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Monday, 10:46 pm in Music

So, if y’all care to remember last Music Monday (it’s been a while) I asked people to suggest song themes for next week.  Amanda suggested “summer”, and I’ve got a playlist for that one, but I think this week I’m going to do niten’s suggestion of “renovating music”.

To this end, during my week painting I listened to the batPod almost non-stop, trying to track down the best songs to listen to while doing extremely tedious and exhausting work like washing ceilings and painting skirting boards.  So here they are, in no particular order.

Siouxsie & the Banshees feat. Danny Elfman, “Face to Face” (watch)

They say follow your heart
Follow it through
But how can you
When you’re split in two?

I’ve discovered that the best renovating songs are ones that you can not only sing to but whistle to as well.  Luckily I’m a pretty good whistler, and while I’m a hopeless singer (as I’m sure my parents and ~Mat [h] can unfortunately attest to) Siouxsie Sioux’s lilting voice in this song is great to try and imitate… so long as you can’t hear yourself too much.  And you know, it’s funny; iTunes probably has about the best randomised track feature ever made, yet I still heard this song no less than three times over the week.  Apparently the iPod’s “what have we randomly played previously” memory last only as long as the next synch.  What a pain.

3 Doors Down, “Kryptonite” (watch)

You called me strong, you called me weak,
But still your secrets I will keep
You took for granted all the times
I never let you down

You know, I don’t actually even like this song (I got it off a friend in a music swap and I never delete anything), but our renovating week was also the week I wrote “Things Wikipedia Didn't Tell Me About Canada” in my head and I just couldn’t get this stupid image of Dee and Random sitting in a brig in the Watchtower, each sharing one ear of the batPod singing this really badly off key with dramatic air guitar.  C’mon, you can’t tell me that’s not exactly what you’d be doing.  I’d also like to put this song up – clichéd though it may be – as the Official Theme Song to Mind Control Thursdays.  So sayeth I, so shall it be so!

Danny Elfman, “Poor Jack” (watch)

Well, what the heck, I went and did my best
And, by God, I really tasted something swell
And for a moment, why, I even touched the sky
And at least I left some stories they can tell, I did

Elfman’s voice is beautiful but, more than that, this track from the Nightmare Before Christmas album has a lot of empathic speaking in it which makes it prime singing material.  I overheard mum confiding to ~Mat [h] that she thought I was talking on the phone at first, and it took her a while to work out I was actually singing.  Oh ye of muchos mocking!

Madness, “Saturday Night Sunday Morning”

You know they still like to talk about you
But they don’t want anything too real
So most of the conversation revolves around
Things that happened 20 years ago at least

I had a sort-of friend in college who was a really big Madness fan, so in order to have something to talk about with her I went and bought their 1999 album Wonderful.  It was… an interesting album.  I’m not sure if it’s good or not, but it’s definitely niche, even for Madness.  Anyway, it had a couple of gems, one of them being this song.  Good for singing!

Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird”

But, if I stayed here with you girl,
Things just couldn’t be the same.
Cause I’m as free as a bird now,
And this bird you’ll never change.
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can’t change.
Lord help me, I can’t change.

Okay okay, I’m technically cheating on this one.  It’s not a renovation song, rather it’s in commemoration of randomredux and I finally (after three years) finishing the first draft of Chainbreaker.  So now the thing’s off to the publishers – all 600+ double-spaced pages of it – and in celebration I present to you what I think is pretty much the official Loriah OTP song.  Long live Urban Nordica!  Long live what is irrefutably one of the greatest guitar solos in music!  Hurrah!

And that’s it for this week!  Make sure to stick around sometime on Mondays to come when I do ‘summer’, and y’all better get to thinking of some topics I can do after that one, else we go back to our regularly scheduled “here’s what I downloaded this week”.  And no-one wants that.  Right?

• Tags » download, meme, mp3, music, music monday
• Comments By » ~Belinda [h]