View from the Loft

In the Bleak Midwinter

Shawn Colvin's version from her CD Holidays and Lullabies.

"Snow had fallen snow on snow/ Snow on snow on snow . . ."

 

Baby, It's Cold Outside: Norah Jones and Willie Nelson

This song has become somewhat controversial, with many people arguing that it's a song about date rape, or is at least coercive and rapey (see here, for example). According to Wikipedia, the conversation that the song consists of is marked in the score by the notations "mouse" and "wolf," corresponding, of course to "woman" and "man." That sure does look like prey and predator. The song has been done with the roles reversed, by Betty Garrat and Red Skelton (you have to get through the Esther Williams/Ricardo Montalban video before Betty and Red come on) and it's been performed on Glee by two men. Still, it's inarguable that the song was intended to be sung, and is almost always sung, by mouse/woman and wolf/man. 

It's true that the man is very persistent. And I'd be willing to go as far as saying that it's this kind of thing that contributes to the idea that when a woman says no, she doesn't really mean no--she just needs to be talked into whatever the man wants of her. Also, the line "What's the sense in hurting my pride?" (wolf) makes me absolutely cringe. 

And yet. There are lines in the song that indicate that the female half of the duo isn't all that unwilling to stay: "maybe just a half a drink more," "maybe just a cigarette more," "I ought to say no" (notice that "ought"), "at least I'm gonna say that I tried," etc. A lot depends on just who performs the song: much can be conveyed by the particular singer.

Anyway, feminist though I am, I like this laid-back version by Norah Jones and Willie Nelson.

 

 

 

Billie: I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm

It's a mystery to me why wintery songs get conflated with Christmas songs, but there you go.

Here's the incomparable Billie Holiday singing "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm." Nobody does it like she does. Nobody. But then that's true of all her songs ...

 

The Twelve Pains of Christmas

It's that time of year: time for a musical twelve days of Christmas. I did this back in 2009 (if you're interested, and why should you be, you can click on "Archives" over there on the right and then on December, 2009), and of course a slew of videos were "removed by user," probably due to threats by the music industry.

Anyway, I thought I'd start off with one I put up back then, "The Twelve Pains of Christmas."  Pains that most of us are familiar with!

 

Kitten album covers!

If you haven't yet seen these classic album covers kittified, you should!

Here they are.

Enjoy!

I hate the music industry

Wow. A couple of years ago I put up a series of posts featuring videos of non-mainstream holiday songs. I just went back to check them out, and lots of the videos I embedded in my posts can no longer be seen, thanks to the music industry and their fervent dedication to copyrights.

What complete bullshit! I suppose next they will send out their minions to spy on campfires and tap "Kumbaya" singers with some sort of copyright violation.

The fact is that despite the music industry's fevered actions, music is just not easy to reign in so that it profits only the singer/writer/producer/corporation. From time immemorial, music has blossomed from the efforts of those who came before and has spread by means of replication, imitation, parody, embroidery, and who knows what else that artists have employed through the centuries. You just cannot corral something as elemental as music. It's a losing game. Yet the music industry fails to recognize this and continues with its jihad against ordinary people simply wanting to share what they like musically.

I think this is really shortsighted. Yes, the music industry will continue to blindly seek legal "solutions" to its nonexistent "problem,' because that is how they--being corporatists--are programmed. But I think it's a losing battle. The genie is out of the bottle, and all the music industry is doing is making people angry and bitter at their tactics.

 

Another earworm ...

Are some people more likely to have earworms than others? Because I'm really plagued with them. And they don't arise because I've lately heard the song somewhere or anything. They just pop up in my brain. Anyway, here's the latest.  Talk about nostalgia!

 

Put the message in the box

For some reason, when I woke up at four this morning, this song--which I've neither heard nor thought of in years and years--was playing in my head. I wouldn't call it an earworm--yet--but I was amazed to remember it after all this time.

 

Making amends ...

... for that last video. Here's something to take away the bad taste.

 

 

Thanks, Lily Allen. Couldn't have said it better.

I know it's not new. But damn, I really like this. Especially the part about needing approval from an authority figure ... wow, that's the GOP all over!

Fuck you very much!