Seven (eight?) songs

[eve11]

meme from ladymercury_10

List seven songs you are into right now (preferably with links). No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your live journal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

I don't listen to a lot of music, but there are songs I hear on the radio or on TV (wyep.org) that make me take notice. So here is a list.



Dan Wilson, Free Life. I heard this the other day on the radio and it is both contemplative and celebratory, but has a strain of melancholy, unless that was just my mood. Link isn't to the official video but just a youtube lyrics post.

Brandi Carlile, That Wasn't Me. What a voice, and just a beautiful and poignant song. Also, Kris Kristofferson is in the video (!).

Jerry Douglas feat. Mumford and Sons & Paul Simon, The Boxer. I never really listened to the lyrics on the original, but on this one I can't not listen to them. Another folk song that really takes you when you pay attention. I think this version is better than the original.

Kinky, Después Del After (After the "After"). Heard this one on the World Cafe and I thought it was a cool sounding song for a Halloween party soundtrack. The story as the singer explained it was pretty cool. The album is "Sueño de la Máquina" (Dream of the Machine), about a guy who goes out to party one night, meets a girl, contemplates life, and then wakes up a motel the next morning and goes outside to see that the apocalypse has happened. In this song, he gets a ride from a mysterious stranger who invites him to an after-after-party, the hottest place, etc... and it is slowly revealed through the song that the mysterious stranger is, in fact, the Devil, inviting the guy to Hell's afterparty.

Passion Pit, Take a Walk. Poppy song, and I guess it's on Taco Bell commercials now, but it actually is a very serious song I think. Not as much of a dissonance between style and substance as Foster the People's "Pumped up Kicks" but definitely a social commentary.

Cheating: two from Jack White's new album Blunderbuss. Man, I gotta get this whole album. Everything this man does is phenomenal. I don't know how or why. The first song is the toe-tapping contemporary retro, I'm Shakin'. And the second is still the one that I think needs to be the soundtrack for the quintessential Melody Pond or Doctor/River relationship vid, Love Interruption. I love the woodwinds on this song.

Stevie Wonder, Superstition. It's been playing on the NFL commercials and of course they are using it as opposite of what the song means, but holy hell, pay attention to this song as it is still amazing 40 years later. Here also is A 1973 studio session recording of the same. Damn.

Comments

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

Love Take a Walk. Really good song - and very much a commentary about today and your average joe.

Know a few of these...others I don't - but I'll be sure to check them out. I love music. We always have something playing in the background here at home. Music is very much a part of our lives.

*HUGS*

[eve11]

I hope you find something you like! :)

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

I love Mumford & Sons! I think my parents used to listen to the original version of that song when I was a kid, because I haven't heard it in a long time (I don't listen to the radio) but it is very familiar.

And wait, "Pumped Up Kicks" is a serious song? Again, since I don't listen to the radio, I only know of it as the song that my obnoxiously loud partying neighbors used to listen to all the time when I was doing homework last year, and I wouldn't have expected them to be going for social commentary music, haha.

[eve11]

The Boxer originally is Simon and Garfunkel; I think it is more famous for the "Lai lai lai" chorus and the cymbal crash than the words. In fact I knew it as the "lai lai lai" song; I didn't even know its title.

And wait, "Pumped Up Kicks" is a serious song?
Ha, yes, it's rather dark, in a Pearl Jam 'Jeremy' sort of way, I think.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the part I recognized was the "lai lai lai" bit.

See, this is how much I live under a rock, that I have no idea what a Pearl Jam "Jeremy" way would imply.... :P

[eve11]

LOL no that is not you living under a rock, that is me showing my generation! That song is from like 1991 (warning for the click-through link, it's a violent theme about bullying and deals with guns and suicide). Though D is 3 years older than me and was like, "What's a Pearl Jam 'Jeremy' sort of way?" as well. I thought it was a pretty famous song.

Pumped Up Kicks is a little more "shoot the other people" but still, it's pretty dark.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Oh. Was that sort of like a Columbine thing, then? And it may very well be famous, judging from the length of its Wikipedia article, but the sum total of my Pearl Jam knowledge is "that band that has the album with the avocado on the cover," haha.

I don't think I ever heard the lyrics to Pumped Up Kicks, just the riff coming through our ceiling. From which it was pretty easy to assume it was a party kind of song. :P

[eve11]

Sort of; according to the wikipedia article the song took from two different incidents; one about a boy named Jeremy Delle who killed himself in front of his classmates in Texas, and one about a boy that the lead singer Eddie Vedder used to pick fights with in school, who shot up a classroom (though possibly an empty one?). It was a pretty big song when I was in junior high/high school.

Most people didn't listen to the lyrics of Pumped Up Kicks and just assumed it was a poppy fun song. It wasn't until you realized that the chorus said something about "you'd better outrun my gun, faster than my bullet" that they figured it might be a more angry song than it sounds ;)