Category: Music

Borrowed Heaven

I just bought The Corrs’ new album Borrowed Heaven a couple of days ago, and well let’s just say it’s been playing in my car non-stop ever since.

I’ve been a fan of The Corrs ever since I heard “Only When I Sleep” from their album Talk On Corners. After that, I went on to buy all their albums starting from Forgiven Not Forgotten to Borrowed Heaven passing by the great Unplugged.

I love their music, their style is simply unique.
This album continues on the same tone. It lifts you off the ground with it’s sweet tunes and lyrics, and Andrea’s sweet voice makes you feel like you’re floating somewhere between the heavens.

From the opening song “Summer Sunshine” to the instrumental “Silver Strand” at the end, this album is full of great and beautiful songs.

My faves from the first listen are: Summer Sunshine, Angel, Long Night, Baby Be Brave and Silver Strand.
I always love the celtic intrumental pieces they include in their albums. They’re amazing.

I’m in my second listen to it, and it’s getting even better and better 🙂

The Corrs rock!

“Esther”, The artist formerly known as Madonna

Madonna has spent years building a reputation with her name, and now she’s changing it.

The pop diva has adopted the Hebrew name Esther. She says the move is in part due to her religious beliefs as she studies Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah.

Even though this is not as mad as Prince dropping his name and choosing a symbol instead of it, it’s quite bad.
Of course, Madonna as a person has all the right to do whatever she wants to personally, and it’s none of anyone’s business. I just think it’s stupid from a career/marketing point of view.

Madonna is a household name now. Everyone knows Madonna. She’s up there with a very few people who are known in any household from the kids up to the grandparents.

Madonna is a brand whether you like it or not. Any music with the brand Madonna on it is automatically a hit.

Madonna is a legend.

Dropping such a well known name and changing it to something else is a bad move career-wise, I think.

Of course, being a big music fan, I’ll know Madonna is Esther, and I know she’ll always keep pouring out that great music of hers, and that’s what counts to me. I don’t care what she calls herself in the end of the day.

But not everyone is like me, not everyone knows what is going on in the music world. All they know is they like Madonna and her music. Esther? Who’s that? Oh yeah, she sounds a bit like Madonna. Talking of that, Where’s Madonna? She’s the best!

Ray Charles RIP

Ray Charles, the genius soul, blues and gospel singer has died at the age of 73 in Beverly Hills, California.

The cause of his death is complications from liver disease.

It’s a real loss to the music world. Ray Charles awed us all with his great music, endless talent and his strong will.

I remember listening to Ray Charles ever since I was a kid, as my dad is a fan of his, and growing up to fall in love with his music too.
His songs will remain engraved in every music lover’s mind and in the history of world music.
Hits like “Georgia On My Mind” and “Hit the Road, Jack” will never be forgotten.

Ray Charles will live on through his beautiful music.

Arabian Music Awards

Last weekend, the first Arabian Music Awards were held in Dubai, and from what I read online, they were one big technical disaster, with loads of problems kicking in.

Anyway, today Future TV aired an edited version of the awards show, and here are the main awards and their winners:

– Best Male Singer: Amr Diab
– Best Female Singer: Nawal Zoghbi
– Best New Male Singer: Ewan
– Best New Female Singer: Carol Samaha
– Best Arab video clip: Elissa (Agmal Ihsas)
– Best Modern Act: MTM
– Best Dance Act: Guy Manoukian
– Best Duet: Kathem El Saher & Sarah Brightman
– Best Live Performer: Assi Hallani

Also invited to perform at the show were: Sarah Brightman, Outlandish and Michael Learns to Rock.

It shows it was heavily edited but still some technical problems came through.
Anyway, it’s a good idea and hopefully next year it won’t be as bad.

Over the past year or so, I’ve been developing more and more interest in Arabic music as it’s being modernized and is more to my liking now.

CNET launches free music downloads

CNET, who bought MP3.com last year, have launched a new free music download service allowing users to search and download what it says are thousands of songs contributed by independent and unsigned artists.
That is basically the same thing the original MP3.com did.

The service is based on CNet’s download site and is available at: http://music.download.com/.

The music download service will be separate from the MP3.com Web site, which CNET said it will relaunch soon as a music-information site.

Now, I actually like CNet’s websites and services, they’re a very good source of information (News.com, ZDNet) and downloads (Download.com).
But the step they took when they bought MP3.com was a very stupid one. It had and still has no meaning or goal.

They buy a website, shut it down, then relaunch another website that does exactly the same thing but under another name, thereby losing the brand and followers of the first service, and then they plan to relaunch the original website as something totally different.
I don’t see where all of this is going and what strategy these people are following.

MP3.com was obviously dead internet meat with no real value. (with all due respect to the artists who used to upload their stuff there).
It’s just that, as a Business, MP3.com sucked.
So, why in God’s name CNet thought it was smart to buy it is beyond my brain’s capabilities of understanding.
Maybe they wanted the cool domain name?!

Outlandish: Walou

A friend of mine at work just let me hear Outlandish’s new song “Walou”, and I have to say: I just love it!

It’s a really cool song, with real nice beats and an infectuous tune.
The style reminds me a bit of Craig David and uptempo R’N’B.

I’ll be trying to get the song myself soon, and am sure I’ll be hearing a lot of it.

I talked about Outlandish before when they released a cover of “Aicha”.
They are a group from Denmark, with roots from Morocco, Pakistan & Honduras.

I wish them the best of luck in their careers, they’re on a great track, I think.

M.C. Hammer

Last night, as I was zapping through the different satellite channels, I found a movie about M.C. Hammer on Multivision.
Having one of those flashback moments, I decided to watch the movie.

It was a nice movie, not anything extraordinary, but nice in a way that it introduced me to his life, how he made it, and how his musical career all ended.

It definitely brought back a lot of memories of the times when Hammer was at the top of his game, when it was “Hammer Time”.

In fact, the first music tape I ever bought was an M.C. Hammer album “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” including his hit single “U Can’t Touch This”.
Being a music freak, I also remember detecting that the whole catchy tune of that song was actually a rip off from an older song from the 80’s called “Superfreak”.

I didn’t really like much of his work after that, but still Hammer is one of the people who helped in making rap more mainstream.

Man, I remember how my friends and I used to listen to his songs, how we’d be trying to copy his dance moves and all.
Some of my friends even went as far as copying his hair style.
Thank God they didn’t go any further than that, because that guy’s sense of style sucked like hell.

Those were some good times though 🙂
Oh, memories…

Star Academy concerts in Tunisia

The Star Academy Middle East students will be passing by Tunisia in their Arab tour to perform 2 concerts.

The first concert will be on May 1st at the Palace of Sports in El Menzah / Tunis.
The second will be on May 4th at the open air theatre in Sfax.

It’ll be a live concert in which the students will dance and sing their best songs from the show as well as some other songs especially for the tour.

The Tunisia concerts are 2 of a series of concerts that will be held across the Arab world.

3 Tunisians competed for the title at Star Academy Middle East, 2 of whom reached the final stages Ahmad & Bahaa.

It still hasn’t been announced when tickets will go for sale.

The Best of Star Academy on LBC

Today LBC aired a special called “The Best of Star Academy” in which they presented the best moments of the recently finished Arab Star Academy.

As I mentioned before, I only got to watch the last prime, and actually thought that Bashar deserved to win.

Anyway, after watching the best moments from the past primes and some other off-prime moments with the candidates, I actually think that either Ahmad (the Tunisian) or Bashar (the Kuwaiti) should have won.
They both have the best voices of all, even though Bashar is more active and more present on stage.

Anyway, I can also see why people liked Mohamed Attiah, the winner of Star Academy LBC, he seems like a really nice and funny guy.

What I find the most interesting from this whole Star Academy experience is how much people got addicted to it and how it became some sort of cult.
It’s one of the first attempts at reality tv by Arabs and it somehow revolutionized prime tv.