Huh, I don’t really know how to start this one. So everybody here knows who Coldplay is, right? Fairly big alt-pop band with arena-sized choruses, love, Fair Trade, falsettos…got Brian Eno to come in and produce their latest? Cool. So I can get right into it and say that Viva La Vida is the most accomplished album of their career. I mean that in pretty much every way: every song has its own color, the runtime is perfect, and the band has never sounded tighter or more inspired. It’s also the closest they’ve come to making a complete statement, rather than just stringing a bunch of romantic, isolated and vaguely political songs together and calling it an album. What is that statement you ask? Well, look at the title. Martin christened the first song of the band’s debut with the chorus “We live in a beautiful world.” Viva La Vida is his way of opening up that world and exposing its beauty. Yeah there’s death, yeah there’s heartache, yeah there’re…despots and lynch mobs…but all of this pales in comparison to the vibrancy of life itself. Is that a bunch of flowery bullshit? Well, that’s for you to decide. I’m willing to suspend disbelief for forty-five minutes.
Author: Money Mike
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The New Music Revue: “Viva La Vida”…Coldplay…Ole!!!
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The Falsettometer Comes To Your Emotional Rescue
Michael Philip Jagger is many things. Frontman for arguably the world’s greatest rock and roll band. Serial bedder of hot-ass women (Bianca Jagger was a dime piece…and so was Jerry Hall back in the day…hell, he’s still bedding teenage Brazilian models and he looks like a raisin these days!)You can’t forget, as Eddie Murphy once said “Mick Jagger’s lips are so big…Black people look at him and say “he got some big-ass lips”. Ha!!!
He is also in possession of a rarely used yet always effective falsetto, which has rared it’s head in three of my favorite Stones/Jagger songs. (more…)
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“My Medicine”: Snoop Dogg Meets Deputy Dawg
Snoop Dogg’s been a lot of things over the course of the fifteen-plus years that he’s been on the scene. Gangsta rap icon. Pimpery proponent. Multi-faceted pitchman. But…country singer??
The D-O-Double G’s new song, “My Medicine” (which Snoop says is a tribute to Johnny Cash), finds Snoop getting his country-rock on with the help of Everlast, who co-wrote and produced the record (something tells me his schedule wasn’t too full). The video includes cameos from current C&W superstar Brad Paisley (who you’ve gotta love just for the fact that he seems to have a fantastic sense of humor), and country icon Willie Nelson. Willie’s involvement makes a lot more sense when you realize that the song, in typical Snoop fashion, is about weed. One can only imagine the collective fumes that were coming out of *that* trailer.
Although “Sensual Seduction Sexual Eruption” was a fantastic record, it’s safe to say Snoop really lost his mojo quite a while ago, and this attempt to woo country music listeners falls a bit flat once the novelty of “oh, shit! Snoop’s making a country record!” wears off. The video is cute, but there’s not much in the way of replay value, and I think the days of Snoop being a hungry rapper who made consistently good records are long gone.
But damn, I wish I was somewhere in the general vicinity of that trailer…