More Favorite Songs

More favorite songs.

My favorite Alanis Morissette song: Uninvited. Am I an Alanis fan? Not really. But I can still have a favorite song by her. Anyway, I totally love this song, the droning piano part, the way the chords fit around it, the way it builds from sparseness to layers upon layers of sound, the exotic guitars, the way the lyrics and melody fit together in kind of weirdo ways, putting the accent on weird syllables all throughout the song. Only thing I don’t like is the slightly disturbing lyrics. But besides that, it’s an incredible song.

My favorite Madonna song: Beautiful Stranger. Kind of random. But I love the retro vibe to it, almost Beatles-esque. I especially love the retro sound of the drums, very cool. The song structure is also very interesting. First section, lines 2 and 4 rhyme. Second, 1 and 2 rhyme, 4th line rhymes with lines 2 and 4 from the first section. Third section, 1 and 3 rhyme and 2 and 4 rhyme. The song is divided into standard 4 line sections, but the rhyme/melody schemes of the lines keep getting switched up, and that’s a really interesting effect.

They rebroadcast the Ashlee Simpson fiasco SNL over the weekend. Busted. I understand the brouhaha, but people realize that bands augment their performances all the time, right? Even U2. Like you’ll hear that arpeggiated keyboard part that starts out With Or Without You in concert, but there’s no keyboard in sight. They augment Elevation also, like the Edge doesn’t always play that guitar riff on the second part of the verse. I once sought out live performances of Puddle Of Mudd doing Blurry so I could learn the cool harmonic thing that starts off the song, but they don’t play it live – you hear it, but they’re not playing it. Everyone augments their performances. I read an article that said Van Halen used to finger-sync their keyboard solos. That’s weird.

Blurry is another song I love. The harmonic part is very cool. The chord progression is also kind of interesting. The guitars just play C D E power chords over and over, so the melody kind of differentiates the chords, and they switch around the last chord from E minor to E major throughout the song. That’s cool.