Twenty-five years of writing about music! A selection of 17 essays and reviews of music from all over the world.

Steely Dan's song "Deacon Blues" tells the paradoxical story of how an inauthentic man finds liberation. How much is that everybody's story?

When does a fun song about a bad man celebrate wickedness? And is this OK in the name of fun?

The story you didn't know of the classic hymn and how it has been a prolific meme in American culture.

Songs about home: what can we say about them and what do they say about us?

The name of one of music history's most most difficult sets of sonatas is unknown, but its beauty is evident.

What contemporary songs can tell us about our epic conflict.

The beauty of baroque music is that it can be realized in so many ways. Four versions of the same sweet song.

In which the sense of life in Beethoven's Fifth is compared to that of Atlas Shrugged.

A musical that tells the tale of that force of nature, Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues

Regarding the classic Bollywood video "Chaiyya, Chaiyya," and its erotic song and dance.