Thread by @GeePawHill

Hmmm. I reference my playlist, the VBS (Very Best Shit), with some regularity. In the last couple of days, several have inquired whether I have published it.

I have not.

There are 517 takes on it. Some of them are, well, deprecated. But if I do one a day, in no order...

Idunno, tho. I mean. One's VBS list is inevitably intimate. Do I even trust y'all enough to share it? And what about the logistics? I mean, I don't want you to just see the artist/title, I want you to hear the take. Most are available, but surely not all.

I don't listen to the VBS all the time. I mostly listen to "all the songs I have online". I turn to the VBS when I need comfort.

It's terribly complicated.

So here's the first three songs, sorted by "random filenames by which I acquired them".

First is Ella & Louis. "Stars Fell On Alabama".

We'll hear them again on the VBS, this isn't even their most astonishing take. This is the greatest vocalist of 20th century pop, ever so slightly past her prime, dueting with the man who is most responsible sd the architect of 20th century pop.

She, *notoriously* precise. He, *notoriously* out of control. And you hear them, and they're in perfect sync.

Then we move to Patsy, the secondmost astonishing vocalist of 20th century pop, who we'll also hear again later. She's singing a Hank Williams tune, "I Fall To Pieces".

...you want me to forget, pretend we never met...

...and I try, and I try, but I haven't yet...

...you walk by, and I fall to pieces...

You feel the tension here? Juxtaposition is my beat.

Third, I swear to you, this is the order the files are in the folder in, the incomparable Tony Bennett, the greatest of the crooners, here at, idunno, I think he's eighty-years-young in this MTV Unplugged concert.

I couldn't sing like that when I was 7, 12, 22, or 44. I wanted to sing like that at every one of those ages.

Aight, bonus track, fourth in the folder, it's Bonnie Raitt, "The Nick Of Time".

Raitt, a superstar, doesn't/didn't write most of the songs she performs, but she wrote this one.

Wild. First four random tracks off the VBS, and every single one of them is performed by artists who appear more than once on it. We'll see them all, Ella & Louis & Tony & Bonnie, again.

Believe it or not, none of those four tracks are my most beloved tracks from those artists.