Archives For Music

We are still going backwards with this listing of songs…

I think 2006 and 2007 marked my shift of Asian focus in music. It’s weird, I don’t think it’s about lyrics as I most often than not don’t search for lyric translations. I have just found Asian music to be more “musically” interesting than their Western counterparts.

I once had a throughout conversation with a friend online who lives in Morocco, and is a huge fan of Asian entertainment, and has lost all notion of Western entertainment. I asked him why his interests shifted, and he told me it was because there was a point in his life where everything looked and sounded the same to him.

Others have commented on the topic with regards of idols’ image and the degradation of the business.

With the turn of the new decade, we will see how big the Asian entertainment industry gets. Many will be watching… I will keep an eye on this.

Continue Reading…

Love Love Love, Oh Yeah!

December 29, 2009 — 1 Comment

You know, if anyone artist deserves to make me broke, it’s Wang Lee Hom and his freaking talent. Not only is he an astounding singer, and a kick ass composer… and producer. He also plays 14 instruments, and freaking speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, English, Japanese and French.

To make it funny, he’s also beaten Angelina Jolie, since he has 10 adopted children from Laos.

He’s an amazing live performer, and I would kill (not literally) to see him in a concert.

Check out,

https://youtu.be/AHBr3_drJ9o

To keep things interesting, I’ve decided to switch to the newest songs that made the best 100 songs of the decade. Just the heads up, it turned out to be very Asian. Is it trying to tell you something?

One of those examples was the Welcome to Beijing song, which had a HUGE bunch of Asian (mostly Chinese, Taiwan and Hong Kong) stars. The scale of the project is probably similar to (or even bigger than) Michael Jackson’s We Are the World song… which in its time was epic. To me, and to many Asian (and non-Asian) people who keep track of the Asian music industry it marked an important time. Not only did the Olympics opened China to the world… and the world to China, but it also felt like a huge switch on everything from basic economics, industry… and entertainment.

It’s as if Chinese musicians had been enclosed all those years while the economy started to pick up, and have exploded with a huge fireball of creativity. It’s amazing at the amount of talent coming out from there, especially now that they can upload their music through the many Chinese music websites like douban.com and haoting.com, and the amount of blogs and communities that are reporting on them.

Some really awesome music, which I have already blog in this place. This is the reason, I want to get over these ones first, before I post many other songs from 2002-2006 when I didn’t blog that much (or at all).

Continue Reading…

Ever since the internet began playing a bigger part on what is music today (with places like MySpace, YouTube and Peer to Peer), I said it… there will never be a fuly 100 Greatest Songs for this past decade. You will watch a VH1 (or MTV) Greatest Songs of 2000-2009, and you will always feel they will be nothing compared to their list of Greatest 90’s songs, or Greatest 80’s songs where you would sit, listen and say “Wow, I remember this song. It brings such memories” – Those days are over, and it’s kind of nostalgic.

With the internet, the market for music was open in such a way that you do not need to listen to the radios. You are not obliged to listen to what the record companies decide to send the radios… you simply do not need to listen to anything they produce as there’s a market from pretty much any small artist willing to put themselves out there. With the internet, you do not need to restrain yourself from listening to something just because it’s not sold on your region. You can find out about any group around the world, singing in any language, and you can most likely get their albums digitally or through online stores.

And so my list of 100 Best Songs of the Decade doesn’t reflect what was supposed to be popular in America… or America Latina… or Europe… or China… or Japan, but it reflects the best of everything that was available anywhere in the world. There is most likely you will find something here that will bring memories to you.

Continue Reading…

Best Albums of 2000-2009

December 23, 2009 — 7 Comments

Well, I’ve found it easier to narrow down the number of albums for this Top100 Albums of the Decade, than to narrow my list of songs to 100. LOL I have around 350 songs at the moment. This is gonna be difficult… and also in every possible language xD

Anyway, I’m sure that I had to take out some albums to include other albums. It was all a very difficult process to figure out what to include… going from “do I really have to take this song out?” to “OMG, I really love all these songs from this artist!!! Which one should I choose!- So please, bear with me, and comment what to add.

Continue Reading…

In 2006, when she began promotion of her debut Under the Surface, she released a simple video for the song with the same title, which wasn’t really WOW but promoted the song well. Turns out, since her starting promotion of her music in Germany, they made a new version of Under the Surface…

and they also released a proper video for If a Song Could Get me You~~~
comes with Making Of an all~~~ Marit’s so cute.
Wonder if under all that cuteness, there’s a strong Scandinavian character.
What you say Julz?
Continue Reading…

Best of 2009: Songs

December 23, 2009 — 1 Comment

Well I don’t think I have listened to much 2009 music, and I know there are a couple of albums that are still on my list of “want to listen” but I figured if I wasn’t rushing to get them, I wasn’t gonna fall madly in love with them.

So here is my provisional list of best 2009 songs. I’m also planning a Best Songs of 2000-2009, but that’s gonna take wayyyyyyyy longer. At the moment I have pre-selected the songs from 2000-2006 which are nearly 500 songs. I need to listen to all of them and begin taking songs out. I’m pushing for a 100 songs list.

Continue Reading…

I have just fallen in love with a new song. Better yet!
Lyrics live up to the expectation.
Take a look at Sodagreen from their 2007 album
Incomparable Beauty. Beautiful lyrics and instrumentation on the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adgEGZQHG28

And this is Little Love Song.

FYI, singer is a guy. But here he is doing a pretty rocking version of Toxic. LOL Now imagine him singing and 2001 Britney Spears performing to that music. Would be sweet.

I love LOVE Incomparable Beauty. *sighs*

1k Albums on LivingSocial!

December 21, 2009 — 1 Comment

Congratulate me! I just added my 1k ‘have heard’ album to my FB app.
Yay! And I’m so happy it was an album I liked a lot, and want to add to my
personal collection~~~ Yay Sodagreen! Yay Chinese music!

Only 6 more album listens, and I’ll be ready to name my best of 2009. xD

I noticed some of my music/imeem posts had gone orange on me, and *le gasp* IMEEM is gone?

Apparently, IMEEM had some debts, and MySpace just bought it for only $1M. The transaction has been so quick, that imeem accounts haven’t been moved, and indie artists were left floating… and might not get paid at all.

This is what MySpace said:

We did not acquire imeem’s contracts or relationships as we have our own in place. MySpace Music has its own distribution platform, which includes relationships with prominent aggregators and indie labels, that provides indie artists ways to monetize their music on our site.

Sucks for indie music.

I wonder if I will get back those playlists though. I’m sure MySpace is planning to let people embed stuff, otherwise why “buy technology” from imeem, right? Those orange boxes suck.

via Wired.com

Indie artists, use CDBaby. Besides letting you sell the albums you want, they will digitize it and will sell it and distribute on mp3 form. Or if you really trust your fans, just self-host your album and use paypal. That way is easier to count hits on your own files.