When my brother and I went hiking a while back, we drove up to Grassmere with the stereo on. My little Toyota doesn't have great speakers so I tend to keep the volume down, but my brother drives a smart Audi and turned it up so loud my head nearly exploded - I hadn't listened to music that loud for ages and the tune we had on was this:
When the melody came in it felt like the best feeling in the world. One of those moments where your mind stops churning out stories and just stops and experiences what's happening now. A good song can stop you dead in your tracks and make you listen. And what greater thing is there in life, that to listen with your whole being. Yup, here comes the Zen bit! Nope, can't be bothered, so here's the next tune from Boy Bit 8:
This one is fascinating too.
I wonder how loud my Campervan speakers will go...
I love this song but I'm not entirely convinced Jay Z is quite as good as he thinks he is. But then you read the lyrics and it's quite a fascinating bunch of slang, play on words, and rhymes:
Yeah I'm out that Brooklyn.
Now I'm down in Tribeca.
Right next to DeNiro
But I'll be hood forever
I'm the new Sinatra
And since I made it here
I can make it anywhere
(Yeah they love me everywhere)
I used to cop in Harlem
All of my Dominicanos (Hey yo)
Right there off of Broadway
Brought me back to that McDonalds
Took it to my stash spot
560 State Street
Catch me in the kitchen like Simmons whipping Pastry
Cruising down 8th street
Off-white Lexus
Driving so slow
(but BK, it's from Texas!!)
Me I'm out that BedStuy
Home of that boy Biggie
now I live on Billboard
and I brought my boys with me
Say what up to Ta-ta
Still sipping Mai Tais
Sitting courtside
Knicks and Nets give me high-5
N**ga, I be Spiked out
I could trip a referee
...tell by my attitude that I'm MOST DEFINITELY FROM...
I made you hot n-gga,
Catch me at the X with OG at a Yankee game,
sh-t I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can,
you should know I bleed Blue, but I ain't a crip tho,
but I got a gang of n-ggas walking with my clique though,
welcome to the melting pot,
corners where we selling rocks,
Afrika bambaataa sh-t,
home of the hip hop,
yellow cab, gypsy cab, dollar cab, holla back,
for foreigners it ain't fitted act like they forgot how to act,
8 million stories out there and they're naked,
city it's a pity half of y’all won’t make it,
me I gotta plug a special and I got it made,
If Jeezy's payin LeBron, I’m paying Dwayne Wade,
3 dice cee-lo
3 card marley,
Labor Day parade, rest in peace Bob Marley,
Statue of Liberty, long live the World Trade,
long live the king yo,
I’m from the Empire State thats…
Lights is blinding,
girls need blinders
so they can step out of bounds quick,
the side lines is blind with casualties,
who sip the lite casually, then gradually become worse,
don’t bite the apple Eve,
caught up in the in crowd,
now you're in-style,
and in the winter gets cold en vogue with your skin out,
the city of sin is a pity on a whim.
good girls gone bad, the city's filled with them,
Mommy took a bus trip and now she got her bust out,
everybody ride her, just like a bus route,
Hail Mary to the city your a Virgin,
and Jesus can’t save you life starts when the church ends,
came here for school, graduated to the high life,
ball players, rap stars, addicted to the limelight,
MDMA got you feeling like a champion,
the city never sleeps better slip you a Ambien
(Lyrics taken from a website with some dodgy spelling)
I like to think I like only cool music, but I've ended up whistling along to both Cheryl Cole's new song - Fight For This Love, and Alexandra Burke's new one - Bad Boys. Choosing my favourite was not easy but thanks to a logical thought process and years of training in musical ethics, I have managed to reach, what I think, is a fair and proper decision:
Cheryl Cole's song: Even though she doesn't sing in it, it's all auto-tuned, and the lyrics are incredibly trite, the overall message of the song is honest and based in a kind of reality, which seems to match her kind and responsible public persona.
Alexandra Burke's song is basically about walking through a crowd of guys without wearing anything and saying you like it. Which is fair enough, but as a message to send out to the world, it's not a very wise one really. Melody-wise, it's completely rubbish until a crazily catchy chorus comes in from another song completely, from another decade...the 80's.
Cheryl Cole's song sounds like she's improvising the melody until a laid back chorus eventually finds its way into the song. It's not great, but after a while, thanks to auto-tune allowing a little bit of her voice to come through, you hear her trademark warmth and sincerity, and it's all the better for it.
So, to conclude, although Alexandra got a better songwriter to do her catchy chorus and she was born with slightly better vocal chords than Cheryl, it's still a song about liking walking around half-naked in front of loads of guys. Fight For This Love has a better message, is not about walking around half-naked in front of loads of guys, and buried beneath auto-tune, contains more warmth and sincerity than Bad Boys.
*All opinions are based on pure fact and are true.
I've really enjoyed Glastonbury from the comfort of my sofa this year. I haven't been before but this is probably the first year I've watched it religiously for 3 days. My highlight though was Universal by Blur. The "really really could happen" chorus was wonderful - whatever it means, it feels like it embraces everything...whatever that means! I've seen them a couple of times as a teenager and it was great to see them again. A lot of their songs have such nice melodies, they work really well at a festival. And it's nice to see them all getting along. There were a few glistening eyes both on-stage and off-stage:
Other highlights for me were Lady Gaga, Peter Doherty, Maximo Park, Bon Iver, White Lies, The Noisettes playing acoustic, Glasvegas doing Be My Baby, and Florence and the Machine.
Glasvegas - Daddy's Gone:
Next year it'll be my first Glastonbury! Exciting!
I much prefer La Roux to Little Boots, I think - they seem to have been marketed at the same time and both do the 80's electro-pop thing but La Roux's current single is leading the field, methinks. It's unfortunate, because Little Boots is a lot cuter! Oh,well...
I'm a bit late with this great Firefox add-on it must be said. But even though my previous post was about how stupid these music recommendation sites were, this one is really good so far, in that I can listen to people's music whilst surfing the net. At the moment I'm listening to Fleet Foxes radio station full of great little folky tunes from Bon Iver, Dodos, Band of Horses, Andrew Bird etc. It's quite amazing how many great bands there are out there, unsigned or not. I'm giving up; all songs I hear are better than mine...
There's always a bit of time to write a song. Here's my new Peach Boy track just in time for Hawaii. It's called Hey, and the sound quality isn't great, but Hey! Download Hey.mp3
