I had the honor of meeting the great George Jones only once, but it was one of the most amazing and surprising moments of my professional life. I was writing the CMA Awards for the first time about a decade ago, and rushing backstage at the Grand Ole Opry House...

A few months ago, my wife Fran told me she had decided to run her first marathon -- the Los Angeles Marathon. "Will you support me trying to do this?" she asked one evening, and frankly I was taken aback by the question. After all, she was the one who...

As Clare Boothe Luce once noted, "They say that women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men." Here then is a longwinded filibuster soundtrack for Rand Paul and all those who were part of the filibuster of John Brennan....

"Sequester" sounds significantly sexier than it is. As in, "Sequester"? I don't even know 'er. See, I was right. For far too many Americans wondering what's going on, there's nothing at all sexy or funny about this rather shameful moment in American history and about the pathological failure of our...

"There are more love songs than anything else," Frank Zappa once pointed out. "If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another." Frank was right, but I remain a sucker for a great song about L-O-V-E, and my favorite this year is "Love Is A Country" by...

On Saturday Feb. 9th, CBS will broadcast The GRAMMYs Will Go On: A Death In The Family, which tells the behind-the-scenes story of last year's GRAMMY Awards telecast. As someone who's had the pleasure of working on the show for more than a decade now, I know a very important...

I was in New Orleans last week and apparently there's going to be a football game there this weekend. I'm pretty sure that it's on Sunday, but check your local listings. So here's my Super Bowl Party playlist with few suggestions from my All Pro followers @Wildaboutmusic. As...

I love the music Curtis Stigers is making right now. This suggests that the great Bob Dylan was right when he sang "Things Have Changed" -- a song Stigers brilliantly covers on his most recent album Let's Go Out Tonight. And if you think that jazz singing is a lost...

Tuesday night is our big Hollywood premiere for $ellebrity, an intriguing new feature documentary directed by Kevin Mazur about the price of fame today, and the way that the texture of celebrity has evolved -- or, it could be argued, de-evolved -- over time. As an executive producer of $ellebrity,...

To quote Oscar Wilde, "Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account." Thanks, Uncle Oscar, for the excellent literary excuse to resolve pretty much nothing. So rather than offer any grand resolutions that won't clear or share my ignorant perspective on life...

In his very funny and moving new film, This Is 40, Judd Apatow has generously given me the cameo role of a lifetime -- a Jew. More specifically, I play a reporter from The Jewish Journal who is briefly seen -- from the back, in a yarmulke -- and overheard...

"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way," John Stewart once said. "I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land." However you choose to celebrate Thanksgiving this year, here's my very thankful playlist, complete with selections...

Whenever I was misbehaving as a young man, my late great Dad always threatened to send me away to military school. I had no idea that my father -- a Naval officer back in the day -- was thinking of ways for me to someday meet women. So here's my...

I really dig this whole democracy thing, and our screwed up but touching search for common ground. In fact, last night I had the strangest dream: reaching across the political divide, Fox News offered to call Kenya for President Obama if MSNBC called The Cayman Islands for Mitt Romney. Now...

There has been a great deal of controversy lately about polling and sampling. So to take the most accurate temperature of the vox populi for tonight's presidential debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, I went directly to my Twitter followers @wildaboutmusic, and asked them for their Debate Party Playlists....

"I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security," Robert Redford once said. "Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?"

If you're going to use the powerful and often dazzling spotlight that celebrity and mass...

This was truly the NFL's Night of Shame, and it had better be the last. Last night's misadventure in Seattle is bigger than one football game between the Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers. It's about the stunning arrogance of Roger Goodell and the NFL in thinking fans will not...

Mitt Romney has a kind of gift, and often when he speaks the former Governor shares that gift with President Obama's campaign. In fact, it could be argued that Mitt's best efforts to sabotage his own electoral efforts reflect a rather surprising generosity, especially considering that it's not his job...

"I'm searching for phrases/To sing your praises" Bob Dylan sings at the start of "Soon After Midnight," one of my favorite songs on his newly painted masterpiece, Tempest. More than anyone, Bob Dylan inspired me want to write. Hell, I still want to write, and Dylan remains an inspiration to...

"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." That's what Martin Luther King, Jr. said, and I have learned to never argue with a good Doctor. Happy Labor Day, everybody. As always don't forget to include your own songs below. We're not...