Song Saturday: I Could’ve Been Your Girl by She & Him

For those that have known me for awhile, this week’s song favorite will come as no surprise. I’ve got a bit of a girl crush on Zooey Deschanel, and I particularly love her in She & Him.

She & Him is basically Zooey and M. Ward. They met on the set of a movie, released their first album in 2008, and magic was set upon the world.

All right, the magic might be exaggerating a little bit. She & Him consists, especially the first album Volume 1, of quirky instrumentation and songs written by Deschanel. Her voice is nearly impossible to mimic. The tone of her voice is clear, but the inflection and sound is unique. Plus, with Deschanel’s girly style and nerdy leanings, the music has a sort of sixties vibe that somehow manages to stay fresh. It has a charm that never quits.

Even the Christmas album is lovely.

It’s a little mind boggling. They just released Volume 3 (which I haven’t gotten yet, but I am definitely going to very soon!), and it sounds remarkably similar in style to the first two volumes. But that hasn’t dampened my excitement at all. This song is from the new album, and Deschanel directed the video. It is just the right amount of odd to make me want to run out and get the album now instead of finishing this post.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Song Sunday: Next to Me by Emeli Sande

What I really wanted to do was give you a cheesy Mother’s Day worthy song, a sweet one like The Best Day by Taylor Swift or a funky one like Welcome to the 60s from Hairspray. Or even a new-to-me one like Oh Mother by Christina Aguilera. But instead, I have a completely different song stuck in my head this week.

And it seems to be stuck in everyone else’s, too.

This song came across my path as I was getting dressed one morning. It was playing on JumpStart on VH1 (yes, you can judge me) as a You Oughta Know artist. And I thought, “Well, girl singing with piano? Yeah, I should know her!”

I promptly forgot about her in the midst of serving breakfast that morning.

Instead I was confronted with this song again on Glee a couple of weeks ago, and it stuck. It probably didn’t hurt that Idina Menzel was singing it on the show.

Next to Me by Emeli Sande is playing all over the radio right now. I’m not normally one that’s big on radio play, but with all the driving I do, I listen to the radio quite a bit. This song hasn’t gotten old yet. For me, that is pretty exciting.

Anyway, I hope you’re all having a lovely May weekend! Bring on more lovely weather!

Document Your Life

I admired Susie’s videos that she made for this project, so I decided to undertake it myself. It turns out that I’m not terribly good at it, mostly because I forget to do anything with it at work.

The project was started by Lauren Hannah, and the rules about it can be read on her tumblr. It is basically a way for us to learn to appreciate the beauty in our everyday lives.

I cheated this month, just a little, because I’m also trying to get better about taking photographs. My first video is mainly that. The point is, I am really excited to see my year in this format. Here’s to the first installment!

P.S. If I had done a Song Saturday a couple of days ago, it would have highlighted Piece By Piece by Orla Gartland.

Song Saturday: Anything Goes

Earlier this week, I filmed a video for Wonderly‘s Curate theme on movie musicals that I love. I’ve been asked to do this in the past by a few people, mostly because I have a love for musicals that can’t be denied. For those that haven’t gotten their feet wet in that movie genre, it can be daunting to figure out which ones are the best to watch, and which are the best to start with.

But that’s not what this post is about.

That video made me look carefully at some of the musicals I love, and I remembered that there is one I keep meaning to watch again: Anything Goes.

The movie was made in 1956 and stars Donald O’Connor (think Make ‘Em Laugh in Singing in the Rain) and Bing Crosby. The songs are a lot of Cole Porter tunes that were adapted for the musical, so they are swingy and delightful.

Well, as luck would have it, the musical was originally adapted for the stage. A couple of times. The one that makes me happiest was performed at the Tonys the year I was born, and it starred the completely lovely Patty Lupone. The title song is so catchy, and I’ve found myself singing it the past few days.

I know that this is a totally different genre than I’ve been recommending on here, but I hope you like it anyway. Here’s to tap dancing the weekend away!

Song Saturday – Tornado Tunes

If Pecos Bill can ride a tornado, we can certainly sing about them.

Since I’ve been working these past two Saturdays, I’ve gotten a bit behind on this little project. Now, really, who’s surprised?

If you’ve seen the weather for Arkansas lately, you’ll know that we’ve had some bad storms all pile on top of each other. The Midwest in general has been hit with some weather that made me remember the movie Twister and want to hide in the bathtub with a mattress over my head.

Since Spring is tornado season, I’ve chosen two songs (since I skipped a week!) about twisters. And I swear none of them are about the Wizard of Oz.

The first is aptly titled “Tornado” by Little Big Town. This is more of a female-power-over-cheating-jerk song than a song about the weather, but the instrumentation in the song is what keeps me going back to it. (Well, that and my mom loves it.) The bluegrass feel sounds like a twister about to let loose. The harmonies, and the appropriately creepy and dissonant bridge, keep me happy with the song, too.

Although “Blown Away” by Carrie Underwood is also about a tornado, it’s a completely different change of pace. To start, it’s definitely more of a ballad. Ballad in the sense that it’s telling a story, like a good portion of country songs do. (Yet another reason to love the genre, if you ask me.) Also, Carrie Underwood has vocals that take over the rest of the song. It’s just really, really difficult to ignore her powerhouse pipes and focus on the instrumentation. In this particular song, I think that’s an asset.

I am pretty much in love with this song at the moment. I love that she only hits that really high note in the end, and that it’s the kind of song you roll down the windows for. It goes from a really low pre-chorus about the rains in Oklahoma to the powerful chorus to verses that sit in the middle, commanding attention. Even the echos of the song title sound like a storm breaking. It’s very well done, guys.

I run around singing this all time, and because of the emotion in the lyrics (and what that commands of anyone singing it), it’s the best kind of stress release. I know that Carrie Underwood is best known for winning American Idol and singing songs like “Before He Cheats,” but she is certainly not done making her mark on the country genre.

Song Sunday – Once in a Lifetime by Landon Austin

I have loved this song for awhile, which I’m sure you know, but this week it has been stuck in my head. Maybe because he was in Chicago this week and I wasn’t.

Often, I refer to Landon as my YouTube boyfriend. (I met him once. Super nice guy, but totally not interested, so I’m sure he laughs at that if it ever hits his radar.) He’s a song writer based in Nashville, and he is just awkward enough to be endearing. Go to his YouTube channel, and you’ll get a crush on him, too.

His original songs are well-constructed, and super catchy. There is absolutely nothing about them that I would change. It’s only a matter of time before he’s noticed on a bigger platform. This particular song is adorable, with great guitar playing and lyrics that drip with sentiment; in short, it is music that sticks with you and makes you smile.

review of the Ruby Oliver series

I said weeks ago that I was going to write a blog post about the E. Lockhart series I was reading. I got all four of them for Christmas, and I’ve been fighting the urge to devour them ever since.

To begin, let me say that E. Lockhart is a fabulous writer. She writes with such honesty and wit and complete understanding of how a teenager’s mind works. In the Ruby Oliver series specifically, she uses footnotes to expound on the knowledge of her main character and provide extra resources and humor for the reader. She uses lists in a way is that is just brilliant, and she makes the act of keeping a diary and undergoing therapy fresh. I find that last bit really difficult to believe, even after I’ve read the books.

Emily Jenkins in all her glory!

Emily Jenkins, or E. Lockhart, has a brilliant way of taking a plot that should be cliche and twisting it just enough to make it unlike anything you’ve ever heard of. (Susie says Gayle Foreman does the same thing. So, check her out, too.)

Basic premise: Ruby Oliver is a girl that has panic attacks caused by stress brought on by her relationships, with boys and with her friends. To combat these attacks, the therapist has her keep a diary and begin making lists so she can organize her feelings and reactions better. It’s basically a way for Ruby to understand her own thought processes and the sequence of events her actions can bring. That’s something we’ve all heard before, right?

But her therapist is a little awesome. Ruby has to make a list of all the boys she has ever been in a relationship with, real or imaginary, to see where her problem of Boy Mania has come from. She has to make a visual map of relationships at one point, too. All things that, in the wrong hands, could be a very bad idea.

All of the conflicts in this series are organic to the material. I never felt like Lockhart was forcing her drama along or stretching it past where she needed to. Ruby spends most of the series trying to walk the fine line of being a good friend and getting what she really wants–A Real Live Boyfriend.

Onto Ruby Oliver, the character: Ruby is a teenage girl on scholarship, a movie-lover who wears fishnets, a coffee drinker who works at a zoo, a chronic list-maker who has boy drama coming out of her pores. Roo is the daughter of a blogging gardener and a food-crazed actress who live on a house boat. She has strange friends and a candor that I almost envy. If Ruby Oliver, or Roo, were a real person, we would be friends.

And maybe that is Emily Jenkins’ greatest achievement as a writer. Even when I get frustrated with her characters, with their decisions and actions, I never stop feeling for them or wanting to know more about them. I want to be their friend.

And, hey, I probably wouldn’t mind being Emily Jenkins’ friend either.

If you want more Roo, read the story about the bake sale. Or, if you’re looking to read more E. Lockhart, try the always-recommended Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.