Music Music Music

[Phoebe]

42. Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls - IT IS SO GOOD OMG WHY DID I WAIT UNTIL #42 FOR THIS????????? Love it. Love it all. Planning to just roll through whatever albums they have that I can get my hands upon.

[Phoebe]

43. Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color.

I liked the Boys and Girls album better. It's all good though. The woman is absolutely amazing but the way she and the rest of the band fit together is also genius.

Meanwhile that Green Light song continues to be a brain-invading tapeworm. Sometimes I just play it over and over from a little after 3 min to the end. What is that sound???

[poorpete]

I slightly preferred Sound & Color more, but who knows, once 2018 arrives and I'll be listening to both a bit more constantly. She's great though, have you seen her live performances?

I'm 73 songs in on Frank Sinatra, and of course the only one I adored on first listen is stripped down with no strings or big-band feel.



I assume this is all personal preference for me -- I did the same thing when I went all-in on Harry Belafonte. His stringy ballads and big-band songs were my least favorite, but his blues stuff, his folk stuff, his calypso stuff, his african/world stuff, are all wonderful.

[poorpete]

Listening to Wham!'s "Make it Big". Their version of Freedom (https://youtu.be/BFwOs-jy53A?t=1m18s) is good but sounds so pedestrian compared to George Michael's Freedom '90 made a mere six years later.

[poorpete]

Green Day.
I liked them as a teen.
Turned them off as my tastes turned to brit pop and their children Sum 41 and Blink 182 turned their pop punk into pop pop pop punk.
So I was pleasantly pleased to listen to "American Idiot". Good pop punk, with Billy Joe in command of his voice and everyone doing only great things with their instruments. Seems when a lot of artists reach album 3 or 4, they let their energy fall, preferring to stone out (I'm looking at you Supergrass and Arctic Monkees), happy that they go all-in on energy 10 years into their fame.



That said, I had to discount a few songs, especially some otherwise-great epic songs, because of the use of "retarded", which was on its way out around then. Bad punk rockers, bad!

[Phoebe]

A The guy spent too much time wallowing in Camus maybe, but he's basically right about this across so many contexts.

[poorpete]

My wife would call this unlistenable but I enjoy songs that force me [successfully] into their groove, however weird/wild it be, and each listen I love this more and more...

[Phoebe]

44. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
45. Stevie Wonder - Talking Book
46. Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life

No comment for now besides that I was surprised by the multiplicity of musical styles he captures within a single album, and it's all very beautiful for listening.

[Phoebe]

[akiva]

Say fear is a man's best friend
You add it up
It brings you down

[poorpete]

[poorpete]

Getting burnt out on Sinatra. I'm going to take next week off.

His Columbia years, I was excited to hear what songs made him famous in the 1940s, and, they, are, sleepy. We listened to five of them in the car, and after the sixth, my daughter said "are you just playing the same song over and over?" Pretty much. We turned it off. These are wistful songs, usually about day, night, and dreams. I figured he realized popularity comes with being on the radio during primetime, and what a perfect time to play a song about getting sleepy.

Songs with percussion, too few and far between. zzzzzzzzzz

[Phoebe]

Yeah, I really liked the Stevie Wonder detour. I'm listening to a wretched song called "This Person is A Palindrome". Bah. Not recommended. and it was NOT Andrew Bird. I want to listen to another album tonight but SO TIRED, not sure I will make it through. The next two days are going to be real zingers of unpleasantness.

[poorpete]

This song starts off so unpromising... but from the bridge onward I love it!

Do you think I'm crazy!?

[akiva]

I like it when jazz musicians eulogize other jazz musicians.

[Phoebe]

This is just... really good, and also hilarious. Now I can go to bed.

[akiva]

L. Ron Hubbard can't save your life

[poorpete]

Kraftwerk knew what was up. The only thing they didn't realize is "hey, make these bass-heavy," otherwise was spot on. Here's my fav


All Amazon Prime has is the "Oils on Water" album, should I try that first or go onto Spotify or something and listen to a studio album?

116. Supertramp - Breakfast in America
Bunch of classics, a good opener, and a bunch of meh. Listen to first six songs and be done. They really knew how to do a great rock n' roll saxophone solo way back when. The solo on "Logical Song" is up there with Baker Street and Careless Whispers.

[Phoebe]

Probably write this same thing here before, blways crank it to 19 in the car radio situation, much to the chagrin of anyone within a block in any direction, and I think this song is 100% not about whatever it seems to be about, but is about EXISTENTIAL ISSUES. LIFE - he wants TIME in which to LIVE, because we are all going to DIE, and you know... fill in the blanks yourself, citizens, I'm drunk and have no time for the usual psychotic weirdo instructionals. Everyone is going through something.

[poorpete]

119. Beauty and the Beast (2017). I have mixed feelings on this. Many of the remade songs pale in comparison to the originals ("Gaston" in particular) with either the singers adding unnecessary flourishes (again, "Gaston") or near exact covers in which I can only notice issues, eg, Emma Watson being slightly but noticeably (uncanny valley-wise) autotuned.

The new songs are pretty good. As much as I'll always prefer Menken/Ashman, Menken/Rice's "Evermore" gives the Beast a great solo at the perfect time.