Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Music Journey

My musical tastes are fairly... eclectic. And by eclectic, I mean I'm too lazy to develop interest in a particular band or style. So basically, I like songs that you can sing along to (hence an appreciation of the musical) and songs with a haunting quality to them (Chopin's at the root of that one). So when I'm looking for music to go in the background while I do other things, I tend to trust in the randomness of Youtube. To whit, I take the last band mentioned on my Facebook page, go to their first song posted on Youtube, and choose my next song based on what Youtube recommends next. The only rule is less a rule than a general tendency: no repeating songs, and songs should be chosen in such a way that I listen to as many different bands as possible.

So here's a random musical journey. It starts when someone on my feed mentions Rush...

Rush. "Tom Sawyer." 1981.
Meytal Cohen's cover of Rush's "Tom Sawyer." (Meytal is, frankly, kind of adorable. Which is perhaps not what most are looking for in a Rush cover, but I was fine with it.)
Metallica."One." 1989.
Guns 'n' Roses. "November Rain." 1992.
The Cranberries. "Zombie." 1994.
Johnny Cash. "Hurt." 2002 (Cover of Nine Inch Nails' 1995 version)
Pink Floyd. "Wish You Were Here." 1975.
Led Zepplin. "Kashmir." 1975.
The Doors. "Riders on the Storm." 1971.
Rolling Stones. "Paint it Black." 1966.
Animals. "House of the Rising Sun." 1964.
Eagles. "Hotel California." 1977.
Survivor. "Eye of the Tiger." 1982.
Michael Jackson. "Smooth Criminal." 1987.
(I had to go a LONG way down the list at this point to find a song that wasn't Michael Jackson)
USA For Africa. "We are the World."
Band-Aid. "Do They Know It's Christmas." 1984.
Spandau Ballet. "True." 1983.
John Waite. "Missing You."

I suppose the next point here would be to supply some sort of meaningful analysis, but... I got nothing. Don't have the musical background for it. Hence the exercise. It's easy enough to see the micro-connections between songs; more generally, it's mostly a "greatest hits of the 80s and 70s" sort of thing. That's... interesting? No wait, I mean, that's entirely to be expected. Maybe I need to try someone more recent/obscure next time.

Later Days.

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