All About You

You Really Got Me by The Kinks

It’s time for another train post, how exciting.

I have approximately 2 hours to tell you about ‘You’. Should be enough, though ideally I’ll do it in less because I have a magazine and two Collings and Herrin podcasts to attend to – lots of train material today.

So, ‘You’. After finishing ‘W’ I have X-Ray by the Maccabees, and then Yellow Submarine and Yesterday by The Beatles. Then it’s ‘You’ time. It really ain’t too surprising ‘You’ comes up a lot – writers like to talk directly to people frequently, so using the second person is expected. It also helps that ‘You’ can be singular and plural, so there is more opportunity to use it.

Anyway, there a quite a few to get through, so let’s crack on:

You Ain’t Going Nowhere – Bob Dylan

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet – Bachman-Turner Overdrive (yes, purchase spurred by the Harvey the dog TV ad, but it just reminded me what a good song it already was)

You Can Call Me Al – Paul Simon

You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones

You Can’t Fool Me Dennis – Mystery Jets

You Can’t Hurry Love – Phil Collins and The Supremes (I have both versions because it is THAT good a song…)

You Have Placed a Chill in My Heart – Eurythmics (another artist that comes up ridiculously a lot even though I only have one album by them – admittedly a best of, but still)

You Really Got Me – The Kinks

You Rock My World – Michael Jackson (said it before and I’ll say it again – didn’t like the guy, but you can’t deny some of his songs were good)

You Send Me – Jack Peñate (love Jack, love this old song, perfect combination. Randomly found this online somewhere and was very pleased)

You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties – Jona Lewie & Man Like Me (thanks Ikea)

You’re Gonna Lose Us – The Cribs (not sure I’ve talked about The Cribs before – I used to really like them and have the album Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever, but for some reason I’ve gone off them a lot. I think my taste has just gradually leaned away from their sort of music…)

You’re So Cool – Hans Zimmer (for what felt like years I was trying to find a piece of music that was basically just xylophone/glockenspiel plinky-plonky sounds that was used in loads of films. Then, after much research I found it was this – though I think there are many variations and this isn’t ‘the one’ for definite – which is from the film True Lies)

You’re the Voice – John Farnham (randomly caught some of Hot Rod on TV once and this song is used. Like a lot of adverts, TV and film are prone to do, it reminded me what a great song it is. It’s probably cheese to the max, but I don’t care)

So that was all about ‘You’. I’m not sure writers like to talk as much about ‘You’ as they do themselves (there were about 4 posts on just ‘I’), but it’s still a popular topic. Are there any other famous ‘You’ songs? Probably a ton, but without the internet at the moment I can only think of You and I by the Gaga and You’re the One which must be a song title by loads of people… right?!

Anyway, I will sort out the picture and video when I’m home, now I’ve got an hour left of train journey to endure/enjoy.

Ta ra,

L x

Classic:

Write that White

The Writer – Ellie Goulding

I’m going to wrap up ‘W’ in this post, even though I’ve got a lot of songs left. The reason being – I only have one word that appears more than twice – ‘White’. I will list all the songs that appear just twice too, because otherwise this would be super-short, and who would want that?! Mmm…

So, let’s kick off with ‘While’:

While We Wait – Jack Johnson

While You Wait for the Others – Grizzly Bear

Now ‘White’. I suppose as ‘Black’ came up, it was likely ‘White’ would, too. It represents hope, peace, light, innocence, heaven, clouds and also blankness and emptiness; a lot for writers to work with, basically. So, songs I have are:

White Ladder – David Gray (I never really paid attention to David Gray before; he seemed fairly mundane and average. But a while ago I heard his song  Sail Away on the radio and realised I really liked it. Then I thought, hey, I quite like David Gray. I already had This Year’s Love because it’s a beautiful song, and decided I’d like the whole White Ladder album - Babylon is all right, and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye and Please Forgive Me are quite good, too. I also went on a bit of a David Gray-athon and bought Dead in the Water, Be Mine and The One I Love. It is all a bit ‘middle of the road’, but kind of nice and comfortable music)

White Sky – Vampire Weekend

White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes (the song that started it all…)

Right, now I have two ‘Who’ songs:

Who Knows Who Cares - Local Natives

Who’s That Girl – Eurythmics

Two ‘Why’ songs:

Why Hip Hop Sucks in ’96 – DJ Shadow

Why Should You Come When I Call? – Counting Crows

Two ‘Wild’s:

Wild Honey – The Beach Boys

Wild Horses – The Rolling Stones

Two ‘William’s:

William Powers – The Maccabees (have I mentioned how much of a Maccabees convert I am? Well, definitely with their most recent album, anyway)

William Tell Overture – Gioachino Rossini (naturally)

Two ‘Wolf’s:

A Wolf in Geek’s Clothing - The Naked & Famous

Wolf Pack – The Vaccines

Two ‘Word’s:

Word By Word – Bombay Bicycle Club

Words – GIVERS

Two ‘Would’s:

Would I Lie to You? – Eurythmics (so should be the TV programme’s theme tune)

Wouldn’t It Be Nice – The Beach Boys

And finally, the last song in my ‘W’ doesn’t have a word that occurs a lot, but I though I’d mention it:

The Writer - Ellie Goulding (pretty much the reason why I bought her album. Really love this song, but like all very good songs, I have to ration my listening of it)

Right, so that’s ‘W’ over with. So, WHY should you come back (heavy wink)?! – Next week I’ll get onto ‘Y’, which actually has quite a few words for me to yap on about.

It seems this blog is going to end how it started – with no one reading it, but hey, what do I care?! Writing this is just for my own benefit… of course.

Huhhhhh… bye.

L x

Where and When?

When You Walk in the Room by Fyfe Dangerfield (from Fly Yellow Moon)

I’m feeling rather uninspired when it comes to naming this post, so have gone with the obvious.

Two question words: ‘When’ and ‘Where’. Is there much to explain with these words? Not really. Well, with both it seems they are often not actually being used to start questions in the songs I have, more just pronouns for statements on time and place. They don’t have the added present tense verb ‘do’ or ‘will’ to make them questions… I’m sure there’s a more technical term that I would have learnt during my English degree to describe how these words are being used here, but it eludes me now.

So, ‘When’. When will this be over?! Soon, I promise. Here are my ‘When’ words:

When Doves Cry – Prince

When I Grow Up – The Beach Boys

When Tomorrow Comes – Eurythmics

When Will I See You Again – The Three Degrees (from the Be My Baby sixties album I bought fairly recently)

When You Walk in the Room – Fyfe Dangerfield (quite a funky tune from Fyfe, quite fun and one of the better ones from his album)

When You Walk in the Room – Jackie DeShannon (completely different song, this one from the sixties album again)

When You’re Young and in Love – The Marvelettes (another one from that album. It appears the gals in the sixties liked asking ‘When’ questions, or just using the word ‘When’ seeing as they’re not actually questions…)

OK, now ‘Where’ in the world are we?

Where Is My Wild Rose – Robin Pecknold (a cover of a Chris Thompson song, apparently, and from the three free songs he released a while back)

Where Nobody Knows – Kings of Leon

Where You Lead – Carole King (yes, I have this because of Gilmore Girls, why else?)

So that’s all for now. Not long to go now… it’s a shame I’m feeling a bit lacklustre about this whole thing and my blog-venture may go out on a limp rather than a high, not that there would really be a ‘high’… what am I saying? I have no idea any more, I better leave.

Bye,

L x

Bit random video, but the only other ones of this song were live performances that didn’t really carry across the track that well, and a boring ‘lyrics’ video. This is a montage of three Indian/Hindu weddings it appears, but it sort of works quite nicely. These videos are really just a way of putting the audio of the song here anyway, no need to pay attention to the visual:

Sweet Songs

Sweets for My Sweet by C.J. Lewis (HILARIOUSLY INAPPROPRIATE single cover here!)

It’s time for the last post on ‘S’. After ‘Sun’ songs, I get to ‘Sweet’ songs (I do have three ‘Surf’ songs but they’re all by the Beach Boys – so stereotypical of them tsshh…). So, ‘Sweet’ – an adjective to describe sugary niceness, innocence, and just loveliness, not far off the use of ‘Sun’, actually. Of course it can also mean actual sugary treats; ‘candy’ as Americans would say, but I think generally it will be used in the adjectival form in songs.

My ‘Sweet’ songs are:

Sweet Child o’ Mine – Taken by Trees (used in that John Lewis ad a while back. I quite like the original – you can’t argue it’s not a great song, but it’s a bit tiresome these days and this one’s a nice, gentle version)

Sweet Disposition - Temper Trap (really love this, though it was one of those songs I had to avoid hearing for a while because it was played everywhere and used in every television show and advert possible. I’m still not sure if I can hear it now, but I’m keeping it because I think in a couple of years, after not hearing it in a long time, I can listen to it and really enjoy it. I know I’m silly to like a song less if it gets played a lot, but it’s something I can’t seem to control – a song can be really special to me when the amazingness is still fairly new and I’m still discovering how great it is. The magic is lost when I’ve heard it too many times and it makes me so sad that I can’t get that special feeling back that I used to get when listening to it before – does that make any sense at all?! I find it hard to put into words…)

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics

Sweet James - Alex Winston (nice song from the Sister Wife EP. Was going to use this for my picture and video – but there are no videos of it on YouTube! Scandalous! Will have to go with the classic that’s coming up…)

Sweets for My Sweet – C.J. Lewis (From my super-awesome-don’t-knock-it ‘The Ultimate Collection – Nineties 100 Hits’ album. It was a gift, I didn’t buy it… but that doesn’t matter because I love it anyway. Only just found out this was originally a song by the Searchers in the sixties – crikey!)

That’s all the sweets you’re getting. Was this short and sweet? For me, fairly. I’ve just realised though, that I haven’t got Sweet Home Alabama, which is a bit of a crime – I might have to download it now.

And that’ll be it for ‘S’ – all I have after ‘Sweet’ songs is Sympathy for the Devil.

Until next time…

L x

Sleeping Sister

Sister Wife by Alex Winston

This week I continue with ‘S’ and I will be ‘talking’ (i.e. writing a rambly, nonsensical, very boring post) about the words ‘Sister’ and ‘Sleep’.

‘Sisters’ are indeed, doing it for themselves, if you will. Like ‘brother’ the word means a bit more that the blood relation and has come to mean your ‘fellow woman’ as well. Far out. But ‘Brother’ didn’t actually come up in my list did it? *Goes to look* Nope. And I’ve just had a looksy online and there appears to be NO songs that start with ‘Brother’ – insanity? So why are there some that start with ‘Sister’? Ummm… maybe it’s a bit like ‘She’ again, in that women don’t mind singing about other women but men generally stick to just talking about women too and not other guys? This is all just my mind rambling off in search of an answer, though, once again I don’t know the answer.

So. My ‘Sister’ songs are:

Sister Christian - Original Broadway Cast of ‘Rock of Ages’ (originally by Night Ranger. Went to see Rock of Ages in the West End a while ago and now have the Broadway recording (thanks to my house mate Anna – merci beaucoup!). It’s a musical (tick), about 198os Los Angeles (tick), with American cheesy rock songs (tick), and it’s pretty funny (tick). What more could you want?!)

Sister Wife - Alex Winston (this was the first song I came across, some how – probably on an advert, of Alex Winston’s. I then downloaded the Sister Wife EP which has this song, obviously, and five others. They are all really good. One of them is a song that’s been used on a couple of adverts, a TK Maxx one in particular, called Choice Notes, which is nice but not as good as the others just because I’ve heard it too much. Sister Wife may be my favourite, but I also really love Fingers and Toes which has a better verse than chorus – a rare occurrence with a song I think. Should really see if she has some albums for me to download actually.)

Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves - Eurythmics (the most famous ‘Sister’ song)

That’s it. Though we can’t forget the brilliant theme tune to the Nickelodeon show ‘Sister, Sister’ too, even though I don’t have it on my iPod… maybe I should though!? Anyway, ‘Sister’ is obviously a great word because they are such an awesome relation to have – I have two most excellent of sisters, and girls rule, OK?

Right, now: ‘Sleep’. Sleeping is interesting (I use the term liberally) because it can be both very dull – it’s something we all do for half the day, every day, and a bit interesting – due to dreams and when we use it as a euphemism for something else you do in bed… I’ll say no more. So there can be a few reasons for writing about ‘Sleep’. The songs I have are:

Sleep Alone  - Bat for Lashes (from the Sleep Alone/Moon and Moon EP. Good song, not as gorgeous as Moon and Moon though)

Sleep Through the Static  - Jack Johnson

Sleeping Beauty – Waltz - Tchaikovsky (from ‘The Classic Experience’ CD that I think was my mum’s. I like classical songs that I know… which is a really stupid thing to say, but true. I’m sure there are classical pieces that I don’t know and if I heard a couple of times I’d like, but it’s much harder to do than with pop songs. I had taken the album off my old iPod because I would just skip them straight away when they came on shuffle, but I do find them very calming and are good for when I want to concentrate on something but still listen to music. Or I want to get all sentimental when looking at nice scenery. I’m thinking of creating a really long playlist of songs to listen to on shuffle for general use too, so then I won’t put these classical songs on it and have to skip them when they come up.)

OK, that is it. Sorry for the lengthy side-notes on some of the songs. I’ll see you at ‘So’.

Laterz x

 

Alex Winston’s Sister Wife; annoyingly attractive and a satisfyingly great voice:

 

The L Word

Ambivalence Avenue by Bibio (Lovers' Carvings)

Okie dokie people. Here we go with the most predictable word of the whole lot: ‘Love’.

To quote Ross from Friends (as I often do…):

“Ah, love. L-O-V-E love. ‘L’ is for life. I mean what is life without love? ‘O’ is for OH WOW! …” And so on.

Although it is the most talked/sung about sentiment/emotion/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, I actually only have eight songs that begin with ‘Love’, though that doesn’t include the two L.O.V.E songs I mentioned here. But, there are clearly about a million more that I don’t own.

I just looked some up, and there are indeed too many to mention, but I did notice these two which were next to each other in a list and their presence pleased me:

Love Will Keep Us Together - The Captain and Tennille

Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division

This seems to sum up our use of the word ‘Love’ in songs – it’s either the most amazing thing in the world, or the cause of a lot of misery etc etc. Well… I suppose that’s not completely true, some songwriters get more complex about the concept, but it is usually the case that ‘Love’ songs can fall into one of two camps.

Anyway, enough with the waffle, here are my ‘Love’ songs:

Love In an Elevator - Aerosmith

Love Is a Stranger - Eurythmics

Love Is Better Than a Warm Trombone - Gomez (interesting title…)

Love Me Do  - The Beatles

Love Me Girl - Yeasayer

The Lovecats - The Cure

Lovers’ Carvings - Bibio (used on a Kindle advert. Haven’t got any other songs by Bibio, but based on this one I would think I’d like more of his/their work, I just haven’t bothered to spend the time listening to any other tracks yet.)

Lovesong - The Cure

I think I would have had Love Is the Drug on here from the Radio Est 1967 album (actually a Kylie Minogue cover of the Roxy Music classic, but a fairly good cover) but for some reason I took it off my iPod – maybe I took the whole album off at one point… I fail to remember.

Well, I think that should be it for now. I thought it would take me a while to tackle the whole ‘Love’ schtick, but actually I didn’t have that many songs. I suppose there are also loads of songs that contain ‘Love’ in the title, just not at the start, and millions that mention ‘Love’ within the song, but just don’t include it in the title.

OK, I’ll bow out now, and see you at M. Mmmhmm?

L x

Bibio’s Lovers’ Carvings (at around 1.30 it turns into a whole new song. So good):

It’s ‘Is’, isn’t it?

The Best of Bob Marley and The Wailers

And so it continues.

I feel most people’s, and possibly my own, interest is waning. But I do not want to abandon my ‘plan’, so I will keep going, even if it is for my own amusement. *Sigh*

I’m finishing ‘I’ today and all I have left is ‘Is’ (again, confusing, sorry), ‘Isn’t’ and ‘It’s’. Basically, all words with ‘Is’ in, contracted or not. Don’t think I need to comment on the use of ‘Is’, it’s fairly self-explanatory. The only thing I will say is that I’m surprised I don’t have any songs, at all, that begin with just ‘It’. Though, thinking about it, I can only think of one song, in the entire universe, that begins with ‘It’ – It Started with a Kiss by Hot Chocolate – are there any others?? (I’m probably only talking to YOU Anna, as I’m fairly sure you’re the only one reading – so you better answer!)

Anyway:

Is This Love - Bob Marley

Is This Love? - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Isn’t She Lovely - Glee Cast (Ashamed, yes. But I used to have Stevie Wonder’s on here because I had his Songs In the Key of Life album, but there were a few songs that annoyed me with their repetitive-ness and length, so got rid of the whole album. Glee’s version is sweet)

It’s Alright (Baby’s Coming Back) - Eurythmics

It’s Not Over Yet - Klaxons

It’s Only Natural - Crowded House

I think ‘I’ is finally finished now. Next will be ‘J’ and I will be able to cover all my ‘J’ songs in one post, it seems. Poor ‘J’, it doesn’t get much word, or song title, coverage… this is what my life has come to – caring about the frequency of letters and words in song titles. I am the meaning of cool.

À bientôt

L x

FUN:

Here it is

Beachcomber's Windowsill by Stornoway

I had originally intended to talk about the word ‘Here’ in my last post along with ‘Help’, but I got a bit carried away talking about Fleet Foxes… So, ‘Here’ is getting a whole post dedicated to it, right here… ha ha… oh dear.

I am slightly surprised by ‘Here’. Why would songwriters be talking about ‘Here’ so much? Is ‘There’ etc going to come up too? Maybe it is because ‘Here’ is where the writer would be and a lot of song writing is self-centric and almost self-indulgent at times… but yet again, I think I will disprove this with the song titles I have. And yes, actually I have just looked and ALL my ‘Here’ songs are ‘Here Comes…’ which is more just an accepted phrase, and nothing to do with the actual physical position of ‘Here’.

OK, I should look at my songs more closely before I start rambling about the meaning behind the occurrence of a word. So all the songs are actually talking about something ‘coming’ (no sniggering, please) towards them; either an ominous and bad thing, or something rather more pleasant. And so maybe everybody is just looking to the future, as always. Sigh… I’m tired.

‘Here’ they are anyway:

Here Comes the Anxiety - The Wombats (I’m not a big fan of The Wombats, but I bought their debut album way back when on the back of their first single Let’s Dance to Joy Division for my sister’s birthday, and decided to keep the album myself too. I did like them, but again I heard their songs too many times and got a bit fed up of them. Some of the album songs are fun, especially Little Miss Pipedream and School Uniforms (only because it’s about a girl called Louise), and this one’s OK, but in a word: meh.)

Here Comes the Blackout…! - Stornoway (very lovely band, very lovely album – Beachcomber’s Windowsill. Have had the pleasure of seeing them live too, actually before I had given their album a good enough listen, and it probably encouraged me to listen to it more and increased my liking for them)

Here Comes the Breeze - Gomez

Here Comes the Rain Again - Eurythmics

Here Comes the Sun - Abbey Road (this is a cover version of the Beatles song because I wanted the song before The Beatles’ music was available on iTunes, and I can’t really tell the difference actually, it’s pretty close to the original. I think I will download the original eventually – when I can be bothered. I have to admit, I mainly wanted this song because it features in the 1998 version of The Parent Trap which I LOVED (OK, still do) and so own a lot of music that is used in it because a) the songs are actually pretty awesome and b) they remind me of the film, which can only bring happy times. But in my defence, I was quite young when I watched the film first (probably 8 years old) and so I don’t think I can be blamed for not having heard Here Comes the Sun before then.)

That is that for ‘Here’. I am nearing the end of ‘H’, but I think I can stretch one more post out of it.

See you ‘Here’ soon (sorry)

L x

P.S. I’m liking adding videos, so here is a wonderfully-acted clip from The Parent Trap that introduced me to Here Comes the Sun. I think this is another cover version too, but never mind, and it has Natasha Richardson in it, sad.