'Just like honey, baby, from the bee'

Van Morrison, Sheryl Crow and Counting Crows join the Slaylist. Plus, 'Aftersun,' 'Vengeance,' 'Calendar Girls,' a split decision for the Lakers and more

Happy 24-hour period beginning early Tuesday on the East Coast and late Monday in the rest of the United States. International readers, you make the call.

Patty Griffin took the prime music slot in Slayed by Voices last week, so I thought I’d put this week’s additions to the Slaylist (which as always can be found at Spotify) in pole position this time around.

We’ve got some meaty songs to share, so give them a listen as you give this a read.

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“Tupelo Honey,” Van Morrison. This song was once known as “She’s an Angel,” at least in my mind, because I fell in love hearing it on the radio during college before I learned the actual title. This led to many fruitless searches through the Van Morrison section at Tower Records in Mountain View. (The same thing happened to me with Elvis Presley’s “Caught in a Trap,” which I finally found out was really called “Suspicious Minds).

That said, I wasn’t crazy: The most powerful part of the beautiful “Tupelo Honey” is when Morrison sings “She’s an angel of the first degree,” backed by a “She’s an angel” background chant.

The sweetness of “Tupelo Honey” is undeniable. Jon Landau, author of the seismic 1974 quote “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen,” had this to say: “It is a song of pure devotion, a song of dedication, and through its incredible repetitions of the chorus, a song of rededication.” In his own review, David Cavanagh offers that "‘Tupelo Honey’ is sung by a man who has grabbed us by the lapels and won't let go until we understand precisely what he's experiencing.”

“Tupelo Honey” plays like a love song, and certainly that’s how I take it. But the second verse heads a different direction, and at Songfacts, a case is made for the song as a civil-rights anthem (for Ireland and/or the American South), particularly through this verse:

You can't stop us on the road to freedom
You can't stop us 'cause our eyes can see

”Tupelo Honey” was my first musical encounter with the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, and only afterward did I realize that it was the birthplace of Presley, even though I was already listening to Presley CDs by this time. Much later, Tupelo comes into play with the superb Emmylou Harris song, “Boy From Tupelo.”