How Good It Is

Sep 17 2024 181 ep. 17 mins 731

How Good It Is Podcast artwork

Each episode, I choose a song from the 50s through the 80s and dive into its history, the story behind the song and other items of interest. Find more stuff at www.howgooditis.com

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178: Influential Women, Part 3–Jane Asher

Sep 17 2024 17 mins

Of all the people in the Beatles' inner circle, Jane Asher is perhaps the most mysterious. Not because she's reclusive--far from it, in fact. Jane Asher has spent lots of time on stage and on screens large and small from the time she was a child. But other than newspaper and magazine articles, and maybe a few video clips which survive from the 1960s, there isn't a lot of first-han

177: Influential Women, Pt.2–Rosanna Arquette

Aug 02 2024 11 mins

In case you haven't heard, we're on a little bit of a journey, meeting various women who have had an influence on multiple pop songs. In today's episode we'll be visiting Rosanna Arquette. The interesting thing here is that whether or not the songs in this episode are about Rosanna has been an on-again, off-again mystery. For a while they're not, then they are again, and maybe, ma

176: Influential Women, Pt1–Renee Fladen-Kamm

Jul 05 2024 10 mins

For the next several episodes, we're going to take a look at the women who inspired some of the Rock Era's most iconic songs. There will be six episodes in this series; five of them will concentrate on a specific woman, each of whom inspired multiple songs. The sixth episode will look at several women who each inspired a single song. A couple of the women I've chosen will be fairl

175: In the Still of the Night

Jun 16 2024 14 mins

After this many episodes, it gives me a moment of "Huh, isn't that interesting" when I start writing the post for an episode and discover that I haven't covered a song from that particular year before. In this case, that year would be 1956. In retrospect, that shouldn't be a surprise, given that we're reaching waaay back into the early days of the Pop music era. But it's still a f

174: Don’t Fear the Reaper

This is an episode I wrote in the Southern Studio, so I may have been in a better mood than usual to write it than I ordinarily am, given the subject matter. When Blue Öyster Cult first got together, they were a college band from Stony Brook, New York. That's not far from where I grew up. Oddly, none of the band's original members are from Long Island. Two of them grew up in New

173: Wichita Lineman

Jan 17 2024 15 mins

By 1968, Glen Campbell had moved from session musician to a star in his own right. His single "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," written by Jimmy Webb, was a huge hit for him. So when Campbell decided he needed another song, he turned back to Webb and asked him for another song. For whatever reason, he asked Webb to make it a song about a specific location. Webb, at that time, was in

172: A World War Two Christmas

Dec 25 2023 23 mins

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! Today we're looking at three Christmas songs that are born from the anxieties of World War Two. Two of the songs aren't direct references to the war itself, but it clearly informed the subject. Themes of separation and loneliness emerge, and a sense of nostalgia is present throughout. Interestingly, one of the songs was so dark that the lyr

171: Save the Last Dance For Me

Dec 22 2023 16 mins

...before we were so rudely interrupted... This is a song that I'm long-overdue in covering, if only because of the backstory it has. It's simultaneously heart-warming and heart-breaking. It's a love letter from lyricist Doc Pomus to his wife. That's not unusual, of course. Many songwriters compose songs dedicated to a loved one. But this one has an extra special twist to it. I sh

170: I Fought the Law

Sep 21 2023 15 mins

How many times now have I gone into the backstory with a song and learned that the person who wrote it says something akin to, "Yeah, I knocked that one off in about fifteen minutes." Oftentimes they also think that the song isn't going to amount to very much, which I find kind of funny. But it also supports a working theory I have that it's not always the song itself, but the way

169: Tiny Dancer

Aug 13 2023 20 mins

I don't often play favorites on this show; in fact there have been a couple of songs I genuinely disliked, but I covered them anyway because the story behind them was kind of interesting. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify those songs, because I do try to be even-handed. However. I am going to take the time to gush about "Tiny Dancer" just a little bit, because it's on