I don't get tired of these two songs, so let's start here.
1. Brenton Wood's "Oogum Boogum." I wouldn't bother with the entire album, Brenton Wood's 18 Best. He had two hits, the other one being "Gimme Little Sign," and the rest of the Best album sounds pretty much like those two songs. So Brenton Wood didn't have a huge career or a big impact, but "Oogum Boogum" slays me every time I hear it. It's about this guy who likes a girl and can't get over what she is wearing, because she looks so hypnotically cute. The first time I heard it I was knocked over. I love the lyrics and the tune, and that's it. Nothin' fancy to report beyond that. We listen to a radio station that plays the song over and over at work, and I never grow tired of it. So I finally bought it, and it's one of those songs that I just get excited to hear and share with people. This one was my top pick from the very git' go with no controversy.
Here's a little video of the man himself.
2. The second song was harder to narrow down. Octo and I have introduced each other to a lot of music. So he was going to suggest this one, and I said, "Oh, but that's mine! Didn't I introduce you to that song?" So he gave it back to me. It's Ben Folds and William Shatner's 2004 cover of "Common People," from the album Has Been. The original is from Pulp's 1995 album Different Class. I bought the Has Been on a lark, thinking it would just be funny. There are actually some fantastic songs on there. "I Can't Get Behind That" and "You'll Have Time" are clever. It was very satisfying to hear Octo laugh out loud several times--gotta love sharing your music. But I think "Common People" is just a great song, and this is a beautiful cover of it. The way the instrumentals build kinda gets me going every time I hear it. There's something so rebellious and fun about this track. It's just another song that kind of kills me on a regular basis, and I never want to skip through it.
For comparison sake, I think it would be good to get the Pulp version as well as the cover. But to save you 99 cents, here's a really great video of the Pulp version.
While I don't think "Common People" is really a mockery of Shatner, I did find this funny cartoon while surfing Youtube, and it's worth sharing, too.
Salem's Lot 1979 and Salem's Lot 2024
Happy Halloween everybody! Julie's working late and the boy doesn't have school tomorrow so he's heading to one of those crazy f...
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(2007) * First of all let me say that as far as I could tell there are absolutely no dead teenagers in this entire film. Every year just ...
6 comments:
LOVE "Common people!" Great track. Never heard it before.
You put it up, and I dug it, and then you took it down and I was afraid you'd changed your mind. Great stuff.
I was having some issues with Youtube. They have this feature that lets you share stuff on your blog, but it just puts it up automatically. I was looking for that little "embed" function and saw it later.
When I first heard this song, Shatner's doing his "singing while speaking" thing, and it gets to the line "She just smiled and held my hand" and it was this huge vocal leap: actual singing, and great singing, and I thought "go Bill GO! Wow, he can really sing!"
But of course it isn't him. Good old Joe Jackson handles the singy stuff, and he kicks all kinds of ass.
I hadn't heard the original until today, and while it's tasty I've completely fallen for the Shatner version. One difference I like is that the backup singers in the original chant "wanna live with common people" while in the Shatner version "live" has been swapped out with "sleep."
I've always been completely baffled by the Shatner singing phenomenon but I guess this is as good a time as any to get my feet wet.
The Shatner singing "phenomenon" is garbage; pure ironic comedy schtick.
My praise was for the original, obviously.
I dig the Shatner version. It's not something I listen to a lot, but I think I've got an album full of his spoken word singing somewhere. This is the best song on it, IIR.
Also, since apparently we're blowing off the wait-till-Friday rule for comments, I love that Oogum boogum song too. I didn't know that's what it was called, and I couldn't remember where I knew it from (probably Almost Famous).
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