Tag Archives: music

Bad Love (Songs)

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What are the worst love songs of all time?

Well, this list on Yahoo! is a good start, but it barely scratches the surface of love songs that leave something to be desired, such as “love,” or in some cases, “song.”

Along with Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman,” noted here for describing the sociopathic, needlessly cruel behavior of the woman in question, there should be a couple more. Let’s start with the Beatles’ “Girl,” another chronicle of an abusive woman, and “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

This Worst Wedding Songs list has the ever-creepy “Run For Your Life” from the Beatles, along with Sting’s stalkery “Every Breath You Take.” Both of these songs are stalker anthems.

How about “Close to You”? “Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?” Isn’t that an Alfred Hitchcock movie?

Then again, I have to admit I do like Elton John’s “Your Song,” even though it’s apparently written from the point of view of a guy with ADHD who’s trying to write a song but keeps interrupting himself, leading to a totally incoherent tune that’s somehow sincere and sweet anyway.

Other Things That Are Not Romantic, many of which I’ve noted before:

  • “Phantom of the Opera.” It seems very romantic when you’re 15 years old (I know I thought so). It’s only later that you think it through and realize the play is about a man who literally kidnaps a woman and drags her into a basement, where he wants her to stay. Forever. That’s not romantic, that’s criminal.
  • Flowers. I love you, therefore I’m giving you the severed reproductive organs of plants. Better toe the line or you’re next.
  • “Twilight.” Elderly man creeps into a high school girl’s room and watches her while she sleeps. Yikes!
  • “Titanic.” I have to admit, I had to stifle a giggle when they were on the raft at the end of the movie, she says “I’ll never let go” and then almost immediately shoves her love’s corpse off the raft. It’s all about timing, am I right?

The Weirdness That Is Gangnam Style

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If you haven’t heard of Gangnam Style by now, it’s a silly Korean pop song that went spectacularly viral online and has since become tremendously popular.

Its music video on YouTube has more than a billion views. Yes, that’s “billion” with a B.

It’s also spawned a number of versions and parodies, some of which are worth watching and others of which definitely are not.

  • Glee did a show choir version. There are also a couple of marching band versions, but I wasn’t able to find one I liked enough to link. Sorry.
  • Here’s an Inuit version. This is absolutely great, and incorporates a bit of actual Inuit culture into a silly fun pop song.
  • Someone set their Christmas lights to it.
  • And finally, there’s a mashup with M.C. Hammer. It works better than I would have expected, which is to say it works to any extent at all.

Any versions you like out there?

Edit:

  • Farmer Style is an awesome one! Well-filmed, tuneful and awesome! (via commenter thrivingmom. Thanks!)

Some Cheer for a Difficult Day

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Tragedies and difficult times are occurring today.

There’s not a way for me to help in any meaningful way, but looking back at my grandfather’s funeral, I mostly recall that a cousin’s inadvertent joke made us all laugh–and knowing that my grandfather would have laughed harder than anyone. That made us all feel better, and it was a fitting memorial for a guy with a loopy sense of humor.

In that spirit, I offer you a few links that may at least give you a bit of a smile.

  • Gangnam Style is funny, but this educational parody from NASA is even better. It’s so nice to see women doing science and not just being used as eye candy.
  • Here’s a list from Poynter of the best media errors and corrections of the year. Some of them are flinchworthy, but others are just hilarious. I have to offer kudos to the kids who sent a correction notice in regarding the day the Titanic struck an iceberg.
  • And from the Atlantic Wire, another list of the Best (Worst?) Typos, Mistakes, and Correrctions of 2012. Because one good Correrction list deserves another, am I right? This one has more childish errors, such as an incidence of the infamous leaving-the-L-out-of-public. These are the typos that keep the press awake at night praying we remembered the Ls and didn’t switch the w in “wrap” for a c.

 

Review: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw…

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Fiona Apple may produce albums with ridiculously long titles, but I wish she would also make longer albums.

Don’t get me wrong. Her latest effort, which came out earlier this year, is wonderful. I just wish there were more than 10 songs.

“The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do” is the title of the album. Yes, all of that.

That’s actually pretty short for Apple, considering her second album was entitled “When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing ‘Fore He Enters the Ring There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You’ll Know That You’re Right.”

I pasted that in from Wikipedia. Most people shorthand the title as “When the Pawn,” because by the time you finish saying the whole title you’ve forgotten what you were going to say anyway.

But I digress. “Idler Wheel” is a great album, with plenty of that raw-sounding vocal work Apple has become famous for.

What I love about it is, of course, the percussion. There’s plenty of fantastic marimba work, a rumbly timpani and then there’s the celeste, which most people wouldn’t even recognize by name. Apple plays the piano and a lot of the percussion herself.

My liner notes for “Idler Wheel” came in a notebook-looking thing that includes the whimsical credit “Thighs,” for the song “Daredevil,” which I’m pretty sure means they’re using their thighs as percussion. It’s pretty awesome, and you have to admit it adds a certain meaty texture to the thing.

The standout tune, though, is “Hot Knife,” an incredibly simple song featuring just two verses and a bridge in a sort of round. It’s a little like Beck’s “Nicotine and Gravy,” with the two separate, very simple verses, each catchy in its own right, layering on top of each other over and over and cascading into a single complex song. It’s wonderful.

Fever: Variations on a Theme

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So, in all the Peggy Lee-related hubbub around her hometown of Jamestown, N.D., I learned that she actually wrote two verses of “Fever,” which she never received any royalties from.

I love that song, and it’s really stood the test of time, too–everybody who’s anybody seems to have done a cover version of it at one point or another. Here’s a bit of a sampler, for all you fellow Fever-lovers.

Keep in mind: I haven’t seen any of these videos, I just listened to part of each one.

1. Peggy Lee. Not the original version, just the definitive one! A classic for a good reason.

2. Elvis Presley. He’s the King for a reason. It doesn’t take a lot of liberties with the material, but if you didn’t think a man could be sultry, you were wrong.

3. Madonna. A disco version of Fever, featuring Madonna wearing weirdly hypnotic pants.

4. Beyonce. A pretty faithful version, with some additions, including some harmonies and some more lyrics. Hey, Lee added lyrics too, nothin’ wrong with that!

5. Link Wray. A punk cover of Fever. It’s a very different, but fun, take on the song, done by one of the guitar greats. (A cuss-word is shown in the video.)

6. La Lupe. A bouncy salsa beat and an incredibly thick Cuban(?) accent, with some lyrics in Spanish. It works, surprisingly, although it takes a turn for the weird partway through.

7. Michael Buble. Smooth! Another one in the grand tradition of men being sultry.

8. Superpitcher. With an electronic flavor, this version by a German producer still retains the sultry feel of the Peggy Lee “Fever.” It reminds me a little bit of “Tainted Love.”

9. Ella Fitzgerald. Sorry, boys, the girls can outsultry you.

10. Little Willie John. The original “Fever,” which doesn’t have Peggy Lee’s verses, but does include the snapping and harmonizing.

11. The Doors. Yes, really! This isn’t just “Fever,” though, it’s a mashup of “Fever” and “Summertime,” so it’s pretty hot. (Ahahah. Sorry.)

And a few more Fevers for the road!

Exploding Manure, Insidious Weeds and a Geek in Power

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Here are a few things you might find to be of general interest:

I’m a Daydream Believer, Davy

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As everyone probably already knows, Davy Jones of the Monkees is dead.

I am not too young to care.

The TV news shows are only playing two songs–”Daydream Believer” and “I’m a Believer.” These are great tunes, believe me, but if you only know those and the Monkees theme song, you’re missing out.

When I was a kid my dad had a great tape that was some sort of “best of” the Monkees and we listened to it fairly often. It’s “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.” I loved “Valleri” and I wanted to take the “Last Train to Clarksville,” and I sure didn’t want to be anyone’s “Steppin’ Stone,” though I wouldn’t have minded having a “Pleasant Valley Sunday.”

It took me a while to understand that “Kicks” was about drugs, and then I couldn’t really imagine why anyone would want any, because drugs were so obviously bad. My opinion on this hasn’t really changed a lot. What can I say? “That Was Then, This Is Now.”

And who can forget “The Girl That I Knew Somewhere“?

 

Ringtone Stops Symphony; Phone Owner Mortified

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Generally when I go to a meeting, I put my phone on vibrate.

I never feel like I can turn it off, because one never knows when there might be an ammonia leak, a catastrophic accident or a massive donation to a local school. Reporters, like pastors and police, are essentially on call all the time.

Every once in a while, very seldom, I forget to change my phone over to vibrate, and once or twice, this has resulted in a mortifying ringing during a meeting. It’s always incredibly embarrassing, I feel unprofessional and I feel like a big inconsiderate jerk on top of that.

But it could be so much worse.

Imagine having your phone ringing during a symphony at a massive concert hall. Only you don’t even recognize it’s your phone, because you turned your phone off. And it can’t be ringing, because it’s off. And it’s brand-new, and you’re not exactly sure how the dang thing works, but it’s off, that’s for sure. And then the director stops the symphony and glares at you for several minutes until your phone stops ringing.

The internet bays for your blood, people are calling you unconscionably rude and directing the sort of hate at you that used to be reserved for people who kick dogs and throw kittens off overpasses.

The moral of the story: Know how your phone works, and be sure you know how to turn it off.

The Long Dark Christmas Carol of the Soul

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My friends who work in retail are already beginning to get a little… funny… about having to listen to the same twenty or so Christmas carols over and over again at work.

I’m not sure this constitutes torture under the Geneva Convention, but it is certainly annoying. My workplace doesn’t play Christmas tunes over any sort of loudspeaker, and if it did, I would probably want to take an axe to said loudspeaker too.

I always maintain that the problem isn’t Christmas songs in and of themselves, so much as the painful lack of variety of said Christmas songs. There are literally hundreds and probably more like thousands upon thousands of Christmas tunes out there, yet our ears are assailed by the same 20-25 of them every single time we step into a store during the holiday season. Even the new Justin Bieber Christmas songs might be an improvement.

… okay, maybe not. But at least they’d be new.

The shame of it is how many great Christmas songs there are that simply don’t get played, because they’re weird, old, or just because Elvis hasn’t done a version of them. Instead they play Paul McCartney’s “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” which, Geneva Convention or not, is definitely torture.

So. Why do we keep singing Christmas carols? Here’s a wonderful article from Slate that examines the question, and gives the long history of Christmas songs–how the early Church hated pagan adaptations, how Puritans hated them and how the modern Christmas celebration arose.

And I also have two additions to my 12 Carols series, one of which is based on the other. Yes, I know that makes 14 carols, technically. What can I say, math has never been my area of expertise.

Lord of the Dance is only a quasi-Christmas carol. Its words were written in 1967, and it tells the story of Jesus’s life in first-person. It has absolutely nothing to do with Michael Flatley, I promise.

Lord of the Dance was based on Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, however, which was a Christmas Carol, published in 1833, but traditional long before that.

They’ve disabled YouTube embedding for this one, but have a listen. It has a weird little syncopated rhythm, and I remember singing it once in choir. It was fun.

Thanksgiving Carols

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Turkey

Turkey

Christmas seems to be the only holiday that gets a soundtrack. Unfortunately, many people get quite tired of that soundtrack. I’ve had at least a few people tell me how much they hate Christmas carols, and I always have to explain to them that they really don’t.

They just hate the 25 or so Christmas carols that get played into the ground every year by the radio stations and malls. For these people, I picked out 12 great Christmas songs that aren’t played so much; do check them out.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, doesn’t have nearly as much music. I can only think of four Thanksgiving songs.

One, Sleigh Ride, is generally associated with Christmas, but the “pumpkin pie” line really suggests more of a Thanksgiving jaunt.

Two, I’ve Got Plenty to Be Thankful For, is from the 1942 movie “Holiday Inn.” This movie spawned a much better-known Christmas tune for Bing Crosby, “White Christmas,” and let’s face it, “Plenty” isn’t that great. Even in the movie, Bing doesn’t sing it, just listens to it on a record player and makes sarcastic comments the whole time.

Three, David Stoddard’s “The First Thanksgiving,” told from the perspective of the Native Americans. (I’ve linked it before, you might remember it.)

Four, uh, well. I found another song about Thanksgiving just recently, but this one should come with a disclaimer. No cursing or anything graphic in it, but, well. I think you can figure out the problem with it by the name of the song.

It’s Rasputina’s “The Donner Party.” If you don’t know what the Donner Party is or what they’re most known for you may want to find that out first. Before you listen to the song. Then think twice before you listen to it. You might not want to eat Thanksgiving dinner ever again.

It’s alarming. It’s very alarming. I’m pretty sure it’s also totally fictional. … I certainly hope.