Best Song of 2005: Heat #4

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Kanye, Gorillaz, Daddy Yankee and the Chemical Brothers qualify for the next round. Kanye also wins the run-off from Heat #2. But guess what? Yes, ANOTHER run-off follows heat #4, which is FULL OF BANGERS.

• You get SIX TICKS over the three bits of the poll, unless you told us all your new favourite (and why) from the last heat. Put your new favourite in the box below and get an extra tick for the next heat - do it for five or more heats and get an extra nomination for 2006 (unless I think of something else to do in 2006).



• The top five in each heat will go through to the next stage. Make sure you rep for your faves in the comments!



• If you want to fill in the 'best song I only heard today' box later, change your vote (or tick too many by mistake), you can edit your votes by clicking on 'Poll #12345' then 'Fill Out Poll'.



• You have until Tuesday lunchtime to vote.

[Poll #1530858]


Extra ticks this heat go to justfanoe, credoimprobus, mesearch, koganbot and me.

Comments

Re: I live for the day, I live for the night, that you are desperate and dying inside

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I tried to do (http://www.cureforbedbugs.com/2006/10/boyz-ii-men-changed-my-life-and-i.html) some musical analysis on the Lindsay song a couple years ago:

So one technical feature of a lot of rock confessional is that it's modal music where major/minor is in flux. That means that the use of thirds is crucial. "Rush" (pretending it's in C for now): "Don't let nobody tell you" gravitates around the fifth in the minor scale (in C minor it's G) and the major third in the major scale (in Eb major it's G). But when they come down to what should be the root (essentially V-I, traditional harmonic resolution), that Eb makes the resolution minor (V-i), because they hit the minor third.

"I Live for the Day" does something unexpected by setting the chorus in an indirectly related key, from B minor to E minor/G maj and carrying over the vocal melody. In the chorus, the vocal rhythmic pattern (and to some extent the melodic pattern, it's a third below Kelly C.) is "Since U Been Gone," "I-live-for-the-da-ay," with the second "syllable" in the extended "day" resolving in a similar way. Imagine what "Since U Been Gone" would sound like if, instead of blasting GOOOOONE, Kelly had patterned it like this: "Since U Been Gone! Since U Been Gone! I can breathe..." (she does do this with a double track at some point, but it's not the primary melody). It would be a bit more desperate, more frantic, less immediately cathartic. That's what Lindsay's doing here. And -- didn't notice this until yesterday -- there's an almost imperceptible key change at the end, up a whole step to F#min/A maj, so that the intensity has been increased considerably (it's the classic climactic modulation that takes the song over the top) but covertly.

Plus Lindsay KICKS ASS.