Off the Charts #8: Birthday 2014 (Part 1)

She Keeps Bees

Well, I haven't finished this week's countdown, yet. But I do have something for you to listen to. It's perhaps even more alternative (in some cases) than the songs on the countdown because it's all from the blogs I read.

And this year I've decided to split the festivities into two episodes rather than making you set there politely nodding your head for three hours.

So these are the blogs that posted on my birthday last year that I picked songs from for this episode:

xkcd (specifically THIS POST)
The (new) Vinyl Villain (specifically THIS POST)
Across the Kitchen Table (specifically THIS POST)
Side One Track One (specifically THIS POST)
Song, By Toad (specifically THIS POST)
Pigeons and Planes (specifically THIS POST)
We Listen For You (specifically THIS POST)
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (specifically THIS POST)
Unrecorded (specifically THIS POST)
Last Year's Girl (specifically THIS POST)
Crestfallen (specifically THIS POST)




Off the Charts #8: Birthday 2014 (Part 1)

***Featuring***
astronomyy
Flight of the Conchords
Icona Pop featuring Charlie XCX
Male Gaze
Meursault
My Bloody Valentine
Nirvana
Pyramids
She Keeps Bees featuring Sharon Van Etten
Smashing Pumpkins
Turan

Another Mockingjay Soundtrack Update

So iTunes revealed almost all of the tracklist for the Mockingjay Part One soundtrack. The two songs we knew about this afternoon are still on there (why would they go anywhere? why did I write that sentence??) and 11 more tracks have been revealed. There's still a track that's called "Track 5" by "Various Artists" that's listed with a duration of six seconds, so that'll probably be revealed later.

iTunes says the soundtrack will be available on November 17th. Here's a link to the iTunes page. It's not going to take you to iTunes, but it's basically like the browser version of iTunes.

Here's the tracklist:

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Pt. 1 OST:

01 Stromae: Meltdown [ft. Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tip, Haim]
02 Chvrches: Dead Air
03 Tove Lo: Scream My Name
04 Charli XCX: Kingdom [ft. Simon Bon]
05 Various Artists: Track 5
06 Raury: Lost Souls
07 Lorde: Yellow Flicker Beat
08 Tinashé: The Leap
09 Bat for Lashes: Plan the Escape
10 Grace Jones: Original Beast
11 Lorde: Flicker (Kanye West Rework)
12 XOV: Animal
13 The Chemical Brothers: This Is Not a Game [ft. Miguel]
14 Lorde: Ladder Song

Top Ten Tuesday: Charli XCX "Boom Clap"

This is a kind of video that you don't see very often anymore. They used to roam the wild plains of Music Television like the mighty buffalo. It's a video from a soundtrack of a movie and in the video, the singer (Charli XCX in her first non-feature Top Ten hit) sings the song in some slightly related environment and clips from the movie are interspersed throughout. Think Bryan Adams's "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves which featured Adams singing in "the forest". To be fair, it's entirely likely that it was the same forest from the movie. But it could just as easily have not been. Similarly, Charli XCX is singing in "the city" and I, not having seen the movie or read the book, don't know if she's singing in one of the locations from the movie or what, but the feeling that she is is conveyed loud and clear.

This would go on my list of my Top 15 favorite Top 40 songs of this summer.

Top Ten Tuesday: Iggy Azalea featuring Charlie XCX "Fancy"

I'm kind of incredibly fascinated by this video. Maybe it says something about my innate prejudices, but I definitely had to look up an interview with Iggy Azalea to confirm that she was the girl in this video. And indeed she is. And in all the other videos, too. She says something in another song about studying The Carter (a Lil Wayne album) and it definitely shows.

And then the Clueless tribute adds something else to it. It also makes me look at Clueless in kind of a new way, too.

Top Ten Tuesday: Icona Pop featuring Charlie XCX "I Love It"

I'm pretty excited that this song has finally broken into the Top Ten. It's a dance song in the 80's/90's tradition as opposed to, for instance, the song I played last week. By that, I suppose I mean that it is a little less worried with "looking cool" and a little more into having a good time. You could make the claim that it's repetitive or mindless, but I think it is just so so so fun. I think it looks like they're both having a good time.

Oh, and my theory is that neither of them actually sing on the track. They construct the track and then the voice you hear singing is that of Charlie XCX. But I would love confirmation of this.

Enjoy!