by Beth Cronk, head librarian
The 2014 Grammys were awarded last night. As with most awards, all of the nominees
offer some great material. I’ll highlight here the Grammy-nominated and
Grammy-winning music and audiobooks that our library has available. Whether you’ll enjoy particular recordings or
not is of course a matter of your own taste.
Is there anything as debatable as whether a song is good or not?
Blake Shelton was nominated for best country solo
performance for the song Mine Would Be
You. The romantic ballad was also
nominated for best country song. This
track is on Shelton’s Based on a True Story, which was nominated for best country album. Shelton has gained new fans through his
recent work as a coach and judge on the television show The Voice. No awards for him
last night, but country fans may really enjoy this CD anyway.
The Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell album Old Yellow Moon won the Grammy for best
Americana album. Crowell joined Harris’
Hot Band in 1975 as a guitarist and harmony singer. On this album, the duo sings four original
songs written by Crowell, as well as Hank DeVito’s “Hanging Up My Heart”, Roger
Miller’s “Invitation to the Blues”, and Allen Reynolds’ “Dreaming My
Dreams”.
To Be Loved won
the Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album. This Michael Bublé CD includes standards such
as “You Make Me Feel So Young”, “Something Stupid”, and “Young at Heart”. Bublé became a jazz and old-fashioned pop
singer because he grew up listening to his grandfather’s collection of jazz
records.
You may not realize that audiobooks win Grammys, too. Stephen Colbert’s America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t won the
Grammy for best spoken word album. We
have the unabridged version of the book, read by the author. The host of The Colbert Report delivers his customary political humor and
satire. The book is based on the premise
that America is the greatest country and perfect in every way, but that it’s
broken and needs Colbert’s ideas to pull it back from the brink.
Billy Crystal’s audiobook is also nominated for best spoken
word album. Still Foolin’ ‘Em: Where I’ve Been, Where I’mGoing, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? is a memoir of Crystal’s life, with
a focus on what it’s like to age. Now
65, Crystal avoids the clichés of Hollywood memoirs and makes his writing as
funny and sweet as his much-lauded stand-up routine. We have the unabridged version of the book,
read by the author.
You can find all of these CDs at the Litchfield
Library. Checking out CDs can give you a
great way to pass the time in the car or to discover new music that you’d like
to buy on CD or iTunes. Remember that
copying music from a library CD to your own computer would be creating an
illegal pirated copy.
Other libraries in our system have different CDs available
that you can order or check out at those locations. For example, the Grove City Library has
Grammy-winning and Grammy-nominated CDs available by Daft Punk, Imagine Dragons,
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, David Bowie, Alicia Keys, and Little Big Town. You can visit them to check out those albums
or order them to be picked up at the Litchfield Library.
