I am thankful, this years and all years, for the music. For the music that soundtracks my morning, my commute, my workday, my movies, my commercials, my evening, my dreams. For the music that loops when I'm on hold. For the music I can barely hear from those speakers in the ceiling of that restaurant. For the music that tells us who we are. For the music that fuels our most intimate moments. For the music that speaks truth to power. For the music that fills my ears and my heart and my brain as I try to escape, for fleeting moments, from that which pretends to be power in 2017. For the beauty of music made by people who, at the end of the day, I know nothing else about. A friend on Tuesday—thank you!—sent me a fantastic PARIS REVIEW essay by CLAIRE DEDERER about "the Art of Monstrous Men." It's an essay about film, particularly the work of WOODY ALLEN, and about writing, not so much about music. It's about how all artists might have to be monsters, and about how all monsters might have to be artists, and about selfishness and sexism, and about all the questions we might wrestle with when we contemplate revisiting ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN. Dederer is too smart, too thoughtful, to suggest there's a good answer to any of those questions. Everyone who loves music, or creates music, or distributes or markets or programs music, should read it because it is, of course, about music too. And I am thankful, especially this year, for the music that I sometimes need to drown out all the other music... It's only November, last time I checked, but here are the most "consumed" songs of 2017 according to VARIETY and BUZZANGLE. Actually they're not even including November in their count. But congrats for the consumption, ED SHEERAN, LUIS FONSI and DADDY YANKEE... The GRAND OLE OPRY comes to the land of actual opera... Boy bands, girl groups and family bands are evergreen things, as crucial to the pop music of 2017 as they were to the pop music of 1996 or 1971. The PARTRIDGE FAMILY was one of the greats of the genre, never more bubblegummily wonderful as when DAVID CASSIDY was singing songs written by craftspeople like TONY ROMEO or BARRY MANN & CYNTHIA WEIL. It wasn't a TV star's job to sing on his or her fictional band's actual songs, but Cassidy and his TV mother, SHIRLEY JONES, were the real thing, and that's them on those songs, elevating their made-for-television pop fakery to '70s AM gold reality. RIP... MusicREDEF is taking a long weekend to eat turkey and cranberry sauce and listen to "ALICE'S RESTAURANT." Here's where else you can hear Arlo Guthrie's THANKSGIVING classic on the radio, which is by far the best place to listen to it. We'll be back on Monday... But Friday is still FRIDAY, and this Black Friday brings new music from BJÖRK, LUIS MIGUEL, NOEL GALLAGHER'S HIGH FLYING BIRDS, HOPSPIN, SUFJAN STEVENS, SLUM SOCIABLE, FABOLOUS & JADAKISS, and MOONLIGHT LADIES by my friend JENNA MAMMINA & JOHN R. BURR, which features jazz-pop covers of songs by JAMES TAYLOR and other artists in his orbit... A&E's six-part documentary series WHO KILLED TUPAC? continues Friday with episode 2, "Crips vs. Bloods"... RIP JOHN PRESTON.