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.
Barenaked Ladies! Now here's a band that I just listened to waaaay too much in the early 2000's.
I've blogged a few times about some of their songs. And I'm too lazy to look back, but I'm sure I lamented what a loss the band took in 2008ish when Stephen Page left the group, and frankly I haven't (probably unfairly) visited any of the band's new material since then. Maybe I will someday.
The song stuck in my head comes from the band's last record cut with Page. And ironically, the SSIMH is not even a Stephen Page song!
Anyway, the album is called "Barenaked Ladies are Men" and the track is called "Beautiful"
The internets are funny. Today's song found its way into my Spotify library based on my Random Music Generator when I was forced to listen to the Top 50 tracks in the world.
Wow, mainstream music is so far past me I don't even know what to think. I feel old saying it, but I hate that it's the kind of music my children know.
Today's song isn't too bad, really. But here's what I find fascinating about it--- it's by an artist named Ant Saunders. According to The Internets, his real name is Anthony Saunders and he writes and produces his own music. When I played this song for my 12 year old daughter, she immediately started singing along. I asked her how she knows the song and she said "Tik Tok" Which, of course, is an app where kids lip sync. I'm old.
Here's the song stuck in my head. It's called "Yellow Hearts"
"Yellow Hearts" was released just as a single, Ant Saunders has yet to release an album, but this is such a cool example of how somebody can just throw some music they've produced out to The Internets and make a successful story out of it. As of right now, Spotify says this song has streamed over 97 million times. According to the web (The Internets you guys) Spotify pays 0.0038 cents per stream. Let's do some maths!
97,000,000 X 0.0038= DRUM ROLL....... $368,600
Good for this young man. I may scoff at what the kids are listening to, but there are worse songs in the world.
I'm trying something pretty dangerous going into 2020... For years I've been blogging about the song playing in my head on a SUNDAY morning. For 2020, I've moved it to MONDAY morning. I'm a risk taker.
Who knows if it will change the kind of song playing in my head? Only time will tell.
So far it's been pretty interesting because today's song came completely out of left field!
I have no idea how I know this song, it's just one that I've heard over the years. I had to google it to find it, but the original song is from 1959 and it's by R&B Singer-Songwriter Lloyd Price.
According to the internet, Prince covered the song... maybe that's how I know it, but I've never listened to Prince so who knows?
Anyway, here's the song.... the original, but it's been covered tons of times too.
We had a special week with my extended Cash family as my grandparents celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. They were married on Christmas day in 1949, which is just great. It has an "It's a Wonderful Life" feel to it.
Anyway, music has always been a part of my family and Grandpa had a whole list of songs he wanted played for them. From "you are my sunshine" to "little joe the wrangler" to "long line of love" it was a great night. The highlight was when my Grandparents, approaching their 90's, danced to their love song "To Each His Own" It was a great day to be with so many people I love.
The song from that night that found its way into my head is called "I'll Fly Away" It's actually a gospel song from 1929, written by Southern Gospel composer Albert Brumley. My family took the chords from You are My Sunshine and integrated it into a medley with I'll Fly Away. It was lovely.
The song itself has been covered time and time and time again. It's always tough to decide which version to share, so I guess I'll give you a few:
Alison Krauss:
Alan Jackson:
and cause he's family, somewhere down the line, Johnny Cash:
Here's a few pics I caught... wish I had gotten more. My 8 year old son, Jude, hugging my grandparents, who truly are the best.
Here's my Christmas song for the year. Sorta meh about Christmas music, kind of always have been... so here's "The Best Things Happen While Your Dancing" from White Christmas. Probably not a Christmas song... but a song in a Christmas movie, so here's the closest my subconscious is gonna give you this year.....
Merry Christmas (even though technically I'm posting this nearly a month later)
This is from South African band Beatenburg, from their 2014 album "The Hanging Gardens of Beatenburg" It's track 7 and the song is about travelling. Here's Ithaca. It's good.
I had to look it up, maybe because I'm dumb, but Ithaca is an island in Greece!
Or a town in the finger lakes region of New York.
Whichever you prefer.
Where would you visit? I'd visit the Island. I am just saying.
Confession time: My listening of music has evolved into something a little strange. It all started when I started streaming music.
Let me go back first.... I've always hated "picking" what to listen to next. Not sure why. I think mostly because it's hard to decide and also maybe sometimes I'll change my mind in the middle of an album or song, or whatever and I don't like that for some reason. I especially felt that way when I was using my iPod which had some pretty *innovative* shuffling features. You could shuffle all songs or all albums. Shuffling albums was my favorite.
As an avid iPod user, I learned that they would last a good two years of daily, nearly constant use, before going kaput. When my last one went kaput this spring, I finally gave in and joined Spotify. I've never looked back even though streaming pays my favorite artists JACK SQUAT.
But I digress. In fact I'm not even gonna try to have all of this post make sense or have structure. I'm just gonna type OK!
So.... I have loved streaming on Spotify, and I even started liking songs and albums to match the collection I had worked so hard on when I was downloading music. BUT! Here's the problem-- on Spotify you can make a collection of albums, but as far as I know, the shuffle album feature doesn't exist. Boo.
So- I started to miss this feature, because I love albums, and I love shuffling.
I conceived an idea to remedy this dilemma... how could I start to randomly generate albums I WANT to listen to......
So, my old pal the Random Number Generator came into play- let's see if I can embed it to this post, I've done it before. Hold on.
Can you believe I did that all by myself! I'm so proud!
OK.... So.... Let's see if I can explain what I decided to do:
I created a list between 1 and 30. By spinning the number generator, the next sequence of music you'll be listening to is decided by the spin!
Here's the list I'm currently using- I'll elaborate after I show you the list.
1 & 2- One of my blog playlists (currently 21 total lists)
3 & 4- Any of the other current playlists I've created or following (currently 30 total lists)
5- Shuffle all my liked songs
6- Pick a friend I follow who is currently listening to music (Spotify has this feature)
7- Pick a friend whose name I see along the side (who is currently listening or has recently listened)
8- Pick a person from a list of people who follow me (currently 49 people)
9- Pick a person from a list of people who I follow (currently 416 people)
10- Pick an album to listen to based on suggestions from a Facebook post I made a few months back.
11 & 12- Pick a post from this here website (the blog) and listen to the album
13 & 14- Shuffle liked songs. First song played defer to its album.
15- "Browse" tab at Spotify home page.
16-20 "Home" page of Spotify, pick whatever is suggested from one of their generated lists
21-22 Shuffle my iTunes purchases (I have many) and play the corresponding album of 1st song played
23- Shuffle all my liked songs
24- Play albums A-Z (saved albums in spotify list) Started at A and working down to Z alphabetically
25- Play albums Z-A (saved albums in spotify list) Started at Z and working up to A
26-30 Spin 1-25 and play a random artist's album according to the spin.
OK, that's a general overview. I hope I still have you. Basically you spin the wheel and it lands on a number, and from there, if applicable, you randomize the option again til you have either an album, or playlist. Then you listen to it!
For example. Lets say I spin a '6' (Pick a friend I follow who is currently listening to music) I look to see who is currently listening to music that I follow on Spotify. Lets say there are 5 people- I then spin again, but this time from 1 to 5. Then whomever it lands on is the person that decides what I'm listening to. Usually I randomize between what they are currently listening to, one of their public playlists, or a list of current artists they are listening to that Spotify picks for them. But if you want to try this (who would?) then you can do it however you want.
I'm constantly changing things, but I find that generally I'm listening to music I like, and if I don't like it, I just laugh at myself to be compulsive enough to do this anyway. One day my friend Jeff called me (this was September) and said "Brady! Why are you listening to Christmas music!?"
Just today I listened to The Stone Roses self-titled album twice. Luckily I like this album. But I'm super anal about listening to whatever is generated for me, so if the spinner landed me on, oh, I don't know, "Ethel Merman Sings the hits of Nickelback" twice in the same day, I'd listen to it twice.
I'm compulsive.
So... another thing that has made this fun (for me) is a playlist that I constantly update that I call "Top o' the Hour" Essentially it's a revolving playlist. I take whichever track I'm listening to, and place it at the top of the playlist at the top of each hour. Then I take the oldest track on there off the playlist. I'm constantly making changes to this playlist and it makes for the strangest mix of songs, but most of them really are good so it's fun to listen to it.
Oh, and the song stuck in my head was "You Are Loved" by Josh Groban. And one of the reasons so many strange songs (like today's, strange for me, I never listen to Groban) are now weasling their way onto my blog is because of my listening to this playlist and being extremely random in my listening choices-- but I'm having a lot of fun, nonetheless.
Here's the dang song y'alls
You are loved. Don't give up!
Love yourself too. I'm learning to like who I am, with all eccentricities and all!
