Song of the Day: "Grace Kelly," Mika
London's Mika is going gangbusters over in England, as his debut album, "Life in Cartoon Motion," hit No. 1 on the album charts -- a feat matched on the singles charts by "Grace Kelly." Queen is the obvious reference point here, as the song sounds like the kind of thing Freddie Mercury would turn out in his jauntier moments -- think "Killer Queen" more than "Bohemian Rhapsody." The 23-year-old Lebanese-born singer has even gone so far as to use Mercury's piano on his own recording sessions. For whatever reason, music this glam rarely seems to translate into success in America, but that fact takes nothing away from this track's silly, charming sense of fun.
-- David Marchese
(The Song of the Day is also available as a podcast. Subscribe: iTunes or RSS)
Great literary podcasts:
"In Walked Bud"
Amiri Baraka
"The Last Days of the Suicide Kid"
Charles Bukowski
"The House on Mango Street"
Sandra Cisneros
"A Reporter's Life,"
Walter Cronkite
"An Open Heart," by The Dalai Lama
Read by Nicholas Vreeman
"Robert Frost Reads"
Robert Frost
"In Harry's Bar in Venice"
Ernest Hemingway
"The War on Drugs"
Bill Hicks
"I Have a Dream"
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"King of Horror"
Read by Stephen King
"Motherless Brooklyn," by Jonathan Lethem
Read by Steve Buscemi
"Long Walk to Freedom," by Nelson Mandela
Read by Danny Glover
"Shopgirl"
Steve Martin
"All the Pretty Horses," by Cormac McCarthy
Read by Brad Pitt
"The Bluest Eye"
Toni Morrison
"Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov
Read by Jeremy Irons
"The Bell Jar,"
Sylvia Plath
"The Raven," by Edgar Allen Poe
Read by Basil Rathbone
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," by JK Rowling
Read by Jim Dale
"Everything"
Henry Rollins
"Fast Food Nation," By Eric Schlosser
Read by Rick Adamson
"Me Talk Pretty One Day"
David Sedaris
"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
Dylan Thomas
"Slaughterhouse Five"
Kurt Vonnegut
"Hooking Up"
Tom Wolfe
Audiofile logo by: Aris Blevins
