The beautiful female in the Tyler the Creator video “She” is allegedly his ex-girlfriend named Milan. It is also alleged that she became a lesbian after they broke up, but the source was of course Yahoo! answers so if you have a grain a salt, I guess you can take it as such.
The Cardigans is pretty good. I underestimate their fluidity and structure pop sound. They stretch the melody and coolness of their music beyond most type of music, but has that underground recording studio sound that gives their sound a natural feel.
This girl, I am not quite sure what grade or school this is at, puts on an amazing performance at her school’s talent show with a cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Maps song. The quality of the recording isn’t that great, but if you like to search for talent, you will feel it after hearing this version.
Whoever you are, great voice. I hope you will do great things someday
Kesha has blown up out of nowhere, and is taking the world by storm. Not a fan of her music, but I guess her following is pretty strong. I really can’t believe she is blowing up. These women all taking up beats that are, I don’t know if you want to say stolen, but very well-produced homages to Kylie Minogue.
Bark+Bite blog has the best rant review about her stuff.
C’mon! Lets all go out right now, and go crazy. Its 2010, the worlds going to end! Lets show the Universe that the last generation know how to party with the rest of them.
You have a better party song? Post it, and I will add it. Lets go fucking insane for 2 ten!
I don’t know if anyone else has thought about it when they were listening to Tool’s 10,000 days Wing For Marie.
It is an amazing song, and when I listen to it, it reminds me of a lot of traditional Irish music that my friends listen to ( not the Whiskey in the Jar-type songs, but more melodic and emotional )
When you hear this, and then listen to this:
There isn’t much of a similarity, but the arrangements ( especially the vocal arrangements ) in the two songs are directed more to traditional Irish/Gaelic folk music than any other current/past genre ( other than the heaviness of the rock guitar ).
Can anyone say they have/have not though of this? Am I wrong? Do I have something?
I was listening to a radio bit on National Public Radio, and I was stunned by the riff I heard.
Hitting me, was a bass riff that was so familiar and so soothing; it came at me as a backup song during the credits of an interview. I listened, not thinking of its importance, for all backup music to endings of radio bits are made up of obscure pieces from other musicians ( or musicians pertaining to the interview/ journalist piece at hand ).
As I comforted myself into the NPR piece, the bass line hit me. It was an exact ( almost exact ) riff of an R&B song that I heard when I was a kid:
But it wasn’t this song at all. The surprise came first with the intuition that the former song took the riff from a piece that was older:
It is one of those times that you would be upset that you didn’t know a song you liked was semi-covered, but you are comforted somehow with the fact that the riff did exist some time before, and that it was liked by others. It was liked by others who wouldn’t neccesarily be privy to any hip-hop or R&B. Not others who would give any importance to those who used the riff for their albums.
But to hear it, and hear where it was given birth, it gives me a better love for those who “covered” it and felt it was a good enough riff to exchange it in a tengent genre for others to listen. It makes me like the songs that use this riff so much more. It makes me want to find other similar ventures of current and past music; to find musical pieces that have been used in history to create mainstream music.
Let’s be honest: Could you ever think a Chingy song would be derived from a Jaco Pastorius bassline? I don’t think so.
The band is featured as a duo-lead singing piece ( I am guessing Kitty and Daisy ) anchored by a pianist ( I am guessing Lewis ), a guitarist and bassist.
The two lead women are on stage wearing beautiful ruffle dresses ( strapped, with one green and one blue ), along with Lewis, formally dressed in a nice tuxedo. The whole motif is pretty much a homage to the 50’s swing-like atmosphere, and their musical talent pulled it off.
They played this song for Jimmy Fallon’s audience:
I have heard this song in the past, but was very unfamiliar when they had played it. But the emotion, the vocals, and the affect of the combination of all the acoustic instruments made it worthwhile to listen.
The song was very hard and had a head-bopping appeal, especially considering the only rhythm was created by the initial clapping of the band supplemented with one the of the girls performing on a single snare while singing in tandem with the other.
My only qualm ( and it might be because of my affinity to Burt Bacharach ) might be that towards the end of the song there wasn’t much they did to enhance their combined vocals. They didn’t really get louder, nor did they harmonize any chords with each other. It might have been the way the audio was rendered to television, but it didn’t sound as loud as it should’ve been for three voices to belt out the chorus simultaneously.
But the talent is there, the ferocity is there. Hopefully the fans will follow. I happen to have the unlucky luck to write about them without having a chance to expand upon my knowledge of them live, since they won’t be touring in my area. I will try to check them out though.
Here is their Myspace page:
It has been a sad week for the talented Rihanna. I wanted to write something positive about her away from her current situation. Going through some of the news and links, I stumbled upon an acoustic version of her song umbrella. I heard this version a few months back, and it is really catchy.
I never really liked the song, or any of her music, but in the acoustic format I had a greater appreciation for the songwriting put into it.
During this trek, I also was bombarded with an assortment of covers of the song. This song seems to be liked by a lot of people, seeing that everyone and their mothers are creating their own versions of it. I feel this might be the most covered pop song of the 21st century ( or maybe My Immortal? )
Some people were really good, with very sweet voices, cool arrangements, or serene minimalism. Others were cursed with off-key vocals, bad recording, or saturated with mundanity.
So, here’s the top 10 list of the best Rihanna Umbrella covers gathered from the internet. If you have others, audio or video, that can beat these, email me, and I will make a revision in the future.
Shots in the Dark: Music & Musings from The Underground 