Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven

Today i listened to Moonlight sonata composed by Beethoven. I happened to listen to it through a suggestion by a friend. As i was listening to it, i developed a feeling it was more of a ‘misery-in-life’ themed music rather than romantic which can be misunderstood by its title. Also, one of the things that suprised me, as i read more about it, was that Beethoven was deaf when he composed it,infact he was for more of his work. It took me by surprise and i started to wonder how it can even be possible,but as i read more about it,i came to know it,Beethoven was pretty sure of the patterns before he composes his music.He also used dissonance(it can mean something different to you, art is subjective) as a powerful tool in this piano sonata. He also didn’t follow the basic premise of a sonata and change the speed of three movements it consists of. I have listened to it more than any other musical art piece thats for sure and i still cannot comprehend its beauty as a music appreciator(not a nerd).

Happy Birthday to AS IT IS’ ‘The Great Depression’!

This morning I woke up to so many tweets celebrating this magnificent record and talking about the ways it has impacted people’s lives in so many different ways. Not gonna lie, got me a bit teary-eyed. Definitely inspired me to wanna express my appreciation.

It has been exactly one year since the third studio album by British pop-punk band AS IT IS was released, and I’m ashamed to admit it took me about that long to be able to recognize how incredible it is, but hey, better late than never! now I love everything about it. 

As with all great concept albums, ‘The Great Depression’ comes with an intricate narrative to accompany the music. Performed from the perspective of ‘The Poet’, the record tells the story of their experiences with mental health issues, as well as analyzing society, modern-day problems, and comprehending the way in which they all influence each other. 

I thank AS IT IS for forcing me to pay more attention to the lyrics, something I’m admittedly not that used to, but that I will definitely continue to do because as you’ve seen, powerful stuff can be found in them. 

Lastly, I just wanna say how grateful I am for bands like these one, for the amazing music they create, for the inspiration, for the community, for bringing people together.

Thank you, AS IT IS, and happy birthday to ‘The Great Depression’♥

PS: If you’ve never listened to it before, it’s time to start ;)

:-)

Hey there! 

I recently had this random idea of starting a blog, inspired mainly by my absolute love of music.

I’m the kind of person that feels the need to listen to every single song ever released – as impossible as it may seem – and I’m always on the lookout for new music. Also, whenever I discover a song/album/artist/band I think it’s exceptionally great and that in my opinion deserves way more recognition, I make it my business to encourage every person I know to give them a listen.

So, whether you feel the same way as I do about music or enjoy exploring new genres, this is the place for you! Welcome!

Let’s get started. 

First thing I’d like to recommend to y’all is this iconic band I’m sure everyone’s heard about: Green Day. If you ever thought about getting into them, but didn’t know where to begin, here I have for you a list of their top 10 best songs.

Enjoy!

10.-Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Number 10 on this list has got to be Boulevard of Broken Dreams, the second single from the American Idiot album. Its lyrics are from the perspective of someonefeeling lonely/depressed who’s trying to take powerfrom that fact, which is of course an issue a lot of people can relate to. This combined with the powerful musical elements are what has made it so popular and one of Green Day’s signature songs.

9.- 21 Guns

Another of Green Day’s most popular songs, it’s the second single from the 21^st Century Breakdown album and it addresses the topic of patriotism. Musically it isn’t as “punk rock” as you’d expect, nonetheless I’m sure it will captivate your ear instantly with the sound of Billie’s acoustic guitar and his soft singing. In a nutshell, I’d say it’s a cell phones-in-the-air anthem worth praising.  

8.- Brain Stew

Brain Stew has got to be for sure their most underrated track ever, which is such a shame! Alongside the song Jaded it constitutes the third single from the album Insomniac. The song is about Billie dealing with insomnia. The only reason it isn’t higher on the list is it’s a teensy-tiny bit monotone, but when you push past it… brilliant, just brilliant.

7.- Bang Bang

Bang Bang was released as the lead single from their twelfth studio album, Revolution Radio. Regarded as combining elements of the band’s early punk rock days with themes from their politically motivated later albums, the song was inspired by the events of mass shootings in the United States and is written from the viewpoint of a mass shooter. Apart of the powerful message, the instrumental part is just, everything. Strongly recommend the live version, which I believe to be the best in most cases.

6.- Letterbomb

It’s hard to explain the greatness of this song, part of the American Idiot album. All that comes to mind is how freaking amazing is when played live, so go watch the video and you’ll see what I mean ;-)

5.- Forever Now

Eleventh song of Green Day’s newest album, Revolution Radio, for some the album’s most ambitious track, for me the most underrated, it clocks in at nearly seven minutes. Beginning with the lyric “My name is Billie and I’m freaking out” that Billie himself has called “the most honest line I’ve ever written”, it ends with the refrain "I ain’t gonna stand in line no more”, which I just love! It’s like, I’m not going to accept the status quo or I’m not going to be manipulated anymore. Overall, highly recommended.

4.- Longview

Longview is the debut single on the band’s third album, Dookie, and it mainly describes intense boredom. Lyrically, the song is about a day spent sitting around the house, doing absolutely nothing of importance, masturbating, and smoking marijuana until the days are no longer fun. Fun fact is that the famous bass line intro to this song was written one night while Mike was high on LSD. Needless to say, it’s brilliant! I truly believe the instrumental part is what really makes the difference with this song.

3.- Hitchin’ A Ride

Hitchin’ a Ride is Nimrod’s first single and it’s about the alcoholism suffered by Billie Joe prior to the album. It’s kinda sad for this masterpiece to be forced to settle for third place on this list, cause it’s just magnificent. Think I’m exaggerating? Please have a listen before judging.

2.- Holiday

In second place is no other than the iconic “anthem”, Holiday, one of the two explicitly political songs on the American Idiot album. The song takes aim at American conservatism and has been characterized as an outspoken “fuck you” to then-President George W. Bush. Who can’t get on board with that message, am I right?

1.- Jesus Of Suburbia

I know there’s a lot of people out there that are bothered when the most popular and “mainstream” song by a band is excessively praised, but you need to let me have this. Jesus Of SuburbiaisGreen Day’s best song, in every way possible. How often do you get a single being over 9 minutes long and as successful as this one? That fact’s gotta tell you something! It’s difficult to pinpoint what makes this track so appealing but if I had to guess, I’d say the story it tells. I ain’t saying more cause I think the song speaks for itself. So you need to listen and judge for yourself.

:-)

Welcome back to the Girls Against Book Club! For the month of October, we’ve been reading ‘The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic’ by Jessica Hopper, a title that, on the first page, she states is not entirelyaccurate. The title of this collection of essays is what drew to me to it though. The lack of music criticism written by women perhaps reflects the disproportionately lacking amount of women in the music industry generally, or perhaps the amount of women who are given opportunities rather.

Sexual assault at gigs, from my experience, affects women at a much larger rate than it does men and perhaps the domination of men in the music industry is the reason why the issue was largely ignored before campaigns like Girls Against. I chose to read this book as part of our book club in order to learn more about the experiences of a woman in a male-dominated industry and to amplify the voice of a talented female music critic.

 I thought parts of this book were great but others, I didn’t enjoy so much. This is in no way a criticism of Hopper’s writing style, which is engaging, humorous and honest; it’s purely because some of the artists she writes about I’ve never heard of and some of the essays were originally written when I was 6 years old, making it difficult to understand some her points of reference. Obviously, this book is not handmade for each and every reader, ready to go with artists they like and cultural references they can understand and so I really don’t feel justified in criticizing the text for this reason. But personally for me it made it a little bit less of an enjoyable read and someone who is perhaps a little older than me with a better general knowledge of music would have enjoyed it much more I’m sure. I do think the text would have benefitted from a structural change in terms of grouping the essays by date rather than category as the essays at times were loosely grouped by category anyway and it was a little disorienting reading essays one after another that jumped from 2003 to 2013 to 2007 etc.

Anyway, with my little moan out of the way, I’ll move on to some of the essays I enjoyed.  The first essay I liked is titled ‘Emo: Where The Girls Aren’t’. It explores the distorted portrayal of woman in emo music, in which Hopper states woman are ‘denied the dignity of humanization through both the language and narratives, we are omnipresent yet chimerical, only of consequence in romantic settings.’ I don’t listen to much emo music and so can’t comment on whether this has changed since when the essay was first published in 2003 but this representation of women is present in many music genres that I do listen to and I think Hopper explains it nicely here. A line from this essay that really resonated with me is ‘men writing songs about women is practically the definition of rock ‘n’ roll’ as it seemed to explain to me why I unconsciously shifted to listening to so many more female fronted bands. A lot of the male-fronted bands I used to listen to, and admittedly still listen to now at times, do often just write songs about romanticized versions of women and I’m as bored of this in 2017 as Hopper was when writing this essay in 2003.

Another essay that I enjoyed, one of Hopper’s artist-specific essays, was ‘Deconstructing Lana Del Rey’. Lana Del Rey has been one of my favourite artists since ‘Born to Die’ and Hopper’s commentary on, what she describes as, the ‘Authenticity Debate’ surrounding Lana was really interesting to me. Hopper indirectly mocks those who ‘don’t understand’ Lana Del Rey and are determined to get to the bottom of ‘what she is’ and outlines the debate surrounding this. In response to this she simply states, ‘Being sexy and serious about your art needn’t be mutually exclusive, even when your art involves being a pop package.’ A simple statement like this portrays how unfounded the questions surrounding Del Rey’s image are and for me, this ‘debate’ just goes to show that society is still a little bit afraid of women who do not perfectly fit into it’s mould of what a woman is and should be.

Hopper’s essay on Courtney Love and Hole was definitely one of my favourites to read. ‘Live Through This’ is such a great album (that you should go and listen to right now if you haven’t already) and her conversation with the band is really interesting. The essay is titled ‘You Will Ache Like I Ache: The Oral History of Hole’s Live Through This’ and Hopper describes ‘Love’s surety of her band’s rightful place in the hierachy’ as a sort of rite of passage for ‘every girl with a guitar’, describing the album as ‘the portrait of a woman claiming her power’. Listening to this album feels incredibly empowering and I couldn’t have summarized it better than Hopper does here. There were so many lines like this one in the collection where Hopper put my long and confused thoughts into a well-written and simple line and I always think that having the ability to do this makes someone a really great writer.

It is clear in all of these essays how truly passionate Hopper is about music and this along with her vast and extensive knowledge of the music industry makes her the ideal music critic. She put together this collection of criticism to, in her own words, ‘help mark the path’ of music criticism written by woman, dedicating the book to ‘those that came before, those that should have been first, and all the ones that will come after.’ This set of essays was my first real look into music criticism written by anyone of any gender and I can vouch for the fact that it sets an amazing example not only for women but for everyone and I sincerely hope that more women are given the opportunities to become music critics. I only wish that my knowledge of music was more extensive generally so I could fully appreciate every essay in this collection and essays to come- I will work on that!

For the penultimate book of 2017, we will be reading Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poetry ‘Feminine Gospels’. I really wanted to incorporate some poetry into the book club before the year was over and who better to begin with than the first female and LGBT British Poet Laureate? She’s even Scottish which is where our campaign’s roots lie with two of the three current founders being Scots too! In this poetry collection Duffy focuses on the theme of female identity and explores it historically, archetypically and in various other ways.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in then please join us in reading it during November! If you have already read ‘Feminine Gospels’ or are planning to then be sure to join our GoodReads group here so you can keep up to date with the book club and contribute your views on the text. Alternatively, if you’d rather contribute your views anonymously or privately you can email us at [email protected] with your thoughts. The next book club post will go up on Sunday 3^rd December so be sure to tell us what you think of the text by then for a chance to have your views included in the post.

Written by Alice Porter (@aliceporterx on Twitter).