Mucho Music

I've been listening to a lot of music lately. It must just be the mix of great CD purchases and my mood - Christmas time always makes me feel the music.

The two CD's I've been listening to constantly are Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak and The Hotel Cafe presents Winter Songs, a Christmas CD sold at Target (and online), featuring quite a few outstanding new and traditional holiday tracks by female singers. Both CD's are excellent and couldn't be more highly recommended. "Love Lockdown," "Paranoid," and "Robocop" are the three repeated tracks on 808s I can't listen to enough. "Winter Song," "The Heartache Can Wait," "Maybe Next Year (The X-Mas Song)," and "Frosty the Snowman" are some of my new holiday must-plays.

In fact, it was "Winter Song," that led to some happy connections. Earlier this week I managed to catch the neat - cute - little animated music video for the song. It was just what I needed; it started my day off with a smile. Then a couple of nights ago I caught a live performance of the song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson on The Tonight Show (such a tiny little guitar). Again, it was just fantastic. So great in fact, that I had to rush out and pick up Ingrid's CD, Be OK.

It is that CD - Be Ok - which I'm listening to at this minute. And it is great singer-songwriter, piano/guitar, fun music.

That is not to say that all in music land has been grand. Two recent recommendations disappointed me. It's not that Break Up the Concrete by The Pretenders and The '59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem are bad CD's - they are good, but just not as good as I expected from the recommendations. It happens. I'm just glad that I'm not without music that makes me happy.

Oh, and Paramore has a new CD/DVD, The Final RIOT!, out now, which is also quite good.

(Did I ever go link crazy in this post?...still, the links to the music video and The Tonight Show appearance are worth the click.)