No Place I'd Rather Be

I heard this little gem on the radio and it impressed me beyond belief! The lyrics are nice... talking about loving being in the presence with a significant other, but what mostly surprised me was the music.

It starts off with a beautiful violin melody that transforms into a synth with the same melody. Then the song progresses into the chorus with an amazing piano accompaniment. In my own compositions I love combining a violin solo part with an accompanied piano part and this song accomplishes both in an awesome manner. If this is the direction that popular music is going in, I am totally okay with it. I just hope that others take note of the success of this song and take up this style of composition. I just can't stop dancing in my chair!

The Verve tried to do something like this with Bittersweet Symphony in 1997, but it repeated the melody into the ground and became grossly overwhelming. The melody was fine for a few bars, but to repeat itself for the entire song? Come on.

Clean Bandit got the recipe right.

~ Melody♫

Microsoft Vs. Minecraft

Minecraft for 2 billion dollars...

That's the price, Markus "Notch" Persson, the owner of Mojang has put on Minecraft, the international sensation. Microsoft has developed an interest partly due to Minecraft's success on the Xbox 360, but it's weird because Notch personally hates Microsoft as a company. Notch has made it very clear on several occasions that Microsoft is a terrible company. For example, he accused them of "trying to ruin the PC as an open platform" with Windows 8. It seems like Notch does not have any interest in pursuing Minecraft any further and sell it at it's high point rather than a later low point.

It's not the first franchise that Microsoft has bought, the most notable being Bungie's Halo series. Hopefully Microsoft will keep Minecraft alive, if Microsoft goes through with the deal.

This news troubles me though, mostly because you may be forced into using a Microsoft account. God knows what that will require or what hoops they will make you jump through. Only time will tell.

~ Melody♫

I was Wrong

I've been hearing this song, Am I Wrong by Nico and Vinz, on the radio for awhile now. I didn't really think much of it because I thought it was just another love song albeit a really catchy beat. Just recently, I listened to the whole song and  picked up on the "yeah yeah yeah, oh oh" background vocal part. It sounded foreign to me, something like an African influence. Intrigued, I immediately went on my computer, searched for the music video, and  was really surprised at what I found. You might not have been fooled like I had, but I seriously thought it was a love song. The singer was professing his love for a girl, but she was rejecting him.

I was very wrong because this isn't a love song at all. It is about having a dream and holding onto it, ignoring anybody who tells you otherwise.

So am I wrong
For thinking that we could be something for real?
Now am I wrong
For trying to reach the things that I can't see?

 

The music video was filmed in Zimbabwe and Botswana, Africa. This song is really trying to place the people of Africa in a positive light, instead of the usual negative light. The following lyric makes a lot of sense now:

Am I wrong for thinking out the box from where I stay?

I really like the concept of this song now that I correctly interpreted it; it's not the usual love struggle. It's pretty interesting that Nico and Vinz wrote this song from the African perspective because they are Norwegian. Both of them have direct African ancestors though so I understand their motivation to write Am I Wrong. This song was actually released on April 12, 2013, but it became internationally famous starting around June 2014 in the United States. It reached #4 on Billboard's Top 100 hits; the last Norwegian song hitting the United States charts was Take on Me by A-ha in 1985.

It's interesting that these types of motivational songs are popular now. Before, songs were explaining how you should party like you don't care. Now the message is similar to Taylor Swift's Shake it Off, don't let anybody sway your aspirations.

~ Melody♫

By the way, this song has brass also ;)

Mandatory Fun

"Weird Al" Yankovic has done it again! His new album 'Mandatory Fun' was released on July 15, 2014 and it has been his most successful album yet. Parodying songs like, Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, Royals by Lorde, Happy by Pharrell Williams, Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, and Fancy by Iggy Azalea, he covers the most popular hits from 2012 to 2014.

Not only does "Weird Al" successfully parody these songs to the very last instrumental detail, but he also accurately identifies social trends of today and parodies them also. For instance, he exposes "grammar nazis" in his parody of Blurred Lines, called Word Crimes. The term "grammar nazi" is aimed toward the people that annoyingly correct every grammatical error on anything said online; the most common error being the usage of 'your' and 'you're'.

But the one thing that excites me the most about every new "Weird Al" album is his polka medley. Every album, he takes the most popular hit songs that he didn't specifically spoof and combines them into a medley with a polka theme. These medleys are an absolute perfect indication of trends in music. It's really interesting to look back on his polkas and see what types of music were popular at the time. Al's most recent one consists of these tracks:

• Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus
• Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People
• Best Song Ever by One Direction
• Gangnam Style by PSY
• Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen
• Scream & Shout by will.i.am feat. Britney Spears
• Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye feat. Kimbra
• Timber by Pitbull feat. Kesha
• Sexy and I Know It by LMFAO
• Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz
• Get Lucky by Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams

Do you agree with these songs? Is this an accurate representation of popular music today?

~ Melody♫

Shifts in Modern Music Today

Nicki Minaj came out with a new song called Anaconda and I want to review it SO bad, but I realized that I don't like talking about trash. Hmm. There is something that is more prevalent in recent music.

What is with the resurgence of brass instruments in songs? Back in 2011, I remember Lady Gaga The Edge of Glory. It was okay as far as Lady Gaga songs go, but it had something interesting: a sax solo! At first I didn't think much of it, but less than a month later Katy Perry came out with Last Friday Night. This song had a sax solo in it too! Now, I felt a little uneasy, some producer made the gut-sy decision to do that sax solo and now other producers are following suit making it the new standard.

Here are some popular songs that have some sort of major brass part.


Ariana Grande - Problem
Capital Cities - Safe and Sound
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Can't Hold us
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Thrift Shop Feat. Wanz
Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks
PSY - Hangover

There are most likely more, but these come to mind immediately.

Brass = Success. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's Thrift Shop was majorly successful: another Party Rock Anthem. Thrift Shop reached #1 on the Billboard hot 100 and received numerous more accolades.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think it's bad that there is a sudden comeback for brass instruments. I just thought it was interesting to see, first-hand, the changes in modern music. What are the '10's going to sound like? '20's? '50's?

~ Melody♫

Catchy Beats and Crazy Dances

Sometimes my mind wanders and I wonder why successful songs are, well, successful.

Do you remember Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO back in 2011...?

You turn on the radio, start flipping through the stations... all of a sudden you hit a clear station through the static and you get blasted with LMFAO yelling 'PARTY ROCK' in your face. To put some perspective, if you lived under a rock at the time, it reached #2 on the Billboard top 100 songs of 2011 right behind Adele's Rolling in the Deep. It also made a return in 2012 making it to #29. But wait, Party Rock Anthem also reached #1 on over 26 foreign charts around the world, making it an international hit.

This song was ridiculously over-played. The reasons are simple really. It had an extremely catchy hook/phrase/melody/beat that accompanied a fun, easy, cool-looking two-step dance. I mean, they don't really say much lyrically, besides 'running through girls like Drano' and mumbling something about Led Zeppelin. Oh and 'put your hands up' that's a key part, gotta remember that.

Hmm, what does this sound like?

A catchy hook with a fun dance and indistinguishable lyrics.

Oh man the puns would have been real if I was thinking of Fun.'s We are Young. But no, it's PSY's Gangam Style. Whoever wrote the song, musically, is a genius. I imagine that it happened this way. The composer flipped through his radio and heard PARTY ROCK! He eventually went to bed that day. He woke up and turned on the radio... PARTY ROCK! Realizing how popular the song was he went to his meeting and was like, "We need a catchy synth hook, a funny dance, and some english phrases thrown in to make it fun to sing... Hey sexy lady?" Fucking genius... And I don't mean that sarcastically. He was spot on.

I mean come on, even PSY capitalizes his whole name. He's been around since 2001 in comparison to LMFAO debuting in 2006, but I feel like it was destiny.

You probably heard this song through the rock you were living under but I'll drop some facts on you anyways. Gangnam Style reached #47 in the 2012 top 100 Billboard hits and #55 in 2013. A Korean song on the US Billboard hits list... Not to mention the music video being the first to break 1 billion views on Youtube; currently past 2 billion now. The phrase"Oppan Gangam Style" was inducted into the Yale Book of Quotations... Wow... The cultural impact has been amazing.

He's basically the "Lonely Island" of Korea, parodying real life issues in his songs. Known as the 'bizarre singer' PSY really does stand for Psycho.

"What I thought was, you know, crazy about music, dancing, performance, so that kind of psycho."
- BBC Interview

So for all you musicians wanting to be internationally famous, employ LMFAO, get their composer to write a beat for you, make up a silly dance, mumble about Led Zeppelin, make money, and then proceed to drive in your solid gold limo.

It blows my mind that no one knows what PSY is saying, but yet everybody loves listening to Gangnam Style. The moral of the story is this: music will forever be the universal language. It touches the most primal emotions within us regardless of what is being lyrically said. And that is something really profound to think about.

~ Melody♫

Taylor Swift Shaking It Off!

Taylor Swift just released her new single "Shake It Off" from her upcoming album 1989, set to be available for sale on October 27, 2014. This song, on surface value, is about 'shaking off' all the 'haters', basically doing whatever you want no matter what people think. This is in no-way a new concept for Swift because she has touched on this before with "22". In a nutshell, 22 teaches listeners to 'party with your hands in the air like you just don't care'. The difference between 22 and Shake It Off is that the latter seems to be directed to the negative portion of her fan-base while the former song seems to be about not caring in general and having fun.

Shake It Off has many lyrics that are obviously pointed toward the critical side of her fan-base -- the people being her critics saying that her break-ups are all her fault:

"I go on too many dates, but I can’t make them stay

At least that’s what people say, that’s what people say"

She retorts to this by saying the following lyrics in the pre-chorus: 

"But I keep cruising, can’t stop, won’t stop moving

It’s like I got this music in my mind saying it’s gonna be alright."

This verse is particularly interesting because it seems to be references to two songs: Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus and Three Little Birds by Bob Marley. These references seem to be reinforced by the music video (MV).

The first time Swift says 'can't stop, won't stop moving' she does this crazy, Cyrus-like, sassy shake while scrunching her face. And when she says 'I got this music in my mind saying it's gonna be alright' two ballerinas soar through the air, while Swift is forced to be grounded because she can't dance ballet -- reinforcing the Three Little Birds message. Even though she can't 'fly' it's gonna be alright.

The second time the pre-chorus comes around, Swift joins dancers that twerk while singing the Cyrus line, but immediately transitions to the ballerinas again creating a contrast when singing the Marley line.

Those are all of the major lyrical references that I initially thought of. I tried looking for maybe a Justin Bieber reference due to the mass amounts of criticism he endures, but most were just hopeful shots in the dark and nothing substantial.

I touched a bit on the video, but there are some references that you can only get from watching the MV. The entire video revolves around her, as an amateur, hanging out with professionals of various activities with Swift obviously screwing up and making a fool of herself. But she's having fun and 'shaking it all off'.

During the video Swift performs a shout-out to Lady Gaga. Swift dons a Gaga-like outfit and does some old dance moves such as the Robot, maybe inspired from the 1980's like her album title, '1989', suggests.

And of course Swift has to put in her own personal words and says 'just think while you’ve been getting down and out about the liars and dirty, dirty cheats in the world you could have been getting down to this beat.' Get off those negative comment chains, stop arguing, and enjoy life!

Then at the end of the video, Taylor Swift is shown dancing with, what seems to be, random fans going crazy and doing whatever they want regardless of how they look.

Overall, I really appreciate the message that Swift is trying to convey and of course, the shout-outs toward other artists to not let the negativity stunt your growth and keep you down. Everybody is human and deserves to be treated with respect. Personally, I would never want to be famous because of all the hate that I would have to see/read for how I looked or what I say and do.

But yes, you will get knocked down in life, but just get back up and shake it off!

~ Melody♫