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  • The Sunday Night Shuffle Vol. 1

    Tracy ChapmanKeith Sweat AlbumSo, here’s my latest cockamamie idea for a column: as a music junkie, I sort of like it when folks who have extensive music collections blog about what they’re listening to at a particular time. If our music tastes are similar, and they mention that they’re listening to something I haven’t heard previously, I usually make an effort to scope out whatever it is.

    Anyway, because I’m sure you’re all wondering “what is Mike listening to?” (yes, I’m being sarcastic), I figured a good idea for a column would be to just set my iTunes on random for 10 songs and see what pops up. Actually, 10 is too standard a number. Let’s live on the edge a little and say seven. Yeah, seven!!

    For the record-I’ve got an 80GB iPod Classic that’s a little more than half full right now (a little over 39GB, 10,160 songs). About two months ago, the external hard drive that I had all my music on crashed, so I’ve been rebuilding from scratch. All I can say about that is that I’m very glad I still buy CDs, or I’d have been S.O.L.

    OK, enough babbling. Let’s get to the music:

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  • Chart Chat 6/22/08: Metro Station, Pussycat Dolls, Journey & More!

    Metro Station Hey folks…had to take last week off due to some site remodeling, but we’re back! And here are this week’s Top 20 charts, brought to you by kind courtesy of Billboard.

    Top 20 Albums:
    1) “Tha Carter III” Li’l Wayne
    2) “Definition of Real” Plies
    3) “Now That’s What I Call Music! Vol 28” Various Artists
    4) “Indestructible” Disturbed
    5) “Here I Stand” Usher
    6) “Revelation” Journey
    7) “Seeing Sounds” N.E.R.D
    8) “Flavors of Entanglement” Alanis Morissette
    9) “Evil Urges” My Morning Jacket
    10) “Weezer (Red Album)” Weezer
    11) “3 Doors Down” 3 Doors Down
    12) “Sex & The City Original Soundtrack” Various Artists
    13) “The Declaration” Ashanti
    14) “Spirit” Leona Lewis
    15) “Rockferry” Duffy
    16) “Taylor Swift” Taylor Swift
    17) “Nothing But the Best” Frank Sinatra
    18) “35 Biggest Hits” Toby Keith
    19) “Rock & Roll Jesus” Kid Rock
    20) “Back When I Knew It All” Montgomery Gentry

    …and on the singles chart…

    1) “Viva La Vida” Coldplay
    2) “I Kissed a Girl” Katy Perry
    3) “Lollipop” Li’l Wayne feat. Static Major
    4) “Bleeding Love” Leona Lewis
    5) “Take a Bow” Rihanna
    6) “Pocketful of Sunshine” Natasha Bedingfield
    7) “No Air” Jordin Sparks w/Chris Brown
    8) “Forever” Chris Brown
    9) “Love in This Club” Usher feat. Young Jeezy
    10) “Shake It” Metro Station
    11) “Bust it Baby Pt. 2” Plies feat. Ne-Yo
    12) “Sexy Can I” Ray J. feat Yung Berg
    13) “Leavin’” Jesse McCartney
    14) “Damaged” Danity Kane
    15) “4 Minutes” Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake
    16) “What You Got” Colby O’Donis feat. Akon
    17) “It’s Not My Time” 3 Doors Down
    18) “When I Grow Up” Pussycat Dolls
    19) “Love Song” Sara Bareilles
    20) “Realize” Colbie Caillat

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  • The New Music Revue: “Viva La Vida”…Coldplay…Ole!!!

    ColdplayHuh, 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.

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