The on-repeat playlist : this week

So yeah. I suddenly have a vague recollection of promising to post my favorite songs every week in this very blog. But ah, for once I’d like to have a bad memory and say, “What? I don’t remember promising something like that!”

Meh. Sometimes I am selfish and love to keep all the good music I have found all to myself. Sometimes I am a little too lazy to post stuff that I am actually dying to share with all the people. So enough is enough, I thought. Here’s getting straight to business. Here’s one of my choicest and (I’d like to think) most diverse playlist that I can’t seem to get enough of, for the last week. Or maybe two. I forget.

I’ll start with the one song I have been listening on repeat the whole day. Actually since yesterday.

So I first got to know about Mozella after watching a Castle episode for the umpteenth time. Must be in one of the episodes in Season 2 that the song “Can’t Stop” plays in the background. I guess I had missed the song in my first viewing. But well, as is my habit, I found out the song, liked it, and straightaway searched for Mozella in Grooveshark. And suddenly this song got to me. Like hit me with a truck or something. “Uh-Uh” is from Mozella’s album Belle Isle, and although all the songs are really good, this one, with its backing vocals is specially catchy. More so because it is about a woman who steadfastly rebuffs her guy’s pleas for forgiveness, and doesn’t relent to all his pleas. Man I wish I were like her!

Before this, I was listening to Ingrid Michaelson. And particularly this song.

My sister was the one to introduce me to Ingrid Michaelson. She had first posted a link of her song “The Way I Am” and I fell in love with the song from first listen, but in the long run, my favor tilted towards “You And I”. I have always been a fan of quirky lyrics, and even though Ingrid Michaelson reminds me sometimes of Regina Spektor and sometimes of Elizabeth and The Catapult, I like the fact that her songs are happier, and lighter, and you are bound to smile once you have heard the songs. Definitely one of my happy songs. Plus I absolutely love the ukulele!

Now, this next song by Edward Sharpe ad The Magnetic Zeros, I hunted for. I mean, I found it on my purposeful hunt for new music on the Popular tab in Grooveshark. I should by now just pledge allegiance to that site, really.

So what do I love about this song? Umm, just about everything. Starting from the whistling, to the perky beat and to the fact that this is a love song like one I hadn’t heard before. I mean, really, it doesn’t get any better than “Home, let me come home, Home is wherever I’m with you”. Plus it has got this old feel to it that appeals to the sucker for classics in me.

Before that I went through a total Alexi Murdoch phase. I can’t count the number of times I had to pause the movie “Away We Go” to google the lyrics and find out what song was playing in the background (I never have the patience to wait till the end credits roll) only to realize it is an Alexi Murdoch song. My favorite so far is this.

I am always about interesting beginnings, and this is as amazing as it gets, I tell you. Even “All of My Days” is a good song, but well, Blue Mind has this something I can’t put my finger on that appeals to me. This is for the rainy nights when I want to just lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling.

I went through an ambient music phase in between, and it started with Azzo. The track is called Jonathan and I hunted it down after hearing it in a video. Worst part with instrumentals is that it doesn’t have lyrics I can google… But well, find it I did!

Jonathan by Azzo

The starting is a little shrill so it might kind of get to your nerves but believe me it gets better. I played this song for one whole night and I can safely say I quite got used to the high-pitched intro by the eleventh time. It was only after this piece that I started finding out what was ambient music, and discovered Aphex Twin. Phase didn’t last long. Only this piece did.

Moving back further, I also spent one whole day listening to Lil Wayne’s “How to Love”.

This isn’t what I normally expect from Lil Wayne so maybe it was more of surprise that worked for this song. It is slow, and sad and touches me in a way I can’t explain. Maybe it is the minor chords that do it for me. This song actually makes me stop doing whatever it is I am doing, and just keep staring at my laptop screen vaguely. Whatever it is, it did change my opinion about Lil Wayne, just like “Anything” changed my opinion about Jay-Z.

Saving the best for the last, this song I discovered only after watching The Social Network. Blasphemy, I know, both discovering a Beatles song through a movie, AND watching a good movie a year and a half post its release, but well, sometimes, you need to save things for later so you can savor them better!

I got hooked to the intro, big time. The Beatles had always used unusual elements and had experimented with a lot of different things, but this was something I hadn’t heard before. Prompted me to download the entire discography, I tell you. And bam! The Beatles were back in my life yet again.

So much for now… I have also been listening to some Kina Grannis, and David Byrne and RnB compilations but I keep going back to these songs over and over again.

Give the songs one listen at least.. and do let me know. I have been known to play Genius to my friends so I’d love to make more personalized playlists! Ciao for now!

Tastin’ the wastin’ and groovin’ and sharkin’

Finally I am through with the screw-ups I call my mid-terms, and suddenly I have time in my hand to do everything I want to do, and it is sort of a let down. See it’s not even like I stopped doing stuff because my mid-terms were going on, but well, it was a whole different case of the thrill of the taboo. Can you even imagine how boring it is to do things only when they are meant to be done?

So well, although I don’t really love to write when I am expected to (like in the free time I get when the exams are over), I had to do this. Tried talking it out but R’s busy (nothing new in that anyway) so I can’t talk to him. I even took an outside chance on getting my sister to listen to me, but seems like I am the only person in the universe who won’t be home late tonight.

But it’s not everyday you realize you are an addict. And I have to get this off my chest. So let me do this right.

I am Sam (nickname courtesy AB), and I am a musiholic. I am afflicted by that disorder characterized by the excessive consumption of and dependence on music (oh yeah, I tweaked the definition of an alcoholic, and in case you were wondering, *consume* is exactly what I do with music)

And how did I come to realize it?

Exhibit A: I spent four hours on the night before my Artificial Intelligence paper, surfing for new music to listen to on Grooveshark, and I wouldn’t stop smiling, all the while that I listened to some awesome, awesome songs.

Exhibit B: After getting into bed at 2am in the morning, I spent another hour listening to *one* song that I had hurriedly transfered to my phone (the only one I had with me; rest of the songs I could only listen to online) and thus ended up sleeping at three. And it doesn’t end there.

Exhibit C: I wake up at 7.30, and turn on the laptop (meaning to go through the slides) and almost unconsciously connect to the internet, and before I know it, I am shuffling more through the random searches than the pdf files I am meant to learn.

Exhibit D: I come back from a f***ed up exam (no surprises there), and the only thing I want to know the moment I enter my room is if the wi-fi’s still behaving itself. It is. And I start right from where I had last left off, and that is where I start having a doubt as to if this is really normal behavior.

Exhibit E: I try taking an afternoon nap, and have my laptop right next to me, with the earphones still in my ears, and a playlist put on repeat (rubab instrumental, if you must have it). You must have some idea about how a woman feels when she wakes up with her cheek squashed on top of her laptop and her hands lovingly placed on its closed screen like it’s the most natural thing to do. Freaked out, yeah. That was exactly how I felt.

And if it were not enough, I am still at it. I am even now, zealously searching for new music like it’s going out of fashion; I find myself counting hours till I can get home and start downloading all the songs I have been listening to, so I can have them with me all the time, unlike now when I need to be connected to the net, (which in itself is such a pain).  I have got into the bad habit of active listening, because half the time I am like “Ya..ya..hmm.. hmm…so have you heard *this* song?“, and rest of the times I am humming something under my breath. And why would the social networking be left untouched? The obsession spreads over Facebook AND Twitter as well. I wonder at times why my earphones don’t just start growing out of my ears. And I wonder how many more years I have left before I start hearing music inside my head without even actual music being played. Oh, and it wouldn’t matter, because the rate at which I am going, I will be deaf way before my time anyway.

So there you go. I am confirming my Dad’s worst fears, and confronting my own. Oh no, I am not scared I am an addict. I am just scared of that slightest possibility that I might someday change. Because I hope, hand upon my heart, that I don’t. I love being a musiholic, which means I will not even try to stop myself, so help me God.

Just heard an amazing song I need to Google the lyrics of. So ciao for now.

P.S. Maybe , just maybe, this has to do with the whole idea about putting up playlists on my blog. I can’t believe I have deliberately, on my own,  set myself up a routine to write. But boy am I excited about it.