30 Day Music Meme: Day Thirteen

Day 13- A song that is a guilty pleasure

Let it be said that I have no guilty pleasures. At least when it comes to music. I love my music taste, very diverse. I know that is it full of ‘guilty pleasures’. 80s music is one of my favourite genres, I think that says a lot!

I Googled guilty pleasures before writing this and I liked most songs that came up in the search! I think I might start a music post after I’m finished this meme called ‘Songs I like that I shouldn’t’. When watching X Factor’s Guilty Pleasure night a couple of weeks ago, I was amazed at the lack of guilty pleasures! Not enough cheese for my liking. Though one artist that was featured is going to be my guilty pleasure for this post.

Ricky Martin. Oh god do I love his songs! So catchy, so dancey, so cheesy. She Bangs is probably my favourite but Livin’ La Vida Loca is definitely a song from my childhood. I remember my friend had the single and we used to dance around her room to it. I still do that to this day! And the music video with all the dancing is awesome!

Here’s double the guilty pleasure, a live version of Kylie singing with Ricky!

30 Day Music Meme: Day Twelve

Day 12- A song from a band you hate

The Killers. There, I said it, I don’t like them. That song All These Things That I’ve Done drives me nuts. ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’, what does it mean?! Bill Bailey does a sketch on this in Tinsel Worm, sums it up much better than I do and tells us the only thing this song is good for is changing those lyrics, his being ‘I’ve got ham but I’m not a hamster’. My current favourite being ‘I’ve got toast but I’m not a toaster’. And that Human song? Don’t get me started!

Anyway, today is about trying to find the positive in this. And while looking through my iPod, I found I have one Killer’s song in there! It being Somebody Told Me. It is a good song to dance to, lots of energy in it!

 

30 Day Music Meme: Day Eleven

Day 11- A song from your favourite band

I don’t think I could name a favourite band but I’m sure if you asked several of my friends what my favourite is, they would say The Beatles. There are so many songs I love of theirs, the first one I remember listening to was Hey Jude, my first favourite was Can’t Buy Me Love, I played Michelle on repeat until it was played over hundred times, In My Life has a tendency to make me cry, I love the violins on Eleanor Rigby, Piggies reminds me of the second time I went to Prague with my second year college house mates, Rocky Racoon and I Am the Walrus are just fun songs and Yesterday and Blackbird are such simple but utterly beautiful songs. I could go on!

But Twist and Shout brings back such fun memories. It plays a big part in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and one summer’s day, about 3-4 years ago, I was at my friend Cillian’s house, watching this film. When the Twist and Shout scene came on, we got up and danced. And then rewound the scene several times to dance some more. His brother came into the room at one point and walked out shaking his head at how uncool we were! Even if I didn’t have this memory to attach to the song, I would still love it this much. The raspy screaming voice, the way it makes me want to dance and the Liverpudlian accent creeping out slightly from some of the words. Awesome!

 

30 Day Music Meme: Day Ten

Day 10- A song that makes you fall asleep

Under the right conditions, even the most energetic song will make me fall asleep. Over the past four years of travelling to and from college, I have fallen asleep to all sorts of music. I’m not sure if today’s song is supposed to be one that’s so boring it makes you fall asleep or one that genuinely lulls you into sleep. I’m going to choose the latter.

The Amélie Soundtrack by Yann Tiersen is a particularly soothing album. I especially love Soir de fête. It’s a beautiful waltz, almost in round form, with a different instrument coming in as the verse begins again and adding new texture to the verse, making it richer in sounds. It starts with bells and clapping, with the introduction of mandolins, accordions and low whistling sounds and ends beautifully with the music fading to a musical box tinkling Zip-a-dee-doo-dah (from the Disney film ‘Songs of the South’). The song reminds me of childhood, probably because of the musical box and the handclapping. It is such a relaxing and calming song, I have often listened to it, along with the rest of the album, to help empty my mind and aid me to the Land of Nod.

 

30 Day Music Meme: Day Nine

Day 9- A song you can dance to

I love to dance, though as we established on Day 3, I sometimes look ridiculous. It never stops me from dancing, whether on out painting the town red or in my room (and sometimes on the bus, seat dancing is a special talent of mine). And what better to dance to than a bit of disco music. Specifically Blame it on the Boogie by The Jacksons.
I think I first came across this version of the song while going through a cd I got free in a newspaper. I had previously heard it a year before in an amusements arcade. I don’t know what it is, I guess just like Rockin’ Robin and most other songs by The Jackson, it has that magical ability to instantly make me want to dance. I can listen to it on repeat for hours and still want to dance. I suppose if I ever do end up doing that and it makes me late for something, at least I have a good excuse to blame it on the boogie! Badumtish!
This video is awesome by the way!

30 Day Music Meme: Day Eight

Day 8- A song that you know all the words to

Ah, learning the words to songs was just one of those rights of passage as a kid. Getting a new cd, whacking it on full blast and taking out the album sleeve to learn the lyrics. If you were lucky, cd singles would also have the lyrics (I remember one song had both the lyrics AND dance moves too! That was exciting!). It would only take a few plays to know the lyrics by heart. I often wondered why it was easier to learn the words to songs than to retain school work. And that homework should have been in song form to be easier to remember!

These days I’m more likely to search online to figure out tricky lyrics to a song. Which is what I probably did when Gold Digger by Kanye West came out five years ago (was it really five years ago?!How time flies). It came in handy, as it gave me the glorious opportunity to correct a hard core Kanye fan when his lyrics to this were off! It’s the small things that amuse me really.

 

(Also, I was going to write this entry on that Duck Sauce song Barbara Streisand but thought it would be showing off seeing as they’re difficult lyrics to remember)

30 Day Music Meme: Day Seven

Day 7- A song that reminds you of an event

The wonderful thing about music is that it has the incredible power to remind you of someone, some event or some time of your life, just by hearing the first few seconds of that song. That quality therefore makes this another difficult choice to make, when there are so many songs that take me back to a specific event in my life. Seeing as the last two posts weren’t the most cheerful, I decided to pick a song from my youth (in other words, when I was 18).

Man Eater by Nelly Furtado doesn’t really seem like a huge memory song. But it brings me back to the summer of 2006, the year I finished secondary school and finished my Leaving Cert. And more importantly it reminds me of my debs. A debs, for anyone that doesn’t know, is Ireland’s equivalent to the prom. So essentially a night of fancy dresses, suits, dinners, dancing and drinking! The dance floor was busy enough just before this started playing but within 3 seconds of it starting, the floor was mobbed. Mainly by my guy friends dragging this one particular lad up onto the dance floor as it was ‘his song’. I think I stood there in amazement to see boys excited about this song, when I think of it more of a girly song! Plenty of other songs remind me of this night but this song shines out!