Benjamin Kassel
"Hail to the King" has always wowed me... and now it also makes me think
The tap-filled anthem is one of my 21st-century rock favorites, but its lyrical theming didn't register with me until very recently.
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Benjamin Kassel
- Mar 25, 2022
- 4 min
"Learn to Fly" takes on extra weight in the wake of Taylor Hawkins' death
I'd been sitting on this song for a while, never imagining I'd write about it for this reason... but it painfully fits the moment.
Benjamin Kassel
- Mar 24, 2022
- 3 min
"Time in a Bottle" and the ephemerality of life
Jim Croce's ballad is never an easy listen for me, especially now as I think of major life changes coming in the short term.
Benjamin Kassel
- Mar 19, 2022
- 4 min
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is more than a meme
...but the meme's wide reach means that's how most think of the Blue Öyster Cult's classic tune.
Benjamin Kassel
- Feb 20, 2022
- 3 min
"The A Team"'s singular narrative makes me think deeply about the homelessness I see around Berkeley
Ed Sheeran's tale of one Angel grapples with connection, addiction, and its subject's all-too-likely fate.
Benjamin Kassel
- Feb 3, 2022
- 4 min
"American Pie," a memorial to lost innocence as much as lost musicians
As Don McLean captured, "The Day the Music Died" was only the beginning of a period of sweeping cultural change in the United States.
Benjamin Kassel
- Dec 25, 2021
- 4 min
I come to Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" in my own time of pain
It's a powerful reminder of the wide-ranging consequences of not taking care of oneself.
Benjamin Kassel
- Dec 21, 2021
- 3 min
"White Winter Hymnal" is an odd song to be associated with Christmas
A lyrical analysis displays why and then some.
Benjamin Kassel
- Dec 7, 2021
- 3 min
"Waterfalls" combines contemporary theming with morality
TLC, fully immersed in the social world of the mid-90s, remind listeners they can find a way out of the darkness by being their own light.
Benjamin Kassel
- Nov 11, 2021
- 3 min
Remembering the tragedy of the Edmund Fitzgerald through Gordon Lightfoot's haunting "Wreck"
Twenty-nine men and the ship with which they went down are memorialized each November 10, with this song serving as a backdrop.
Benjamin Kassel
- Nov 6, 2021
- 5 min
With "One Headlight," the Wallflowers resolutely navigate toward better days
Jakob Dylan and company paint the end of youthful innocence as a time for reaffirming oneself and continuing to move forward.
Benjamin Kassel
- Oct 13, 2021
- 4 min
As we're often painfully reminded, "Time" only moves forward
Alan Parsons and company tenderly embrace this fact in a song that can soundtrack the end of many things.
© 2021— by Benjamin Kassel. Proudly created with Wix.
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