This week.
So, on top of plane crashes, bombings and missiles, starvation, the latest spate of nonsense from south of the border, there have been the deaths of Sly Stone (Sly and the Family Stone) and Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys).
We've been hearing a lot of "Everyday People", which is no hardship; I've always loved the song. It seems even more pertinent now than in the late sixties.
"Ooh-sha-sha, we gotta live together!" exhorted Sly, something the Creature in the White House doesn't get, and wouldn't believe, if he did.
Here's a splendid cover from Playing for Change, from about nine years ago, filmed just before the Creature got in the first time, judging from a couple of key Washington, DC locations. And with the death of Wilson, there are hundreds of covers of "God Only Knows" flooding on to social media in tribute.
My favourite Beach Boy song happens to be "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", but I fully understand.
"God Only Knows" is the song Paul McCartney says he wishes he had written, and then there's its eternal niche at the closing of Love, Actually, and in the soundtrack of countless weddings. That's a sort of double paradox: Love, Actually isn't actually about love, and the lyrics of "God Only Knows" contain strangely unmatrimonial sentiments: "I may not always love you . . . . If you should ever leave me . . . ."
It is a helluva song, though, and currently, this is my favourite non-Beach-Boys version, recorded ten years ago in Toronto by Choir! Choir! Choir! (with a nice focus for the altos, for a change!).
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