Twenty-Five Semi-Obscure Traditional Christmas Songs as Performed by Famous and Non-Famous People: 1. The Coventry Carol. Celebrate the end of Christmas with this cheerful song about infants being murdered by a paranoid monarch. Actually quite beautiful. As performed by Sting, Joan Baez, John Denver, Nox Arcana, Loreena McKennitt, Manheim Steamroller, Alison Moyet, Annie Lennox and the African Children's Choir, Sufjan Stevens, Hayley Westenra, The Mediaeval Baebes, Dinah Shore, and the Westminster Cathedral Choir. [more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe on Dec 11, 2011 - 29 comments

"Broadside was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment." The entire back catalog of this influential magazine - which helped set the visual standard for underground zines until desktop publishing - is now avalable online, in PDF.
posted by Miko on Apr 2, 2010 - 9 comments

"So, that’s my long and winding history of a little postcard from the Upper West Side of Manhattan!" Suzanne Vega writes about writing the hit song Tom's Diner, coping with its numerous remixes, and its part in the birth of the MP3 music compression format.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 24, 2008 - 34 comments

'The Cantigas de Santa Maria medieval-era manuscripts were written during the reign of Alfonso X "El Sabio" (1221-1284) and are one of the largest collections of monophonic (solo) songs from the middle ages ... ' Images.
posted by plep on Nov 18, 2004 - 6 comments

Night of the Johnstown Flood. "There was no larger news story in the latter nineteenth century after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The story of the Johnstown Flood has everything to interest the modern mind: a wealthy resort, an intense storm, an unfortunate failure of a dam, the destruction of a working class city, and an inspiring relief effort." Curious about about a line in this song, I went looking for information and found this story and this monument and the wonder/horror of this playground, where a giant force played with masses of iron, weighing scores of tons each, as a child might play with pebbles.
posted by weston on Jul 15, 2003 - 23 comments