If you wanted a song that depicted Kanye at his most vulnerable- if you can ever describe him as that – it’s probably this one. For the background, he had split up with his girlfriend – who then went out with Wiz Khalifa – and was feeling all these emotions that he could only put into song.
Firstly, he raps about ‘gripping’ the girl in question up, ‘fucking’ and ‘choking’ her and then the next minute he’s broken down singing ‘I can’t love you this much’. I put that in a rather simple way but I can’t go through it all with you. That would take too much time. You’ve got rapgenius for that.
The song also features a skit about five minutes into the song, spoken by the one and only Chris Rock. The things he says are very funny, but in context with the song it’s quite tragic.
Surely you can spend seven and a half minutes of your time for this? Surely?
When I look at my iPod and see that I have to write a post about a song by The Beatles, a feeling of ambivalence arises. I like doing the blog, I wouldn’t have started it if I thought it was a silly idea. However, in regards to songs by The Beatles… I can’t really tell you anything new about them. Probably everything that can be said about them has been written by people, who know much more about music than me, on other sites. Wikipedia’s full of information too. I can only repeat what I already know and what I think of it. That is what I shall do.
“Blackbird” is a pretty song. It’s one of the few where it’s just Paul playing by himself. It’s him, his guitar, his foot tapping on the floor and a short break with a bird singing.
The music makes it seem very light, but McCartney was inspired to write it after racial tensions in the USA in 1968. For you Americans out there, the word ‘bird’ in the UK is slang for ‘lady’ and so the song is about a black girl, which makes lyrics such as ‘waiting for this moment to arise’ and ‘waiting for this moment to be free’ very thought-provoking. Once you find that the song isn’t actually about a bird, it changes everything.
That was the name of Dananananaykroyd’s first album , released on April 6 2009. One day after I turned fourteen. I had not heard the song at the time. I do remember hearing the band’s name one time on MTV or something and working out how to pronounce it. That was about it really.
It was months later when I had started Year 10 in autumn 2009. A video for one of their other songs played on MTV2, I liked that. So I went on YouTube to see the video and listen to that song again. It was then that I found the video for this song.
Looking at the video then I think that I may have seen “Black Wax” on TV, but I changed the channel for some odd reason. Bad mistake. It’s a good thing I came back to the song. It’s one of the most joyful ones I have on my iPod collection. According to Wikipedia, “The song’s lyrics, written by vocalists John Baillie Jnr and Calum Gunn are about a dream John had about the thrill of having sex on a bus made of drums (with another musician, but he won’t say who) in an underground world in Paris, and trying to conserve the feeling by sealing it in a wax lined tin.” Now I know that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, but that actually seems legit. I don’t know what the lyrics are about, but the music is upbeat and feel good as anything. Especially the last part when guitars roar in with a triumphant shout of ‘here we are’ by the two vocalists before fading out with the guitar. It’s beautiful stuff.
The song was then chosen by EA Sports to be included in FIFA 10. Whether or not that did anything to the band’s popularity is beyond me.
Feeling good? Yeah, me too. Results day for my exams is in nine days. It’s pretty scary. I’m trying not to think about time though. Next Thursday determines the rest of my life. Or at least the year that’s to come. Let’s hope that I get good ones.
Today is the fifth song on Arcade Fire’s second album “Neon Bible”, released in 2007. To summarise – for those of you who don’t know who Arcade Fire are – they are a Canadian band which practically every critic came to love after they released their fist album “Funeral” in 2004. They rose in popularity, gained a lot of fans and have currently finished their fourth album which is due to be released in Autumn.
Neon Bible’s release was probably as hyped as “Favourite Worst Nightmare”, so everyone was waiting to see what the band would do next. My sister bought it when it came out. We listened to it on Windows Media, that’s when I first heard this song.
I say that today’s post is one song, but it’s actually two sections just merged together to make a full product. I will guide you through them as best as I can.
Then everything comes to an abrupt end, and with a few strikes on a xylophone the second part then starts with a boom.
Second section: Bad Vibrations
Impending doom. That’s really all I can think of when I listen to “Bad Vibrations”. Weirdly, the phrase “Black Wave” is used in this and not in the first. The “bad vibrations” are only alluded to in the final lines, “The sound is not asleep/It’s moving under my feet”, but are also emphasised by the dark tone, Win Butler’s perishing vocals and the various “oohs and aahs” in the background. It’s pretty scary. The song slowly comes to a halt, and segues into the next song.
So there you have it. Another post is done.
Hope you like the song as much as I do. Listen to it. Comment if you want.
That’s probably one of the funniest verses I’ve heard in a long time. Kanye West, at the moment, feels like he cannot be touched. He’s got a hot wife, he’s a father. Things are looking up for him.
What better way to show his good life off to everyone then, by writing about that (amongst other topics that interest him) in his new album, “Yeezus“?
I like Kanye West’s music. Seems like forever ago when he first came out with “Through the Wire” and seemed like a modest man who, after surviving a life threatening car crash, wanted to show the world that he wasn’t just a great producer but could handle his own material. With an album title such as “Yeezus”, we now see how far this ‘modest man’ has come.
“Yeezus” came as a real surprise to me. Let me tell you why. I knew it was his next album title, and then found reports about his new song “New Slaves” being shown on the sides of buildings around the world. That was around Springtime/early Summer. So I thought, “Well, it must be next year that the album will come.” That was until my friend told me that it would be released in only a few days time. Oh…. SHHHIIIIIII-
No way! The new Kanye album’s coming! Ah man. I couldn’t wait. That was until the album leaked, and the same friend sent me the link through Facebook. I was all over that shit. I couldn’t handle it!
That’s where “Black Skinhead” comes in. After being impressed by “On Sight”, “Black Skinhead came in with those thumping tom-toms and I knew that some hard stuff was about to go down. One thing that struck me about the album was how loud it was, but it came to good effect on this song. This song has to be played loud. It’s Kanye’s theme song.
After listening to it multiple times now, it doesn’t feel the same as it did on that first listen. It’s definitely a highlight though.
