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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 16, 2020 7:51:08 GMT 1
I actually think Paolo Nutini is really underrated as a singer/songwriter. He has the voice of a much older soul singer, and the ability to craft songs which sound like they could have been written decades ago. 'Last Request' is a very classy love song, which has something about it that I would imagine could appeal to people who don't normally like love songs.
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vastar iner
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I am the poster on your wall
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 16, 2020 8:39:03 GMT 1
Makes a good sandwich spread too.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 16, 2020 9:12:19 GMT 1
Regarding the Arctic Monkeys, when they first got to #1 my reaction was that I had a previous CD by them and it was probably a limited edition and worth a lot to sell on. I had many of those, and didn't sell any of them. Perhaps I should have.
R U Mine reached #23 in my chart in 2012 so obviously I was familiar with it, and probably would recognise it if I played it now, but it isn't a song I considered a classic of its time.
Still, what I was seeing at the time were a handful of indie-rock bands hyped up to be major whilst others were totally ignored. Not saying they weren't good, but there were lots of other great bands at the time who could have done with more publicity. (Ok, around 2005 there were quite a number of others. By 2012 there were very few).
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 17, 2020 7:29:07 GMT 1
725 - Love Story by Taylor Swift No. 2 in 2009
I have a feeling some people on Haven may be horrified to discover I didn’t even know this one until a fortnight ago. In the dying days of the Radio 1 website message boards in the late 2000s I remember there was someone who was obsessed with Taylor Swift. Several members, capitalising on her lack of UK success and strange first name, would wind him up pretending they thought she was a man.
Thing is, there just seemed zero chance that a US country singer could cross over to the UK charts, the genre is one of the few areas of US culture that simply doesn’t work on this side of the Atlantic. What we didn’t see coming was Swift’s brilliant and incredibly successful conversion to the universal language of pop.
This one is her one big hit which predates that conversion, and I didn’t even know it. A nice enough song, although it does sound like a one off country cross over by an artist you’ll probably never hear of again. Her next 9 top 100 hits failed to make the top 20, but then of course, everything changed.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 17, 2020 7:41:59 GMT 1
For me, Taylor Swift is a good enough pop singer, but she was far better when she was doing country. 'Love song' is her most famous one from that era, but some of the songs which didn't do so well were very good too.
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 17, 2020 7:56:07 GMT 1
There will be one or two people at Haven who will denigrate Taylor Swift's achievements. After all, her parents were wealthy, and able to pay for vocal lessons and a lot of demos. There's at least one person here who thinks pop stars with wealthy parents automatically have no talent. Others will say that she is a country singer, and all country music (just like all rap music) is terrible. These people are ignoramuses.
Taylor Swift is a supremely gifted woman, and a tremendous, and spirited, role model. "Love Story" is, rightly, her signature song. The fact that she was only 18 when she wrote it is extraordinary. The fact that she wrote it by herself, is even more remarkable. Not only is it catchy, defiant and uplifting, but it also manages to reference Shakespeare in a manner that is heartfelt and not a cliché.
At the time this was released, she was still being marketed as "straight outta Nashville". But it is 100% pop, of the sort that gets teenage girls buying it in droves, but also gets boys and adults also saying "I really like to this". Taylor co-produced, but I don't know whether it was her, or the other producer, who had sufficient nous to retain just enough of the strings in the background to keep Taylor's original initial band of devotees from the country scene interested, before it broke through onto mainstream radio in the USA.
I feel she's subsequently written several songs that are as good as this. But I can't think of many teenagers who've produced such a mature and broadly appealing record in the entire 60+ years of rock and pop music.
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Good Old Days
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Sielos grožio niekas nepavogs, kol širdy jaunystė gros.
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Post by Good Old Days on Jul 17, 2020 8:10:04 GMT 1
I loved Taylor Swift in the past, but she moved in a wrong direction.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 17, 2020 8:32:42 GMT 1
I had no idea Taylor Swift had wealthy parents, or singing lessons. In fact I rarely have any interest in the background of any pop star, I’d rather judge the music.
I would have guessed, too, that the track described as her signature song would be either Shake It Off or the Never Getting Back Together one. They’re both excellent. This one’s growing on me too though.
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 17, 2020 8:37:55 GMT 1
I had no idea Taylor Swift had wealthy parents, or singing lessons. In fact I rarely have any interest in the background of any pop star, I’d rather judge the music. I would have guessed, too, that the track described as her signature song would be either Shake It Off or the Never Getting Back Together one. They’re both excellent. This one’s growing on me too though. The wealth remark wasn't directed at you, and I base my judgements wholly on what I hear. But some don't. "Signature song" is far from precisely defined, but I tend to associate it with someone's first major hit which typifies what follows, and retains its popularity. For example, if I were to pick a signature song from Madonna's huge oeuvre, I'd select "Like A Virgin".
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Post by masenz on Jul 17, 2020 10:16:32 GMT 1
'Love Story' is a very solid track, and as stated above, solely written by a teenager shows she is a very talented woman.
She's never been one of my favourites, but I've come around recently to recognise that she sure knows how to craft brilliant pop music. And the fact she still throws her everything in to her videos and the like is actually quite refreshing in the current day and age.
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TheThorne
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Post by TheThorne on Jul 17, 2020 10:21:18 GMT 1
I have always had a soft spot for Taylor and yes it is country but it overlapped with other young pop rock singers at the time like Avril Lavigne or Michelle Branch enough to appeal to me.
Always up for a country crossover hit eventhough its not my favourite genre at all.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 17, 2020 16:12:06 GMT 1
Taylor Swift is a good example of one of the many things wrong with the music industry. There's not much difference between the pop or rock side of country and "straight" pop or rock. ZZ Top for instance are effectively a crossover. Yet the way the US charts in particular work, big-selling country tracks only make it into the pop charts if they are not marketed as country tracks. It's ghettoization.
It's also a bit full circle. Go back to the forties and the big-selling "Harlem Hit Parade" records could not become pop hits...
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 18, 2020 7:50:31 GMT 1
724 - Mask Off by Future No. 22 in 2017
Except in shops and on public transport.
For a while I attempted to set myself up as Haven’s unofficial hip-hop correspondent. I love a lot of rap music and felt that it often received an unfair hearing on these pages. I never foresaw something like this happening though, a million selling single where a guy just mutters virtually incomprehensibly about taking drugs. I actually really like the backing track, it would just be better if Mask Off was an instrumental.
I’m not sure what to make of music like this. Has being able to speak clearly become old fashioned? Maybe it always was to some extent, and we’ve reached a point where all vocals are just a series of grunts.
Interesting to note that at no point was this a very big hit, so its place on this list could potentially be due to a relatively small number of people just never getting bored of it and streaming it repeatedly for a long time. It might not be as well of course, I have zero evidence to support that it is, but it’s possible.
Next.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 18, 2020 8:35:47 GMT 1
Is that from 2007? I've never heard it before, and hopefully will never hear it again. Just dire.
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 18, 2020 8:52:29 GMT 1
I'm loving the way this thread is encouraging me to listen to music differently. In some cases, it is very familiar songs, and I'm trying to work out why I like them. And in other cases, like this one, it is a song that has passed me by completely. By only doing one per day, I can keep up, and don't feel overwhelmed. Thanks very much SheriffFatman. I don't think I've ever heard "Mask Off" before. And, as a standalone piece of music, I don't feel the need to add it to my collection. But, as background music it is really interesting and atmospheric. If it was used in a film I was watching, I'd probably feel the need to sit through the credits to learn what it is. The repetitive, almost zen-like chant, of the chorus, on top of the haunting woodwind instrumental is very effective. I can also see why it has accumulated streams, as it is the sort of song I can imagine teenagers wanting to mimic, and render back to their friends in the same way that I could with "Anarchy In The UK" and "Rat Trap". Checking on Wikipedia, I read that it is about drug addiction and also tells a story of Future's life. So, I looked up the lyrics. I don't feel qualified to write a biography about the man, given the "story" just seems to be a stream-of-consciousness list of words and phrases, lacking narrative structure. But I do believe he has owned a Range Rover and some fancy sunglasses, and enjoys a plate of calamari on Wednesdays. However, with further internet searching, I have learnt that Percocet is the brand name for an addictive prescription painkiller which is implicated in hundreds of accidental deaths per year thanks to the US Federal Drug Administration being in the pocket of Big Pharma. (Percocet. Coming to Britain soon, when we sign that post-Brexit trade deal with the USA, which also forces us to take chlorinated chicken and pick-up trucks which kill pedestrians and cyclists. Don't say you weren't warned, Future wrote a song about it.)
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 18, 2020 8:53:02 GMT 1
Is that from 2007? I've never heard it before, and hopefully will never hear it again. Just dire. Typo. 2017 not 2007.
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Post by o on Jul 18, 2020 10:00:55 GMT 1
I dont think I've ever heard this before, it's the sort of song that comes on the radio, and within 5 secs I can switch it off, my son will love it! And I'm expecting it's million sales are made up of at least 800k of streams! All I will say in it's defence is it's not as bad as some songs on this list, Drake - One dance #1 for 16 weeks, just what? And sorry for the spoiler. Taylor Swift, I love a bit of, I thought Lover was gorgeous recently, but she's just so pretty and perfect and thin and that annoys me in the music industry.
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Post by Razzle Dazzle on Jul 18, 2020 11:19:57 GMT 1
Less said about Future the better, probably big on Tik Tok or something
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 19, 2020 19:52:29 GMT 1
723 - Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson No. 3 in 1979
Now this is a great record, it’s obvious, it would be silly to deny it. I have nagging doubts about it though. I think the problem is it’s a great disco record, in line with the best of Chic or late 70s Bee Gees, as opposed to a great Michael Jackson record. I mean, it’s good, but it’s no Thriller, or Beat It, or Bad. I just feel like his next two albums set pop music on fire and took it in a whole new direction, whereas this one was more in line with the best of what everyone else was doing. That’s not to say it’s not good, it’s an instant floor filler and his vocals are fantastic, it’s just a bit, well, disco. Just my thoughts of course...
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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 19, 2020 20:49:49 GMT 1
I love Michael Jackson and don't think he ever made a bad record, and this one is a disco classic, but it's never been one of my favourites - it's just sort of been there without me fully appreciating it.
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