Kelly Clarkson - All I Ever Wanted

So Marcus dropped me an MSN message to tell me Kelly Clarkson’s album is pretty awesome, and since I was already a huge fan of the first single “My Life Would Suck Without You“, I had to give it a listen. No surprise, after checking it out, I think it’s already one of my favourite albums of 2009! Instead of talking about the album in general, I’m going to go through the track listing one by one.

01 – My Life Would Suck Without You
Absolutely brilliant first song and an excellent choice for her first single. Shows off her vocal talents perfectly and the video is fantastic.

02 – I Do Not Hook Up
This was originally meant for Katy Perry (and you can kinda tell from the lyrics), and although it’s totally a Katy Perry song, I think Kelly Clarkson really brings the female “power” to it whereas Katy would have brought the “emotional” aspect to it.

03 – Cry
Yet another beautiful track showcasing Kelly’s amazing vocals. This is the “Beautiful Disaster” of this album. I love it. Third favourite track off the album.

04 – Don’t Let Me Stop You
I see this as Kelly’s “Irreplaceable” song, but with more character. Take that, Beyonce.

05 – All I Ever Wanted
I appreciate songs that change tune/tempo/mood in the midst of the song. This is one of them

06 – Already Gone
Definitely one of my top five fave tracks. Her voice in this one is amazing.

07 – If I Can’t Have You
One of the tracks that embodies Kelly’s more “rock” music. It’s not terrible, but somehow I see Kelly as a very lyrical, musical singer, less a rocker.

08 – Save You
This is the “P!nk” song off the album. The deep vocals feel like this should be a P!nk song. One of the two tracks I can’t decide if I like or not.

09 – Whyyawannabringmedown
This is the one track that feels out of place on the album. More Paramore than Kelly Clarkson. The second song I can’t decide if I like or not.

10 – Long Shot
Another song meant for Katy Perry. I’ve heard her (Katy) sing it on YouTube, Kelly does a better job. (And that’s coming from a Katy fan).

11 – Impossible
Slightly more to the “rock” side of things, but very Kelly Clarkson. Can’t say it left a huge impression on me though.

12 – Ready
Ironically, she sounds like Katy in this one. Not sure if it works for her though.

13 – I Want You
My favourite track off the album. Such a quirky track that reminds me of maybe the ’80s. Just plain fun, upbeat, with great lyrics. Listen to this first.

14 – No One Will Listen
This song actually sounds very “Broadway” and/or “epic”. Like you listen to it and it just feels like a big song. I like it.

This album is great. If you’re not going to buy it, at least check it out on YouTube. Most songs are up! After you do that, comment and let me know what you think.

It’s been awhile since I’ve chosen to highlight a YouTube musician on Music Mondays, but awhile ago Sheryl recommended I check out two artists, one being David Choi, who considers himself to be more of a songwriter than an artist, but he can actually sing pretty well.

One thing I realised about David’s music, is that he brings his own adaptation of the song to the songs he sings, case in point: Britney Spears’s Womanizer.

David Choi – Womanizer

The other thing engaging about his music is that he is pretty versatile, being able to cover both male (Jason Mraz, John Mayer) and female (Katy Perry, Britney Spears) artists alike.

Finally, we definitely grew up in the same era, evident of his cover of Diana Ross’s If We Hold On Together, from the movie Land Before Time.

David Choi – If We Hold On Together

If you like David’s stuff, he has lots of music free for download on his website, http://davidchoimusic.com.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s Music Mondays, feel free to recommend any artist or band, local or otherwise, that you think should be covered!

Why do I like Katy Perry (other than the obvious fact that she’s so darn cute)? She’s fun. And that’s something lacking in the music world these days.

Check out what she did at the MTV Latin Awards:

And what she’s dressed up as at another concert (image from Trendhunter):

Katy Perry's Dressed As An Egg

And if you watch her “Hot N Cold” video, it’s just endless amusement from end to end with the bopping bridesmaids, the chase and the dance at the end, rather than the usual “look at me I’m so glam” music videos that we’re used to:

Lyrically, there’s nothing to shout about. Simple songs mostly about relationships with no deeper meaning, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Vocally, she reminds me of a cross between P!nk and Gwen Stefani, and I’m quite fond of the throaty voice she uses to sing. However, after watching numerous videos on YouTube, I have to say she rarely manages to pull it off live.

On to her album “One Of The Boys” (which I bought for a mere $7.99 on iTunes), the songs I really like are:

Hot N Cold – Addictive track!

I Kissed A Girl – I can’t believe anyone not liking this

Lost – I doubt she could replicate the vocals of this song live, but they sound great on the album.

Fingerprints – Probably one of the more meaningful songs on the album, or maybe I’m a sucker for songs about leaving fingerprints….

One Of The Boys – Another fun song, and of course, the lyrics about making out with her are just yummy.

The songs I didn’t like:

Ur So Gay – I don’t like this not because of the supposed homosexual content (which by the way, I find there is none), but because I just thing musically and lyrically, it’s a poor song.

I’m Still Breathing – The other song I just couldn’t get into, mostly due to the musical arrangement than anything.

I know, you’re all going “Who?”. Here’s the back story: Last night I was doing some research for this week’s Music Monday, (hint: it involved searching for Katy Perry on YouTube), what surfaced instead was this:

I know everyone’s trying to be the next Marie Digby, but over 1.3million views and 12 thousand ratings with an average of 4.5 stars isn’t something easy to achieve. So I thought, in the spirit of embracing social media, why not share someone relatively unknown?

So my understanding is that Alyssa is an 18 year old college girl in San Antonio, who, well, loves music, and her MySpace page is here. The one thing I don’t like is here though.

I know MySpace is the current big thing for music but as far as I’m concerned, you should have a yourname.com or yourname.net, simply because when you participate in someone else’s network, what happens if your account gets locked, even as a mistake? It means losing contact with your fans. At least with your own website, you have a permanent presence on the web that is yours.

In any case, I do fairly like her music. Considering that it’s done with a home audio system with no mixer, mic, and/or console, pretty solid job. So here’s two more videos: I’m Yours by Jason Mraz and Take A Bow by Rihanna, which I think is my favourite of her covers.

This week’s Music Monday is going to be short because I’ve been in bed all weekend nursing a cold and a bad throat, but let’s get to it!

I was shopping at the mall (or what passes off as a mall in Kingston), the other day and was appalled to see cds being sold for $18 (I’m talking about new releases) which translates to about $24 in Singaporean dollars. Fully armed with the knowledge that the average album price on iTunes is $9.99, why in the world do these retailers think we’re going to shell out double of that, for a physical copy?

I mean I grew up buying cds and I still like having it to hold, but that cd isn’t worth an extra $9. (In fact, I went home and purchased the Katy Perry album off iTunes instead of buying it at the store. But that brings us to iTune’s DRM problem, which another story for another day…)

When will record labels realise that cds are very quickly going the way of the dinosaur? Being able to easily download music is only part of the piracy issue. The other part is that the labels and retailers are just making it easier to engage in piracy, rather than to pay some money for it. The reason why I’m spending more money on music here than back home is because they have cds priced between $9-11.

So out of curiosity, when was the last time you actually bought a physical cd? Are you comfortable with the idea of going totally digital? (ie: no physical cd at all). Let me know what you think.

Oh and an update: Remember how I was bummed about missing Metro Station? Well I found out on Last.fm that they’re playing in Toronto on the 26th of October, and my ticket arrived in the mail yesterday. Psyched!

I’ve never really added a “themed” kind of blog post to my blog, but I’m going to start with Music Mondays, at least for the next couple of months just to see how things are going. I have so many passions it was hard to decide which to go with!

The 2008 Video Music Awards (VMAs) were held earlier this month live from the Paramount Studios and I managed to catch it a little belatedly and my reaction was typically mixed.

What I liked:

P!nk’s performance was outstanding. We haven’t had anything new from her in awhile, and this looks like a strong start. I’m actually quite a big P!nk fan from her first album back in 2000, so it’s really nice to see something new.

Rihanna’s performances (both her solo and duet with T.I.) were pretty amazing. That girl knows how to rock! Her wardrobe choice for the second song was way better than her first.

Most of the awards had multiple nominees present in the crowd, so that kept me guessing who the award winners were. That said, towards the end of the show I moved on from guessing to desperately hoping because….

What I didn’t like:

My biggest gripe is that the VMAs really felt like a Britney lovefest. I mean I understand that 2008 was a bit of a comeback year for her with “Piece of Me” and appearing on How I Met Your Mother to good reviews, but giving her three awards (all big ones), getting her to open the show, and blatantly planting questions like “Is this Britney’s comeback” was just insulting my intelligence.

Travis Barker and DJ AM were awesome (they’re injured in a very tragic airplane accident) and their collaborations with Katy Perry and the Ting Tings deserved more screen time than that as far as I’m concerned.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do for future Music Mondays, I have a couple of albums and/or artists that I’ve discovered recently that I will probably share, but beyond that, anything goes! If you have ideas, feel free to leave a comment. Ps: I should say that I am very much a child of mainstream radio of the ‘90s, so my music taste has been molded by bands that are generally music and MTV friendly. So if you’re one of those “purists” who are going to gag at praise for mainstream artists, you probably want to skip this section every Monday .