Skip to main content

Best Musical Snippets of 2013

It's always great when you get a song that's consistently great from beginning to end, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.  Sometimes you get songs where a certain section clearly stands out from the rest. Here's a few from this year:
  1. The Chorus of Kanye West's Bound 2: The soul sample that occupies the rest of the song is soul only in name.  It approximates College Dropout-era Kanye with none of the warmth and, well, soul that made those tracks great.  The chorus is the exact opposite.  It uses the electronic music technique of putting a soulful male voice over a bass-heavy beat to create something emotive and genuinely soulful.
  2. The 3rd Minute of Youth Lagoon's Mute: Most of the song is nothing but warm, hazy fuzz, but, for about a minute, Trevor Powers cuts through that fuzz with a soaring, uplifting melody that Bono would be jealous of.
  3. The Pre-Chorus of Vampire Weekend's Unbelievers: One of two things this year that absolutely blew me away on first listen (the other being Daft Punk's Doing It Right).
  4. The Bridge of The National's Demons: The rest of the song isn't bad, but this bridge has more grandeur, momentum, and melody than the rest of the song combined.
  5. The Chorus to Phoenix's Bourgeois: It takes two and a half minutes of boredom to get to this chorus, but oh, what a chorus.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Lists 4 Bitches

Now, for some actual music.  First, my last.fm account if you want a quick snapshot of what I like.  (Yes, I know, the name is stupid, go ahead and laugh, I don't care...)  Also, I made you bitches a list...bitches love lists... Top 10 Songs of 2011 (so far): The Weeknd - Wicked Games :   This song is perfect.  The best track off of the most interesting album to come out this year (It's also free, you should download it and give it a listen if you haven't already: Link ).  The overblown drums and grimy guitars give the song a lot of momentum and a great ambiance, but really, the song is all about Abel Tesfaye.  His voice is hauntingly perfect (or perfectly haunting, either one works) and his songwriting is on point all the way through.  I tried to pick the best part of this song, but I just can't.  It's that good. Tyler, The Creator - Yonkers : Should have won Video of the Year.  At least he won Best New Artist. Kid deserved it. His mom looked so proud. Anywa

Songs That Should Have Been Hits

When releasing pop songs, major labels have been surprisingly good.  Sure, they often go with the obvious choices: the songs produced by famous producers and the songs featuring other big name acts.  However, after some bumbling around, they usually do end up releasing all the good songs as singles.  Every once in a while, though, they mess up big time.  Top 10 singles that could make millions of dollars and sometimes change the course of an artist's career are left to languish as album cuts because people are too stupid to comprehend their greatness.  Here's a list of songs that would conquer the world, if only someone would bother releasing them, and their likely peak chart position in the U.S.  There's links to YouTube videos of the songs imbedded below (obviously, there are some quality issues), and here's a Spotify Playlist with all available songs. Katy Perry - Hummingbird Heartbeat : #1 Jennifer Lopez - Hypnotico : #1 (Note: The YouTube video is sped up.)