I'm sure many of you are familiar with this song. Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli sang it. Charlotte Church sang it. Josh Groban sang it. Celtic Woman sang it. Everyone wants to sing "The Prayer." Not that that's a bad thing, of course--it's a very pretty and inspirational song, much like "You Raise Me Up."
I am not sure how many of you are familiar with this song's origins. It's from a movie called Quest For Camelot, and is sung by the main character's mother as said main character races off from her village on a horse, presumably towards Camelot (presumably, because I haven't watched the movie, so I don't know). I didn't look up the actual clip until today.
Um.
Nobody mentioned that it was a chase scene.
Nobody mentioned that it was a chase scene involving monster things with metal arms.
Nobody mentioned that it was a chase scene involving monster things with metal arms riding on warthogs.
I discovered this awesome lady a little while ago (last summer?) when one of my brothers started playing "Lights," and I was immediately hooked by the sound and style. Heh, I guess you could say that my musical tastes are kind of really influenced by my brothers.
Brief Description:
Ellie (Elena) Goulding is a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from England whose debut album came out in 2010. That album, Lights, was No.1 on the UK Albums chart shortly after its release. Her style has been described as electro-folk-pop. She works with another musician/composer/DJ called Starsmith who acts as her producer. It's pretty cool. That's all I have to say.
What I like about this artist:
"[It's] pop, but a bit more emotional," Goulding once said of her music. Yes. Emotion. Dripping everywhere from her delicate, almost fragile voice. Piano. Electro-stuff. Drumbeats that hit me deep inside. (I don't know what exactly that means. It feels strange. It's hard to describe. I like it, though.) Lyrics that take a bit of effort to figure out. It's a lethal combination for me. I love it ALL.
Some of my favorite songs:
"Lights" - Of course I have to include this one. It's still my absolute favorite.
"The Writer" - I sing the chorus of this song over and over, all the time.
"Home" - Addicted to the drums here.
"Black and Gold" - I think this one's a cover, but I love the way she sings it.
Nathan introduced me to this band a few years ago, and I've liked them ever since. Nightwish is probably responsible for giving me the taste for metal that I have. (Understandably, this confounds my mother and delights Nathan. "You're such a metal-head like me," he told me today.)
Brief Description:
Nightwish is a Finnish/Swedish metal band that's about as old as I am, having debuted on New Year's Eve of 1996. It's gone through a progression from folkish-ambient mood music with metal elements to more exclusively metal to metal with a bit of orchestral sound. Nightwish has had two lead singers. The first was Tarja Turunen, who has this powerful classical voice that can be kind of scary sometimes, but she was dismissed in 2005 and replaced with Anette Olzon, who has a good-but-not-so-powerful voice. That switch of main vocalists naturally influenced their style, so the metal is a little lighter in their recent work.
What I like about this artist:
Nightwish is headbang-worthy. I don't really headbang, but I enjoy music that makes me want to. Metal stuff kind of has a weight that other music doesn't have (maybe that's why they call it "metal"?), and when all that weight is thrown on top of songs that have very little melodic variation and lots of screaming, I don't like it so much. However, when that weight is put into songs that have very singable melodies and lyrics that I can hear--as Nightwish usually does--I tend to like it. (*Note: There are exceptions to this. Occasionally I like songs that are completely screaming and growling and really heavy metal, but I haven't exactly figured out why I like them.) I quite enjoy the imagery in Nightwish's lyrics too: phrases like "the dark rain from her eyes" and "land of the daybreak" and "into a child-man's heart."
PLUS THEY DO ORCHESTRAL VERSIONS OF THEIR SONGS AND I LOVE ORCHESTRAS.
Some of my favorite songs:
"Nemo" - One of the first I ever heard. (Tarja's the vocalist here)
"Creek Mary's Blood" - Instrumental orchestral version. It's very long :P
"Eva" - This is one of their prettiest songs--and very tame. (Anette sings here)
"Storytime" - From Nightwish's most recent album, called Imaginaerum. It's kind of creepy :D
I think this group deserves to be the first post of this series because I was legitimately obsessed with them for at least six good months (though that was two years ago already). They're still some of my favorite singers now.
Brief Description:
Celtic Woman is a New Age/Celtic/Adult Contempary/Classical singing group made up of 4-6 members at any given point in time. They've had ten or eleven members total since their debut in 2005, though they started out with five. The music is usually either Celtic-with-a-modern-twist or modern-with-a-Celtic-twist. Usually. It's a little hard to define their genre. Some people don't like Celtic Woman because they're not Celtic enough. Basically, it's a few Irish women singing, one fiddler--and behind the scenes, an ultra-talented music director named David Downes.
What I like about this artist:
This Downes guy is a musical genius. He was the one who assembled Celtic Woman in the first place, and he's the guy who chooses all the new members when old ones leave. Because of this, not only are his arrangements absolutely beautiful, but he's familiar with all of the singers' voices and uses that knowledge to his advantage. Sometimes their voices blend so well in harmony that I can't distinguish them at all (which actually throws off a few people, but I like it a lot). Add to this the fact that the members are top-grade professionals when it comes to singing--or fiddling in the case of Máiréad--and you get some really good music. Also, they usually have an orchestra playing with them, and I love the full sound of an orchestra.
Plus, I'm a big fan of Celtic music, no matter how watered-down it might be. There's just something about the melodies that makes my heart ridiculously happy, and the lyrics tend to be about more than love-and-breakups. I mean, I'm fine with love-and-breakup content to an extent, but songs about yearning for home or nature or prolonged separation just interest me more. And the songs that are about love, they do hilarious things like refer to men as seaweed.
Some of my favorite songs:
Oh my. There are a lot. I will post four.
The live recording of "The Sky and The Dawn and The Sun," which may be my absolute favorite song.
I went to see them live. Máiréad actually plays like that. o.o
ACAPELLA.
And this one's a little more Irish-y. Yay for drinking songs! (I like their dresses.)
Warning: Majority of content will not be in English. I'm sorry about that. I need to listen to more music that's in English. Ohhh well. Advice: Do not watch all of these in one sitting unless you have time to spare. This is not a good-enough reason to waste time if you have something important to do.
CATEGORY 1: Made Me Laugh
CATEGORY 2: Is Well-Made and/or Pretty
CATEGORY 3: My Favorite Dances (not quite music videos anymore...)
Method #2: Follow what the CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response Zombie Apocalypse Manual says. (Basically, prepare as you would for any natural disaster.)
Method #3: Obtain your own chainsaw and be an awesome hero.
Method #4: Pretend that the zombies outside aren't real and continue to kill the virtual zombies in your zombie attack game.
