Beginnings and Ends

Today is a day of beginnings, but also of ends. Glee picks back up after its winter break and hits the final stretch of the season. I'm hoping the music stays as good as the middle of the season.
Manafest released his latest album Fighter today. He's been producing music for a few years now, but I only came across him this past November. He's got this rock with a little rap mixed in style and it's great music to chill out too. Here is the song that got me hooked on his music.

On the side of endings, 1000 Generations announced today that they are disbanding. They put out some great music and they will be missed. I got to know them through a confusing time in my life and this song helped me out a lot.

New stuff starts up all the time, and stuff ends all the time. It's great to celebrate the new and miss the old. I'm sure brighter and better things will come along.

Happy Birthday...

.... to Nelson Mandela, who turned 93 today.
And in honor of his birthday and his accomplishments, a Smash Mouth video.

Sunny Days

I have recently become re-enamored with the classic show Sesame Street. I watched it a fair bit when I was little. I'll never forget counting, saying the alphabet, and singing the rubber duckie song as I watched. As I grew older they added the amazing Elmo's World segment.
Last spring, I would turn on Sesame street at 7:30 to watch a few minutes before whatever "grown up" show we were going to watch. It's amazing to see how much the writers put in for older people. The puns. The humor. The famous people doing parodies of their hits. And I gotta admit, I just love singing the song about whatever Elmo discussed that episode. I think it took my dad a few days to figure out you just sang the word to "jingle bells".

This is a new favorite of mine:

Wavin Flag

Its been almost a year since I made a fateful discovery for my music tastes. Coca-Cola and a Somali born rapper changed my favorite song list forever. Wavin' Flag was Coke's promo song for the 2010 World Cup. I love Coke, but I discovered the song almost by accident. The pure joy put into the song, along with the drums and me hearing the Spanish version first stole my heart forever. It was my anthem to get through basic training.
I now have six different versions of the song to include several of the Coke versions, the much more somber but still inspiring original, and the Young Artists for Haiti version.
K'naan was a great discovery for me. I haven't gotten tired of the song yet and I don't plan on it.
This is at least the second time I've linked to this video, but I really love it.

Jet Lag

Natasha Bedingfield is probably my biggest idol. I've been in love with her music since she made the is cross over in 2005 with These Words; the single before the success of Unwritten.
There's also this fairly cool group known as Simple Plan who I remember as one of the groups of my middle school years. They're back with a new album this coming June, and they collaborated with my favorite artist. It's a lot less rock-y than some of Simple Plan's other stuff, but this is a pretty sweet song.

Committed

The purpose of this post is to explain why I do and don’t want Committed to win season 2 of The Sing Off. This will be accomplished through the use of the author’s personal opinions.

Why: They really are good. From their take on Maroon 5’s This Love to the Usher Medley, they have shown their versatility and greatness. And they seem to have a solid fan base. And Street Corner Symphony, their only serious competition seems to have focus only part of the time.

Why Committed Shouldn’t Win: I’ve only seen the first episode all the way through, but Street Corner Symphony’s take on Everybody Wants to Rule the World was more mind blowing than Committed’s This Love. Both were amazing and I’m hoping that these two groups will be the final two.

The big thing with Committed is that they started out as a church group. Everyone keeps getting butt hurt (sorry about the army lingo) over their choices in songs. I think they’re phenomenal. Although they’re church boys, they obviously know “secular” music; they’ve just never worked at singing it for audiences. If people are looking for ‘goody-goody’ church boys, they’re watching the wrong competition. Maybe I’m just biased because I’m a part of both worlds and enjoy them both.

I’ve also seen comments bashing them and questioning their “committedness” simply by their being on the competition to win the money and record deal. If this were to be totally true, then we should also question the sincerity of TobyMac and Steven Curtis Chapman because they charge a lot for concert tickets, Owl City for releasing commercially and secularly, and ignore every other Christian or Christian groups in show business or professional sports because obviously these people aren’t “Christian” enough and participate in some of the world’s stuff instead of being stuck up and doing their own thing.

Deep down, I really don’t care who wins the Sing Off this year as long as it comes down to Committed and Street Corner Symphony. They were both so amazing. Can you tell that people dissing Christians in the spotlight is a soapbox of mine? 


Check them both out:

I don't know the next time I will be able to post. I leave you with this: my new favorite song.

Disney

If Disney had control of Army Basic Training, it would probably look something like this:

Philosophy Football

I know, I should really try posting a little more often. It's not for a lack of posting topics, I can find a bunch of things to talk about (mostly soccer related...). It's for a lack of time. Crunch time with school projects and preparing for AP exams in May. So here's a video I can always laugh at. It's even funnier after having European History for a year and learning who most of these people are.

In My Head...

I feel like I've been going nuts a little bit lately. Mostly because I get words and phrases stuck in my head and then I feel the need to repeat them incessantly. Just today, it's been 'pompey, pompey, pompey' (in reference to Portsmouth, their FA Cup game and all their recent issues), 'Andrei' (Andrei Arshavin, scored Arsenal's third goal today) and the terrace chant for Theo Walcott (basically his name over and over. He scored Arsenal's second goal today). And just for good measure, Fabregas scored the first goal, but I haven't gotten his name stuck in my head.

And, last weekend, my youth group went on a retreat at Camp Orchard Hill (great place). They showed this video and I thought it was really cool. The guy in this is Blaine Hogan. He did some stuff on Prison Break. Check it out.....

something to think about