Mash-Up

Well, hello, blog - long time no see.

Just thought I'd share this this fun track - this year's United States of Pop, a mash-up of the top 25 billboard hits of the year, created annually by DJ Earworm. I don't think this year's is quite as good as years previous, but it's damn catchy, and the video is great. Enjoy.

Who knew they could get weirder?

The Decemberists are turning The Hazards of Love, their most recent album, into a super-trippy animated film. This should be interesting:

Invincible.

Hilariously, Michael Jackson's final studio album was named Invincible. Also hilarious is Michael's melting, whitening, clearly-not-invincible face, shown in its different stages throughout the years in the great morphing video below.

Coldplay steal the show...and a song.

Long story short, Coldplay seems to have written the song "Viva la Vida" by simply copying the Joe Satriani song "If I Could Fly." Originally Joe Satriani planned to serve Coldplay with a copyright infringement lawsuit at the Grammys by hiring a bunch of servers to scour the venue. In the end, Satriani's lawyer was contacted by a lawyer representing the band who said he would accept the papers without the drama of a Grammy-night hunt for the band.

Here's a YouTube video that plays relevant sections of both Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" and Joe Satriani's "If I Could Fly." Satriani's song is from his 2004 album Is There Love In Space?, while Coldplay's is from their 2008 album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.

For reference: the complete Coldplay song; the complete Satriani song.

For those of you interested in the music theory behind this claim here are two videos in which a guy from Creative Guitar Studios in California analyzes the theoretical similarities between the two songs. Video 1. Video 2.

Satriani is suing for any and all profits related to the copyright infringement, and considering the popularity of "Viva la Vida" he stands to gain quite nicely from this (especially when one considers the bump in name recognition for Satriani).

Presidential Playlists

So, I heard this referenced on NPR yesterday so I decided to look it up: Top 10 iPod Playlists for Obama and McCain.

Quick comment on McCain: even I'm smart enough to know you don't include the smart artist twice - especially ABBA - and you don't make the most recent song on your list a song from when your opponent was a teenager.

What prompted me to post this was that "Yes We Can" by will.i.am made Obama's playlist. I love that Obama has an ego, though some of my friends have disagreed with me that he does. If there was any doubt, I'll just say this: he admitted (while running for president) that one of his favorite "songs" is one that just consists of famous people singing stuff he said over clips of him saying it. If that's not egotistical ...

The Big Three Killed My Baby

Reason 8,756 I love The White Stripes: Occasionally topical songs! (Very rare, as Jack White doesn't believe in political music as an effective means of creating change.)

"The Big Three Killed My Baby" is a song that rips into the Big Three, with some fairly entertaining lines like, "Better ideas are stuck in the mud," and, "Don't let 'em tell you the future's electric/ 'cause gasoline's not measured in metric."

If you would like the song just email me.


Lyrics:

The big three killed my baby
No money in my hand again
The big three killed my baby
Nobodys coming home again

Their ideas make me wanna spit
A hundred dollars goes down the pit
Thirty-thousand wheels a rollin
And my stick shift hands are swollen
Everything involved is shady
The big three killed my baby yeah yeah yeah

The big three killed my baby
No money in my hand again
The big three killed my baby
Nobodys comin home again

Why don't cha take the day off and try to repair
A billion others don't seem to care
Better ideas are stuck in the mud
The motor's runnin on tucker's blood
Don't let 'em tell you the future's electric
'cause gasoline's not measured in metric
Thirty-thousand wheels a spinnin
And oil company faces are grinnin
And now my hand are turnin red
And i found out my baby is dead yeah yeah yeah

The big three killed my baby
No money in my hand again
The big three killed my baby
Nobody's comin home again

Well i've said it now
Nothings changed
People are burnin for pocket change
And creative minds are lazy
And the big three killed my baby yeah yeah yeah
And my baby's my common sense
So don't think im puttin up some esense
And my baby's my common sense

Yeah im about to have another blow up (2x)