sinead o'connor's beautiful face.

the sentiment seeps from her, her mouth is expressive to the hilt. she sings strongly and passionately and vividly and lamentingly. there is nothing except her face, her mouth, her tears. the song is a jeremiad. its mournful tone entwines one into its sentiment, her face plumbs its deepening emotion. her mouth's graceful wailing is intense and intoxicating, its beauty is bewitching.

someone to be kind to in between the dark and the light

i didn't know i liked the eagles so much. but their music animates me, their songs inspire emotion in me. and so all of a sudden; it was only last summer that i began listening to their music.

i was sitting at dunn's waiting for my hot dog as i was wont to do last summer at six am, post-imaginationhouse, and i commented to the tall fellow that i liked the song playing, to which he gave his unbeknownst-to-him fateful response, 'it's the eagles, man'. the eagles ... a spectre that loomed in the back of my western-influenced mind, a band that i knew existed and was important, but which i couldn't recall having ever heard. of course, just like with frank, i was wrong: i knew many of their songs but didn't know it. 'desperado' i knew because of that seinfeld episode; 'tequila sunrise' i knew because of interview with the vampire; 'hotel california' is really famous of course, but i had spent an entire summer some years previous loving the gipsy kings cover. and so i discovered that the eagles were an embedded component of this society's social imaginary - the background repository of images and narratives - the vernacular, pop culture which i have, over the years, absorbed without intention, which to me is still remarkable considering one where i grew up and two that so many young people from here don't know much about the past while it seems to be familiar to me.

but these above-mentioned songs were not the songs that turned me, really. it was the slow, forlorn songs. 'i can't tell you why' was the first. it's a song about the banal reality of two people trying to come to know one another, amidst their conflicting, entrenched perspectives on life: "look at us baby, up all night, tearing our love apart", he says; "nothing's wrong as far as i can see; we make it harder than it has to be", he concludes. the song begins with only the bass, but continues into a slow percussive rhythm, punctuated by a dreamy and ethereal synth, and concludes with an almost two-minute guitar solo that single-handedly and instantaneously incited in me an appreciaton and love for the electric guitar in particular, and rock music in general. the song's lyrics, just like most of the eagles' fare, are sensible and sensitive, capturing in an instant a depth of emotion without sacrificing comprehensibilty or grammar. much of the same is evident in 'the best of my love', a song which tackles similar subject matter in similar musical style: "every night i'm lyin' in bed/ holdin' you close in my dreams/ thinkin' about all the things that we said/ and comin' apart at the seams". the chorus is longing and mournful, both lyrically and musically, inspiring the same in the listener.

the title of this post is a line from one of my favouritest songs, 'one of these nights', delivered in a falsetto and pace that contrasts the previous lines and bars, which makes it stand out immediately. of course the genius of their songs, generally, is that they are expertly executed both musically and lyrically. their meaningfulness is conveyed effortlessly by don henley's almost unremarkable voice, were it not for its remarkable range, augmented by its lightness, which allows it to move seamlessly into his falsetto, the natural, graceful beauty of which acts as a juxtaposition against the deepness of his lyrics. they move together, the music and lyrics; the same sentiment is conveyed by both, they complement each other to make a unified whole, a symmetry: beauty incarnate.

e poi ... e poi

a wicked track, totally funk, coming out of italo-disco from '81. yea, pino's cheesy and dramatic but that's what it is. unlike american disco, european disco was much less sexual, more about the fun of it, and, incidentally, about space (new age). "This kind of music seems to expand the listener's surrounding to a very large space with the utilization of new music shaping technologies by the artists." the heavy use of the synthesizer led to that spacey feel, but a lot of the songs were actually about space, and robots, and love. (this one isn't, though.)

give it a go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHLewcdIWlw&feature=related

taylor swift is a genius.

this little girl has managed to break all these records, becoming the best-selling artist in '08, the only artist ever to have two albums in the end-of-year top ten, tied in second place with mariah carey and the beatles for the most singles in the billboard top 20, spending all this time at number one on different charts across different genres, all because she makes good music. yes, it's the music of young girls, but it's not like the music of other young girls. yes, while most of what she talks about is boys, she imagines that interaction as abstractly romanticised (romeo and juliet), but while using mundane imagery (throwing rocks at the window). one is forced, by the coherence of her lyrics, to leave aside the moralising concerns of a society that legitimates the prioritization of romantic ideas for young girls. one is forced, by the variety and excitement of her musical prowess, to forget that she's a young girl. this is her most intriguing and intoxicating feat: she's managed to marry honest, personal, interesting lyrics with powerful, evocative, and emotional music. the production of her work is rather unbelievably magical, mostly because it's entirely unexpected. but, despite the fallacy of expectation, what we are left with is a genius who knows how to create songs that are both meaningful and popular, who began writing at age ten, made her first multi-platinum album at age sixteen, and by age eighteen, with only her second album, has reached the sorts of financial and artistic peaks that almost no one ever does.

http://www.youtube.com/taylorswift

kanye's new album.

powerful in its simplicity. (cliched, perhaps.) most of the album is just beats from the 808 drum machine. the starkness of the music is mirrored by his austere auto-tune voice and the simple depth of the lyrics, which, though dealing with cliched subject matter remains full of interesting imagery. everyone loves 'love lockdown', and so do i, but the first track is perhaps my favourite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HHJ-3A5-Ak