++ We Are The W O R L D

そしてこれにつづく...

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Yesterday night marked the release of the video and single for the 25th anniversary remake of the monumental song "We Are The World". I won't write much about it, but I have to say that I love it as much as I love the original. Still sent shivers down my spine from listening to all the talent involved this time around.

The 25th Anniversary Remake

The Original 1985 Version

:)

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...この醜い脳裏

++ Fly Me To The M O O N

そしてこれにつづく...

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For a while now, I've been listening to a lot of oldies songs. I guess I just want to listen to those songs that paved the way to make the musicians we see today. In my playlist I've got songs from Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Little Richard, James Brown, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. Every single one of these artists are truly the pioneers of the music we listen to today. Their songs are so amazing that I can never get sick of listening to them. Timeless music that will never be forgotten.

Their songs are definitely something I aspire to one day. I really love how they express themselves in each song, how they tell their stories or share their experiences through music. It's something I'd love to be able to do one day, to write music or draw/paint pictures to share with the world. But I guess we all have to start somewhere so hopefully if I work hard enough and persist, eventually I'll get there someday right?

There are so many songs of theirs I want to talk about right now, but that'd be way too much to write. So I'll limit myself to the one song I've loved for an incredibly long time, "Fly Me to the Moon" by Nat King Cole. I first heard this song back in 1995 from the ending sequence of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and instantly fell in love with it. Out of all the renditions, I kinda prefer Nat King Cole's version over Frank Sinatra/Quincy Jones' swing-inspired one. It's just so hard to explain why I love this song so much, because there's just so much to talk about; the dreamy lyrics, vivid imagery and magical melodies. I guess Nat King Cole says it perfectly in the opening portion to the song:

"Poets often use many words
to say a simple thing.
It takes thought and time and rhyme
To make a poem sing.

With music and words I've been playing
For you, I have written a song.
To be sure that you'll know what I'm saying,
I'll translate as I go along..."

If you ever get the time, you should really listen to this song.

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...この醜い脳裏

++ Music & M E

そしてこれにつづく...

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Alright, so today I'm just going to vent a bit of my frustrations here about the current state of the pop music industry.

I've been so frustrated with the decline in music quality over the years. It's become so much trash nowadays that it is almost embarrassing to listen to some of the songs that are coming out. There is no such thing as the conscious musician anymore, just mindless pop singers and dancers. These "singers" sing songs that become majour hits, break records and earn them various awards that they honestly don't deserve. Take for instance the current chart topper, TiK ToK by Ke$ha. It's been at the number 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles charts since the 2nd of January, a little over a month by now. It has broken the number of US digital sales for a female artist since 2003 and also the record for Billboards Pop Songs radio airplay chart by getting more than 11,224 plays in a week. This being a song about getting drunk, partying it up and just plain getting wasted by the end of the night. Then you've got others like Lady Gaga, Flo Rida, David Guetta and the list goes on. Even acts that have been around for a while take note of this current trend and "dumb-down" their musical content to an all-time low to get to an all-time high point in their career, e.g. The Black Eyed Peas.

Since my taste in music centres around RnB, Hip-Hop and maybe a bit of pop, I'll be centralising my discussion around it. So then, let's compare the songs from the past few years to the classics from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe up until the 90s. In the 50s you'd have influential artists like Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley. The 60s brought The Beatles, the whole Motown label, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones. In the 70s you have Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, AC/DC, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye. In the 80s there was Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Housten, Janet Jackson, Luther Vandross, Run D.M.C., Beastie Boys, NWA. 90s had Boyz II Men, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Usher, D'Angelo, Aaliyah, R. Kelly, TLC, Seal, Brandy, Monica, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston. And then even in the early 2000s, we had acts like Ne-yo, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Craig David. Over that long history of music, music slowly degraded to the state that it is in now.

These days, there are hardly any songs that could be considered classics 20-30 years in the future. For example, where are the songs these days that are like; Unforgettable/Mona Lisa/Smile/Fly Me To The Moon by Nat King Cole, Georgia On My Mind/Hit The Road Jack by Ray Charles, Ain't No Mountain High Enough/I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye and Co., Isn't She Lovely/Superstition/Higher Ground/I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. Nothing that has come out within the past few years can compare musically to these true artists or any of their musical creations and adaptions. How can you compare Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing, or Flo Rida's Low to Common's I Love H.E.R., or Ke$ha's Tik Tok to Michael Jackson's Thriller. There is no comparison artistically. It's now all about partying hard, having crazy sex and getting trashed. It's a shame really.

I haven't even started yet, I could say so much more but I haven't. It's something that has been bothering me for so long and I hope that things can only get better now. Otherwise I'll just have to stick to these classic songs and just ignore the stupidity of the industry for the time being. Glad to atleast get some of that off my chest haha.

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...この醜い脳裏

++ Wanna Be Startin' S O M E T H I N '

そしてこれにつづく...

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So, instead of rotting away my brain during these long holidays, I decided to pick up some anatomy books to read again. Back when I started out drawing, I read quite a few how-to-draw, drawing techniques and anatomy books. It was a few years back when I read them, so I'm not sure how much I actually got out of reading those books. But now I've motivated myself to pick up my slack and start reading through some books thoroughly to improve myself.

Currently I'm reading Figure Drawing For All it's Worth (1943) by a man called Andrew Loomis. The book is simply amazing. His writing is so in-depth yet is easy enough to understand without any worries that you'd be confused or lost in his descriptions. His approach in detail is really effective too, emphasizing to the reader that they should draw the way they feel most comfortable. Loomis gives very clear guidlines to follow yet allows for enough creative freedom from the reader that they are able to apply their own styles to each "lesson" he gives. The diagrams he draws out too are very well done, motivating the reader to continue reading and aspire to Loomis' talent. I'm definitely going to stick to his books for the time being, to get as much out of it as I can. I've got my hands on his whole catalogue, so there's quite a bit of reading to do, but I honestly don't mind reading his works. Though it's going to be a very thorough workout! For sure! hahaha.

...And so let me leave you with a quote I read recently,
"The best time to plant a seed was 20 years ago. The second best time is now"
We should all work our best now, so that hopefully we can look back on ourselves in the future to see how much we've grown.
I wish everyone luck for the future! (:

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...この醜い脳裏

++ U Remind M E

そしてこれにつづく...

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Hmmm.. just had a thought. Since this is MY personal blog, why not just post about the things that I'm totally interested in... hmmmmm.. well sounds like a good idea I guess..? </sarcasm>

DAMMIT, I have no idea why I haven't really embraced this blog as much as I should have. It really does feel good to put shit here for a pseudo-audience to read haha. So I've decided to dedicate most of my posts to my interests in life, also to post some not-so-general knowledge stuff about things like music/art and whatever else I know, haha.

ANYWAY onto news!!

OMG, USHER AND CHILLI BACK TOGETHER?!? Wow, never thought that would happen, especially after the highly publicized relationship Usher had with Tameka and the whole divorce mess he got himself into afterwards. And then his decision to have that fling with the older Def Jam exec, Grace. Man, Usher seemed to be liking his older women!
But yeah, I've always thought Usher and Chilli made a good couple before. I'm kinda mixed about this news now though. Not sure why, maybe because of the decisions Usher has made since his breakup with her in Dec 2003. You messed up bro!

Here's a little something from Kanye that I read again after a friend reminded me of it on facebook. This dude, no matter how egotistical he can be sometimes, definitely speaks from his heart. I've definitely got a whole heap of respect for this guy, always have. Not many people would be able to do the things he is doing. By that I mean to be able to stand up tall and speak the truth even though he is under so much public scrutiny. I feel for this guy sometimes too. He really does represent a realist in a ludicrously abused industry, a rarity in this day in age. I can definitely understand his desire to make that mini-movie he published online a few months ago. Kanye, keep doing what you do bro!

Talking about Kanye, to all you haters/borderliners or even to those that like him a bit, let me present to you my throwback video of the day. I absolutely love this song of his. A little history to some of you out there: Before Kanye's breakout album "The College Dropout (2004)", Kanye worked closely with Roc-A-Fella Records, which was at the time being managed by none other than Jay-Z. He was a key producer in Jay-Z's highly successful "The Blueprint (2001)" album, though found it very hard to get support from the music industry as a rapper. Kanye was only ever acknowleged as a producer and nothing else, a.k.a. the guy that makes the music behind-the-scenes and is almost always never known by the general public. He felt that he was never properly acknowledged for the works he had done. Jay-Z's thanks to him for working on his critically acclaimed and commercially successful album was two front-row tickets to his show... that Kanye had to pay for himself. A year after his work on "The Blueprint", Kanye was involved with a car crash which almost took his life. This gave him the motivation to make his first single, "Through the Wire", the song to which I posted the video link to. Only a few months after he suffered the accident, Kanye decides to head into the studio to record this song.. WITH WIRES ALL THROUGH HIS MOUTH AND JAW. My case in point, this man speaks the truth. You can't tell me that what he says in this song wasn't from his heart.

Anyway, that's all from me today. Hope you guys enjoyed this blog posts change in pace! (:

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...この醜い脳裏

++ I N S O M N I A

そしてこれにつづく...

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Damnnnn I think I've picked up a really strange/bad sleeping habit. Can't get to sleep anytime before 3:30-4am anymore hahahaha. Just check the time I posted this article. HAHAHA!

Also, hoping the two of them really like my presents! D:
Glad I was able to buy present no.1 in time to make her feel better. Though present no.2 may arrive a day or two late.. But I hope she likes it when she gets it in the mail! o:

Thought I'd just post something here since I haven't in a long while! (:

P.S. If ya didn't know, most of the titles to my blog posts before this are titles to songs I listen to hahaha. Just a random fact lol. I'll also continue this trend in future posts. Btw, Insomnia is a Craig David song from his Greatest Hits album ;D

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...この醜い脳裏