He’s incredibly good at turning experiences into words. Allentown is still relevant today, the way he wrote it it just describes so many peoples American experience.
But he did that a lot. Where I think he’s best with it is more emotional songs, he really captures whatever emotion he’s getting into words well. Like, Captain Jack does a good job of telling the story of someone in small town America, but I always heard it as a song about depression. All this stuff is happening around you and you’re just kinda there for it, not really feeling much of anything.
Or how he captures that nervous feeling about meeting a girl for the first time in Get it Right the First Time. He is so good at getting emotion into music.
I recently started listening to classical and boy does it require a completely different listening approach! I’m listening almost exclusively to Mahler’s No.5 since my attention fades away after the first movement and I need lots of listening to know what’s actually going on
Mahlers 5th is good, but I think his 4th is better.
But my personal favorite is Beethoven’s 5th. I used to HATE that symphony when I was a kid, my grandmother loved it and it bored me to tears.
Turns out the version she had on CD that she always listened to was the worst recording you can find of it. It was WAY too slow, it made the whole thing drag on. That symphony works best when it’s damn near rushing. When I got back into classical a few months back I found the Berliner Philharmoniker playing it directed by Simon Rattle, and the sprint through that symphony, and it works SO MUCH BETTER. It was very clearly intended to be played fast, so many of the parts feel way more interesting and there’s sections where each part of the orchestra feels like it’s tripping over the others to be heard.
Since you look much more knowledgeable than me, could you help me understand how to navigate the overwhelming amount of different versions for every piece of music? For now I’m completely ignoring who’s playing and conducting and sometimes I timidly try to listen to another version, usually just to come back to the comfort of the first version I listened
Usually I try to listen to a few different versions until I land on one that really clicks with me. It takes a little bit to really understand what that means. To me the orchestra is less important than the director. The music is always the same, but the director decides which parts will pop out the most, how fast the tempo is, and how he wants the orchestra to play parts.
I literally picked it because I thought the album cover was interesting because it had some color. A lot of classical albums are committed to black and white for some reason.
Googling a piece can help, especially if you search for like “beethoven 5th best recordings.” You’ll find a lot of opinions out there, and it can help you get a starting point for a given piece to go from.
If you find yourself wanting to go to a more “comfortable” version, it means something in the recording you’re listening to isn’t clicking with you. That’s OK! Try to identify what it is that makes you not like that recording, and what the one you prefer does differently that makes you prefer it. It helps to write it down; if you make posts here or on Mastodon that may help a lot with articulating what you do or don’t like (and boost engagement).
Seemingly “simple” things like “i think this section is too fast” or “the version I like has the horn section louder here, but this version focussed on the windpipes” really influence how you hear the music and make a big difference, and are completely valid reasons to prefer one recording over another.
My first love is Hip Hop but I love lots of genres Funk, Soul, Jazz, Electronic, House, Techno, Dreampop, Ambient, Balearic, Indie/Alternative - I’m probably missing something 😊. I’ve even setup some communities here on Lemmy for my music genres that I love.
Some of my favourite artists:
Mount Kimbie
The xx
J Dilla
Flying Lotus
Larry Heard/Mr Fingers
The Avalanches
Khruangbin
Beach House
Toro Y Moi
Erykah Badu
Miles Davis
Four Tet
Leon Vynehall
Jonny Nash
EDIT: Adding City Pop genre as well since I saw another user comment that
2nd EDIT: Oh and Reggae, Dub too!
3rd EDIT: Okay I keep adding artists thinking I can’t believe I left such and such off haha I’ll stop now!
Mostly it’s different subgenres of rock and metal (like 70% of all comments here. Seriously, I’ve never met so many ppl that listen to my favorite music in one place xD).
I kinda have a few moods. For the “fun and energetic” mood I have hard rock and heavy metal, for the “my job is f*cking me and I don’t like it” I have nu metal and some other things that sound angry, for the “fancy” I have a strange mix of P!atD, Franz Ferdinand, some songs that are creepy/sad but sound happy (“I can’t decide”, “Don’t fear the Reaper”, “To The Sea”) and steampunk/dark cabaret/murder song bands (Voltaire, Coppelius, the Cog is Dead, American Murder Song)
Synthpop, new wave, dark wave, cold wave, minimal wave, post-punk, goth rock....
...but like synthpop more than anything else. I gotta have those hooks. <3
A Blue Ocean Dream
a-ha
Alien Skin
Ashbury Heights
Beborn Beton
BlakLight
Blue October
Body of Light
Brutalist Architecture in the Sun
Camouflage
Cetu Javu
Children Within
Code 64
Conetik
Count to Infinity
Covenant
Dark-O-Matic
Depeche Mode
DeVision
Echo Image
Electro Spectre
Fantazja
Fragrance.
Korine
Lust for Youth
Mesh
Mind Machine
Molly Nilsson
Neuroactive
New Order
Null Device
NUN
Pet Shop Boys
Psyche
Riki
Rupesh Cartel
Sally Dige
Sea of Sin
State of the Nation
SWEEP
Tenek
The Bedroom Witch
The Mobile Homes
Torul
TR-ST
Veil Of Light
VH x RR
Wave in Head
Wolfsheim
Zynic
Happy to listen to lots of stuff though. Some others that come to mind right away: Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Moist, Technotronic, early Skinny Puppy, Gunship, Luis Ake...
Power Metal:
Powerwolf
Gloryhammer
Alestorm
Sabaton
Windrose
Pagan music:
Emerald Rose
Tyr
And then sea shanties, folk music, Irish (rebel and otherwise), labor/protest music, and the occasional bouts of pure randomness.
Right now I cannot get enough of Miracle of Sound. Dude just checks every box there is for me. It's like if every other kind of music I listen to got gene-spliced into one guy.
In no particular order other stuff:
Blackmore's Night
Clamavi de Profundis
Omnia
Faun
The band fired Thomas Winkler (lead singer) aka Angus. No reason was given but his poor live performance after the pandemic was rumored.
Then some old chat was leaked that put to light that James (bassist aka hootsman) and Chris (song writer / former keyboardist aka Zargotrax) were racist/mysoginic trying to take advantage of their status to fuck fans.
Then some allegation of abuse against James were made.
At the end of it all Christ wrote a PR excuse letter. Gloryhammer got a new lead singer (Sozos Michael). Thomas went on his way to make a new band (Angus McSix).
So we got two album this year with gloryhammer style.
Just be careful there is two song order. The one of the track listing (the bad one) and the lore one (the good one).
For whatever reason they decided not to put the song in the lore order so the story makes no sense if you listen to the album in the track listening order.
I have the exact same list for power metal lol, only thing I’d add is twilight force.
I also like chiptune stuff, a great artist that kinda crosses over chiptune and metal is rainbowdragoneyes, he has done remixes of gloryhammer and alestorm, and has a whole EP of remixed and OC pirate metal chiptune.
I listen to a bit of everything. Bands in my recent rotation include Low, 3rd Secret, Motörhead, Rick James, L7 and Joji, Aimee Mann, Mdou Moctar, Aphex Twin, Beastie Boys. Donny Benet
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s PetroDragon Apocalypse is my favorite album all year.
My favorite all time genre is industrial. So stuff like The Young Gods, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, KMFDM, Ministry, Filter, Mulitple Man, Meat Beat Manifesto, Pig, Emptyset, Youth Code, Atari Teenage Riot / Alec Empire, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Download…
I heard ‘Congregation’ in the show Devs (loved it), and was surprised I never listened to them before. Went back and listened to the whole catalog… several times over. It’s the best airplane music.
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