#sundayrevival Beautiful - Christina Aguilera

Beautiful - Christina Aguilera

I guess that beautiful moments just come from either being with the right people, or doing the right things... if you are able to find the intersection of these two sets, well, you've just scored a goal! It doesn't take much to get there, but somehow life manages to always make it quite complicated, and this makes the cherishing of these special moments even more important. Out of the intersection of sets mentioned above, here is a song for you today. I used to love this when I was a teenager... it was on one of those compilation albums that were quite popular in the 90s and early 00s, one of the first CDs I added to my library. It's always a pleasure to take this off the dusty shelf!

Taxi ride - Tori Amos

Taxi ride - Tori Amos

Don't know why, tonight I felt the need to watch/listen to some live performance of Tori Amos (if you ever need a reason for that feeling), and thanking her incredible productivity, a quick and easy YouTube search brought me to find what I was looking for. It's been incredibly soothing and I will forever be grateful to the forces of the universe that have brought me to discover her... well, more than 7 years ago. Feels like forever. Anyway, I've found this beautiful live performance she did for NPR in 2012 and have been absolutely delighted by it, seeing how she came back to near-to perfect shape in that time frame after long years of decadence. I've particularly enjoyed 'Taxi ride' from that live, it's a version I probably like even better than the album one, so I'm gonna share it with you now, you can look at (and especially listen to) the difference if you care about it enough!

In this world - Moby

In this world - Moby

I love periods like this one, when I keep getting songs in my head, as I don't have to struggle to find great music to post on the blog! The problem only lays in me remembering to post them and finding the time to. Today I think I managed to, even if I had a few things to do here and there, such as coming back from Milan, a brunch, F1 quali, tidying up my desk to make room for new manga, shower, washing me and clothes, and I still get to have my Saturday night getaway (or get-in). This Moby song came to my mind after dinner and after immediately listening to it, I figured it would be a good post! I hope it makes sense for your own Saturday night too! Enjoy and have a great weekend!

It's good to be in love - Frou Frou

It's good to be in love - Frou Frou

Today is another shameful day for my country: another edition of the "Family day" took place, this being an event where people manifest their unwillingness for other people to love each other and have their love recognized by the law. They also want to prevent other people from raising children just because they didn't procreate them. I don't want to explain here all my thoughts and my reasons why these ideas make me feel sick, I'll just tell you they do.
Today is also a very bright day for me! I have received news from one of the universities I have applied to that they selected me for a PhD program starting in September! I've been really really hoping for this to go right and it seems like it did! I'll keep you updated and give you more news about this in the future...!
Anyways all I want to do is to leave you with the following message:

It's good to be in love. With whoever and whatever you want. Love is never wrong when it makes people and things happy, and it usually does. Preventing other people from loving each other and caring for each other doesn't protect nor defend anyone, it's just a selfish excuse that people use to not try and understand how other people feel. Spread the love. Whatever kind of love. Because it's good to be in love.

A sorta fairytale (single) - Tori Amos

A sorta fairytale

Here we are with the first song of 2016 and to celebrate the beginning of the new year I picked one of my absolute favourite songs ever, the one I've listening to the most according to my iTunes count (taking into account both the original version and the single edit) and, really, one of the songs I love the most. It's magic, as after listening to it more than 300 times, it still hold its magic power as the first time I fell in love with it. The lyrics are beautiful, the melody soothing but with a great rhythm, the song can touch your deepest feelings and at the same time be a perfect soundtrack for a thoughtless ride in your car. The video is absolutely inspiring too, and the whole 'Scarlet's walk' CD is just awesome, I can't wait to be driving in the middle of America just to use it as a soundtrack, walking back on the steps Tori herself was walking while drafting the album. I really hope that 2016 will be like this song: as close to perfection as it can get in this world.

"Like a good book I can't put this day back, a sorta fairytale with you..."

And I rode along side till you lost me there in the open road...

Wednesday - Tori Amos

Wednesday - Tori Amos

"Nothing here to fear. I'm just sitting around being foolish when there is work to be done. Just a hang-up call and the quiet breathing of our Persian we call Cajun on a Wednesday...". This is how my day started, with this song playing in the car, and I must confess it made perfect sense to me for the time being: taking it easy getting up and having breakfast while I had to come to work... I was just lacking the Persian (cat? I assume so, given that it's breathing), but I could see my own wednesday as the one described by Tori in her song, starting the day in the usual way, thinking "Well, why not?" and stopping for a coffee (I didn't do that, but just because I don't love coffee) and maybe recalling things said by somebody, things I forgot already...

A new day has come - Céline Dion

It's the end of the year and I don't why this song got stuck in my head after lunch! Given that not only is a new day coming, but also a new year, it would make sense to use Celin Dion as my last post of the year! It's been somewhat funny, as after preparing liquorice gelato last night, just a few minutes ago I was making a mascarpone cream for pandoro to eat after midnight while listening to this song and, after it, to my May 2008 playlist that it was featured in. Moving from Eagly-Eye Cherry to Keane, from R.E.M. to Alanis Morissette... I figured that I was already listening to good music 6 years ago!! I didn't move too far away from my at-the-time favourites in terms of genre and singers, so here is one more proof that the year change is only nominal, but time goes by evenly...!
Yet, it wouldn't feel right to end the year without a little summary: for me 2014 has been the year I worked for the first time, the year I lived a few months in England, the year I travelled quite a bit around Europe and also, and maybe most importantly, the year I graduated, putting and end to my career as a student! Quite big things! I'm hoping for more exciting events to happen next year, as I will start working for real, getting money out of it (it's funny to think that the first money I "earned" stemmed out of this blog, just a few weeks ago!). For A song or two per day 2014 has been a very important year: I started the Google+ page of the blog, which helped me greatly increase my audience and my interaction with you guys, I started Pinterest (with limited success for now), I finally got recognized by Google and embedded in its systems, but it has also been the first full year I completed and the year I realized I was going through with this blog, that it was not going to slowly die out a few weeks or months after I started it. And that is mainly thanks to you all who are reading my posts, so a big thank you goes out to you all and I wish you the best for 2015 and all the time to come!!

Matilde odiava i gatti - Carmen Consoli

Matilde odiava i gatti -
Carmen Consoli

So... here we are! I didn't even advise you about my oncoming trip (for a reason), but the time has come! Notwithstanding all the obstacles and difficulties, we are (almost) ready to leave! I'm going to Sicily with my wife and another friend of hers (that I know too) to visit her relatives there! I mean, put like this sounds like a serious thing, but given our platonic marriage it couldn't be otherwise!! She has not been going down for a few years now and I/we will more than gladly go with her and, hopefully, enjoy a nice holiday between the mountains and the seaside! Given the beautiful days we've been having even here lately, maybe going in September has not been a bad idea at all, with this summer's crazy weather! Anyway, to start getting in the Sicilian mood I'm gonna share with you a great song by my favourite Sicilian songwriters. Lucky you, she sings in English too (you can find the English version of the song on Spotify, link here).

Wing (live) - Patti Smith

Wing (live) - Patti Smith

I started listening (again) to Patti last night as while getting through Regina Spektor's album I'm listening to now I found a song whose piano incipit sounded a bit like Patti's Gloria. And building on that I kept on listening to her all afternoon today as when I begin I can't get a hold of myself and stop, so it is natural for me to post a song of hers here today. The one I chose is the one that caught my attention the most this time and, well, it's a song I have a special relationship with. It's not one that struck me strong as soon as I listened to it, actually while listening to Gone Again it passed through quite unnoticed. I started feeling strongly for it while listening to a live version of it on Patti's collection Land and well, this is the version I feel like posting, as it's the one I feel the most.

Reading time with pickle - Regina Spektor

After a very satisfying and a bit tiring day I am finally able to sit down and write a few lines for my blog! First of all, just for a change, the music: the song I have picked for today's post is one of the group I mentioned yesterday, more specifically the one by the artist I already knew, another album of whom I just started listening (yes, that's Regina Spektor). The "new" album is Begin to hope, while this tune is featured on her sophomore album Songs. I think I just fully realised the brilliance of the lyrics of this song, with Regina making eye contact with a solitary pickle in the supermarket and bringing it home while thinking about love and forgotten questions. Second of all, my nice day: I didn't touch my thesis BUT I did clean the shelves in my room, taking my "animals" and gadgets out on the balcony to get some air and getting rid of all the dust they caught lately, I got into the SPA-weekend atmosphere (it's my fav F1 GP so it's always a pretty special time of year for me, can't wait for the race tomorrow!), I had a great christmas dinner with my besties (yes, christmas. The weather almost looks like December, so why not?), american style with hamburgers, fries and chips (and a touch of Italia with home-made gelato). What more?

PS: Credits to mimi-merlot for the great, great pic! Genius! (http://mimi-merlot.deviantart.com/)

Virginia - Tori Amos

Virginia - Tori Amos

Summer-like days, so you exist! I was starting to doubt that you would make your appearance at all this year! And summer is not the only thing approaching, my concerts are coming closer and closer too! The first one is gonna be Tori in about a week and I feel compelled to post this one, even though it's not from her latest album, because I've watched a video of her playing it live in the Netherlands and I really, really hope she's gonna play it in Milan too! Virginia is one of my favourite songs on Scarlet's Walk, I love the songs in itself and the meaning it holds for the USA-wide journey of (the fictional character) Scarlet throughout the album. It is also a great one for summer time!

Dirty day (junk day mix) - U2

Dirty day 

Hey everybody! My inspired week is going on (thanks goodness) and here we are today too! I've been listening to U2 kind of in parallel with R.E.M. but I am still a couple of albums away from the end of their discography. Nowadays I am focused on their b-sides and remixes of their 1990-2000 best and I must say I am quite enjoying it, especially the remixes. One of the songs I am liking the most is this remix of Dirty day, which has always been one of my liked but not super favourite tracks of theirs. The same actually applies to the album the original Dirty day is on (Zooropa), which I have always liked but never completely fallen in love with. I hope that these remixes are giving me the chance to develop my relationship with it once again, and then who knows? It might grow in me after all this time...!
Anyway not feeling very well today, a mix of flu, spring, general sickness, light headache... it really feels like a dirty day for me!

Electrical storm (William Orbit mix) - U2

Electrical storm - U2

These are hard days for posting music, today too I'm not very comfortable with posting as I'm not really sure about which song to pick, buuut I am confident it will be a good one anyway! I was undecided between two songs and, given that the other one will probably find room here in the (near) future, today I will go for U2! I have almost got to the end of their discography, now I'm busy listening to their best of 1990-2000 (b-sides disc). I found out the original version of this gem that sounded quite familiar to me and I actually just found out that this remix is probably the more famous version. I love artists who produce so much material that, even with the passing of time, you keep finding new awesome stuff!

L'alleanza - Carmen Consoli

Again, this is not something I usually do. No, I don't mean the posting in the middle of the night, that

L'alleanza - Carmen Consoli

happens often! I mean posting Italian music. But, you know... even if generally I am not (at all) a fan of Italian music, there are these few artists that I dare say are really worth it. One of them is Carmen: many people don't like her because her songs are oftentimes quite sad, depressing, intense... they picture the bad things of life, all the fake imaginary that we picture in our heads, the things that don't work about society, mental problems, obsessions, life problems... Well ok, I know now you will not have any willingness to listen to her whatsoever, but her vivid picturing of all-things-life are also the reason why her fans love her and can relate so deeply to her songs. And some songs are also connoted with more serene themes such as remembrance and love. Anyway, this is not one of her most famous songs, nor one of my absolute favourites; yet it is one that I really like and stumbling upon it a short time ago made me want to post about it! L'alleanza means The alliance and the song talks about a love/hate relationship and lays down the need for us to survive every relationship, keeping our mental sanity. Nice one, isn't it?

By the way - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Awesome music today at the office, I got loads of inspiration for posts! I really enjoyed work today, the music was good (so good that I didn't even put my own earplugs on), the tasks were diverse and the atmosphere relaxed and enjoyable, you gotta love fridays! Today's song is one of the few we got more than one time (there must've been some kind of weird repeat mode on), but this is one of the great songs that you don't mind listening more than one time a day! Have a good friday night! Cheers!

#sundayrevival Pancake - Tori Amos

Guess what I've just been eating? Well, in such a cold (and lonely, why not?) night like this, what better than a warm pancake with maple syrup? And, given that I've not been doing the #sundayrevival last week either, it seemed like a good idea to me to pick this one song for the blog. Careful, this is one of my most beloved songs ever: super meaningful lyrics (that actually don't have much to do with pancakes) and great music, I just love it so much! So why don't you enjoy a pancake too? (be it a real one or this song, or maybe both of them!)