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patternsintraffic · 3 years

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My 100 Favorite Albums of the 2000s: #70-#61

I'm back with more albums that I love. Listing is fun! Who knew?

70. Rooney - Rooney (2003)

In the days of mp3.com, Rooney was one of the bands that I would stream during my Software Apps class in high school. I probably heard "Blueside" and "I'm Shakin'" a hundred times at barely-audible volume before this album came out. The sunny, bouncy melodies, synths, chord changes, and throwback lyrics are reminiscent of the Beach Boys or The Cars. I just love the carefree feel and youthful energy of this album, and the tunes are great. This is a quintessential California album from a verified California band.

69. Rock Kills Kid - Are You Nervous? (2006)

The only full-length album from Rock Kills Kid was just a few years before its time, which is a damn shame. When bands like Two Door Cinema Club came around in 2010 and captivated the indie rock world, few knew that Rock Kills Kid had been pumping out danceable alt-rock four years prior. "Paralyzed" and "Run Like Hell" should have been the songs of the summer. "Life's a Bitch" should have been a staple of high school mixtapes everywhere. Instead, this was a band that just didn't fit in with the musical climate of 2006 and regrettably fell off the map. At least we'll always have Are You Nervous?

68. Feeder - Pushing the Senses (2005)

Feeder have been a UK rock institution for 27 years now, releasing ten full-length albums over that span, though they’ve never made much of a splash in the States. My favorite Feeder album, Pushing the Senses, strays from the band’s signature guitar-driven power pop for a mid-career foray into the Britpop style popularized by Coldplay and Keane. The band received criticism for chasing the sound of the times, but their take on it felt genuine and sounded amazing. “Tumble and Fall” and “Tender” could stand toe-to-toe with any of the soft-rock output from those aforementioned bands. Feeder even let the guitars loose on “Feeling a Moment” and “Pushing the Senses,” two of the most undeniable singles I’ve ever heard paired on the same album. Coldplay and Keane have never reached such energetic heights.

67. Lifehouse - No Name Face (2000)

Lifehouse have become somewhat of a punchline over the years, as they’ve continued to release pretty standard and inoffensive alternative-rock fare, usually with one or two big singles coming from each album. It seems like most people enjoy a few Lifehouse songs, but no one is really a Lifehouse enthusiast. I think that the band’s best material comes from their 2000 debut No Name Face, and though their output since hasn’t made me into a true Lifehouse fan, I will always go to bat for this album. “Hanging by a Moment,” “Sick Cycle Carousel,” and “Breathing” are the songs most would be familiar with from early-2000s radio, and they are all excellent. There’s nothing particularly fancy about the rest of the album, as the songs don’t need any embellishments to shine. They are organic, earnest, and beautiful, and though I’m sure there’s some nostalgia involved I never regret revisiting them. Lifehouse might be kind of a stale name in music in 2021, but No Name Face shouldn’t be forgotten.

66. Acceptance - Phantoms (2005)

Until reuniting for Colliding by Design in 2017, Phantoms was the only full-length Acceptance album. It's not hard to see why this band continued to grow a cult following during their inactive years, as people tend to want more after an album as good as this one. It had the lyrics for the emo kids, the guitars for the rock kids, and the hooks for the pop kids. It's actually pretty surprising that Acceptance didn't make a mainstream splash in 2005, especially since this album was released on Columbia Records. A lot of that may have been due to the exceptionally poor choice to release "Different" as the first single. It's a great song, don't get me wrong, but there are so many upbeat tunes on this record that would have done a better job catching ears and piquing interest in the band. At least we finally got the follow-up album 12 years later, and the band have remained active since. Sometimes everything turns out OK in the long run.

65. Cursive - The Ugly Organ (2003)

I’m not sure what drew me to The Ugly Organ in 2003, at 15 years old. Listening to it now, it’s brash and angular, and not particularly accessible. I was just starting to stray from the music on rock radio at the time, and I came across “Some Red-Handed Sleight of Hand” and “Art Is Hard” online. I think there was something about the urgency in Tim Kasher’s voice, and the acidic way that he spit out the pointed and sarcastic lyrical content, that left me wanting more. It may be the cover art or the cello that permeates these songs, but something always felt a little creepy about them, like the band were performing in a haunted house. There aren’t many vocalists like Kasher, who seems to meld multiple levels of meaning into each line while drifting effortlessly from gentle singing to yelling to spoken word. This is a good one to dust off around Halloween. What a treat.

64. Long-View - Mercury (2003)

Long-View was a short-lived UK soft sock outfit that released one full-length album, Mercury. Nothing terribly surprising here - it sounds like an early-2000s UK soft rock album in the age of Coldplay and their contemporaries. The music is simple and often quiet, the vocals are smooth, and the tempos are mid. But despite it feeling like one of many on the surface, Mercury is charming and engaging. "Further," "Can't Explain," and "When You Sleep" have great hooks. The lyrics sound personal and conversational, and despite being cliche at times they feel poetic against the backdrop of Long-View's delicate instrumentals. An exemplary take on an oversaturated genre.

63. Augustana - Can't Love, Can't Hurt (2008)

After "Boston" put Augustana on the map in 2005, they traded in their indie rock sound for a set of rootsy, earthy anthems on their sophomore effort Can't Love, Can't Hurt. While the songs still sound like Augustana, there is a more classic, timeless quality to this album that has kept it fresh 13 years after its release. The slow build of "Twenty Years," with its swelling strings and piano leading the charge, was the kind of song I didn't know the band was capable of writing before this album. And "Sweet and Low" has one of the most sublime hooks I've ever heard.

62. Barcelona - Absolutes (2008)

This Seattle indie rock outfit is anchored by pianist and singer Brian Fennell (now of SYML fame). I had never heard of Barcelona prior to this album, and it took me by surprise. Fennell's vocals are captivating, winding through catchy pop melodies while deftly maneuvering from delicate to powerful. They pair with the band's guitar- and piano-driven arrangements to cement Absolutes among the best in the genre. There is a 2007 independent version of this album which is preferred by many who heard it before it was remastered and rereleased with an expanded tracklist in 2008. While I understand being attached to the version of the album you first fell in love with, I just can't agree with the opinion that the album is better without the standout tracks "Come Back When You Can," "Colors," and "The Takers."

61. Kill Hannah - Until There's Nothing Left of Us (2006)

Kill Hannah played anthemic goth-pop that belied their violent-sounding name. Until There's Nothing Left of Us is a triumphant, stadium-ready pop rock record that had the synths, grooves, and hooks to take the radio by storm in the early 2000s. If this album came out two years earlier, Kill Hannah might have been a household name. How did "Lips Like Morphine" not enrapture a generation of high schoolers? This is one of the many albums on this list that had absolutely all of the ingredients, but it somehow didn't add up to musical stardom.

#albums of the decade #best of the 2000s #top100 #countdown #nostalgia trip

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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Mrs. Douglas was the music teacher. Let me be clear: she was not a music teacher, she taught music at the three predominately Black elementary schools in my hometown. She taught at a different school every day and, if you lived in Hartsville, S.C. any time between 1968 and 2006, she was the music teacher. Mrs. Douglas is the reason everyone from my childhood knows the words to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem.

Being home-schooled at a young age, my mother hadn’t shielded me from whiteness so much as she surrounded me with Blackness. But I longed to go to school. I wanted to play on a playground and carry books in a knapsack. Having to raise your hand to speak and eating square pizza seemed like so much fun, which is why I cherished Wednesdays with Mrs. Douglas. On Wednesday afternoons, Mrs. Douglas gave me private piano lessons in her home and I was her prized student. I was a child prodigy and–if I could just remember to lift my wrists and keep my posture straight–I was on the path to becoming the next Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. I was always eager to play for Mrs. Douglas because she had one thing that inspired students to perform at the highest level:

Mrs. Douglas was beautiful.

Even as a ten-year-old, I could see it. Everyone could. Perhaps the best way to contextualize her beauty is to say she was a combination of Thelma and Willona from Good Times. She had a pre-Beyoncé level of fineness that made little boys swoon and little girls belt their hearts out in perfect tune. And, she began every gathering with the Black National Anthem–“Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

It really is a perfect song. God must have laid that on James Weldon Johnson’s heart because, in 169 words, he somehow captured the entirety of the Black experience. The lyrics are at once painful and triumphant without wallowing in our trauma. And when we hit that “Sing a song...” part, we really spill out all of our Blackness. In the annals of Black music, “sing a song” ranks right up there with Frankie Beverly’s “Before I let you goooooooo....” or Ricky Bell’s confession that “it’s driving me out of my mind.” If there’s anything Black America can do, we can sing a song.

Mrs. Douglas did not teach me the Black National Anthem. I have never been in a setting where people actually learned the words or the melody. Everywhere I went, people just seemed to know it. Looking back, this was probably the work of Mrs. Douglas, but for the first ten years of my life, I assumed everyone was born knowing how to blink their eyes, do the Electric Slide, and sing “Lift Every Voice.”

One Wednesday, at the end of our hourlong lesson, Mrs. Douglas gave me a copy of the Maya Angelou bestseller along with the sheet music to “Lift Every Voice,” as if one were necessary to understand the other. She told me that she would be teaching me how to play the anthem for the next few weeks but we could only begin after I read the pages she had bookmarked. In the chapter, Angelou describes her elementary school class singing the Negro National Anthem. I’m sure my piano teacher was trying to stress the importance of the song to our history and culture but all I could remember is Maya Angelou describing her anger after a local school board official denigrated the entire Black race during her grammar school graduation ceremony:

We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.

Then I wished that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner had killed all whitefolks in their beds and that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that Harriet Tubman had been killed by that blow on her head and Christopher Columbus had drowned in the Santa María. It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life.

It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

Jesus. Was I supposed to be reading this? Were white people this bad? Was the song this good? And how would this help me play the piano? It did not help my posture at all. I know this was probably Mrs. Douglas’s attempt to ensure that I would thank her in one of the Grammy speeches that I would surely give later in life but, Ma’am...

I. Was. Ten.

Still, enthralled by her beauty and a little disturbed by her reading assignment, I committed to playing the fuck out of that song. And, by “playing the fuck out of that song,” I basically hit the keys harder and with more emphasis (Did I mention I was ten years old?). It was obvious that Mrs. Douglas was pleased. For the next few years, I played “Lift Every Voice” at all the Black functions around town, including Pastors’ anniversaries, cotillions and every Black History Month program. I didn’t even need the sheet music. I didn’t know any other songs. To this day, my entire piano repertoire consists of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It was the only song I could interpolate into other keys.

But my favorite time to play the anthem was when Mrs. Douglas’s Combined Glee Club performed. The Combined Glee Club was basically the best singers from the Black elementary schools combined into one choir. Led by Mrs. Douglas, the CGC was the number-one ranked glee club in all of the greater Hartsville area. Not just anyone could be in the Combined Glee Club; you had to be selected by Mrs. Douglas. It was the official verification that you had musical talent. I’m sure some people put it on their college application.

If there was something Black going on, they were invited and those motherfuckers could sing. All of my neighborhood friends were on the Combined Glee Club and my best friend played the drums for them. (Yes, they had a drummer!) The CGC usually performed the Donny Hathaway version of “I Believe in Music” (which, until a few years ago, I believed was a song Mrs. Douglas had penned herself). But their specialty was opening up with “Lift Every Voice.”

If I am being honest, I have to admit that I am a tiny bit afraid of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in the way that I am afraid of the Holy Ghost or making potato salad for a family dinner. I know how important it is to us, so I am afraid to mess it up. Even though I hadn’t been around white people, I somehow knew it was our song. I had never seen it on television or on the radio. It was like a secret handshake or a fried chicken recipe–It belonged exclusively to us. Plus, if I messed it up, Mrs. Douglas might not consider the marriage proposal I was planning in a few years. Every time I played “Lift Every Voice,” there was a lot riding on it.

When I finally started attending public schools, my mother enrolled me at a predominately white school where I was assigned to a homeroom where I was the only black kid in the class. I’d like to explain how the white kids made racist jokes at my expense but, if they did, I didn’t even notice it. In fact, spending time around white people for the first time at ten years old, I learned more about Black people than I learned about white people.

I had not assimilated the subconscious deference to whiteness that often accompanies being Black. I became acutely aware that white people are not smarter or even more educated than any of the kids in my neighborhood. They were perfectly mediocre. They didn’t know how to double-dutch and they didn’t even have a glee club. In music class, the teacher just passed out instruments and let the kids have jam sessions. How were they supposed to acquire their daily recommended dosage of glee? I was a little ashamed of going to school there, so I led all my friends to believe that I was still being homeschooled until they discovered the truth at the annual Holiday Music Showcase.

Every year, all of the schools would get together for a Christmas program to show off their best musicians and singers. The white schools would have violinists, saxophone players and ensembles playing classical music with terrible basslines. As for my predominately glee-less institution, we learned a special super-Caucasian rendition of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.” I was just thankful that we didn’t have to follow the Negro Mass Choir. They were last on the program.

My white classmates were unmoved as each individual school performed and, with each successive song, I slunk lower in my seat. During Washington Street Elementary’s performance, as they lifted up His name with a perfect a cappella version of “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” a kid sitting behind me whispered:

“Look at all those lips!”

Everyone giggled. I did not.

Our performance was predictably lackluster (probably because I refused to sing). It sounded like an episode of Little House on the Prairie. It sounded like long division. Rudolph’s nose had never been so unremarkable. Had he heard those flat notes wafting through the Center Theater, I’m sure he would have been as ashamed as I was. We trudged back to our seats as the Baddest Glee Club in the Land took the stage for the last performance. Of course, they sang “I Believe in Music.” Accompanied by Mrs. Douglas on piano and my homeboy James on drums, they blew the doors off the place. Even my classmates were impressed because, when they hit one particular a cappella refrain that every Black choir does, my classmates were clapping along. They were off-beat, but they still clapped.

After a rousing round of applause, Mrs. Douglas announced the next song from her piano: “Lift Every Voice.” Of course, all of the Black people in the audience—even the children—stood up. None of the white kids even moved. I was the only person in my entire class who stood.

Mrs. Douglas didn’t play that shit.

She stood up from the piano and glared at the audience as if to say: “You motherfuckers better stand up and show some respect.” I had never seen Mrs. Douglas express anger. And she waited. And the choir waited. She looked. And the choir looked. As she scowled at the audience, Mrs. Douglas saw me standing and smiled. She waved me to the front of the auditorium and whispered in my ear: “You wanna play?”

By the time I sat at the piano and she ascended to the stage to direct the Combined Glee Club, everyone was standing. She looked at me with her usual glance and in one microsecond, my back straightened. My wrists were raised to the perfect 45 degree angle.

And just like that, I was Black.

For the first time since I had read Maya Angelou’s angry words, I was no longer afraid of the song. I don’t know if it was the repetition of playing so many times, or the hand of some unseen thing, but I was suddenly able to play and sing the song simultaneously. And goddamn, did that Combined Glee Club lift their voices. They sang that song.

Our song.

I called Mrs. Douglas today.

I had so many questions. I wanted to ask her why she dragged me around town when I don’t have a sliver of musical talent. I really wanted to know why she made me read that book. I figured she’d tell me something about building my character, giving me a reason to socialize with people my age or how music helps the brain mature. Or maybe she’d make some perfect metaphor about birds in cages.

She did not answer.

I still have a song, though.

We are the song.

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scum-belina · 5 years

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Aight, since you're on such a movie binge lately, and since I usually love your recommendations, what are your top 10 movies?

Upon being asked this nearly 48 hours ago, my brain, despite having watched probably 1000 movies of all different genres and from multiple countries was like "the only movies you can remember is shrek 1 2 and 3" but after digging through my memory I THINK I have managed to find some of my top favorites movies. My favorites are defined solely on how much they managed to impact me and inspire me so here we go in no particular order!

1. “The Best Offer” (2013) by Giuseppe Tornatore. This is the most recent film I’ve seen and is by far one of my all-time favorites. It is at least 96% of everything I’ve ever wanted in a movie and I’m still reeling from the borderline perfection of the whole thing. Unsurprisingly I got interested in it bc of the older man/ younger woman thing, but nothing about their relationship development was cliche or shallow, so much so that it pleasantly surprised me, and then threw me through 25000 emotional roller coasters that were also on fire. It’s a drama, romance, comedy, mystery, thriller, and tragedy without being an absolute mess and idk if I will ever get over it I love it so much.

2. “Melancholia” (2011) by Lars Von Trier. A film that portrays severe depression through an apocalyptic metaphor and actually manages to skillfully get away with it. I love this movie as much as I hate it for being so raw and painful yet beautiful at the same time. Everyone in this is great but Kirsten Dunst truly is a formidable actress. This is the only LVT film I’ve fully enjoyed also bc all of his others have too much of a pretentious assholeishness to them and he just tries too damn hard to be edgy and it wastes the entire storyline.

3. “The Phantom Of the Opera” (2004) by Joel Schumacher. A classic in every respect of the word. It’s got the twisted love tale that I’m an eternal sucker for PLUS they burst out into song abt such matters all the time??? LOVES IT. Everyone with even the slightest taste for the dramatic should watch it at least once.

4. “The Red Violin” (1998) By François Girard. I Don’t even know how to describe this film. I just remember it from my childhood bc my dad was fascinated by it and I was too. It has an entirely foreign, mostly Italian cast which makes it somehow feel like even more of an authentic story. It really helped shaped me to realize just how important music and musical instruments are to humanity and how they are another way to express our innermost thoughts and feelings.

5. Moulin Rouge! (2001) by Baz Lurhmann. I will NEVER forget the first time I saw this. I was around 7 or 8 and my parents had rented it from blockbuster, and all 3 of us watched it in awe. Baz Lurhmann is nothing but a genius the way he integrated multiple modern songs into this musical and they FIT. The moulin rouge version of “Roxanne” knocks the original by The Police out of the park, out of the world, and out into another dimension. And then the original songs like “come what may” are all 10/10. It’s theatrical, it’s romantic, it’s funny, it’s tragic. Those are the 4 things that almost always cause me to love a movie. Also Ewan McGregor is absurdly hot in it and HIS SINGING VOICE??? HHHHHOOOOOOO BBBBOOOOOYYYYYYYYY

6. “Phantom Thread” (2017) by Paul Thomas Anderson. I’m not gonna lie, I hopped onto this movie solely bc of the older man/younger woman romance theme that I am always a slut for, but much like The Best Offer it was SO MUCH more like??? This isn’t even about their age it’s about who THEY ARE and their differences yet their love for each other and how can they balance their lives, who THEY ARE without hating one another as much as they love one another??? BOY I LOVE THAT TORTURED LOVE. This movie was almost NOTHING of what I expected from it and I loved every surprise it gave me.

7. “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” (2006) by Tom Tykwer. Idek WHAT to say about this film other than it’s so good!!! It’s so fucked up!!! I’M so fucked up!!! I love it so much!!! You know how me be!!! Love that nasty artsy badness!!! Go watch it and then message me asking me what the fuck is wrong with me!!!

8. “V for Vendetta” (2005) by James McTeigue. I know this movie has been overhyped at times, but it truly is incredible. Both the left and right seem to claim this movie as their own, but my libertarian ass just loves it for its anti-tyranny theme and ofc for the development of Evey and V’s relationship. It’s definitely worth at least one watch.

9. Pirates of the Caribbean (2003-2007 so only the original trilogy bc those are the only ones that really exist and matter ok) by Gore Verbinski. I was around 9-10 when I saw the first potc, and it changed me and inspired me for life. Immediately I found Elizabeth Swann so relatable not just bc we have the same first name, but because she had the same intense desire for freedom and adventure as I had/ still do tbh. She liked the “bad guys” and wanted to be one of them and ultimately became “King” of them without sacrificing her own femininity and OHHH I LOVE THAT. The original potc trilogy has the perfect blend of adventure, fantasy, horror, and romance for me (although I will always wish Elizabeth had ended up with Jack in the end I will DIE for this ship).Mind you, The Mummy (1999) Came EXTREMELY close to taking potc’s place, but the mummy never managed to make a good or even rewatchable trilogy like potc did so potc wins this.

10. This is Spinal Tap (1984) by Rob Reiner. The only complete comedy on this list, I cannot even begin to describe how genius this film is. I have watched it so many times since childhood and I STILL find new jokes in it that I had never noticed before. Anyone who has had even the slightest bit of an interest in music should find this hilarious. The Stonehenge mishap scene alone makes this one of the greatest comedies of all time.

These are some of the few that I’ve been able to come back to mind from memory rn but I’m sure I’ll think of other faves later. but all of these are some definite top faves of mine that impho (in my personal humble/horny opinion) everyone should watch at least once

#i have consumed 3 apples and an entire liter of wine tonight i am unhinged so if i misspell or repeat myself just understand that #in this moment i am eva green in penny dreadful

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usgunn · 5 years

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September 8, 2019

CLICK HERE for the September 8, 2019 playlist

1. The Walker Brothers - “My Ship Is Comin’ In” (1965)

It may be a music nerd cliché to love Scott Walker, but...I love Scott Walker. I’m sure Scott will show up in other forms on later ARBTR playlists, but this week I felt like kicking things off with some quirky, string-laden late 60′s productions, and this early Walker Brothers song felt like a great way to start. For a primer on Scott, check out the documentary Scott Walker: 30th Century Man, which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. A little extra trivia: this song was produced by Ivor Raymonde, father of Cocteau Twins bassist Simon Raymonde.

2. The Left Banke - “Desiree” (1968)

The Left Banke are best known for their hit “Walk Away Renee,” from their first record in 1967. That record was primarily written and arranged by keyboardist Michael Brown, who at the time was a mere 17 years old. Brown parted ways with the band before their second record, The Left Banke Too, was released, but this track is one of the two songs on that album that he wrote and played on, and in my opinion a highlight of a small but dense catalog.

3. The Move - “Beautiful Daughter” (1970)

OK, so technically this song was released in February 1970, but...close enough to stick with our late 60′s time period. A really wonderful string arrangement here, presumably done by singer and songwriter Roy Wood, who would later start ELO with Jeff Lynne.

4. The Electric Prunes - “The Adoration” (1968)

This song comes from the fourth album credited to The Electric Prunes, Release of an Oath, but is an Electric Prunes record in name only. The band that recorded “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night” was gone, and all that was left was producer David Hassinger and composer/arranger extraordinaire David Axelrod, who would go on to compose and produce several amazing, hip, jazzy records under his own name. I’m a big Axelrod fan and I’m sure he’ll show up on a future playlist, but this early example of his forays into the “rock” world seemed to fit with this week’s opening theme.

5. The Soundcarriers - “Signal Blue” (2014)

Getting out of the 60′s, but this UK band has had both David Axelrod and Scott Walker referenced by critics as likely musical inspirations, among other hip 60′s and 70′s acts. This comes from their album Entropicalia, released on the great Ghost Box record label run by Julian House, a graphic designer whose work has graced almost every Broadcast and Stereolab record sleeve, and who similarly does all the design for Ghost Box’s releases.

6. SAULT - “Don’t Waste My Time” (2019)

Literally know nothing about this band. Try and Google them -- as of when this playlist was released, you will find virtually nothing. All I can tell is that the production was done by Inflo, a UK-based producer that appears to have some connection to super-producer Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse. Kind of a sassy, ESG feel; just heard this this week and loved it.

7. Shape of Broad Minds (feat. MF Doom) - “Let’s Go (Space Boogie)” (2007)

Hip-hop project led by prolific producer (and, I think, part-time Atlanta resident?) Jneiro Jarel. This comes from a record, Craft of the Lost Art, released on Warp Records hip-hop offshoot Lex Records. And of course, this song features the vocal stylings of rap legend (and, I think, also part-time Atlanta resident?) MF Doom. Jarel and Doom later did a full-album collaboration, Key to the Kuffs, under the name JJ Doom. I love the propulsive feel of this song, with a riff that feels like it’s leading somewhere but keeps repeating itself.

8. George Smallwood - “You Know I Love You” (1980?)

I discovered this song on a compilation put out by the enigmatic DC-based label Peoples Potential Unlimited called Peoples Potential Family Album, compiling tracks the label had reissued on 12-inches. PPU mainly mines obscure boogie-funk from the DC/Virginia area, from which blind singer-songwriter George Smallwood hailed. I love the backing vocals on this song, they totally make it for me, along with the demo-like sparseness of the production.

9. Sandra Wright - “I Come Running Back” (1974)

I’ve already forgotten how I discovered this, but something I saw this week led me to listen to this track, from the album Wounded Woman, recorded in 1974 for Stax subsidiary Truth Records but unreleased until 1989. I’m glad I did--I instantly fell in love with everything about this song.

10. Tim Maia - “Brother, Father, Sister and Mother” (1976)

Note the correct song title above - Spotify seems to have mucked it up. Maia was a funk/soul guy in the 70′s in Brazil who was the subject of Luaka Bop’s compilation World Psychedelic Classics 4: Nobody Can Live Forever - The Existential Soul of Tim Maia, where I discovered this song.

11. Daphni - “Sizzling (Radio Edit)” (2019)

Daphni is the name under which Caribou mastermind Dan Snaith releases his more dance-oriented material. This song, released this past summer, is a remix of an obscure 1981 funk track called “Sizzlin Hot” by Paradise. It cooks.

12. "Blue” Gene Tyranny - “David Kopay (Portrait)” (1978)

Note the correct song title above. Tyranny was an avant-garde piano player and composer who dabbled the “rock idiom,” for lack of a better term. He was briefly in the Stooges, apparently. This song is adventurous from a compositional perspective but also remarkably funky. Extra trivia: this song’s namesake, David Kopay, was an NFL running back and the first NFL player to publicly acknowledge he was gay. In addition to the many things to love about this song, the extended synth drone outro provides a palette cleanser for the set of songs that close the playlist this week.

13. Will Johnson - “Every Single Day of Late” (2017)

Will Johnson was the leader of the late-great Centro-matic from Denton, TX, one of my all-time favorite bands. He released a couple of sparse solo records while Centro-matic was active, but since that band folded in 2014 his solo records have incorporated more varied sounds and approaches to songwriting. This song, from his most recent record Hatteras Night, a Good Luck Charm (although a new one is due this year) opens with a somewhat menacing electric guitar sound and never quite feels settled, adding junkyard percussion and backing vocals with some interesting atonal guitar work in the middle.

14. Rollerskate Skinny - “Lunasa” (1993)

Really, really weird and fearless 90′s rock band from Dublin, Ireland that featured Jimi Shields, younger brother of Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine, on drums and other instruments. This song really gives you no idea of what the album this comes from (Shoulder Voices, their debut) sounds like--I’m not sure any individual song on the record does. All over the place in the best way possible. I felt like the backing-vocal heavy nature of this song went well with the previous song and the next song, even if they otherwise sound like they have nothing to do with each other.

15. Kelley Polar - “Chrysanthemum” (2007)

Polar was (is?) a Julliard-educated violinist with an affinity for dance music who made two great string-drenched dance records in the early 2000′s and then, as far as I can tell, disappeared. This song actually barely features strings, and I therefore hesitated to include it, but I love the starkness of this track and the rhythm “breaths” that drive it.

16. Psychic TV - “The Orchids” (1983)

I’m not a Psychic TV fan, and I don’t get much of what they do. The band, formed by former Throbbing Gristle members Genesis P-Orridge and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, often trafficks in drone and noise music that just doesn’t do anything for me. But this song is different. I first heard this song when Califone covered it on their Roots & Crowns album in 2006, and I still love that version. But the original has a strange naiveté to it, with its lo-fi production and overlapping, cut-and-paste vocals.

#playlist #spotify #music discovery #psychic tv #kelley polar #will johnson #rollerskate skinny #blue gene tyranny #sandra wright #daphni #tim maia #george smallwood #sault #shape of broad minds #the soundcarriers #the walker brothers #the left banke #the move #the electric prunes

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youzicha · 5 years

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The Chernobyl tv series has been criticized for prioritizing drama over accuracy when fictionalizing the events. But as I've been reading about the accident, I've noticed that a lot of these things actually are present in the sources. The script writer is not necessarily deceitful, just credulous. For example,

⚛ The ionized air glow is depicted as a narrow searchlight beam rising kilometers over the plant, which is surely not physically possible. But there is a first-hand account of it in Midnight in Chernobyl.

The two men turned into the ground-level transport corridor and reeled outside into the night. Standing no more than fifty meters away from the reactor, Tregub and Yuvchenko were among the first to comprehend what had happened to Unit Four. It was a terrifying, apocalyptic sight: the roof of the reactor hall was gone, and the right-hand wall had been almost completely demolished by the force of the explosion. Half of the cooling circuit had simply disappeared: on the left, the water tanks and pipework that had once fed the main circulation pumps dangled in midair. Yuvchenko knew at that moment that Valery Khodemchuk was certainly dead: the spot where he had been standing lay beneath a steaming pile of rubble, lit by flashes from the severed ends of 6,000-volt cables as thick as a man’s arm, swaying and shorting on everything they touched, showering the wreckage with sparks.

And from somewhere in the heart of the tangled mass of rebar and shattered concrete—from deep inside the ruins of Unit Four, where the reactor was supposed to be—Alexander Yuvchenko could see something more frightening still: a shimmering pillar of ethereal blue-white light, reaching straight up into the night sky, disappearing into infinity. Delicate and strange and encircled by a flickering spectrum of colors conjured by flames from within the burning building and superheated chunks of metal and machinery, the beautiful phosphorescence transfixed Yuvchenko for a few seconds. [cite: Alexander Yuvchenko, author interview, 2006]

I think probably this is a perspective effect, where the light appears to stretch up higher if you are standing right at the base, but it would not look like this from Pripyat.

⚛ The tv series claims that if the bubbler pool had not been drained there could have been a megaton-sized explosion, which sounds extremely silly. But this claim was made by Vassili Nesterenko, who was a nuclear physicist and director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. (Incidentally, Nestrerenko also co-authored a book claiming that Chernobyl radioactivity will kill a million people, about 100 times more than most other estimates.)

⚛ The tv show implies that the radiation victims treated at Hospital No. 6 are dangerously radioactive and must be sealed up inside a chamber of plastic sheets. This account is based on Lyudmilla Ignatenko's chapter in Voices of Chernobyl.

They have instruments there, so that without going through the curtain they can give him shots, place the catheter. The curtains are held together by Velcro, and I've learned to use them. I push them aside and go inside. There was a little chair next to his bed. He got so bad that I couldn't leave him now even for a second. He was calling out to me constantly: “Lyusya, where are you? Lyusya!" He called and called. The other biochambers, where our boys were, were tended to by soldiers, because the orderlies on staff refused, they demanded protective clothing. The soldiers carried the sanitary vessels. They wiped the floors down, changed the bedding. They did everything. Where did they get those soldiers? We didn't ask. [...]

None of the doctors knew I was staying with him at night in the bio-chamber. The nurses let me in. At first they pleaded with me, too: “You’re young. Why are you doing this? That's not a person anymore, that’s a nuclear reactor. You'll just burn together." I was like a dog, running after them. I’d stand for hours at their doors, begging and pleading. And then they’d say: “All right! The hell with you! You’re not normal!" In the mornings, just before eight, when the doctors started their rounds, they'd be there on the other side of the film: “Run!"

But this was probably more superstition of the nurses than a real risk. The bio-chamber was there to protect the (immunocompromised) patients from infection, not to protect the staff from radiation.

⚛ Various people have mentioned that the characterization of Dyatlov and Akimov in episode 1---while very memorable---doesn't seem to agree very closely with the historical record. But it was not invented by the tv show writer: both the plot and the characterization in the episode is closely based on Grigoriy Medvedev's Chernobyl Notebook, all the way down to individual scenes like Dyatlov looking out at the graphite, or Akimov's imploring tone of voice.

“I do not understand anything! What kind of devilry is this?! We did everything correctly...,” Akimov cried out once again. [...]

“This is it!...” the thought flashed through Dyatlov in a panic. “The explosive mixture has been detonated.... Where?... Seemingly in the emergency tank of the SUZ (safety control system—G.M.).” This version, engendered in the shocked brain of Anatoliy Dyatlov, was to wander for a long time yet in people’s minds, was to console the hemorrhaging consciousness, the paralyzed and sometimes convulsively quivering will, came all the way to Moscow, and it was believed right up until 29 April; it was the basis for many actions that were sometimes fatal to people’s lives. But why? Well, because that was the easiest approach. It contained both a justification and a salvation for those who were responsible from the bottom to the top. Especially those who by some miracle had been left intact in the radioactive belly of the explosion. They needed strength, and a conscience that was at least partly quieted gave it to them. After all, ahead of them was the entire night, the unendurable night of death which they had nevertheless conquered.... [...]

Dyatlov ran out of the unit control room and with resounding steps, as though he were wearing football shoes, sliding on the broken glass that made a soulwrenching gritting and grinding sound, he ran into the backup control room, which was right next to the staircase-elevator well. He pressed the AZ-5 button and turned the key to shut off power to the servodrives. Late. Why? The reactor had been destroyed.... But Anatoliy Stepanovich Dyatlov figured otherwise: The reactor was intact, the safety control system tank had ruptured in the central hall. The reactor was intact.... The reactor was intact....

The windows in the backup control room were broken, the glass made a slippery screaching sound under the feet, and there was a strong smell of ozone. Dyatlov looked out the window, stuck his head outside. Night-time. The din and screaming of the fire raging up above. In the reddish reflection from the fire, he could see a horrible heap of structural fragments, girders, concrete, and brick. Something was scattered around the unit on the asphalt. Very thickly. Something black.... But he could not take it in that this was graphite from the reactor. Just as in the turbine room. There as well his eyes had seen the glowing chunks of graphite and fuel. But his mind would not accept the horrible implication of what he had seen.

I guess the issue is that Medvedev's book is already fictionalized. ("What did Akimov and Toptunov, the operators of the nuclear process, feel at the moment when the control rods became stuck along the way and the first terrible shocks were heard from the central hall? It is difficult to say, because both operators died a painful death from radiation without leaving any testimony on this point. But one can imagine what they felt.")

#chernobyl

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lucioarmytage · 5 years

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How Punk Formed Electronic Music

Musical genres are classes which comprise music which share a sure model or which have certain elements in widespread. Certainly one of rock's problems seems to be demographic. Trendy rock music is mainly being bought by young, white males. Women and girls forty and under mainly purchase pop music. Regardless of the success of some later feminine rockers like 10,000 Maniacs and Alanis Morissette, modern rock nonetheless seems to have a problem attracting female patrons. In 2006, the web site surveyed girls all over the world on their music style. Whereas the survey did not present percentages, rock solely appeared in the other class and that was just a tiny slice of the general pie chart. Now, it is doable that some rock fans chose different (which covers several genres) but this was still less than half the size of the pop class. A two time Grammy Award successful singer-songwriter & activist from Benin. She is famous for her various musical influences & inventive music movies that has earned her the title of ‘The best livening African Diva'. Based in London, Thackray, 27, composes jazz and digital music, launched her Walrus EP in September , and will be re-scoring It Follows with a reside orchestra on October 31st in Leeds. Nation and rap are both very different genres. Combining the 2 just creates one of the worst sounds ever.

A seven-time Grammy winner, Prince had Prime 10 hits like Little Crimson Corvette," When Doves Cry," Let's Go Loopy," Kiss" and The Most Beautiful Lady within the World"; albums like Soiled Mind," 1999" and Sign ' the Times" were full-length statements. His songs also became hits for others, among them Nothing Compares 2 U" for Sinead 'Connor, Manic Monday" for http://www.audio-transcoder.com the Bangles and I Feel for You" for Chaka Khan. With the 1984 film and album Purple Rain," he instructed a fictionalized version of his own story: biracial (though Prince's parents have been each African-American), gifted, spectacularly bold. Its music received him an Academy Award, and the album sold greater than 13 million copies within the United States alone. The music of these days was a reaction to actuality. The military that ruled Nigeria for a greater part of its fifty eight years' independence had created so many problems. The urge to struggle back was there, however at all times suppressed. Fela stood out as a result of he stepped in aggressively together with his music. The description of a style is a collection of patterns. Songs that share patterns could be grouped in a genre that describes those patterns. You could find these patterns in any music dynamic: rhythm, speed, development, key, instrumentation, no matter. Provided that we do discover that MySpace musicians group genres into constant complexes (3 worlds, sixteen style communities), we turn to our third question, in regards to the structural dimensions of those complexes. To do so, we study the extent to which the permeability of style communities' boundaries range. Here we return to the 2x2 desk from above, and present how the main style complexes in the MySpace universe match within it. Spoken phrase has at all times raised eyebrows with regards to music. Some view it as poetry, while others respect it as every other music. Spoken phrase performances have brought new ideas of offering entertainment. This consists of collaborating with other musicians in addition to adding instrumentals to the artistic performance. Music to be careful for contains that from Jemedari, Quantity 8, Specifyd" and others. Music comes in many differing kinds and styles starting from conventional rock music to world pop, easy listening and bluegrass. Many genres have a rich history or geographical significance, a cult following or music roots that go far past the twentieth century. The rise of EDM has been powered by expertise, with social media helping construct the profiles of rising artists such as the Belgian techno DJ Amelie Lens. It has also remodeled the music distribution model. Regional Mexican music is among the best-selling genres of Latin music within the United States with such artists as Vicente Fernandez , Espinoza Paz, Los Tigres del Norte, Gerardo Ortiz, Banda El Recodo, Jenni Rivera , Selena , La Arrolladora Banda El Limon, and Marco Antonio Solis collectively bringing in tens of millions of report sales.

After all, there are lots of limitations in our study and our survey did not embrace all attainable music genres. There are such a lot of varieties of music that we've not included in our research. In future studies, we are going to address this issue and we would conduct exploratory research to seek out out exactly why listeners from each genders desire sure genres. This way we can have a greater overview of the differences between female and male music preferences. The facial ink is only one hallmark of SoundCloud rap, a as soon as underground scene with its roots in southern US trap music that within the final 12 months has crossed over into the mainstream, and is quick becoming one of the crucial widespread musical genres for teenagers and young adults.

Music in America is presently in an fascinating place. The internet has made it easier than ever for artists to release their music for the world to hear, however on the similar time it may really feel like a smaller group of artists is capturing the top of the charts. Still, when it comes to touring exhibits and local scenes rock and nation musicians are serving to to bring fans together all throughout the nation. Whereas the charts could be dominated by music that is streamed over telephones and computers the local concert venues are full of individuals looking for that classic mixture of drums, a guitar, and a singer that can make them really feel something.You would possibly discover those that want to purchase your music after you've got spent cash on social media promoting however you'll never turn into famous. What these gross sales amount to is probably just a few thousand dollars a yr. Typically you'll be making less than any individual making minimal wage that works at a 7-eleven store. If you're utterly honest with yourself, most individuals don't get into this business to generate income at first. They want that FAME. That fame will finally get the ball rolling and bring in the cash later like in the case of Metallica.Maybe it is the hybridized nature of rock music, the myriad influences which have melded to make the shape, that lends itself so properly to debate - Stones vs. Beatles, Beatles vs. Elvis, garage rock vs. area rock - however nevertheless, it may be this side of the genre that most appeals to the ever desirous to argue Debaters. Or it might simply be the inherent contentiousness of rock as a complete, the rebellious spirit that defies categorization whilst finer lines are drawn - both manner, individuals with the Debater persona kind might have an elaborate set of justifications for why their bands are worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of rock, whereas others ought to be condemned forevermore to the bargain bins of history.

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kachulein · 5 years

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Mind giving me K-pop recommendations? Like, what got you into K-pop, who's your favorite, things like that? I want to try listening to it and I wanted to ask you, Kachu! Congrats on 800!! 💖💙

Aww thank you so much dear!!

First of all, Kpop is not just simply pop music, as the name suggests. Within the genre kpop are actually many different genres of music mingled and there’s something nice for (almost) everyone to find. I’ll give you some information about my favourite groups that might help you find what you could like. I will also link mostly title songs as they are the more popular songs and usually have a music video (kpop music videos are always very aesthetic btw).

Starting off with my ultimate favourite group Stray Kids. They are still rookies as they debuted in March 2018 but I’ve fallen in love with them and their music so much that I highly recommend you checking them out. They are a 9 member boy group with three of those members, Bang Chan, Changbin and Han (knowns as 3RACHA) writing and composing all of their songs. 3RACHA has been releasing pre-debut mixtapes on Souncloud throughout 2017 and if you like hip hop/rap music, you should definitely give them a listen. Some recs are:

Hellevator

District 9

Grow Up (try to listen & read lyrics without crying; you can put on eng sub on the mv)

Voices

My Pace

Awkward Silence

I am YOU

Get Cool

M.I.A

Mixtape#3 ‘For You’

Mixtape#1 ‘Placebo’ (my favourite songs of theirs)

Mixtape#2 ‘Even a shadow needs light to exist’

note: The songs with a ‘mixtape’ in front of them mean that they were originally track 3RACHA released in one of their mixtapes but they’ve been alternated and remastered into a ot9 Stray Kids version

Some 3RACHA songs:

ZONE

Start Line

Matryoshka

Broken Compass

NXT 2 U

Tik Tok

P.A.C.E

Placebo (I love the original version as well)

For You (^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^)

Runners High

MONSTA X is another one of my favourites and it was actually thanks to their song Hero that I got into kpop. It’s a great song with a beautiful music video and I highly recommend it. Their songs are usually very powerful bangers to get hyped to. Some song I recommend are:

Hero

All in

Stuck

Shine Forever

Beautiful

Fighter

Jealousy

Dramarama

Newton

Shoot Out

Another favourite of mine is BTS. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of them already. They’ve been around for a while and gained worldwide a lot of popularity in 2017. They’ve changed their music style over the years but it shows that their music has grown with them. Some recs are:

I NEED U

Dope

Run

Fire

Save Me

Blood, Sweat & Tears

Spring Day

Not Today

DNA (their most famous song I believe but not their best imo)

MIC Drop

FAKE LOVE

IDOL

I’m Fine

Don’t Leave Me

Another group I definitely cannot miss is Seventeen. Their name is misleading since they are actually only 13 members not 17 (it’s still a lot though). The group is split into 3 sub-units, Hip Hop Team, Vocal Team, and Performance Team with each of those teams having a leader. The three leaders also created a SVT Leaders unit for their song Change Up. They mainly release ot13 songs with one of their members, called Woozi, being the main composer but they also released songs in their respective units. Some recs are:

Boom Boom

Check-In (Hip Hop Team)

Highlight (Performance Team)

Don’t Wanna Cry

Change Up (SVT Leaders)

Pinwheel (Vocal Team)

Clap

THANKS

Oh My!

Call Call Call

Getting Closer

bonus: Just Do It (by BSS a new sub-unit consisting of three members, however they only released this song so far)

Got7 is a groups under JYP entertainment just like Stray Kids and they are their seniors since Got7 has been around since 2014. They also have great music I highly recommend checking out:

Hard Carry

Never Ever

You Are

Look

Lullaby

Miracle

Day6 is under JYP entertainment as well but they are a bit different from the usual Kpop group since they are actually a band and play their own instruments. If you like rock music, I highly recommend them!!

Shoot Me

Beautiful Feeling

Somehow

DANCE DANCE

I Wait

How Can I Say

Congratulations

and since we’re already talking about about rock music, here’s some more groups whose music goes into the direction of rock to check out:

The Rose - BABY, Sorry

FT ISLAND - Take Me Now, Pray, Out Of Love, Lose, Hello Hello, Wind

Dreamcatcher - Chase Me, Good Night, Fly High, YOU AND I, What

EXO is a group that has been around since 2012 and even though they haven’t been very active lately, they still got a lot of bops that you could check out. They are under SM entertainment just like the next three groups I’m about to mention:

Overdose

Call Me Baby

Love Me Right

Lightsaber

Monster

Lotto

Ko Ko Bop

The Eve

Tempo

Love Shot

NCT are another group under SM. Their concept is a bit difficult because they are said to have an unlimited member count and they will be debuting more and more sub-units. NCT (as a whole) consist of 21 members as of now with 3 already existing units called NCT U, NCT 127, and NCT Dream and a fourth unit called WayV that is said to debut this month. Some recs are:

NCT U:

The 7th Sense

BOSS

Baby Don’t Stop

NCT 127:

Limitless

Cherry Bomb

Chain

TOUCH

Regular

Simon Says

NCT Dream:

We Young

We Go Up

Red Velvet and Oh!GG are two girl groups under SM Entertainment. They are both really nice and worth checking out. OH!GG is actually a sub-unit from the girl group Girl’s Generation, one of the most popular girl groups of the 2nd Generation. I hope I’m not messing up rn with the info lol. And Red Velvet is currently one of the big three girl groups.

Red Velvet:

Dumb Dumb

Ice Cream Cake

Russian Roulette

Red Flavor

Peek-A-Boo

Bad Boy (love this so much)

Really Bad Boy (what a bop)

OH!GG:

Lil’ Touch

Twice and Blackpink are the last two girl groups I’ll be introducing to you. They are the other two of the big three girl groups alongside Red Velvet and are very successful and definitely worth checking out:

Twice, an example of a cute girl group:

Likey

What Is Love?

Dance The Night Away

YES or YES

BlackPink, an example of a badass girl group:

Boombayah

Whistle

Playing With Fire

Stay

As If It’s Your Last

DDU-DU DDU-DU

The last group I’ll be mentioning is Big Bang, they are the Kings of the 2nd Generation of Kpop (if I didn’t misunderstand the whole generation stuff) and they released A LOT of great songs since they’ve been around since 2006. here are some recs I really like:

Bang Bang Bang

FXXK IT

Sober

Last Dance

Fantastic Baby

Let’s Not Fall In Love

GOOD BOY (GD x Taeyang)

Last but not least, I’ll list you some more songs from girl/boy groups and solo artists that I really like and find worth checking out. However, I try to keep it on the down-low since I could recommend and huge amount of songs.^^

Boy Groups:

iKON - Love Scenario, Killing Me, Bling Bling, B-Day

WINNER - REALLY REALLY, EVERYDAY

VAV - Senorita

TRCNG - UTOPIA (one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard)

VIXX - Fantasy

Pentagon - Shine, Runaway

SF9 - Fanfare, ROAR, Now Or Never

Girl Groups:

Pristin V - Get it

CLC - Hobgoblin, Black Dress

Weki Meki - Crush, La La La, I don’t like your Girlfriend

Gugudan - Not That Type

IZ*ONE - La Vie En Rose

(G)I-DLE - LATATA, Hann (alone)

Mamamoo - Egotistic, Starry Night

9MUSES - Remember, Love City

Solo Artists:

Sunmi - Gashina, Heroine, Siren

Chungha - Roller Coaster

Taeyeon (member of Girls Generation/Oh!GG) - I, Why

Hyuna - Roll Deep, BABE, Lip & Hip

IU - Twenty-three

Jay Park - Me Like You

G-Dragon (leader of Big Bang) - Untitled, 2014, COUP D’ETAT, Crooked

Jennie (member of BlackPink) - SOLO

Taemin (member of SHINee) - MOVE, Thirsty, Sayonara Hitori

This probably sounds confusing and like a whole lot, but don’t worry!! The main thing right now is that you find some songs to check out and the rest is some additional info to help you decide what to check out since it’s a lot.^^

#bastille-smedry #mutuals #ask #<3

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britneyshakespeare · 5 years

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tagged by @pavlovers to do the 10 songs im currently obsessed with thing. this is kinda weird bc ive mostly been listening to poetry and two public domain audiobooks on spotify in the past like... two weeks (but sense and sensibility and the picture of dorian gray are still excellent so there’s that) and i’ve not been listening to as much music so... here we go. without further ado.

out of time - the rolling stones i have this eerie feeling i’ve done this song for one of these tag things before? or at least that i’ve talked about it before. i don’t know, i searched it on my blog and found nothing, but this has always been one of my favorite mid-60s brian jones stones songs. i can even get with the sardonic, cruel lyrics which in most cases just make me kinda irritated with mick jagger. they at least have a sense of cleverness in this case that tends to be lacking in other chrissie shrimpton-inspired songs like under my thumb and stupid girl.

somebody to love - queen okay so i saw bohemian rhapsody last sunday and i... loved it. reawakened all my love for queen that never really sleeps anyway. but freddie mercury really was just... so distinguished. and this is a pretty basic favorite queen song to have, and to be perfectly curt, i don’t think i even have a favorite queen song. their whole discography is too unique to really weigh against itself like with other bands. but of all the big queen songs that you tend to hear everywhere, this is the one that gets the most out of me, most consistently. as much as i also love killer queen and bohemian rhapsody and good old-fashion loverboy and all them.

quiero del fruto prohibido - stephanie salas while looking for more spanish-language music to listen to recently i found stephanie salas, and i haven’t gotten that deep into her discography yet, beyond just her 2006 album tuna, but i really love it and i’ve gone through it a couple of times. it reminds me a lot of return of saturn by no doubt, which is by a long shot my favorite gwen stefani-penned album. in both sound and attitude. and i always love discovering new music that sounds like old gwen stefani.

consequences - camila cabello (orchestral version) i really didn’t expect this from camila, even with as soulful as she’s been trying to sound since beginning her solo career. this was just so beautiful, and though i wouldn’t say the lyrics on this song are that impressive (she’s clearly still an amateur songwriter who’s yet to grow into herself), the new instrumental here really accentuates the best in it. this version is far better than it has any right to be.

paco paco paco - encarnita polo also found this while looking for 60s spanish pop songs on allmusic.com. i haven’t found much substantial information on the singer of this catchy little track yet, but it sure is pretty frickin cute, and doesn’t get annoying when it gets stuck in my head. suits all my girly vintage pop-rock needs, which we all know is my weakness.

by myself - cécile mclorin salvant discovered her new album the window on allmusic.com a few weeks ago (wow i’m really discussing a lot of allmusic.com on here... i don’t even use that site that much it’s just my main resource for discovering new shit bc i’m so out of touch w trends nowadays) and even though it’s all covers of decades-old songs... she’s really got the voice and the instrumentals backing her up to make them her own. a wonderful style. and this song in specific inspired me to make an aro jazz playlist, so there’s also that.

in india you - brian jonestown massacre i’ve yet to really dig into the discography of this band, but i’ve been meaning to for awhile. this is my favorite song from them so far, or at least the one that sticks out the most of those i’ve listened to. trippy and psychedelic and surreal and exquisite. does a lot of respect to their namesake of course... the 1978 jonestown massacre.

effeuille-moi le coeur - francoise hardy i’ve always loved the melody of this song ridiculously and as i’ve been trying to learn french, i’ve been using this songs as one of my audio samples, particularly bc i haven’t been able to find any detailed translations of it into english like you can with bigger francoise songs like tous les garcons and whatnot. so i’ve just been learning it piece by piece, because the language isn’t that out-of-reach to me. and i certainly love it more for that. :-)

thriller - fall out boy mandatory potentially embarrassing middle school song here. i haven’t been on a fob kick recently or anything, for some reason this song has just been popping into my head on and off recently. don’t really know why. but the lyrics of it always really stuck with me, especially in the chorus. still a good song that holds up.

the spinning wheel - delia murphy one of my favorite versions of one of my favorite traditional folk songs. there’s not really much i can say about it, other than that it just feels like an old comfort to me. and if anything, the antiquity of the recording and less-than-stellar sound quality of its being so old is a charm to me. i just feel so melancholy and nostalgic listening to it. a wonderful song.

i don’t know what to do. i guess i’ll just tag a few @sneez @shecomesincolors @nospoonsgiven @r3nton @aliceic @bohemian-brian

#tag #thank ya nancy i think i forgot to say that above

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cometomecosette · 6 years

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“Les Mis” review: US Tour, San Francisco, August 25, 2018

When I heard that the Les Mis tour was coming to San Francisco, I knew right away that I had to make the 2-hour drive and see it. I hadn’t seen the show onstage in three years and I’m always eager to see a new performance – only time and money limits stop me from traveling to see every professional production.

The current US tour is, of course, Laurence Conner’s 25th Anniversary production, which has been sweeping the world since 2009. The sets, costumes and basic staging were familiar and my feelings about them haven’t changed a bit. I could nitpick about all the details that feel inferior to the classic Trevor Nunn/John Caird production (the lack of any chairs or tables in Empty Chairs, the excessive slapstick in the Thénardiers’ scenes, the awkwardness of some scenes that were clearly written to be staged on a turntable, etc.), but overall, it’s a beautiful way to experience the musical. The impressionistic imagery derived from Victor Hugo’s drawings is both Romantically beautiful and appropriately somber and gritty, and for the most part, the staging excellently serves the story. So many little details enhanced the action’s moving effect: for example, in the Well Scene, Valjean found an exhausted Young Cosette collapsed in tears over her heavy bucket, and he gently approached her from behind and helped her to her feet, perfectly mirroring the moment when the Bishop first found him sleeping on his doorstep.

Believe it or not, this was my first time seeing the 25th Ann. production since 2012, before the movie was released. Since then I’ve only seen non-replica regional productions; I missed the 2014 Broadway revival and have never been anywhere near the International Tour either. So I noticed a fair amount of changes that have been made to the production since the original 2009-13 tours. Some of these changes I had already read about in other people’s reviews, but others were surprises. Here are all the differences I noticed:

*All projections that used to tell us when and where the action takes place have been cut. Maybe this was already the case in 2009-13, but I don’t remember. This must make the time skips confusing for first-time audience members who haven’t read the synopsis.

*In the Prologue, during the farm scene’s instrumental passage, two little girls run across the stage playing tag. One trips and falls, and Valjean approaches to make sure she’s all right, but her parents hurry protectively to her side and glare him away from her.

*Petit Gervais is included. Valjean takes his coin during “Now every door is closed to me…” I know this bit of staging has been in and out of this production since 2009 (it was present in the UK tour, then absent in the 2010 US tour, then reinstated in Toronto…), but for now it’s back. I think the placement is awkward, though, since it comes just on the heels of Valjean showing compassion to another child. I personally would have placed Gervais after the inn scene during “And now I know how freedom feels…” to show that Valjean’s increasing mistreatment has made him even more bitter and ruthless than when he was first released from prison. (Future directors, take note.)

*Fantine’s dress is now a solid turquoise in place of the stripe-and-flower pattern from the 2009-13 tours. I already knew this from the 2014 Broadway photos of Caissie Levy, though.

*In “At the End of the Day,” the Factory Girl now has a “girl posse” of two other women. They’re the ones who initially snatch Fantine’s letter and sing “And what have we here, little innocent sister?” then pass the letter to their queen bee, who reads it.

*Fantine’s first customer in “Lovely Ladies” is now the Factory Foreman. (This may have been the case back in 2009-13, but I don’t remember; it was the case in the 2006-07 Broadway production, though.) We get a long, horrible moment where they stand and stare at each other, Fantine appalled while the Foreman leers back at her, before she finally gives him her hand.

*Same scene: Fantine doesn’t sing “Come on, captain, you can wear your shoes…” anymore. Instead, she and the Foreman emerge from their “transaction” and two other whores ask the departing Foreman “Tell me, captain, did you wear your shoes?” “Don’t it make a change… etc.” while Fantine stands still and traumatized. She only starts singing at “Easy money, lying on a bed…”

*Fantine’s cause of death is once again TB, as Hugo wrote it. Back in the 2009-13 tours she wasn’t portrayed as sick; instead Bamatabois gave her a powerful kick in the side, which apparently broke her ribs, punctured a lung and killed her. But now she’s coughing before Bamatabois ever sets eyes on her. I suppose after Anne Hathaway’s dramatic weight loss and oh-so-believable illness in the movie, Laurence Connor decided he couldn’t kill his Fantine differently.

*In “Master of the House,” we get a more elaborate variation on the movie’s quick “watering the wine” bit. Halfway through the song, a man desperately needs to go to the bathroom; Thénardier directs him to Mme. Thénardier, who holds a chamber pot while he uses it. At the end of the song, she secretly pours out the chamber pot into the wine jug, then brings the jug to her husband, who drinks, then gags.

*I remember that the first time I saw the 2010 US tour, Mme. Thénardier tried to seduce Valjean during “The Bargain,” but later in the run, that bit of comedy was cut. Well, now it’s back. She “treats” him to some dramatic leg- and cleavage-flaunting and sprays herself with much too much perfume, making him cough when she comes near him. A little excessive, if you ask me.

*Gavroche’s costume seems to have been tweaked. Instead of the all-brown outfit of the 2009-13 tours, as seen on Robert Madge in the 25th Ann. Concert, he now wears a light blue shirt with a tan vest. Also, instead of “This is my school, my high society…” in “Look Down,” he now sings his more political lyrics from the movie, starting with, “This is the land that fought for liberty…”

*The street fight between the two women in “Look Down” has been cut. Why that vignette wasn’t cut to begin with when the show was first trimmed down in the early 2000s, yet actual characterization material from major characters was cut, I’ll never know.

*Enjolras and Marius’s lines in “Look Down” are now a public speech to the beggars, delivered on soapboxes with one or two other Amis (I don’t remember which ones) present too.

*In “Attack on Rue Plumet,” Éponine now snatches a knife from a gang member (I don’t remember who, though I don’t think it was Montparnasse – either Babet or Claquesous) and threatens all the men with it as she sings “I know this house, I tell you…”

*When Éponine delivers Marius’s letter, she doesn’t run straight up to Valjean and announce her purpose anymore. Instead the scene is staged more like the original Nunn/Caird version; she creeps into the garden and looks up at Cosette’s balcony, trying to determine how to get the letter to her, but then Valjean catches her and she gives him the letter out of fear. She also takes down her hair and reveals her gender on “He said to give it to Cosette,” though I’m not sure why.

*Gavroche flips off Javert the end of “Little People.” Not the Arm, which other Gavroches have done. The Finger. My friend who saw the show with me was disturbed that they let a child do that.

*Éponine’s death is now a self-sacrifice. When she enters over the barricade, she almost makes it to safety, but Marius, in his eagerness to talk to her, jumps up from cover while bullets are still flying and is almost shot. Éponine pushes him out of the way and takes the bullet instead, though she doesn’t let him realize she’s been hit until after they climb down to the ground.

*Gavroche’s death is no longer offstage, but now handled in the style that seems to be near ubiquitous in productions with no turntable. Gavroche makes it back to the top of the barricade, but is shot at the last moment and falls into Enjolras’s arms. Then Enjolras hands him down to Grantaire, who mournfully carries him from the barricade.

*Post-Final Battle, Javert now has a movie-esque moment of sympathy over Gavroche’s body. He finds the boy on the ground, kneels and contemplates him, then does a sign of the cross before lifting him up onto the cart next to Enjolras.

*Likewise, Javert now has a gun in his last meeting with Vajean. This has seemingly become ubiquitous in post-movie productions.

*In the wedding scene, midway through the Thénardiers’ exchange with Marius, the majordomo announces “Ladies and gentlemen, the cake!” A gorgeous wedding cake is wheeled onstage – and Mme. Thénardier promptly grabs the knife, cuts a piece and stuffs it into her mouth with her bare hands, much to the shock of the onlookers. In disgust, the majordomo orders the cake removed. I’m not sure whether I think this is funny or fatphobic.

*When the Bishop appears among the spirits in the finale, he and Valjean hug, rather than just bowing to each other as in 2009-13.

Now for the cast…

Nick Cartell (Jean Valjean)

Both musically and dramatically, this man commanded the stage. His bright, ringing tenor was capable of all the magnificent power and magnificent gentleness an ideal Valjean should display; his only possible vocal flaw was that he sounded a bit too young. (The same could be said about his looks.) His acting was spot-on too. From the angry convict of the beginning, to the gentlemanly Monsieur Madeleine, to Javert’s fierce nemesis, to Cosette’s loving father, to the dying old man of the finale, he embodied each of Valjean’s identities. One worthwhile touch he added that I’ve never seen from any other musical Valjean was the limp Hugo ascribes to the character, as a result of living for years with his leg chained: at first it was barely noticeable, but as he aged it became painfully pronounced. Another, adorable touch to his performance was this: he took the popular detail of Valjean gently booping Cosette’s nose, and instead of only doing it once or twice, he expanded it into a special gesture of affection for her throughout their years together. Repeatedly he touched his own nose, then touched hers: first when he adopted her, then in “In My Life,” then at the beginning of “Valjean’s Confession,” and finally as he was dying. During the final curtain calls, the audience’s wild applause for him was well deserved.

Josh Davis (Javert)

I’m afraid he was my least favorite of the lead performers. Not in terms of his singing: he had a rich, powerful baritone voice that was just right for the part. But his diction tended to sound strange and his whole characterization was a bit too growly, aggressive and “cartoon villain”-like for my taste. I’m sure this was partly direction: Laurence Connor’s concept of Javert has always seemed more aggressive and neurotic than the novel’s or Trevor Nunn’s, regardless of the actor. But it still didn’t ring quite right for me. I agree with a previous reviewer who wrote that his delivery recalled William Shatner … particularly at the end of “Who Am I?” when he charged after Valjean yelling “CON!” which of course sounded just like “KHAN!” I literally asked myself “Did he just make a Star Trek joke?” (Though maybe it was one, since this was a matinee performance; I know it’s a tradition in the London production to add little jokes in the matinees.) Still, there were moments of his performance I liked a lot: for example, his unique, utterly broken, weary delivery of the line “This man has killed me even so!” I’ve definitely seen worse Javerts in the past. I’ve just seen better ones too.

Mary Kate Moore (Fantine)

A lovely, delicate Fantine with a beautiful mezzo voice and a poignant, pain-filled characterization. I just wish I could have seen more anger, pride and inner strength from her. Maybe part of the problem was my far-away seat, because I’ve read another fan’s review of her performance that praised her strength and anger. But personally, I never felt the complexity of the novel’s Fantine from her. Still, without question, her singing and acting were high in quality. I think my main issue was with the staging, which highlighted Fantine’s victimhood and reduced her agency. The factory “fight” consisted only of the Factory Girl beating her up, rather than letting her make a fierce effort to get the letter back, and the reassignment of lines in “Lovely Ladies” left her standing in mute, broken shock where past Fantines have made active, tough-talking advances to potential customers. She was a good Fantine, but might have done better in a different production.

J. Anthony Crane (Thénardier)

Scraggly, slimy, funny and slightly larger than life but never too hammy, dark and sinister in “Dog Eats Dog”… in short, he was just what Thénardier should be. His marriage to his wife seemed to be one where “pots and pans and underwear fly”: they bickered ferociously, but worked together effortlessly, and at the end of the Waltz of Treachery they “celebrated” their 1500 francs with his head under her skirt. Predictably, the audience loved them both.

Allison Guinn (Mme. Thénardier)

Good, but over the top. Her voice was powerful and strident, which is right for the role, but she made it a little too strident and annoying for my taste. The same can be said for her acting: just as brash, funny and nasty as it should be, but a little too slapstick and cartoonish. Of course she’s far from the only cartoonish Mme. T. I’ve ever seen, and while she didn’t perfectly embody the brute Hugo created, she was still a solid source of comic relief.

Robert Ariza (u/s Marius)

A very likeable Marius: cute and small (he was slightly shorter than Éponine!), with fluffy black hair and a warm, sweet tenor voice. He was adorably passionate and lovesick in the early scenes; I adored the moment in “A Heart Full of Love” when he thought he had scared Cosette away after she ran from her balcony, and was groaning “I do not even know your name!” to the wall of her house (such an INFP!) when he suddenly realized she was standing behind him. He also offered a warm friendship with Éponine and touching grief and tears at her death. His “Empty Chairs” was appropriately poignant too, with its outpouring of grief and anger. Knowing that first-time Les Mis viewers so often react to Marius in less than complimentary way, it’s a testament to his performance that afterwards, my first-timer friend praised the character’s coming-of-age journey and his romance with Cosette. Everything about his performance was more-or-less just right.

Paige Smallwood (Éponine)

A good, strong Éponine, with a beautiful, powerful voice and a solid, affecting characterization. She was a genuine street rat, never cutesy or ingénue-like, yet not too harsh either, but struck just the right balance of toughness, playfulness, anger, heartache and warmth. I especially liked a few of her small yet unique acting choices. On the line “I like the way you grow your hair,” for example, she started to reach out to touch Marius’s hair, but then pulled herself back, and distracted him from what she had almost done by throwing his book onto the ground. I also loved her grimly determined expression at the end of “On My Own,” when she set off to rejoin Marius at the barricade; other Éponines I’ve known have paused in uncertainty at that point, torn between love and fear, but this one strode to her fate with hard, unwavering resolve. Her death was excellent too, with the perfect balance between pain, vocal beauty and tenderness. The audience understandably loved her.

Matt Shingledecker (Enjolras)

I should have known to expect good things from this Enjolras, since his performance as Tony in the 2009 West Side Story revival (he replaced Matt Cavanaugh) was highly praised by the late Arthur Laurents in his last memoire. His bright, ringing tenor voice was just right both for Tony and for Enjolras, and his looks were ideal too: tall, strong and handsome, with a long mane of sunny blond hair. His acting was also spot on, with an excellent balance between stately dignity and rabble-rousing fire. I only wish I had been sitting closer, so I could see his expressions more closely and have more insight into this Enjolras’s relationships with his friends, especially Grantaire. But I have nothing but positive feelings about his performance.

Jillian Butler (Cosette)

A sweet, charming Cosette; not one of the most outstanding I’ve seen, per se, but very good. As with Robert’s Marius, it’s a testament to her talent that my first-timer friend loved their love story. Her voice was a bright, crystalline soprano, slightly thin, but never wispy or squeaky. Her acting was spot-on too; she was just as innocent, lovesick and tender as she should be, angry about Valjean’s secret keeping without being bratty, and appropriately distraught by his death. I do wish Connor’s staging let her show him more affection instead of highlighting their conflict, but of course this wasn’t her fault at all.

John Ambrosino (u/s Grantaire)

Effective, though I wish I had been sitting closer to see the nuances of the various looks he exchanged with Enjolras. They were subtle, but I have no doubt they were emotionally charged. Still, he was convincing as the wild and funny drunkard, as the sad cynic, and as Gavroche’s devoted big brother figure. I was especially struck by his private, despairing collapse against a wall after Enjolras glared at him at the end of his “Drink With Me” verse, and though his “NO!” at Gavroche’s death was slightly underwhelming, his staggering, open-mouthed anguish as he carried the boy’s body and quiet weeping into his chest on the ground were heartbreaking. Overall, an excellent performance.

Sam Middleton (Gavroche)

A first-rate Gavroche, old enough to be convincing and commanding onstage yet young enough to be poignant, with a strong, clear voice and good acting throughout. Besides the usual cheek and feistiness, I loved that this production made Gavroche’s compassionate side clear. He was the one who comforted Marius after Éponine’s death, and when Grantaire collapsed in despair after his “Drink With Me” solo, he gave him the sweetest consoling hug. The characters onstage weren’t the only ones distraught by his death, that’s for sure.

Elsa Avery Dees (Young Cosette)

A delicate, sweet-voiced little thing, just as any Young Cosette should be.

My friend who had never seen Les Mis before was completely bowled over by this performance. She had endless praise for it our way home (though even she thought the slapstick in the Thénardiers’ scenes was overdone) and right away got tickets to see again with her family. Personally, I wouldn’t want to see the same cast back-to-back, but I am hoping to see the tour again when it comes to LA in the spring. This production might not be perfect, but still, both for first-timers and for longtime Les Mis lovers, it has no shortage of great things to offer.

#les mis #les miserables #musical #review #us tour 2018 #san francisco #orpheum theatre

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thomaszmusic-blog · 5 years

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Lily Allen - Alright, Still - Review

Hello, this time I am giving you my review of Lily’s debut. Enjoy ;)

TOP 3 SONGS OF THE ALBUM

Smile

Littlest Things

Everything’s Just Wonderful

WORST SONGS OF THE ALBUM

Blank Expression

Absolutely Nothing

U Killed It

Thanks to the big success on MySpace, in 2006 Lily Allen debuts with her first studio album. As a result of cooperation with Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson, an 11 tracked (19 for deluxe version) album, directed in pop, ska and reggae, album is released. Alright, Still – as that is the album title – achieves a big commercial success, earning even a Grammy nomination.

SINGLES

Smile, a sarcastic and funny songs quickly hit to the top of the charts and became one of the most recognizable song of Lily Allen worldwide. The most interesting thing is the combination of her delicate vocal with those confident lyrics.

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Second single, LDN, it the lyrical image of the diversity and in big cities. I love how perfectly she describes how the world works. For those, who did not pay attention to lyrics, you can find the music video, that reflects the song perfectly.

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The third single is a beautiful ballad – Littlest Things. The songs is one of the best ballads by Lily Allen. Lyrics are really touching. It’s like a reminiscing of all those good memories from you relationship. I can easily relate myself to the song and get into the mood, while listening to it. For me, Littlest Things is the best song performed live by Lily Allen – her voice is fabulous!

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Finally, Lily decided to release a double single – Alfie/Shame For You. Only for the first one, a music video was recorded and that is the one worth recommendation from the double single. The track is about Lily’s brother – Alfie Allen. Again, lyrics are really sarcastic and funny. Instrumental for the songs sounds a little like from a cartoon. Everything is visualized in the sweet video with the animated house and puppet Alfie.

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ALBUM

The whole album is represented by strong lyrics. There is a lot of irony and abuse, but most importantly, there is also a lot of truth, that people are afraid of speaking out loud. One of my favourite tracks on the album is Everything’s Just Wonderful. The songs describes how the world works and what we need to do to be considered as important. It shows how media controls us and we miss freedom. The most danceable song on the album is probably Friday Night. I’m not sure why, but the song associates me with Halloween – I dream about the music video with the Halloween party for the song.

I don’t think, that the deluxe version is the “must hear” option. There are a lot of songs, that are completely bland. I only wish, that Nan, You’re A Window Shopper would be on the standard album.

SUMMARY

Lily Allen has appeared with a really fresh album, as it was strongly influenced by various non-commercial types of music (ska, reggae). She managed to hit the top of charts with her debut album! Lily proves herself as a great songwriter, strong personality and promising hitmaker. Alright, Still is a great start for the new artist.

#lily allen #pop #pop music #music review #musicreview #review #cd #bestmusic #hit #british music

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nedcollette · 2 years

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Jokes & Trials Vinyl reissue

16th anniversary release of Ned’s debut album, on vinyl for the first time, thanks to Sophomore Lounge and Feeding Tube Records.

Edition of 500. Cut from the excellent original master by Lachlan Carrick. Black vinyl, colour jacket, lyric insert and extensive new liner notes from Mark Harwood aka Penultimate Press.

Pre-order from March 4. US customers should order direct from the labels for ease of shipping.

NED COLLETTE – Jokes & Trials Feeding Tube/Sophomore Lounge LP

What a pleasure it is to bring you the first vinyl version of Jokes & Trials, the 2006 solo debut by Melbourne's Ned Collette, whose incredible song cycle Old Chestnut (FTR362) and brilliant instrumental album Afternoon—Dusk (FTR468) have been widely and correctly lauded as classics.

As Mark Harwood explains in his excellent liner notes, Ned emerged from the Melbourne improv underground along with people like Will Guthrie and Joe Talia. Indeed, it was Talia who turned Ned onto Jim O'Rourke's 2001 classic, Insignificance as a way of demonstrating possible connections between pop song form and avant garde strategies. Ned's own first moves in this direction built around loops. But by the time he was ready to cut Jokes & Trials, he was eager to try more traditional musical structures, infused with subtle tendrils of experimentalism.

The songs on this album use elements like pedal steel, cello and a vocal chorus to create a set of music with a timelessness rooted equally in early '70s singer-songwriterism, and subsequent avant garde variations on the form. There is something at the base of Ned's guitar and voice here that put me in mind of Bert Jansch's work for the Charisma label. The vocals and words bespeak a knowledge or the same deep well of sorrow, although whether this is truth or artifice I cannot claim to know.

Several of the tunes on Jokes & Trials point directly towards the richness of Ned's evolving style, and his ability to use small changes to instrumentation in ways that feel radical. The more I play it, the more the detailing reveals itself. This album may represent an early step in Collette's stylistic journey, but it is a sure and beautiful one. Certain to massage the souls of those who came to his music later in the game. A good one for sure. –Byron Coley

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whereareroo · 2 years

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SING ME A SONG

WF THOUGHTS (11/16/21).

Jackson Browne, the singer-songwriter, is currently touring with the legendary James Taylor.

There's a short list of musicians who can walk out on a stage, sit there with a single instrument, and sing beautiful songs that overwhelm the audience. James Taylor is one of those guys. All he needs is a stool, his guitar, and his voice. He usually brings a band, but I think his solo stuff is his best work.

I never had much interest in Jackson Browne.

Except for "Running on Empty," I didn't pay much attention to him. He wasn't my cup of tea.

In my old age, I'm becoming more open- minded and flexible. If Jackson Browne is good enough for James Taylor, I figured that he was worth another look.

I started with the Rolling Stone listing of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. I was shocked to see that Jackson Browne is listed as #37. James Taylor is #69. I totally disagree with those rankings, but Browne's listing is an interesting data point.

Next, I listened to a bunch of Jackson Browne music. Most of his stuff is not my kind of music, although I must admit that some of the writing is very good. While listening, I realized that I used to like the song "The Pretender." I remembered the line "caught between the longing for love and the struggle for legal tender." Also the line: "I'm gonna find myself a girl who can show me what laughter means, and we'll fill in the missing colors in each other's paint-by-number dreams." It's a pretty song that is also food for thought. Give it a listen. I particularly liked the version that Browne recorded from his living room in 2021. His solo performance from home, at the age of 73, is better than the original recording from 1977.

In my book, Browne's music is too filled with political messages and social messages. It's too heavy. In this regard, he reminds me of Bob Dylan. I've always had the same complaints about Dylan's music. It's not fun music. (I was shocked to see that Rolling Stone rates Dylan as the #1 songwriter of all time.)

Jackson Browne (his legal name is Clyde Jackson Brown) was nominated for six Grammy Awards. He didn't win any. James Taylor has won five Grammy Awards, and in 2006 he was "Person of the Year" at the Grammys. Taylor has also been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Interestingly, both men were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the year 2000. I guess that was a good year.

On the current tour, Taylor is clearly the main event. Clyde Browne is the opening act. He's clearly a first-rate opening act. I'm sure that Browne is very happy to be working with Sweet Baby James. (Note-that song is not about JT, it's about his nephew.) Please listen to some music, reflect, and have fun.

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loadacademy575 · 3 years

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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Soundtrack Download

00:00 - A Land Of War And Poetry 04:01 - Currents Of The Odai 09:13 - Magnus Smiles on Suran 14:25 - Vvardenfell Vista 15:27 - Ascadian Idyll 20:24 - Shadow. Most tracks were given a title on the soundtrack CD ('Original Title') included in the Collector's Edition of Morrowind, and later another title ('Remastered Title') when Jeremy Soule released a remastered version of the Morrowind soundtrack on DirectSong. The Original Title also corresponds to the 15-track CD seen on some sites. 1 day ago Each one is iconic. That's why ESO Morrowind looked at ES III for music inspiration. The soundtrack of ES III-V had strong identity and atmosphere and alot of the vague track in eso (imo) lacks the atmosphere of the single player games #26. The best Elder Scrolls music for me is the Forgotten Vale theme from.

Beyond a Steel Sky (Video Game 2020) SoundTracks on IMDb: Memorable quotes and exchanges from movies, TV series and more. Beyond a steel sky soundtrack. Beyond a Steel Sky Soundtrack This is additional content for Beyond a Steel Sky, but does not include the base game. Beneath A Steel Sky Soundtrack The Beneath A Steel Sky soundtrack can be downloaded here. Before using this support area be sure to check you are running on or above the recommended system requirements located at the bottom of this page. Listen to Beyond A Steel Sky (Original Soundtrack) on Spotify. Alistair Kerley Album 2020 46 songs.

Overview

There was a time when the Elder Scrolls franchise wasn't one of the biggest names in the RPG genre. That all changed in 2002 with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the first Elder Scrolls game to be released on both computers and consoles (Xbox). The game continued the franchise's fascination with open-ended gameplay that placed few restrictions on the gamer's actions — you might choose to follow Morrowind's main plot or lose yourself in exploring the game's vast world and its myriad sidequests. One of the consequences of this approach was that, probably involuntarily, Morrowind came to embody the difference between more non-linear Western RPGs and the traditionally story-driven JRPGs. With more than four million copies of the game sold, very strong reviews and a slew of end-of-the-year awards, Morrowind remains one of the cornerstones of Western RPGs.

To score Morrowind's soundtrack, developer Bethesda Softworks called upon the services of one of Western game music's biggest names, Jeremy Soule. Although still a relatively young composer at the time, Soule had already proven himself an expert at writing music for fantasy games with his work on the Harry Potter and Icewind Dale games, as well for Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Dungeon Siege. Morrowind would prove to be another steppingstone for Soule on his way to becoming one of the foremost composers for this genre of games. In a press release, Soule emphasised that the 'stunning epic quality of the Elder Scrolls series is particularly compatible with the grand, orchestral style of music I enjoy composing the most.' At the same time however, Soule was aware that due to Morrowind's free-wheeling nature, gamers might spend hours roaming a particular area in the game, similar to an MMORPG. Soule then chose to create a soft and minimalist soundtrack that wouldn't be too dominant during these long stretches of exploration, so the music wouldn't wear out its welcome.

This approach yielded mixed results, at least according to various game reviewers, who commented on the soundtrack's limited scope and on its overreliance on its main theme. Complaints were also levelled at the ambient, non-adaptive nature of the music, which failed to reflect the gamer's actions and current situation. Despite such criticism, Morrowind's soundtrack was nominated for 'Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition' at the Annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences's Interactive Achievement Awards in 2003, where it lost out to Michael Giacchino's Medal of Honor: Frontline.

On album, Morrowind's music was first made available on a 40-minute bonus CD that came with the game's Collector's Edition. Soundtrack collectors eager to find out how well Morrowind's music played outside of the game were later given an easier way to satisfy their curiosity. In 2006, Soule released Morrowind's soundtrack via his online music store DirectSong. This new release presented the music in remastered form and added six minutes to the difficult-to-find physical album, effectively superseding it. This review refers to the original physical release.

Body

So, are Soule's efforts for Morrowind as difficult to enjoy on album as during the in-game experience? Short answer: no. Fortunately, this is one of those rare cases where the soundtrack actually plays better outside of the game. First case in point: Morrowind's main theme. It's first presented on opening track 'Nerevar Rising' in obvious fashion. The track is effectively a series of presentations of the main theme, increasing in volume and scope as the melody is being passed from harp and flute to the celli, before a climactic finish on violins and full brass caps off the piece's development. It's to Soule's credit that the theme — essentially a simple three-note motif extended by two different secondary phrases — adapts well to all these different instrumental settings. The melody communicates lyricism just as much as an optimistic spirit of adventure once the orchestra cranks up the volume. This mellifluous quality comes to benefit the easily recognisable theme and helps it to adapt to other tracks' atmospheres, instead of blatantly putting its stamp on these compositions. 'Peaceful Waters' quotes the main theme briefly on flute and teases out its reflective character, while 'The Road Most Travelled' incorporates a rendition of the theme on solo cello into its lush textures. The melody plays equally well in the more energetic setting of Morrowind's battle cues, where the theme appears on flowing violins on 'Bright Spears, Dark Blood' and subtly referenced in the background of the second half of 'Dance of Swords.'

All these quotations of the main theme are fashioned intelligently and are inserted seamlessly into the flow of the compositions. It's a shame then that the theme only occurs regularly during the album's first half and then disappears — for good actually on the original physical album. If there's any issue with the main theme and Soule's use of it then, it's that the theme is actually underused and doesn't tie the soundtrack's second half together as well as the first half. Next to the main theme, there's a number of secondary themes which are specific to particular cues as a lightly-sprung but determined melody that's heard in various disguises throughout 'The Road Most Travelled'.

And what about the soundtrack's soft and minimalist nature? Good news here as well: Morrowind's music is anything but background droning. Instead, it's a rich score with pieces that develop formidably within their limited running times — ultimately the title's biggest strength. The album's compositions showcase fluid and expertly layered orchestrations that give every instrument section of the synth orchestra an opportunity to shine. Stylistically, it never goes beyond that classical fantasy sound that's been a mainstay of many games, with its rhapsodic and heroic strains. But on Morrowind, Soule applies this formula with an assured hand and the results are thoroughly convincing.

The album alternates battle tracks with more expansive compositions that seem to describe a scenery rather than actions. Its on these cues that the soundtrack develops a spellbinding pull and occasionally even a sense of grandeur that's most befitting for a world as large at that of Morrowind. Tracks like 'Blessing of Vivec', 'Silt Sunrise' and 'Shed Your Travails' are a well of soulful string melodies that don't fail to tug at the heartstrings, yet never sacrifice their noble air. Soule's talent for creating colourful, ever-changing orchestral layers is in full force on these pieces. The opening string melody of 'Silt Sunrise' is backed by increasingly complex orchestrations before calming down for a serene melodic statement, which in turn leads to a splendid conclusion over busy string ostinati and brass interjections. 'Shed Your Travails' and 'Caprice' calm down in their middle sections to include an ethereal female choir that instils the music with a real sense of wonder. On 'Shed Your Travails', this episode leads into an appropriately otherwordly, peaceful finish over glistening violin tremoli and a dying flute melody. 'Caprice', on the other hand, frames its spiritual interlude with light-hearted string ostinati and effortlessly segues from one musical extreme into the other. 'Blessing of Vivec' is just as beautiful and emotionally gripping as these cues, but remains more austere through its jagged solo cello lead whose cautiously ascending notes are a lot less flowing than most string writing on the album. While none of these tracks run longer than three-and-a-half minutes, they pack more development and symphonic drama into their running times than other compositions twice their length.

Morrowind's action material doesn't quite reach the same lofty heights, but it's convincing enough in its own right. Again, it's standard fantasy stuff: bold brass, driving strings and dramatic percussion. But Soule uses these familiar ingredients skilfully and presents them in well-composed shape. And his ear for details ensures these tracks merit repeat listens to tease out their intricacies, such as the rapidly descending violin ostinato figures on 'Dance of Swords' and 'Ambush!' Instead of using them to simply increase the tracks' rhythmic power, Soule places the cascading motifs between beats to create ear-catching, syncopated counterrhythms. Soule's penchant for constantly changing textures benefits the action tracks as well, even though their instrumentations are less colourful than those of Morrowind's slower tracks. Frequently, Soule casts his battle cues in an ABA structure that sees these compositions calming down in their middle section after a dynamic start, before ramping up the volume again towards the end. This change in tempo and texture is quite transparent, but helps to pace these cues and avoid monotony. And Soule makes sure that tension never sags during these quieter passages through the inclusion of lighter rhythmic elements such string pizzicati, hand percussion and tinkling piano notes.

All these positive qualities help to overcome the biggest criticism one could level at the battle cues: that their sound isn't powerful enough to allow them make their full impact. To a degree, this ties in with Soule's declared approach of not trying to overwhelm the listener with his music in-game. And make no mistake, the majority of Morrowind's action tracks are energy-laden enough to satisfy, even though you sometimes wish the percussion elements would have greater presence. But it's only once Soule's strips back the many layers of his compositions and focuses on the primal qualities of repetitive rhythms that things start to sound less promising, for example on 'Drumbeat of the Dunmer' and 'Stormclouds on the Battlefield'. The only thing that the minimalist rhythms of 'Drumbeat of the Dunmer' could have going for them is a resonant, forceful sound, and Morrowind fails to provide this. Tyranny bastard's wound ending. In general, the album sounds somewhat dull and compressed, with the effect that the detailed orchestral textures, particularly on the colourful slower tracks, aren't always rendered with a desirable level of clarity. Orchestral climaxes that should soar occasionally have their wings clipped, and the sustained double bass chords on 'Over the Next Hill' have way too much presence and muddy the soundscape. Sure, this is a synthesised soundtrack from 2002, but there are enough better-sounding albums around from the same time to suggest that Morrowind's acoustic appearance is hardly reference quality.

Summary

With The Elder Scrolls III -Morrowind- Special Edition Soundtrack, Soule further cemented his elevated standing among Western game music composers. The album impressively displays why Soule would come to be regarded as a specialist for scoring fantasy games. Particularly the more measured tracks on Morrowind are beautifully orchestrated and splendidly developed, to the degree that they sometimes feel like mini-epics convincingly compressed into three minutes. To a slightly lesser degree goes for the soundtrack's battle tunes, which are nicely varied in their textures and filled with intricacies, particularly when it comes to their rhythms. All the way through, Morrowind exudes that wondrous, yet bold feeling of high adventure that's so indispensable for a fantasy score of this character, captured in the score's strong but slightly under-used main theme.

Unless you insist on listening to your scores in a lossless format, the physical release of Morrowind's score is superseded by the digital version. The disc lacks the remastering and bonus tracks of the digital version, and ends particularly underwhelmingly with 'Drumbeat of the Dunmer'. That all said, fantasy score enthusiasts should not hesitate to purchase a version of this soundtrack.

7/10

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althinksthings · 6 years

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Top 10 Albums - Part 1

The Brief

“In no particular order – 10 all time favourite albums.

What really made an impact and is still on your rotation list, even if only now and then.”

As always, because I'm me, I'm going to break and change the rules for my own amusement and so it will hopefully be a more interesting venture. I'm going to discuss 10 of the albums that became important to my life. This is partly because the only way I could possibly nail this list down to only 10 albums was to select ones that were particularly formative or influential, and partly because since I'm not very good at analysing music, having some form of narrative behind them will help structure my choices and my posts. In that sense, then, they are in a particular order: I'll be putting these out in a bibliographic chronological series, in the approximate order that I discovered these albums during my life.

A quick note about the way in which I listen to music. I have synesthesia, which means that every song and album I listen to has colours that I strongly associate with it. This, while a thoroughly enjoyable part of my life, sometimes has drawbacks when discussing music as there are certain songs that I just can't help ascribing colours to. As an example in this essay, I couldn't help but describe the song Lord Grenville as “grey”, and I'm sure this phenomena will show up again.

So then.

1. Al Stewart – Year of the Cat. (1976)

YotC was the 7th album to be released by Al Stewart, from his rather extensive discography of 16 original albums, with a few live records and an instrumental one on top for good measure. His genre is primarily folk-rock with a strong emphasis on his spectacularly complex and beautiful guitar style. His favourite subjects for songs are history and wine, the latter even warranted an entire album dedicated to it in 2000, called Down in the Cellar. As for history, I swear I've gained more knowledge about history that has actually stuck because of these albums than anything else in my life. I specifically used one of his songs (League of Notions) to revise for my history GCSE exam, and another one (Post World War 2 Blues) to help me remember information in my history A Level classes. A caveat: this is not actually my favourite album that Al Stewart has ever released. That crown goes pretty unequivocally to Modern Times, released in 1975 and immediately preceding YotC in his discography. So this immediately seems like a pretty stupid pick.

Before the age of 10 I didn't really have a music “taste” per se. My dad reckons that the first artists I ever vocally showed a preference for were Abba and the Eagles, both choices that I will defend because I still think they're both great. I also loved Deep Purple (their album Who Do We Think We Are nearly made the list), but I didn't have any devices on which to listen to music as a solo venture, there were just constant tunes on in the house and car. However, it just so happened that we went on a family holiday to Canada in the summer of my 10th year, and this holiday involved a 10 day road trip in a camper van around British Columbia. It was amazing, the views were astounding, and we stayed in a new campsite every night which meant lots of new sights and exciting locations, but it also meant a rather large quantity of driving. My dad, at this point, had an MP3 player that was slightly smaller than a brick and which he had loaded with however much data a brick could hold in 2006. He handed me the MP3 player and suggested that I listen to this album because he thought I'd like it, so on one of the days of travelling I stared out of the window and listened to Year of the Cat back to back. It was the first time I'd ever heard any of Al Stewart's music and I remember my very first thought being “he has a weird voice”, but as I got used to it the songs stuck and later as we walked around a vineyard I couldn't stop singing the song Broadway Hotel. I think it was my first ever favourite song, and certainly the one that I remember changing how I listened to music. This album wasn't just on in the background, it was playing because I chose it and I wanted to listen. Long story short, YotC was the direct cause of me asking for and subsequently receiving a minute iPod nano that next Christmas, and so I accredit this album as being the direct cause of me starting to listen to music as a whole.

I feel like I should actually talk about the album for a bit. The final track on this album is the titular song Year of the Cat, which to date remains Al Stewart's most famous release. Some of you would recognise it, it still gets played on various radio stations from time to time. It's a gorgeous, largely instrumental song of almost 7 minutes, involving a large array of solos from various instruments. The cat is a year in the Vietnamese zodiac, coinciding with the year in which the song was recorded. The lyrics are a semi abstract reference to the comedian Tony Hancock, whom Stewart saw perform a couple of years before his suicide in 1968. The song has a basic narrative: the tourist protagonist whom we hear about in the second person is walking through a market and meets a woman. He gets distracted by her, loses his sense of perspective and his grasp of time, and the next day realises that his bus has left without him. This coincides perfectly with the meandering solos and instrumental interludes of the single, the listener can feel that they are getting gently lost in the passage of time but (if you're like me), you don't really mind.

So that's the single, what about the rest of the album? As a record it is relatively short, only 9 tracks if you don't include the bonus songs from the 2004 remaster (I don't). I'm not going to go into each song in so much depth, but every track has it's own certain atmosphere that serves to build the overall feeling of a somewhat pensive yet occasionally magical world. Lord Grenville, the opener, is a grey perspective of the situation of Sir Richard Grenville, who was a Lord, soldier, and sailor in the 1500s, now famous for dying when refusing to surrender his ship to Spanish fleets in the Battle of Flores. On the Border is half about the Basque Separatist movement (a situation involving a group of Basque organisations seeking for independence from France and Spain), with the second half of the song revolving around Robert Mugabe, who is now the ex Prime Minister/President of Zimbabwe. Flying Sorcery is a reflection on the life and achievements of Amy Johnson. Not all the songs are based in such concrete evidence: the aforementioned Broadway Hotel is an investigation into people who choose to live in hotel rooms, questioning the feelings of loneliness, isolation, and love that could arise in those situations. It is, then, genuinely surprising that the incohesive subject matter of the individual tracks lends itself to a finished product that feels complete and without tonal dissonance. That may stand as a testament to Stewart's lyrical and musical skill: love songs are treated with no less verbosity than songs about prominent political figures, and the distinctive sound of his intricate guitar patterns is a constant throughout the record.

I could go into this much depth and more about all of Al Stewart's albums, and do full analyses about a great number of his songs, but this was supposed to be an explanation for why the album YotC is important to me and I've already gone way over that particular boundary. The album Modern Times, especially, I think is an undiluted masterpiece of everything that is good about Stewart's songwriting, and I half wish I had spend more time discussing that in this essay. The enigmatically titled Apple Cider Re-Constitution is one of my absolute favourite songs, along with the song Modern Times, an 8 minute long masterpiece of nostalgia and the way in which different people remember their pasts. Other honourable mentions from Stewart's discography include the legitimately harrowing 8 minute Roads to Moscow, (a narrative of the German invasion of Russia during the Second World War through the eyes of a Soviet partisan), and a 13 minute live version of his epic Nostradamus. When written down like this, these songs sound depressing and miserable - and while Roads to Moscow is admittedly not the most jocular of tracks - even despite the heavy subject matter and the sometimes inherent lyrical complexity, Al Stewart's songs are always melodious, engaging, and interesting.

So really, all this to say: when I was 10 I listened to Year of the Cat and it spurred in me an interest in music and history that, I expect, will last the rest of my life.

#al stewart #year of the cat #music #top 10 #albums

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nightincider · 7 years

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A Somewhat Skewed Guide to Listening to Taylor Swift

I wrote this for a friend a year ago who was interested in getting into Taylor Swift and had no idea where to start - this is by no means a formal review, but a casual personal overview on Taylor Swift that I thought would be amusing to post here.

Warning: unfiltered, unedited rambling :’D

Disclaimer: I confess I’m not familiar with 100% of her discography (I usually don’t listen to the bonus tracks/know all of her standalones)

Note: I will be going in chronological order of her discography even though that’s not how my journey through her stuff went

Taylor Swift (2006)

don’t listen to this if you actually hate country music bc this is defs more on the country side of her country-pop crossover (mandolins, banjos, thankfully no annoying vocal twang)

this album is a great insight to her roots as a songwriter but it’s best enjoyed if you already like her, it’s like peeking into the old diary of someone you admire

Picture to Burn - hilarious breakup song trash talking an ex about how his pickup truck is stupid (you think I’m kidding but I’m not), video is awesome and shows her band trashing his house. I once sang this at karaoke and my friend fucking died and she didn’t believe the lyrics were actually a T Swift song

Mary’s Song (Oh My My My) - a really pretty, sappy gem about a long term love

everything else I could take or leave tbh

Fearless (2008)

tbh I still don’t “get” this album bc it’s a bit immature for my tastes but I’m sure young teen me would have loved it if it came out then. But overall I feel like this album only disappoints me bc her later work is so much better. Otherwise it’s actually pretty great

Fearless - the title song for good reason, appropriate way to begin the album and starts off with the attitude of facing love with a, you guessed it, fearless outlook

Love Story - ok the Romeo & Juliet ref and the sappy lyrics are kinda cringeworthy but overlooking that it is probably one of her most well-written pop songs to date in terms of the melody, arrangement, catchiness etc and I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this

Breathe (feat. Colbie Caillat) - understated soft, sad pretty track

Forever and Always - I really love the melody in this one and the mentions of rain. This feels like the precursor to Mine (off Speak Now), except the relationship in the song didn’t actually work out

Change - notably NOT about relationships but about looking forward to positive changes and winning in life whatnot. It’s uplifting and I see it as the prequel to Long Live (from Speak Now)

everything else is not bad but doesn’t quite make my favs like this list. shoot me but I find Fifteen and You Belong With Me way overrated

Speak Now (2010)

supposedly before writing this album Swift wanted to go with the concept “Enchanted” (which is one of the songs as well) but her label told her she needed to show she was maturing and not make an album that was basically Fearless 2.0 so she opted for the idea of “Speak Now”, which is total (sometimes brutal) honesty

This album does indeed speak her mind, in the sad, happy, and even embarrassing ways (coughs the title track is about her fantasizing about crashing her ex’s wedding and stealing him away and makes comments about how the bride’s gown looks like a pastry)

Before Red, Swift released a lot of singles w/ multiple versions, usually a US (read: more country) and international (read: more pop/rock) one.

IMO, the singles on Speak Now (Mine, Back to December, Story of Us) sound way, way better on the international edition. So please try to find those versions!

Mine - please check out the international version it’s miles better than the US version (more driving rhythm/urgency, better guitar riff, the US version is too laid back IMO)

Sparks Fly - a song about undeniable chemistry, the chorus is one of my favs

Back to December - slow, sad, and beautiful. I almost cried over this. I prefer this to Dear John bc it’s not as brutal and more accessible (Dear John is great too but really hard to listen to that often). Again international version is better bc the mandolin part in the US version is annoying.

Mean - kind of childish but that’s why I love it, it’s the pop song equivalent of a kid sticking their tongue out at their bullies on the playground

The Story of Us - not as emotionally wrenching as a lot of the other breakup songs but probably the catchiest and I love the beat

Enchanted - love at first sight type song. I really like the song structure (especially how it builds up) and instrumentation, and the bridge stanza is my favorite

Better Than Revenge - T Swift doing Paramore

Innocent - T Swift doing Evanescence, also I think that song was a jab back at Kanye West lmfao

Long Live - song about taking on the world, proving ppl wrong, having great adventures, I wish I could someday feel worthy of singing this song

the one dud IMO is Never Grow Up (it’s kinda boring plus I think she was too young to write well from the perspective of a parent).

Red (2012)

This was THE album that converted me to the cult of Swift and I hope it converts you too

I confess I only really noticed the beauty of Speak Now bc I went back and listened to it properly after I got tired of spinning Red during my commute

Fun fact: I only bothered to give this album a try after my white hipster bestie (whom I had a huge gross crush on at the time) rec’d it and I was like wtf at first but he was like no really give it a shot, so I did.

Red is every bit as honest as Speak Now but it’s not as bitter or playful it’s more sad and resigned and more nostalgic, wistful, you get it...

It’s painful for me to rec my favs from it bc I’d say the ENTIRE FUCKING ALBUM but I’ll. try. /grits teeth

State of Grace - those drums! that guitar! that whole “we’re on a journey and it’s beginning” feel… this is her strongest album opening track to date (1989 totally bombed in that aspect, fuck Welcome to New York)

Red - I don’t know how a song has literally 2 unique melody lines but still manages to be so amazing. Unfair.

Treacherous - the whole excitement of falling in love with someone that you probably shouldn’t but presented in an unexpectedly tender way

All Too Well - by this point Swift has a trend of making song #5 the sad slow ballad (it’s a thing her fans have noticed). This song hits me hard on a personal level bc it reminds me of my 2.5 year relationship that ended and it’s incredibly well-written, from the lyrics reminiscing on the past to taking you back into that moment during the choruses, also the bridge just breaks me. This is probably the pinnacle of sad breakup songs and you cannot convince me otherwise

I Almost Do - All Too Well’s more timid but no less heartbreaking cousin

Holy Ground - this is kind of the banner song of the album despite not being the title track. While Red is meant to set the backdrop for this album’s themes, this song embodies the core of the album best IMO. And it has a danceable beat to boot.

Sad Beautiful Tragic - I used to skip this a lot after Holy Ground bc it’s a bit of a downer but it has an understated beauty

Starlight - want to see Swift write fanfiction? well here’s your chance. This song is about Ethel and Bobby Kennedy as teenagers. also embarrassing confession: I want to sing this at my own wedding if I ever get married someday. Best part is the piano line that evokes twinkling stars

I’m rather indifferent to the big pop singles in this album (I Knew You Were Trouble, 22, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. They’re good but, ultimately the best stuff is the album tracks)

1989 (2014)

the album that converted a lot of pop lovers to the cult of Swift

shows a lot of growth and experimentation since Red, but Red is still personally my favorite, this one’s a close second tho

Swift has said in interviews that Red was a devastating album to write but 1989 is more about moving on from that and focusing on herself and it’s overall both more optimistic (regarding life in general) and calculated and cynical (regarding romance)

1989 is the year Swift was born, btw. Coincidentally the album has 13 tracks not counting the bonus ones and 13 is Swift’s favorite number (she was also born on Dec 13)

I have this whole conspiracy theory level of analysis going on about how this is a sequel to Red and how those two albums are linked in a way that the others aren’t

let’s get it out of the way, Welcome to New York is the obvious dud. sorry to our mutual friends who love NY but the song kind of sucks in itself oops. Like it’s very uninspired and generic

for an actual good song about NY check out Vienna Teng’s Goodnight New York

Blank Space - overplayed but I love the idea of Swift parodying what her critics think of her

Out of the Woods - it’s a song about uncertainty in a relationship and the ending is left up to interpretation and I love the repetitive chorus bc it illustrates the feeling of being trapped in the woods and seeing trees flash by you. The bridge has a personal anecdote (the brakes/stitches mentioned are from a minor snowmobile accident).

All You Had to Do Was Stay - about a dream Swift had where all she could do is say “stay” in a high pitched voice to an ex and it embarrassed her lol. Typical pining song but something about those “stays” sound way more painful than comical in practice.

Shake It Off - a good pick-me-up for the slow days and the only big single of hers I haven’t gotten utterly sick of

I Wish You Would - reminds me a lot of HAIM, and it’s oddly one song that I almost never skip when it comes up on my commute shuffle despite having heard every song on this album too many times. understated but solid.

Wildest Dreams - Swift doing Lana Del Rey better than Lana Del Rey

How You Get the Girl - cute but all I can think of is her cat in the Diet Coke commercial that used this song

This Love - I feel like this is the song tying the album together, it’s the most vulnerable track and the one flame of hope amidst all the jadedness that pervades the album regarding romance. It’s kind of meta in some way like it describes not only T Swift the character in the album but also possibly T Swift the person? This song is very important to me.

I Know Places - kind of a darker sound (for her)

Clean - a song about moving on from a relationship, I’m already biased towards this bc Imogen Heap worked on it but it’s really beautiful, and I love when Heap’s harmonies come in.

New Romantics - the freakin song of our generation, the lyrics are so fucking real I can’t even

misc/standalones

Safe and Sound (feat. the Civil Wars) - from the Hunger Games OST, it’s pure folk goodness

Sweeter than Fiction - the happy ending we all want. has a bit of a beach-rock vibe to it with a very 80s production

Ronan - written for a child who died from cancer, it’s beautiful and sad

Thank you for reading if you’ve even made it this far and I hope I didn’t overwhelm you, happy listening! :D

#Taylor Swift #Taylor Swift Fearless #Taylor Swift Speak Now #Taylor Swift Red #Taylor Swift 1989

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