++ 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.

~~~

...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