Wednesday 2 April 2014

#atozchallenge: B is For...

I kid you not, I ended up with sixteen songs on my list under the letter B. And that was after I’d weeded out all the ones which weren’t quite my favourites!

Borderline – Alison Krauss



Years ago Alison Krauss and Robert Plant released an album together. It was advertised on the TV a lot and one day, on the way home from Uni I knew I was going to have a bit of a wait until my train so I headed into Borders and after finding nothing to grab my attention in the book sections I went down to the music bit downstairs. Knowing it was getting near to the time my train was due to leave I spotted an Alison Krauss CD, bought it and then realised later that it wasn’t the one being advertised on TV. But I liked the songs on it (and I did eventually get the one with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, when it was released).

Bitch – Meredith Brooks



This is one of the songs I have on my ‘Cait’s Themes’ Playlist. They’re all songs that I can relate to in some way. Bitch is one of those songs for when you’re having one of those days. It’s good fun to sing along to at the top of your voice when you need a destress. And when I was much, much younger I used to think it kind of cool when they played it on the radio because it was a song with a bad word in it. ;-)

Blue Water – Francis Rossi



This is a song which features on Francis Rossi’s solo album. Living on an island I’m surrounded by water and this one always reminds me of those long ferry journey’s home in the nice sunny weather. During one placement while I was at University I had to contend with horrible weather and increasingly difficult journeys to and from the Nursery I was working at. I videoed the waves crashing over the front of the ferry and then (because I didn’t have a copy of My Heart Will Go On from Titanic at my disposal) I set it to Blue Water because the gentle sound of the song was kind of ironic against the rocky journey. Believe it or not I didn't actually start videoing the waves until after they'd died down a bit; this was the gentle bit of the journey!

A Boy and His Frog – Tom Smith



I found this on YouTube, completely by accident, just following related videos. It’s about Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog after Henson’s death. The first time I heard it I didn’t really twig exactly what was being said, but on a second listen I realised what it was about. It’s quite sad in a way and very cleverly done.

Birds and Boats – Gregory and the Hawk



This song came to me before NaNoWriMo a few years ago. I was writing a chick-lit type story set in space and I was looking for music to help inspire me in that direction. I asked for suggestions on the NaNoWriMo forums and one of the first responses was to recommend this song. I loved it from the first time I heard it. In a way it makes me think of Wall-E, the bit where Wall-E and EVE are out in space sort of dancing together. Then I found the above video and I think it's perfect, I love stop motion animation and this gentle song goes really well with it.

Blunt the Knives – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Dwarf Cast



When I heard there were going to be actual Tolkien songs in the Hobbit films I was a little bit excited. When I first read The Lord of the Rings I got a bit bogged down with all the poetry, but each time I read it I feel like I enjoy it a little bit more and I started feeling like I was missing it in the Lord of the Rings films. I was glad that they put the songs into The Hobbit and I was curious to see how they were going to handle it. Blunt the Knives is one of my favourite ones in the book and I was thrilled when it lived up to my expectations in the film. It’s just brilliant, and a bit of an earworm.

4 comments:

  1. You got me with A Boy and His Frog! So sweet and so sad.

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    1. I think it's the catch in his voice at the end that does it. ;-)

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  2. It's so funny, you never think about how many words start with a letter until you do a challenge like this one and have to narrow it down!

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    1. Exactly! It's like the opposite of when you're trying to spell something down the telephone and need to think of a word beginning with a particular letter, and then your mind goes blank!

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Let me know what you think. :-)