George Strait
Twang
(MCA Nashville)
Releasing: 11 August 2009 (US) /

SONG LIST
01.  Twang - Jim Lauderdale, Kendell Marvel and Jimmy Ritchey
02.  Where Have I Been All My Life - Sherrie Austin, Will Nance and Steve Williams
03.  I Gotta Get to You - Jim Lauderdale, Jimmy Ritchey and Blaine Larsen
04.  Easy As You Go - Steve Bogard and Rick Giles
05.  Living for the Night - George Strait, Bubba Strait and Dean Dillon
06.  Same Kind of Crazy - Delbert McClinton and Gary Nicholson
07.  Out of Sight Out of Mind - George Strait and Bubba Strait
08.  Arkansas Dave - Bubba Strait
09.  The Breath You Take - Dean Dillon, Jessie Jo Dillon and Casey Beathard
10. He’s Got That Something Special - George Strait, Bubba Strait and Dean Dillon
11. Hot Grease and Zydeco - Gordon Bradberry and Tony Ramey
12. Beautiful Day for Goodbye - Doug Johnson and Pat Bunch
13. El Rey - Jose Alfredo Jimenez

PopMatters and Lala are happy to present this tribute playlist of some of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits, spanning his life in music from his earliest hits with the Jackson 5 to his final studio album.  They’re songs everyone knows, a testament to their enduring power of Jackson’s impact on popular culture.  And thanks to our friends at Lala, PopMatters is providing the playlist for free to all readers who sign up with a new Lala account by clicking the “Get this playlist - FREE” button on the player below.

Plus, if you sign up with Lala through the player between July 6th and July 12th, you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing to win the Grand Prize: the ultimate Michael Jackson discography on MP3!  That’s each of Jackson’s studio albums, plus compilations, his early work with the Jackson 5, and assorted singles—just for signing up for a free account on Lala.

How Lala Works:
Signing up for Lala is akin to signing up MySpace or Facebook - it’s free and no credit card is required. Simply click the “Get this playlist - FREE” button on the PopMatters Michael Jackson Tribute Playlist above and you’ll automatically receive all of the songs to start your Lala collection. With sign up, you also get 25 songs of your choice from Lala’s collection of over 7 million songs.

Lala enables you to build a web music collection—you can take your music and fuse it with a massive licensed catalog to easily play, buy, and share on the web from any location. You can also add all the music you already have (MP3s, ripped albums, tracks bought on iTunes, etc.) to your collection on Lala.

If you’re at home, work, a friend’s house, where ever… your music collection is there too, all easy to access in a browser.

Once you have signed up, you can stream any song in the Lala catalog, again a whopping 7 million tracks, one time, including all of the albums and songs that appear in Lala player widgets on PopMatters.

What happens after the first full play of a song? Lala is a store that sells MP3 downloads and streams, which they’ve dubbed “web songs.” You can pay $0.10 for the web song and stream it an unlimited number of times from any computer, and an additional $0.79 to buy a downloadable MP3 without DRM protection. MP3s on Lala are typically $0.89 each. Any MP3 you buy on Lala is bundled with the “web song,” which is added to your Lala collection for unlimited streaming.

You can add web songs to your Lala collection from PopMatters by clicking the “add” button, visible by scrolling over the song in the Lala player. Once you add a song to your collection, you can stream it anytime on Lala or whenever you see it on a Lala player. As noted, to start you out, the first 25 web songs are free!

Check out the Lala FAQ for details.

So get started with the free PopMatters Michael Jackson Tribute Playlist!  Sign up with Lala to receive the entire playlist for free be entered to win the ultimate Michael Jackson discography in MP3, courtesy of Lala and PopMatters.

Over on MySpace, a scruffy little band called the Heaps emerges from the flaming wreckage of Elvis Costello (now spending several lifetimes in the purgatory of talk show hosting) and Belle & Sebastian (or, How I Found God and Lost Most of My Audience, by Stuart Murdoch) to make two irresistible songs: “Casual Encounters” and “William Baldwin: A Lament”.

The other posted songs work well enough, but these first two gems are not only tuneful, they’re therapy for the unbearable lightness of pop culture and Craigslist. Have a listen.

The Heaps
“Casual Encounters” and “William Baldwin: A Lament” [Streaming]