#sundayrevival Pretty good year - Tori Amos

Pretty good year - Tori Amos

I don't know why I found myself with this song in my head this afternoon, but I just did. I suppose I triggered Tori myself by suggesting her music to a friend recently, but I suppose that's not all of it...! Anyway I guess that, notwithstanding my generally bad mood of the last few days/weeks (I need a holiday), a Sunday with Tori can never be a totally bad Sunday. Maybe it's a bliss of another kind...!

#sundayrevival A thousand miles - Vanessa Carlton

A thousand miles - Vanessa Carlton

A couple weeks ago I went to karaoke with some friends, a pretty fun night, and one of the songs we sang all together was of course a teenage classic of ours, 'A thousand miles'. The song has been coming up often ever since, with some of us singing it off the top of our heads from time to time; this happened today too during our hike to the Lion Rock peak, a steep walk up a tall hill which rewarded us with a mystical view of nothingness (we were surrounded by the white of clouds), and of course we also got soaked. It's been a nice and enjoyable experience anyway! The celebrations for the Chinese New Year are going on, but they are past the climax now, so I'm getting ready to start next semester!

Mother - Tori Amos

Mother - Tori Amos

Last night I was reading an interview that Tori made together with Justin Timberlake, Sting, Alicia Keys, Pharrell and John Legend about songwriting and music, and she was talking about her debut album 'Little earthquakes', which is probably in my top 5 of all times! I of course had to go listen to it, and well... even when having it in the background while doing other things, if the moment is right it can convey such a strong energy...! Its magic is unparalleled and it always resonates with me in one way or another. 'Mother' is one of my favourites in an album of favourites, and it is the one that really resonated with me last night. It's her time to shine here on the blog.

"Go, go, go, go now out of nest it's time, go, go, go now, circus girl without a safety net..."

Northern lad - Tori Amos

Northern lad - Tori Amos

I often say that life is a sea of shit with a few moments of happiness interspersed here and there, and somehow even when it looks like I might be proven wrong, I end up being right. What can one do about it? Learn to swim through the sludge and try to keep your head up.

"Had a northern lad, well not exactly had

He moved like the sunset, god who painted that

First he love my accent, how his knees could bend

I thought we'd be ok, me and my molasses

But I feel something is wrong

But I feel this cake just isn't done

Don't say that you don't

And if you could see me now

Said if you could see me now

Girls you've got to know

When it's time to turn the page

When you're only wet

Because of the rain..."

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!

Us - Regina Spektor

Us - Regina Spektor

I am hating Italian bureaucracy and the need for sending paper copies of official documents... we are in goddamn 2016, can't we find a more efficient way to handle things?! Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to have to undergo a(n avoidable) trip to Milan to make sure that my damn University sends some damn documents with a damn courier. I hate deadlines when I have to have things delivered and it doesn't depend on me, I hate letting other people's inefficiencies fu*k up my time and my life, but anyway... let's see the good side of things, I hope I'm gonna spend a nice afternoon in Milan. Since Vilnius I have been a little bit stuck on Regina Spektor and have added a couple of her songs to my current playlist. This one in particular has been in my head for the past week or so, and today made my day better, so I guess it's time for me to share it with you!

The calculation - Regina Spektor

The calculation - Regina Spektor

It's ironic how we keep waiting for people to change and show us that they care even when we've had multiple proofs that they don't, or just are not able to show it in a way that's meaningful to us. How we feel like we're able to lower our expectations, but in the end we are not. Communication is key, but understanding each other without the need to speak out all the time is even more important maybe. Also, having too much time on your hands ain't good, as you tend to think about things a lot, maybe too much. Well, maybe that's not a bad thing, as you're able to understand things sooner. Anyway, enough with my melodramatic thinking, let's go prepare some sushi rice!

Dance anthem of the 80s - Regina Spektor

Dance anthem of the 80s - Regina Spektor

I don't like to be overwhelmed by good music, so here I am trying to speed up the posting process! This blog is called 'A song OR TWO per day', for goodness's sake, sometimes I can even do two freaking posts per day, can't I?! So here I am, with another great tune off Regina's 2009 album 'Far', which I have been re-approaching and appreciating lately! Today is a weird day, as I have many things to do but I can't do most of them due to stupid offices and branches being closed in the afternoon (and going to sleep at 4 and waking up at 12.30 isn't helping me in handling things in the morning), but nothing particularly urgent..!

#sundayrevival Josephine - Tori Amos

Josephine - Tori Amos

Once again I'm ready to pack my things and fly, and few other times I've needed this so badly under a physical point of view because... once again I am badly struck by the usual cold and sore throat and... what the hell, how I hate winter!! Warm places are waiting for me, just a couple of flights away, just a few hours away... and then I'll finally be able to get rid of this hideous, annoying inability to do anything with my mouth without suffocating! There is a time for enduring this malaise without taking action to stop it, but not tonight. Not tonight, Josephine.

Eet - Regina Spektor

Eet - Regina Spektor

After just one post of songs on queue, here I am already straying around with other music... I can't help it, and this is the meaning of the blog itself so I'm just gonna go with it! Thanks to 'The Leftovers' I approached again Regina's second latest album, the 2009 'Far' which I had listened to a couple of times at the time and then left on the side. I'm greatly enjoying it now, its time has come! This was the first single off it if I remember correctly and it's also one of the songs I'm already in love with! Wish you a happy weekend!

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...

Laughing with - Regina Spektor

Laughing with - Regina Spektor

I am watching the second season of 'The leftovers' and I'm loving how I cannot explain right away what the hell is happening and what the characters are thinking and why they are behaving like they do, so multiple levels of interpretation and I think also multiple possible interpretations of things on the same level... a mess. I also took a walk on the seaside under the stars, as I needed to get out and breathe some air and being in contact with nature like this is always mesmerizing and beautiful. All of this brings me to the song that was playing at the end of the episode I just watched, in which I recognised Regina's voice. Searching for it, I realised it is out the first album of hers I listened to ('Far'), and also the one I didn't listen to ever after. Gotta give it a chance in the near future, in the meanwhile let's just remember that we're not laughing to god, but...

#sundayrevival Smells like teen spirit - Tori Amos

Smells like teen spirit - Tori Amos

I mentioned Tori yesterday, as after listening to her I got to Dido, but this is a fresher listen, as it happened yesterday itself. Some random playing of all Tori songs (I have, which is more than 200 tunes and counting) brought me to listen to this gem, the "most viewed Tori Amos video on YouTube", a cover not loved by many not-hardcore-fans maybe because, as usual, the red-head completely overturned the original and made it a song of her own, a completely new song. Making comparisons is useless, and the very fact that an artist covers a song of someone else means that they respect their music. What doesn't happen very often is that the original songwriter himself embraces a cover in the way Kurt Cobain did, dancing at it with Courtney Love and playing it as an intro to Nirvana gigs. Well, that should be a good enough reason not to throw Tori's teen spirit on the side...! Hope you can enjoy it too!

Lothlòrien - Enya

Lothlòrien - Enya

This morning I woke up at 6.15 to undertake a 4-hour drive to get to work... not the worst thing in the world, but not the best way to start a new week either. I have been feeling lousy all day, and now a little bit of headache is getting onto me. But the trip has been fine, luckily there were some clouds filtering the direct sunlight, so I didn't get too hot and sweaty in the car. Plus, I put on Enya music (as I have been doing often lately... damn stressful, adult people's life!) to soothe my head and to wake up gently. It worked once again, so that's been a good move! In the second half of the trip I moved to my current playlist to get going at full speed, and this was actually the only song I listened to twice, as it is also featured in the playlist. It's peculiar, as while listening to Enya, some Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack songs sung by her popped out and I was dancing at their epicness, so it's funny that she was already composing music inspired to Tolkien's book even before it got (even more) famous with the early 2000s movies. I hope you all, Enya's fans, LOTR's fans, music fans and bloggin fans can appreciate this post, which is number 600 for me and my blog!!

Primavera - Ludovico Einaudi

Primavera - Ludovico Einaudi

Yesterday at work I was feeling some kind of headache, probably because of too little sleep (ok, I know I am like an old man, but sleeping less than 8 hours per night leaves me worn out), so I was looking for some music that could soothe the aching and well, after seeing some Facebook friend posting Einaudi's music the night before, it sounded like a good idea, and it was. Primavera means springtime in Italian, which would also be appropriate for this time of year, in theory. In theory because it's freaking cold and rainy and depressing and everything, and I have a cold that I've been carrying around since xmas and I can't standing freaking more!! Let's hope that the real primavera is gonna come soon!!