| | This is partly just to give me an excuse to talk about music.  A blogger I follow has been doing something sort of similar over on his site (although his music taste is vastly different than mine... we both enjoy Over the Rhine, but that's about it) and I was inspired to do something a bit similar.
The idea is that I go through and list 10 songs (he does it once a week... I'm impatient so will claim I'll do it one a day but also a slacker so it will probably end up being twice a week) from my music library. I'm going alphabetically by song name. Also, multiple versions of a single song count as one song. I'll try to link to YouTube examples when I can, and give a tiny bit of information about why I enjoy this song and have chosen to keep it around.
Feel free to recommend music to me based on the songs I list... or comment on how you love/hate/can't believe I like the songs.
Today's 10:
1. The ABC Cafe/Red and Black (Les Miserables, the 10th Anniversary Cast). Red and Black is a great song. Michael Maguire and Michael Ball sing it brilliantly here. The parallels between war and love are kind of interesting, although hardly deep lyrically... Mostly I'm just enjoyed the Michaels' voices.
2. Absalon, fili mi (The Hilliard Ensemble). I'm not huge on choral music, but I discovered this in a music appreciation class and found that it stuck with me. There's something very wistful and sad about this melody. It's written from the point of view of David to his son Absalom, so there's also a beautiful, sad story aspect to it.
3. Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive (Sam Harris). If this song was sung by anyone but Sam Harris, I wouldn't have kept it. But Sam Harris can sing anything and sound very, very, very lovely.
4. Across the Universe (Jim Sturgess). Perhaps The Beatles did it better. But The Beatles didn't have an awesome video accompanying their version that perfectly portrayed a young man trying in vain to cling on to the life he once knew and avoid life's downward spiral. Unfortunately, that video can't be found on YouTube.
5. Act Two Opening (Merrily We Roll Along, 1994 Off-Broadway Cast). An odd little medley of tunes, all centered around a difficult relationship. The song builds nicely and ends with a rather great, short version of "Good Thing Going."
6. An Actor's Life (Dave Grusin). Yeah, the song's a bit dated... But I still love it. The melody is interesting, and it's one of those songs that just always make me smile. This comes from Grusin's "Cinemagic" CD, which is a CD of movie music. This particular song was used in the movie Tootsie.
7. Addicted (Kelly Clarkson). Possibly my favorite song from this CD of hers. It's nothing new in the genre, but her voice manages to capture the feeling of the song, and there's a desperation in it that sometimes hits exactly the right chord for me.
8. Addicted (Simple Plan). Now this song is also about addiction to a person, but there's no real desperation in here. I'm a fan of happy pop-punk that sings cheerfully about awful things. Makes me feel better about anything I'm upset about it.
9. adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood (Future of the Left). There's pretty much no reason for me to like this song. I don't really know what those lyrics mean, but the song sounds angry so they might mean something angry. But the music is interesting and makes me pay attention when I usually wouldn't with this genre. The version I have has less screaming at the end than this one, and I like that better. Also note that this song is pretty much the least representative sample of my music library.
10. Adelaide's Lament (Guys and Dolls, 1992 Broadway Revival Cast). This is a classic, thoroughly entertaining showtune. Faith Prince's version is far more listenable than Vivian Blaine's. It's the saga of a woman who's been engaged for 14 years and is getting a little tired of not being married.
All right. Well, we'll see if I ever do any of these again. I have a bit of a tendency to start things like this and then totally forget them. Remember when I was going to update every day with what I was doing this time last year with NLDC? Yeah, and when I was going to make fun of all my old stories I wrote?
If nothing else, now you all know the first ten songs in my music library. WHEE!
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| | Posted 3/26/2009 11:50 PM - 21 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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