Whenever You Need Somebody

I don't care about the things that people say. It's this song I think about each and every day. (Hmm, perhaps not every day, but pretty frequently, that's for sure.) Maybe I should stop quoting lyrics from this song and tell you something about it instead.

I'm late, again. If you were paying close attention, you would notice that this is coming out on Tuesday instead of Monday. But my plans haven't been affected all that much by what day it is. The time for the return is here.

The return of Rick Astley. One of the great voices is back.

No, I didn't come up with that line. I saw it in an ad. You're probably expecting me to tell you something about how Rick wrote the song, how he felt about the success of it, etc... but what if I told you that this wasn't Rick's song? 

I'm going to have some angry fans on my doorstep now. "But it's the title track for the album!" "I clearly remember watching him sing this on live TV when I was 13!" Unfortunately, even though my cover was mostly inspired by Rick's version, I must admit that the song isn't an original from him.

Listen to the song here
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Spring Song

I've discovered that I should start writing up here. If I don't, then previews of the post (like on Google search, or on the side of my homepage) will just show the piece of HTML for the audio, instead of anything I actually said. I also hope you will forgive me for forgetting to set this post up on Sunday.

Listen to the song here
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Today's song was written by Felix Mendelssohn as part of a collection called "Songs Without Words." There were 8 different books of these that were published at different times in Mendelssohn's life. In the 1830s and '40s, when they were written, pianos were becoming more popular and larger numbers of people were learning to play them. Mendelssohn's songs became a favorite because they weren't too hard for new pianists to play. (If I ever feel like this one was too easy to play, maybe I should check out the ragtime version that I heard about while looking it up.)

Some of the volumes in the collection were dedicated to family members or to other musicians that Mendelssohn knew. However, not all of the songs got their own names like this one. Most of them were simply designated by the tempo and the key.

Mendelssohn was once approached with an offer to have lyrics written for these songs. He turned it down, saying that what he was expressing with his music was not too indefinite to put into words, but rather too definite. Perhaps he was trying to say that music can connect with a person in a way that words can't really convey.

Maybe I should rework the saying about being remembered for how you make people feel. "People might forget the lyrics of your songs, and they might forget how you play your instrument, but they will never forget how your music made them feel."

Keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya

No More Looking for Love

Listen to the song here
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This one's by Rick Astley.

"Rick?" you're going to say. "Man, I was young when his songs were coming out. I forgot about his existence decades ago."

Well, someone told me recently that a lot of old songs from the 70s and 80s can actually be better than modern music. So I'm partially playing this for him.

I'm also in a state where I've just found a good singer and am now perpetually determined to listen to their songs. There's a big 2018 throwback happening here. You may remember that after I played the song "River" and found that a lot of people were listening to it, I proceeded to play several more of Josh Groban's songs on my YouTube channel. Well, guess what? Now, after this one, you'll be getting new posts of Rick's songs every week!

Oh. You don't want that. I'll only play them every 2 weeks, then. To extend the parallel even further, my computer is attempting to correct me on the spelling of Astley like it did for the spelling of Groban back in 2018.

That's where the comparison stops, though. "River" had just come out weeks before my cover was recorded. Today's song was on Rick's first album that was released in 1987. So I'm also playing it for another someone who asks me on a regular basis, "Were you listening to songs from the 80s again?" 

Speaking of 1987, did you ever think about how that was exactly 35 years ago? You're not the only one to notice. Apparently, the CD of that album was just re-released to celebrate that it's been 35 years. Once I heard that, I was determined. If I'm going to play Rick Astley songs, I might as well get rolling and do it now. So, if Rick is celebrating, one could argue that I'm playing this song for him, too.

We're done, right? Now that we've added Rick himself to the list, there couldn't be anyone else I'm playing it for, right? Unfortunately, I have to tell you that you forgot someone.

You forgot Liya.

Maybe after all my years of studying classical music and all my years in jazz bands, I'm supposed to be on another level in which I don't like these 80s songs. But that doesn't change the fact that I actually like them. (In fact, if you want to hear a little bit of music theory, I noticed while learning this song that it's in the key of F, but it's using notes from the Bb major scale. That bears a striking resemblance to a lot of jazz and blues tunes that I've played. Maybe I'm not falling too far from the tree.)

What I haven't said yet is that I'm playing this song for myself. And I'm playing it for you, the person who's listening to this recording, so that you can keep filling your teacup with music.

~Liya