InMyEars™ Playlist — Spring Break Edition
This is just a picture. The listening widget is down the page. 
Happy Tuesday, Turkeys (fellow listeners). A very happy Spring Break to many of you! For the rest of us, we survived Monday—hopefully Like A Conqueror. And now, here’s a shiny new playlist (widget below) to reward you and jumpstart the second half of your Tuesday. There are tunes from artists including Bruno Mars, Britt Nicole, Thievery Corporation, Broken Records (thanks for the tip, Mike Ferrara), William Fitzsimmons, the Glee Cast, and Sara Bareilles (including “The Light,” one I’ve mentioned before for its power to make a grown man cry). A bunch of great soundtracks feature prominently: In Good Company (Iron & Wine’s “Sunset Soon Forgotten”), Dan In Real Life (Sondre Lerche’s “Let My Love Open The Door), Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Mark Mothersbaugh’s 80′s-esque Casio-style “Nick and Norah’s Theme”), Heroes (Wendy & Lisa’s “Peter” theme from the instrumental score for the TV show), Glee (the cast’s take on “Lean On Me”), and The Freedom Writers (will.i.am’s “I have a dream,” featuring the Black Eyed Peas).
Two other items I’d like to highlight:
- Two of the tunes use pre-recorded speech, which is integrated right into the groove of the song–“I Have A Dream” (Black Eyed Peas) and “Exploration” from Thievery Corporation (it is not by The Trews–sorry for the typo in Grooveshark’s catalog). If you’ve ever had a chance to mess around with sequencing apps that use loops, like Garage Band or Super Duper Music Looper (yes, that’s a real application), then this sort of idea is not totally foreign to you. It certainly adds a different feel and, in the case of both these songs, gives a strong sense of hearkening to something else, someone else—a different time and place, if you dig.
- Behold the awesome use of alternating 5′s and 6′s to offset the meter in the chorus of Sara Bareilles’ “Let The Rain.” Once you’ve had a chance to take the song in at face value, go back and see what happens if you try to keep a steady count all the way thru (i.e. “1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3….”). The majority of the song sits in a nice duple/quadruple groove (something like 4/4 or 2/2 for you music nerds) but then it promptly drops into a complex mix of measures of 5 or 6 beats for the chorus. Go ahead, knock yourself out and get a little education while you’re listening.
As ever, if you’d rather make a flying leap over to my Grooveshark and listen there, by all means clickety clicky right here. And if you use grooveshark or last.fm, let’s connect in those places–friend/follow me (links to my profiles below), so I can reciprocate and start stalking YOUR listening, too.
As ever, I’d appreciate your feedback here in the comments (click thru to the individual post if you don’t see a place for comments at the bottom of this page).
Stay tuned, Turkeys. Next playlist will probably dig back into some indie stuff and other less mainstream music and artists I’ve been introduced to via Last.fm. But no guarantees—you just never know what you might find InMyEars™….
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