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My iPod #410: Fall Out Boy – Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying

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Honestly, I liked this track much more in the past than I do now. If I had the same attitude towards it like I did then, I would have provided the song’s full title, but that is just too much. I’m tired and burned out. Not to say that this track is bad, ‘cos I’m gonna write about it anyway. It has lost its effect on me, that’s all.

“Get Busy” is a very bitchy track. It appears to be from the perspective of a guy used for sex, and eventually dumped by a girl who he really had feelings for. The guy’s understandably pissed, but feels that justice is served when the girl’s ‘secret’ (what it is, we don’t know) comes out and rubs it in by telling her that the secret was shit anyway. He’s over her. She don’t matter no more.

I have always liked the music on this track. The palm-muted guitars add a very sinister tone to the song’s atmosphere, and the track also showcases Patrick Stump’s vocal talents. He doesn’t just sing on here, but he also (kind of) screams along with Pete during the bridge, adding a real harshness on his voice. It did take me a while that it actually was him who was doing that and not just a guest vocalist from another band they knew.

Pete Wentz also reads out a poem as the final chord is struck and fades out. To this day I don’t know what it’s about, but as he continues reading it his delivery rises in intensity as the guitar fades in again until coming to a sudden stop. That ending’s always made me feel a bit uneasy. But it’s a good lead in to “XO”. Very similar to what they did with “20 Dollar Nose Bleed” and “West Coast Smoker” on Folie á Deux.

A shame I don’t feel as excited by the song as I used to. But those were some good few years I had when I was.

My iPod #397: Arctic Monkeys – From the Ritz to the Rubble

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Like “Fake Tales of San Francisco”, the version of “From the Ritz to the Rubble” I listen to can be found on the EP “Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys”. There aren’t any major differences between that version and the re-recorded take on “Whatever People Say….”. The only one I can think of at the top of my head is the ending bass. Even so, the version you can hear above was the one I was listening to waaaay before the album was released and therefore I got used to seeing that as the official version. Though both tracks were recorded in a totally different label, I have to say that I feel “Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys” contains the better takes of both songs.

Though the majority of you may recognise the track as the penultimate offering of Arctic Monkeys’ phenomenal debut from 2006, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”, an album about a Saturday night out in Sheffield. Although “A Certain Romance” brings the album to a close, I consider “From the Ritz to the Rubble” to be night-out concept’s ending, coming from a person who wakes up on the Sunday morning thinking ‘what the fuck was that all about?’. Though not before a recalling of events involving a power-mad bouncer at the entrance of a club, which funnily isn’t all that important as Turner shrugs it off claiming it as ‘a story to tell you’.

The song’s main message concerns how people reflect on the things they’ve done on a drunk night out, and how amazingly different things appear to be the morning after. It is also one of the most energetic tracks on the Monkeys’ debut; many cymbals crash, a lot of alternating guitar lines occur which pan from one ear to the other, and plus it has a groovy bassline which you can never go wrong with. One to get the blood rushing.

My iPod #348: Daft Punk – Face to Face

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I have returned! What better way to start the month of October than with the start of this ‘series’ thing that most followers possibly look at my blog for.

This is “Face to Face”, the penultimate track from Daft Punk’s second album Discovery. If you are watching the album’s visual counterpart “Interstella 5555“, this is the point where – spoilers – Earth finds out the band are aliens and help them get back to their home planet. That’s the first time I heard the track, and I got very positive vibes from it. Watching the film at the same time, I was happy to see that the people of Earth were so adamant on helping the blue-skinned people. It was nice to see.

From looking at the lyrics, the track is from the perspective of someone who feels foolish for throwing their toys out of the pram in a fight, instead of just talking it out face to face, and finding sense in whatever the other person was saying. It may also be about Internet dating or something. But I personally think it’s the former.

The double-tracked vocals are done by Todd Edwards, who more recent Daft Punk fans may know from “Fragments of Time” from “Random Access Memories”. However, the majority of the track has no vocals at all and instead focuses on the different samples of older songs that are used but which Daft Punk never wanted to reveal. We all know that “Evil Woman” by ELO is in there….. but I still have no clue what the female vocal is saying or where it’s from. I’m convinced that it’s saying “-long…. Mr. Furlong” and then “good evening” at some parts too.

The music itself makes me feel good. Why? The positive message, the stomping 4-4 beat, or those cut/copy samples that work so well together. A song to lie back to and feel good about what you have is what this is.

My iPod #337: The Beatles – Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

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Hey what’s up how’s it going?

Today’s first song is from disc two (or side four for all you vinyl people) of The Beatles self-titled album from 1968. Or “The White Album” as almost everyone refers to it. That year was when John, Paul, George and Ringo started to dislike each other a bit. Why? Well there’s one word that the latter three, and a lot of fans would answer that question with. Yoko. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were hardly ever apart, even during recording sessions, and this aggravated George, Paul, and Ringo quite a bit. How did John answer this? Possibly by many ways which would have gone on behind closed doors, but for us he wrote “Me and My Monkey”.

“Monkey” should be played very loudly out of speakers. It gets me in the mood to party. It sounds like the band had a very fun time recording it, what with the random howls and screams which appear after almost every “Come on” that John yells, that incessant bell that never seems to end and when John also appears to start becoming a sheep right when the song begins to fade out.

It may be about heroin use and there may be some sexual connotations thrown in too, but those are just interpretations.

Dunno about you, but has anyone else noticed during the breakdown near when only the guitars and bass are playing that the bass plays a sharper note than the guitar chords? Just irks me a bit. But still, it’s cool. Very good hard rock song.

My iPod #308: Linkin Park – Easier to Run

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Hmmmm…… It’s now 2014. So from what I remember the first time I actually listened to a Linkin Park song was when the “Breaking the Habit” video was showing on the television. Well, either that or the one for “Numb”. Crazy. I’ve known Linkin Park for about ten years now. But they’ve never been my favourite band. I can get into their songs though. Especially their songs. Not the most recent ones though, I’m a bit off with those. I’m more the “Hybrid Theory”-“Minutes to Midnight” Linkin Park guy. I’m actually not that big of a fan of “Minutes” either. The singles off it are great though. Nah. My favourite album of theirs is the one in the middle of those two, “Meteora“.

Yeah man, “Meteora” is the only Linkin Park album that I could sit down and listen to all the way through. It gets a bit of shit for sounding a bit too much like its predecessor. I can’t add much to that. Never listened to “Hybrid” in full. Nu-metal is a genre where you can’t really change much too. You have the rap-rock style which is done very well on “Meteora”. The same can’t be said for a lot of nu-metal albums out there. All the songs segue into each other too, and I like that shit.

“Easier to Run” is a track on “Meteora”. The sixth one, I believe. It’s about finding easier to run away from your problems rather than facing them head on, because of the fear of facing more pain. Quite sad, yes.

I’ve always liked how this song sounds. There’s something very epic and atmospheric about it. The quiet and meek tone established by Chester’s vocal and the light guitar plucks during the verses which then builds tension when Mike comes in with his part and the strings enter before caving into the loud guitars that take over during the chorus. Very cool.

It’s all very slow too. But not in bad way. It just makes you appreciate it more, you know? And it makes a good contrast to the following track, whose one note string opening appears in the last few seconds of this one. Just as the dust settles, there’s something running at you that you can see from a distance. Then “Faint” takes over. Good transition.