The past few weeks I’ve been buying new album releases like a madman. Artists (and studios) have dropped records left and right, presumably with the holiday season in mind.
I’ve looked at the scheduled releases for the rest of the year, though, and it appears that I’m done for 2013. So it’s time for me to take stock of the albums I’ve picked up this year.
I recently bought Eminem’s new album and had to decide between the standard version and a “deluxe” version that featured four more songs for about four more dollars.
I thought back to all of the times I’ve purchased an album with bonus tracks, and how little I’ve actually listened to any of those tracks, and went with the standard.
My sister has long named Lyle Lovett as her desert island artist (with the rather fanciful prerequisite that all of his future material would be delivered to the island as well).
Given Lovett’s spotty output over the last decade, that “future material” provision might not count for much anymore, but that doesn’t diminish the extraordinary quality of his first several albums.
Scott Bradlee’s instrument of choice is the piano, and he has a particular specialty in the ragtime style. He even posts YouTube tutorials on how to play ragtime piano riffs.
This clip, a “vintage” version of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe,’ shows off those piano chops particularly well.
Everybody and their sister has recorded a cover of ‘Blurred Lines’ this year. I even dedicated a week of posts this summer to some of the more amusing ones. So I guess it was inevitable that Postmodern Jukebox would take a stab at it.
They opted for a bluegrass/country-and-western approach which serves the song pretty well. Of course I’m a pushover for this sort of instrumentation in any song.
