TAKE TWO: CHICAGO

Self-described as a "rock and roll band with horns,", Chicago has been creating their unique and dazzling blend of jazz, soul and pop-rock music for almost sixty years. Formed in 1967 from several Chicago area bands whose members decided to join forces and play together. The original line-up was Peter Cetera on bass, Terry Kath on guitar, Robert Lamm on keyboards, Lee Loughnane on trumpet, James Pankow on trombone, Walter Parazaider on woodwinds, and Danny Seraphine on drums with Cetera, Kath and Lamm sharing lead vocals. First working as a local cover band called The Big Thing, the group began creating original material which was well received when they performed them.

After getting signed to Columbia Records in 1968, they changed their name to the Chicago Transit Authority. Their self-titled debut was released the following year and was a double album which was highly unusual for a band's very first record. But that showed how much faith the label had for Chicago Transit Authority and they were proven to be right. The album would go on to sell over a million copies by 1970 on the strength of the hit singles, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings", "Questions 67 and 68", and "I'm a Man". Following this rapid success, the band dropped "Transit Authority" from their name to avoid any potential legal action from the actual transit company. 

Chicago quickly went back into the studio for their next album, "Chicago II" that became another big hit in 1970 that featured the top ten songs, "Make Me Smile", "Colour My World" and "25 or 6 to 4". "Chicago III" was out the next year and became another gold album. The rest of Chicago's subsequent six albums were Roman-numeral titled and would include plenty more popular hit singles: "Saturday in the Park", "Just You 'n' Me", "Feelin' Stronger Every Day", "(I've Been) Searchin' So Long", "Wishing You Were Here", "Old Days" and "If You Leave Me Now" which became the group's first number one US pop single in 1976 and won Chicago their only Grammy Award to date. With the 1977 release, "Chicago XI", "Baby, What a Big Surprise" was a number four U.S. hit that would become the group's last top 10 hit of the decade. 

Tragedy would strike the group when on January 23, 1978, Kath died from a freak accident: a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a gun he thought was unloaded. The band was unsure they would be able to continue as they also were beginning to have serious concerns about their long-time producer, James William Guercio who they began to suspect had been cheating the band financially. 

Chicago decided to continue on as a band, hiring guitarist and singer-songwriter Donnie Dacus to replace Kath and Phil Ramone to co-produce with the band on their tenth studio album, "Hot Streets" which was their first without a numbered title. The singles, "Alive Again" and "No Tell Lover" became top-twenty hits and proved Chicago was still able to achieve success despite the changes. However their next album, "Chicago 13" in 1979 was not nearly as successful and Dacus would leave the band at the end of the tour supporting the record. By 1980, the band released "Chicago XIV" with a new producer, Tom Dowd. With a radical change in sound, this album was a critical and financial failure with Columbia, no longer feeling the band was commercially viable, dropping the band from the label.

Two years later, Chicago signed with Warner Bros. Records, added keyboardist, guitarist, and singer Bill Champlin and brought in a new producer, David Foster to work on "Chicago 16". The ballad from the album, "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" (written by Foster and Cetera) became the band's second number one US pop single. More hits with Cetera on lead vocals followed with "You're the Inspiration" and "Hard Habit to Break", and soon he was requesting an opportunity to go off as a solo performer while remaining with Chicago. The band declined this offer and in 1985, Cetera would leave Chicago, enjoying a solid career with several of his own top ten hits.

Chicago has continued on as a group ever since, largely as a touring band with a constant change of backing members over the years. But they have also still been recording with twenty-six career studio albums to date and their most recent, "Chicago XXXVIII: Born for This Moment" released in 2022 with Lamm, Loughnane and Pankow still performing with the band they helped form. Chicago was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. It was extremely difficult to narrow down to just two songs by Chicago but I managed to select a couple of my all-time favorites:

NEW SOUNDS

MAREN MORRIS

Maren Morris broke through back in 2016 with her song "My Church" which was her first to reach the top ten of the US country singles charts. A recording contract with Columbia Nashville followed and she achieved more hit country singles. Morris dabbled in dance music a couple of years later, teaming with German record producer and DJ, Zedd and having their collaboration, "The Middle" become a smash international hit. After a few more successful albums, Morris has taken a page from Taylor Swift's playbook, moving away from pure country and has just released "Dreamsicle", a collection of modern pop that showcases another side of her impressive talent. Teaming up with a large number of the top producers in contemporary pop which includes Greg Kurstin and Jack Antonoff (who helped Swift on her journey into pop music), the politically outspoken Morris has delivered songs that express where she currently is in her life right now after recently ending her marriage to musician, Ryan Hurd and coming out as bisexual. She has planned to embark on her "Dreamsicle World Tour" to support the record with dates set across North America and Europe.





BARBRA STREISAND

With "The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two", Barbra Streisand offers a sequel to her popular 2014 duets album, "Partners". This collection, due out in June, has the legendary performer teaming-up with some of her musical contemporaries (Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Bob Dylan), pop music successors (Josh Groban, Sting, Mariah Carey, Tim McGraw) and current artists (Sam Smith, Laufey, Ariana Grande). The songs they perform range from pop standards to songs written by some of her duet partners. The first two songs released feature Streisand with the Irish rocker, Hoizer on a cover of Ewan MacColl's 1957 love ballad, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". And the former Beatle performs with Streisand, "My Valentine", a love song he had written for his album, "Kisses on the Bottom" back in 2011.

WHAT WAS THAT?

It's been about four years since Lorde released her third studio album, "Solar Power", a collection of psychedelic pop, which was meet with a largely mixed reaction. The New Zealand based artist had laid low since then but recently has returned to the scene with new music. With "What Was That", the singer has returned to form with more of the synth-pop sound that first brought her attention. Teaming with new collaborators, Jim-E Stack and Daniel Nigro, the song has Lorde haunted by memories of a relationship that has ended, trying to understand what it was all about. And the music video for the song has the singer moving through New York City, on foot and by bike, before ending up at Washington Square Park, surrounded by a swarm of her fans who were waiting after being notified she was going to make an appearance. This seems to be a good indicator that a collection of new music is on the horizon from Lorde but in the meantime, have a listen to her latest:

SLY LIVES (AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS)

The question is asked in "Sly Lives", the follow-up to musician-turned-filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's Oscar-winning documentary feature, "Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" on the legendary musical creator, Sly Stone; "Is there a burden on Black Genius?". It is answered by many artists who appear in this riveting film like Chaka Khan, George Clinton, D'Angelo, Andre 3000, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who all tend to agree that when you put art out into the world, there is an intense pressure by success which can be even more stifling than a fear of failure. They also agreed that Stone, a free-spirited prodigy, was an important and highly influential visionary who kicked down the racial, gender and musical barriers that had been long held-up in society. He would go on to pay a heavy price for his rewarding sonic disruption, although some of the trauma may have been self-inflicted through his struggles with lingering drug addiction. Yet his profound musical legacy has continued to endure and thrive.

Born Sylvester Stewart, he first got into music performing with his family as a gospel group in church after migrating to the Bay area from Texas. As a child, he became proficient at playing several instruments, effortlessly mastering the keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums. Stewart went on to become involved in a mixed-race, doo-wop singing group, the Viscaynes in the early 1960's, finding some local success. After later becoming a DJ in San Francisco at KSOL where he played soul records while occasionally mixing in some British rock, Stewart got the opportunity to produce for Autumn Records, making records with San Francisco-area rock bands such as The Beau Brummels, The Mojo Men and The Great Society that featured Grace Slick in her first band.

This lead to the forming of Sly and the Family Stone, a racially integrated, mixed-gender band who performed what would become known as Psychedelic soul, a merging of funk, rock and r&b. After an indifferent reaction to their debut album, Sly and the Family Stone broke through with their follow-up release, "Dance to the Music" in 1968 with the title track reaching the top-ten on the pop charts. More hits followed; "Everyday People", "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)", "Everybody Is a Star", "I Want to Take You Higher", "Family Affair" with a highlight being an electrifying live appearance during the summer of love at Woodstock.

This sudden success brought problems to the band with creative and personal friction between the musicians and far more prevalent drug usage. But it was Stone's increasingly erratic behavior that would eventually drive some band members to leave the group. And while they would usually be replaced, largely for touring purposes, Stone began to perform most of the instruments and vocals himself during the recording of new music.

Fast-paced and visually arresting, "Sly Lives" reminds us of what a musical anomaly Stone was as an artist at the time. Fearlessly challenging the convention of genres, he was unmotivated by chasing fame, only making music that truly inspired him. Sly and his band were officially together for about seventeen years but really only had almost a decade where they were productive creatively as a musical outfit. But what they were able to accomplish during that explosive period was absolutely innovative and breathtaking.

RANDOM SIGHTS + SOUNDS

David Archuleta had seemed to be happy during his time pursuing a music career and getting a jump start by becoming runner-up during the seventh season of "American Idol" back in 2008. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, his faith was very important to Archuleta, even putting his rising career as a pop singer on hold while he spent two years as a missionary. But he had also been keeping a secret that he had been struggling with for many years: he was gay. This created a problem for him with the Mormon Church when he finally came out in 2021, eventually feeling he had to leave it behind. Archuleta has continued with his music career, more recently with a desire to perform freely whatever kind of music that personally motivates him and he can have fun with. His latest single, "Crème Brulée" is exactly that, clearly inspired by Sabrina Carpenter's catchy hit, "Espresso" which he had performed live in concert. The music video for this playful song has Archuleta dancing with smooth choreography interchangeably locked with male and female dancers.



Here is a spotlight on some new music: Kendrick Lamar and SZA team up on the single, "Luther" from his album, "GNX" with the video as a short film; "Tonight", the latest from British pop artist, PinkPantheress that is a part of her upcoming mixtape; Lucy Dacus, member of the indie supergroup, Boygenius, has just released her fourth solo album, "Forever is a Feeling" and this is a single from the collection and Kesha is back with new music from her upcoming album, a country/hip-hop hybrid that features T-Pain.

It's not really a great surprise that the romantic relationship between actress/pop singer, Selena Gomez and producer/songwriter, benny blanco would lead to a musical connection between these two. Beginning their love affair a little over two years ago, although they first met working together on music for her second solo album, "Revival" in 2015, this couple, who are engaged, has just released their recent collaboration, "I Said I Love You First", an album filled with songs that focuses on the ending of one relationship and finally finding true love in a new one. Gomez, who stars in the popular series, "Only Murders in the Building" and recently co-starred in the provocative, Oscar-nominated big-screen musical, "Emilia Pérez" and blanco, the pop music creator who has probably worked at some point with every contemporary artist you may know, has brought on board Gracie Abrams, The Marías and J Balvin to appear on their project. Here are a few of my favorite tracks from the album:

2025 NATIONAL RECORDING REGISTRY

The National Recording Registry has just selected the latest twenty-five sound recordings inducted with the goal each year to highlight what it calls "the range and diversity of the American recorded sound heritage". Some of the recordings that have been honored include the debut albums of the pop-rock group, Chicago and the '80's folk musician, Tracy Chapman; the jazz legend, Miles Davis and his experimentation with electric instruments on "Bitches Brew" that became his very first gold album; "My Heart Will Go On", the love ballad from one of the biggest box-office movie hits of all-time, "Titanic" sung by Celine Dion; the recording of the jazz classic, "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Brother Bones and His Shadows which would later become the theme song of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team; the original Broadway cast album of the hip-hop flavored biography of the first US Secretary of the Treasury, "Hamilton"; "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", an album considered by many to be the masterpiece of Elton John's recording career; "Happy Trails", the popular theme song for "The Roy Rogers Show" on radio and television written and sung by Rogers and his wife, Dale Evans; Helen Reddy's enduring feminist anthem for the women's liberation movement, "I Am Woman"; and "Back To Black", the breakout hit album by the late British pop vocalist, Amy Winehouse.

The Registry is an extension of the passage by Congress in 2000 of the National Recording Preservation Act. Since 2002, the Library of Congress oversees the selection of 25 recordings, which must be at least 10 years old at the time of induction, and deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". This latest group brings the total number of recordings in the registry to 650.

Here is the complete list of the twenty-five selections entered into the 2025 National Recording Registry:

"Aloha ‘Oe" - Hawaiian Quintette (1913) (single)
"Sweet Georgia Brown" - Brother Bones & His Shadows (1949) (single)



"Happy Trails" - Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (1952) (single)



Radio Broadcast: "Game 7 of the 1960 World Series" - Chuck Thompson (1960)
Harry Urata Field Recordings (1960-1980)
"Hello Dummy" - Don Rickles (1968) (album)
"Chicago Transit Authority" - Chicago (1969) (album)



"Bitches Brew" - Miles Davis (1970) (album)



"Kiss An Angel Good Mornin" - Charley Pride (1971) (single)
"I Am Woman" - Helen Reddy (1972) (single)



"El Rey" - Vincente Fernandez (1973) (single)
"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" - Elton John (1973) (album)
"Before the Next Teardrop Falls" - Freddy Fender (1975) (single)



"I’ve Got The Music In Me" - Thelma Houston & Pressure Cooker (1975) (album)
"The Kӧln Concert" - Keith Jarrett (1975) (album)
"Fly Like An Eagle" - Steve Miller Band (1976) (album)



Nimrod Workman Collection (1973-1994)
"Tracy Chapman" - Tracy Chapman (1988) (album)
"My Life" - Mary J. Blige (1994) (album)



"Microsoft Windows Reboot Chime" - Brian Eno (1995)
"My Heart Will Go On" - Celine Dion (1997) (single)
"Our American Journey" - Chanticleer (2002) (album)
"Back to Black" - Amy Winehouse (2006) (album)



"Minecraft: Volume Alpha" - Daniel Rosenfeld (2011) (album)
"Hamilton" - Original Broadway Cast Album (2015) (album)

SOMEONE TO CALL MY LOVER

I am still amazed about the power of Tik Tok and the short-form, video platform's ability to breathe new life into older or more obscure music. The latest is the resurgence of Janet Jackson's 2001 pop hit, "Someone To Call My Lover" which has seen a streaming surge once again by going viral on the app. There is usually a current dance craze that helps propel a song's popularly but that isn't clear here with Jackson's twenty-four year old song gaining traction through remixes by her fans and the use as background music on various Tik Toks.

"Someone To Call My Lover" was a track from Jackson's seventh studio album, "All for You" and was the second single released from the record. Jackson and her producers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis crafted this song during the difficult demise of her over ten year marriage to dancer and producer, René Elizondo Jr. Feeling lonely and wishing she had a companion so she could do things differently in a new relationship, the song was inspired by these emotions. With a sample of the guitar riff from the rock band, America's 1972 top-ten hit, "Ventura Highway" driving the song, "Someone To Call My Lover" reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the top-twenty in several other countries.

But this sadly would become Jackson's final top-ten hit in the US and the last time Jam and Lewis would produce her music for ten years. Following her appearance on the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in 2004 and the infamous "wardrobe malfunction", Jackson became vilified in the press, losing work and her new music would suffer the consequences from this incident. Thankfully, Jackson's career recovered from this controversy, enjoying a renewed, surge in popularity with her Together Again World Tour which began in 2023 and has continued with a Las Vegas residency. And it's been ten years since her last studio album, "Unbreakable", so let's hope this viral hit will help inspire Jackson to get back in the studio to make some new music.