Here, for your enlightenment, are the 25 songs that have received the most play on itunes, on my desk computer.
to view the whole playlist instead of just starting to listen, go here.
I claim no responsibility for the imagery you might encounter on these videos - for example on the mash-up post, when the only video I could find that used the mash-up song I liked, included a lot of anime panty shots. Minimize the window while it plays if you must... but the walkmen video's quite cool.
Feel free to judge the entirety of my character on whether you like or dislike one, several, or all of the artists or songs on this list. I think it gives a pretty fair sample of the variety of music I listen to, though it doesn't include any of the classical I like. The list biases towards the more mellow stuff that I like when I'm working (desk computer, you know?) When I'm out and about on my mp3 player or in the car, the stuff I choose tends to be louder, and when I'm really focusing on my work, I tend to play classical music on the mp3 player with speakers instead of having it on my desktop iTunes, so that I can't distract myself by playing around with the music selections. (White Stripes, and Sleigh Bells in particular this year, make me happy when I'm away from my desk.)
Songs (in order of listens)
Holy Holy Holy - Sufjan Stevens
4 Minute Warning - Radiohead
Lover's Day - TV on the Radio
Buriedfed - Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Arcade Fire
Keep Yourself Warm - Frightened Rabbit
Slow With Horns - Dan Deacon
Kids - MGMT
I Want to Live in a Wigwam - Cat Stevens
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Tytto Tanssil - Paavoharju
Donde Esta la Playa - Walkmen
In the Flowers - Animal Collective
Portland, Oregon - Loretta Lynn and Jack White
Make Everyone Happy/Mechanical Birds - Modest Mouse
1901 - Phoenix
Convinced of the Hex - Flaming Lips
Festival - Sigur Ros
Dragon's Lair - Sunset Rubdown
Scythian Empire - Andrew Bird (played on the video I made for my wife on our wedding day)
A with Living - Do Make Say Think
Once Again - Girl Talk
On the Radio - Regina Spektor
Everything is Free Now - The Tiny
Rococo Zephyr - Bill Callahan
A Case of You - Joni Mitchell (I cheated and added a 26th, because either Joni or Stan Rogers NEEDED to be on the list)
Not available on youtube: Music in her eyes - by Stan Rogers, a Canadian singer-songwriter who would have been named with Gordon Lightfoot in the Canadian folk pantheon if he hadn't died early in a crash.
So, readers, what does my list say about me, other than that I'm not much into top 40, and that I'm friggin' awesome?
one expat's life in Korea
Friday, December 31, 2010
Roboseyo's Year-end Bests:
Here are some notable posts from 2010 at Roboseyo
Happy Roboseyo:
Travel to: Busan. Inwang Mountain.
Useful Posts
Smart Roboseyo
Other Memorable Tributes, Rants, Miscellany, and Must-Reads
People Go Home: Tribute to Friends Gone Home
And for fun, one of my two favorite music discoveries this year. I'll probably write more about them later, but I totally have an artist-crush on Janelle Monae right now, and I am smitten as a kitten.
Here's the music; the video (which won't embed) is a another glorious thing entirely, and I highly recommend it.
Happy New Years, readers.
And for fun, one of my two favorite music discoveries this year. I'll probably write more about them later, but I totally have an artist-crush on Janelle Monae right now, and I am smitten as a kitten.
Here's the music; the video (which won't embed) is a another glorious thing entirely, and I highly recommend it.
Happy New Years, readers.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Year-end Parties and...Is K-pop the Greatest Genre for Mash-ups?
New Year's Eve parties: Ten Magazine continues its excellent work of scouting out and posting news of all the action going on in Korea.
Next: I love mashups. They fit with the way I envision culture working these days, where everything is mixing together and touching each other in unexpected ways, thanks to our confusing, communication society.
Every year DJ Earworm makes a year-end mash-up of the top pop songs from the year.
My personal favorite is this one, built around the etherial hook from that one Coldplay song. It just really, really works. And it features a lot of Alicia Keys, and a lot of Pink, two of my favorite voices in current top-40 pop music.
This year, there's another one: it's alright - I prefer Alicia Keys featuring prominently over Katy Perry and Key$ha, though I do like (cheesy as it is) this song: "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars. I don't know if I'll join the Bruno Mars fan club and buy the t-shirt (I'd rather have this t-shirt), but this is an awesome song to have come on the radio while you're driving (which is how I first encountered it).
And, now that I've run it down a bit, here's the 2010 mash-up.
But readers if you're only watching one mash-up on this post, watch this one. This is the K-pop 2010 mashup, from mmixes' Youtube channel.
and here's the challenge:
I don't think anyone can find a genre of music that lends itself better to awesome mash-ups than K-pop. If you can think of one, with some example of mash-ups that are as awesome as this, let me know.
And here's why:
The fun of mash-ups is recognition. See how many songs you recognize from this one track by Girl Talk. Girl Talk is amazing. I don't know if Girl Talk can play a single instrument, but he can throw lines and hooks from all kinds of songs together, so that five minutes of listening touches on a billion memories of drives, dances, parties, and awesome people who played you music, and the music also rocks: it fits together, it works, and it's a musical journey that's awesome and nostalgic.
Well, the fun thing in mash-ups is putting hooks together, so that people can recognize those familiar hooks.
K-pop is all. about. hooks. Critics argue that's all it's about, and argue that if you will (some are), but when you're making a mash-up, that's beside the point, because the hooks alone matter. So go watch that K-pop mash-up I posted above: it's like listening to the best parts of the entire year of k-pop, and not having to wait through weak verses, lines of songs where "the one who dances" has to sing to get equal stage time, unneeded dance interludes, unneeded "the music stops and we're going to act out a scene that somehow involves ambulance lights" breaks, or the other three minutes of a song that only has one good hook, or any of the other excesses or filler that puts people off K-pop, and enjoy it in its purest, most concentrated state.
Only the best hooks, only the famous dance moves, only the cutest close-ups, and then it's done.
Mash-ups, baby. yeah!
What's your favorite mash-up? Put the youtube link in the comments.
Next: I love mashups. They fit with the way I envision culture working these days, where everything is mixing together and touching each other in unexpected ways, thanks to our confusing, communication society.
Every year DJ Earworm makes a year-end mash-up of the top pop songs from the year.
My personal favorite is this one, built around the etherial hook from that one Coldplay song. It just really, really works. And it features a lot of Alicia Keys, and a lot of Pink, two of my favorite voices in current top-40 pop music.
This year, there's another one: it's alright - I prefer Alicia Keys featuring prominently over Katy Perry and Key$ha, though I do like (cheesy as it is) this song: "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars. I don't know if I'll join the Bruno Mars fan club and buy the t-shirt (I'd rather have this t-shirt), but this is an awesome song to have come on the radio while you're driving (which is how I first encountered it).
And, now that I've run it down a bit, here's the 2010 mash-up.
But readers if you're only watching one mash-up on this post, watch this one. This is the K-pop 2010 mashup, from mmixes' Youtube channel.
and here's the challenge:
I don't think anyone can find a genre of music that lends itself better to awesome mash-ups than K-pop. If you can think of one, with some example of mash-ups that are as awesome as this, let me know.
And here's why:
The fun of mash-ups is recognition. See how many songs you recognize from this one track by Girl Talk. Girl Talk is amazing. I don't know if Girl Talk can play a single instrument, but he can throw lines and hooks from all kinds of songs together, so that five minutes of listening touches on a billion memories of drives, dances, parties, and awesome people who played you music, and the music also rocks: it fits together, it works, and it's a musical journey that's awesome and nostalgic.
Well, the fun thing in mash-ups is putting hooks together, so that people can recognize those familiar hooks.
K-pop is all. about. hooks. Critics argue that's all it's about, and argue that if you will (some are), but when you're making a mash-up, that's beside the point, because the hooks alone matter. So go watch that K-pop mash-up I posted above: it's like listening to the best parts of the entire year of k-pop, and not having to wait through weak verses, lines of songs where "the one who dances" has to sing to get equal stage time, unneeded dance interludes, unneeded "the music stops and we're going to act out a scene that somehow involves ambulance lights" breaks, or the other three minutes of a song that only has one good hook, or any of the other excesses or filler that puts people off K-pop, and enjoy it in its purest, most concentrated state.
Only the best hooks, only the famous dance moves, only the cutest close-ups, and then it's done.
Mash-ups, baby. yeah!
What's your favorite mash-up? Put the youtube link in the comments.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
snow pictures from yesterday
It snowed yesterday, so I took these pictures.
It's actually harder taking good snow pictures than it seems, because all the white in the frame seems to wash out the three-dimensional feeling in a picture's composition, if it's not handled carefully.
Anyway, I headed out to Bu-am dong, near Sangmyung University, and took some pictures on the way up a couple of mountainsides, and through a couple of grotty old neighborhoods, the likes of which are slowly, sadly disappearing.
Anyway, I love fresh snow.
And snow on branches.
maybe my second favorite picture from the day... I was actually a little disappointed with the results of my photography, though the snowy trudge was sure fun.
There's a little temple up there.
during the spring, this was a rushing river. Now kids were down there, having snowball fights in the riverbed.
This is a good example of why snow doesn't photograph well in daylight: the textures of the snow, and the branches on which it hung, got washed out by the diffuse daylight. If the snow had been sitting on larger shapes, the picture would have some composition, and if it were a moving video camera, you could see the 3D movement of the things behind the branches, to get a sense of the depth. As it is, there isn't much to see in this picture, though it looked super cool in person.
Maybe at night, if there were a single light source (say, an orange street light) it would have looked cooler.
Pine branches sagging under heavy snow. Now we're talking!
My favorite picture on the day. I'm pretty sure that's Bukhansan, though I might be wrong.
I also managed to get the pictures off the confounded wrong-file-formatted video camera and onto my computer, finally.
so those are my snow-tos. (see what I did there? I combined snow and photo, because they both have a long "o" sound!)
I also spotted this cool coffee shop name on the way up the hill to Sangmyung University:
The most puzzling thing I saw during my walkabout was definitely this nativity scene, out in front of a neighborhood church:
it's a run of the mill nativity scene, until you look at the proportional sizes of the figurines, and you wonder how a Mary that size had a baby Jesus that size... unless Jesus was capable of fish and loaves type miracles right from day one.
And, finally, because I have nowhere else to put them:
One of the little city beauty elements that one doesn't spot every day, but which I always love to see:
When the sun reaches a certain angle, it'll reflect off the side of one glass-windowed building, onto the side of another building, and cast all kinds of strangely shaped lights and shadow on it.
Stuff you don't see in the countryside, friends.
It's actually harder taking good snow pictures than it seems, because all the white in the frame seems to wash out the three-dimensional feeling in a picture's composition, if it's not handled carefully.
Anyway, I headed out to Bu-am dong, near Sangmyung University, and took some pictures on the way up a couple of mountainsides, and through a couple of grotty old neighborhoods, the likes of which are slowly, sadly disappearing.
Anyway, I love fresh snow.
And snow on branches.
maybe my second favorite picture from the day... I was actually a little disappointed with the results of my photography, though the snowy trudge was sure fun.
There's a little temple up there.
during the spring, this was a rushing river. Now kids were down there, having snowball fights in the riverbed.
This is a good example of why snow doesn't photograph well in daylight: the textures of the snow, and the branches on which it hung, got washed out by the diffuse daylight. If the snow had been sitting on larger shapes, the picture would have some composition, and if it were a moving video camera, you could see the 3D movement of the things behind the branches, to get a sense of the depth. As it is, there isn't much to see in this picture, though it looked super cool in person.
Maybe at night, if there were a single light source (say, an orange street light) it would have looked cooler.
Pine branches sagging under heavy snow. Now we're talking!
My favorite picture on the day. I'm pretty sure that's Bukhansan, though I might be wrong.
I also managed to get the pictures off the confounded wrong-file-formatted video camera and onto my computer, finally.
so those are my snow-tos. (see what I did there? I combined snow and photo, because they both have a long "o" sound!)
I also spotted this cool coffee shop name on the way up the hill to Sangmyung University:
The most puzzling thing I saw during my walkabout was definitely this nativity scene, out in front of a neighborhood church:
it's a run of the mill nativity scene, until you look at the proportional sizes of the figurines, and you wonder how a Mary that size had a baby Jesus that size... unless Jesus was capable of fish and loaves type miracles right from day one.
And, finally, because I have nowhere else to put them:
One of the little city beauty elements that one doesn't spot every day, but which I always love to see:
When the sun reaches a certain angle, it'll reflect off the side of one glass-windowed building, onto the side of another building, and cast all kinds of strangely shaped lights and shadow on it.
Stuff you don't see in the countryside, friends.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Who Owns a Culture: Summary before Finishing
OK. It was a long, long time ago that I started writing this series, and it's just embarrassing that I haven't finished it yet...
I have excuses, but you probably don't care to hear them anyway. I got married, too. However, I'd like to re-summarize what I've said in the previous articles, just to get everybody back to speed, before I go to my final point, which is of particular point during the holiday season.
However, in the comments to my "OK, Hyori Gets It," post, I'm getting comments from some of the same people who participated in that discussion back then, and who, in my opinion, are still off the mark in some respects.
So I'm finishing off this series, and while I do, I'll include another response to some of them.
The summary then:
I have excuses, but you probably don't care to hear them anyway. I got married, too. However, I'd like to re-summarize what I've said in the previous articles, just to get everybody back to speed, before I go to my final point, which is of particular point during the holiday season.
However, in the comments to my "OK, Hyori Gets It," post, I'm getting comments from some of the same people who participated in that discussion back then, and who, in my opinion, are still off the mark in some respects.
So I'm finishing off this series, and while I do, I'll include another response to some of them.
The summary then:
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