Blogs are so passe and pretentious. Oh well, here's my blog about music that's stuck in my head when I wake up in the mornings along with adventures of the Cash family and wacky wacky crazy wacky shenanigans.
The Queen of Finding her way into my brain has had another victory today.
Irony- Regina means "Queen" in Italian. See how clever I am friends?
The song stuck in my head is "Small Town Moon" the opening track from Spektor's 2012 album WHAT WE SAW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS.
(Fun (boring) fact, this is the 8th song of Spektor's I've blogged about here and the fourth from this album)
This song catches so beautifully what Regina does so well. Namely:
-Her voice is just really nice, clear, pure with a great sense of pitch.
-Coloratura.... is that a word you can even use in pop? She does it a bit with all her songs and her
voice just rolls.
-Interesting subject matter, somebody who's left a small town for the big city.
-Quirky, unexpected twists in the song, my favorite being the way she repeats "baby baby baby baby baby baby...." so many more times than she should. Only Regina Spektor can get away with this sort of thing.
I guess I should let you listen to the song, now that I've talked your ear off about it:
Today's song comes from a delightful little fellow named Martin Sexton. He started out as a street performer in Harvard Square in the early 1990's. After recording some of his songs and selling more than 20,000 copies of his self-produced album, he was soon-after signed by a label and has been making music ever since.
Here's "The Beast in Me" from Sexton's 1998 album THE AMERICAN
This song appears to be about the artist's disdain for the city of Los Angeles. Almost as if going there, as an artist, is a necessary evil for him. At least that's my interpretation.
Fiona Apple tickled them ivories back in 1996 (at the age of 18!) with an incredible album called "Tidal." Today she weaseled her way into my brain with a beautiful and sad song entitled "Never is a Promise" from that same album.
This song was the 6th single released from the successful album. Listen carefully to the lyrics and then ask yourself if an 18-year-old is capable of writing this kind of music. Although Fiona Apple is still making music (I've blogged about some of her newer music here) nothing touches the kind of music she charged out with in 1996. I don't think she'll ever top it.
Today's song came as a surprise. I heard the melody going, but had no idea what the song was!
And I was surprised how easy it was to find. I had this lyric going in my head "I'm in love with a girl" and I could distinctly hear the part where the instruments stop in the song and the singer says "don't consider it cheating now."
So, I did a Google search: I'm in love with a girl song
Hundreds of results came up and I thought I was going to have to call my brother and try to sing the melody without lyrics to discover the song. I knew it was a grungy sounding song with heavy electric guitar and when I saw Google give me "Fell in love with a girl" by The White Stripes as a choice, I knew it was the song going in my head.
The song is only 2 minutes long and wow does it rock. The video is great too- Lego animated over a decade before the Lego movie was released. Check it out:
As is my tradition, whenever I blog about a song that isn't currently part of my collection, I make an effort to buy the album on which is comes and add it. This helps broaden my catalog of music and makes me listen to music I otherwise wouldn't consider. Currently I'm listening to the album "White Blood Cells" which I purchased and downloaded today. It's not normally the kind of music I enjoy, but I'm glad to have it the same. Such a strange hobby I have.
How "Fell in Love with a Girl" managed its way into my head this morning is exactly why I enjoy writing this blog. I don't know if I heard it on the radio, in a movie, on a commercial. The White Stripes a popular band, especially in circles of people who are much cooler than me. The band itself consists of Meg and Jack White, a husband and wife duo (him on the guitar, her on the drums) and they've had critical success in their songwriting. This song in particular has had widespread popularity and acclaim. In 2007, Rolling Stone magazine listed it as one one of the forty songs that changed the world.
My 7 year old daughter, Lucy, has a few thoughts she would like to add. Brace yourselves:
All they used was legos.It was awesome when I saw it.It,s so cool how they made the boy playing the guitar and the girl playing the drums! I was amazed.
