Music In America

For this week's listening blog, I have chosen to listen to the song "Hotel California" by The Eagles. This song is not new to me because my entire family loves this band. They recently just planned to go see them play live at the Hollywood Bowl in 2020. This song for someone first listening to it, is a really good listen. I think that the melody of this song is really peaceful and deep but at the same time has a mellow and gentle feel to it. Don Henley the lead singer of the band said " I guess you could say it's a  song  about loss of innocence. ... our  interpretation  of the high life in Los Angeles, and later said: It's basically a  song  about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about". This makes sense when you listen to the lyrics of this song. It starts out with an opening of a dark desert highway, then goes to a mission where a woman says that this place could be heaven or this ...

For this week's listening blog, I chose to write about the song "Respect" performed by Aretha Franklin. For starters, I thought it was really interesting how the song was originally written by Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin's friend. I found it really cool that she changes some of the lyrics to fit for a woman singing the song. I feel the lyrics have a deeper meaning than just respect. The action of respecting someone is more than just words. During that time, women's rights was a topic of discussion and I think this song was in a way, a show of power for women. This song has been in countless movies and the beat and tune of the song is great. The way Aretha Franklin is able to sing and change her pitch and tone in the song really shows how talented of a musician she truly is. Even years after her "prime", she can still stand on a stage and rock the crowd. The end of the song when she repeats "sock it to me", I think she is trying to say that sh...

Alright alright alright, for this wonderful week of listening blogs, I chose to listen to "Fun Fun Fun" by The Beach Boys. I would listen to this song along with the rest of the beach boys hits from a very young age. I was born and raised in Huntington Beach, California and the beach boys were just a part of living there and their music resonated with most of the residence in the community. When it comes to the song, I enjoy the different ranges of notes the group hits. From high, to a seemingly regular tone, their range is really something. The intro to the song makes me feel like im back in the car with my sisters and mom taking us to the beach in the summer. When i was younger i never knew that a T-bird was a car, i really thought it was a bird. So i was super sad that this girl got her bird taken away. Turns out, as i discovered later in my life, she had fun fun fun until her dad took the car away. sounds about right. I think back in those times having a car and driving a...

For this week's listening blog I chose to listen to "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens. I really love this song and the beat and sounds it has. Like many great musicians, Ritchie Valens died way too young and before the general public got to hear his full potential. The upbeat sound and tune of this song is what I think is a driving force for this song. It has been used in a numerous amounts of movies, television shows, and has a great number of covers as well. This song reminds me of summer and having a good time and being carefree. I think the talent that Ritchie Valens had was something that was one of a kind. Along with Buddy Holly, we were unable to experience the full spectrum of Ritchie Valens' music. Some people are put on this Earth for a short time and in that short time will achieve more notoriety than some that will be on this Earth for many years. In the case of Ritchie Valens and the song "La Bamba", I think that was the case. This ...

For this week five listening blog, I chose to listen to "Mambo Italiano" by Rosemary Clooney. When I first started listening to this song, I did not think it would turn into the classic "Mambo Italiano". The beginning seems to start out slow and then after a few lines switches up and speeds it up. This song has been redone and remade many times but the original was not what I was expecting at all. The song mentioning going back to Napoli because the girl missed the sea. I listened to the song multiple times and I still don't really know what she is saying throughout the entire song but I feel like she is singing about being Italian, the food, but also dancing. So all in all it is about Italian Pride in my opinion. When she is singing she says something about no more mozzarella and to try an enchilada or something of that nature so that is what makes me think it is more about the Italian Culture and being Italian. The translation of Mambo Italiano is just Italian...

For week 4 listening blog I chose to listen to "In the Mood" by Glenn Miller. I really enjoyed this song. The song felt very happy and warm. I can see why they chose to name it, "in the mood". I liked the constant melody but then toward the end of the song he changes it up a little bit. He adds more belting of the instruments but also goes from slower to faster as well. The entire song feels like it was made to be a happy song that everyone can jam out and dance to. The time frame I get from listening to this was definitely back in the 60s. I can imagine this being played by a band at a horse race or at a summer party in Georgia. I tend to try and get submerged by the music and let it take me back to the time where it was created. I think to fully understand a song, or any music for that matter, you have to let yourself get lost in the time it was created. For more popular music in today's culture I think that is harder to do because there isnt as much passion a...