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David Browne

Verified
New York
As seen in: Rolling Stone, The DBrief, CNN, Medium, MSN, MSN Canada, MSN Deutschland, MSN Malaysia, MSN New Zealand, MSN Singapore, O Globo, Rolling Stone Brazil and
Author, "Talkin' Greenwich Village" and other books; Substack: TheDBrief (brownebag.substack.com); Rolling Stone contributor
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Articles

September 11, Music and Us

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By David Browne Verified
| The DBrief
Five days before September 11, 2001, I was interviewing James Taylor at his home in western Massachusetts and asked him what it was like to still perform “Fire and Rain.” At that point, his signature tune, inspired by the death of a friend and his own recovery issues at the time, was just over 30 years old, and he’d sung it at a large portion of his shows since then. “How do you do it for the 1000th time?” he mulled, seated in the backyard of his home, the Berkshires spread out in the distance.
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Cassandra Wilson and the Many Lives of “Strange Fruit”

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By David Browne Verified
| The DBrief
Billie Holiday may be the singer most associated with “Strange Fruit.” But with the passing this week of Cassandra Wilson, let’s not forget Wilson’s role in reviving and reinventing one of pop music’s most startling and polarizing protest songs. On Wednesday, the sad news emerged that Wilson, one of the finest jazz-rooted singers of our time, had died at age 70. Calling Wilson a jazz singer was never quite right, actually.
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And the Greatest Song About America Is ...

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By David Browne Verified
| The DBrief
The end of the summer of the sesquicentennial had arrived. The celebrations of the country’s 250th birthday were winding down. Memories of the aborted Vanilla Ice performance on the National Mall were fading like a week-old suntan. Yet there remained one pressing matter to resolve. After two and a half centuries, which song best captured the spirit, grandeur and promise of the country? What is the best and most enduring song about America? Last Friday night, I set out to answer those questions.
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