Music 1020

For this week I decided to pick the song YMCA by The village people. And first of all, I just want to say that I am super stoked that we are finally getting to songs that I actually know and recognize. It makes this class so much more enjoyable, and easy to remember everything when it is songs that either I know, or I know of other songs by these artists. I really like this song because it is just a classic that everyone knows and has heard hundreds of times, and it even has its own dance universally attached to it. I think I first heard this song in elementary, it was a super easy dance that they could teach us and a super-easy song to remember as a little kid. I also just found out while writing this blog that YMCA actually stand s for Young Men's Christian Association this brings a whole new context to the song and almost makes it somewhat of a religious song since the whole thing is essentially promoting a church group. Also apparently it became a gay anthem? But I have read co...

For this week I decided to pick the song "A taste of honey" by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I really like the use of the trumpet in this song it is almost the lyrics of this song and all the other instruments are the backups to it. This song is very swinging in its mood. I am willing to bet that it was a very popular song choice for people to dance to in clubs when it came out. Although the main chorus is very swingy, there are parts where it really slows down and becomes much more intimate which I think would have made it even better for dancing to as you could have your special moments with your partner, and then you could pick the pace right back up again and start swinging around. Another thing that I wanted to point out about this song that is also very impressive is the fact that it does not even have any vocals. I think it is very impressive that a song with no vocals from this time period would become so popular and influential that it would end up being a song...

For this week I decided to pick the song, "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" by, James Brown. This song focuses a lot on the instruments, it has a lot of long breaks in between verses and sometimes even lines. The song is almost four and a half minutes long and without these pauses, I bet it would only be around three minutes long maybe even shorter. The song is definitely something that I could hear being played whilst the credits roll on an old world war 2 era movie (not necessarily focused on world war 2). A lot of the lyrics in this song are about Papa doing a lot of the new dances. From what I can tell it sounds like this is coming from an older person during the time since it is told from the point of view of Papa. But it is him saying that he can do all the cool things that all the young-ins are doing nowadays. Although I am no expert in the slang of that time, it sounds like what an old person would say when they are trying to be hip and imitate what the kids are sayi...