List ten songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're no good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the ten songs in your blog. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to.
I'm not going to bother to tag anyone because people seem to get irked by getting tagged, although I love getting tagged because any evidence that people are aware of my existence boosts my self-esteem.
Also, I tend to listen to one artist at a time, and I often listen to one song over and over again, until everyone in my family is utterly sick of that artist and that song. I'm only going to list a couple of songs because there are only a couple that I keep coming back to right now.
Landed by Ben Folds off his latest CD, Songs for Silverman
Ben Folds is a classic songwriter - sweet melodies, catchy piano riffs, lyrics written with simple language in his distinctive voice, sometimes humorous, sometimes bitter and angry. There is a particular type of song that Ben Folds excels at writing, and that is the Break-Up Song. Looking over his discography, I am struck by how many of my favorite Folds songs are about a break-up. There is the quiet realization that you don't matter to your ex in Selfless, Cold and Composed. The pissed off and humorously juvenile rage of Song for the Dumped. The bitterness and pain of Smoke - and all of those are only on one CD!
Landed is about the end of a relationship, but it is optimistic and hopeful - the end of the relationship in this song means the protagonist is free, and I feel that freedom surging through me when I listen to this song.
Well I opened my eyes and walked out the door
and the clouds came tumbling down
and it's "bye-bye, good-bye, I tried"
And I twisted it wrong, just to make it right,
had to leave myself behind.
Now I've been flying high all night.
Hometown Waltz by Rufus Wainwright off his latest CD, Want Two
Somehow, this song, with the strumming banjo and an accordian driven melody, has enchanted me. Short and sweet, simple and wise, recorded with Wainwright's sister, mother and aunts, and it captures something that is sort of an overriding theme in my life - you can't escape your past, and everything you came from is always a part of you.
You travel the world and find all the answers
Everything operates on the unattainables
And then you hear your mother laugh attached to the phone
Could have walked around the block 'cause all roads lead to
home
That's all I can list for now. I've got some CDs that I haven't given a real listen to yet, including Ted Leo and the Pharmacists latest and Le Tigre, but right now, these are the two songs that are in my head and in my heart.
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