Pentatonix covers Imagine Dragons (again - they covered "Radioactive" in 2013, with Lindsey Stirling) as part of the Ryan's World movie soundtrack:
Yeah, the slide on YouTube shows the official PTX 2024 promo photo (just like my account header) instead of them in their outfits for the video ... . And the "play" button is right over Kevin's face - boo!
I have played this video and reaction videos to this video over and over for the last few days. Such a rich, warm throwback to the great days of Motown, Stevie Wonder, and early solo Michael Jackson:
I'm not even 100% certain why, except that almost 40 years after they first recorded it, Cheap Trick could still do this song (with a sing-in from host Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates):
This is from a web video series called "Live from Daryl's House." I'm actually spending time watching a lot of videos lately, mostly music of some sort.
An old favorite:
And the moon shines high over Tucson
Over waters that were long ago dried
'Cause the moon don't care if the water's not there
It's high tide ...
Florence + the Machine do "Dog Days Are Over" with just her, a guitar, and an Irish harp ... and the audience helping on the hand-claps (me too!). Fair warning: it was apparently very hot in the little venue, and Florence goes on a long digression about how they're fans of the Arctic Monkeys, before the music starts.
This song makes me happy-cry. I can't even sing some of the lyrics because the tears are locking up my voice.
But I'm standing here now
With my heart held out to you
You would've thought a miracle
Was all that got us through
Well, baby, all I know
All I know is I'm still standing
And this is love ...
I wanted another Monday Music meme to do, but I didn't find anything I liked much. So I made one up.
I'll post a song, a favorite of some sort, and if you feel so inclined, you can add another song that's in conversation with it: a song mine reminded you of, a song that answers mine, another song by the same artist, a different version ... so many possibilities.
This just came up on Shuffle on my iPad while I was doing chores:
I'm a town in Carolina, I'm a detour on a ride
For a phone call and a soda, I'm a blur from the driver's side
I'm the last gas for an hour if you're going twenty-five
I am Texaco and tobacco, I am dust you leave behind
I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall
I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl
I'm the pines behind the graveyard, and the cool beneath their shade,
where the boys have left their beer cans, I am weeds between the graves.
My porches sag and lean with old black men and children
Their sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them
I am a town.
I am a church beside the highway where the ditches never drain
I'm a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name
I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age;
I am not your destination, I am clinging to my ways
I am a town.
I'm a town in Carolina, I am billboards in the fields
I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels
I am Pabst Blue Ribbon, American, and "Southern Serves the South"
I am tucked behind the Jaycees sign, on the rural route
I am a town
I am a town
I am a town
Southbound.
Having a tired, bummed out morning, looking for some live performances on Youtube to cheer me up, and I found this. It's probably not *quite* as impromptu as it seems, but wow, it's just a vocalist with a shaker and a tambourine, a guy with a ukelele, and a dude playing a wooden box. Pretty damn good:
As a young friend of mine said recently, "Train has never recorded anything that wasn't silly, and that's actually a compliment: I can use some silly a lot of the time."
30: A song that reminds you of yourself
Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel
I was haunted by this song from when I first heard it. It came out the year I turned 19, not long after I had my first major depressive episode on my own as an adult. The weird mysticism, the percussion beat to the odd 7/4 time signature, the theme of alienation from those who think they know you ("To keep in silence I resigned / My friends would think I was a nut"), and the yearning to go home (and at this point, my real home was pretty broken) hit me hard.
And then at the end, the singer realizes he doesn't need his things, all he needs is his actual home, where he can be himself. My spirit still rises in anticipation every time I hear the opening bars, and my heart is full in sympathy every time he sings "My heart going 'boom boom boom.""
( Cut for complete lyrics )The video is weird as all get out: I'm not sure what the cabbage theme at the fade-out has to do with anything.
29. A song that you remember from your childhood
A Bushel and a Peck, sung by Vivian Blaine in the original Broadway cast recording of "Guys and Dolls"
Broadway was big in our house, My mother, who had a pretty decent soprano, used to sing this to me and my sister.
I loved Sara Bareilles' fist album, Little Voice, so much. The follow up was more sticky and gooey, less passion and tartness. When she gives the title callout in this, it hits me right in the feels.
I'm ready and waiting
For a heart worth the breaking
But I'd settle for an honest mistake in
The name of one sweet love.
28: A song by an artist with a voice that you love
The Water Lily by Priscilla Herdman
I have a thing for alto voices. I've already showcased Mary Fahl (October Project), Annie Lennox (Eurythmics), and Tracey Thorne (Everything but the Girl) in this space.
Here's a fairly obscure folksinger whose voice has comforted me a number of times, including during the scary hospital stay in my early 30s when I first became a heart patient. The words to this were written by Henry Lawson ( 1867–1922), Australian writer and "bush poet." Herdman's album of the same title includes a number of songs by Lawson. I think this one is the most beautiful and by far the most haunting.
27: A song that breaks your heart
I Can't Make You Love Me by Bonnie Raitt
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power
But you won't, no you won't…
26: A song that makes you want to fall in love
We Walk the Same Line - Everything but the Girl
"If you lose your faith, babe
You can have mine
And if you're lost I'm right behind
'Cause we walk the same line ...
It's no coincidence that I also think of this as the theme song for my OTP, Gojyo and Hakkai from Saiyuki.
And wow, it's been two months since I've posted one of these.
25: A song by an artist no longer living
New York's Not My Home by Jim Croce
Philadelphia native Jim Croce was most known for his rollicking story songs, like "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," sweet love tunes ("I Have to Say I Love You in a Song"), and ballads about being a lonely musician, like this one. The day before his hit single "I Got a Name" was released in 1973, he and his long-time lead guitarist Maury Muehleisen died in a plane crash. He was 30 years old.
(Details from Wikipedia, although I dimly remember the actual events: he died when I was 15 and just starting my record collection. I can sing every word of a number of his songs, including Leroy Brown, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim," and "Workin' at the Carwash Blues.")
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