Underrated / Overhated

What IS music genre? How important is it? Is it even really a thing?

These are all questions I tackle in this video - hopefully you find this video interesting, informative, and maybe even entertaining! I talk about everything from blues, to folk, to rock, to jazz - and artists from Jacob Collier to Chris Thile, to Duke Ellington... and everything in between!

In this episode, I'm joined by Everything Everything's Jonathan Higgs to talk about ugliness in music - how it works, how it doesn't work, and the boundaries between the two! We talk about a range of music, and discuss Everything Everything, their latest album, and their general approach to making music.

Enjoy!

Warren Zevon's Desperados Under the Eaves has one of the finest codas in rock/popular music, and some really interesting/weird/genuinely brilliant lyrics.

This is a video about how the song does what it does, and how it fits into the album on which it appears. Along the way, I talk about Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pink Floyd's the Wall, and a bunch of other stuff.

The song is one of the rare examples of through composition in popular music (or at least the first half is).

Enjoy!

#songwriting #music #warrenzevon

The 12 bar blues is probably the most popular chord progression in 20th century popular music, but most people mainly talk about it exclusively in terms of blues players and guitarists (or pianists or bassists... soloists basically) rather than in terms of songwriting.

This video looks at a load of famous songs that use the 12 bar blues progression, across a range of genres, from the 30s, to the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. I talk about tonnes of stuff, from Chuck Berry, to Queen. And yes, obviously the Beach Boys :D

#12barblues #music #songwriting

A bit of a reaction video today: I got my American friend to listen to four weird British hits from years past, and tell me what she thinks of them.

We cover songs from the 70s, 80s and early 2000s - all of them at least a bit weird, but not TOO weird: I tried to capture the spirit of British weirdness without going for novelty tunes.

There's some psychedelia, some ska, some punk, and baroque pop!

What do you think of the songs we cover? Should I have included anything else?

Everyone who loves the blues, and loves guitar playing knows that Rory was a great guitarist, but much less attention is given to his songwriting, and his lyrics.

This video about how Rory's songwriting works, looking at Tattoo'd Lady, from his 1973 album Tattoo. It's pretty wide ranging, looking at the chord progression, lyrics, context, genre conventions and wider cultural references.

I'm sure any fan of Rory will enjoy this video! Come for the info, stay for the memes :)

Laura Nyro's Stoned Soul Picnic was most famously covered by The 5th Dimension, but her original version remains the best.

A whirlwind of music, great lyrics and awesome vocals, Stoned Soul Picnic was released in 1968 on the album Eli and the 13th Confession.

This video is about how the song works, and the word 'surry', used throughout the track (WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN?!)

Brian Wilson wrote Til I Die for the Beach Boys in 1969, but the song wasn’t released until 1971, on their underrated album Surf’s Up. One of my favourite Beach Boys songs, with possibly their best lyrics, Til I Die has a unique chord progression and is beautifully produced. Some people think that it’s the most depressing song they ever recorded, others think it’s at least a bit uplifting: either way, it’s beautiful!

It was also released as the B-side to the single Long Promised Road, which was one of the Boys’ least commercially successcul singles ever. A shame, becase both songs are fantastic!

In this video I analyse and review Til I Die, looking at the lyrics, the chords and the history behind it, exploring potential links with the Beatles’ ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ and with Irvin Berlin’s ‘How Deep Is the Ocean’. Think of this video as something of an informed reaction to a song I’ve listened to a million times.

Yes’ sixth album, Tales from Topographic Oceans, was released in December 1973, and is infamous in progressive rock circles and beyond. Bloated, longwinded, full of wacky hippy wierdness, trippy and just downright strange, Tales is an 80 minute album comprised of 4, 20ish minute long tracks (one per side).

The Revealing Science of God (Dance of the Dawn)

The Remembering (High the Memory)

The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)

Ritual (Nous Sommes du Soleil)

As you can see (and as you might expect), the song titles are all a bit silly – blame Jon Anderson and Steve Howe! Rick Wakeman famously disliked the finished album, thinking that there was simply too much padding and second rate material...

But I’m here to ask: is it actually a bad album? Is it actually the failure many people say it is? In spite of its reputation today, it was actually a commercial success at the time, and I maintain that there’s lots of good contained within those 80 minutes of music!

Country Joe and the Fish are best known today for The Fish Rag (also known as I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag), which they released as a single in 1967, and famously performed at Woodstock, One of the most enduring songs written in protest of the Vietnam War, this song has been used in films such as More American Graffiti, and TV series like The Wonder Years.

It’s a quite obviously anti-war song, and the band themselves were staunch non-conformists and communists. The band features a range of weird and wild instruments, from the kazoo to the calliope, and is a damning indictment of the American War Machine. In this video I take a look at what makes this song work, analysing the lyrics and the music.

NOTE: I had accidentally uploaded the unedited audio for this episode and as of 08/04/2022 this has been corrected