Tunes Du Jour Celebrates Brothers And Sisters Day

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May 2 is Brothers And Sisters Day, and today on the old blogorooni is a playlist of 30 duos or groups that include siblings. I didn’t include EVERY set of brothers and sisters, as I limit these playlists to 30 songs, so apologies to the Brothers Allman, the Sisters Pointer and all the other qualifying worthwhile acts. I’ll get you next time.

Here’s what is included:

**Don’t Look Back in Anger – Oasis**

This anthem of Britpop is fueled by the volatile but brilliant creative tension between Manchester’s most famous brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher.

**Gaslighter – The Chicks**

While Natalie Maines takes the lead, the group’s foundation is built on the masterful musicianship of sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer.

**God Only Knows – The Beach Boys**

The ethereal harmonies of this masterpiece are anchored by the Wilson brothers (Brian, Dennis, and Carl), proving that “family blend” is a real sonic phenomenon.

**Let It Be Me – The Everly Brothers**

Don and Phil Everly practically invented the art of close-harmony singing, influencing every duo that followed in their footsteps.

**Mmmbop – Hanson**

Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson took the world by storm as youngsters, showcasing a tight-knit musical bond that has kept them recording together for decades.

**The Rain, The Park & Other Things – The Cowsills**

The real-life inspiration for The Partridge Family, this family band featured six siblings and their mother creating pure sunshine-pop gold.

**Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) – Sly & The Family Stone**

Sly, Freddie, and Rose Stone revolutionized funk and soul as a multi-talented family unit at the heart of the psychedelic era.

**She Talks To Angels – The Black Crowes**

Brothers Chris and Rich Robinson have steered the Black Crowes through decades of rock and roll, proving that sibling rivalry can be a powerful creative engine.

**Sex On Fire – Kings Of Leon**

The Followill clan—brothers Caleb, Nathan, and Jared, plus cousin Matthew—turned their Southern upbringing into global stadium-rock stardom.

**Private Idaho – The B-52’s**

The quirky genius of the B-52’s was spearheaded in part by the late Ricky Wilson and his sister Cindy, whose shared vision helped define the New Wave era.

**You Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC**

The backbone of the “Thunder from Down Under” was the rock-solid rhythm section and songwriting partnership of brothers Angus and Malcolm Young.

**Summer Girl – HAIM**

The Haim sisters (Este, Danielle, and Alana) are the modern standard-bearers for sibling synergy, blending West Coast cool with effortless familial intuition.

**Crazy Horses – The Osmonds**

Proving they were more than just teen idols, the Osmond brothers cranked up the fuzz pedals for this surprisingly heavy slice of 70s rock.

**Hot Line – The Sylvers**

With nine siblings in the lineup, The Sylvers brought a massive, coordinated family energy to the disco and R&B charts.

**Goodbye to Love – The Carpenters**

Richard and Karen Carpenter combined his meticulous arrangements with her once-in-a-generation voice to create some of the most enduring pop music ever made.

**Oh Carolina – Folkes Brothers**

John, Mico, and Junior Folkes helped lay the groundwork for ska and reggae with their historic collaborations in 1960s Jamaica.

**Baby, I Love You – The Ronettes**

Centered around sisters Ronnie and Estelle Bennett (and their cousin Nedra), The Ronettes defined the Girl Group sound with their powerhouse vocals.

**Eddie My Love – The Teen Queens**

Sisters Betty and Rosie Collins achieved 1950s stardom as teenagers, delivering some of the most soulful doo-wop harmonies of the era.

**I Can Never Go Home Anymore – The Shangri-Las**

This dramatic masterpiece features two sets of sisters—the Weiss siblings and the Ganser twins—who brought operatic intensity to pop music.

**My Golden Years – The Lemon Twigs**

Brian and Michael D’Addario carry the torch for baroque pop, displaying a musical shorthand that only brothers who grew up playing together could possess.

**Crazy on You – Heart**

Ann and Nancy Wilson shattered the glass ceiling of 70s rock, combining powerhouse vocals with virtuoso guitar playing in a sisterly bond that remains unbreakable.

**Hero Takes a Fall – Bangles**

Sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson formed the core of the Bangles, blending 60s garage-rock influence with perfect sibling vocal stacks.

**I’ll Be Good To You – The Brothers Johnson**

George “Lightnin’ Licks” and Louis “Thunder Thumbs” Johnson brought a sophisticated, funk-fueled sibling energy to R&B.

**Stay Gold – First Aid Kit**

Klara and Johanna Söderberg of Sweden create folk music so intimate and harmonically precise it feels like they are sharing a single voice.

**Closer – Tegan And Sara**

Identical twins Tegan and Sara Quin have evolved from indie-folk to synth-pop icons, always maintaining the distinct perspective of their shared life experiences.

**Who’s That Lady – The Isley Brothers**

Spanning several generations of the Isley family, this legendary group turned sibling collaboration into a decades-long hit machine.

**Mama’s Pearl – Jackson 5**

The gold standard for family bands, the Jackson brothers (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael) displayed a level of professional polish that redefined pop music.

**Rock & Roll Fantasy – The Kinks**

Ray and Dave Davies are the definitive “battling brothers” of rock, but their lifelong collaboration resulted in one of the most influential catalogs in history.

**Full of Fire – The Knife**

Karin Dreijer and Olof Dreijer of Sweden push the boundaries of electronic music, using their sibling bond to explore avant-garde and experimental sounds.

**Saints – The Breeders**

When Kim Deal recruited her twin sister Kelley to join The Breeders, they created some of the most iconic and infectious alternative rock of the 90s.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents Willie Nelson

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What stands out about Willie Nelson, especially in a playlist like this one, is how naturally he connects songs and audiences that do not usually live in the same lane. “Crazy” and “Night Life” point back to his early years as one of Nashville’s great songwriters. “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “On the Road Again,” and “Always On My Mind” show how fully he grew into stardom as a singer. Then the list keeps widening: pop standards like “Blue Skies” and “Moonlight in Vermont,” a gospel song like “Uncloudy Day,” a duet with Ray Charles on “Seven Spanish Angels,” a track with Snoop Dogg on “Roll Me Up,” and a Pearl Jam cover, “Just Breathe,” recorded with his son Lukas. On paper, that range looks unlikely. In practice, it feels completely coherent, which says a lot about the steadiness of Willie’s musical personality.

Part of that comes from the shape of his career. By the 1960s, Nelson was already well known in Nashville as a songwriter and recording artist. He wrote “Crazy,” which became Patsy Cline’s signature hit, and songs like “Night Life” showed how strong and distinctive his writing already was. He also had chart success of his own, but the polished Nashville system was never a perfect fit for his voice or his instincts. Around 1970, after moving back to Texas, he stepped into a different kind of scene, especially in Austin, where country crowds and younger rock audiences often overlapped. That change in setting helped turn him from a respected country figure into a much larger cultural presence. Albums and songs from the years that followed, including “Shotgun Willie,” “Bloody Mary Morning,” “Whiskey River,” and later “On the Road Again,” made him central to the outlaw movement while also expanding his audience far beyond traditional country radio.

What is especially appealing is that the outlaw image never boxed him in. Yes, this playlist has the swagger of “Me and Paul,” “Good Hearted Woman,” and “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” but it also has the gentleness of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” and “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” Even “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” is less about posing than about longing and disappointment. Willie has always understood that country music works best when it makes room for toughness and vulnerability at the same time. That balance is one reason he has been so durable: listeners can come to him for a road song, a drinking song, a heartbreak song, or a meditation on aging, and he never sounds like he is trying on a costume.

That same openness explains why he has made sense to so many collaborators across generations and genres. His duets with Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard feel like conversations between peers, rooted in shared history and mutual respect. “Seven Spanish Angels” with Ray Charles has the gravity of two masters meeting on common ground. “Beer for My Horses” showed that younger mainstream country stars still saw him as a living touchstone. He teamed up with Snoop Dogg (among others) on “Roll Me Up”; then three years after that covered Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe,” and neither one of those tracks feels like a gimmick, or a cash grab, or an old man trying to stay cool. You never see the calculation with Willie. He does not care if you think he is cool. Willie has a gift for treating every song, whether it comes from country, pop, jazz, gospel, or rock, as something worth inhabiting honestly.

That may be the clearest reason Willie Nelson remains an icon after so many decades: he has never depended on one audience, one era, or one definition of authenticity. He is beloved by country traditionalists, outlaw-country fans, pop listeners, rock audiences, fellow songwriters, jazz admirers, and younger artists looking for a model of how to build a long life in music without becoming rigid. This playlist makes that case quietly but convincingly. It gives you the famous songs, the standards, the duets, the deep feeling, the wit, and the curiosity. More than anything, it shows an artist who has spent decades following good songs wherever they lead, and inviting an unusually wide range of listeners to come along.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents Roy Orbison

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Roy Orbison occupies a distinctive place in popular music, and a quick look at the songs in this playlist explains why. From early rockabilly sides like “Ooby Dooby” with the Teen Kings to late-career recordings such as “I Drove All Night” and “You Got It,” Orbison built a body of work that was both commercially successful and musically ambitious. He wasn’t just another early rock-and-roll singer; he brought an operatic sense of drama to three-minute pop songs, often writing or co-writing material that stretched the emotional and structural limits of radio-friendly music.

One of the most striking features of Orbison’s catalog is its emotional range. Songs like “Only the Lonely,” “Crying,” and “It’s Over” don’t shy away from vulnerability. In fact, they lean into it. Orbison’s voice—capable of moving from a low, restrained murmur to a powerful, ringing high note—allowed him to tell stories of heartbreak with unusual intensity. “Running Scared” is a good example: it builds steadily, almost anxiously, before resolving in a soaring final note that feels earned rather than showy. Even “In Dreams,” with its unconventional structure and dreamlike lyrics, shows his willingness to take risks within the pop format.

At the same time, Orbison knew how to deliver straightforward hits. “Oh, Pretty Woman” remains one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in rock history, pairing a confident groove with playful lyrics. “Dream Baby,” “Mean Woman Blues,” and “Working for the Man” highlight his rock-and-roll roots, while “Blue Angel” and “Blue Bayou” showcase his affinity for lush, melodic ballads. His songwriting often blended country influences with early rock, a mix that reflected his Texas upbringing and his time at Sun Records. Even a holiday tune like “Pretty Paper” carries his signature sense of longing.

Orbison’s later career adds another dimension to his story. After a period of personal and professional hardship, he experienced a resurgence in the 1980s. His collaboration with k.d. lang on “Crying” introduced his music to a new generation, while songs like “She’s a Mystery to Me” and “California Blue” demonstrated that his voice had lost none of its character. As a member of the Traveling Wilburys, alongside George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne, Orbison fit in effortlessly. Tracks such as “Handle With Care,” “End of the Line,” “Last Night,” and “Not Alone Any More” reveal how naturally his dramatic tenor complemented the group’s more relaxed, roots-oriented sound.

Taken together, these songs show an artist who was consistent in vision yet open to growth. Whether singing about romantic devotion in “Claudette,” playful charm in “Candy Man,” or quiet resignation in “Too Soon to Know,” Orbison treated each song as a story worth telling fully. He didn’t rely on trends or image; in fact, his trademark dark glasses and still stage presence placed the focus squarely on the music. Listening through this playlist, you hear not just a collection of hits, but the arc of a career defined by strong songwriting, emotional honesty, and a voice that remains instantly recognizable decades later.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents 1977

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If you had to pick a single year that captured popular music at its most creatively overstuffed, 1977 would be a strong candidate. Rock was arena-sized and expensive. Disco was inescapable and, for a certain crowd, irresistible. Punk was arriving like a kicked-in door. And somewhere in between, artists were quietly making records that didn’t fit neatly into any of those categories. The year produced an almost absurd concentration of songs that people still know by heart, not because nostalgia has been kind to them, but because many of them are genuinely excellent pieces of music.

The rock side of ’77 was dominated by songs that have since become impossible to avoid. Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” and Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” all came from the same general tradition of polished, emotionally direct rock songwriting, the kind that prioritized feel and production in equal measure. Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” sat a little rougher and looser, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s “Blinded by the Light” was genuinely strange radio fare — a Springsteen cover that became more famous than the original largely on the strength of its own eccentric energy. Meanwhile, David Bowie’s “Sound and Vision” and Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” pointed toward something more interior and experimental, both artists having recently untethered themselves from previous identities and clearly enjoying the freedom.

Disco in 1977 wasn’t a single sound so much as a spectrum. At one end, you had Donna Summer’s extraordinary “I Feel Love,” which Giorgio Moroder produced using almost entirely synthesized instrumentation — Brian Eno reportedly told David Bowie it had just changed the future of music, and he wasn’t wrong. Further down the dial were Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” Marvin Gaye’s loose, joyful “Got to Give It Up,” Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights,” and KC and the Sunshine Band’s “I’m Your Boogie Man,” songs that prioritized the floor over the headphones and delivered accordingly. And then there was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, which arrived in late 1977 and would go on to become, for a time, the best-selling album ever released. It’s remembered as a disco landmark, but its lead single was the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love” — a warm, unhurried ballad which doesn’t really fit the disco label. That the song was swept up into the disco phenomenon anyway says something about how powerful that cultural moment was: it absorbed everything in its vicinity, regardless of what the artists themselves thought they were making.

Punk was having none of it. The Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” was banned by the BBC and still reached the top of the charts, which tells you something about both the song’s impact and the limits of official gatekeeping. Ramones’ “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” was faster and more fun, but no less pointed. Television’s “Marquee Moon” and Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives” had a punk rock spirit that suggested the genre’s real legacy might not be volume or outrage but a renewed interest in wit and directness — a correction to the perceived excesses of the rock mainstream those same artists were reacting against. These records don’t sound like novelties now. They sound like a genuine argument about what music should be doing.

What’s striking, looking at a year’s worth of this material together, is how little any of these artists seemed to be aware of, or interested in, what the others were doing. “Somebody to Love” by Queen and “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder share roughly the same calendar year but almost nothing else. “Solsbury Hill” and “Float On” exist in completely separate universes. That independence — each act pursuing its own idea of what a good record sounded like — might be exactly why so much of this music has held up. Nobody was chasing a trend that would have dated them. They were mostly just making the best version of the thing they already knew how to do, and 1977 happened to catch a lot of them doing it very well.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents 1995

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If you were paying attention to music in 1995, you probably noticed something a little odd: the word “alternative” had started to mean almost nothing, because it had come to mean almost everything. A year earlier, the death of Kurt Cobain had cast a long shadow over rock music, but rather than stalling out, the genre fractured and expanded in every direction. Weezer were writing nerdy, hook-driven power pop. Foo Fighters were delivering straightforward hard rock. Hole were confrontational and raw. Radiohead were drifting somewhere cerebral and unsettling. Garbage were threading industrial textures through pop songwriting. Veruca Salt and Elastica were sharp and guitar-driven in entirely different ways. What united all of them under one label was more a matter of attitude and distribution than any shared sound. “Alternative” had become a marketing category, and in becoming one, it quietly swallowed whole.

Across the Atlantic, British music was having one of its more confident years. In their home country the year prior, Oasis released “Live Forever” and soon carried themselves like they were already the biggest band in the world — and for a stretch, they weren’t wrong. Blur’s “Country House” was cheeky and sardonic, all music-hall bounce and art-school wink. Pulp’s “Disco 2000” was Jarvis Cocker doing what he did best: writing working-class character studies with a disco pulse underneath. Supergrass and Elastica added urgency and speed. But the British presence in 1995 wasn’t limited to guitar bands — Take That had “Back for Good,” one of the cleaner pop songs of the decade, and it charted everywhere. The UK wasn’t just making noise in rock circles; it was competitive across the board.

The year also belonged, in large part, to women making unambiguous statements. Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” arrived like something had finally been let out of a locked room — angry, specific, and entirely unconcerned with being likable. PJ Harvey’s “Down by the Water” was quieter but no less unsettling. Björk’s “Army of Me” was a kind of mechanical ultimatum. Des’ree brought warmth and self-possession to “You Gotta Be.” TLC’s “Waterfalls” managed to be simultaneously a pop smash and a genuine cautionary narrative, delivered with enough grace that the message landed without feeling like a lecture. These weren’t novelty moments. They were artists working at full capacity.

Hip-hop and R&B in 1995 were doing something interesting: they were crossing lanes in ways that felt natural rather than forced. Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” borrowed from Stevie Wonder and landed on a movie soundtrack, but it had weight that outlasted its context. Method Man and Mary J. Blige turned “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” into something genuinely tender. Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” was lighter — a little self-deprecating, a little funny — and it stuck anyway.

Meanwhile, Massive Attack’s “Protection” and Portishead’s “Sour Times” were doing something that didn’t fit neatly into any existing box: slow, cinematic, built more from mood than momentum. Trip-hop was the year’s most quietly influential genre, even if most listeners didn’t have a name for it yet.

Some of the year’s most lasting moments came from artists who resisted easy categorization entirely. Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue recorded “Where the Wild Roses Grow” — a murder ballad duet that shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but did. Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” was enormous in its emotion without ever tipping into melodrama. McAlmont & Butler made “Yes” feel like a genuine declaration. Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” was a quiet story song buried in an album, yet it became one of their most-loved tracks. In 1995, the mainstream was wide enough to hold all of this at once — the bratty and the mournful, the danceable and the difficult. That’s not always true of a given year in pop music, and it’s worth noticing when it is.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents 2006

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If you had to pick one song to sum up 2006, you might reach for Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” — a song so omnipresent that year it practically became ambient noise. But that choice would also tell you something true about the year: it was a moment when genuinely strange, interesting ideas were landing at the top of the charts, not just surviving on the margins. Cee Lo Green and Danger Mouse made a song that was simultaneously soulful, psychedelic, and completely radio-friendly, and somehow the world went along with it. That tension — between the weird and the accessible, between art and commerce — runs through a lot of what made 2006 a particularly interesting year in music.

The mainstream pop landscape was, by any measure, stacked. Justin Timberlake’s “My Love,” with its spare Timbaland production and T.I. verse, pointed forward toward the minimalist R&B that would define the next decade. Beyoncé released “Irreplaceable,” a song so well-constructed it barely needs any production to hold your attention. Rihanna was still in her early hitmaking mode with “SOS,” and Nelly Furtado, working with Timbaland, was having a pop renaissance with “Promiscuous.” What’s notable in retrospect is how many of these tracks were built around restraint — the arrangements have room in them, the hooks don’t have to fight to be heard. It’s pop music that trusted the song.

On the rock side of things, the year had an interesting split personality. Arctic Monkeys had exploded out of Sheffield with “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” all nervous energy and sharp elbows, while The Killers’ “When You Were Young” pushed toward something more cinematic and earnest. The Raconteurs gave Jack White a different context to work in, and “Steady, As She Goes” was proof that a riff-first approach still had plenty of life in it. Muse were somewhere in the atmosphere with “Knights of Cydonia,” a song so committed to its own grandiosity that it looped back around to being genuinely exciting. Meanwhile, Band of Horses released “The Funeral,” which occupied a completely different emotional register — slow, aching, and built to last.

Away from the obvious mainstream, 2006 had a lot happening in the spaces between genres. TV on the Radio were making rock music that felt genuinely new with “Wolf Like Me,” while Hot Chip and Junior Boys were finding the emotional depth available in electronic pop. The Knife’s “Silent Shout” was something else entirely — icy, theatrical, and slightly unsettling in the best way. Camera Obscura offered a gentler alternative with “Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken,” a song that wore its Lloyd Cole reference as a badge of honor, and The Pipettes were busy making sharp, witty girl-group pop that felt both nostalgic and pointed. Hip-hop, meanwhile, was getting some of its most creatively ambitious work from Kanye West (“Touch the Sky”) and Lupe Fiasco, whose “Kick, Push” used skateboarding as a fully realized metaphor for outsider identity without ever feeling forced.

There were also moments in 2006 that went beyond music into something more like public conversation. The Chicks released “Not Ready to Make Nice,” a direct response to the backlash they’d faced since 2003, and the fact that it became a hit felt genuinely significant — a mainstream country-adjacent audience giving space to a song about refusing to apologize. Cat Power’s “The Greatest” was quieter but no less affecting, a meditation on loss and missed potential delivered with a stillness that made it hit harder. Morrissey was still being Morrissey (“You Have Killed Me”), which is either a comfort or an irritant depending on your history with the man. What holds all of this together isn’t a single sound or movement — it’s more that 2006 was a year when music across a lot of different genres was being made by people who seemed to be thinking carefully about what they were doing, and the results have held up.

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