Tag Archives: music

When Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” Becomes a Masterpiece

To say this cover by Ben Howard of that song is brilliant would be an understatement.

Support Wickerpark 2012!

Wickerpark is an annual festival that takes place in Batroun and which I, as a Batrouni, feel especially proud about. This year will be the second time it’s held after a successful first run last year where over 1500 people attended the two-day festival.

The funds collected were donated in their entirety to the Ministry of the Environment for the replanting of trees in areas ravaged by recent fires, after a campaign centered around “Give Nature a Chance.”

Lebanese mainstream media, however, didn’t care much about Wickerpark. Why’s that? It could be due to the environment ranking so low on our concern radar.

This year’s Wickerpark is about a different issue entirely. Being the coastal city that it is, Batroun has many active fishermen that collect sea urchins in order to sell them. Many people also have a hobby of hunting these sea urchins. As a result of extensive exploitation, their level has declined on a yearly basis until our sea has very few urchins left.

Wickerpark wants to help change that by fundraising efforts to repopulate the sea. In order to do so, they’ve enlisted the help of students at the Marine Biology Center in Batroun. (You can see a picture of one of its unfinished buildings here). So in a way, supporting Wickerpark will not only be helping the Lebanese environment but you’d also be helping fellow Lebanese students in their research and that is always very needed.

The two-day event will take place at an open air venue in Batroun, right by the sea.

The tickets are sold at Librairie Antoine for $30. One ticket will allow you access for the festival’s two days on June 29th and 30th.

On the first day, you’ll be able to attend short-film screenings, ecological fairs, artist exhibitions as well as a series of small acoustic sets.

The second day will be the music festival, featuring different Lebanese bands (No, Meen is not one of them unfortunately):

  • Karl Mattar
  • Sae Lis
  • Who Killed Bruce Lee
  • The Flying Circus
  • Zeid & The Wings
  • The Beirut Groove Collective

Last year’s music festival

The ads for Wickerpark 2012 are quite fun as well. The campaign this year is called “When Nature Pokes Back.” You can watch the ads here:

Come on people. Think about it this way: Batroun is a beautiful city (proof). A weekend in Batroun will definitely be an awesome time. And you’d also be supporting a great cause while also having fun. All of you are also on summer breaks as well. You simply have no excuse not to attend.

Carrie Underwood Covers “Fix You” by Coldplay at Royal Albert Hall Concert

Proving yet again that she can deliver songs better than their original performer, Carrie Underwood took on one of Coldplay’s most famous songs “Fix You” at her UK debut concert at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Adele released a DVD late last year of her concert at the same venue.

Reporters and UK personalities present at the concert were gushing over Underwood’s vocals.

Some examples:

Dan Wooton from The Daily Mail tweeted the following:

@carrieunderwood That was one of the best performances I have ever seen. Thank you for a very special night x

ChartShowTV: Wow! @carrieunderwood was too good tonight in London! Her version of Coldplay’s Fix You was stunning!

And so I don’t bore you, here you go:

Elissa’s New Album: As3ad Wa7da – Review

Remember when I told you Lebanese artists have absolutely no system for releasing albums and that Elissa actually setting a release date for her album was a good thing?

Well, I was wrong. Instead of releasing the album on June 25th, as planned, Elissa’s new album As3ad Wa7da (The Happiest One) was just released, a full week early. I believe it’s due to an early leak which is no excuse for a rush release. I doubt though that her fans are displeased.

The reason I’m reviewing this album, with it not being English music, is that I like Elissa. She is one of my favorite contemporary Lebanese singers, regardless of what some people might say about her vocal abilities. What impresses me the most about her is the fact that she is vocal about her beliefs, be it her religion or political views, in a region where that is frowned upon. I also liked the fact that her albums would usually be balanced between Egyptian and Lebanese songs, not exactly giving one dialect an upper hand over the other.

That last point changed with her newest release. The album holds 14 songs, 2 of which are covers of songs by the late Salwa el Atrib and Warda. Out of the remaining 12 songs, which constitute the new material, 3 are Lebanese songs and the rest is Egyptian. I don’t want to sound xenophobic but I would expect a little more balance from an artist who hails Lebanese nationalism as her politics of choice.

But I digress.

The quality of Elissa’s new album is average compared to her previous releases. After different album covers surfaced, the official one being the one at the top of this post, I was skeptical at what might come out of this. But it was a more or less an enjoyable listen.

Opening with the Egyptian dialect-song “Fi Ouyonak” (In Your Eyes), she caters to the people who await such a style from her: the slow, mellow romantic songs. And then as the album moves through songs, its level doesn’t die down. It remains more or less consistent, giving songs here and there that would please different parts of Elissa’s core fanbase which has been awaiting her album for more than two years now.

Te3ebt Minnak, my favorite song on the album, comes as the fifth track on the album and is as song about a relationship gone sour where the protagonist in Elissa’s song is tired from the person she’s singing to. “I wait for one sweet word from you and when I hear it, I forgot I lived less than an ordinary life with you”

Corny, perhaps. But effective. Of course, that’s my loose translation of one of the song’s lyrics.

Other interesting songs on the album are the Lebanese: Kerehtak Ana and Eghmerni. The former comes around the middle of the album while the latter follows it a song later. Kerehtak Ana is obviously about the end of the relationship while Eghmerni is the total opposite, boasting some interesting poetic nuances from writer Siham el Sha3sha3. However, both of them could have been so much better – they both needed an extra revision to bring them to their full potential, be it musically or production-wise.

Elissa’s take on Salwa el Atrib’s  “Alouli el Eid” is interesting but I’m a fan of the song to begin with while her cover of Warda’s “Lola el Malama” shows a side of her vocals that most people would have doubted otherwise. Lola el Malama is also better-delivered from Elissa than Alouli el Eid.

As3ad Wa7da could have used the touch of Marwan Khoury who delivered some of Elissa’s best songs (Betmoun comes to mind), but overall it will satisfy those who like her. However, once the initial hype sets down, one wonders is this really the best Elissa can come up with after a two year and a half wait?

Judging by her more superior previous albums, As3ad Wa7da is an album that made Elissa transiently happy and will make her fans also happy that their favorite singer delivered a new album for them to listen to. But as a casual fan, As3ad Wa7da does almost nothing for me, apart from the few songs on there that I consider as interesting. In fact, I think it lacks anything that would jump at you like her previous albums did (the previous one had Aa Bali Habibi, the one before had Betmoun). Some songs on there are also entirely dispensable that I’ve found myself completely losing interesting halfway through them.

Overall, As3ad Wa7da has the exact formula that an Elissa album would have, except the songs are not as striking: the romantic slow songs, the upbeat dancey songs and the midtempos with trance verses interspersed in them.

6/10

Listen to: Te3ebt Minnak, Kerehtak Ana, As3ad Wa7da.

Blown Away (Single Review) – Carrie Underwood

Dry lightning cracks across the sky, those storm clouds gather in her eyes. Daddy was a mean old mister, mama was an angel in the ground. The weatherman called for a twister. She prayed blow it down.

To an incessant heartbeat-like drum, Carrie Underwood’s newest single opens. Blown Away, the second single off the album of the same title, is the darkest song on the album in question and a drastic departure from anything Underwood had given before, be it musically or lyrically.

As Carrie Underwood’s voice breaks in a delivery echoing the character’s need for peace, the song shifts into an ethereal production where Underwood goes into a multi-layered lower register to sing the song’s most haunting line, which confirms what the opening verse makes you think of.

There’s not enough rain in Oklahoma to wash the sins out of that house. There’s not enough wind in Oklahoma to wash the sins out of that past.

Carrie Underwood may have not been the victim of abuse but she sings Blown Away with so much conviction that it’s hard to think her life wasn’t the struggle she portrays. As she feigns power to sing the song’s chorus, you can’t but hear a faint cry in her voice as she pleads to have her problems blown away by the impeding twister.

Shatter every window till it’s all blown away. Every brick, every board, every slamming door blown away. Till there’s nothing left standing, nothing left to yesterday. Every tear-soaked whiskey memory blown away, blown away.

As the tornado nears her house, the character in Underwood’s song hides away in the cellar of the house, leaving her “daddy laid there passed on the couch.” As she listened to the screaming of the wind, the song exemplifies the amount of hurt the girl has been put through in her life.

Some people called it taking shelter. She called it sweet revenge.

As Underwood shifts between impeccable falsettos and power-singing in her delivery, she delivers an excellent song that is unlike anything else on any form of mainstream radio today. Carrie Underwood is not only singing about whiskey-soaked abuse memories, she’s also telling the story of a daughter leaving her father’s breathing body to the mercy of a wind that knows no mercy, all to a chilling production.

The country-pop production is another instance in which Underwood pushes the envelope further for country radio after a country-rock first single in Good Girl. In Blown Away, the dramatic production proves necessary to bring full effect to a song that desperately cried for such an epic dramatic feel, be it on the thundery chorus or the chilling pre-chorus.

Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear, the creators of Underwood’s biggest hit Before He Cheats, have given her the song that might just rival that. Some country audiences will be rubbed the wrong way with the theme of this song but with something this incredible, Underwood shouldn’t care the least. In fact, she should be proud pf that because it’ll be the mark of how great a song this is. With Blown Away, Carrie Underwood has yet again thrown caution to the wind and let her guards get blown away.

Blown Away is a song you can’t resist getting blown away with.

10/10

Listen to the song here:

And watch a sneak-peek into the music video here: