Best of 2012: Beautiful Girls edition

City and Colour - The Girl

I found myself listening to a lot of older songs in July, returning to some tried and true favorites.  So you don't get a July this year. Sorry. On the bright side, we can all musically block out a miserably hot and sweaty month.  Instead, here are a few songs that I found myself listening to on repeat play around the beginning of August, and they all have something in common.  Just listen to the toothachingly sweet lyrics from City and Colour: "You sacrifice so much of your life in order for this to work. While I'm off chasing my own dreams, sailing around the world, know that I'm yours to keep, my beautiful girl." The Canadian band, City and Colour, is fronted by Dallas Green (get it?).



Sara Bareilles - Beautiful Girl

Have you ever noticed how much I love Sara Bareilles? She makes perfect music.  This is a song she, according to concert banter, wrote for her younger, adolescent sister. Sara sometimes plays this song at concerts, but it's never been released on an album.



Missy Higgins - Everyone's Waiting

Just watch. You'll get the connection.

Best of 2012: Songs from June (Part 2)

Birdy - "1901"




The Lumineers - "Ho Hey"




Snow Patrol - "New York"




Milo Greene - "Silent Way"

Best of 2012: Songs from June (Part 1)

Wild Ones - Flo Rida and Sia

Three confessions: One: I freakin' love Flo Rida. Since I'm usually listening to, shall we say, softer music, some people are surprised by my undying love for Flo Rida. I bet you're less surprised that I'm a big Sia fan.  Two: Every time I write the word "wild," I write the word "Wilde" first. Three: For years, "Low" was the ringtone for when my mom called.

June already has a long songlist, and it's pretty eclectic, so the rest of it will be given in the order in which the songs were received.



Such Great Heights - The Section Quartet

This is a cover of a song by The Postal Service. Even if you're not a fan of the original (I am), you might still enjoy this version.  TSQ also does great covers of "Black Hole Sun" and Muse's "Time is Running Out."



Bad Romance - Vitamin String Quartet

If you like TSQ, you might also enjoy Vitamin String Quartet. Besides an entire album of Lady Gaga covers, VSQ also does covers of Viva La Vida, Bittersweet Symphony, Kids by MGMT.



More - Usher

I'm also an Usher fan...

Ljósið -  Ólafur Arnalds

Yeah, I don't know how you pronounce it either, but Arnalds is a pretty impressive 25 year old multi-instrumentalist from Iceland. 

 I Don't Love You Anymore, but I Don't Love You Any Less - Hungry Ghosts

This song reminds me of Miss Marple. I'm pretty sure I've seen it on a BBC mystery at some point.

Landline - Greg Laswell and Ingrid Michaelson

And then I finally got Greg Laswell's new album, which features this song with his wife, Ingrid Michaelson. You may remember I already posted videos of "Come Back Down" and "Back to You" in March when they were first released. But the whole album is fantastic and well worth the $7.99 on iTunes.

Here's another: 

Another Life to Lose

and...

New Years' Eves

And just to wrap things up nicely...Good Feeling - Flo Rida ft. Etta James

Because I like to dance.

Best of 2012: Songs from April

Drive Darling - BOY
The song, the artists, the video. I love it all. On a recent 4 hour drive up to Philly, I listened to this song a billion times. Add it to your road trip mix.



Youth - Daughter
Just listen. You'll get it by the time the drums roll in. Here's a bonus: Landfill.




Coming Down - Dum Dum Girls
I posted their song "Bedroom Eyes" back in October, but this song is a bit edgier.






New Ceremony - Dry the River
I want to cut their hair. But the song is fantastic.



Am I That Lonely Tonight and Unfortunately, Anna - Justin Townes Earle
It's kinda impossible to listen to "Am I That Lonely Tonight" without imagining yourself driving alone across the country in the middle of the night. Justin Townes Earle, who incidentally is named after Townes Van Zandt, has been around for years, but much more in the country arena.  These songs have just enough whiskey and twang in them to make me fall in love with JTE. Unfortunately, Anna is the other one on non-stop loop.



The River - Thomas J. Speight and Allie Moss
A really simple, beautiful love song.



Our Hearts Were on Fire - Firehorse
Weird ass video, but this is just a great indie song with a lot of interesting sounds in it...but in a good way.



Can't Stop - MoZella
The Detroit-based singer-songwriter that shares a name with a search engine is a favorite on TV shows and commercials. You've probably heard her song Magic on a Droid commercial. Most of her songs are too cheerfully poppy or snoozy for my ears, but Can't Stop is her best bluesy Goldilocks track.

Songs of March: Best of 2012 (part 1)

Song Most Likely to Make You Dance:  "We Found Love" - Rihanna (ft.Calvin Harris)

It is impossible to sit still while listening to this song. Go ahead, try it. Hit play.  The pulsating energy is irresistible. The electronic crescendos were made for strobing club lights that make the sea of bodies move in slow motion. The video plays like a four and a half minute episode of Skins, complete with the spoken word introduction in English accent. Perhaps that's part of the song's aesthetic appeal, that it's about crazy, manic-driven love. Or maybe the truth is less analytical than that. It's just damn fun.  But every song in March seemed to find some sort of niche in my playlist that set it off from the other songs that made it to repeat. The fact that this song is just now making my play list would make it a contender for Song Most Likely to Prove that I Don't Keep Up With Popular Music, if it weren't for....



Song Most Likely to Prove that I Don't Keep Up With Popular Music: "Give Me Everything" - Pitbull (ft. A Lot of Other People)

See everything about song above. With all fair warning, if this comes on in a club or bar or CVS, you will mostly likely grab somebody sexy tell'em 'hey'.



Song Most Likely to Make the Lights Dim All By Themselves: "Come Undone" by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan

A friend (hi, Friend) sent me a text the other day saying that this is the sexiest song ever. And it kinda is... If this doesn't become our generation's Let's Get It On/These Arms of Mine, there's something wrong with our generation.



Runner-Up for Above: "Powerful Stuff' by Sean Hayes.

You probably heard this one on that Subaru commercial.



Best Song to Listen to with Bourbon: "In Front of You" by "The Quiet Kind

I don't really need to say more, do I?



Song That's Less Likely That You've Heard: "Boxer and Clover" by The Donnies the Amys

Or actually, you may have heard it since it's played in the background on Gray's, but you probably didn't realize how adorably dorky it is--I refuse "adorkable" as a viable portmanteau.  Let's face it, we all dance around and pretend we're in music videos when no one else is around.  And as cool as you think you look while breakin it down to Rihanna or Pitbull, you really look like this guy.  Another great song off this California band's album is "I Told a Lie." To hear the whole album, check out The Donnies and the Amys's website.



The Song Most Likely to Make You Listen for the Lyrics - "We Got it All" by Right The Stars

Sample lines: "I feel rhythm. You're all melodic." and "You ripped my worst day off of me, tried it on, threw it in the back seat. Keep on driving, never looked back." It's catchy in a very 80s-centric way.

Best of 2012: Songs from February

THIS SONG IS SO GREAT.

ahem.

Free (edit) - Graffiti6
It was around the middle of February, and I still hadn't heard a single song all month that really caught me.  I guess I downloaded the free iTunes song of the week just because, but had never listened to it. So I'm sitting on the Metro, stuck, because I always am, wishing I had new music to keep me company when this song came on. I had no idea what it was, I didn't remember downloading it, and I'm still pretty sure that Jesus or magical fairies put it on my iPhone.

The lead singer of the London-based duo Graffiti6 looks like he's the pretty one from a boy band, but the sound is much more complex. It's one part Black Keys, one part, "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher." (It's there. You just have to listen to it--past the Of Monsters and Men-esque horn section.) A lot of people are comparing their sound to Gnarls Barkley, who I really like, even though his Rorschach video always makes me think of Brad Pitt (That's not Brad Pitt.) because that's the way my mind works.




Only for You - The Heartless Bastards




The Heartless Bastards have been around since 2003, playing clubs and putting out three albums before their latest record Arrow was released in February.  If Erika Wennerstrom's lead vocals sound familiar, you may have heard their track "Sway" a couple of times on Friday Night Lights. It's that memorable voice that gives the four-member, Austin-based band their distinctively southern rock, Americana sound. Tracks like "Skin and Bones" "The Arrow that Killed the Beast" are a little too Americana for my ears. But the other song on the album I really love is "Parted Ways," which they're offering as a free download on their website.



Sidewalk Ends - Jesse Thomas




Speaking of distinctive voices, Jesse Thomas is a Kentucky-born singer-songwriter, whose new album War Dancer is getting her a little well-deserved attention.  Her voice easily moves between the low hum of a fifties songstress to the rough growl of a 90s garage band.  One of the song's best tracks, "Madeline," isn't available on soundcloud or youtube, but you can listen (and even buy!) at iTunes. There's also a free download of her cover of Dolly Parton's Jolene over at her website. Here's another song, "Fire," from her new album, and "Stay" a short, quiet, earlier release.  And, yeah, she looks like Sara Gilbert to me too.





We Are Young - Fun. ft. Janelle Monàe




Everybody has been talking about this song since it was featured on a commercial for the new Chevy Stunt Super Bowl ad. The internets had been buzzing for a while before then, but any search attempts for "We are Young" only turned up "Love is a Battlefield" or Supergrass's "Alright". Now everybody in the world knows it. (Though I'm probably the only one bothered by that scar line.)

I do miss the drums from the original version, and the video is pretty cool too, but it's over four minutes long, but with less than 30 seconds total of Janelle Monae. If she's around, why waste her? If I'm ever in a bar fight, I hope she comes gliding out of the chaos to sing.  The acoustic version has more of her velvet vocals, bright smile, flawless skin, impeccable style, and towering pompadour. But I'll let you decide for yourself. Let me know what you think.

Best of 2012: Music from January

This song showed up as a free iTunes single the last week of December. The six piece Icelandic folk band sneaked onto my playlist on New Year's Eve and hasn't budged. Just try being grumpy after all that trumpet blaring and chorus of "Hey!"s. The single version has a lot of ambient noise that's missing from the live versions, including the eerie creaking of ropes, presumably the rigging of the ship that caries our bodies safe to shore.



This song is a few years old now, from Gregory Alan Isakov's 2009 album The Empty Northern Hemisphere.  It's just a mellow, acoustic love song that begs to be on a dozen soundtracks, yet it isn't.



Last week when I wrote about Ingrid Michaelson's new album Human Again, I barely mentioned "How We Love" in passing, but since then this quiet little song, tucked into a record full of big sounds, has won me over, heart and soul.  Listen closely or you'll miss gems like, "felt the sharpness deep inside, the kind of ache that can't be satisfied" and "she smelled like cinnamon and winter clove, and sparked like firewood inside a stove."



I've also become (re)obsessed with Australian rocker Butterfly Boucher. Yes, that's her real name. Moving on.  "I'm Not Fooling Around" is a song about denying that you're trying to win someone back.  That's not my analysis. It's right there in the song. Go ahead, listen. This song is one-third techno, one-third disco, one-third Bach. You have to listen now.  The album isn't out until April, but you can get a free download from Butterfly's official site.



And for a completely different sound, "5,6,7,8" is part tango, part girl power rock, especially in this live version where Butterfly is on stage with fellow-Aussie Missy Higgins and Nashville alt-country, and Butterfly's Ten Out of Tennessee bandmate Katie Herzig.  There's so much pretty on stage, the eye hardly knows where to look. That is, until around 1:50, where, if you're more, shall we say, inclined towards the female form, it'll blow your mind.  Butterfly Boucher is the hottest thing since Joan Jett.

See.


(from Kirk Stauffer's Flickr page.)