I Need To Distract Myself
I’m mad at myself for about 34,945 different reasons, so let’s talk about the future.
The beginning of 2020, more specifically. That’s when I’ll be done with my Decade of Music project and will have approximately 3,650 new songs since the beginning of 2010.
That’s a lot of music, and of course it must be sorted/ranked/raved about in various ways. So here’s what I’m thinking I’ll do once the project is over.
- A list containing the top song of each decade.
- A list containing my top 10 songs overall (regardless of decade)
- A list containing my top 10 “most beautiful” songs (regardless of decade)
- A list containing my top 10 music videos (this will require me to watch every single song’s music video…a daunting task, but so is this entire project)
- Maybe a top 10 list for each major genre?
- A list of my top 5 songs for the entire 10 years, with explanations. It’d be hard to find the top 5, but I think it would make me really think about which songs were my absolute favorites.
- And, of course, stats on genres, stars, song lengths, etc., both overall and for each decade. Because that’s what I do.
Is there anything else you guys would like to see from this project? The end is NEAR* and I’m getting excited.
*The end is actually not that near. But it’s 2017 now and this thing is set to end in 2019, so it’s actually not that far off.
The Worm
Hey, check it out, the DJ Earworm 2016 mashup is here!
Not bad, not bad. Certainly better than 2015, but as I mentioned last year, 2015 was not a great year for music in my opinion.
Hell, let’s rate all the ones he’s done so far, shall we?
In order from fave to least: 2009, 2014, 2008, 2013, 2016, 2007, 2012, 2010, 2015, 2011
Yay!
This is FANTASTIC
I have a new theme song:
Everything in this is truth.
OK Went
So OK Go has done it again:
I like this one a lot. I don’t know if any artists will ever be able to beat these guys’ music videos. And while I definitely am impressed by their more elaborate ones, I still really like this (relatively) simple one from waaaaay back when:
In the Key of Spook
I’m super into my dumb NaNoWriMo story right now. I know it’s early in the month and I have very little written right now, but like I always do, I have a few songs that I think “match” well with the tone/theme/goings on of my story. So here’s the list for Ghost Town Realty:
- I Died So I Could Haunt You by The Five Ghosts. Kind of an obvious choice, of course, but how many songs about ghosts/haunting are this upbeat?
- Hello by Adele. I like how wanting this song sounds. There’s a yearning behind it that I think matches really well with the relationship between one of my living characters and one of my ghost characters.
- Indigo by Epica. I don’t know what the climax of my story will be yet, but this would be the song to go along with it.
- Life is Beautiful by Vega 4. Another kind of mournful/yearning song, but with a slightly different feel. My main character and his struggles with live vs. death needs a mournful song.
- When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die by Moby. The right-after-the-climax song or the sad-but-resolute-end-of-the-story song.
DIVVY UP THE BALLS
Oh my god, that piccolo clarinet. Super cute. That’s what I needed when I was nine years old and my fingers were too stubby to cover the C hole on a regular clarinet.
(teehee i said ‘c hole’)
Tune-A-Licious
I’ve been doing something a little bit different with my music as of late. Rather than picking my “Favorites +” (4+ star songs) playlist and randomly shuffling that, I’ve been just randomly shuffling my entire music collection—which is a little over 4,000 songs—and just going from there.
I’d forgotten just how many of my songs were tied to very specific moments or time periods in my life. Hell, I bet I can put my tunes on shuffle right now and pull out half a dozen or so that are very closely tied to specific times in my life.
Let’s do it.
- Pompeii by Bastille: the end of fall semester 2013. That was probably my favorite semester of school I’ve ever had for quite a few different reasons, and I remember listening to this son a lot that winter, especially around finals.
- Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) by Vertical Horizon: haha. Um. My first breakup song. I happened to download it around that time in 2007 and it’s pretty much the perfect “feel sorry for me” song, so yeah. Sitting in my dorm room and crying! Fun times!
- Anything on the Black Eyed Peas’ “Monkey Business” CD: senior year of high school. This was one of the few CDs I owned at the time and would play it in the car driving to/from school.
- Anything on Ashlee Simpson’s “Autobiography” CD: the summer between the last year of high school and the first year of college. I still wasn’t too into music and so this was another set of songs that got played over and over and over again that summer.
- Without You by David Guetta and Usher: Marana, AZ. I moved down there in December 2011 to be with my mom, and it was the most isolated place I’ve ever been. I remember listening to this song in my room before/after doing my 10-mile walking loop every single day.
- Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes: Marana, AZ. See above.
- Say It Right by Nelly Furtado: summer 2017. This was always on the radio and I’d listen to it on my way to/from work (Wendy’s).
- Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs: fall 2008. This was one of our frequently-played Rock Band songs in the house with Sean and the others, so it always brings up memories of all of our shenanigans whenever I hear it on shuffle.
- Some Nights by Fun.: Tucson, AZ. Not only did I download this song while down there, but there are quite a few lyrics in it (e.g., “Well, that is it guys, that is all – five minutes in and I’m bored again/Ten years of this, I’m not sure if anybody understands/This one is not for the folks at home/Sorry to leave, mom, I had to go/Who the fuck wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun?”) that summarized my feelings about why I was in Tucson in the first place and how much I wanted things to change.
- Good Life by OneRepublic: my very brief but awful time in London, ON. I downloaded this song like a day before I moved there and I listened to it a lot while I sat in my dorm room because I was too anxious to do anything else. I also listened to it a lot in those two aimless months between moving back to Moscow from London and moving down to Tucson with my mom. It still causes a very bittersweet pang in my brain whenever I hear it.
- Dildo by Interactive: hahaha. Band friends and basement Rock Band parties/orgies. I miss you nerds.
Yesssssssss
It’s going to be really hard not to fill my Top 50 playlist with these amazing remixes I keep finding this year.
Not saying that this is 5-star material, but if it’s not, it’s really damn close.
“I’m goin’ 38, Dan…”
I’m kind of in love with Macklemore’s Downtown. Especially the music video:
It was filmed in Spokane, you know.
Edit: Hahaha, this is pretty great, too:
Edit 2: Imogen Heap! Wonderful:
(Sorry for the music video dump.)
Freaking Walk the Moon, Man
I am seriously addicted to this song. This is the fastest a song has been promoted to a Five Star in a long time.
Hee
Haha, this is a well-done music video.
And have another totally unrelated one, because for some reason I was thinking about this music video a while ago and just decided to look it up again.
HOEDOWN, BITCHES
ALRIGHT, SO.
Tonight I was listening to some Aaron Copland, ‘cause Copland’s awesome. Specifically, I was listening to Hoedown on repeat for about a half an hour. Some of you may know it better as “the beef song”:
Anyway, awhile back, Nate and I had either seen the name of this song somewhere or had heard a reference to it, and when I referred to it as “the beef song,” he didn’t know what I was talking about (‘cause apparently it’s only ‘Murican beef that’s for dinner). So tonight when I had finished listening to it for like the tenth time, I let him have a listen and told him again that this was the beef song. He mentioned that he thought he’d heard this somewhere before. After a quick YouTube search, it turns out that a very similar song was in Fieval Goes West!
This song was actually composed by James Horner (RIP); apparently he took Copland’s Hoedown and kind of remixed/remade it to fit the movie.
Pretty awesome if you ask me.
Holy Hell
This is Disturbed’s cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. It is amazing.
This gave me chills, seriously. He’s got a beautiful voice.
Tunes for All!
2016 has been a fantastic year for music thus far. I don’t really have anything to blog about today (but do I ever, really?), so have some of my favorites. I’ve posted a few of these on here already, but it’s my blog, so I’m just going to post them again. Take that!
Go? OK!
So remember this post when I said that OK Go’s next step in the world of music videos would be to shoot one in space?
Well, I was close.
Zero gravity! Very cool.
Apparently there was lots of throwing up while filming this, haha.
Genghis Kahn
I love this.
Claudia’s 365 Days of Music: Year 6 – A Review
‘Sup, bitches? The 6th year of my music project has ended, so let’s look at some stats, shall we?
Total songs: 365
Total time: 24 hours and 27 minutes
Total size: 1.72 GB
Mean song length: 3:57.43
The Five Stars
Listed in order of acquisition!
Over my Head (Gabe Flaherty Remix) by The Fray
Doin’ It Right (Decadon Remix) by Daft Punk
Gold (Thomas Jack Radio Edit) by Gabriel Rios
Say What You Want by The Barenaked Ladies
Work This Body by WALK THE MOON
Take a Walk (A Capella) by Passion Pit
Amazon (Original Mix) by Gabe Flaherty
The five most beautiful/touching songs of the year:
Dare You to Move by The Vitamin String Quartet
Shenzou by Steven Price
Nessun Dorma sung by Pavarotti
The Gravel Road by James Newton Howard
Deliverance by Brian Tyler
The Overall Top Five
Work This Body by WALK THE MOON
I love everything about this song: tempo, length, lyrics, THE DRUMS, and especially the last like 15 seconds, when that extra layer of background lyrics (noises?) is added. This is tied with Gold as my favorite for the year, I’m pretty sure.
Gold (Thomas Jack Radio Edit) by Gabriel Rios
I really like the violin in this song (and the general chorus as well). Plus, the lyrics made me think of an interesting idea for a story, and any song that inspires me to write gets an A+ in my book.
Take a Walk (A Capella) by Passion Pit
This guy managed to take my second favorite Passion Pit song and perform it (in my opinion) better than Passion Pit. The first 25 seconds deserve a five-star on their own, holy freaking crapples. Beautiful.
Amazon (Original Mix) by Gabe Flaherty
So the dude who gets one of his remixes into my “Top Five” list every year (see the next song in this list for an example) made an original song, and it’s awesome. The chorus makes my toes tingle.
Over my Head (Gabe Flaherty Remix) by The Fray
FREAKING GABE FLAHERTY, MAN. This was like one of my first songs of the year and it still is one of the best ones. He gives a very different feel to this The Fray song, and I really like it. Again, the chorus is fantastic.
Now, pie charts!
[Edit: Ugh, Office 2013. They fucked up a perfectly good pie chart is what they did. Look at it. It’s got bad formatting.]
In terms of play count, alternative, electronic, and pop were all pretty evenly split. Interesting.
Onward to year seven!
United State of Pop 2015
This year’s United State of Pop is out!!!
Meh. It’s not my favorite of the ones he’s done, but I don’t blame that on him. I blame that on this year’s music. The other guy I get my mashups from, Daniel Kim, has two parts for his Pop Danthology 2015, and I’m not a big fan of either one. Again, I think it’s this year’s music.
But judge for yourselves!
COLDPLAY NEEDS TO BE STOPPED
Seriously. This is one of my new favorite songs. (Probably not a five-star, but pretty close!)
Have another:
That nonsense is live, holy hell.
DoopDoop
This thing is pretty cool.
You basically place arrows, pointing different directions, on the grid, then press play to see what sounds you’ve got. Here’s a little dinky example from me.
Here are a bunch of nice examples from a Reddit thread.
Jenkees!
So I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about Ronald Jenkees before (I’m too lazy to check, hahaha), but one of his songs, Disorganized Fun, came up on shuffle this morning, so I decided to share the video of him playing it. I think I originally downloaded this song in…2010?
Anyway, he’s pretty awesome.
Mad skillz.
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