Joonto's 5 Music Picks – November 2020
1. In Private – Dusty Springfield
I discovered this song by chance while surfing on YouTube. I got captivated by the pads playing while the singer's powerful and assertive voice asks what you're gonna do in private.
The verse is pure '80s, bright, radiant, optimistic, the ingredients we need these days.
2. Red Light Spells Danger – Billy Ocean
The song that is running in my head these days is this! "Red zone means Covid" I posted on the comments below the video. It is a great soundtrack for these days when I feel great and low at the same time. These days for me are like a rollercoaster. I feel like doing a million of things, but in the end of the day I can do little, but that little I do is on the edge. The bass makes me feel as I'm running away from the cops after they busted my illegal house party!
3. I Can't Stand Still – AC/DC
AC/DC released their new single a few weeks ago. No surprise I rushed into their discography again! I'm particularly attached to the album Stiff Upper Lip, where the Australian band explored more blues sounds. The most blues song here reminds me that I can't stand still. I always need to to do something, like listening to more blues or even playing it....!
4. That's Life – Frank Sinatra
That's Life has always been my favourite Frank Sinatra's song. You can imagine my thrill when I heard it in Joker, which is in turn one of my favourite movies of all time!
I love(ed) singing this at karaoke (well, when karaoke was allowed...) even if nobody reacts with the same involvement as when I sing My Way or New York, but who cares? This song expresses all the class Frank had and left for us as his unique legacy that nobody, even machines will ever be able to reproduce. OpenAI can even give up with their eerie experiments in creating new songs with Sinatra's voice. They can't understand what Sinatra was about.
5. Yellow Ledbetter – Pearl Jam
Lately Pearl Jam showed up quite a bit in my life. I visited the place of a friend of mine who's into grunge and it turned out that she's crazy about Pearl Jam. She has their posters, gadgets and even a vinyl around her house! After that visit I watched the touching movie 50/50, a story about cancer and how friendship can help to overcome it, casting Jason Gordon Levitt and Seth Rogen. The ending credits are accompanied by Yellow Ledbetter! I loved this song when I was a teenager. It made me melancholic and nostalgic of a decade never lived: the 90s. It also made me hopeful for the future somehow.
You must know kids that this song was a B-Side for Jeremy and was not meant to be a single hit.
The beauty of the era when there were no algorithms and obsessive marketing is that an incredible song could end up on the B-Side, just to be rediscovered years later as a hit. It's this game of chance that made rock music great: the stories behind each song and album, how they were created, the anecdotes behind their genesis, the episodes, the little happy accidents that led to a particular riff or a line in the lyrics that nailed the song! This is craftmanship, opposed to the industrial, anonymous, robotic industrial production that AI is taking into music... The future is so sad... Please, let sleep in the 90s! :((((