Tonight was the first night off from life in a while. Beyond the calendar, my day-to-day and overall role at work are both changing some, and taxes have been complicated than usual. I'm pretty happy with things, but I need to find better pacing. So, via Casey, here's what I've been playing on repeat the last few mornings to get the days going. Adele's the artist I most regret missing at the Tiny Desk, so add John Legend…

John Legend – Rolling in the Deep (Adele Cover) by johnlegend

The cover is more exciting than anything on Legend's last album, with The Roots, and I give that light criticism as a big fan of his. The album (of covers) could have used more of the bold choices this take brings.

A cappella in parts, gospel in others, raw set against a smooth crowd, heaven looking down. Roll your soul through every open door, indeed.

Sony digital media team, way to expose yourselves.

I'd wondered whether the Springsteen camp would use actually use @springsteen after taking it from a quality-tweeting and clearly-not-impersonating fan. The camp impressed me some in June by managing a few tweets. While viewers knew it wasn't Bruce — fans with common sense instantly ruled that out — the feed made no first-person claims.

But we learned today through a screw-up that it's not even the Bruce camp doing the tweeting. This afternoon brought a fresh tweet, "The pre-sale for my added Honolulu show starts tomorrow…come and see us! http://bit.ly/180eHX Password: Evolver" and I immediately clicked. Springsteen in Honolulu? I'd never been to Hawaii, and Bruce would've been a great excuse to go. The short link, however, brought viewers to the pre-sale for John Legend's Honolulu show. I clicked around TM's site to see if there was a different pre-sale and the link was mistaken.

But no. @springsteen immediately updated, "Sorry folks…please ignore that…I'm not coming to Hawaii soon…!" and deleted the mistake tweet.

A slightly different version appeared  in Legend's first-person Twitter three minutes later. Sony #fail. While I'm a huge fan of both artists, I was disappointed and not surprised. The Bruce pre-delete screencap:

Jeremy gave the following preamble on Facebook, and I liked it: "I dutifully ignore most of these Facebook lists, in which you get tagged in someone else's and are therefore obligated to make your own, but this one sounded kinda fun. So the challenge is to list 15 albums that changed your life, most impacted you or whatever …  I'm limiting mine to officially released material only because otherwise this would be a list of 15 Bruce Springsteen recordings unavailable in stores." My list:

1. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
2. Darkness of the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen
3. Kids in Philly, Marah
4. A Legendary Performer Vol. 2, Elvis Presley
5. Gold, CCR
6. Tunnel of Love, Bruce Springsteen
7. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
8. Summerteeth, Wilco
9. Pneumonia, Whiskeytown
10. Get Lifted, John Legend
11. Greatest Hits, John Denver
12. Joshua Tree, U2
13. My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello
14. Pet Sounds, Beach Boys
15. West Side Story soundtrack

If you want to fight, each one is easily explainable, and I know karate.

Most difficult cuts: Demolition, The River (but you know The River is fine without you), James Brown 20 All-Time Greatest Hits, Chronicle, The '59 Sound (I'm guessing it'll stick), Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall, Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight.

Slate this week had a spring poem for the fall, and it paired well with a fall poem the site ran in the spring. The spring one — the fall one that ran in the spring — had been sitting in my favorites since then, waiting for a reason or an excuse. There've been those moments recently, in Namesake when the wife learns of death and turns on all the lights in the house, on The Office with the missed calls standing alone to close, inside iTunes with the solitary Prelude to John Legend's first album, and the better moments where you remember what a prelude can be.

Spring for a fall: "Acorns." Fall for a spring: "Spring Comes to Ohio."

Filling up his PT Cruiser at the neighboring gas pump up the street and playing John Legend's Get Lifted album as he did. Consider the world of music in cars. Only a certain percentage have the windows down. Only a certain percentage of that percentage have the volume loud enough for people outside the windows to hear. Now of that new number, how often is someone playing an album instead of the radio or a shuffle? How often is that album one you recognize? How often is that album you recognize from the open windows of the neighboring car an album you like? An album you enjoy on a mediocre day. Times is hard and things are a-changing / I pray to God that we can remain the same….

–The psychic on Lee Highway appeared to have closed down. The signage ripped from the hanging frames on the porch made you wonder if the psychic had gone under — never saw too much action as you drove by — had sold the place or, more likely, lost the lease. Unable to forget the Mr. Belvedere commercial that aired for years on WTTG, where Mr. Belvedere pushes Wesley's face into the chocolate cake, you wondered — you're prone to wondering — if the psychic had seen it coming.

But then I turned to my left, and the psychic had apparently moved to new digs across the street, complete with new neon signs.

–The always ridiculous ElvisNews.com newsletter highlighted "British rock star Shakin' Stevens" who was totally unfamiliar to me. If I'm interpreting his Wikipedia entry correctly, he was the Robbie Williams of the '80s. Or something. Anyway, the newsletter reported Shakin's new album had a performance of a song called Fire Down Below, "which Jerry Scheff wrote for Elvis." And I thought, could this be the Silver Bullet Bob song? The prostitution-based potato chip crunch between the Night Moves wheat bread, the Sun-drenched cheese, and the Come to Poppa feeling of biting through the plate? (Mainstreet is air and you know it.) How good would an Elvis version have been?

But then I checked out the album, and Seger's song was Seger's own. I read the newsletter story again and found a link to the Shakin' song. It was … not my taste. It was an undercooked Burning Love, and Springsteen's Fire remained the greatest fire-related song written with Elvis hopes but never recorded. (Related, '86 Bridge School or Darkness tour version? I transpose the two and that's probably a good thing.)

–MySpace spam. You know the name, but you don't. Over too quickly.

And my brain is out. It was nice to hear Majic 102.3 pull out John Legend's Another Again on the drive home after softball tonight. On the album, the wistfulness of the neighboring songs take it to a much sadder place than where it lives on its own. No lyrical findings here, just enjoyed this twist versus the rest.

From Sunday's Sun-Times:

When it feels right to me, when I feel proud of every line in the song, when I don't feel like I'm getting bored or I didn't say the right thing or I took the easy way out on the lyrics — that's when I know I've written a good song. Some things just sound so beautiful that it seems transcendent to me, and Show Me is one of the songs that feels like that. …

Show Me really just came in one burst — a night, or maybe a night and a half. You can't overthink these things, and you know from the basic groove and the basic chorus whether or not the song is right. That's the beginning. If it doesn't have those things, then it's not going to be a great song, no matter how profound the lyrics are or whatever else. With Show Me, as soon as I got that, then I knew it was going to feel good."

Full story.

We all do, really. Or work less. From JohnLegend.com: "Be sure to catch John Legend's visit to Sesame Street! John will perform 'It Feels Good When You Sing a Song' with Hoot the owl! Show airs Monday, August 14 @ 7AM on PBS…"

Here. Save Room, off the fall album Once Again.

I like it. The louder and funkier parts don't come across well in these miked one-eared headphones meant for a telephone, but the song overall has this great listenability that's got me excited for the album.

The headline in the Washington Times asks, "Legend in making?" The paper's Tarron Lively attends John Legend's post-release show and enjoys the night. "The high point of the show was his performance of the album's centerpiece Ordinary People, which is making its rounds on urban radio. Accompanied at first only by his own elegant piano playing, Mr. Legend eventually was joined by the band, which closed out the song with a flourish. It was enough to make you wish the studio version had been recorded like that."