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

What’s What

What Does Your Soul Look Like by DJ Shadow (from Endtroducing)

Here we are on a Monday again. But a Bank Holiday Monday, which is more excusable I reckon.

We are finally onto one of those ‘Wh-’ question words I kept wanging on about, ‘What’. I don’t think there’s much point getting all explainy about why ‘What’ appears in song titles. Like any interrogative pronoun (oh yeah), it will appear quite frequently because songwriters like to ask questions – whether it’s rhetorical, philosophical or straightforward, they do like to ask.

So ‘What’s’ up? This is what’s up:

What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 1 – Blue Sky Revisit - DJ Shadow

What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 4 – DJ Shadow (OK, very confused. It appears my iPod, or my computer, has changed around the names of all my DJ Shadow tracks because when I search for these two songs on YouTube, they are completely different to what I have, with different running times and everything. So not actually sure what the track I think this is, is really called. Hmm, never mind. Have I talked about DJ Shadow? I have his album Endtroducing… because Kath had it, and through sister-osmosis (technical term) I decided I quite liked it and so downloaded it… I think, or just burned the CD to my computer. Anyway, it’s very atmospheric and you need to be in the right mood to listen to it. If any of the songs come on in shuffle they’re usually skippers – it’s better to listen to the whole album at once, the songs don’t really fit in with much else. Quite good, though.)

What If – Bombay Bicycle Club (I have all three of their albums now and am a full converted FAN, don’t know why I wasn’t before.)

What Is Happening – Alphabeat (embarrassed by Alphabeat, but I still like this song quite a bit)

What You Thought You Need – Jack Johnson (I only have two bloomin’ albums of his, but his songs come up ALL THE TIME!)

What You Want – Bombay Bicycle Club

What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? – R.E.M. (did have the full best-of album on here, but got fed up with some tracks, so this is one of the few that remained)

What’s Up? – 4 Non Blondes (from my Ultimate Nineties collection. Always confused me how they sing ‘What’s going on?’ but the song is called What’s Up?)

And that’s what’s ‘What’. So, when will I see you again? At ‘When’, that’s when. Sorry, there’s something about the end of a post that encourages bad puns/wordplay from me…

Right, off to catch the final episode of Homeland that I missed last night(!), see you on the other side.

L x

So this is what What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 1 – Blue Sky Revisit should really sound like, but it’s not what I have under that title on my iPod…:

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:

 

Ho, No, No!

No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley

Yikes. Over two weeks since my last post, oh dear. But to be fair, I had a busy week after my last post, then went home to Dorset for the weekend, then came back and was ill, plus there has been Christmas shenanigans/planning etc, and… now it’s now…

Yeah, anyway, onto the word of today: ‘No’. I don’t actually know what part of speech ‘no’ and ‘yes’ are… adverbs? Nouns? Je ne sais pas. Actually I suppose in song titles ‘no’ is most likely going to be an adjective, I think (don’t quote me on that), so in ‘No Matter What’ it’s acting as an adjective, right? Because you could replace it with ‘little? So maybe it’s just a quantifier meaning ‘There is no…’? Well it’s all academic anyway… but it’s quite interesting that you can’t use ‘yes’ in the same way, actually. So that would be why there are less songs beginning with ‘yes’ than ‘no’.

Right, here are my ‘No’ songs:

No Money - Kings of Leon

No More Crying - The Slackers

No Other Way - Jack Johnson (would be more fun if it was There’s No Other Way by Blur, but sadly I don’t own that and it wouldn’t come under ‘N’)

No Rest (Live)  - Dry the River (they seem to be coming up a lot lately. As I said on Twitter, I hope being on the BBC Sound of 2012 list doesn’t make them less special to me. I know I shouldn’t care about how popular a band get, but I do)

No Soul - The Rumble Strips (these guy’s songs are fun but samey, and if you don’t like trumpets steer clear)

No Woman, No Cry (Live) - Bob Marley (I used to think this was Marley saying ‘If there’s no women, there’s no crying’. I didn’t really get the Jamaican-English phrasing. And so this is an instance of ‘No’ not being used as an adjective, but more a command, still don’t know what part of speech it would be called…)

I think that will be that for ‘N’, so see you at ‘O’.

I’m hoping to post again before Christmas, but if not:

A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight (I had to make this Christmassy somehow to explain the title!)

L x

I Never New

New post. New letter. New word: ‘New’. Nice.

But before I get to ‘New’, I have ‘Never’. ‘Never’ is very final, determined and dramatic – as is often the tone for songs – see also the words ‘All’, ‘Every’ and ‘Know’.

Of course, there are very famous songs that come to mind - the theme from Never Say Never Again, the classic Never Ever by All Saints, Never Forget by Take That (thank you Miss Champ, again)… any more for any more?

Well, here are the ones currently residing on my iPod:

Never Enough  - The Cure

Never Going Back Again - Fleetwood Mac (LOVE this, think I might put a video for it below. I so did NOT ashamedly rediscover this via Glee…ahem)

Never Know - Jack Johnson

So now for the ‘New’ stuff. ‘New’ is usually fun and shiny. It can be exciting, but scary too. It brings with it all kinds of possibilities…and so, so many things to sing and play music about too.

Anyway, enough. Here they are:

New Ceremony (Live) - Dry the River (from their live iTunes EP)

New Frontier! - Counting Crows (it may be interesting to look at any other song titles that have exclamation marks in them at some point…. at some point.)

New Soul - Yael Naim (on a Macbook advert a while back, I believe. Very nice song)

New York Minute - Don Henley (croony, swoony, song. Used in an early Friends episode, which prompted me to buy it.)

I’m sort of surprised I don’t have more ’New York’ songs, there are tonnes out there, but hey-ho, I can’t like that many of them, or be bothered enough to buy them anyway.

That’s it for now. But look at me – posting twice in one week! Amaze-balls, as the young cats say.

See ya,

L x

Voice and guitar are SUPREME:

Long Lost Loves

Lost! by Coldplay (Don't worry, I'm not really a fan...)

Today I will mostly be talking about… the words ‘Long’ and ‘Lost/Losing’. Thrilling, I know.

Shall I bother with any preamble? I think I’ll just talk about stuff afters… If I have the energy. Perseverance, Louise, perseverance.

So, the long songs I have are:

The Long and Winding Road - The Beatles (I think my least favourite Beatles song, that I know anyway. Obviously still good. It actually reminds me of my Pragmatics lectures from uni because we used the lyrics as an example of entailment and implication – don’t ask me to explain, I can’t remember.)

A Long December - Counting Crows (a bit dreary, but when you’re in the right mood it’s good)

Long Distance Lullaby - Stornoway (it’s Stornoway, so it’s lovely)

That be it for ‘Long’. What is there to say about ‘Long’? Not much really, it’s just an adjective pertaining to measurement/quantity etc etc. I suppose it makes you think of ‘longing’ which is sad and mopey. If something’s long it’s usually boring too. OK, so there was a bit to say about it.

 

Anyway, now ‘Lost/Losing’;

Losing Keys - Jack Johnson (meh. Why do his songs ALWAYS come up??)

Lost in the Post - The Wombats (also meh.)

Lost! - Coldplay (oh Coldplay… what a conundrum. Yes they are bland, overplayed, humdrum, clichéd…whatever. But whenever they release new stuff, I try to resist them, but actually I sometimes do quite like their songs. Then, as per usual, I am exposed to them so much that then their songs do become bland, clichéd and just boring. So basically, a few of their songs that I did quite like originally and I managed to end up not completely hating, have found their way onto my iPod. Hence this one here.)

There are lots of connotations with ‘Lost/Losing’. There is plain ‘loss’, which is rather sad. Then there is the depression and humiliation of the verb to ‘lose’ (in terms of win/lose), and finally you can be ‘lost’ which is rather mysterious and scary. So a lot to be going on with for a songwriter.

OK. I want to go to bed now so I’m off. Do suggest more ‘Long’ and ‘Lost’ songs if you have/know them…. please?!

Goodnight,

L x

(Sorry no video this time, didn’t feel any of the songs really deserved it that much)

What If?

If Only the Moon Were Up by Field Music

See, I told you. I’m back within a week. Boom.

‘I’ is proving very productive, straight after ‘I’m’, I’m (sorry, confusing) onto another word that provides many song titles – ‘If’. Like I said before, songwriters are actually fond of the conditional tense, and so ‘If’ goes along with that. It introduces all the possibilities and potentials that writers like to conceive in their little dinky, song dream-worlds – aren’t they adorable?

My Iffy songs are:

If I Could - Jack Johnson

If I Could Give All My Love -Or- Richard Manuel Is Dead - Counting Crows (probably one of the weirdest and longest song titles I have)

If I Had Eyes - Jack Johnson (this guy likes his ‘If’s apparently)

If Only the Moon Were Up - Field Music (random find, along with their song A House Is Not a Home, way back when, I think around six years ago now. Fairly nice song, not ground-breaking though.)

If You Got the Money - Jamie T. (I have his album Panic Prevention which is pretty good, though I have a quite-like-but-still-slighty-unsure-of feel about Jamie T. I like his songs, but wouldn’t say I’m a real fan of his. Wasn’t fussed about his more recent stuff either.)

If You Wanna -The Vaccines (I have their debut What Did You Expect from The Vaccines which I really like. It was a shame that there was so much hype about them, and then a bit of a backlash when their album was released and received bad reviews, feeling like a bit of a let down. But I loved Wrecking Bar and so had to buy their album, and was surprised at the negative reviews – I really liked all the songs, especially Wetsuit. So, shame about the hate, and I would like them to be less exposed, and it would be nicer if some of the songs were longer, but yeah,… I like them.)

So that’s ‘If’ over. And ‘If’ you don’t mind (sorry… every time), I’m going to scarper now, I needs my forty winks.

Au Revoir

L x

Home Time

Graceland album by Paul Simon

It’s ‘Home’ time. Even though it’s a Sunday.

I have four songs that begin with ‘Home’. Home can be seen as a mentality or feeling, as well as just a physical place, so it’s no surprise you find it in songs, along with the emotions attached to it.

Here are my ‘Home’s:

Home - Ellie Goulding (a fairly decent track from her Bright Lights album)

Home (acoustic) - Jack Johnson (from his Sleep Through the Static album and again, a bit of a ‘meh’ track. Though it has the lyrics: “Home is wherever we are” which is rather nice)

Homeless - Paul Simon (I have two versions of this, the original and a demo version from his Graceland remastered album. Graceland was another of my mum’s cassettes that we used to listen to frequently in the car when I was younger. So all the songs from that album have seeped deep into my subconscious, almost so much so that I can’t really pass judgement on the quality of the music – I know and love all the songs too well to know if they are actually any good. They are familiar and happy and Paul Simon. That is all.)

Hometown Glory - Adele

And that’s it. Although, I knew that I had more songs with the word ‘Home’ in, so I searched for ‘Home’ in my iPod, and it came up with:

A House Is Not a Home - Field Music (a random find a long time ago, along with another song by them If Only the Moon Were Up)

In This Home of Ice - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Welcome Home - Radical Face (the song used on the Nikon sponsor adverts for Hollyoaks. Yes, I shamefully watch Hollyoaks quite a bit and one day decided to listen to the full song that was used in the sponsored adverts before and after advert breaks, and realised it was a pretty nice song. It’s a shame I’ve heard a snippet of it so many times, because I think if I hadn’t and had discovered it blindly (or deafly?!), I would have liked it even more. Now, however, it is a nice song, but tarnished by its overplaying.)

I don’t know why I decided to look at ‘Home’ in other positions of the song title which I haven’t done with any other words. I think it was because when I was thinking of the word, I would sing in my head the “I’ve come home..” lyrics from the Radical Face song, but realised that the title was Welcome Home and so not beginning with the word. But this could be a slippery slope… It will destroy my whole pattern and structure if I do this with every word, so this will be the first and last time! Scandal!

This will be it for ‘H’. See you next time, when I have to go about tackling the ‘I’s… could be tricksy.

L x

A Little Goodness

Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys

So it appears my comment plea fell on deaf ears… oh well, I think I’ll admit defeat. Onwards and upwards.

The last word for ‘G’ is ‘Good’, which is a little ironic amidst these very bad times (i.e. the insane rioting and looting that is happening). But maybe these ‘Good’ songs can provide a little relief… well, I doubt it, but I feel it’s a bit odd that the word I am talking about is so juxtaposed with the general mood of things. Maybe it’s a good omen… or maybe I’m reading too much into things as usual.

I have three pure ‘Good’ songs, and two ‘Goodnight’ songs, and very boringly so, three out of the five are Counting Crows songs, yawn. It appears my more interesting musical tastes have more obscure song titles that are unique and so harder for me to comment on without individually talking about every single song I own. Anyway, here they are:

Good People - Jack Johnson (from In Between Dreams and a fairly good song. Its lyrics: “Where’d all the good people go?” is rather appropriate at the moment)

Good Time - Counting Crows (song one)

Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys (obviously)

Goodnight Elisabeth - Counting Crows (song two)

Goodnight L.A. - Counting Crows (song three)

I suppose after finding ‘Bad’ came up a number of times, it’s not surprising that ‘Good’ comes up. I don’t think there’s much else to say about ‘Good’; it’s a common word, it has a couple of senses, it can be compounded with other words… that’s it really.

So, onto H next, and hopefully there will be more good by then (eurgh, cheesy, sorry)

L x

PS I’ve added some links to other pages in this blog in an attempt to be more ‘techy’, probably aren’t necessary but thought I’d experiment.

Go! Go! Go!

Go Outside by Cults

Another set of three ‘G’s. ‘G’ seems to have been a fairly productive letter, I have no explanation as to why…

And also another imperative verb: ‘Go’. I don’t think there’s any fancy, poetic reason for the presence of this word; it’s a common verb we use all the time, especially in commands, e.g. ‘Go away!’ (please don’t, actually) but it can also be used as a an excitable/frightened starting trigger, take the beginning of the Beach Boys’ song Little Honda. So basically, it’s not surprising I have a few songs that start with the word ‘Go’.

Here is the ‘Go’ trio:

Go On - Jack Johnson (from the second album I purchased of Jack Johnson’s, Sleep Through the Static. I bought his popular album In Between Dreams and was pleased with it. It’s not ground-breaking stuff, just mellow guitar music, but I did like it, so then I bought this next album, but, maybe because I didn’t give it enough complete plays, I didn’t take to it. It just didn’t have as many, for want of a better word, ‘catchy’ songs; they all just seemed a bit dreary, including this one. Sorry.)

Go Outside - Cults (after my sneering at music being used in adverts in my last post, I’m going to come across as a complete hypocrite here: I bought this after it was used in a cider advert, and it’s not the first time I’ve done so… woops. But I don’t mind it if adverts introduce me to new music which I like, as long as then I don’t get overexposed to it – I suppose it’s my fault for watching too much TV, but it irritates me if a song I already like is used in an advert and then it is played excessively… again, I should just watch less TV, I suppose. Anyway, I had heard of Cults, but not actually any of their music, until I heard this. And basically, it’s good. I like.)

Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac (say what you want about Fleetwood Mac, I think this is a good song)

So that’s nearly it for ‘G’, but I think I can stretch one more post out of it, but until then I better love you and leave you…

L x

PS – *Desperado Alert* If anybody is reading, it would be nice if you comment and/or add any songs you have/know that start with ‘Go’… but I suspect I’m talking to myself once again, right?! Right?!…….. Yes.