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1.
'You Can Call Me Al'
Paul Simon
The first single off his Graceland album, 'You Can Call Me Al' can
easily be everyman's anthem. The album won a Grammy for Best Album
of the Year in 1988.
Paul Simon speaks of the first two verses as a natural flow of thought:
"A man walks down the street/ He says why am I soft in the
middle now? / Why am I soft in the middle/ the rest of my life is
so hard?"
The words just play on each other, drawing connections, as they
might unconsciously in a random bout of solitary thinking. Musically,
Simon experimented with South African sounds in the song, as he
recorded it three months after returning from South Africa. The
African rhythms were provided by the group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
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2. 'A Long December'
Counting Crows
Adam Duritz wrote this song after his friend Jennifer got ran over
by a car in the December of 1995. He would spend a lot of time at
the hospital and spend the rest at the studio where the Counting
Crows were recording their second album, Recovering The Satellites.
The song is a mellow one, and coupled with Duritz's slow, deep vocals,
makes for a song one can kick back to. The lyrics might bring hope
to those listen to it, at the end of a particularly disappointing
year.
"A long December' and there's reason to believe/ Maybe this
year will be better than the last/ I can't remember all the times
I tried to tell myself/ To hold on to these moments as they pass".
In these testing times, it is a perfect song.
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3.
'Fareb'
Rushk
Apart from the layer upon layer of most Rushk songs, what
strikes one most about them is the lyrics that might hint
at one thing, but actually mean something completely else.
The other impressive thing is the perfect Urdu diction of
the vocalist.
'Fareb' is off Sawal, Rushk's first (and only) album. It begins
with dialogues between what can only be the hero and heroin
of a 1960s Pakistani flick. Electronic sounds soon enter the
equation, instruments and vocals follow.
"Haqeeqat ka qaidi na ban/ Fareb rihai/ Mita de, bhula
de, sadaqat".
'Fareb' is either a song about being super pragmatic and accepting
the bitter truths of life, or one about being defeated and
escaping them altogether. In either case, it makes for a great
listen.
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4.
'I'm Not In Love'
10cc
Recorded in 1975, the song features a large wordless choir,
which actually was the group members' voices. Built up from
chord loops and multi-tracks, the song took about 256 vocal
dubs to construct the sound behind Eric Stewart's vocals.
The idea behind the song came from Stewart realizing that if
he told his wife he loved her over and over, it would lose it's
meaning. On the other hand, the lyrics sound like a person in
denial. I'm not in love/ So don't forget it/ its just a silly
phase I'm going through/ And just because I call you up, don't
get me wrong, don't think you've got it made."
The song because of its complex harmonies has often been described
as ahead of its time. It was recorded by The Pretenders for
the film Indecent Proposal and also featured on the soundtrack
of The Virgin Suicides.
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5.
'1234'
Leslie Feist
'1234' by Canada's Leslie Feist is a plucky, piano-driven sing-along
and the stuff hits are made of. Enigmatic lyrics and complex
emotions come through the transparency of the arrangements,
and the song is filled not only with immediate feelings but
also with memories and what-ifs, hints and conundrums.
The song comes from a delicate masterpiece of an album, The
Reminder. The word delicate makes one think of chamber pop,
smoky ballads and bedroom confessionals. Those are all there,
but so are rootsy toe-tappers, bouncy exercises in eccentric
pop and an iPod jingle like '1234'. The glut of genres never
eclipses Feist's honeysuckle sigh, which glides above every
gentle note.
Appealing melodies, thoughts of love and a gracious voice, The
Reminder is a pop album, but never a shallow one. Leslie Feist
has also scored big with the Grammy Awards voters, grabbing
four nominations.
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