would you believe this is a love song?

"Stand Inside Your Love"

You and me
Meant to be
Immutable
Impossible
It's destiny
Pure lunacy
Incalculable
Insufferable
But for the last time
You're everything that I want and ask for
You're all that I'd dreamed
Who wouldn't be the one you love
Who wouldn't stand inside your love
Protected and the lover of
A pure soul and beautiful you
Don't understand
Don't feel me now
I will breathe
For the both of us
Travel the world
Traverse the skies
Your home is here
Within my heart
And for the first time
I feel as though I am reborn
In my mind
Recast as child and mystic sage
Who wouldn't be the one you love
Who wouldn't stand inside your love
And for the first time
I'm telling you how much I need and bleed for
Your every move and waking sound
In my time
I'll wrap my wire around your heart and your mind
You're mine forever now
Who wouldn't be the one you love and live for
Who wouldn't stand inside your love and die for
Who wouldn't be the one you love


and he kissed her foot.

Bloc Party- Signs

“At your funeral I was so upset. So up…. So upset.”
Sigh. It has got to make you want to sigh. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

He is one of those musicians who have voice as instrument. Others include Thom Yorke, M.Nasir, Isaac Brock, Greg Paquet, Hamilton Leithauser, John Frusciante, Ian Curtis, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Sarah McLachlan, Regina Spektor, Jeff Buckley, Glen Hansard, Paul Banks, Caleb Followill, Julian Casablancas and a never-exhausted-list of them. Listen as the high pitch music opens the song and later his low tone voice enters. As the song progresses, he weaves in his high tone with the music. It could not have been more pretty or clever.

I have to say the highest point of the song is when he sings the line that I have quoted above. It most definitely will do something to your heart.

Listen here on YouTube


** Names added after Kye's comment =)

Gotta love them Swedes

Even if their lyrics sometimes sound funny. Okay, maybe the chorus (the most blatant lines) were so frickin cliched. But I checked out the lyrics properly just now, and the other parts weren't so bad. Still pretty corny. But her voice and the guitars and all that Swedish goodness makes up for it.


Fine Line



I love her voice.

Without a doubt, Coldplay's not-so-new-but-new-enough-for-me (isn't it amazing how we can invent pseudoadjectives by merely stringing a group of nonadjectives with dashes?) Viva la Vida is a great album, challenged only by the classic greatness of Parachutes, but my favorite song that I play on loop in the car, and in my head, on my lips, and under my breath to freak out nearby train passengers remains the ever uplifting Strawberry Swing. A catchier song never sounded more sincere.

They were sitting
They were sitting on the strawberry swing
Every moment was so precious

They were sitting
They were talking under strawberry swing
Everybody was for fighting
Wouldn't wanna waste a thing

Cold, cold water bring me round
Now my feet won't touch the ground
Cold, cold water what ya say?
When it's such…
It's such a perfect day
It's such a perfect day

I remember
We were walking up to strawberry swing
I can't wait until the morning
Wouldn't wanna change a thing

People moving all the time
Inside a perfectly straight line
Don't you wanna curve away?
When it's such…
It's such a perfect day
It's such a perfect day

Now the sky could be blue
I don't mind
Without you it's a waste of time

Could be blue
I don’t mind
Without you it’s a waste of time

Could be blue,
could be grey
without you I’m just miles away

could be blue
I don’t mind
Without you it’s a waste of time

Nothing like a group of little words to say the biggest things.

Guilty Pleasures

...out of that dark place in my closet where there's a community of dust bunnies picking their nose in public.

Many of us secretly lace ourselves in the poisonous. In the ridiculous. In the embarrassing. Often times we do it behind closed doors, in dark alleys or behind big oak trees. Within the company of the silent walls, taciturn pets, oblivious parents and stale dust passing by. Some of us embrace our hidden skeletons, take them out to lunch and do the salsa with them in public. Here’s a less torrential alternative. Share it here on The Loop. Because amongst friends, who can really play the fool? Amongst friends, we’re all just fools with our guards down at a higher percentage than you’d allow in the presence of monster in-laws. If you’re going to tell me you’ve never listened to anything shameful before, then I’m going to go over there and talk to your mother. I’m sure she still remembers all those hours you spent listening to N’Sync/Westlife/Spice Girls and staring lovingly into the eyes of Lance. Sure, at that time you didn’t know he was gay. At that time you didn’t know that gay meant not in love with you…because you had the wrong genitalia. At least at the time you weren’t sure of the human anatomy nor did you have proper taste. C’mon, Lance? He didn’t need a press conference, it was pretty obvious. He was eurotrash bleached blonde!
AND he didn’t sing. He just danced around. WITH OTHER MEN. Hm…

Anyway, I’m going to share with you today something I found way back when embarrassment was acceptable if you’re trying to be your own mind, body and soul. And trust me when I say that at that time, society still mattered, school girl crushes were still being conjured by the sight of boys and hope was a compound found in breathing air. Something from the past. Something that hasn’t been in rotation for many years. I don’t even have it in my computer but I’m sure there’s a copy in one of my old back up CDs somewhere. It doesn’t matter because we won’t be needing the mp3.

Now, this is going to be emo. This is emo. This is blistered-pieces-of-a-broken-heart emo.
However, there’s no beware-of-screaming-feral-vocalist warning here. This is Butch Walker’s Mixtape. It is a guilty pleasure I’m foisting upon your innocent ears because it is so teenage poetry. Lost love being the subject matter. Pounding fists and breaking things being the actions taking place. Moping insides included.

I don’t remember how I came about it. I don’t remember what I felt about it. But I do remember that it was just something that latched on to me like a 10 feet long tape worm. I remember it playing in the dark as I tried to fall asleep and always thinking my god, is he going to strain his heart? This is cacat.

But c’mon! It was…it is emo catchy, mixed with boo hoo sorrow. Butch Walker delivered it with all that he had in him. I’m sure he tore opened some stitches and even BLED.

I didn’t listen to it on loop back then and I’m not asking you to either. I just want to share this little slice of disconcerting music that once upon a time I thought was ok to listen to. Butch Walker is whiney, lame, pathetic and appalling. The song and lyrics is whiney, lame, pathetic and appalling.

Example:

You say hello, inside I'm screaming I love you
You say goodnight, in my mind
I'm sleeping next to you
You drive away from my car crash of a heart
And I don't know.

You’re in for some bad music. This comes from a guy who did pretty much everything Avril Lavigne has ever put out. I know. I can feel the tumult of all minds from here. If you’re wearing white, change first before your brain explodes. It’s to be kind to your mother.

Maybe it is best that I just throw fecal matter at your bedroom window instead of making you read this. But where’s the fun in that?

And yes, with all that you’re permitted to laugh at me.

Rest assured I’m not listening to it anymore and it actually ceased being a guilty pleasure way back when it came up and I felt my ears being sexually assaulted. Like being licked in the lobe by some pervert. Or Richard Simmons. Or Gay Aiken. That was how unnerving the realization that this guilty pleasure is now dead and buried. Not of course until you suffer too.

As if we needed a creepy video to prove my point but let’s go all out for the experience.

There goes my unsullied reputation for good music =) I do it all for you.

J'suis Snob

When at the movies, I am disposed to choosing an international or a foreign film over the latest blockbuster flick starring some shameless American displaying his six pack abs, or her double D boobies. Not that boobies can actually be seen on the wide screen of a Malaysian cinema but don’t worry; I’m not into same-sex provocation either.

Anyway, it is not the same when it comes to music. I am inclined to listen to music made in English saved for a handful of songs that I somehow picked up along the way that is not conveyed in the current lingua franca. Frankly, I don’t understand these few songs but as we can all agree, the language of music is universal. Those foreign songs include a Spanish rock tune (typical, eh?), a popular German love ballad from the 90s (!!!), a Japanese theme song for a once crazed-over Japanese drama (I am susceptible to sibling influences), and M. Nasir.

I know M. Nasir is not exactly foreign. Allow me to venture on a tangent here for a minute. I like M. Nasir. Although Malay is my mother tongue but I will admit, rather overtly, that I do not listen to Malay music. It is not that I am opposed to Malay music. It is just, in my enclosed opinion, bad.
Or not good.
Or annoying.
Or ridiculous.
With the exception of M. Nasir. But why is M. Nasir different? How is it that M. Nasir can tower over the mainstream acts of the Malay music industry, hold his own and completely kick ass? Not only is he all that, but he has no Western influences either. His music is not some clever fusing of East and West nor churned out using a pop formula.

It is because sonically, he’s above mainstream deliverance. Because he can pen Malay literature and package it in a respectable fashion of music. How he merges his vocals, his words and his vision is solidly and intricately done. An apt representation of the arts that he has dedicated himself to producing. Creative yet infused with tradition. He even uses his masterful skills of pepatahs and not only am I capable of understanding it but I am in awed by his laudable brilliance. I can’t do it (D.U.H) and other Malay artists can’t do it either, not even under M. Nasir’s direction (such as the appalling Mawi). But I digress. My gushing over the musical genius of M. Nasir can be spared a different post.

Through the handful of foreign songs that are in my collection of music, one language is less evanescent, less difficult to tire of especially if I can’t extract any real meaning from the lyrics since it is unintelligible to my limited understanding of languages. I speak of the French. It’s so charming a language and so fine-tuned in sound. It’s classy, airy, and romantic. It has the ability to create a fanciful reverie. Listening to the French sing is like being let in on a secret that you mustn’t reveal to anyone even though you wouldn’t be able to anyhow given the fact that you cannot repeat what you don’t understand. Although French songs sound less cohesive in the sense that the words don’t follow in rhyme and it sounds verbose, but the delivery is often key to have it come off very sensible. In fact, despite not speaking French (and no, all those college French classes I took has not resulted in me speaking any real French), I find listening to French, very meaningful.

J’suis Snob is a classically jazzy, old-feel number from a deceased iconic Frenchman, Boris Vian. He was a man with verve and panache in his style of work that he has left as his legacy. And if I were a man, I’d have loved to have been him because this theme song of his fits his nature down to a T. A nature I’d have no problem adapting as my own. In fact, maybe it’s a nature I’m already well comfortable with. It’s not about being arrogant although the song oozes nothing else. But it’s about class. It’s about elegance. An exclusive self-absorption that is also convivial with a sleek touch in the manner of the 50’s. Boris Vian was a prominent controversial novelist, playwright, engineer, musician, actor, translator or basically an all around Renaissance Man back in the 1940’s and 50’s. He was also the one (along with a friend by the name of Henri Salvador) to write the first French Rock n’ Roll song.

J’suis Snob translated in English is “I am a Snob”. This song is a monologue. Somewhat of a soliloquy. It is Boris Vian declaring himself as an upper class, high-end, high-held nose and he owns up to the life so unabashedly. We could all use this egocentric liberation once in awhile and instead of getting yourself lipo and hair extensions and then proceeding to attend the talk-of-the-town gala, indulging in this song is sufficient enough. Indulgence is the word. What with lines such as “I have accidents in Jaguar, I spend August in bed, it is in small details like that, that one is snob or not”, it is that type of affluent flaunting and that level of grandeur.

The last 2 words this guy supposedly said before he literally dropped dead was “My ass!”
J’suis snob? I think so.

Download here.

Cath- Death Cab For Cutie

Cath, she stands with a well-intentioned man
But she can't relax with his hand on the small of her back
And as the flashbulbs burst
She holds a smile like someone would hold a crying child

And soon everybody will ask what became of you
'Cause your heart was dying fast, and you didn't know what to do

Cath, it seems that you live in someone else's dream
In a hand-me-down wedding dress
Where the things that could have been all repressed
But you said your vows, and you closed the door
On so many men who would have loved you more

And soon everybody will ask what became of you
'Cause your heart was dying fast, and you didn't know what to do

The whispers that it won't last roll up and down the pews
But if their hearts were dying that fast,
They'd have done the same as you
And I'd have done the same as you



There isn't much to decipher for this one. (so I think). Shaz asked me what I thought the line She holds a smile like someone would hold a crying child meant. At the time, I was a stranger to the song and its lyrics, and I answered offhandedly, "Smiling while gritting your teeth?"

Now that I've heard the song on loop, I realize now the heart of the song resides in that one line. All that tension, all the clench, all that quiet frustration, transferred mercilessly on some innocent molars. Hidden behind a desperately plastered smile.

Sometimes you have nothing else left to do.