Sayaka Alessandra is a beauty with a deep, rich voice and a name so pretty it should be the inspiration for a follow-up to Ben Folds’ ‘Saskia Hamilton.’
According to her personal website, “Since being discovered on YouTube Sayaka has gone on to sing in Café’s, Lounges and outdoor venues. In the short time she’s been singing and learning guitar her talents have excelled. At the present rate of improvement her fans predict she’s on the way to becoming an international star.”
Theme weeks are a song-of-the-day blogger’s best friend. They allow you to come up with material in batches rather than piecing thoughts together one post at a time. I can knock out five theme posts in the time that it takes me to select and write a couple of standalones.
So I’m always on the lookout for a new theme week.
Recently I was thinking about how often I hear that somebody likes Bob Dylan’s songs but hates his voice so I decided to troll YouTube for Dylan covers. Specifically, Bob Dylan songs covered by cute girls. Now that sounds like a theme week.
Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ was excoriated as everything wrong with the modern music industry — the epitome of packaged product and the removal of talent from the commercial equation.
Indeed, Black is the logical extension of Britney Spears. Spears proved that you didn’t need vocal talent to become a superstar… just a sexy image and a group of top hit-makers and producers behind you.
The Ark Music Factory removed the sex appeal and the proven behind-the-scenes talent from the equation and still managed to score a big hit, if only an ironic one.
Best Songwriters – #2 – Bob Dylan
Once again, no surprise to see today’s artist on this list — I did, after all, dedicate nearly a year to Bob Dylan Weekends. In fact, I’m guessing most of you assumed Dylan would land at the very top. So I guess that leaves a little suspense leading up to tomorrow.
I’m not going to attempt to sum up Dylan’s greatness in a single blog post. Countless blogs, magazines, books and movies have tackled that task over the 50 years he’s been recording and I don’t know if any of them have quite done the trick.
Put simply, he changed the face of popular music, and did it more than once. Dylan was one of the first singer-songwriters of the modern era and you’d have a hard time finding artists working today who don’t credit him as an inspiration of one sort of another. He brought poetry to rock-and-roll and proved that it could be not just critically but commercially successful.
Meet Me In Montauk 