I’ve been so far down the visual art rabbit hole lately that I forgot how to use words. Singing still seems to work. Please enjoy my Caroloake song #51 for today’s Music Monday and please keep well everyone.

Carolaoke Song #50 - No Doubt - "In My Head"

Original Song Reference:

I’ve been really getting into singers like Caro Emerald and Paloma Faith lately. The song I chose today is Paloma Faith’s “Upside Down”. This song is perfect in every way. The words, the music, the music video and most of all, her vocals (she's amazing!)

I’m especially fond of these lyrics:

“I don't care (care care)
I'm halfway there (nowhere)
On a road that leads me to straight to who knows where…”

For some reason it reminds me of the line in Almost Famous when Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) tells young William Miller (Patrick Fugit) “you’ll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle.”

Carolaoke Song #50 - Paloma Faith - "Upside Down"

Original Song Reference:

Juice Newton! She was in heavy rotation at my parents house when I was younger. If I remember correctly, she was also inside the jukebox at the campground that we spent most summers at (great childhood memories by the way, thank you Mom and Dad!) That’s the first place I heard Steve Miller Band’s, “Abracadabra” and I couldn’t get enough of playing that over and over again. That jukebox sounded amazing - all warm and bass(y). It was cool to be down there when it was raining during the week and nobody was there. That was some freedom, let me tell you. My sister and I would entertain ourselves listening to music and playing the various arcade games that were there, feeling like grownups even though the camper was just up the hill. The campground even had a little store on the premises that we’d get candy at to take back up to the camper.

A note about the actual karaoke track I used for this little tribute. The instrumental part of the track is really bang on, however, the male backup singers in this version come on like a team of football players singing along in the locker room and was throwing me off my girly Juice Newton vibe. I mean no disrespect to anyone, especially football players who may or may not be able to sing, it just stood out to me as such. I provided a little sound clip of what it sounded like before I added my vocals. I found it very entertaining.

Male backing vocals sample:

Carolaoke Song #49 - Juice Newton - "Queen of Hearts"

Original Song Reference:

I remember Lance Dobersek sharing some footage of Sarah McLachlan recording music inside a church with about a million candles lit and that’s the shit I’m talking about. I’ve been working on the little room I record in to make it more ambient - lava lamps, strings of fruit lights, weird lamps - that sort of thing. I mean, why not make it look and feel like stage atmosphere?

Carolaoke Song #48 - Sarah McLachlan - "Building a Mystery"

Original Song Reference:

This is a song I’d “scream sing” all the way down from Madison to Milwaukee for Sweet Jelly practices on Tuesday nights once upon a time long long long ago. All day I had been in a cube at a toy company making Flash animations for the children and I tried hard to keep a lid on my growing excitement for rocking out later but I didn’t do a very good job. I know I made a spectacle of myself. It really did feel weird being in a band while I worked at a button-upped corporation. It always felt like I was doing something wrong UNTIL I read that Elvis Costello was also in a complete non-rock quiet computer job and wrote songs while he worked there. Then I started to feel a lot better about my weird affliction for wanting to be in a band.

Carolaoke Song #47 - Sinéad O'Connor - "No Man's Woman"

Original Song Reference: