pole position - Robert Shwartzman, the first rookie to win the pole in more than 40 years. He’s not just a rookie. This weekend will be the first time he has EVER raced on an oval. Which indicates that despite his speed he is a major underdog to win the thing, but stranger things have happened.

Just as newsworthy is who will be starting at the back of the grid. Two time defending champion Josef Newgarden and his Penske teammate Will Power were penalized after technical inspection reveals that illegal modifications were made to their cars. Head honcho Roger Penske did not f*** around, he immediately decided that his senior leadership team is no longer Penske material and fired them immediately.

I have mixed feelings about the IndyCar season thus far. I appreciate greatness, but dominance can get boring. That’s part of why I can’t get into Formula One; the top driver seemingly wins every race in each season. In the 5 IndyCar races of the year, Alex Palou has 4 wins and a second place. Now, all of those races have taken place on either a road or a street course; this will be the first oval race of the season. So Palou is not necessarily the overwhelming favorite. My pick? I’ll go with Pato O’Ward, who came sooooo close to winning last year. My sentimental pick is Scott Dixon. He is arguably one of the 4 or 5 greatest IndyCar racers of all time, but has “only” 1 Indy victory. A second win would cement his legendary status even further.

Ladies and Gentlemen… Your Colorado Rockies

We’re far enough into the season that the assorted “he is on a pace for ___” scenarios are not as far fetched as they were in mid April. Teams are going to hit the 1/3 mark of the season next week. Sample sizes are large enough that they are starting to get meaningful. I still want to wait at least a month before getting too excited, but man oh man those Colorado Rockies.

After 50 games their record stands at 8-42. That projects to only 26 wins for the season. That’s obviously not going to happen, but consider this. In the unlikely event that they play .500 ball the rest of the way, they would be looking at 98 losses. And if they were capable of maintaining a .500 pace for any length of time, they certainly would have shown it by now. It’s amazing to think that the modern record for most losses in a single season set by last year’s Chicago White Sox could already be in jeopardy. Also in play is the record for lowest winning percentage of .235, set by the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics.

Once again, the Rockies will certainly (I think) pick up the pace. There is every chance that they’ll luck into a few victories here and there. Even so, after 50 games a team will have clearly established their natural level. This is a team much worse than even the biggest pessimists could have imagined back in spring training. Check back around the 4th of July, if they are still close to being this bad at that date, then we have got ourselves a historically inept team for the second year in a row.

50 Years Ago - Still Crazy After All These Years

There is a famous clip of Paul Simon accepting the Grammy for Album of the Year in which he quips that he would like to thank Stevie Wonder for not releasing an album that year. This was in fact the album which broke the Stevie Streak, and it was also the album which contained Simon’s only #1 Hot 100 hit as a solo artist. To my ears, it is a fine record but it doesn’t measure up to either of his 2 previous records.

His eponymous album & There Goes Rhymin’ Simon both illustrate his musical curiosity, as he incorporates all types of genres into the mix. Still Crazy in contrast is a much more homogenous record, the majority of the songs have a lightly jazzy feel to them. And this point has me still irritated after all these years. When is he going to get around to telling us the remaining ways to leave your lover? If you’re gonna start a list, it behooves you to complete it.

It sounds like I’m damning the record with faint praise, but the best word I can use to describe the album is “professional.” Songs such as the title track and 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover are well-polished, with all-star bands of session pros providing support, and in the same way that there used to be a caricature of what constituted an Oscar Movie, so too does this feel like a prototypical Grammy Album. Somewhat highbrow, intended for a mature audience, but it feels emotionally distant.

The two biggest highlights of the record were both collaborative efforts. His duet with Phoebe Snow, Gone At Last, has got a wonderful gospel tone to it, and it brings life to the album that is otherwise missing. The album also contained the first Simon & Garfunkel duet since they had broken up the act a few years earlier. My Little Town is an appropriate reunion; the nostalgic lyrics mirror the reality that two estranged friends were working together again, albeit briefly. Reunions of this sort are too often anticlimactic letdowns, My Little Town ranks up there with the very best songs in the entire S&G catalog.

I’m probably in the minority when I classify this as a second tier Paul Simon album. It’s still worth noting that he is in the inner circle of American musical legends, so even second tier Simon is pretty damn good.

Closing Laughs

Thanks as always for the clicks. (Not a euphemism.) Enjoy the long weekend, everyone. I’ll see you again on Wednesday.