The Rainbow – The Apples In Stereo – I saw em open for Television years ago and I might add they were awesome. This Beatley (check out the band name) remains a real pleasure. Gives power pop a good name – A
So Aaron posted his top 25 albums of 2013 and I didn’t know one of them, though I do know Richard X Heyman among the honorable mentions and, er, the Beatles At The BBC among the best compilations.
At 41 minutes the album is like a play cut into separate scenes but more like a play of the mind where everything is happening at once; it doesn’t feel linear, it feels as if the story is occurring simultaneously, and so less than a story and more like a series of emotions going through change after change and ending in anger
Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires Of The City is overrated and I love the album. Katy Perry’s Prism is overrated and I don’t like the album but neither are quite as overrated as these three, VW is better, KP is worse, but these three most overrated albums of the year are off the charts…
While America slept, somewhere out of sight, “Drunk And In Love” is in t #12 and Miley’s “Adore You” has a new video and here is an easy prediction, they will both spend the next two months on the charts. PS “Adore You” is a terrific song.
I really love it when an artistic success is a popular success and looking at my list of fave albums, well, even Yeezus didn’t sell that much. Beyonce is a beacon of artistic integrity and musical kismet. A complete triumph to end 2013.
Once upon a time at home
I sat beside the telephone
Waiting for someone to pull me through
When at last it didn’t ring I knew it wasn’t you
Four songs off the album are among my favorites of 2013, and if nobody else likes her, well, you’re not her accountant, what does it matter to you? It shows you aren’t a member of a rabid pack of naysayers, you can go your own way and be true to your own, beter tastes.
Music writing is an instant mix of po-faced beat dissections and ass kissing and usually both, except, in an attempt to prove themselves above the fray, a major publication will dis a major work by a major performer (pace: Pitchfork).
Popdust is probably my favorite music website, it looks like a dream and is wildly sarcastic and funny and fun. It obsesses over K-Pop and has better ears than Pitchfork; if Popdusts Top 20 songs of 2013 seems a little obvious, well, the whole point with pop music is that it be popular…
As the name suggest it is a self portrait of sorts, Beyonce attempts to balance her insecurities as a woman with her securities as a woman, her refusal to compromise her and willingness to share that with an audience (not me: wrong fantasy).
Tug Of War – Paul McCartney – Lost in the midst of time, and never rolled out even when Macca is looking for something to change up in his show and despite it appearing on Wingspan, there is a real tug to the song, a sweet sadness – A-
If you haven’t heard Annaleigh sing “The History Of Wrong Guys”, it is one of the most wonderful things on Broadway, just funny and sweet and true and somehow you can hear Cyndi Lauper behind it as well… So fork over a hundred bucks and go before it’s too late.
Linda’s cover of Anna’s “Fast As My Feet”, with her three kids and Grandson joining in, works as an antidote to Rufus’ sorrow, as though despite all odds there is joy in life and in family that can remove the sting even from death through love and art. Perhaps the moral of this entire album.
She builds an artistic house of seasons and times passing and love and hope and than she surrounds it with melodic to care for it and take care of it, and as she studies these feelings, and shares them, they have the permanence of true love.
What is missing is the internal intelligence of the Live AtThe BBC sets. Which it is true that it is all of a year, and a great year, in the Beatles history, still something feels off in the way the songs follow each other.
“If you ever leave me I’ll be sad and blue, don’t you ever leave me I’m so in love with you”… Written by Lennon (“I Call Your Name” is on the flip side) this is Brill building brilliance from a 1960s pop superstar. The Beatles would have gone at it harder, there would have been a touch of self-parody – A
You better not pout but da Bing is sure letting the Andrew Sisters do a lot of heavy lifting on this version, gives them the best word to sing on the track “With little tin horns and little toy drums, Rooty toot toots and rummy tum tums…” – B+
There’s no doubt in my mind, Cults have a collection of sweet sweet catchy songs that curl in your ears like a warm kitten on a sofa, but will they be able to continue in this direction forever? How many ‘Go Outside’, one of their most famous songs, can they produce?
In “Saving Mr. Banks”, the Disneyfication of the pre-production behind “Mary Poppins”, the backstory becomes one of children and their fathers. Emma Thompson’s extremely bad tempered PL Travers is mourning who beloved father who died when Travers was a child
“The Great American Cult tour is not only brilliantly titled, but brilliantly supported. Four Year Strong, Daylight, and Mixtapes are the supporters. This is a diverse and wonderful lineup that will not only draw the pop punk crowd, but the rougher post-hardcore crowd as well.”
You hear about these kinda things but until you actually see it,a man shed 20 years just by getting onstage, it is hard to believe it actually happens and yet there it is! The great, one of the greatest, soul man, found the fountain of youth just by performing his songs to an audience at City Winery and perform them he did, in 90 minutes of take no prisoners soul he smashed through every barrier and came out triumphant. It’s a Christmas miracle.
If I preferred beats to melody, Matangi would be my favorite album of the year. These polyrhythmic beats on beats songs are to EDM what Kanye West is to Hip Hop: they sound nothing else, they sound even wilder than her previous albums.
Home For The Holidays – Perry Como – This one takes me back some eight years where a good friend used to sing this for me every Christmas, it is a sweet song isn’t it? – A
The melody is gorgeous, and Taylor sings it with a voice that sounds fragile at first but then you catch the strong undertow, as though gentle emotions can have just as much strength as the most ferocious; the joy in that sort of lyricism should need no explanation here
The album is here because the tracks can function as songs, without really knowing what’s happening, just as separate songs, great songs with great words, lots of jukes. “There is no plane, no pilot, it is a thought experiment…” Perhaps. but one with a heart.
So old folks and shuffle board, biker mamas and car mechanics rejoice. You got your rock and roll tour right here, WITH BUFFET! Yup, booze and old broads and 38 Special its a dream come true. Don’t forget your Levitra and cholesterol meds.
X Factor gets its winner Prison Officer Sam Bailey to the top of the charts and wins the UK Christmas single of the year, something that means not much here!!! People like the sub Celine Dion ululating climb every note to a towering thunder singing of game show vocalists but people are stupid
I’ve listened to Beyonce any number of times, and while it may not all be great, not a song is close to bad. And I’ve listened to One Direction any number of times and if a few songs are good, nothing here is great.
Love Is Gonna Come At Last – Bobby Womack And Patti Labelle – Womack is on the record as hating rap but the way he uses the chorus like a hook on this song, opening and closing the track with it, is an ancestor of rap for sure – A
When you start off with Paul McCartney singing “Merry Little Christmas” you set yourself up for goals unheard of. Right down to the adorable snow.. and I DONT EVEN LIKE MCCARTNEY! The magic of Fallon just radiates.
Here we go again, another singer receiving big bucks to perform in a less-than-okay country. Mariah Carey adds one mark to a long list (Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce, Usher, Kanye West, Nelly Furtado, 50 Cent, Sting,…) as she was paid $1 million to perform for Angolan President
she pretended that her tweet ‘was never intended to be public, and upon learning it wasn’t a private message, immediately removed it’. So Courtney Love didn’t know what Twitter is? What a joke. She also said that ‘the entire Twitter Posting was hyperbole making light of Holmes’ constant attention-seeking, and not a statement of fact’… attention-seeking?
No way are the networks gonna give you anything more than brass tacks when they know full well you’re either in the depths of holiday depression or drunk has hell and puking on your neighbors lawn.
The complaint is the songs don’t link thematic in your mind, it is more like a random collection of tracks, a playlist, but both the sound is the linking and Natalies voices sounds unique throughout. A terrific album.
So Feinstein’s is so no more and Michael has moved himself to San Francisco and opened a new room and yes, folks, it is missed but here he is again back for a Christmas stand at Birdland. A little pricey but should be worth the admission fee –I’ll be there Christmas Eve and Mike will be jazzing things up through December 28 th.
You Send Me – Sam Cooke – The smoothest of all soul singer seduced a white audience with this grown up puppy love masterpiece of 50s; pure and innocent but with the suggestion of sex – A+
The amazing thing here is how involved the big man is in the music, how alive Womack is to the sounds, how at 69 years old he might still be l a badass but he is a joyful, surviving badass; it’s like the world has grown only as big as the stage he controls and this world is timeless soul greatness.
At this time of the year when people compile their lists of best albums of the year, Arcade Fire’s ‘Reflektor’ is on a great number of these lists. Is it really justified? It would probably on mine but I have to be honest, I am not sure I would have put it on any list if the same album had come from another band that I had never heard of.
The big thing with Rudimental is dance pop is fun, and they are having fun presenting it to us but Home takes awhile because they don’t record it with the sumptuous oof they give it live. “Feel The Love” doesn’t achieve the anthem quality on stage, the cresting waves of melodic soul hooks, and it is still great.
Thee Oh Sees are taking an indefinite hiatus! That’s so sad because they are an unique band with an extraordinary energy, and their stoner-garage-punk-surf-psychedelic rock combines everything you want to hear and see at a live rock show. Frontman John Dwyer announced the news, this week, during a show at the Great American Music Hall.
Considering that I am not a fan and the whole hipster seen sorta makes me ill it is appropriate that it be chock full of dead flesh. This pizza contains tasso ham, chicken, andouille meatballs, and pepperon
“This is a great honor. Thank you to the people who nominated and voted for us. Thank you most of all to Kurt Cobain. And to everyone who’s kept rock music going strong for 60 years and counting.”
Anything Could Happen – Ellie Goulding – This is a big song for Ellie, completely addictive with those “wee wee wees” playing in the back of your head long after its over and a chorus of Ellie’s bringing it back home. Huge in the UK – A
“It almost feels like a scene in Skins, or an old punk scene. Seeing a bunch of guys just hanging out and having fun and being friends is so cool to see, and everyone in the pop punk scene claims it, and don’t quite show it as genuinely as ND did in this video. It’s adorable.”
So with new son and husband in tow, and just before Maria’s US “Up All Night” Tour (actually, the tour doesn’t have a name, I named it for her), she is performing a half show with her family live from her kitchen
Where the idea comes from I have no idea but the editor and creator of this YouTube masterpiece deserves some sort of awards for the skill used to create this video. Don’t be confused though, the tune used as accompaniment to the cartoon is not a holiday song at all
This isn’t subtext on Modern Vampires Of The City, with its strange echo of “The Elders Of Zion”title? I still don’t see why more isn’t being made of Ezra being Jewish when it reverberates through Rolling Stones album of the year
For many unbeliebers like me, I must admit it sounds like a Christmas present, People magazine has already set up a poll ‘Should Justin Bieber retire?’ and has so far received a 92% for a yes, but they have to be kidding right?
