Ok. This morning I decided to randomly sync some of my personal music to my Spotify. The first classic that popped up was from Adina Howard! Now, I’m not a huge Adina Howard fan because she was way to explicit for my taste. However, I do acknowledge the fact that she is a very talented singer. But sometimes I used to think she didn’t think so. A lot of artist use explicitness or profanity when their producers think it’s the only way their going to sell records. Then again, I also used to think both her music and persona lowered the standards for younger females (but I digress). Regardless of how I felt about Adina then, I couldn’t deny the awesome grooves of her song “Freak Like Me,” released in 1995, recorded for Elektra Records. Funny thing about this song is that, everything about it was so perfect (melody and composition), I didn’t even realize how explicit it was until I started listening to the words 😀 So many people had a hand on writing this song, and that includes (you’d be surprised to know) the legendary William Bootsy Collins. With so many people collaborating to write this one song for Adina, who would even believed it would hit #2 on the charts!! Well desired though. Very nicely put together! Adina has not had another hit since then. Well, after about 12 years, she has a new album out now called “Resurrection,” looking like a big o’l drag queen if you ask me. Let’s see how it does, but personally I’m not impressed.
Now, judging from the kinds of music I’ve posted in the past, many of my readers may be quite surprised to know that I love “Blinded By The Light,” recorded by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1976. I’m not sure what was it about this rock song I loved so much. Maybe it was the mixture of rock & space age sound effects? Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether or not I was listening to actual music, or listening to an actual alien invasion! 😀 This was their only major hit throughout their career. “Blinded By The Light” hit #1 on the Top 100 Charts in 1977, and stayed at #1 for a week. People still love their music tho. On Spotify, this song reached 20.5M plays, 2.2M Shazams, and about 16M additional plays throughout YouTube. By the way, did you know that “Blinded By The Light” was actually a Bruce Springsteen song, released in 1973 (I believe)? Wow, they almost sound like two completely different songs.
Do you guys remember Jonathan Butler? Wow! This was one good-looking bro back in the day. Mr. Butler is a type of talented artist I think not to many people appreciate. He made some really good music, however, his music was not chart topping unfortunately. For some reason, I can’t retrieve all the stats for Jonathan on the billboard, but judging from the very low Spotify streams overall, I can make a safe assumption he did not rank high on the Billboard charts. But, But this doesn’t mean he wasn’t talented. One of the songs I remembered very well from him, is a song called “Lies,” released in 1987. This song only peaked at the 27th position on the Hot 100 Charts, however, I remember seeing the music video for this song all the time! It’s a great jazzy pop tune! It will at least get your head bopping. Another nice one was “More Than Friends,” released a year later in 1988 from his album called “More Than Friends.” I think you’ll really like both these songs. Check it out.
I wanted to quickly share with you an artist I’ve enjoyed a lot. His name is Jonny P. He released a song called “Shine On,” and I love it sooooo much. The feel of this particular song is somewhat along the musical styles of Ronald Isley & Al Green put together. His music is so unique that I can’t even really fit him in any category. All I know his music smooth and pleasant to the ear. As I seriously dig in to finding more diverse music (which is not easy believe it or not, which is why blogs are still necessary), I am stunned to find more and more younger artist that choose to produce new music with a classic flair. Not only have they taken their new music old school, there are lots of fans to go along with them. This has really restored my faith that their are new artists that value quality, and not just dump a bunch of manure on the internet (and expect to get rich). Check Jonny out on Spotify, I’ve already saved several of his albums. Lots of real talent out here guys.
It’s such a shame that Robbie Dupree became a one hit wonder. Robbie made it big with his smash hit called “Steal Away,” released in 1980. This was my favorite song, I used to play it all the time. The song has such a catchy tune, and he used an instrument that sounded like it came from India (I don’t know what it’s called), made the song even more interesting and unusual. The song hit #6 on the Hot 100 Charts; and that was pretty much it! Actually, on the same record, he had a song called Hot Rod Hearts, but it only reached #15. Now, 15 wasn’t a bad position at all, but I felt that this song was quite boring unfortunately. You know what? Depree released a song called “Brooklyn Girls” in 1981, It reached #54, yet I felt the song sounded waaaaaay better than “Hot Rod Hearts.” I guess there just wasn’t a market for Dupree’s kind of music. Dupree recorded many albums since then, but no more hits. Mr. Dupree is about 71 now, and still performs to my understanding.
In 2018, are you still downloading mp3s? If not, do you miss them? I was reading a number of different blogs on the subject; and turns out there are just as many different opinions about mp3s. Some bloggers talked about the beauty of gaining access to obscure music not easily found in stores; not sure if that’s still true because the best way back then was via Kazaa & Imesh. Now that both of those are basically defunct; I’m almost positive that the way people get their MP3s now are by way of YouTube. As I’ve gotten older, I just don’t see the point of going through the trouble of finding and downloading mp3s anymore, now that streaming is here. There is a point (speaking from my experience) where large amounts of mp3s becomes too much to organize/manage. No matter how much you try, you can’t really truly organize them; unless you obsess over them to the point you can’t do anything else with your life. Which is also one of the many reasons I’ve come to the conclusion that downloading mp3s now are just too primitive in the current age of streaming. I liken this to people who have emotional attachments to physical albums; once you come from a certain era, it’s really hard for most people to change towards something better. We all fall victim to it (whatever that thing is).
I think the only sites that supports mp3s now (legally) are independent artist sites, such as Jamendo and the like. What I find even more stunning, is that many artists who want more fans, still don’t use music discovery platforms such as Spotify. Let me tell you, the vast majority don’t even know what a Jamendo is. Some bloggers I’ve read suggests that mp3s are dying. I’m not sure if I agree with that either; maybe if we look at it in a relative sense (in comparison to streaming)?. When we look at legal sites such as Amazon and GooglePlay, there needs to be a site that has music not available on your chosen service in mp3 form. On the other hand, I’ve also seen sites that automatically and illegally RIP YouTube music into mp3 formats. Now, taken in account that storage has gotten larger and cheaper, there still comes to a point when downloading huge amounts of mp3 files (also large sized files cause most of us care about quality), can and often does effect you’re mobile’s performance. Hardware do get slower as space diminishes. Again, to solely use mp3s today just doesn’t seem practical to me anymore (unless there’s no other way of getting it), and it has become a habit that is impossible to break, especially now that music is essentially free now via streaming.
Oh, my goodness! Have you guys heard of Marc Martel? Holy sh*t! He did cover of Queen’s legendary classic Bohemian Rhapsody very recently. I never even heard of this guy until I found him by accident yesterday. I saw so many people posting photos of the late Freddie Mercury all over twitter, and I said to myself WTF? It must be his birthday or something. Come to find out, they have a new movie out called “Bohemian Rhapsody,” starring Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. You remember Rami? The one from that TV show Mr. Robot? Ok. Let me tell you guys something….. To be fair, I have not seen the movie yet…. But…… Girrrrrrrrlllllllllllllsssssss After I heard Marc Martel sing his version of Bohemian Rhapsody, I said to myself HE should have been casted to play Freddie Mercury instead. However, at the same time, I guess it doesn’t matter, because with Marc’s new cover, it’s perfect timing. When interested fans search for either Bohemian Rhapsody or Queen, Marc will probably show up in the results somewhere! Guys, the song sent chills through my spine! It was like Freddie Mercury rose from the dead…. I’m telling you…. Very rare have I ever heard a song where it laterally left me speechless. I’m sure with a good makeup artist, they could have made Marc in to Mercury. I think that would have frightened a lot of people, cause damn if it didn’t freak me out. I’m hearing mixed messages about the movie documentary. I think I’ll wait a bit before I see it (depending on what more people say). Or maybe I’ll wait for Netflix. OMG!!!!
Here is an amazing candid photo of the legendary Fats Domino (1928-2017). He was best known for his (what I call) piano pop. His music was categorized as rock ‘n’ roll, but if you really listen to his music it’s a mixture of pop, jazz and blues. I guess in those days, anybody who has their fingers moving as fast as his across the piano, it was immediately stamped rock, regardless! 😀 Now, I always remembered him primarily as a singer & piano player; but he also played sax and electric guitar. Fats had about 34-36 records that hit the top 40s. It is interesting that I can’t find any #1 hits from Fats, however, he has sold millions of records. The highest ranking song was at #6 called “Whole Lotta Loving.” Keep in mind this was based on the Top 100 category; he may have been higher in Billboard’s rock category.