More holiday music:

["Got Something For You" - Best Coast & Wavves]

Cute! And catchy. There's not that much to this song, so that's all I have to say.


["Oh Santa!" - Mariah Carey]

I heard this in a store today and my initial thought was "Mariah Carey has more than one Christmas song?" This was the lead single from her second Christmas album, released last year.


["I Wish It Was Christmas Today" - Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, & Tracy Morgan]

SNL has contributed some true classics to the holiday music catalog--most notably, "The Chanukah Song," which was first performed on Weekend Update! This version was performed on SNL last weekend (SUCH AN EXCELLENT EPISODE, YOU GUYS), but it's been performed a number of other times on television (you can find a collection of them here; I'm partial to the version with the Muppets) and covered by Julian Casablancas.

There's a hip-hop version of everything

Finals fatigue = Emily making inane posts

[M. Hisataakaa - 風の通り道 (Path of the Wind remix) ft. Karakuri of A.Y.B. force]

Mad chill. Good to listen to while you write papers.

["Dr. Totoro" (Dr. Dre - The Next Episode Remix)]

I literally found this a minute ago. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I just like that it exists.

[djDOYOU - "Make a Man Touch the Sky" (Mulan vs. Kanye West)]

An old favorite of mine. Yeah. It's pretty epic and it makes you want to kick something's ass. Like finals week. Godspeed, everybody.

The happiest of holidays

I just put up a string of lights in my room and am really ready for this shitshow of a semester to be over! Here's some holiday music to fit the mood.

["Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" - She & Him]

This pared down cover of the Judy Garland classic is really lovely with some nicely restrained instrumentals. I'm not a big She & Him fan--I like Zooey's voice but it can be really cloying sometimes-- but in this song, she doesn't really stray into the nasally cuteness she sometimes affects.

Also worth checking out is their sped-up version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" where they switch genders. I really appreciate this because it sounds a lot less like a date rape about to happen. ("Say, what's in this drink?" ROOFIES. RUN, GIRL.)

["Linus and Lucy" - Vince Guaraldi]

"Linus and Lucy" might be more closely associated with the Charlie Brown TV specials than Christmas, but it counts because it made its first appearance in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Maybe something like "Christmas Time Is Here" would've been more appropriate, but I just like this better.

Hello again.

Does it make any sense trying to revive this?

Anyway, I do most of my blogging on Tumblr now, but I always liked the idea of this blog being a platform to share music among ourselves. So, no theme or real depth to this post. I really just want to get a couple songs I like a lot out there:

["I'm A Lady" - Santigold]

I'm probably super late to the game on this one, but I just found it on Rookie Mag's Friday playlists, which are good for when you're sick of all your own music. There's an annoying skip limit, though.

["Tell Her No" (The Zombies cover) - Tennis]

The original is worth checking out too.

["Is It True?" (Brenda Lee cover) - Tennis]

This is pretty fun to sing along to! Weirdly, I haven't been able to find a version of the original.

Starlights

Karen's last rather well thought-out post has made me want to write one with more depth.... Unfortunately, I haven't had time, so in the interest of keeping this blog alive I'll put that idea on hold. I've really gotten into Ellie Goulding lately, so here are two songs appropriate for the holiday that's just passed...

["Starry Eyed" - Ellie Goulding]

This is such a Kylie Minogue video.

["Lights" - Ellie Goulding]

There are also several good remixes of "Lights;" I have Xaphoon Jones' dubstep (or BoomBapStep, whatever he wants to call it) version.

Anyone interested in seeing her at Terminal 5 in 3 weeks?

Glitter In the Air by Pink

I think Pink is severely underrated as a serious artist. This is a song that I find very moving and it evokes a feeling in me I can't quite place my finger on--it's something like tenderness, softness, plus some sadness. I'm still working out what this song means for me.

The song alternates between stanzas consisting of a series of questions (questions that are not fully happy, such as "Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone / Your whole life spent waiting on a ring to prove you're not alone*") and stanzas that seem designed to giving the listener the sense that something is about to happen and urges the listener not to give up ("It's only half past the point of no return" suggests that no, all is not lost. You are on the verge of a life-changing moment. There is an undercurrent of sadness, perhaps disappointment or despair, present in the first two "question" stanzas is resolved in the last stanza of the song, wherein all the questions we, as listeners, are confronted with point to a decidedly happy moment ("Have you ever held you breath and asked yourself / Will it ever get better than tonight?") that all the struggle of the previous stanzas is building up to.

*I just want to note that I love the wordplay here--ring as in ringtone or wedding ring.

The title of the song, "Glitter In the Air" comes from the line "Have you ever thrown a fistful of glitter in the air?" I don't really understand this line. Glitter, to me, summons up images of innocence, magic, happiness, childhood, frivolity... To throw a fist full of glitter into the air is to look at the world through sparkly lenses for a brief brief moment of time. Yet, once that moment passes, you will never get all the giltter back into your hands.

Anyway! those are my thoughts.

Meet Misster.

[Misster - "Bomb Bomb Bomb"]

Taiwan's hottest new girl (yes, you read that correctly) band.

I think all of you need to hear this.

[Xaphoon Jones (of Chiddy Bang) - "The Jackson Pit"]

First time I listened to this, I couldn't stop smiling.

:)

I'm sure you've seen this already...

but OMFG. This guy totally blows my mind. The fact that he's a guy but can sing a girl's part better than 99% of the girls I know is just amazing. Daaaaaaaaaamn:

Girls and Boys

Since last month was Women's History Month, I was going to do some women in music theme post if I didn't have any other ideas. But it's April already anyway, so how about some gender equity instead?

[Sleater-Kinney - "Modern Girl"]

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to post the original or a cover here. This video helpfully makes that a non-issue: the Beatles' original starts playing right after the end of the version from Across the Universe.

[Jim Sturgess & The Beatles - "Girl"]

A combination that works surprisingly well:

[DJ Earworm - "If I Were a Free Fallin' Boy (Beyonce vs. Tom Petty)"]

Based on this clip's Youtube comments, Blur vs. Oasis is somehow still a relevant debate even though the '90s were 12 years ago.

[Blur - "Girls and Boys"]

I also wanted to post "Boyz" by M.I.A. here, but none of the uploads I found were embeddable... which is just as well, since the video is awesome but bordering on seizure-inducing. Here's a link to it on Youtube if you're curious.

And with that, I'll get back to all the work I've been putting off while writing this post.

Why are finals approaching so quickly.