Cover songs

Has anyone come to the point of being sick of listening to the radio because of their excessive replay of the same songs in 1 day? Well, I have! From Lady Gaga's Just Dace to Kesha's Tik Tok, I really couldnt take it anymore so I stopped listening to the radio altogether since last year...I think...God knows when I stopped, I just remember it being a long time ago. It’s only on occasions when the ol’ pendrive is missing from the modulator or when my friends are sick of hearing my songs that I turn to a radio station. And more often than not, I would go ‘ugh’ when I hear the first tune which is as predicted, overplayed.

I could go on and on about how I dislike the music of today and prefer songs from the good old days but I think I’ll leave that to another post. :P I have a friend who is taking a radio DJ subject as his co-curriculum subject. He told me one of their assignments was to host a show for 20 minutes. How cool is that? Your assignment is to host a show that everyone (or perhaps a number of people on campus) will be listening to! And the best thing is I think, you get to play your own songs! Now that is what I call actual DJ-ing, getting to play music of your choice! (I believe those commercial radio stations have a strict list of songs that each DJ is forced to play whenever they are on air for the day)

Then it got me thinking, if I were to host that show, what songs would I choose to play? Well, I thought of covers! I always liked musicians cover songs of different genre. It’s always cool to see how they are going to add their own flare to the song and twist it into their own genre of music! Since I am an avid Youtube user, I shall share some of the covers I think are nice to you all! However I suck at technology and I don’t know how to post multiple videos in 1 post, so I’ll just have to put those different links in an unattractive list of URLs :/ Unappealing as the blue lines are, do check those videos out!!

Muse- Feeling good (Nina Simone cover)

This is by far my most favourite cover of Feeling Good, of course as a Muser, I’m biased toward them but it really is a rocking cover. The original song itself has extravagant sounds of brass whenever the words ‘feeling good’ are sung. This cover has not lost that extravagance by replacing the brass with heavy bass and loud drums. There is also the use of a megaphone thrown into the cover too! I prefer the live version of this cover because the singer adds in some ‘oohs’ at the end of the song which adds to the ‘sexiness’ of the song.

Editors- Feel good inc (Gorillaz cover)

Editors has a front man with a very deep voice and I mean that literally and metaphorically! Tom Smith, the front man likes to add a dark and mellow element to his songs and the song ‘Feel good inc’ really is about longing for freedom (watch the meaning of the original music video to understand). The bands interpretation of the song really makes the meaning of the song more obvious to us and the mix of a few lines from their song ‘Munich’ blends perfectly together with the cover.

Corrine Bailey Rae- Munich (Editors cover)

Now a cover of the previous band, Editors by soul and jazz singer, Corrine Bailey Rae! The original song itself gives me a fast and frantic feeling (you’ll know when you listen to the opening riff) but Corrine manages to turn this song into a slow and relaxing number. Her soft vocals echoing the line ‘People are fragile things you should know by now’ (chorus) sounds like a warm advice by a mother rather than a cautionary warning from the original version. I also like the bluesy bass riff that you can hear faintly in the song.

Franz Ferdinand- Womanizer (Britney Spears cover)

This is quite a good cover because Franz Ferdinand manages to keep their own signature fun and eccentric style to the cover. If people didn’t know the original song, they would think that this is a song written by the band themselves!

Glee- Blame it on the alcohol (Jamie Foxx cover)

OK, who can exclude Glee from a list of cover songs? They practically made an entire TV series based on cover songs! Out of all the songs I heard from them (not being a Gleek, I only heard a tiny amount of their songs anyway), I like this song the most.

Sarah Bareilles- Single Ladies (Beyonce cover)

Sarah Bareilles manages to turn the electronic pop song into a cheeky doo-wop song. It’s very clever of her because a doo-wop style would retain the essence of the song while giving it a totally different spin.

Neon trees- Baby (Justin Bieber cover)

Yes I know, I also feel weird typing JB’s name in a blog post. I believe the kid has been giving inappropriate songs to sing for his age (well, that’s not the case anymore since he is much older now, but come on back when he sounded like a little kid, he is singing losing the love of his life?) Anyway, Neon trees brilliantly mixed this song with ‘Stand by me’ because of the similarities in the bass beat. I also like the drummer’s backing vocals accompanying the raw and emotional vocals of the lead singer.

Biffy Clyro- Love Sex Magic (Ciara ft. Justin Timberlake cover)

I like the fact that Biffy Clyro made a cover of this song using acoustic instruments and the song still sounds essentially like the original!

Languages, Bahasa-bahasa, 语言

Ola! It’s a new semester and I am taking Spanish class as my co-curriculum subject. Yes, before this I had taken French for beginners BUT as my Spanish lecturer always puts, “our lovely university” doesn’t allow us to take the same language for the 2^nd time. Seriously, 1 semester (around 3 months) is not enough to learn a language, not to the extent of speaking it fluently! Since the last time I took French, which was about 2 semesters ago, I can only roughly read those basic basic basic sentences. I am yet to speak it correctly, let alone fluently. When I heard that I could take language for my co-co subject, I was delighted to the hope that I can further my studies in Français but unfortunately, there are no advance classes. They are gonna teach the same thing again. Aww shucks! So, I was left to take Spanish solo while my other friends are either taking Korean or not taking anything at all.

It was quite adventurous of me to go to a class alone. But then again, I do a lot of things alone, so I should get used to it. It kinda sucks to sit by myself and seeing that I was the only local in the class. I take it that Spanish is not a popular choice among people eh? Good thing the lecturer was funny but it was akward to laugh by myself too O_O” In my first class, there were only 4 students, luckily in the following week, the numbers increased to 8. Yes, and in the official name list, there were only 5 names. Gosh…. Oh well, there is always something good about small classes, we can learn things more quickly and better coz the lecturer can focus on us individually, since it’s a small group.

So today was my first class, we were learning El Alfabeto Español. My goodness, there are so many conditions! If a certain letter was with a different vowel, it would be pronounced different. Each alphabet has a way to spell them, like ‘v’ is uve, ‘j’ is jota, ‘h’ is ‘hache’. Some alphabets are pronounced in a completely different way as we know in English, like ‘y’ would sound like ‘j’ in English while the ‘h’ is always silent. Fuh! @@

It may be a ‘mouthful’ but I’ll try my best to learn this language. In my first week, the lecturer asked us why we wanted to learn Spanish. Other than the reason that I have no choice coz I wanted to take French initially, I quite like learning languages. I think it’s cool to be able to speak more than 1 language. A long time ago, when I first entered university and made friends with international students; they always praised us locals for knowing more than 1 language. I took tremendous pride in that fact. As a Malaysian, I’m glad that we learn at least 2 languages and can speak them fluently. I can speak English, Bahasa and Mandarin. That may not sound like something impressive to the average Malaysian, but it is to other people! X)

We can proudly add the languages we speak into our Facebook profile. My friend told me that ‘languages I know’ means the languages we KNOW, it didn’t specify our fluency in the language so add away with whatever language you know, even if your knowledge of it is minimal (like if you're only a good listener or you know a few phrases). If that’s the case, I know British English, Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, a bowlful of Teow Cheow mixed with Hokkien, a teaspoon of Arabic, a menu of Japanese, a tablespoon of French and soon hopefully, a handful of Spanish. Translator for hire with minimum wage, anyone? ;)