Star Eyes

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! Today, I'm playing a jazz standard called "Star Eyes." This song was made for a film that was released in 1943, but it was made popular among musicians when Charlie Parker recorded it several years later. I hope you like listening to it!


Listen to the song here
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Sometimes, a musician plays a song because everyone is listening to it. Other times, everyone is listening to a song because a certain person played it.

If you were looking for records in 1951, you probably wouldn't search for a song from a movie that had been made 8 years ago, but a new recording from Charlie Parker might catch your eye, even if the two recordings are of the same song.

You can't listen to everyone, so you set up some influencers for yourself that you usually listen to. If they are recording new songs, you'll know, and you won't pay as much attention to other songs that are being published. Everyone has people that influence them more than others, whether they think so or not.

Some of them are just decided by chance or the conditions you are in. This would be especially apparent in 1951, when there weren't so many wireless connections. You'd be limited to the people that are already around you throughout your day. However, that doesn't mean everything is up to chance. You're always making decisions that determine who is in front of you - who to ask about XYZ, what video to click on, whether to sign up for the mailing list...

One of the reasons why musicians value listening to recordings is that it makes them sound more like the people they listen to. A musician might even actively try to play a song the same way it sounds in a recording. In the same way, you become like the people that are influencing you. That makes it important to choose who you listen to. 

It's impossible to go without listening to someone, and there's no time to listen to everyone. So, the best person to listen to is someone who is like what you want to become.

Keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya