Nickelback - OK so I know it is apparently cool to diss Nickelback, but I will say it here, I like them. They keep coming up with songs I like. Is it so bad to sing and do the fist pump in the air? Songs like Burn it to the Ground and Rock Star get me singing along, and hey, they are also from Hanna, Alberta.
City in Colour- Dallas Greene is a talented guy and a great song writer. I love a lot of his songs like Save your Scissors and my favorite is his Sleeping Sickness collaboration with Gordon Downie.
Pearl Jam - In a previous post I talked about how much I like Eddie Vedder's voice. His song Just Breathe is one where you here him and his guitar. He has a bit of that "crash test dummies" tone in this one too. mmmm mmmmm
Madonna - Yes, she has been in every one of my decades since the 80's, but she deserves the recognition. I really like her song "Give it to Me" and she knows how to collaborate with other artists to keep herself current. Always the marketing machine that madge. I see lady gaga getting a lot of influence from Madonna, although I think she is mixing that with Marilyn Manson influence to get the gaga.
Eminem - I like Eminem, I like his wit and his lyrics. I know that people can get offended by him but I think they often take his messages to literally. Don't get me wrong, he can be an angry dood, but he likes to mock things and use sarcastic lyrics to make his point. "Without Me" is a perfect example of this. Since his return from his hiatius, he has hit the charts again. I really like his song and video, Not Afraid.. His hair is dark, he looks determined and clean and is still good with the lyrics.
KD Lang - I have always liked the lesbian from Consort, but she really gained attention this year at the Olympics with her rendition of Leonard Cohens "Hallelujah". It is incredibly beautiful and I can listen to it over and over. Here is a version she did at the Juno's years ago.
So have i mellowed? Well, yes and no. I still like a wide variety of music depending on my mood. Some times I like the chillin stuff and other times I really like something with a kick in beat. Good music makes you feel something. Cliff has talked about the Johnny Cash version of Hurt. It is so powerful. I feel the same about songs like Hallelujah and Just Breathe.
So that is it for my music through the decades. I have lived through records, 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs and now all the digital formats that are out there. Whatever the technology, hook me up when I am in the old folks home because I will always love the toons!
My only, WTF is Nickelback. Sorry I cannot get behind someone who manufactures their stuff and probably doesn't write their own songs. Yeah they are from Alberta, but still...
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything else, you are bang on, even with KD Lang.
To each their own though. :)
It's been a weird decade. The whole music business is shifting their focus over to NOW, since they don't know if they'll have a tomorrow. So everything has been a little schizophrenic. And the result is a music press that labels everyone with a hot single the new 'geniuses', to the point that apparently generic crap like Vampire Weekend were supposed to impress people or something.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, you had the final culminations of Johnny Cash's work with Rick Rubin, including Hurt. It was powerful because the video really looked like a final plea for forgiveness from his wife for the shit they'd been through early on, and it came out just weeks before she died. You had Trent Reznor and Ryan Adams get off the smack and the booze and get back to writing good music. Public Enemy came roaring back with a good album.
But then you had Radiohead forget about guitars and the rap world sink further in to a swamp of self indulgent crap and ignore stuff like Sage Francis and Saul Williams and The Roots. So a bit hit or miss.
Personally, I'm not a Nickelback fan, but I think a lot of that isn't even their fault. I got sick of their music being overplayed, and then the legion of clone soundalikes started getting massive radio play and I just didn't want to hear it anymore.
Not a huge KD Lang fan, but her version of that song is killer (only Jeff Buckley's cover is within the vicinity of it), and that Olympic performance was astounding.
I liked Eminem in the beginning, but then I got tired of his repetitive schtick. His new stuff is really good, though...it seems the hiatus did him good. I really like that song he did with Rihanna, actually. It's a great song about bad relationships. And it works BECAUSE the two of them definitely know something about the subject...that tends to result in good music. And sadly, too much of what's coming out now is prepackaged fluff. How powerful can a song be when the person singing the lyrics had nothing to do with writing them? The words don't have any meaning for them.
Anyway, I don't know if you've mellowed, or if you've just broadened out your own musical horizons. At any rate, it's been a really good series of posts. And it's allowed to ramble on. :)