Category Archives: Music

2012 Grammy Predictions

I may not be staying up to watch the Grammy’s but I figured I’d give in my 2 cents as to what will be awarded big time tonight. Some of the categories are a lock, others are more of a toss-up. Either way, it should be interesting.

The night, however, will be tainted by the passing of Whitney Houston. I’m not sure if a last minute tribute will be planned for her.

Without further ado, and after checking out the nominees, here are my predictions for some of the categories:

Record of the Year: Rolling In The Deep – Adele

This it the year’s biggest hit. None of the other nominees comes close in terms of critical acclaim and public reception. Add to it Adele’s contestants being Bruno Mars and Katy Perry and she becomes more than a lock. Sure, the Grammy’s do not always reward the most successful act. But Adele managed this year to bridge critical acclaim with commercial success. It will translate in a few trophies tonight, this being the first.

Album of the Year: 21 – Adele

With other nominees including Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, Rihanna’s Loud and Bruno Mars’ Doo-Wops & Hooligans, not only is Adele’s critically acclaimed and biggest selling album of the year a lock for this, but it would actually be absurd to think anyone else has a chance. What gives Adele an edge over any of the other nominees in this is that she is an artist the Grammy’s can feel safe in showering with awards. She has album of the year in the bag.

Song of the Year: Rolling in the Deep – Adele

As I said, the Grammy’s this year will be Adele-domination night. She will be winning everything. End of story. The fact that this was the biggest crossover hit in the United States in the past 25 years will only add fuel to Adele’s dominating fire.

Best New Artist: The Band Perry

Country acts usually have an advantage when it comes to being awarded best new artist at the Grammy’s because they are usually the ones with the most secure future ahead. Case in point: in the last five years, 2 country acts have won this award: Carrie Underwood and Zac Brown Band. Other winners include Adele, Amy Winehouse and last year’s Esperanza Spalding. Why I think The Band Perry will win is because the Grammy’s tend to overlook pop/hip-hop acts that make it big (Nicki Minaj) and The Band Perry have a great hit under their belt in the form of If I Die Young. A very close second would be Bon Iver.

Best Pop Solo Performance: Someone Like You – Adele

Seeing as this is a category that rewards the vocal performance of a song, it’s easy to see how one can overlook Katy Perry’s Firework. Among the other songs/artists, no one has as big a momentum as Adele. Therefore, it should be an easy win for her – not to mention that Someone Like You is a stunning song as it is.

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: Body and Soul – Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse

You know the Grammy’s will want to award Winehouse a final time, four years after choosing her for Best New Artist, through her last studio recording.

Best Pop Vocal Album: 21 – Adele

She’s going to win album of the year. There’s no way she won’t win this.

Best Rock Performance: The Cave – Mumford & Songs

The fact that this is nominated for both record and song of the year gives this category away. My favorite is Radiohead’s Lotus Flower, though.

Best Rock Album: Come Around Sundown – Kings of Leon

This album may not have found the success proportions of their previous offering but I still see it winning this category.

Best Alternative Album: Torches – Foster The People

Although I prefer Radiohead’s The King of Limbs, it’s easy to see how the success of Pumped Up Kicks would translate into a win here.

Best Rap Performance: Look At Me Now – Chris Brown, Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes

Because Busta Rhymes’ verses are almost impossible to sing?

Best Country Solo Performance: Mama’s Song – Carrie Underwood

Carrie Underwood is what they call a Grammy’s darling. She has performed five times at the Grammy’s in the past six years, four of those being in four consecutive years. And when she attended, she never left empty-handed. With the Grammy’s merging several country vocal categories and Mama’s Song finding its way to a nomination, I think Carrie will win this. It doesn’t hurt that Mama’s Song is a great performance.

Best Country Album: My Kinda Party – Jason Aldean

Following a win at the CMAs for this award and beating the same nominees, Jason Aldean should win this as well.

Best Country Duo/Group Performance: Don’t You Wanna Stay – Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarkson

Similarly to the album category, this duet has won this same category at every country award show. Those wins should carry over here.

Best Folk Album: Barton Hollow – The Civil Wars

The Civil Wars have this in the bag. Their album has garnered critical acclaim and found its way to mainstream success, despite being part of an indie label.

We Found Love – Boyce Avenue (Rihanna Cover)

I heard this at a very cool pub in Batroun yesterday and I think it puts the original to shame.

Listen up:

They made the song their own and did a great job as well.

 

Carrie Underwood & Steven Tyler Rocking CMT Crossroads

For those who thought Carrie Underwood didn’t have it in her, she just proved you wrong. Carrie Underwood not only shone next to Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, she also gave him a run for his money. Not only was the CMT Crossroads featuring both stars spectacular, it was also very rocking.

Prior to the show, Steven Tyler had said Carrie Underwood was the reason he joined the American Idol judging panel:

“You were why I took judging for ‘Idol,’ you are exactly why. Not only could you sing good, but you adapted to this…it’s a pit! It’s a deep, dark, ominous pit. And you get out there on-stage at night with that band, that great band you’ve got and you make people feel happy, first and foremost. All the rest, if people knew what we went through to get out on that stage… you have gotten past that and not a lot of people do – they have to get through drugs and alcohol, booze and divorces and even those didn’t make it. You were a natural at it.”

Carrie, in her turn, replied that Tyler was one of her inspirations growing up:

“I remember as a very small child, I could pick your voice out. Even then, you know that it’s different, you know that it’s special and can pick it out from a million other voices. You were definitely part of what gave me that musical, laid-back, in-the-pocket sensibility on albums and stuff like that.”

So without further ado, the videos:

Cryin’:

Dream On/Just a Dream:

Before He Cheats:

Undo It/Walk This Way:

 

 

A Camel in Downtown Beirut – Literally. A Music Video by Michelle & Noel Keserwany

As Lebanese, we always laugh when a foreigner asks us about our mode of transportation. We brush off their whole “tents and camels” ideas by showing them pictures of ferraris, BMWs and other cars most of us cannot afford but love to take pictures of.

And although most of us haven’t seen a camel in our lives, Michelle & Noel Keserwany, who went viral with their song Jagal El USEK, have a new video out for a song titled: 3al Jamal Bi Wasat Beirut (On a Camel in Downtown Beirut).

The song opens with the following: “Badde kazder 3al jamal bi wasat Beirut 7atta yalli ma ma3o 7a22 benzene ysir 3endo 2amal, 7atta l ajeneb yenbesto wa akhiran shefo l jamal. Khalle kell as7ab l m7allet ya3mlo panic w kyes l shopping tou2a3 men 2id l 3alam l chique… Ana bedde kazder 3al jamal bi wasat Beirut w khalle kell l nes tghar.”

Which translates to: “I want to wander around on a camel in Downtown Beirut to give hope to those who can’t buy gas, so that foreigners can finally be happy that they’ve seen a camel. So the shop owners start to panic and shopping bags fall from the hands of posh shoppers. I want to wander around on a camel in Downtown Beirut and get everyone to be jealous.”

In this simple song, Michelle and Noel Keserwany have painted a sarcastic parody of a part of Lebanese society you cannot but make fun of. The look on the people’s faces? Priceless. The woman holding her nose? Epic. The camel riding next to a Chanel shop most of us won’t dare to enter? Stunning.

This is Beirut! And this is awesome Lebanese talent. Thank you Patrik Abdel Sater for sharing the video with me. You can follow Patrik on Twitter here. He’s also behind the awesome new logo you currently see as a header for the blog and on the Facebook page.

Adonis: A New Lebanese Band

Adonis is the latest band to grace the Lebanese music scene, after the successes of Meen and Mashrou3 Leila. After wanting to and not being able to go to a concert they had at Beirut’s new “it” place Dictateur, I wanted to know what Adonis was: what their sound resembled and if they were worth the hype that reached me through word of mouth. I only got exposed to their music today through their second music video, for the song “Ma Kan Mafroud,” which features Tina Yamout.

The band started last year when lead singer Anthony Khoury and a friend of his, Joey Abou Jawdeh, the band’s guitarist, got together and decided to put some music to Anthony’s lyrics. Soon enough, Anthony’s brother Fabio Khoury, the bassist, and his friend Nicola Hakim, the band’s drummer, and Vladimir Kurumilian on piano. Slowly things started happening for Adonis. They wrote more songs, met musicians with whom they collaborated and from whom they learned. Then they started recording and doing shows here and there. During 2011, their reputation started growing around Lebanon as they appeared in many festivals and had a music video out, as well as an album called “Daw el Baladiyyi.”

The inspiration of their name comes from the small town of Adonis in Mount Lebanon. For lead singer Anthony Khoury, the dullness of this town gave him inspiration for the songs that he wrote. Or as he describes it:

“I started finding magic in the smallest and most fleeting of details, like a street light under which I had my first kiss, or a rooftop on which my childhood friends and I used to hang out on hot summer nights, or a sidewalk or a water tank or or or…. These things and places became solid anchors around which stories, memories, characters are built and given life. The name Adonis evokes in our local imagery the small town as much as the myth, the dull as much as the magical. And it’s precisely in the flickering boundary between these two, the dull and the magical, the ordinary and the poetic, the common and the sacred, that our music is weaved.”

Their sound is very folky. It’s more Mashrou3 Leila than Meen but it’s quite dissimilar from Mashrou3 Leila as well. Lead singer Anthony Khoury describes their sound as one “based on lyrics. We shape our music around texts that generally deal with belonging and identity conflicts, in a sometimes light, sometimes darker and more nostalgic tone, [while] we stay away from direct social commentary and parody.”

And it shows. If anything, their song with Tina Yamout and the fusion they create reminds me of a folk American band I have come to appreciate very recently called The Civil Wars. That is without a doubt a compliment to the sound of this band because The Civil Wars are stunning.

Also, lucky readers, it so happens that I know one of the people who’s part of their most recent music video, for  “Ma Kan Mafroud,”  a song which deals with the theme of loss and the natural instinct to eventually move on.

The video was shot in one night in Sin El Fil and it tells the story of four characters: one that had a miscarriage, one that lost a sister, one that had her country stolen and one who lost a lover. Each one of those characters has a sad story and is seeking catharsis. This salvation will happen through their journey in the bus. The music video, directed by Robert Cremona, depicts the bus ride, where we find Tina Yamout and the band as omniscient narrators, to the backdrop of the characters as they express their grief and their desire to move forward with their lives.

Check out the new music video:

As well as their Facebook page and website.