A Song I Listen To In The Car!

I listen to music every single time I go anywhere. I am generally not a fan of the radio, but it is certainly a last resort, like when I drive my mom's car (since she has XM radio) or when I used to drive my dad's car (before I hooked up one of those CD to cassette things after about a week of fuzzy radio.) But usually, I have a burnt CD ready to go in my car. As my good friend Emily pointed out a few days ago, all my CDs consist of the same core songs, and then a few different ones here and there, which is kind of funny to me. Anyway, when in the car, my favorite song to listen to usually remains as Don't Cry Out, a Shiny Toy Guns classic. It's a fun song to sing along to, especially the chorus (fun fact! the countdown in the chorus is my ringtone!) Anyway, there are of course many others, and it sort of changes from week to week, but Don't Cry Out has been among the first 5 tracks on just about all the car CDs I've made since I started driving.

Shiny Toy Guns - Don't Cry Out - This dude's animation made me laugh... starts at 1:23

Shiny Toy Guns - Don't Cry Out - This is a better version of the song =P

PS - The new STG song coming out soon is called The Sun! How epic does that sound!? Really epic, that's how epic. Anyway I am looking forward to hearing it, since it's been talked about in different blogs. The latest update was just that the STG website is up and running again... does that mean they are setting the stage for a new song release in the next few days?!?! Of course not, I am just going crazy in anticipation and everything is a reason to think it will be released in the next minute.

A Song I Listen To When I'm Angry

AH! I didn't blog yesterday! It's okay, because I did write something (my rule is that i need to write every day so I become a better writer) But because of that, I am gonna do two, yes, two posts today.

A song I listen to when I'm angry... I'd have to say, the music in Goo Goo Doll's Big Machine pretty much hits the spot when I'm angry. Goo Goo Dolls are really good, I saw them live not too long ago and I really enjoyed the show. They are able to get songs out there that range from upbeat, to touching and inspirational, and they have a great rock sound that doesn't get too crazy. Big Machine is one of those songs I don't listen to too often, but (as the title of this post suggests) it's good when I need to get some anger out...which for me is kinda rare, since I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky guy.

Goo Goo Dolls - Big Machine

A Song From My Favorite Record

With this I think I am going to use a few different albums (from different bands/artists) since I have already said a few of my favorites so far. So these few songs are my favorite songs off of my favorite album of the selected singers/bands...does that make sense?

Coldplay - X&Y - White Shadows. This was the first Colplay record I bought, and there isn't a single song on it I don't like...which is unusual for me...Even Versant's EP has one song I don't like! Anyway, this song's chorus is particularly intriguing to me for whatever reason, but I can't say I like is significantly more than any of their other songs (whether on this album or not)

Jewel - Goodbye Alice in Wonderland - Good Day. Of all her eight records, (9th on the way!) I have to say this is the one that beats the others in quality, sound, and material. Jewel is pretty prolific and her albums each differ greatly and have their ups and downs, but this one has a good mix of love songs, commentary songs, and story songs. She also sounds great, much like she does in This Way, but this record is overall better, I'd say. (0304 was an interesting album, and I like it more and more each time I listen to it, so this may change over time)

Avril Lavigne - Let Go - Things I'll Never Say. Her first album definitely outdoes the two that follow, (but I have a lot of hope for the March 2011 release) so it was more a matter of picking my favorite song off this album. This one was just so cleverly written and has a nice happy feeling to it... runner up was Tomorrow

Julia Nunes - I Wrote These - Sugar Coats and You Were (I can't choose!). Okay, time to pump up Julia Nunes a bit. She is arguably my favorite person in the world. Her personality shines in both her videos and on stage, which makes her music so so SO much better. Honestly, she is not the best vocalist or writer, but it's impossible for me not to smile when she's talking and telling stories. Her second album was produced by Pomplamoose, which is the force that drove it to be literally 10x better than her first. These songs often make it to every playlist and CD I make...
A few people I know can't stand her because she "sounds like a man" but I kind of like that, in a weird sense. It sets her apart from other artists and makes her unique. (I actually didn't think her voice was that weird at first, but a ton of other people do, so whatever)

A Song With A Great Intro!

Once again, I changed this topic. A Song I Wish I Heard On The Radio was way too similar to my favorite song, or many of the other earlier categories. So, I copied Brooke White and made this about song intros, the part of a song that gets you captivated and interested enough to stick around.
Okay, so even though it's basically an instrumental, the song Shiny Toy Guns put on their reveal video of the reintroduction of Carah Faye into the band, it definitely has an amazing intro. I heard rumors that they didn't write it and that it was in a movie...? Who knows, but that certainly doesn't make it worse. Another great song with a cool intro is Strawberry Swing by Coldplay (which was earlier mentioned in here somewhere). So, another song with a cool intro is The Truth Beneath the Rose by Within Temptation. This song was actually the first song I heard by WT and I was pretty obsessed with it for a while. Sharon's voice is pretty fantastic, but this particular live performance isn't my favorite, even though it's still pretty good. I find it so funny how she wears these elaborate dresses in some of their shows, yet still jumps around and does her crazy dances and all...she's kinda crazy (the good kind of crazy, haha)

Shiny Toy Guns - Together Again

Within Temptation - The Truth Beneath the Rose

A Song That Tells A Good Story

Okay, okay, this isn't the topic I should be doing, but I don't listen to the radio, so I don't know a song I often hear on the radio, so I changed it. I think contemporary ballad songs are hard to come by, and because of that, it'd be cool to point out the ones that do! My first choice is an unreleased song by Jewel about a middle-class suburban family with all it's troubles, and the other is a Shiny Toy Guns song about Jackie Kennedy (I know, cool idea, right?). The STG song really sparked my interest the first time I heard it, so I did a bit of research on it. The whole idea of the song is really neat, in my opinion. Who would ever think to write a song about something that happened such a long time ago (the band didn't even exist until about 2005) and write about it from such an unusual perspective? They basically blame Jackie Kennedy for letting John F. Kennedy Jr. go on the plane that crashed and killed him along with his wife and others. Not sure if she could have actually done much of anything about it, or if she was against it for some reason, I haven't researched that much into it, but it sure is an interesting standpoint on the issue. Good job, Jeremy Dawson for writing that song!

Shiny Toy Guns - Jackie Will Save Me

Jewel - Boy Needs A Bike No, the "By Matty" isn't me. But the only comment on it is mine =P

A Song I Used To Love But Now Hate

Worry not, this won't be a long one, especially since I have known exactly what to put for this since day one. I am pretty sure this song became popular during my freshman year of high school. At first, I liked it, and actually downloaded it, but (similar to Pocketful of Sunshine) after I heard it at least 6 times on the radio in a school week, I really began to dislike it. The song is I'm Yours by Jason Mraz. Nothing against him, I actually kind of like him and his ability to be a singer/songwriter and still have a popular song, but when hearing a song on the radio too much makes me like it a lot less for whatever reason.

Jason Mraz - I'm Yours


PS! Versant tweeted that their big news was that they are teaming up with Shiny Toy Guns to help them with their third CD! I was totally shocked, since Carah (the singer of Versant) was essentially kicked out of STG. It was kind of a chain of misunderstandings, and it seems like they have moved past it. It has been like 2-3 years, after all. Anyway, I am very excited about that.

A Song That Describes Me

This took a few minutes to figure out. There are a few ways to interpret this heading, but once I sat on it for a little bit, a song by my favorite singer/songwriter popped into my mind. During the beginning of the summer of 2009, I started listening to Jewel, mainly because I found her videos on youtube. Towards the end of that summer, I decided to buy the concert dvd that I already knew all the songs to from youtube, along with her latest album at the time, Lullaby. One of the songs that actually took a while to grow on me was Grey Matter. I don't really know why, but for whatever reason I wasn't really a fan of it a first, but one day I played it about ten times straight and really started liking it.

The interesting thing about the song is that even though I'm pretty certain that it's a love song of sorts, I read a comment of someone saying she wrote it to herself. When I listened to it a few more times, I actually really understood that. Although I feel like I am totally comfortable with myself and who I've become over the years, there's always this feeling, that comes every now and then, perhaps on a bad day, that there's a flaw in me. Well, not so much that I have a flaw, we all have them...but more like that flaw really bothers me. "I hate you / But I love you." That really is a potent phrase. I imagine looking in the mirror and saying that line, though I never remember doing that.

It's just a very interesting concept, how everyone seems to judge themselves so much. I think that comes from fear of being judged by others, partly, but it's mostly just inner restlessness. I took a look at that in my own life and realized I do all the time, subconsciously. I filled up a notebook or two with writing, just short stories and poems, but, really I have hardly filled one with stuff I like. I judge my own writing so much, it's unbelievable. The first notebook I started seriously writing in has stuff X'd out, pages ripped and torn, phrases and words turned into doodles I drew over them so much. It's an interesting thing, in my opinion. It's just another flaw that's "telling me I'm dirty and licking my bones" I guess...

Anyway, the song really gives me a feeling of "am I being to hard on myself?" The answer is always yes. Some days I hate my hair, my smile, my teeth, my nose, the shape of my face, my hands, fingernails...the list is endless. I realize, though, I don't actually hate them. How could I? It's just the things that make me, me; I'm a totally unique person. Every single thing about it me is different than every. single. other. person. in. the. WORLD. And that's the case forever. It's a crazy thing to think about. So why should I ever say I don't like some physical feature about myself? It doesn't make sense.

Anyway, the point is that this song really takes self doubt and self-consciousness and really points it out. Self doubt has been a huge issue for me, I think, for a long time, although I think I hide it pretty well in most cases. But, by pointing it out, it lets me fight against it. For example (and this is also advice Jewel said in one of her live Ustream chats before her 2010 album release) I have been making an attempt to write every day and not really be too worried about what I put out there, whether intended for other people's eyes or not.

I hope all that makes sense...

Jewel - Grey Matter

Just to add something else to possibly my longest post yet, one of the reasons I like Jewel so much is her ability to sing these melancholy songs and not sound depressed. This post probably makes me sound a bit depressed, myself, but I know for a fact I am far from it.
She also doesn't use a setlist for her shows, which is really cool, she just does what she feels like and takes requests from the audience.
She also has like 300 unrecorded songs, which is amazing. I look up to that a lot.
She also writes all her own music and often sings solo acoustic.
She ALSO has a close relationship with her fans, which is very cool.
Need I go on?