Week 12 Listening Blog

For the final blog (YAY), I decided to choose the song "Not a Pretty Girl" performed by Ani DiFranco in 1995. I love 1990s music since that was the decade I was born and partially grew up in but honestly I have never heard of this song nor have I ever heard of Ani DiFranco. I was excited to pick something I didn't know and this song is really a great song. It is more of a punk indie song and the only instruments being played in the song are drums and an acoustic guitar. I think this makes it more simplistic but it works well with the song. I really enjoy listening to the lyrics because I feel like they are show her progressive thinking towards feminism. She talks about not being a damsel in distress and telling others she wants to be than just a pretty face. I feel like especially for this time period, there was a third-wave of feminism that was going on in the early 1990s lead by the females of Generation X. They wanted more freedom from critique about the types of jobs they chose along with questioning what womanhood really meant. I like how her voice goes from silky smooth to raspy and loud it almost sounds like she is voicing her rebellion against feminine stereotypes. Overall, I really enjoyed this song and its style along with the message she shares in the song.

Week 11 Listening Blog

For this week I decided to listen to "Thriller" performed by Michael Jackson and Written by Rod Temperton. For most of us, this is a song we frequently hear around Halloween time on the Radio and for me personally, I grew up knowing this song because of how popular it was and still is. Thriller is Micheal Jackson's most popular song being the #1 best-selling album in the world and The music  video for this song won Best Performance Video, Best Choreography, and Viewers Choice at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. Even thought the music video is 14 minutes long, it had 100 million views when it first came onto the platform YouTube. In the music video, Micheal asked to put a disclaimer that stated "Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult." This was due to Micheal Jackson being a member (at the time) of the Jehovah's Witnesses and was advised to not make the video by other Jehovah's Witnesses due to the appearance of zombies and other supernatural phenomena.

The song itself is amazing and it has such a great beat to it. In the beginning it uses a synthesizer to give it a creepy sound and it starts off the song with a electric guitar and drums that repeat the same notes until it hits the chorus. The lyrics give amazing imagery of everything creepy you would experience on Halloween like in a Haunted House (You hear the door slam and realize there's nowhere left to run. You feel the cold hand and wonder if you'll ever see the sun). It has such a great dance that goes with the song and I really enjoy listening to the creepy narrator it sounds just like the speaker in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Overall, I really enjoyed this song and I look forward to hearing it every Halloween it just really brings in the Halloween spirit!

Week 10 listening blog

This week I decided to listen to "Play that Funky Music" performed by the band Wild Cherry. The song was created in 1976 during what I like to call the "Disco Fever" era. I really enjoy this song as I listened to it several times from playing Guitar Hero and also have listened to the renditions. This song was written by the band leader Rob Parissi who used to do renditions of other songs and make them his own which didn't make his band the most popular. However, while doing this at a gig some man yelled out, " Play that Funky Music, white boy!" and that gave him an idea to write down what was going on at the event and turn it into a song. The song was sadly their only hit that grew in popularity but other artists made renditions of this song including Vanilla Ice in his Ice Ice Baby album. This song was also featured in TV series such as The Office, Scandal, and The Big Bang Theory. 

This song uses the same notes throughout the verse and uses instruments that give it that funky disco style such as electric guitar, drums, trumpets, and other wind percussion instruments. They also use what sounds like a cow bell in the song during the chorus to help indicate to clap during the chorus. Rob Parissi has several this voice that is raspy but also high-pitched that is also known in the disco music during the chorus such as the lyrics "Till you die". Overall, I enjoyed this song and the background as to how this song came to be. I think it is still a song that in enjoyed today that has a great beat that you can't help but groove to. 

Week 9 Listening Blog

This week I listened to "Hotel California" performed by the Eagles and it was composed by Don Felder, Glenn Frey and Don Henley. This song was written and performed in 1976, The Hotel California album was #37 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Albums of all time, and won a Grammy in 1977 even if they didn't show up to receive it. The song was first an idea from Don Felder on a beach. Don Henley states that the song is about the American dream's dark underbelly and the excess of it. It is written in the point of view of an outsider in California who compares the images that is portrayed about California to outsiders versus the reality and normal imagery seen in California (Hollywood and actors versus people who are broke trying to make it big in Hollywood). This song became so popular even to present time with it making an appearance in American Horror Story: Hotel.

I listened to this song even as a kid and never understood the meaning of the song because the imagery is all over the place. Also, the lyrics I feel with this song compared to other songs from generations before, delves deeper into describing the scenery. In fact the Eagles wanted to have this song be a full sensory experience to help stimulate all of the senses such as hearing "And still those voices are calling from far away" and touch "On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair". I love the electric guitar solo and how it starts off with a gentle guitar solo but ends with this awesome guitar solo. Now that I'm older, I can close my eyes and listen to the song; seeing the story being told and see the detailed imagery play out the scenes in my head.

Week 8 Listening Blogs

This week I listened to "Respect" performed by Aretha Franklin and composed by Otis Redding. This song was in Aretha's album "I Never Loved a Man The Way I Loved You" that was performed in 1967. The song was originally performed by Otis Redding in his album "Otis Blues" which made the top five on Billboard's Black Singles Chart. Both of these versions have similar tempos and styles but the meaning is different for each person who sang it. For Otis, it originally was talking about a man who wanted respect from his wife because he was the bread-winner in the household. He describes the man as feeling worthless at home and at his job and only wants his wife to respect him in exchange for the money he brings home to her. However, in Aretha Franklin's version, she switched the genders from a man singing to a woman and that the woman was working. I believe this was very powerful and the reason it became a more popular version was that during the time this version released, it was around the era that woman started to become more common in the workplace (1960s). She associated this song to black freedom and women's liberation.
The song is upbeat and has several repeated versus to emphasize her words especially the background singers lyrics "just a little bit". She wants just a little bit more respect. I love how the singers sing usually after or part way when Aretha sings because to me it sounds like her personal thoughts. the instrumental stops before she says R-E-S-P-E-C-T to emphasize her frustrations with not getting it no matter how many times she ask so spelling it out is a passive aggressive way of stating the fact that they aren't listening and maybe if she spells it out they will finally understand what she is saying. Overall, I loved listening to this song and it has become such an iconic song used in movies, shows, etc. that almost everyone has at one point in their lives, heard of this song. Aretha Franklin really is the "Queen of Soul".

Week 7 Listening Blog

This week I had the wonderful opportunity to listen to "Eleanor Rigby" performed by The Beatles and was composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. I absolutely love this song because I used to play this song for Orchestra and to perform several Beatles songs including Eleanor Rigby. The making of this sing actually has quite an interesting story behind it. When Paul McCartney was helping with writing the song, he actually lived in a housing unit with all these old ladies who would share their life stories with him because they were old lonely woman who would die alone and no one would know about it. This gave him the idea to write a song about loneliness, particularly a story about two old lonely people being Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie who worked in or attended church.
This song starts off with the chorus as the introduction which helps to build up to the first verse. The string instruments play in a Staccato bowing style which means to detach from the string and separate the notes .This make them sound shorter and stronger while playing the beats. I love how upbeat the song sounds which contrasts with the lyrics which are about loneliness and dying alone. I like how they tell the story of these two individuals; Eleanor Rigby who cleans up the church and Father McKenzie who gives sermons no one comes to hear (as explained in the song). Eleanor dies and no one knows about her death and no one comes to her funeral except for Father McKenzie who buries her. It reminds me of a saying I used to hear growing up which was we are all born alone and we also die alone. Although, I would like to think that at least she had one person who was there to perform her funeral which was Father McKenzie. One Lyric stuck out to me which was "no one was saved"  after the burial of Eleanor Rigby. I believe this hints to Eleanor Rigby, even though she was a humble church goer, her soul was still not saved through Jesus. I believe it was because John Lennon did not believe in god and was making a Jab at Salvation through Jesus. I really like this song and love how short the song is and the storytelling element in this song.

Week 6 listening blog

For this week, I listened to, "Mystery Train" performed by Elvis Presley and originally by Junior Parker. Junior Parker wrote the song originally in 1953 as a blues song with more mellow instrumental. Whereas Elvis Presley's version was more upbeat with guitar and just had a overall happier tone to it. Elvis Presley was known as having a unique voice that sounded like the popular negro voice as they describe it and was perfect for this rendition of this song. This song was what made Elvis Presley famous nationally as a country music star and this song was recorded and produced twice by the same recording studio named Sun Studio (first time for Junior Parker and second time was Elvis Presley). This song grew in popularity thanks to Elvis Presley and was number 11 on the National Billboard Country Chart in 1955.

The song itself is very upbeat compared to the Junior Parker version and has several repetitions throughout the song of the first verse such as, "Train Train coming round the bend" and "Train Arrive sixteen coaches long". The lyrics in the song tell a story about the train taking his lady (possibly a lover or someone close to the singer) far away but the train coming back later with her on it and she doesn't have to leave him ever again. I think it is a good short song and can see why it became so popular among other country songs because of its light and upbeat lyrics/tone in the song.