Damn, Christina Aguilera sounds pretty good as Cher and Britney. Her Shakira sounds a bit Cher-y for my taste, but her yodeling sounds legit. But apparently, it’s pretty big news that Christina does old school Britney better than Britney herself because my mother came over with an already set comment on this before I showed her the clip.
Thing is, Christina can do voices, BiBi does gestures [1].
I’ve been so disconnected from Shakira for so long. I still listen to her old albums, but that fandom fijacion that would have been is not there- that means I literally don’t know what’s new with Shakira. After the birth of her son, she’s making a comeback. The last single I sort of knew was Loba or She Wolf, so apparently it’s been less time since her last album.
Not a fan of Can’t Remember to Forget You, but her latest single Empire brought back all those Piez Descalzos and Donde Estan Los Ladrones vibes and feelings. Lyrics-wise still not there, but it’s okay.
All of a sudden interested on what’s coming up with her new album.
Okay, this is bordering on Spam~
But Raiou opened on Friday (it’s been more than half the day in Japan already). So there’s been a lot of news naturally, and I hope there are more reviews… super-hoping in English. xD
You know I’ve been listening to Maika’s album right? That she reminds me of Shakira, and I’ve been pimping some of Maika on YAM [1][never never never give up]. Also OFF-TOPIC, but this made me realize Twitter needs a search your tweets feature.
Anyway, this is Kokoro… but 2 minutes longer =D So more Yu and Msaki Okada singing. LOL
[iframe src=”https://player.yinyuetai.com/video/player/88676/v_5501040.swf” width=”480″ height=”334″]
Ah… English, such a direct language. I often have discussions with people about the nuances of the different languages. Friends tell me that French and Italian are great for flirting, and my mom keeps telling me that different dialects in Chinese have so many words to describe food flavors, impossible to describe in Spanish or English.
However, what about songs?
My favorite songs, my favorite artists in English — 99% of the time, I try not to find the lyrics any longer. Whenever I have enjoyed the songs, looked for the lyrics, 90% of the time I’ve ended up disappointed.
My first language is Spanish, however, I often find myself thinking in English – so, whenever I listen to music in Spanish, my brain begins translating lyrics into English. The repertoire of songs that I actually like in Spanish tend to be songs that are hard to translate literally into English.
So… today it’s voting Sunday. And I’ve also setup my About page… and got rid of my Favorites page because… well, it seemed redundant to have two pages about me. LOL
In case you missed the post in which I talked about my taste in film, this is a similar post that talks about my history… or lack of history with music.
When I was about 7, my dad opened a Karaoke bar (how Asian, non?). But by then, I had already grown up with the likes of the music of La Nueva Ola (the new wave) — you know, the type of Rock n’ Roll from The King… Jailhouse Rock or Houndog but in Spanish. My favorite tunes were probably La Plaga (the plage, the Spanish version of Little Richard’s Good Golly, Miss Molly), and La Mantequilla (the butter, the Spanish version of Cliff Richard and the Shadows’ Move It).
Of course, I was a little kid going to Chinese/Peruvian school, so my repertoire also included the Cantonese Counting Song Yat Yi Sam, as well as the counting Elefantes song… as well as the Sukiyaki song. So from the very beginning… I had a predisposition for all types of music in many different languages.
Continue Reading…
It’s supposed to be the short version – remember this? – Well, it’s here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu2aVWvP__o
Have I told you that MAIKA reminds me a LOT of old school Shakira in her Donde Estas Corazon and Donde Estan los Ladrones days? You know, before she turned blonde on me and began doing that thing she calls Shakira music in English? Kind of like Alanis when she became happy. Shakira was the Latin American Alanis.
So I approve of Maika. Must now find if she’s got an album – hmm… kinda reluctant to get a single. But, anyway… remember Masaki and Yu were going to lip-sync? OMG, it’s the cutest thing ever. I hope there’s a long version of just the two of them lip-syncing because that was the highlight of the video.
The American Music Awards — it’s still on, though I’m guessing there’s about 20min left. Taylor Swift is such a sweety. As for performances, were you impressed? Because I wasn’t that entertained.
I did like Lady Gaga’s performance though, I don’t really go crazy about her music — album-wise — but her performances have been pretty cool. And her performance, alongside Whitney Houston and… yeah, even a little bit J.Lo were the best of the night, in my opinion.
Gaga’s stage performance, alongside the energy of the song, the lights, the theatrics, the glass-breaking, the piano-playing and the bottle-breaking, I thought it was interesting.
J.Lo’s performance — was that a comeback? — of her song Louboutins, it was kinda interesting (songs average, though). I liked the entrance to the boxing ring, and the choreography was pretty good. Note how her feet moved, instead of just jiggling her stuff. Jiggling your ham is not dancing, people. Feet gotta be moved.
And Whitney. Oh, my. I do love a good comeback. What a voice. The song on the album was okay, but the performance brought it to that level. Loads of feeling, I miss that feeling. And those shots with the backlights, they made Whitney look pretty rocking.
And LOL, Adam Lambert. Never seen him perform, but Maca always fuzzed about him. His performance was pretty good. He looked a little bit weird, but there were other parts that were pretty good. There was a lot of touching, including some pretending c*cksucking from a guy and a woman. And a bit of guy-on-guy action — right? coz the keyboards was a dude, right? We don’t see enough of that. They seriously cut from a close-up to a general shot when that happened.
Other performances of the night? Janet Jackson — who was pretty okay, I guess — Black Eyed Peas, Carrie Underwood, Shakira, Rihanna, Keith Urban, Mary j. Blige, Alicia Keys solo and with Jay-Z, Eminem with 50 Cent… and Timbaland’s performance which was okay, but truly can’t stand the way he sounds any longer. He’s overdone it.
Winners don’t really matter. No, really. I mean it.
But congrats to Taylor Swift who won big, including Artist of the Year.
— EDIT —
LOL, honestly. There’s a lot of talk about Adam Lambert. I knew it. The average American Idol viewer couldn’t take that performance. A lot of self-proclaimed Lambert fans who will not be buying the album tomorrow because of the crotch on the face, the S&M stuff, and the guy-on-guy kiss. Get over yourself, people. Female performers do it all the time, and no one says anything about it. If it had been a girl doing all the crotch grabbing, and there had been a girl on girl kiss no one would have made a peep.
Bunch of Mo’phobes.
Esta es la traducción de inglés -> español del artículo que escribí para YAM 003 titulado “Too Foreign for your Own Good. Please Sing in English” en el que hablo de los más recientes lanzamientos de artistas de no habla inglesa estrenando material en el idioma para entrar en el mercado.
Como el artículo es un poco largo, pueden leerlo después del break.
I just posted YAM 003 over at my portfolio~~
There’s a lot of international flavor in it… all by chance actually. It really wasn’t planned, it all just came together like that. There’s a couple of rant articles on movies and music, loads of reviews including complete non-fanatical reviews of Ao Akua, Utada Hikaru, DBSK, Hathaways, U2, Madeleine Peyroux, and Michel Gondry/Bong Joon-ho’s Yu Aoi’s Tokyo!
ALSO! A special on the Peruvian film winning the Berlinale’s Golden Bear top prize~~ The Milk of Sorrow, and some of the discussion regarding the original name “La Teta Asustada”.
