Pop culture

Send nudes!

Published on 24 January 20175 February 2017 by LivLeave a comment

You heard right, we want to see your naked…well, playlist! This a music website! What were you thinking??!!!

Global advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy challenges you to bare all in new Spotify campaign. It’s really easy to look cool on the internet but let’s see who you are in real life…

Ok, ok, it’s not exactly a challenge. We here are not really keen on the “guilty pleasure” terminology. After all, why guilt in listening to music that makes you happy? And also, what exactly constitutes a “guilty pleasure”?! Judging artists by genre, looks or whatever it is that gets you worked up is only keeping you from finding what could be your new favourite song.

It’s this unfounded prejudice from pseudo-music snobs that has people in 2017 still saying things like “wow, I didn’t know Lady Gaga could actually sing!” – no shit, Sherlock! If only you hadn’t judged her for the fact she makes pop music. (as if pop music was Satan’s invention or something…and I’m saying all this while drafting a post condemning shit lyrics…oh, sweet hypocrisy!)

This thing reminded me of a friend who once told me she watches “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” but, when I brought it up in front of other people, she denied like she feared for her life as if anybody actually gave a rat’s ass that she liked it!

Just love what you love and consume whatever entertainment makes you happy! As long as it’s not hurting anybody…sometimes music is art, sometimes it is what it is: entertainment. It’s true it makes me sad that something like the Chainsmokers are chart toppers while so many super talented people struggle, but hey, it’s a big world and there’s space for everyone. We should be glad to have such diversity catering for everyone.

I mean, if Ryan Adams can cover a whole Taylor Swift album, who are you to judge anybody’s taste?

Anyway, my “naked playlist” is pretty much on par with everything I’m always posting: lots of Pearl Jam, Brian Fallon, Wolf Alice, Lissie and Ryan Adams. The two surprises were: the lack of Backstreet Boys – not even ONE track! – and the presence of an Usher song I had on idea existed! If anything, I’d say I’ve listened to “You Remind Me”, “Confessions” and “U Got It Bad” more than any other song by him, but oh well!

What’s in yours? Get it here. Play it loud and share it proud!

We’re on iTunes!

Published on 19 January 201721 April 2017 by LivLeave a comment

Nope, I haven’t taken the shower singing up to the next level just yet – and never will, rest assured.

The very first day of the year started out for me with a really exciting email from Eric Garneau, host of Chicago-based The Nerdologues’ podcast Blank Cassette – every week he asks a guest to put a mixtape together and talk about it. And, on that day, he asked me!

He asked me for about 20-24 tracks so I couldn’t really use any of the existing mixes as they’re all about an eternity-long and, at the time, I’d been listening to a lot of my favourite female rockers and thinking that old “Badass Chicks” playlist needed a bit of updating…so I ended up making vol.2 (with a few repeats because…classics.).

You can listen to my goober self right here but you can also check out much superior episodes in the Nerdologues’ Blank Cassette archive.

Trivia: iconic “Singles” soundtrack turns 24!

Published on 30 June 201630 June 2016 by LivLeave a comment

Trivia of the day: 24 years ago today the soundtrack to Singles was released.

Legendary director Cameron Crowe was a long time friend of Pearl Jam‘s manager, Kelly Curtis.

It was around 1990 on the night of Andy Wood‘s (Mother Love Bone) death that, following a gathering at Curtis’ house, Crowe decided to rewrite the old script he had for Singles.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liv⇞ (@mixtapeliv)

But the “Seattle sound” wasn’t going to be only heard in the soundtrack. During the rewrite, Crowe immersed himself in the grunge music scene spending a lot of time with Pearl Jam & co. for inspiration. The influence was such that the director actually wrote parts for some of them with Jeff, Eddie and Stone featuring as members of the fictitious band Citizen Dick, fronted by Cliff Poncier, played by Matt Dillon (who really was a dick in the movie!)

Last year Legacy Recordings actually put out Citizen Dick’s record “Touch Me, I’m Dick” on Record Store Day! (Sounds familiar? Ahem ahem, Mudhoney, anyone?)

Cameron Crowe went on to direct Pearl Jam’s 20th anniversary documentary, PJ20. It was out in the cinemas for one night only, if I remember correctly. I’d never seen the cinema so packed as on that 20 Sept 2011.

The value of soundtracks

Published on 12 June 20165 February 2017 by LivLeave a comment

I’ve been meaning to write about soundtracks for a long time but there’s just so much to consider, I never thought I could do the subject justice, but Synchtank recently shared this Mental Floss article on Facebook on how important soundtracks are for movies that it inspired me to share a few other thoughts about it.

Last month I went to a special preview of Richard Linklater‘s latest movie “Everybody Wants Some” followed by a Q&A with the man himself at Brixton’s Ritzy and somebody asked him about soundtracks and how he goes about putting them together.

He talked about how the one for this movie in particular was made of mainly the songs he used to listen to when in college in the 80s – where and when the movie takes place – and that they usually start with about 200 tracks, but since licensing is both expensive and sometimes not approved, that helps the team narrow it down.

The funny thing was when he talked about the need to change a song because the one originally picked is too above the budget

“You can’t get Michael Jackson, so you get Jermaine Jackson!”

Picking a song for a scene, whether it’s a movie, TV show or even an ad, is as important as casting the right actor. A song is paramount to conveying a certain message or emotion to the audience and it is often more memorable than anything else in the video.

Another gem from Synchtank was this episode of their SynchStories podcast I listened to a few months ago where they interviewed music supervisor Thomas Golubič (Breaking Bad).

“Many people who tried to get into music supervision but don’t quite make it is because they are ultimately champions of music but not of storytelling”

He reveals the process of understanding a character/story and finding and picking the right tracks to match them:

“if you can really think in terms of the story and the characters and get a sense of what is really truthful to those characters…as you get to know them [characters], you hope that you can kind of navigate the truth of who they are with music”

There’s a lot more to it and I highly recommend you actually listen to the whole interview if you’re interested in the subject.

From an audience point of view, not only it helps us connect with a scene, a character, a storyline, but it often introduces us to new music we might otherwise never hear about. How many artists have you discovered through soundtracks? I don’t know about you, but my list is pretty endless.

Dawson’s Creek, The Craft, Romeo + Juliet, Cruel Intentions (can you listen to Bittersweet Symphony and NOT picture Reese Witherspoon driving away?), The OC and its gazillion Mixes, Gossip Girl. These are just a few of the most popular soundtracks that had some of its songs be as important as the actors playing the scene they soundtracked.

Recently a dear teenage human in my life made me watch Pretty Little Liars (I tell ya, getting hooked on a show that is already going to season 7 is a big mistake if you had any kind of life plan, even if it’s just showering and going for a Sunday brunch!). As the episodes went on, I realised my constant Shazam‘ing was getting in the way of helping the girls find out who A was (sorry, you’ve got to watch it to get this one), so I went on good ol’ Spotify and quickly found a playlist with pretty much all of the songs featured in the show. That’s two of my favourite things in the world – soundtracks AND playlists – coming together and beautifully making life sweeter. But I’ll leave the playlist subject for another day as it deserves a whole other long post of its own.

For the moment I’ll leave you with ABC‘s PLL soundtrack, which also inspired this post but I’ll try to put an “OST” playlist together at some point as there are many other shows and movies also deserving of the spotlight.