Simple "done with finals and bumming around at home" pleasures: lying in bed anId listening to music that sends shivers down your spine.

 I have a playlist titled "Just Hit Repeat" reserved for songs that I think should have a higher play count that they currently have. A lot of these songs are like a punch to the gut; I love music that makes me feel. Or as Aaron Fox would say - songs with "feeling" (oh god I am applying stuff I learned from my sociolinguistics class).

I am so awful at keeping up with these things; but I'm going to try again.

Music blogging (otherwise known as "When Stacy Has Too Many Feelings" or "When Stacy Attempts to Explain/Justifies Her iTunes Play Counts") will be my Summer 2011 Project.

I was listening to Sara Bareilles' King of Anything and thinking how it would be a fantastic mashup with Go West's King of Wishful Thinking.

A quick search on YouTube later and... 

What do you know, such a thing exists!




Even more amazing - it features Emma Hunton and Matt Doyle from Spring Awakening.

I think this is proof that the universe loves me.

is a pretty good way to go.

(Joanna Wang's The Best Mistake I'll Ever Make never stops leaving me breathless. The lyrics, the simple accompaniment, and her voice are all perfect. )

Also, I received a random DMCA complaint for my last blog entry so Blogger has set the entry back to 'draft'.

Personally, I'm just annoyed and confused because I didn't post any download links or how it supposedly 'infringed upon the copyrights of others' since I linked to youtube videos. So unless I get another warning, I'll continue linking to youtube videos.

 I should be working one of my five assignments right now. (I'm almost done with the linguistics one; if by 'almost' you mean 60% complete.)

1.  The Pretty Reckless's "Make Me Wanna Die" and "My Medicine". Taylor Momsen is trying so hard to be hardcore in her hooker chic get up. (Then again, if I had her legs - I'd probably be rockin' thigh highs and stockings as well.) Her voice is unexpectedly good for this genre of music. I keep having NANA flashbacks - she reminds me of an American version of Nana O, especially since they both have songs called "My Medicine".

But man, lyrics like "I'm just 16 if you know what I mean/Do you mind if I take off my dress?" is just screaming for the shock factor (from "Goin' Down").

2. Leaked Glee 2x03 ("Grilled Cheezus") songs, which can be found here. My two favorite tracks are IWHYH and OOU.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand: I don't think I will ever get over how amazing Chris Colfer is at emoting in song. A lot of people dislike his voice, but I really enjoy it.  I'm so glad they used a slow arrangement for the song, it reminds me that I need to watch Across the Universe.

One of Us. I wish all group numbers were like this, with all the vocal parts evenly distributed. I think this might be my new "Like a Prayer". I love, love how they used Jenna's voice used at the beginning and ending. Her voice is so underrated; it can be very sweet and pure but it can also have a harder edge and get a little raspy (like this song).

I really love Chris's voice when he uses his lower register. He sounds fantastic (as does Dianna when she harmonizes with him). Dianna's voice  isn't strong by itself but it complements other singers perfectly and I will be very disappointed if they cut his part in the episode.

I'm a little disappointed by Only the Good Die Young. It's my favorite Billy Joel song and they somehow managed to pull an Uncanny Valley with Mark's voice by auto-tuning it to death. It just sounds so... off.

Lea on Papa Can You Hear Me? is impressive, I think she sounds less like Rachel and more like herself (more subtle, not simply showy belting). This is the purest I've heard her sing on the show.

3. The Inception Soundtrack. I love Hans Zimmerman and Christopher Nolan collaborations; I feel like this is perfect music to listen to while typing a paper. It makes every sentence I type so much more epic.

4. Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven is a Place on Earth" (warning: trippiest music video ever). Oh god, I heard this at some random store the other day and now it's stuck in my head and it won't go away. I have a special weakness for awful 80s/early 90s music. Eye of the Tiger, anyone?

5. Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now". My favorite Queen song, hands down. I think I am incapable of listening to this song without thinking of that one scene at the Watchtower from Shaun of the Dead. Stay classy, self. 

Every couple of weeks I go listen to my Queen playlist and I fall in love with their music all over again.

I am so in love with this song.

According to the internet (yes, I'm That Person who always looks up song interpretations), it's written from the perspective of a guy. The situation is that the girl left him in his bed to make him breakfast. and when he woke up, he thought she had left - and the song is written from his perspective. There are many different claims to the 'real story' behind this song but I've heard this one repeated on YouTube and elsewhere a few times so I'll believe it until I find proof otherwise.

I like the music, but I'm in love with the lyrics. Just the first line "Was it you who said the words, that things would happen, but not to me" caught my attention immediately.

But this verse:

See I'm all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered numbered words
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages for words
More words then I had ever heard and I feel so alive

... That's when I became completely besotted.

The cadence of the words and the way the lyrics rolled off the tongue... yeah, I had this verse up on my Facebook text box for the longest time because I liked it so much.

Versions I Have on Repeat on my iTunes

1. The original by Jason Mraz. (Embedding was disabled.)

2. Kimiko Glenn's cover.



3.  Sam Tsui's cover.

My iPod just played Vienna Teng's Eric's Song on shuffle and I again have to marvel at her way with words and hope she'll try her hand at fiction one day. (I can dream.)

 It's hard to pick favorites with her music but I'm very fond of Stray Italian Greyhound.

I wonder if songwriters ever wince whenever they look at their earlier work like I do whenever I look at my old fiction pieces. Even if I had spent hours refining and editing every line, I always see something that could have been phrased better.

Quite possibly one of the most inappropriate songs to get stuck in one's head for an entire week. It's so ridiculously catchy! I want it to be a karaoke song. So badly.

I am such a classy broad.

Now for a completely different topic, I would probably kill for a mash-up of Joanna Wang's "The Best Mistake I've Ever Made" and Mika's "Happy Ending". It needs to happen.

I've been in love with Joanna Wang's music for a couple of years now (her voice has just the perfect shade of smoke). "The Best Mistake I've Ever Made" is my favorite song of hers since the lyrics are so intriguing. Andrea and I once over-analyzed the song and thought the ambiguity was interesting - it could very well be a song about a same-sex relationship. (Hello, my women's college/liberal arts school background is showing.) 

And I've been on a Mika kick since early August and have been listening to "Happy Ending" non-stop (I want it to be on Glee, it's a perfect song for Chris Colfer to sing as Kurt concerning his crush on Finn).

When you look at the lyrics side-by-side they could almost be telling the same story: before and after.

Very, very interesting. To me at least.

I'm so tempted to mess around with Audacity to try to make the mash-up happen.

I get embarrassingly excited whenever I hear Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". I mean, I literally perk up when I recognize the first few opening notes.

Although I suppose hearing the song at Sands Macao Casino (on the dance stage near the slot machines where a group of young women dressed in very little clothing were... well, doing their job) is probably the oddest place I've heard the song in public.