Songs that Will Make You Need to Call a Waaambulance

Grant and I roadtripped it the other to the Texas vs. UW basketball game from Milwaukee. It was during a pretty sweet snow storm, so it took us about two hours, which gave us plenty of time to listen to music. I couldn't find my iPod hookup, so I had to rely on old cd's. I was running out the door when we left because we wanted to beat the worst of the storm, so I just grabbed my old cd case from high school. Admittedly, in high school I mostly liked emo music until my senior year or so, so there wasn't a great selection, but I at least had a few decent albums in there. After maxing out Brand New, we listened to the Format, which was the first time for me in about a year or so. The song "On Your Porch" came on, and I remembered that I once dubbed it the "Most Beautiful song of all-time". Grant, an avid reader of this blog, said that I should make a post of the most beautiful songs known to myself, and I agreed. As I'm in Michigan right now visiting family and have nothing else to do as they're all early sleepers, that time is now. I won't rank them, I'll just throw them out there and give you videos/streams.



On Your Porch - The Format

Basically the lines that get me are "My dad was sick/ my mom she cared for him/ her love it nursed him back to life. / But me I ran / I couldn't even look at him / for fear I'd have to say goodbye / And as I start to leave / he grabs me and he tells me / What's left to lose? / You've done enough / and if you fail well then you fail but you gave it a shot / Cuz these last three years / I know they've been hard / but now it's time to get out of the desert and into the sun / even if it's alone.











The Great Unrest - Mugison

This song is a repeat offender on the blog. It gets intense at the end, but the orchestration and buildup throughout the song is the beautiful part. And Mugison just has a raw, emotional voice that represents a broken, weathered man, and it's just beautiful in itself.







Poor Celine - The Velvet Teen

Pretty much any song off of Elysium could be on this list. Judah's voice is at its best in this album, as there's no distortion on it and he's not straining it. Don't mistake that for a lack of emotion, because you will feel a range of them within this album, but the absense of a not-even-a-single guitar on this album makes Judah's voice more prominent, and the orchestration adds a new dimension as well.


Poor Celine at last.fm

It's Okay - Land of Talk

Who here's down with Fleetwood Mac? This song could so be sung by Stevie Nicks, but it's way better because while Liz Powell might have some vocal similarities, her voice is in no way obnoxious like Stevie's can sometimes be. The song is so raw, and the lyric "Maybe when I die / I'll get to be a car / Driving in the night / lighting up the dark" just puts you in the body of someone that is giving up on this life and looking towards the next. I think there's a sort of beauty in that kind of honesty, and even though it's a kind of dark hope, it's still undeniably hope.

It's Okay at imeem.com

Annuals - Sore

Another repeat offender. The video itself is beautiful, but the song just to me seems to be about a need to express love daily. Whether with a significant other or offspring (in the video it seems to be about both), its a beautiful sentiment. The highlight lyrically: If I ever let out of bed / Without a kiss to the center of your head / Then I never deserved you from the start /And you can let loose the wall around my heart.

All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun - Jeff Buckley

There are quite a few Buckley tracks that could make it on this list. The obvious choice would be Hallelujah. The song is not originally Jeff's (it's Leonard Cohen's), but his version is the version that has been played by numerous other artists (Before you ask, the version on Shrek is Rufus Wainwright, who had a huge crush on Jeff Buckley) and trillions of YouTubers. However, being an owner of quite a few Jeff bootlegs and B-sides, the most beautiful JB song is All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun. I have two versions of the song, never released or recorded, one very fuzzy, distantly recorded live solo version, and one where he duets with Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. Both are amazing. The duet gives the song a whole new dynamic and meaning. Here's both versions:

(With Elizabeth)

(Without Elizabeth)


All Flowers in Time at imeem.com

All I Need - Radiohead

This song is hauntingly beautiful. It's obsessive. The song is basically saying that the protagonist's only reason for living is the existence another person. It's beautifully desperate. He sounds desperate to try to put into words just how much this person means to him, but like he can never accomplish that task to the extent he wants to. He feels he can't get through to him/her the way he wants. The lyrics are so simple, but they say more than a whole novel could.

That's all I've got for right now. I'd be interested to know what songs you all think are the most beautiful songs you listen to, but I've never been one to ask for comments. If you feel like it though, go for it. I'm going to make a non-related song of the day just because I've been so obsessed with Land of Talk Lately. Elizabeth Powell is the newest member of Broken Social Scene, and I saw LoT open for them and her sing with BSS, and her cuteness is undeniable, but her voice is what gets me. I like it way better than Amy Millan, and she gives Feist a run for her money in my humble opinion.

Land of Talk - Speak to Me Bones

Epic rant!

Okay, that title hypes this post up to be really good, but it probably won't be because I don't swear and I don't think rants can truly be epic unless they have swearing. But it's a stressful time of year, and I think complaining to my computer will be therapeutic. So here it goes.

1. HISTORY TA's - This is not directed at one TA in particular, but more so the natural tendencies of history TA's that grade papers and exams. Someone that is a history TA is mostly a graduate student studying the area that the class falls under. So a History 115 TA, a broad Medieval Europe class, is probably studying something like the relationship between serf (although they wouldn't call it a serf for reasons I am to annoyed to explain) and landlord in Medieval England. Anyway, the point is, they are extremely knowledgable in their field. Thus, some TA's uphold an unfair standard when grading papers that anything they can think of that we have left out should have been included in the paper.

More than that, what bothers me is when a TA writes "Good" at the end of an essay, doesn't write that you've forgotten anything, that you've gotten a date wrong, that you've spelled something wrong, that you've used passive voice... hasn't made a single mark on the essay... and then somehow you get an 80%. To me, this is like a cashier handing you a cheeseburger that costs $3, you taking a bite, saying "This is good", then slapping down $2.40 and walking away.

I guess this is the burden of choosing such a subjective major. If I were in math, there one be one correct solution. I also have had some great TA's as well, so I can't complain too much. But this is an epic rant, so I'm ranting.

2. THE IRS - The IRS has added an unneeded stress to this holiday/exam season. So I send in my taxes by mail. Everything's been checked. Everything's right. Records are kept. One of my jobs is tax free (Fun fact, if you work a campus job and are a full-time student, you are exempt from taxes on that job). My summer job is not. I work full-time over the summer, so this actually adds up to quite a bit of money. Well, I end up getting a far larger refund than I should have. I look at my taxes, very confused, and it says I have made a mistake, my summer job IS exempt from taxes. I know this is wrong, but I think What am I supposed to do about this? They made the mistake. They can't fault me for this. So I let it go.

Well, last month, I get a statement saying that I claimed myself as exempt. No... no I didn't. You guys changed this. I call the IRS very fed up. I get connected to a lady that says she can change this without a problem... I'll have to pay the money back, but she can fix the fact that they entered the information wrong into the system. Fine, I can deal with this. I get put on hold. All of a sudden, the phone hangs up. I have to call back, sit through 30 minutes of Tchaikovsky, and get connected to another, much less helpful lady. She says that I have to refile my taxes. No! No I don't! I was just connected with a lady that said she'd fix it for me! She puts me on hold again. She says she'll send my case to Fresno, CA for review. Today, I got in the mail that I owe $250 with $6 interest, because they assume the money's been sitting in my savings account for six months. I'm glad this is over, but screw you for costing me money for your mistakes, IRS. I hope you don't come after me for writing about my discontent.


Anyway, I'd write a couple more, but I have to get back to writing a 9-page paper that will undoubtedly be thuroughly analyzed for things I missed. Guess I'll just have to take pleasure in people slipping and falling on the crazy ice rink known as "the streets and sidewalks of Wisconsin". Even funnier is the human response to the slip. I've narrowed it down to two circumstancial reactions. 1) If you save yourself, you do six or seven running steps like it was part of the plan, and 2) If you fall, you get up, and you just smile as if to say "If I act like I have a sense of humor about it, you'll all think that I'm not really embarrassed at all".


Song of the day, the hottest indie band out there: Lazytown featuring Lil Jon. Warning: Vulgar language.

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