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 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 1996

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Looking back at the music of 1996, what stands out isn’t just the diversity of sounds, but how confidently artists were breaking free from the constraints that had defined their predecessors. This was the year Oasis gave us “Wonderwall,” a song that somehow managed to be both anthemic and intimate, while across the Atlantic, The Smashing Pumpkins stripped away the grunge aggression for the wistful nostalgia of “1979.” The rock landscape was splintering in fascinating ways—Radiohead’s “High and Dry” hinted at the experimental evolution to come, Garbage fused electronic production with alternative rock attitude on “Stupid Girl,” and Marilyn Manson pushed industrial metal into the mainstream with “The Beautiful People.” These weren’t artists following a template; they were actively rewriting what their genres could be.

Hip-hop in 1996 was experiencing one of its most creative and commercially successful periods. 2Pac’s “California Love” brought West Coast rap to peak visibility, while Busta Rhymes announced himself as a force with the frenetic energy of “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check.” Fugees demonstrated how hip-hop could incorporate soul, reggae, and pop sensibilities on “Ready Or Not,” and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” created a template for R&B-rap fusion that would influence the genre for years to come. Even Coolio, riding high from previous success, was experimenting with different flows and production approaches. The genre wasn’t monolithic—it was a conversation between different regional scenes, production styles, and lyrical approaches.

The year also belonged to artists who defied easy categorization. Björk’s “Hyper-Ballad” merged electronic experimentation with raw emotional vulnerability in ways few pop artists would dare attempt. Beck’s “Where It’s At” was a postmodern collage that treated genre itself as raw material to be sampled and reassembled. Underworld’s “Born Slippy [Nuxx]” became an unlikely anthem, a nine-minute electronic track that captured something essential about late-night urban experience. These weren’t novelties—they were artists working at the boundaries of what popular music could accomplish, proving that experimental ambition and accessibility weren’t mutually exclusive.

Meanwhile, more traditional songcraft was producing some of its finest work. No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” turned heartbreak into a massive pop-rock moment, while Mary J. Blige brought gospel-inflected power to “Not Gon’ Cry.” George Michael’s “Jesus To a Child” showed a mature artist at the height of his powers, and Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” proved that blues-based simplicity could still cut through the noise. Even as production techniques grew more sophisticated and genre experimentation accelerated, these songs reminded listeners that a strong melody and honest emotion would never go out of style.

What makes 1996 particularly interesting is that it captured music in transition without feeling unstable. You had Britpop (Pulp’s class-conscious “Common People,” Manic Street Preachers’ working-class anthem “A Design For Life”), the evolution of alternative rock into more diverse forms, hip-hop’s golden age in full swing, and electronic music beginning to infiltrate the mainstream. The playlist of 1996 didn’t cohere into a single statement about where music was headed—and that was precisely the point. It was a year when artists had permission to explore, when audiences were willing to follow them into unexpected territory, and when the charts reflected genuine creative restlessness rather than calculated trends.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents Oasis

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In the 1990s, the musical landscape of Britain was forever transformed by the meteoric rise of Oasis. Emerging from Manchester, this exceptional group left an indelible mark on popular music, inspiring generations of artists and fans alike.

Led by brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, the band achieved global acclaim with seminal albums like Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? These masterpieces showcased their ability to craft anthemic, emotionally charged songs that resonated with listeners. From the soaring melody of “Wonderwall” to the defiant swagger of “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” Oasis’ music encapsulated the spirit of youth, rebellion, and unbound creativity.

Their debut album, Definitely Maybe, was hailed as a groundbreaking work, earning them a devoted fan base. The follow-up, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, cemented their status as icons, selling over 22 million copies worldwide and earning them two Brit Awards.

Oasis’ music transcended time and genres, leaving an indelible mark on the fabric of popular culture. Their raw energy and unapologetic attitude resonated with audiences worldwide, inspiring generations of musicians and fans to embrace their authenticity and passion. Through their remarkable body of work and enduring legacy, Oasis etched their name among the most iconic and influential bands of our time.

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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 2-17-24

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A used unwashed black t-shirt worn by Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong during the promotion of the band’s American Idiot album sold for $2500 at a charity auction, with the proceeds going to the Oakland School of the Arts. I would love to dispose of my laundry pile the same way, but I doubt anybody would pay more than $400 for my sweat-stained socks.

Billie Joe Armstrong was born on this date in 1972. Tracks from his band are included on today’s playlist.

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