I'm going to talk about a chord progression. Or not even really a full progression, just a specific sequence of chords that I always notice in songs, and how sometimes it's great, sometimes it's cheesy, but it's a striking songwriting crutch that's been used for a cent...

Watching Dean Martin sing “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime” today requires a small investment up front, and that is to forget the last few decades of cultural derision for this style of entertaining, now routinely , reflexively derided as “smarmy” and “cheesy”. I spe...