‘Beautiful Soul’ – Jesse McCartney

I don’t really listen to the radio these days. Whenever I’m in the car I prefer to plug in my iPod, or just put in a CD if I’m not in the fancy car with the auxiliary cable. On occasion I will put FBi on, but that is less frequent these days.

There was a time, though, when this was the only song I would ever hear on the radio. I remember once my sister and I were going for a drive, and it came on one channel so I switched to another. Which it was also on. So I switched to another. Which it was also on.

Fun related fact: I have also seen this song live. At the height of Jesse fever (before Bieber fever was even a thang), he made a shopping centre appearance at my local, Castle Towers. At that stage I was in the deepest depths of my emo stage (I believe it was 2005), so my friends and I thought it would be totally funny/ironic etc to go see him. It was actually one of the most traumatising experiences of my life – 4000 screaming 12-year-olds took over the shopping centre, escalators had to be turned off because people were standing on them to get a better view, etc.

But Jesse was a babe. STILL IS, in that weird prepubescent way. Yep. Definitely watched an episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody with him in it the other day and he sang this song on it. It ruled.

This is also one of my signature songs to sing on Band Hero. Who am I?

‘Emily’ – From First To Last

16-year-old Giselle was a frightful thing. She dressed only in black, wore sweat bands and studded wrist cuffs, wrote poetry about unrequited love, hung out in equal measure at Town Hall Steps and Castle Towers, interviewed local bands for the school newspaper, knew every scene kid there was to know, liked to look at pictures of boys kissing boys…

And really, really wished her name was Emily.

Yep, I was an emo. I don’t regret it, though. I made some questionable fashion decisions and liked some stupid emo boys and bands. But I also met some of my best friends while I was in that stage of my life – some from the internet, some from school, some from shows and so on. We had the best times. We were young and we were stupid but the one thing we really cared about was the music we loved. Sure, there was a huge ‘scene’, but it was nowhere near as pretentious as the one that a lot of my current musical interests belong to now. Everyone just loved the tunes. Everyone knew every word to every song. Going to gigs of bands I loved then now makes me so, so happy. Because of the nostalgia, and because of how excited everyone there is.

There are a bunch of bands I loved then that I still love now, or that I can at least appreciate. I will always love Brand New. I still think the first Taking Back Sunday album is awesome. I kept ‘Bend Your Arms To Look Like Wings’ by Funeral For A Friend on my iTunes – I still love the smooth guitar that carries itself through the song. Put on ‘Rum Is For Drinking, Not For Burning’ by Senses Fail and I’ll sing along to every word.

But this song… Jesus.

Sonny Moore (now a dubstep bro – go figure) was the same age as me when Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has A Bodycount was released in 2004. So I took this as a sign that we were meant to be together. Obviously. Because what kind of red-blooded heterosexual emo female didn’t want a piece of this?

…but I digress. (And also vomit.)

‘Emily’ was the “ballad” of the album. It consists of Sonny Moore’s god awful whining about a girl he loves over clangy acoustic guitar, and at the time I was so jealous that any girl could have such a meaningful song penned about her by a guy who was so totally hot and had SNAKE BITES!!!!! and the BEST emo hair!!!! I wish I was joking, but there was a time when I quoted this song in my MSN screen name and honestly hoped so hard that someone would do something like this for me.

At the time I didn’t think there was anything wrong with his voice – I thought it was incredible, actually – but whenever I listen to it now, it’s completely grating and I fail to understand how I ever could have loved it. On the album’s other songs his singing is a bit more bearable because at least then it’s covered by other instruments more heavily. There is no respite from it at all here.

Males take note: If any of you are ever moved enough by me to write a song in my honour, and come up with something like this, I will be severely offended and delve deep into my soul to ask why I could ever inspire something so heinous. And then I will cut off your testicles.

(Also, L O L at this video.)

‘Thirteen’ – Elliott Smith

I wasn’t sure what to put here because I don’t particularly feel like anything describes me, exactly. At first I thought of putting in the Vietnamese national anthem so I could wax lyrical about what it means to me and my heritage and the rest of it, but I think this post covered that pretty accurately. Then I thought Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ would be an easy cop out, but that is pretty silly, because I am more than the colour of my eyes. So.

The reason I chose this song is because I think it captures my childlike nature, which is one of my big personality traits, in my (brown) eyes, anyway. I was never one for complication and I’m still not – when people ask me how old I am I seriously have to stop and think about it. I feel not a day older than 16 in how I perceive the world (in most regards – in some I’ve grown up a lot), and I feel like I still really relate to the person I was then now, even with years more experience.

‘Thirteen’ was originally recorded by Big Star in 1972, but I chose this version because I absolutely adore Elliott Smith and I also like how he makes it a little melancholy. That’s not to say that I feel down about my childishness – quite the opposite, actually – but I feel like Elliott Smith has a certain shyness when he sings that I can really relate to.

This song, to me, is about the gawky experience of falling in love as a teenager. I still feel this way about my own relationship, even though we’re both in our early twenties and have been together a while now. To me, there’s nothing more perfect than the awkward feeling of really enjoying someone’s company, being shy about it but gradually getting more comfortable until you know you’re in for something great.

Mush, mush, mush. Sap, sap, sap. But today’s challenge asked for a song that describes me, and I am all about the mush and sap and feelings of awkward teenage romance.

‘Stan’ – Eminem ft. Dido

This is one of my all-time favourite songs. I often get teased about it, especially by my sister, who at one point immortalised a quote I said about loving it in her Facebook info section. I listed it as one of my top five best songs of the 2000s. No shame, no shame. Laugh if you want, but no shame. This song is seriously amazing.

I think the Dido sample works really well here, and I prefer it vastly to her actual song, ‘Thank You’. The story is extremely well-told and I feel like the two personas Eminem portrays are distinctly separate – though many people cast doubt over his rapping skills (and though I don’t know enough about rap to be able to properly critique them), he does it well in this song. I can get lost in the song. It paints vivid pictures in my mind and is eerily reminiscent of so many stories I’ve heard about obsessed fans. I’ve even heard the word ‘stan’ in everyday conversation about rabid fanboys and fangirls.

No one expects me to like this song because I don’t think anyone expects anyone to like Eminem in any way other than for novelty or nostalgia factor. I disagree with a LOT of what he stands for – I think he’s a complete misogynist and, even if it’s not his actual personality projected in the songs he writes, I’m not sure why anyone would want that to be their front, either. His lyrics are more often than not disgustingly violent and make me feel physically sick. Generally speaking, I see little value in Eminem’s music – his messages are usually twisted and perverse, and lyrics are important to me.

The Stan character is also sick and perverted, but he’s not meant as an extension of Eminem himself – of course I don’t condone what he raps about in this song, driving his pregnant girlfriend (tied up in a car boot) off a bridge with him, screaming at her, just generally being an abusive prick. I don’t condone that at all, but it is presented as a completely separate, fictional personality, whereas the lines are pretty blurred when it comes to many of his other songs. Though I know he operates as ‘Slim Shady’ rather than his true self, I feel like there’s no clear distinction sometimes.

So anyway, this is probably one of the only Eminem songs I’d attribute real value to. People always think it’s weird when I say I love it, but I do. I could listen to it over and over and over again. It’s an insightful look into the development of obsessive fan culture and how detrimental that can be. I wonder if Eminem tried harder with this song or something, because it’s actually pretty clever. Love it.

‘Princess’ – Short Stack

Now, as I said in a recent post, I rarely consider anything a “guilty pleasure” because I kind of feel like that’s a very elitist thing to say. I don’t think it’s worthwhile feeling embarrassed about liking something. I hate it when people call me a musical elitist because I don’t want to be seen as one. People like the things they like because they see value in them, whether or not they’re “good”. It doesn’t really matter.

But having said that, I can absolutely recognise that this song…is not very good.

I loved pop punk in my formative teenage years. I don’t think I’d be the person I am now if I hadn’t listened to it and made it my life. A lot of my friends that are the closest to me now are the friends I made at that age, bonding over that music. Blink 182, Good Charlotte, Sum 41, New Found Glory, MxPx, Fall Out Boy, Simple Plan – despite what people said about those bands and how little musical ability they possessed, they meant the world to me and I would never try and hide from that. Hey, I still dance around to them pretty frequently, and very little makes me as happy.

So I guess, because I’ve had that background and I know how it feels to be so in love with this kind of music, every time I hear a new pop punk/powerpop song I think it’s a little bit awesome. I’ve never really been able to fully get into new pop punk bands – I hear there are a lot of pretty good ones, but for some reason I just don’t have much interest in hearing them. Maybe because pop punk for me is a nostalgia thing, not a current thing. I’m not really sure, but the fact is that I just cannot get into it, really.

Short Stack gets a lot of hate. They are pretty boys who keep the hairspray industry in business and write the most cliche songs imaginable. I know people who went to school with them and, by all reports, they were douches in school and even more so now. This video clip is one of the most inanely stupid things I have ever seen. Rabbit suit? Weird bear suit? Monkey interlude? What is this song? Why are its transitions so horrible? Who is this princess?

MORE IMPORTANTLY, why do my feet start to tap whenever I hear this song? Why have I sought out the YouTube video more than once? WHY DO I KNOW ALL THE WORDS TO THE CHORUS?

WHY ISN’T THE PRINCESS ME?!

I’m all for well-composed pop music – I’ll wholly admit (as I have before) that Taylor Swift can write a mean hook and that I’ve danced around in my undies on more than one occasion to Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’. Say what you want about Fall Out Boy, but they wrote some badass melodies. I am not one of those people who thinks that just because something was made to be mainstream, it must automatically be terrible. Writing a good catchy song is a skill, and a lot of people have that skill and use it to gauge people’s attention via radio. This is not a problem to me.

However, ‘Princess’ is by no means a well-written song. There is very little to this that has any artistic merit whatsoever. Maybe I can put it down to the fact that pop punk will live inside my heart forever, but this is scraping the bottom of that barrel, too. So I guess I should feel pretty guilty about loving this song and shrieking like a little girl whenever I hear it.

I don’t, really, which is how I know that there is a layer of hell reserved especially for me.

‘Use Somebody’ – Kings of Leon

I did not want to use the same artist twice at all in this song challenge. So I thought long and hard about bands I hate and who to put here. I quickly came to the conclusion that while some bands slightly annoy me, none mortally offend me to the same level as Kings of Leon.

I think I already outlined why in my last post, but to reiterate: they are so mediocre. Every song sounds the same; no, his voice is NOT hot; their lyrics are inane and stupid; the chord progressions never change.

This is the kind of music that people who think they love music but actually hate life listen to. It pains me beyond belief to even have to put this trash on my blog twice, but the challenge called for it, so who am I to refuse?

I have nothing else to say. Brb, cleaning out my ears.

‘A Poem On The Underground Wall’ – Simon & Garfunkel

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever read this blog or talked to me for more than two seconds. I have a great number of bands I’d consider my favourites – Belle & Sebastian, The Beatles, Radiohead and Brand New, just to name a few, for reasons both current and sentimental – but if I had to choose one band only, it would definitely be Simon & Garfunkel. There is nothing else in my life that has meant more to me – flick through past entries on the blog if you don’t believe me.

I grew up with the music of Simon & Garfunkel. They soundtrack some of my earliest memories. It’s one of the things I can share with my whole family, and we always delight in listening to them together. My dad adores them, and without him I mightn’t ever have gotten so enamoured with their music. I owe him one.

The reason I love them so much is because they are extremely real. Their lyrics are like poetry, but never forced – they all speak plainly in beautiful language. There are songs, like ’7 O’Clock News/Silent Night’, which take seemingly simple things and turn them into something thought-provoking. Another favourite is ‘The Dangling Conversation’, a stunning look into a disintegrating relationship set in a single day, poetry books in hand. And how about ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission)’? Best Dylan parody track ever?

The reason I chose ‘A Poem On The Underground Wall’ is because it’s one of the most underrated of their songs. People talk themselves silly about the classics, like ‘America’, ‘The Sound of Silence’, ‘Cecilia’ and so on, and those songs definitely deserve their places – they are all brilliant. But I’ve never heard anyone talk about this one, and I think it’s just as deserving of such dialogue.

I particularly love listening to the live version of it from a 1967 concert, where Art introduces it as such (this anecdote always makes me smile):

The first album we recorded for Columbia, called Wednesday Morning, 3 am, has a picture on the cover of Paul and myself in the subway system in New York here standing at the 5th Avenue station next to an iron post. If you know the album then you’re familiar with the picture.

I’m mentioning this because we have taken a song, it’s now two years later… Paul has written a song fairly recently in London dealing with the theme of people who write on subway walls but treating the theme in a rather strange and serious way. The song is called ‘A Poem on the Underground Wall’.

The song is a perfect example of everything I love about these guys. Gentle, finger-picked guitar, beautifully harmonising vocals and a story contained in just a few minutes. I love how, when they sing “the train is gone suddenly”, the guitar begins to chug like an engine. Little things like that. This is one of their shortest tracks, clocking in at under two minutes, but in my opinion, one of their best. I’ve never shown this song to anyone who wasn’t completely floored by it.

I know that many people casually appreciate Simon & Garfunkel, and while I totally endorse that (of course!), I would encourage anyone with even a passing interest in the band to delve deeper into their back catalogue. There are a great number of songs that have been generally overlooked, but are richly rewarding if you give them a go.

Rather simply, I don’t want to think of a world where this music doesn’t exist.

‘Untitled 3 (Samskeyti)’ – Sigur Rós

I thought a little about this one. I guess “a song that makes you fall asleep” could be one that’s so boring that you struggle to stay awake through it, or one so calming that it’s like a lullaby. I can’t say anything has ever bored me to the point of nodding off, and that wouldn’t be much fun to talk about anyway, so I took it to mean the second. I usually don’t listen to music when I go to bed, but there are some songs that are soothing to me, that I could fall asleep to if I needed to, and this is one of them.

Like a lot of other people, I think Sigur Rós is one of the most unique and beautiful bands out there. I love that they use words that no one understands and make them feel so close to home. I love how unusual Jónsi’s voice is – often I think he must be from another planet. Takk… was the first album of theirs that I listened to, and I still think it is absolutely stunning. Recently I saw 127 Hours and was so moved by the way in which they used ‘Festival’ as the music to the uplifting end scene. This band is just unreal, and even more so live. August 2008, front row centre. I will never ever ever forget that night.

The album I come back to for songs to calm me down and put me in another dimension is ( ), the band’s 2002 release, which I have often put on before going to bed. The reason this album is so special to me is because it is one of their more minimal efforts, and all the songs are “untitled”, meaning that we truly can gauge whatever meaning we like out of them (even though they do have alternate titles). I don’t think anyone could listen to this record and not feel whole.

‘Samskeyti’ translates to ‘attachment’, so I read. I cannot listen to this song without feeling physical pain. It never used to affect me so much, until something happened in the middle of last year that, even though it had little to do with me, really hit me (this is what I am talking about.) It was a strange feeling for me to feel that level of sorrow for someone I never knew, and then I watched the video that his family had compiled in his memory, and they used this song. Photographs and videos of this man, from childhood to how he was before he went, lit up the screen as this song played. He was a baby, he was going to school for the first time, he was playing with his siblings, he was discovering music. From the pictures, it would have impossible to guess that there was a lot of pain in him, and watching it knowing what was to happen in the future was excruciating for me, even though I never knew this man. It absolutely wrecked me, and this song will always be linked to that now. It is one of the only songs that consistently makes me cry – and it’s a piano line repeated over and over with little dynamic change and no lyrics. It’s that simple but it is more powerful than most things I know.

Even so, strangely it feels like home to me. This whole album does. Right now I’m sitting in my bedroom with a cup of tea, feeling a little contemplative and listening to this album. I could very easily crawl into my bed and doze off right now, feeling perfectly at peace. This song means a great many things to me – I know it will soundtrack some of the hardest times of my life, but it is also one of the songs that says to me, “don’t be afraid.” I would be able to fall asleep with an overwhelming sense of calm washing over me, just like I used to feel as a kid when my mum sang to me as I nodded off. It’s heartbreaking to listen to, but I am so thankful that anything can exist that stirs such strong emotions in me and yet calm me down so effortlessly.

This is the most tragically beautiful thing you will ever hear. All 6 minutes and 33 seconds of it are a gift.

‘Life During Wartime’ – Talking Heads

I always recommend the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense to anyone who’ll listen. Whether or not you love the band as much as I do, there’s no denying that it is an incredibly crafted film that really stands testament to the staying power of David Byrne and friends. They had tight harmonies, killer grooves, one of the most impressive live bands you’ll ever see, dance moves that set the floor alight, innovative stage set ups… The versions of the tracks here are sometimes even more enjoyable for me than their studio origins, and I love the film soundtrack a lot, even though it has some omissions. It’s one of the most well-produced concert films and I just cannot praise it strongly enough. It is one of my go-to things when I’m feeling a little low, because it always gets me in the mood to forget everything that sucks about life and just dance.

This is one of my favourite Heads tracks, and probably the first one I remember hearing (other than ‘Burning Down The House’, but I first heard that as the Tom Jones/Cardigans cover when I was young). Back in the days when people used MSN, my best friend’s boyfriend at the time had lyrics from the song in his screen name, so I looked it up and thought it was pretty catchy, but didn’t give it much further thought.

When I was 17, my mother was cleaning out the garage and found a box full of records that belonged to my father and uncle. She was going to get rid of them, along with the family’s old record player, but I convinced her to give them to me instead. I still use that record player, by the way – it’s so old that when I google the brand nothing comes up, but I kind of like it for how dilapidated it is. Amongst the records in the box was Little Creatures. Now, I wish I could say this is where it all began. But nope, silly me didn’t pay the band much mind then either…

The kicker was my second year of university, 2008. I was taking (and acing!) a class in Music and Popular Culture, and for my presentation I was required to talk about vinyl with two classmates. As a part of that, I brought in my Little Creatures vinyl and a CD copy, to compare the intricacy of the artwork. And that was how I started listening to them more and uncovering more of the back catalogue (which I admit I’m still not 100% familiar with) – a university assignment. Who knew those could be useful?

Really, all their songs are pretty danceable and contain so many elements that more modern bands have been influenced by, quite obviously. But I chose ‘Life During Wartime’ because it’s one of the most memorable ones for me. I love David Byrne’s dance that he does when singing it on Stop Making Sense. I love the chorus – so much that at one point, my bedroom wall looked like this:

(Note the Little Creatures vinyl hanging up too!)

It’s just a very catchy tune that always makes me want to get up and let loose whenever I hear it. I saw David Byrne live at the start of 2009 and it was so, so excellent, but since it was at the Opera House and everyone was seated, I didn’t want to be the jerk standing up and ruining it for everybody else. I can’t tell you how painful it was to be sitting down during this song – he played it perfectly and I so badly just wanted to stand up and shake my bum! Thankfully by the end of the show, everyone had let go of their inhibitions and the room was on its collective feet, dancing away as Byrne emerged in a tutu for ‘Burning Down The House’.

Talking Heads love has been an instant bond for me and some people I know. A guy I knew at uni was pretty distant with me until we discussed David Byrne’s big suit at length at a friend’s 21st dinner one night, and from then on we were a lot friendlier with each other. My dear boyfriend is a HUGE Heads fan and I credit this for about 98% of my initial attraction to him. Just such a goddamn amazing band, I wish more people appreciated them!

Watch the video, listen to the song and then try to tell me you didn’t want to get off your seat and dance around. You’ll fail, guaranteed.

Dew Process

Guineafowl is a band that’s becoming a mainstay on the local circuit here in Sydney – around the creative force of Sam Yeldham, the six-piece plays summery music that is all the bigger onstage, hand claps and shimmies aplenty.

Hello Anxiety is the band’s debut EP and comprises five tracks of said summery pop music that’s providing some much-needed warmth to the ever-growing cold. They play with rather stereotypical ‘indie’ sounds, like jangly hand-picked guitars that meld into a luscious waterfall as on first track ‘In Our Circles’, and Yeldham’s voice is glistening with the kind of high reverb that many of these bands seem to enjoy so much. In fact, an easy comparison point on first listen is Cloud Control, especially on this first track – the same layered vocals, even a similar-sounding lead, that typical mid-song die-down of instruments to focus on the voice alone – but Guineafowl mixes things up a little by adding synth in at the end.

Ah, the synth, that most mystical of all creatures. It’s something that can make or break a song, really – when used carefully it can add interesting little touches, but when applied too liberally it’s awfully cheesy. See second track ‘Little Fingers’ – its glimmery synth-tastic intro brought this immediately to mind:

…which is not the best thing to think of. It seems a little too cutesy, too twee, and when the drums come in you almost expect Adam Young to come forward spewing something about planet earth turning slowly. Thankfully as the song progresses and the guitars come in, the cheesy synth eventually dies off, its riff replicated and almost completely replaced by guitar. When it’s applied in smaller doses throughout the track it’s a pleasant spacey touch – the intro is a little saccharine, though.

Layered vocals make another appearance on ‘Botanist’, a live staple for the band (one of the hand-clappers mentioned before). Here the gang vocal is prevalent throughout the track, which could easily muddle the sound but actually works quite well in fleshing it out. Synth and guitar battle it out for attention in the middle, both fare pretty well but it’s guitar that wins, punching out the end of the track.

‘My Lonely Arms’ starts out seemingly as a slower cut, Yeldham’s voice sitting shyly against sparse background music before bursting into a higher energy level. It’s slightly less refined but still slick as hell, boasting a guitar solo to break it up and a chorus to boot.

The EP rounds off with a demo song, ‘Mothr’, sounding tinny with its layered vocals and rattly percussion. It’s interesting to hear the voices here in a barer setting, especially when the track dies down, seeing them sit against the keys with no other distractions. Demos are especially interesting when compared to full studio versions, so the jury’s out until they chuck one of those out if they do, but the track is darker than their others and has a moody atmosphere of its own.

Hello Anxiety is a very able EP from a band that has consistently proved itself (and likes to end songs abruptly, apparently), though sometimes teeters a little too close to modern indie pop expectations and could use some elements a little more sparingly. For the full Guineafowl experience I’d recommend heading to see them live – this recording is a pleasant listening and toe-tapping experience, but their gigs are super energetic, fun and convey much more the feeling of what this band is about.