I like to watch The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon because I think Jimmy Fallon is an awesome, hilarious, and appreciative guy. Sure, he may make his guests play ridiculous games, but if they’re getting a pie in the face, so is he. Anyway, he had Alan Cumming on his show the other night who told a story about Dame Helen Mirren disapproving of his Crocs. I thought his comeback (1:59) was perfect; I’ve got to remember to use it for the future. The full story starts 1:15 in the clip below:
It still amazes me that Alan Cumming plays Eli Gould on The Good Wife because his accent in real life so drastically different from his Eli voice.
I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but I think this means that Lorde is working on her second studio album; I can’t wait. Pure Heroine has become one of my most listened to and favorite albums because the beats and production is so different, so I’m really in need of her follow up album. I read an interview where Lorde confirmed she has started work on her second album, but it is a departure from Pure Heroine in that it’s very different.
If she’s going to continue to work with Joel Little, as it seems evident by the tweet above, then her next album is going to be stellar. I own three albums (Pure Heroine, Lorde’s Love Club – EP, and Evergreen by Broods) Little co-wrote and produced and his production is unique and mind blowing (I’ve been trying to find more music he has produced, but so far I can only get my hands on Lorde and Broods). He creates incredible beats and his minimalistic approach paradoxically creates a fully and whole sound. As a musician, it would be an honor to just be able to observe how he works in the studio, let alone begin able to write/record/produce a song with him.
In the meantime, I’m going to spend time dancing around to Lorde’s music and pray we get some news on her new album as soon as possible. If you haven’t listened to Pure Heroine, I enthusiastically encourage you to, it is awesome. If you’re a Lorde fan such as myself, I would also suggest you take a listen to Broods’ album Evergreen. If you’re like me and you’ve been listening to both albums on repeat, sit tight because I have a feeling we’re getting a new album from Lorde very soon. Fingers crossed!
I’m on the fence whether or not I like “Ghost” by Ella Henderson. I’ve been listening to it on repeat today because I really like the moments when she sings the lyric “I keep going to the river to pray.” I must admit that that is the only lyric I can clearly understand her sing, she seems to be rushing through the verses. Regardless, I have this overwhelming desire during the chorus of the song to throw my hands up in the air and dance around. I really like how she starts the first chorus singing the hook down the octave, and bringing it up later in the song. It makes it infectious.
The more I listen to this song, the more I’m in awe of incredible her voice is. She flawlessly moves through the octaves, and easily delivers a rather powerful performance. So maybe I do really like it.
I think one of the hardest things to do is to show someone the contents of your iTunes library. Music is so personal and intimate that it’s really like showing a stranger the contents of your heart. I get nervous anytime someone wants to see my phone to see what music I have on it because I don’t want someone to judge me or be like “ew, you listen to that person?” I’m tired of people making assumptions about me because of the music I listen to.
I’ve been having a problem with my iTunes syncing with my phone recently, so I scheduled a genius bar appointment for tomorrow and I’m a bit nervous. I mean, I’ve done it before, and the people at the Apple Store are generally friendly. I just don’t like people scrolling through my iTunes. Which is really odd because I tweet, write, and blog about my music taste all the time. Like, I don’t mind trending #PhillipsSongOfTheDay and creating Spotify playlists for random people around the world to listen to, but I can’t deal with a Apple genius accessing my iTunes to help me. In all probability they’re too busy to actually judge my music preference. Even if they did, the chances I’ll ever run into them again or them remembering me are so slim.
But I think this emphasizes this change the Internet has put on my generation: we’re more aware and self-conscious about our interactions in person, but when we’re online we pull out all the stops. It’s a blessing and a curse, really. For me, I’ve been able to open up about my musical taste and share my knowledge online because I don’t get to see my reader’s reactions. I sort of did when I had the comments activated, but some people were rather ruthless. Just because I didn’t know the person, they felt no shame in writing rather horrible things about me for what I objectively wrote about. It’s odd that the Internet can do such a thing as opening us up as a society and connecting us, but yet making us anonymous enough to tear each other down. It’s like the Internet is a big window blind, and while sunlight my peak through and permeate the room, we’re shielded from ever truly experiencing the physical nature of a person.
I guess what I need to do the next time someone wants to make fun of me for liking the music I do is to remember the fact I have a musical preference. I know who I am and I know what I like. And I will never apologize for who I am.
So I’m just hanging out and relaxing on a cold Sunday afternoon, and I hear this commercial come on the tv from the other room:
And within seconds, I realize the song they’re playing is an orchestral arrangement of “Where Is My Mind?” by Pixies. This isn’t the first time I heard companies rework this particular song to promote their products, but I think this particular arrangement is powerful and beautiful. One of the many things I love about music is that a song can be taken and be transformed to transpire another emotion or feeling. Just by changing the arrangement, the instruments used, and the tempo, the same song can take us on a different journey.
Here’s the original version of “Where Is My Mind?”:
My sister sent me a link to this video. And it is awesome.
Someone took clips from Harry Potter and set it to the Friends theme, and it’s amazing how perfect it is because they chose clips that emphasized the characters and their friendship. The line from the song “So no one told you life was gonna be this way” is the cherry on top because Harry didn’t know his life was going to turn out to be what it was, and it really only got better because his friends were there for him.
So, I move that we make Harry Potter a sitcom or television show. I mean, a lot must’ve happened in the nineteen years between the Battle of Hogwarts and the Epilogue of book seven that could really be showcase. Can you imagine nineteen seasons of a Harry Potter show? I’m in heaven.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: DJ Mike D is awesome. Out of my extensive music listening career, I have to say he is one of the only people who can take great songs and make them better. For instance, he just put out this remix of Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” a great song originally, but the remix has a great beat and pop to it.
This remix presents a drum beat and an organ that the original lacks, and fills out the song nicely. The thing about the original is that it’s meant, obviously, to be a slow, passion ballad. However, I think DJ Mike D captures the same effect but in a more upbeat way, and in someway the song feels happier. Again, the original song is beautiful, but DJ Mike D’s remix takes listeners on a different spin of Sheeran’s adventure.
Here’s the original version:
Since my last post about this hit maker, I got a shoutout from the one and only DJ Mike D via Twitter:
@phillipjspencer hey Phillip, someone happened to send me a link, I appreciate the write up.
Naturally, I tweeted back to him to thank him and suggest he remake Vance Joy’s song “Riptide,” to which he said he would “take a listen.” So, if you hear a DJ Mike D Remix of “Riptide,” you’re welcome.
I kind of want to challenge DJ Mike D to remake “Sledgehammer” by Fifth Harmony because I think that song’s production is pretty tight. But I thought that about other songs, and then he remade them and blew my mind. Here’s a list of other songs that I think he should consider working with (I’m writing this as though he’s going to read it…hey, it happened once, could happen again):
“Sledgehammer” – Fifth Harmony
“Riptide” – Vance Joy
“Before He Cheats” – Carrie Underwood
“Girls Chase Boys” – Ingrid Michaelson
“All About That Bass” – Meghan Trainor
If you want to check out more of DJ Mike D’s magic, visit his sound cloud page here.
It took me forever to figure out what the name of that song is. I was listening to Fall Out Boys song “Centuries” on the radio, and I heard the hook from the song above and knew I heard it somewhere before. I was like “that’s a 90s song, I know it, but I can’t remember who sang it or where the song came from….#frustrated.
Finally, after some research I found/discovered the song I was thinking of is “Tom’s Diner” by Susanne Vega, which actually is a late 80s song, but we can round it up to the early 90s. I thought I’d share in case any of you were plagued with the same frustration I was. Listen to the Fall Out Boy song below to hear what I’m talking about:
I found this British radio show that posts videos on YouTube of different musicians performing cover songs. Generally all the performances are incredible, but sometimes the cover songs some artists choose are rather unexpected,. I mean, Ed Sheeran singing Christina Aguilera’s song “Dirrty” and Hozier singing “Problem” by Ariana Grande is so unpredictable but awesome. I embedded some of the better/interesting performances I found. I do have to say that I think Hozier and Bastille’s performances are perhaps the best ones because they really make them their own.
How Sia didn’t win the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Vocal Performance for this song is beyond me. Her voice is perfection in this song, especially in this piano version. You can just hear the pain radiating out of her.
In other news, Sia apparently has a new album coming out entitled This is Acting, and she said it will be more pop than 1000 Forms of Fear. I read that she only released 1000 Forms of Fear because she wanted to be released from her publishing deal so she could focus on writing songs for other people, but with it’s success she’s moving forward with releasing new music. I just read that she’s going to title the album This is Acting because the songs on the album are songs she wrote for other artists, not for herself…so she’s “acting” on it…I’m overly excited right now…
"Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve." – JK Rowling