Every time I watch this video, I can’t help thinking that at least one of these scenes is eerily familiar. 

I especially like the big walking Mr Unhappy, and wish that I had one of those suits in my closet.  I’d wear it on my night shifts.

What happens when the Dreamer and the Realist collide?

This.

I Got You…

I’ve never been a k.d. Lang fan.  I don’t really know what it is about her, but she’s just never done it for me.  So when I sat there during the Olympic opening ceremonies, and watched Canadian music artists perform, I was more than a little skeptical when I saw k.d. take the stage. I probably would have walked out to go get something to drink or a bathroom break, but then she started…

Hallelujah.  The old Leonard Cohen classic.

This song is supposedly from 1984, but I didn’t really become aware of it until fairly recently.  Sad to say, I think the first time I really took notice of Hallelujah was when it appeared in one of the Shrek movies. I didn’t think that it was new.  I knew that it wasn’t.  But I didn’t know whose song it was.  I certainly had no idea that it was a Canadian icon’s.

Since then, I’ve heard it at different times, most notably during Bon Jovi’s encore performance last summer.  It was amazing. And then again during the opening ceremonies.

Say what you will about k.d. Lang, but when all the guys at work were commenting about those opening ceremonies and each one of us made mention about Hallelujah… that was the performance that stood out!  So much so, that I noticed iTunes selling the Vancouver Olympics version of the song… and of course had to have it as part of my collection.

Doesn’t matter how my day is going… when I put that on and close my eyes…  it’s instantly calming.

Hallelujah!

You may have noticed lately that finding a music video on YouTube is becoming increasingly more difficult.  The music labels have always been a little fickle (now there’s an understatement) about their artists’ works being uploaded on YouTube, but now it appears that 3 of the 4 major labels have banded together to create their own music video hub.

Welcome to Vevo, a combined effort of Universal, Sony and EMI.  The lone major absentee is Warner Music, which represents the likes of Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Green Day.. so you you’ll have to look elsewhere for your 21 Guns fix.

The site has a clean interface, boasts over 14,000 titles, and you know that the quality of the videos is top-notch.  No crappy user-added garbage here.  The downside is that you have to sit through a short ad prior to watching your video, but that’s pretty much the norm everywhere now.

I’m not sure that we need yet another place to look for video, but it’s nice that the record labels are starting to play nice.

For now.

Last week I listened to the Top 97 songs of 2009 on 97.3 The Wave.  Well, not ALL of the songs.  I turned on the radio for a stretch, and then went and did something else.  Then they replayed the countdown the next day, and I listened to the end part of it… enough to catch the top songs of the year…

For as long as I can remember, I don’t think that I’ve ever come close to picking the top song for any particular year.  The songs that I like are all in the countdown, but I’m almost always left scratching my head when it comes to the number 1 song.

This year, the most played song was Right Round by Flo Rida.  Although this wouldn’t have been my first choice, I could kinda see where they were coming from.  During the spring/summer months it seemed that you couldn’t turn on your radio without having Right Round come on.  And it was a little more than annoying that the younger DJs didn’t seem to initially realize that the song was not an original, but very much borrowed from the old Dead or Alive song You Spin Me Right Round.  Youth.  Go figure.

But it was actually the second most played song that surprised me more than anything.  Gives You Hell by the The All American Rejects.  Really?  I mean, it’s catchy and all.  But was it really on the air more than all but one other song?  And I’m pretty sure that they mentioned that Gives You Hell was the top song in Canada, but not in Saint John. 

Listen to the lyrics sometime…   I’m guessing that there were a lot of bad breakups in 2009!

This is the last look at my playlist until I add the dreaded “Christmas” playlist into the mix.  I’ll be curious to see in another month’s time whether Snoop and the Red Baron and a few more of the festive classics make it onto the list.  I’m pretty sure that I listen to Snoopy quite often during the holidays.  I can still remember being a kid and calling the radio station to request they play that song.  It’s probably one of the first, and most played, Christmas songs on the radio.

Looking at the Top 25 of November, it has a different feel to it than the previous months.  Sitting atop the pile of great music is the new one by Default, called Little Too Late.  I don’t know a thing about this band.  I wasn’t even aware that they’re Canadian (from Vancouver, apparently) until I was told by someone who knows more about them than I do.  I couldn’t name a single song that they’ve released prior to this, but when I heard this song featured on E Talk Top 20 as a “future hit” I loved it.

Drop it Low was definitely a surprise.  I have no idea who Ester Dean is, even now.  I heard it on American Top 20, and apparently have been listening to it steadily ever since.

Tik Tok?  Where do these people learn to spell?  Well, when you spell your name Ke$ha, I guess that proper grammar isn’t high on your list of priorities.  It IS a catchy tune, though.  When I got my new Skull Candy headphones a couple of weeks ago, I think this was the first song that I played in them.  Sounds pretty good turned up loud.

Looking down through the list, I see several other new songs that made it there.  This was a month of change.  Throw Ya Hands Up, Bad Romance, Yeah!, Meet Me Halfway, and Someday also jumped onto the list from nowhere.

Then there’s I Can Wait Forever, by Simple Plan.  I went on a little Simple Plan bender earlier in the month.  Save You and Untitled are there too… but it’s really I Can Wait Forever that caught my attention.  I don’t know if the song was even released.  I like discovering some of the new music that I have is actually worth listening to.  It’s a shame that I had to stumble onto it like that, though.  And no, it’s not like that.

So all in all, it was a different month of music on the ole iPod extraordinaire.  Yeah, there are some of the usual favourites that don’t seem to be getting old.  I think December will be the last month of looking at these.  I’ll be curious to see how the Christmas music factors into everything, but in 2010, I think I’ll just let it run for a bit and see what happens.

Wow..  the month of October went by in the blink of an eye!  And now Christmas is right around the corner?  What’s up with that?  I’m going to have to add a Christmas playlist to my iPod.  Oh boy.  Snoopy and the Red Baron ride again!

This month I made the administrative decision to move all my music from the external hard drive, back to my laptop.  It made sense (although I kept a backup on the external) because it made sorting the duplicates, typos, etc much easier when it was with me locally.  But it also screwed up how iTunes handled the music.  It was fixable on a song by song basis, and I tried it for a bit, but gave up in the end, and just wiped the iTunes files out, and started over from scratch.  That was about mid-October.  That means that this list is only accurate from that time, going forward.  Not that it really matters, since it’s only for my own benefit, but I like the trending.  And, I’m pretty sure that the top results didn’t change from when I had to wipe everything a couple of weeks into the month.

Good ole Def Leppard was at the top… no real surprise there.. Where Does Love Go When it Dies? That song just won’t go away.  Still waiting for them to release the answer to that question, though! I was more surprised to see 2 other instances of Def Leppard further down the list, but I guess I must’ve been listening to their playlist a couple of times.  I had the chance to see them in concert eons ago.  I was a little disappointed with the show, but I still love their music.

And here’s where it starts to get interesting.. (yeah, right..)   Number 2 song..  Get Up! By 50 Cent…   huh?  Where the hell did THAT come from?  I was going through some of the Top 100 countdowns that were on my drive.. just clicking on the songs and listening for about 3 seconds.. if I didn’t like what I heard in 3 seconds, it was gone, and onto the next one… and then I got to Get Up!  and my first thought was “I’ve heard this before!  But where?”  They used it in one of the So You Think You Can Dance routines.  And the more I listened to it, the more I felt my inner gansta came out.  (Oh c’mon.. if you know me, that must sound ridiculous…)  In a Top 25 of mostly SYW songs (only a few select people may know that reference… ie.. they’re slow… )Having 50 Cent blasting in my kitchen while I was making supper… well..  it’s kinda comical.  Especially considering I bought a big new hoodie, and liked to wear it while I was singing the chorus.. “Get up!”    If only I could have set my alarm clock to scream that at 5:15 in the morning!

Then came two dance tunes.. Evacuate the Dancefloor and Sexy Chick…  These are brand new, and quite catchy.  As the rollercoaster went up, I’d listen to them quite frequently.  The videos are very nice too!

And then the bottom fell out.

There’s not really much to talk about with the remaining 21 songs… most of them have been in the Top 25 before, and I’m pretty sure that the next 25 after that probably follow a similar theme.  I chuckled when I noticed O-Town’s All or Nothing in there.  O-Who?  I think that was one of those boy bands that got slammed together at the height of the “let’s make a boyband every single week” craze.  I didn’t even know that I had that song on my hard drive, and probably never listened to it until now.. but for whatever reason, All or Nothing seemed to catch my ear this month, and got played.. quite a bit..

This month I reset all the play counters, and removed some of the playlists from my iPod.  The songs are still there in the master playlist, but they’re jumbled in with almost 3000 other songs, so I doubt the frequency of play will be as high as they have been the last few months.

Maybe.

It’s October now, so that means two things.

1. I can finally turn on the heat!
2. It’s time to look at the Top 25 most played songs on my iPod.

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on doing this every month, but I thought that it might be interesting (atleast for me) to kind of keep track of my listening  habits and get a feel for what I was thinking through the month.  Kind of reminds me of the days when I used to copy out the American Top 40 countdowns in a book, and then listen to the year end Top 100 and compare that to what I had figured SHOULD be on there.  I was pretty focussed back in the day.

So here it is…

First thing I notice is that there are only 5 songs there that aren’t slow, down from 8 on the previous month’s list.  I don’t know if that means that I’ve gotten more reflective in September or not.  I have to wonder when I look at them… Alice Cooper?  I know that I love that song, but have I really listened to Poison more than I’ve listened to any Phil Collins, Genesis, Great Big Sea, or U2?  Apparently the answer is yes!

Funhouse is Pink’s new one.  I don’t like it as much as some of her older stuff, but because it’s new, I seem to have been listening to it quite a bit.  Dance Wiv Me is probably holding onto its spot from early in the month play.  I don’t really remember listening to it recently, so it was probably carried over from the August popularity.

Sweet Dreams is one of those awesome songs that just doesn’t go away.  I love Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics.  I can still remember that song as one of the ones that we wanted played at the wedding.  Sweet dreams are made of this…

I added the Roxette discography collection to my iPod this month, which explains why there’s so much Roxette in my top 200 list.  Several of those songs were sitting at the edge of the Top 25, and four managed to make it.  From One Heart to Another is a song that I barely remembered from their Pearls of Passion CASSETTE.  The biggest shock is the number one song Never is a Long Time, which I had never even heard until I was going through the songs in the discography.  It kinda kicked me in the gut, and made me take notice.  I have no idea when it was released.  It’s not new, but it definitely one that I wish I had known about years ago.  Between that, and the 3^rd song Never Say Never by The Fray, I think that there’s a certain “Never” theme around the month of September.

I added a few more songs this month to my iTunes purchased folder.  They were songs that had popped into my mind, and I used to own them years ago, but haven’t been able to find them in my collection.  Well, if I can’t find them easily, I just turn to iTunes now.  Except that now my iTunes card has run out, so I guess it’s time for another one.

I have to mention Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits.  I could probably write an entire post on this song, but for now, I’ll just keep it brief.  This song is slow, but it’s not the typically-themed slow song that everything else is.  There’s no special person, memory, or thought associated to it.  I’m not a huge Dire Straits fan (although Money For Nothing was pretty good) but this song is amazing.  If you’ve never heard it, or can’t remember it, I highly suggest looking for it online.  I imagine that YouTube might have it uploaded, although I have no idea if the video is any good.  Listen to the lyrics.  And the haunting guitar.  Amazing.

Well, it’s time to reset the counters and see what happens over the next month. As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve been listening to a wide assortment of music.  My Top 25 contains only 6 songs so far… ABBA, AC/DC, Our Lady Peace, Air Supply, Lenny Kravitz, and No Doubt.

That’s quite an interesting mix!

So I grabbed a snapshot of the Top 25 most played songs on my iPod before resetting all the counters.  It’s more of a curiosity thing, than anything else.  I suspect that when I look at my list next month, that it might look a little different from this list.  Obviously the songs that I purchased through iTunes were on heavy rotation, so that pushed them up the list. 

There were a few surprises though…

Broken is one of those songs that came out of nowhere.  I like Lifehouse, but I was not familiar with this song until I heard a Top 100 countdown and it was already on it’s way out.  I don’t think that it did very well.  I never heard it on the radio here.  I listened to it, and felt an immediate connection with it.  I hear it now being used in the movie The Time Traveler’s Wife.  I haven’t seen that movie yet, but I think I’d like to go.

18th Floor Balcony was one that was used for a routine in So You Think You Can Dance season 5.  I wasn’t even paying attention to the routine.  I was trying to hear the words of the song.  Not what I would expect from Blue October, but I love it!

Dance Wiv Me was the insanely catchy song used to promo So You Think You Can Dance Canada season 2.  Everytime I listen to it, I keep thinking of dancers spinning their way to the ceiling!

Scotty Doesn’t Know is an awesome song that most people probably aren’t even familiar with.  Featured in Eurotrip, it has a special place in my heart.  Matt Damon’s cameo is hilarious, and the song is just too perfect not to play frequently!

There’s a mixture of slow and fast, although this Top 25 is decidedly slow.  I also captured a Top 100 and Top 200 (yeah, I was bored) and the mix is pretty much about the same.  Someone asked me once if I had a “happy” playlist.  Umm.. sadly, no.  I have my GymTunes playlist, which is probably as close as I’m gonna get to a happy playlist.  I certainly have plenty of “happy” songs, but I’ve never felt the need to put them into a playlist.  Even some of the slower songs elicit a happy response, whether a fond memory or whatever.  I’ll work on it.

I’ll send out an honourable mention to a song that was clinging to a spot in the Top 25 for the longest time, and then fell out at the end.  Truth be told, the bottom songs all tied, and some of the songs that didn’t make it onto the list had the same amount of plays as the ones that did.  I think that iTunes uses the “most recently played” characteristic to help determine positioning, so songs that tied were placed by when they were played last.  Anyway, the song I wanted to mention is Twist and Shout by The Beatles.  It might seem like a strange song to make my list, but I recently watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off again, and it beckoned me.  I found it in the archives and started listening to it.. enough that it should be on this Top 25 list.

Without further adieu…  

Stephen’s Top 25 for August 2009