Category: music

Beyonce: Lemonade

So when this album came out all my friends were super excited about it and talked about how great it was but this was during my period of having no real access to music except what I paid for on itunes or heard on the radio, so it only occurred to me today that I could finally listen to it!

Unfortunately, as I suspected it would, it ran into the same problem I’ve had enjoying her music in the past which is I like music that if it was a line would go up and down in jagged lines and her music tended to be more of a straight line. Not as bad as Taylor Swift’s is for that, but enough that while I liked a lot of the songs, I was like ‘ah, well, so it goes’

I loved the song where she was basically describing dismantling a man for spare parts though.

Bardcore, Flight Rising

Amazon Music likes to play God with me from time to time and it started throwing medieval covers of songs at me. The one I chose to listen to was a band called Bardcore with the album ‘Ye Olde Pop Gone Bardcore’ which was fun to pretend was being played by bards to my dragon warriors while I repeated the same three button pushes over and over on Flight Rising.

Other than that, it did not exactly speak to me. I really liked their cover of Bad Guy, but I did not enjoy their cover of WAP which was disappointing because I got all excited when that came up but it was just the same chord over and over. I guess the appeal of WAP is the singing, not the music.

Anyway, good for thematic fighting music which is a noble position in life.

Music: Dust Rhinos, Great Big Sea,

Note to future self: Sea shanties were big right now because everyone was bored and locked inside.

And as a Canadian, I felt an urging to listen to the bands of my childhood which were sea shanty adjacent, Great Big Sea and Dust Rhinos!

Up and Great Big Sea by Great Big Sea and Plain Sailing and The Day After The Night Before by Dust Rhinos, specifically.

My two favourite songs from both bands had mary in the title, specifically Mari-Mac as sung by Great Big Sea (and it has been so long since I properly heard that song, I love it) and my first time hearing Step It Out Mary as sung by the Dust Rhinos which I mistook for an old traditional murder ballad instead of the modern song it was. The exact third listen when I heard ‘she pulled a pistol’ and I went ‘oh wait what’ and googled it and found all the various versions where she murders or is drowned and I was like ‘ahh a traditional’ but apparently people singing it have just been very busy.

My only disappointment with this listening jag is that apparently Dust Rhinos’ Helter Celtic is nowhere to be found anymore and I used to listen to that cassette over and over when I was but a wee hamster. I googled it and… there might be something called Prehistoric with the songs on it? But again not anywhere I could find available to me.

The quest continues.

As for sea shanties in general, it’s nice I know what The Wellerman actually consists of now because I never had time to just sit and listen to a tiktok.

Music: P!nk: Funhouse, Vitamin C: Vitamin C, Savage Garden: Savage Garden, Amy Winehouse: Back to Black, Britney Spears: Circus

P!nk: Funhouse

  • P!nk continues to give me anxiety with her break up songs to the point it’s actually a pretty big distraction from the music, BUT I love ‘Bad Influence‘. It influenced me to actually make my first playlist on the music service (Amazon) I’m using. Finally googled who she goes to sit with in So What and it’s… ‘drum boy’? Well, that’s better than what I was hearing which was ‘I guess I’ll go sit with Trump, boy at least he’ll know how to hit’ which, thanks, ears, thanks.

Vitamin C: Vitamin C

  • Very easy listening. Little confused when Smile ended with a reggae woman talking about dimples until I remembered like, the point of the song. I don’t know much about Vitamin C except a REALLY great Barbie was made of her. Anyway I probably won’t be relistening to this album, but I enjoyed it the whole way through. Since I’ve been starting out trying albums on the music service, I’ve only relistened to a few of the several I’ve gone through already. I guess they’re like me and books.

Savage Garden: Savage Garden

  • This was an album that was one of the background musics of my teenagerhood and it transported me right back. Even my cheek was breaking out. THIS is one of the ones I was relistening to, I think half nostalgia and half ‘oh man I REALLY like this’. The first three tracks, To the Moon & Back, Carry On Dancing, and Tears of Pearls, were especially pleasing to mine ear.

Amy Winehouse: Back to Black

  • Another one I liked well enough but won’t be listening to again, probably. It was sort of weird hearing her voice and then checking her picture and no, that was a white English woman, not a Black American woman. I think the dissonance put me off. Anyway, rest in peace, Amy Winehouse, I do understand why you had fans. Also your wikipedia page is incredibly huge holy crap.

Britney Spears: Circus

  • I really really like Womanizer, Circus, Kill the Lights, and If U Seek Amy to an amazing degree and the moment I heard Blur and Mmm Papi my knowledge of Britney Spears’ living situation made me feel so ill I was unable to finish the album until the next day and will probably never listen past If U Seek Amy ever again. Eurgh.

Music! Bastille, P!nk, Paramore, plus more Flight Rising

I don’t listen to a lot of music deliberately because I like to focus on it and that means that I can’t be doing a lot of other tasks, but I was doing some grinding in Flight Rising for Strange Chests, I thought ‘hey! I could do it to albums!’ so musical time came. Also, I had 30 chests to sell in the end.

All right.

Bastille – Bad Blood

I like Bastille. They sound pleasant and there’s a bit of pretentiousness in the lyrics that appeal to me in a ‘oh that’s clever!’ way. I particularly like Pompeii, Icarus, and Things We Lost In The Fire.

Paramore – After Laughter

It was pleasant enough to listen to, but I couldn’t tell you a single lyric from this album except the fake happy one and that one song kept ending its lyrics before the last word of the sentence which drove me nuts. But overall a good album for grinding in a videogame!

P!nk – The Truth About Love

This was FULL of bops. God, she’s got a pair of pipes on her. Tons of good songs on here. I have no particular favourite but I would happily listen to this whole album again.

P!nk – Hurts 2b Human

Again taken away by how powerful a singer she is, but at this album I started developing bystander anxiety over the constant relationship issues. She seemed to be in a permanent breakup/fretting about the relationships in the songs and I have no idea if that comes from real life but after a while all that started to kind of bleed into my own brain. I would probably not listen to this one again.