myTunes 36 Most Played Songs (12.10.08)

I’ve been thinking about doing this for quite some time – revealing what my top played songs are on iTunes.  By default, the most played playlist is set at 25 or something, but since 36 is my lucky number and 36 just happens to fit perfectly in the height of laptop screen monitor (to where I didn’t have to scroll down to see the whole list), it worked out so so good.

Revealing this list, for me, feels like letting out my public tax return information to the public lol (well, it wouldn’t be big at all, but just imagine that I’m a celebrity and this is now common knowledge).  I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, though some of my choices and rankings of some songs and artists might surprise/turn off/turn on some people, so it’s your choice on what you’ll decide to think of me from now on hahaha.  Whatever, though.  We all have our guilty pleasures/inner demons :p.

I’ll list it backwards, from #36 to #1.  It’s pretty accurate (well, these are based on plays from when I uploaded the tracks to my laptop’s iTunes in summer 2006, and from iPod plays, so it’s based from then).  You will see my varying tastes, from traditional/pop/alternative/rocking/country,bluegrass, rock, pop, and alternative rock.

These below are my stats, as of this moment, Tuesday night, December 9th. 2008 @ 11:23pm (out of about 39,000 plays):

Recommendation XXXIV: Sheryl Crow

All I can say to this site’s audience: thanks so much for waiting.  It means a lot to me that people still check out this site regularly even when I don’t post too often.  With my time off from school, I’ve got my good times and bad: it’s nice not having to stress over work and papers (my film class woulda been so fun though), but it is killing me not being able to hang out with my many buddies and others back there.  I feel like I’m missing out and will miss out on lots of stuff, and I’m thinking I might not be able to return in 2009.  But I came up with a plan to visit my friends early than planned before 2008 is over, so I’m excited about that (will be kinda expensive though…lol).  Anyway, I can guess what most of you are thinking when you saw the picture on the side: what’s she doing on the site?  She’s not country! I know she may not be considered “country”, but she’s done several works within the genre and she has integrated it somewhat in her style throughout her whole career.  She’s worked with Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, Johnny Cash, the Dixie Chicks, Jack Ingram, Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill, and others, and even her duet with Kid Rock (“Picture”) sounded more country than most songs on country radio, so I think she’s earned at least a recommendation (She even had another single on the country charts with the poppier single, “The First Cut is the Deepest”, if you can remember that.)

My thirty-fourth recommendation is: Sheryl Crow’s “Anything But Down” from her 1998 The Globe Sessions album.  Sheryl is one of my favorite rock/pop artists and I like a fair amount of her work.  I’d have to say that “All I Wanna Do” (the much much better of the songs with that name.  Yeah, I said it, and I do mean it, Sugarland.) is my favorite song of her’s because it’s so catchy and reminds me of the ’90s.  It’s got a slight country feel to it with the steel guitar that’s used prominently in the track, and her voice is always easy to notice.  Even when she turned pop with “Soak Up the Sun”, she was still as good as ever (though, her rockier, edgier stuff is preferred).  I remember when I was young, I confused her with Martina McBride when I saw her lol, especially with her music video for the James Bond movie, “Tomorrow Never Dies” (now I don’t really see any similarities, except that they had real short hair in the past).  My only complaint about Ms. Sheryl Crow is that she seems to kinda mumble when she performs live and while it it part of her style and isn’t done on purpose, it gets somewhat distracting.  But whatever, she’s still a great music icon.

Recommendation XXI: Pinmonkey

Hello hello – I am back. Since the blog site change, I have noticed that some of the older post entries have small font and I have no idea why that is (must be a html thing), but if you click on the title of the entry, the font is the normal size and readable. I actually was planning on making a new entry (#21) last week but I got held up with something else (college will do that to ya haha) and I did had some new ideas, but with the little feedback I receive from guests, I don’t have total motivation to write new entries more often lol (so, if you do read this blog, and want more, then comment so I know you exist! Thanks!). I also updated my links area with some new cool sites, and added stars next to my two most favorites (Country Universe and The 9513 ), but those other sites are really sweet too, so check them out.

My twenty-first recommendation is: Pinmonkey’s “I Drove All Night” from their 2002 Pinmonkey album. I’ve been wanting to use them for quite a while, like I mentioned in my old Dixie Chicks recommendation entry from 2007, and I thought it was time to utilize a group again. I first heard Pinmonkey (a group who got their name from a Simpsons episode when Homer worked at the bowling alley place haha) when their debut country radio single came out years back, called “Barbed Wire & Roses” , which was full of bluegrass soul and harmonies, and was pretty damn catchy. Some people – like my sister – commented that the male lead singer, Michael Reynolds, sorta sounds like a woman (a la Mary Chapin Carpenter or something), but I disagree because I never thought that lol. Anyway, when I heard this group, I was really interested in them and their music, so when “I Drove All Night” came out, I was pretty much sold (so yeah, “…Drove…” was their second radio single, if it sounded familiar).

Recommendation XV: Dixie Chicks

I hope the “iCF Singles Review” addition was interesting, because I enjoyed doing it and hope to do another sometime soon. I have a little free time this Sunday afternoon (well, I should be getting my readings done for class, go exercise, eat, and do my laundry, but I’ll put that off for the time being lol). For my next recommendation, I’ve had this particular song in mind for many months – it was just tough picking one from the group and from the album! – and I knew this was the best time to do it. They’re currently doing a few dates with The Eagles here in L.A. @ the brand-new Nokia Theatre (I wanted to attend so bad, but tickets are expensive and I’m pretty busy these days!).

My fifteenth recommendation is: the Dixie Chicks’ “Voice Inside My Head” from their 2006 Taking the Long Way album. There’s really no way to talk about this album and not smile about how mind-blowing it is…I mean, just WOW. I’m not going to bring up the whole “incident” stuff, for my own sake, since that’d take too much writing for me to do! When I first heard “Not Ready to Make Nice”, I totally loved it and I thought it was really catchy and a great song to “come-back” with, but I admit, when I first listened to clips of the new album, I was not 100% impressed for some reason (that goes to show how I can be wrong about things at first listen, sometimes!). I remember I kept streaming the album on MSN.com’s website over and over, and would listen to it while playing video games (real mature, I know ha) and man, I really got into it: I could really see how the music is still country IMO but quite different at the same time. I love how the Chicks didn’t let go of their roots and kept the fiddles, steel guitar, banjo, mandolin, and country-vocals in their music and blended it with a California-rock type of sound. I think that, even though, the Chicks don’t know what to classify the album and allegedly “turned their backs on country music”, the album is still, overall, a country album. I was so thrilled and excited for the Chicks, and everybody involved with creating this album (you rock Rick Rubin!), when the GRAMMYs came around – though, I do wish the award show played clips of other songs on Taking the Long Way as well other than just “Not Ready…”, which I thought was kinda overused during the wins, IMO – because that was a chance to show these women are more than the song and it’d showcase all the music.