Good Morning I Love You

Four-hour, 72-track anthology of the Laurel Canyon music community that became a dominant worldwide force in the late 60s/early 70s. Tracing the scene's development from The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Love and The Doors through to early country-rock and the singer/songwriter boom that defined the early 70s. By the end of the 60s, the international music world's nexus had shifted from such previous hotspots as Liverpool, London and San Francisco to Laurel Canyon, a rural oasis in the midst of the bustle of Los Angeles. Just minutes from Hollywood, the Sunset Strip and the LA record companies/studios, Laurel Canyon became home to a folk, country, rock and pop hybrid that encompassed everyone from early players The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield to The Doors, Frank Zappa, Glen Campbell and manufactured pop kingpins The Monkees.

The centerpiece and title track of Mary J. Blige’s 14th album is an emotional display of self-love—the kind of song that, after three decades of heartbreak anthems, feels like the soft landing spot she’s been searching for this entire time. “All the times that I hated myself, all the times that I wanted to be someone else, all the times that I should’ve been gentle with me,” she sings in the second verse. “I wake up every morning and tell myself, ‘Good morning gorgeous.’” Across the album, her voice sounds just as convincing as it has all these years, contoured in soul and grit. Her lyrics, though, beautifully reflect her life experiences, evolved and brimming with wisdom.

Nineteen eighty-seven's Good Morning, Vietnam was a turning point for Robin Williams, garnering the comic his first Academy Award nomination and leveraging him into the first rank of American film stars. As directed by Barry Levinson, Williams imbues the "true life" story of Armed Forces Radio rebel Adrian Cronauer with his patented machine-gun comic banter, undercut by dollops of now equally familiar tragi-comic bathos. But contrary to the tired hit parade we've come to expect from period soundtracks, the '60s music Williams's character spins here is often a refreshing surprise, drawing from trashy garage-band chic ("Liar Liar" by the Castaways), underexposed British Invasion hits (the Searchers' "Sugar and Spice," "Game of Love" by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders), and relatively obscure American chart hits ("Five O'Clock World" by the Vogues, the Rivieras' "Warm California Sun"), all of it gratuitously punctuated by Williams's manic DJ rantings. The inspired revival of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" also became one of the 1980s' most unlikely hits.