Rants of a nerd
music
The only good thing from the cruise ship disaster
0Those not living under rocks would have come across the sad story of the Costa Concordia. The ship hit a rock off the coast of Italy and has resulted in a loss of several lives as she foundered. It is all very sad. The only good thing coming out may be that we will probably forever be done with the song My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion. Apparently they were playing this song on board when the ship hit the rock.
Who plays a song from Titanic on board a cruise liner?
Apparently the comparisons to the Titanic are apposite as passengers complained of fights for lifejackets and delays in the deployment of lifeboats. Incidentally one of the survivors of this shipwreck is the grand child of a Titanic survivor.
Music I’ve Been Listening To
1The Good:
Bond – Classified
This is another great album from the string quartet Bond. For a long time Habanera fan (from Carmen), a song like Señorita is just a joy to stumble upon. The entire album is like that. Just familiar enough and just contemporary enough.
Cheryl Cole – 3 Words
This has grown on me over time and there are a few songs that I really liked. Not great, but good.
The Saturdays – Chasing Lights & Wordshaker
Chasing Lights is my favourite of the two. Up alone is worth it. A worthy Girls Aloud replacement now that GA are not making music.
Coeur de Pirate – Coeur de Pirate
Fantastic chansons françaises. Lovely voice, nice for listening to while driving.
The Bad:
Rihanna – Rated R
I have tried, really tried. But I cannot like this album.
Owl City – Ocean Eyes
Fireflies sounded good enough to get the album. But loaded as it is with songs like Dental Care, whose lyrics were probably composed when under the influence of some mind numbing painkillers, it is very hard to listen to this without fear of losing one’s sanity.
The Ugly:
Kesha – The Animal
I wish I could get back the minutes I spent listening to this stuff.
Music Review: Timbaland
0I’ve given a listen to Timbaland’s follow up to the debut Shock Value entitled… wait for it… Shock Value II. I did not find the first album all that good, but this one is much better. The songs seem much more developed and distinct. Perhaps at the time of the first album, there were too many Timbaland produced stuff around that the album just could not find its own space.
10 billion itunes songs
0So apparently Apple has sold 10 billion songs on itunes. The store has been up for a few years now and is currently one of the biggest music retailers in the world. Ergo it is reasonable to expect that the best sellers during this time would reflect the best music of the decade. Maybe the top seller would be an all-time classic? The top three songs are:
3. The Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow
2. Lady GaGa – Poker Face
1. The Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling
This site has a listing of the top 10. All of the top 10 are very recent hit songs. Even Kesha made it on the list!
How does that happen? Perhaps the growth rate of itunes is so rapid that the newest hits are automatically the best selling ever. Perhaps the buying public are teenagers and they listen to these songs the most. Perhaps in ten or twenty years we will hear Tik Tok on the radio and think back to the good old days when music was good!
A fallout of the digital age is the shrinkage of time between fads. A decade or so back, movies used to run for several weeks. 100-day runs were reasonably common. These days the movie has gone to TV and DVD within 100 days. The rare blockbuster like Avatar plays for a couple of months. Part of the reason for this is the explosion in available media for consumption. The Economist has got the data deluge on its cover this week (have not read it yet). So there is utter fragmentation of the viewing public. Niches have become easier to fill. For example, smaller movie theaters don’t mind showing offbeat movies that appeal to smaller audiences as compared to the larger auditoria. Equally it is rare for a “cross-cultural” movie (or album or book or …). Perhaps the Black Eyed Peas and Avatar are examples of these breakout cultural examples?
Cheryl Cole – 3 Words
0I picked up Cheryl Cole’s 3 Words only because she is a member of Girls Aloud. The album is not bad. A couple of the singles so far – Fight for this love & Parachute – are pretty nice. will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas is present on more than a handful of the tracks. Unfortunately he does not enhance those tracks at all.
One of the best reviews is this one. I agree with most of it, including the complaint about "the greatest misuse of a Fleetwood Mac sample ever." That is on the song Boy Like You. It is really terrible.
Follow up on the Grammies
0I forgot to follow up on the previous Grammy post. The only major surprise was the Kings of Leon winning the Record of the Year. Album of the Year went to Taylor Swift’s Fearless. It is not a bad album, but it cannot hold a candle to Beyoncé’s I am… Sasha Fierce. I would put Lady Gaga’s The Fame ahead too. Still there were awards aplenty to go around.
And going back to my mid-January piece on the year in review in music, I did pick up The Saturday’s albums. So far Chasing Lights is my favourite. It can keep Girls Aloud company any day of the week. And Cheryl Cole from GA had her solo outing with 3 Words. It is growing on me. The new single Parachute is definitely good, as was Fight For This Love.
There is one other artiste that I wanted to try out: Kesha (or Ke$ha as she stylizes her name). First impression is okay. Not too great. Will this grow on me as well?
Grammy Nominees
1Seeing as the Grammys are around the corner, I checked out the list of nominees. On the pop music side, there is not much by way of surprise, but take a look at who is nominated for best solo rock performance:
Bob Dylan
John Fogerty
Prince
Bruce Springsteen
Neil Young
Hey the 70s called and they want their rockers back. Seriously, are there no modern rockers good enough to even make a nominee? The hard rock category is not much better, but then that category should be moved to a side show anyway.
The selection in the major awards are pretty good. Should be close competition among the women especially. Also given that the trio of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift are all nominated for best song, best album and best pop female solo. The only other nominee who has covered the major categories is the Black Eyed Peas.
It should be worth watching even though the show airs early on Monday morning here in India.
Music: Year in Review
0A little after everyone else has finished publishing their favourite music of the past year, here is my sampling of what got a lot of airplay with me.
Girls Aloud must have been my most listened-to band of the year. The girl band from the UK somehow has continued to deliver good music album after album and the most recent ones (Tangled Up and Out of Control) both lived up to high expectations. It is enough to get me to try a couple of other British girl groups: The Saturdays and Girls Can’t Catch in the coming year. Staying with the Brits, Lily Allen’s sophomore outing “It’s Not Me, It’s You” was a brilliant effort. Also delivering a solid album of ear-friendly material was Pixie Lott’s Turn It Up. Rounding up this solid British year is Paloma Faith. You may not have heard of her, but the album Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful really grows on you.
From across the channel came the hugely successful and foot-tappingly good One Love by David Guetta. The anthem song, When Love Takes Over, introduced us to it during our summer holiday in Europe. Guetta’s other great hit for the year was the collaboration with the Black Eyed Peas on I Gotta Feeling, a crappy song if there was ever one, but how catchy! A trademark BEP outing. Another francophone singer that impressed me this year was the Quebecois Coeur de Pirate.
Staying on this side of the pond for another moment, it would be remiss to not mention Something Sally, a northern European band whose album Familiar Strangers had songs like The Taste and Tip Of My Tongue – the latter a collaboration with Joss Stone. Joss Stone herself had a good year out with Colour Me Free! The other European artiste for me was Lenka, who I found on aurgasm a while ago & whose song The Show is a definite highlight of the recent past in music.
Jumping across the Atlantic, rock music was underrepresented in my playlist. The only band that I played consistently was Cobra Starship after I caught their lovely single Good Girl Go Bad from the album Hot Mess. The single featuring Leighton Meester is itself well made and includes an XOXO text, for those with a keen eye. Also check out Leighton’s single Somebody to Love (featuring Robin Thicke).
Norah Jones’ The Fall is interesting as it is so different from her normally piano focussed songs. These songs are very rock-ish with a much greater guitar emphasis.
That about rounds up my favourite music of the last year (or so). I wanted to mention a couple of albums, Rihanna’s Rated-R and Shakira’s She Wolf, that somehow failed to get me. Both have some good material and I think one resolution for me should be to listen to these two a bit more.
