'Potential'
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
Bonus cover: Cat Power and Karen Elson cover Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime moi non plus".
Seeing that reminds me of one of my favorite "hidden" tracks - the cover of "Bonnie & Clyde" on Luna's 'Penthouse' with Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab (the original was Serge and Bridget Bardot).
So, best cover of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'"?
The Residents? or Crispin Glover?
The Residents' version is rather short, so I give the nod to Glover's version.
eta: Glover's version has a much more "normal" production, with the exception of his vocals. Which are great.
Today's pop music really does all sound the same — and science can prove it
Music snobs, take heed. Detailed analysis of songs produced between 1955 and 2010 confirms what you've always known in your heart to be true: modern pop music really has gotten louder, and it all sounds exactly the same. All aboard the train to smug-town!
Your vindication comes in the form of a peer-reviewed study, published in the latest issue of Scientific Reports, that finds pop songs have become "intrinsically louder" and have come to rely more on more on the same chords, melodies, and sound palettes.
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse," said artificial intelligence expert and musicologist Joan Serrà, who led the study, in an interview with Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations — roughly speaking, chords plus melodies — has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."
...
To be fair, Serrà and his colleagues discovered these patterns in contemporary Western popular music; the researchers were relying on samples collected from the Million Song Dataset, which, while certainly impressive, is a bit limited in global/cultural scope; but at least the researchers recognize this:
We encourage the development of further historical databases to be able to quantify the major transitions in the history of music, and to start looking at more subtle evolving characteristics of particular genres or artists, without forgetting the whole wealth of cultures and music styles present in the world.
Boys Next Door!
Nick Cave - Pop Star!
Hecubus will appreciate this: New Redd Kross album streaming at NPR [link]
I particularly like "Stay Away From Downtown".
Hecubus will appreciate this: New Redd Kross album streaming at NPR [link]
Excellent! I saw them backing Sky Saxon at The Cave in LA in 1985ish.
I particularly like "Stay Away From Downtown".
Like Sloan and TFC they've still got their power pop chops.
I don't know why no one of you told me about Salena Jones & The Keith Mansfield Orchestra before, but y'all on the list for this.