See it live

I think if you're not really immersed in rap and hip hop, sometimes it helps to watch certain performances live.



Did you see Kendrik Lamar's performance at the 2016 Grammys? Mamma jamma!

The best snare drummer you will ever see.

You don't have to live like a refugee (metaphorically, that is)

Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some
Tell me why you want to lay there and revel in your abandon
Honey, it don't make no difference to me, baby
Everybody has to fight to be free

Read more: Melissa Etheridge - Refugee Lyrics | MetroLyrics

We're in the M's... we're getting there

My favorite break up song

Courtesy of Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie, here in cover-ahj. Didn't even know I had this version.



I think this was always my fave breakup song cause I could (and cannot) imagine ever becoming strangers with my husband. We're in the process of breaking up, and we take it in baby steps because we want to remain friends. Need to remain friends, really, cause we still love each other "Like never before."

And I wish you all the love in the world,
But most of all, I wish it from myself.

Matisyahu

Mamer

\

"The great old Kazak folk songs were born when people were shepherding," says the boyish thirty-something. "Living in cities we are often too busy to allow this sort of tranquillity to enter our lives. I have to return to the grasslands once or twice a year. That is where I get my inspiration, my creativity." (Real World Records)

"The band's name was inspired by gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt who lost the use of two fingers following a fire."

This is what it sounds like when a French person is singing an English song phonetically, understanding nothing. Like my cousin did when I first met her.

They're so cute

My first Nicki Minaj song. They're so cute. It's like the theme song to a 90s teen comedy.

One you go black you never go back
And once you go Wayne everybody else is whack

What you up to K'naan?

This seems to have been the year I discovered both Janelle Monae and K'naan.



K'naan's second album was incredible. His third one... bleh. But he admitted it. What's he doing now?

[googles]

A TV show! Hm.

Somalia-born and Canadian-raised rapper K'naan will team with Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow on a new HBO drama series that will focus on Jihadi recruitment in the United States. The series, titled The Recruiters, "will draw open an iron curtain behind which viewers will see the highly impenetrable world of Jihadi recruitment," HBO said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/knaan-kathryn-bigelow-team-for-jihadi-recruitment-hbo-series-20151212#ixzz40gZXVYyo

I love a song you can really wail on

What could ever lead you back here where we need you?

My favorite TV theme song (after the A-Team of course) because: It's the all important final step of the hero journey!

Kotter's a young punk. He gets out, he gets a degree, presumably faces his dragon out there somewhere, and returns to share the gold. Cause remember... if you hoard what you've learned you just become a dragon.

Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out
Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they're turned around.
Who'd have thought they'd lead ya

Back here where we need ya

More music I stole from my dad

My dad's never had huge music collections (I get this from my mother) but that didn't stop me from raiding the bedside table where he kept his cassettes. I'm afraid he lost some Joan Armatrading.

Get up up on the dance floor

Still one of my favorite videos ever

And when you're growing down instead of growing up
Tell me are you bold enough to reach for love?

I never say I'll never love -- but I don't say a lot of things

That time you wrote a song for a watch commercial and it turned out really good

I never cried so much
You've been taking me apart
You gonna put me back together?
Gonna start me from the start?

I've been wrecking my blood
Been wrecking my brains
I been killing my heart
I've been living in the pain

Cause when we fight sometimes
When we're clawing at each other
Got to think it's all for something at the end of all the trouble
Gonna build something to last
Not to let it crumble fast
Want to be the ones left standing
After all the time has passed

And if I'm feeling unplugged
Feeling swept under the rug
Need to hold the lantern for me
Need to pick me back up
Want to remember all the things that we said we want to do
Don't want to start to pull away
Cause it's easier to do
When you look at something ugly that you thought you hid away
When it's coming back to haunt you on an unsuspecting day
We're going to be the harbor where we can just tie our little boats
A place to fight off all the lions that keep gnashing at our throats

Everybody that we trust says it's harder than it looks
Something good's a constant struggle when there's a tree there to be shook
Better believe the wind will blow
It'll try to push you down
It'll try to pull your roots
And leave you lying on the ground...

We'll make time though there ain't that much time
Oh and we'll make love in the middle of the night...

I hope we're older someday
And we've grown so much
I hope that we still feel the warmth there
In our kiss and in our touch
Cause the world is against you
When you're after something true
It ain't the fashion to be faithful
Even though it's hard to do
And it's confusing sometimes
Cause even the good ones fall away
You have to keep the fire burning every night and every day
I know we're corny, old fashioned
Is forever really true?

But when I say that you're for me
And baby, baby I'm for you
And though the grass is always greener but you still have to cut it
And the scars you get together
Are the scars you really covet
And at night when we are lovers
And we're mucking up the covers
And it's all about our eyes
And we've forgotten all the others
When we're laying there in silence
In the comfort and the quiet
And you hold me as we fall asleep
In the coldness of the night
And though we say it on the phone
Out in public or alone
And then we write it down in letters
When the other one's not home...

Read more: Hawksley Workman - We'll Make Time Lyrics | MetroLyrics

A band that consists of cartoon people

Took me awhile to *get*  Gorillaz.

She got her break when Prince heard her in a hotel lounge and invited her to jam with him

Good heavens she had another album in 2013 and I didn't even realize.

Classification: Songs you don't want to be the subject of

Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you

 

"At least five hundred came into my place [the Folklore Center]... and asked if it was about me. I don't know if it was, but it was unfair. I'm in the Village twenty-five years now. I was one of the representatives of the Village, there is such a thing as the Village. Dave Van Ronk was still in the Village. Dylan comes in and takes from us, uses my resources, then he leaves and he gets bitter. He writes a bitter song. He was the one who left." - some dude

lol

Doing "old age rocker" right

Lauper does concept albums--like a blues album, or standards, or in this case a well put together acoustic album. I was wowed by some of these songs that I'd never heard before.

With Sarah McLachlan:




With Vivian Green:

What if all these things that we both buy into
Melt away and disappear?

Spike Lee does Aaron Copland

Spike Lee's another one like Kanye (though I don't think he's crazy.) Gets dismissed a lot because he's opinionated and sometimes rude. But I think he's one of the greatest American directors--emphasis on the American. Like a Frank Capra and Aaron Copland. He looks at his country and gets at the soul of the thing, which is why he's one of the few people who can take Copland from the frontier to the basketball court and it makes sense.

"John Henry"

Sigh... we're only in the C's

Love the tone of her voice on this.

Here's the part of me they have not sold

If you haven't taken time for this song, you is missing something.



Of course... while I post these videos I just discover more songs I want to download.

Chaka is one of the many female artists Prince supports. Too bad he has this reputation as a misogynist, cause he really isn't.

This is how I end up with too much music.

I upload something interesting, and then don't spend enough time getting to know it, to see if I want to keep it. It's that music snob in one that whispers "This might be the album and you're not giving it enough attention you barbarian."

70 is the new 20?

Another old artist who's still managing to contribute something new. She won the Polaris prize* later than this, in 2015. At 74 years old.



_____
* "The Polaris Music Prize is a not-for-profit organization that annually honours and rewards artists who produce Canadian music albums of distinction. A select panel of music critics judge and award the Prize without regard to musical genre or commercial popularity."

Great Billy Joel song

Bit creepy

Waiting for a chick to turn 18. Well... at least he waited.

Use of the word "guy" twice in close succession... BOLD CHOICE

My dad bought this best of album, and I just sort of... ran off with it. Sorry dude. All is fair in music and war.

Oh lord we're only in the B's

Boy these two are hot together.



But culling 2010 was a bitch of a job, and at the end I was still left with 2370 songs! What happened? I don't know how to pick what to share.

Also lots of stuff I didn't even need to look at--1920s compilations and so forth.

Alicia Comes Through

Sometimes I come across a song or album by an artist and it's like... amazing. It's perfect. But the next album comes along and it's just meh. K'naan did that to me. Then one day they put out the album you always knew they had in them.

I really disliked Alicia Keys' second album, but in 2009 she finally put out The Element of Freedom. Good god. What a beautiful record.



It has one of my favorite love songs--très intense.

Moment of honesty, someones gotta take the lead tonight
Who's it gonna be?
I'm gonna sit right here and tell you all that comes to me
If you have something to say you should say it right now




And here's your encore song. ;-)