It’s definitely dance music, alright. I don’t dance myself, but I can hear how one could bust a move to this. The guitar is pretty solid. The juxtaposition of the EDM sound with the '50s ad-man talking about stereo sound works in a way that usually just kind of sounds goofy this kind of dance mix. “Back… and forth… in the groove.”
Haha, that song is oddly nostalgic for me, even though it came out a few years after I graduated. The couplet about living in New York but leaving before it makes you hard, and living in NoCal, but leaving before it makes you soft, has stuck with me over the years for some reason. However, I had no idea it was Baz Luhrmann until just now.
Quirky, offbeat, indie - all the stuff students go for but everyone else ignores. Rightly so. Confine to campus radio and smirk at the plebs in the cold world outside who are not in on the scene, or in the coffee shops which will be your postgraduate workplace. That’s it, it’s postgraduate barista lifestyle music. Music to grow a beard to.
Golden-age British punk rock with a touch of ska. The keyboard solo comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really seem to fit with the guitar riff or the multiple fully-nude women strutting around (how has Youtube not blocked this video?) , but this is coming out of the early era of electronic music where pretty much anything went so it’s hard to fault them for experimenting. The lyrics are nearly incomprehensible, and even upon looking them up they don’t make much sense - the best interpretation I can come up with is that it’s a retelling of the Book of Mormon, but that still doesn’t make any sense.
Guh Luh Ruh Oh Ih Ah
I think this is about a nice lass Patti wants to shag. It’s meh ok, I expect this one to work much better live in a club with an audience to play the crescendo and tempo change on. I’ve heard of Horses and Smith, but from this I don’t know why it’s so famous and critically lauded. Can’t find the right Birdland cover of Rock and Roll Nigger, so this instead
The Hampster Dance
You are not a nice person. This song was briefly amusing in 1999, when the idea of web pages that could play sound and feature simple animations was still novel. Today, it’s one of those things that makes us shake our heads and wonder how this was ever a thing. (Ironically, the way the Billboard charts work nowadays, it’d probably make #1 if it were a brand new song released today.)
Product-of-their-time-improbable-viral-hits it is, then.
This is truly impressive in that they managed to stretch it out for 4 1/2 minutes. Given creative control of this project I would have quit at 2 1/2. But I’m not familiar with any aspect of Massachusetts whatsoever.
Somewhere between the ghettos and the grinding wheels of industry and finance there is a sweet spot where ordinary folk live their lives and eke out some enjoyment from a humble environment. This is by and for those people.
Or it’s for the mega rich to laugh at the little pleasures of the poor folk living their suburban lives like the star of the Truman Show unaware of the mental fences that contain them. Budgies have mirrors and swings, humans have Massachusetts.
Can’t keep my fingers off the punk key.
X-Ray Specs - Identity
. double post
More golden age British punk, with the addition of a brass section this time. The lyrics are unintelligible, which is par for the course at this point in history. Upon looking them up, it’s about an identity crisis - when you see yourself in the mirror, is the person you see not the person that the media tells you you should see, and what should you do about it if it isn’t? A difficult question indeed.
Time for something different - let’s go a few years ahead, after punk turned into New Wave, and take one of the major radio hits of that era, and look at it by way of a cover recorded 35 years later.
Lacking Phil Collins improves this no end. I can finally appreciate this song. Does anyone know what this is about ? It sounds like open air masturbation.
Nothing like a love song with a gang rape in the middle!
U2 when I could listen to an entire album and not want to gnash my teeth. I love the build up and Edge’s guitar in this. One of my favourites off this album.
Feels like a mix of soft country and '90s-esque indie pop. It’s an honest-sounding song about how one feels right after a breakup, especially one with someone who felt like they might have been the one. It’s something I’m sure almost all of us have felt at some point and he channels it well.
I don’t have a song of a similar genre of this on my mind, so here, have a different song with the same title.
Solid Counting Crows. I thought the lyrics were well done and used excellent imagery to get the story across. I know Adam Duritz can sound a little whiny sometimes but I really like this one. They played here not too long ago and I couldn’t make the concert; I really wish I could have. It strikes me that both songs are kind of the same theme, which is amusing.
Pretty good rambling-man-blues type song. The singer is constantly moving on because he’s on the run from something or someone, but no matter how far he travels it never feels like it’s far enough. The chorus denies his bond to that other while simultaneously reaffirming it on a more fundamental level - he is not the means by which his memories or regrets or shames travel down the road, he is the road itself. In the end, I guess the message is that you can’t run away from yourself.
REM’s guitarist is guesting? I’m there. Nice-hooky, a bit countryish but doesn’t overdo it. And it alludes to songbirds? You sold me. 
OK-in the same general vein-the cousin of my brother in law:
Billy Dean - If There Hadn’t Been You
A little twangier than I tend to go for, but I could imagine holding up a lighter and/or waving my hands in the air for it. It reminds me lyrically of songs like “Wind Beneath My Wings” or “You Raise Me Up”, with the singer thanking his partner for the impact they’ve had on his life.
In a similar vein;
Meat Loaf w/ Hugh Laurie & Kara Dioguardi - If I Can’t Have You.
I’ve got a bit of a long standing issue with Meatloaf because ‘money is power, and power is faaaaame’ has made my logic circuits jam since it first came out.
NO NO NO !
First you get the fame, then you get the money, *then *you get the power.
But re: this song, not a bad power ballad. I mean run of the mill in many ways, but has a very Meatloafy sound, and they are hearty singers - he never holds back and I like her voice.
No no no. First you get the sugar. Then you get the power. Then you get the women.
Nice classic blues instrumentals and lyrics that, while not exactly hilarious, are at least smirk-worthy. The dancers in the video (who knew they had music videos in the '30s?) are bit on the minstrel-showy side for my taste, but Waller’s facial expressions are golden.
Blue Öyster Cult made a whole career out of coming up with bizarre titles and writing songs around them, and this one’s definitely one of their weirdest. (“When he bit into her face / she tasted just like a fallen arch!”) Musically it’s sinister and creepy, yet oddly catchy, and just short enough not to outstay its welcome.