Bonus Song Thursday - Sam Cooke "A Change Is Gonna Come"

The Great Albums

Bill Lambusta

Albums, Music Commentary, Criticism, Billlambusta, Brianerickson, Music

4.3 • 749 Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2016

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's Bonus Song Thursday! Bill and Brian follow up their conversation on Sam Cooke's Night Beat by discussing one of his last releases ever, "A Change Is Gonna Come." Written after a particularly tense interaction at a motel, Cooke released this song hoping to affect change within the Civil Rights Movement. We talk about how the song's dense arrangement contrasts with what was produced for Night Beat, the difficulty of navigating racism as a pop icon in a time known for its social injustice, how anger can be used to fuel positivity, and a little on race relations and integration in general. Additionally, we read a listener email, asking us to explain some recording processes we often talk about, specifically the art of mixing!

Transcript

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0:00.0	I was born by the river In a little tent
0:22.6	Oh and just like the river I've been running
0:27.6	Every since
0:30.6	It's been a long
0:34.6	A long time coming But but I know a change's going to come.
0:44.2	Oh, yes, it will.
0:48.1	It's been too hard living.
0:51.4	Hello, I am Bill.
0:52.8	And I'm Brian.
0:53.6	And this is The Great Albums podcast, Bonus Song Bill. And I'm Brian. And this is the great album's podcast, Bonus Song Thursday.
0:58.1	Welcome to it.
0:58.9	What we just listened to right there, Brian.
1:00.6	That song was called A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cook.
1:04.4	It was essentially kind of his final song of his lifetime.
1:10.0	Well, for those of you who've never listened to the podcast before, what we do here every
1:14.1	week is take a different album of music, talk about what makes it great, and then we follow
1:18.3	it up with another bonus episode where we talk about a song by the same artist or tangentially
1:24.2	related and just kind of do the same kind of treatment that we do where we go a little bit into the
1:29.9	song, talk about it, talk about what's cool about it.
1:32.7	And then later on we're going to do a little bit of listener email reading.
1:35.9	Sounds good, man. Let's do it.
1:37.2	All right. So tell me about this song, Brian. What do you love?
	...

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