Keeping It Fresh

Today I have some music for you by a band that has done a cover of a song by one of my favorite bands. DWNTWN has done an absolutely phenomenal job covering this song by The 1975. A lot of times covers can go really well or very terribly, but this cover surpasses the "really well" category. This cover is incredibly well done. The first thing that I noticed when I heard this was that the song is still true to the style of music that DWNTWN makes but also maintains the musical integrity of The 1975. The second thing I noticed was how they seemed to completely change the song and turned it into something very unique. This version of the song includes a lot more synthesizers and keyboard work to make it what it is. DWNTWN turned this 80's beat kind of song into something that has a very trance like and ethereal sound. The thing is, they managed to mutate the melody in a way so that it sounds like the original at the very base of it all, but the layered harmonies and intricaci...

Today I have some music for you by the band Fences. This song features the skill of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. What I like about this song is that the mix of indie rock and rap is able to mesh and fold into each other. It isn't often that you hear a combination of these two different genres, but to be honest, I could not have picked a better rapper. For a song like this, Macklemore brings this sense of sincerity and deep insight. The lead singer of Fences has struggled with a lot of demons in the past and Macklemore is a rapper who can truly understand what struggle is like. These two together bring a real sense of the world around us. They don't try to sugar coat the truth of issues that many people go through on a daily basis. Both of these artists hail from Seattle which is a city that allows many musicians to thrive and really explore different themes. Fences has a very incredible way of writing lyrics and making the most precise word choices. Each lyric of each song, inclu...

Today I though I would get the ball rolling with some music by the artist known as NF. This is a guy who is a crazy sick rapper. I mean absolutely incredible. The style of rap in this song is one of my favorites. It is this syncopated but fast style of rapping, one that allows rappers to spit rhymes out and get in as much lyrical content as possible. Now I really love this style for two reasons. One, being able to hear the words and verses that the rapper writes is amazing. More often than not, songs like this have some sort of powerful meaning, and this song is definitely one of those. This is a song that talks about the music industry in general, about how music has changed and become a source of profit instead of art. Which is something that I can agree with, and the way this whole song is worded is absolutely fantastic. The second reason I love this style, is because there is an inherent and effortless bad-ass sound to the cadence of the rap. He is dropping rhymes as fast as he can...

Today I have some music for you by a band that had slipped into the back of mind  until very recently. Tame Impala is a band that was a huge hit in the 2000's, with a few hit songs that made it to a lot of major radio stations. But they did end up dropping out of the spotlight, and I honestly kind of forgot about them. However, they have been putting out music and recently released an album! A friend brought my attention back to them and I realized how much I missed their music. So this song is one of their newer ones and is similar to their old style of music, but also has an incredible Beatles influence to it. I wouldn't be surprised if people thought this was a song by The Beatles when first hearing the song. From the way the vocals are produced to the way the overall musicality is, there is a really nice classic rock kind of vibe to the song. This band has a reputation of being a psych-rock and kind of sleepy band, but there is a creative genius behind their music and espec...

Today I have a song for you by the boy band that took the world by storm, and is now out on hiatus for a little while. One Direction is one of the biggest phenomenons in music these past few years, and it is starting to become clear as to why. One Direction has finally matured into a musical group that can appeal to all kinds of listeners. From the younger crowd to the older crowd, male and female, romantics and everywhere in between, One Direction seems to be the group that has it all. And their success story has everything to do with how talented they are. Now one of the things I find impressive and really quite wonderful, is their evolution throughout the course of their career so far. The sound that One Direction started with is vastly different from what we hear from them today. For starters, they have ditched the high energy pop in favor of more contemporary and grounded music. There is a more wholesome nature to their music and more experimentation. One thing that hasn't cha...

Today I have some music along the lines of emotionally beautiful. This first song comes from the Bollywood film Ashiqui 2. This is a movie that is a sequel to another Bollywood film that was released in the 90s. Not only was it one of the biggest blockbuster films, the soundtrack was positively splendid. This is the most famous song off the soundtrack, and I think it will be quite clear as to why once you hear it. The playback singer Arijit Singh is the man behind the vocals in the song, and let me tell you, his music is some of the most moving that I have heard in a long while from Bollywood. What I like about his voice is that is soft and low, but has a little bit of a gravelly sound to it. This makes him sound even more vulnerable than he does with just listening to the lyrics. And this song is all about feeling the vulnerability of love, and all the pain and hardships that come with life and being able to maintain that love. This is definitely a heartbreaking song, and is also one ...

Today I have some interesting music for you, in the sense that you may find it a little bit quirky. Today's first song is by the ever incredible band by the name The White Stripes. Now The White Stripes is probably one of the most iconic bands of the late 90's and early 00's. This is a band that everyone seems to know, even if they have never heard a song by them. It is just one of those names that you know, regardless of what kind of music you listen to. What I like about this band is the blending of grunge rock and blues rock to create songs that have some really great bass guitar work in accompaniment with heavy drum work. The White Stripes tends to ditch the dependence on the electric guitar in favor of the lower tones and deep thrum of the bass guitar. This is a song that makes you automatically feel like a badass and a rebel. That is one of the things that The White Stripes can do to you-make you feel like the coolest and most suave person in the world. This song just...