I was working at a polling station for the federal election on Monday — and after my 14-hour shift, I came home and basically zonked out. So I’m playing catchup today. Let’s start with the late-night shows, shall we? It was an eventful evening on the box. And clearly a good night for Bruce Springsteen fans — the Boss dropped in on Jimmy Kimmel Live for a lengthy interview (complete with the mandatory self-serving bit where the host explains what Bruce means to him) to promote his new Western Stars film and soundtrack. The downside: No live performance. The upside: In what I’d like to think was a nice bit of synchronicity, Springsteen-loving British singer-songwriter Sam Fender performed his number The Borders on Late Night With Seth Meyers. It’s not his most Bruce-like cut — to my ears, it’s more of a cross between Gaslight Anthem and War on Drugs — but even so, not too shabby. Of course, it wasn’t quite as impressive as Jim James, Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra’s performance of the Orbisonian number Back to the End of the World on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. I’ve been trying to find the time to spin their new album Order of Nature for a couple of days now; this just makes it clear I’d better get on that. A couple of other acts I need to find time for this week: 1) British rapper Yungblud, who crashed into The Late Show Starring Stephen Colbert to perform Original Me from his new EP with the help of Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds; 2) Anthony Ramos, whose performance of Mind Over Matter on The Late Late Show With James Corden is definitely worth your time. Finally, if you’re an Alicia Keys fan, you’ll probably want to make time to watch her perform Show Me Love live at Barclays Center on Kimmel, after leading the host and his studio audience to the venue on foot. Sheesh. Looks like I picked the wrong night to skip late-night TV. Anyway, now we’re all up to speed.
https://youtu.be/7UOIIEKbt9E
https://youtu.be/aaraKycfSq4
https://youtu.be/2mECd7ldbxE
