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Cover image for Music Monday — What are you listening to? (Storytelling Edition)

Music Monday — What are you listening to? (Storytelling Edition)

Michael Tharrington on May 13, 2024

cover image source: GIPHY Story time, y'all! Our theme this week is storytelling and there are many ways to take this one. There are songs that te...
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Schemetastic (Rodrigo)
  • Bonus song, okay, I have a second song for this week...

A samurai inspired battle song that talks about the struggles of a relationship and fighting for it despite how many years have passed, why not?

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Elizabeth

I love love loveeeee the animation ✨

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Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

As I was watching the video, I was thinking on how much effort the video animator had to do to create the animations... I know that just producing a few seconds is a matter of hours. Have you made some animations that I can see?

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Michael Tharrington

Wow yeah, I'm with everyone else on this one. Such a cool video with amazing animation!

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Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

@ilizette @balagmadhu @michaeltharrington

Just remember another video with a cool animation style, I think you might like this:

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Elizabeth

Ohh!!! This reminds me of the movie Inside Out. Absolutely beautiful!!!

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Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

Interesting association... didn't think of it... but now that you say... actually is a lot like Inside Out, haha. Glad you like it.

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Bala Madhusoodhanan

thats cool animation !!

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Schemetastic (Rodrigo) • Edited

Cool idea for this week!

I have one that a friend recommend it to me, for what she told me, he dedicated this song to a friend who was fighting against cancer.

“pink robots” refers to the tumors.

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Michael Tharrington

Wow, I didn't know that about the song. I love this one and the music video too.

Speaking of stories in music, I think that The Flaming Lips have one of the most impressive growth trajectories as a band. They started off super punk and kinda raw, but just keep on growing as musicians.

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Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

Didn't know that, actually the reason why I know The Flaming Lips is because that friend recommended that song to me, maybe I should listen to them a bit more. Looking forward to the next Music Mondays!

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Michael Tharrington

Over the weekend, I watched this awesome little documentary on dance punk music:

It reminded me of my love for LCD Soundsystem and got me excited for the genre again!

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Michael Tharrington • Edited

How about the story-telling in Childish Gambino aka Donald Glover's music videos?

By the way, y'all gotta check out the series Atlanta.

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Elizabeth • Edited

I absolutely love listening to music that tells a story: I listen to an artist named Asa, she has several story-telling music but they aren't in English. One of my favorites is Good Times, it's a song about friendship, It's a love song to friends. The first time I heard the song, I shared it with my close friend and now we sing along to it whenever I play it.

The genre is called Highlife and Highlife is a Nigerian music genre that you generally would listen to with a group of friends while sharing a meal.

When she talked about her inspiration for the song, it was a love song to her closest friend Janet, who has played a vital role in her career growth and acted as a problem solver when things got rough.

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Michael Tharrington

Dang! I absolutely love this, Elizabeth. This is so uplifting... I'm gonna have to look into this genre some more. And wow, Asa's voice is just so unique and beautiful... it's relaxing!

I'm gonna have to look up and translate the lyrics now. Appreciate you explaining the backstory and the genre of Highlife. So awesome. 💚

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Elizabeth

Oh I’m glad you like it, her voice sounds peaceful

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Rajeev R. Sharma

These days I only listen to some rock/metal while I'm running. No story (or maybe quite a bit of story behind). I just rock and run :D.

Here is my playlist (some of the songs might be explicit): https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyloxWtfy6yXRaMkgCNpVCYIO-1TTJiXn&si=BZZ9a1v0fc9rH20J

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Coby Kalter • Edited

I’ve been listening a lot to the new Vampire Weekend album “Only God Was Above Us”. The song “Classical” is about how history is made up of stories told over time, who gets to write those stories, and what that means for how we look at the past.

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Michael Tharrington

This is dope! I haven't listened to Vampire Weekend in too damn long. They still got it! And wow, Ezra Koenig just refuses to age at all, haha!

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Oscar

This is literally called "story" xD. It's pretty intense.

Also, there might be a tiny bit of profanity. I haven't listened to this song in a while, so I forget. Hopefully that's ok.

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Michael Tharrington

Haha very on the nose! It is intense, but pretty dope. Lotsa energy!!

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Monty Harper

Since many of my favorite podcasts tell the stories behind songs, I'll share a few of those:

I've been binging lately on "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" by Andrew Hickey. This podcast is very detailed and amazingly well-researched. It's fascinating to explore all the different careers and styles and threads of influence and how they came together to make rock and roll into a genre of its own. You can listen from the beginning as I'm doing (I'm nearly to the Beatles, I think now, after 95 episodes! Let's see... yup, "Love Me Do" is episode 100. He must've done that on purpose! Anyhow, OR you can pick and chose your favorite songs to learn about; each episode does stand nicely on its own.

I also enjoy I Am the EggPod (Beatles and solo Beatle album reviews, often by people with some connection to the group - No! I went to find the link and discovered that the last episode ever is about to be released next month. Dang, I'll miss it.), McCartney: A Life In Lyrics (Paul McCartney on his songwriting process and more), and I'm In Love With That Song (detailed breakdowns of well-known songs and recordings).

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a.infosecflavour

the world's first 24 hour music video.

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Michael Tharrington

You know a crazy little fact was that Pharrell tried to sell this song to Cee-loo, but it was rejected so he recorded it himself.

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a.infosecflavour

Yes...something not unusual in music industry. 👀

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Keith Solomon

I’m gonna go there… 😁

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Michael Tharrington

Haha! I love all the dramatic blue lighting in this video.

Despite the cheesy 80's ness of it all I do feel like there's a lotta sincerity in this tune. I'm happy to go there with you, haha! 😀

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Saurabh Rai

@michaeltharrington, where's the music Monday for this Monday?

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Michael Tharrington

Hey Saurabh!

Thanks for the message. 💚

Unfortunately, I was laid off last week — here's a related post from the team. My last day at DEV was on Friday, and I actually had a trip to Asheville that I just returned from on Tuesday, so today feels like my first legit day unemployed.

I've been spending it filling out paperwork to ensure that I can still have insurance, filing for unemployment (hopefully won't have to make use of that for long, haha), and starting to dress up my LinkedIn... BTW, if we're not yet connected, please hit me up there.

In any case, I have no ill feelings towards DEV at all and I'm sure I'll be back here from time to time, but I think I'm gonna take a break from this community at least for a little while. 🙂

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Saurabh Rai

Hey mate @michaeltharrington
That's sad to hear. I've sent you a connection request on LinkedIn.

With all the amazing experience, I'm sure you can get a good job quickly. 🔥

💖

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Michael Tharrington

Thanks a bunch, Saurabh! Really appreciate it. 🤜💥🤛

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Sebastian Christopher

I started listening to kaleo a lot recently.

No Good - YouTube

Provided to YouTube by Atlantic RecordsNo Good · KALEONo Good℗ 2015 Elektra/Atlantic Records for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world e...

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Michael Tharrington

Oh hell yeah, this rocks! I dig it a lot.