CallumsBlog: Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

Post 8
10/4/15

Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

Crazy was the debut single by American duo Gnarls Barkley. The band was formed by singer Cee-Lo Green and producer/keyboardist Danger Mouse (real name; Brian Burton). Crazy was released in 2006 and was featured heavily on Radio 1 especially by Zane Lowe who is famed for finding the newest and most exciting bands in the world. The song was used by the radio station as the background to one of there adverts.


Crazy managed to achieve a double platinum rating in the UK as it was featured at number 1 in the charts for 9 consecutive weeks, the first song to do this for 10 years. Rihanna was the first person after Gnarls Barkley to beat this record with her own debut single "Umbrella" which was released late in 2007. The song also managed to make it to the number two slot on the US Billboard 200 as well as this Crazy won a Grammy for "Best Alternative Performance" in 2006.

Crazy also managed make history in the UK by being the first single to make it too the number one spot in the charts on download sales alone. This was a monumental time in UK music as it was the first glimpse of what was to become of the music industry, moving away from physical album sales and into downloads. Crazy showed that people were beginning to look at easier and more efficient ways of obtaining music and that method was downloads.

Gnarls Barkley were worried about the song. They believed the song would become tiresome and they did not want this to be the case. The band and it's record label attempted to pull all of the physical copies from shops in an attempt to stop the song from becoming hated due to how overplayed it had become. In any case the attempt had mild success however people continued to play the song constantly due to the constant stream of download sales of the song.

The song has managed to maintain it's impact on the music industry however with it's near constant appearance on "Greatest Songs of All-Time" lists. It is featured on Rolling Stones list as well as well as Pitchfork Media and NME's lists.


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Callum

CallumsBlog: Hozier - Hozier

Post 7
9/4/15

Hozier - Hozier


Hozier is the self titled debut album of Irish folk artist Hozier.  Real name Andrew-Hozier Byrne he was picked up by Universal music in 2012 whilst studying Music at University. The Album was released in September 2014 with the debut single "Take Me To Church" went viral on Youtube leading to the album becoming supremely successful. The album placed number 1 on the Irish Itunes charts and number two on the national charts and incredibly the album also managed a top 10 place in the US Billboard charts.


Hozier was nominated for the prestigious "Song of the Year" award at the 57th annual Grammy awards with his track "Take Me To Church". Sam Smith eventually walked away with the award for his track "Stay With Me". The award ceremony showed Hozier performing a medley of his track "Take Me To Church" along with famed Scottish artist Annie Lennox who performed Nina Simones track "I Put A Spell On You". The video as of writing has 5.2 million views on Youtube.

Hozier was met with critical acclaim. The album was described as a "Strong debut release" by AllMusic. Hozier's passionately deep soulful "whiskey-soaked" voice was also met with acclaim with critics picking up on his ability to push emotion through his lyrics with confidence whether he was near whispering such as on the track "In A Week" or whether he was preaching such as on "Take Me To Church". 

The album in my personal opinion is absolute triumph. Hozier manages to mix and match between genres throughout each of his tracks, from the R&B of "Jackie and Wilson" to the blues underline on the track "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene". Hozier's voice manages to make listeners experience a wave of emotions throughout the album and in turn has created one of the best albums of 2014 and in my opinion the decade. 

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Callum

CallumsBlog: The Hoosiers - The News From Nowhere

Post 5

7/4/15

The Hoosiers - The News From Nowhere

The News From Nowhere was the 2014 release from the band "The Hoosiers". The band made a name for itself back in 2007 with the release of the album "The Trick To Life". The album was a commercial success due to the singles "Goodbye Mr A" and also "Worried About Ray" unfortunately for the band this is still the most successful album they've had. "The Trick To Life" was popular due to it being chock full of earworm style songs that after one listen were stuck in your head for days!

The band decided to separate from Sony (Their record label) after becoming frustrated at the lack of promotion their 2nd  album "The Illusion of Safety" received, as a result the band re-released the album under a new name and included a four extra different in the new re-released version. The unfortunate thing for the band was that neither release was particularly successful.

"The News from Nowhere" was released by the band without a record label which meant the band had some issues. Recording, manufacturing, promotion etc were usually all paid for by the record label however not having one means the band would have to find a way of financing the album. The Hoosiers decided the best method of doing this was by crowdfunding the various aspects of creating an album. The band used the fan email list to obtain the help of their loyal fans with financing the album. They used offers of being in videos, touring the studios, signed merchandise etc in order to entice the fans further. In 2014 after obtaining enough funding the band finally released the album "The News From Nowhere".

CallumsBlog: Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams

Post 5

24/3/15

Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams

This album was the first album I purchased. I was taken by the bright yellow cover art and immediately decided this was the album I was going to buy. Released in March of 2005 it was met with many mixed reviews from critics with most praising Johnson on his songwriting however the lack of experimentation from Johnson led to critics stating that it was just another played safe Jack Johnson album. The album never did anything outrageous to promote itself that wasn't the type of album it was, the music within the album made up for it's lack of promotion and it showed with the album taking #1 in the UK in its first week and reaching over 1.6 million sales. The album was released in 2005 under the Mango Tree record label. The album is my personal favourite as I feel like the album is relevant no matter what mood you are listening to it in.

The album is a very relaxed, acoustic guitar with easy listening melodies featured throughout.

Johnson shows throughout this album his talent for song-writing with songs such as "Better Together" & "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing" showing the depths he can go to when singing about heartbreak and then he manages to create songs such as "Banana Pancakes" "Do you Remember" in which he manages to switch the writing style from heartbreak to reflection, he does with a relaxed and similarly up-beat style.

The album plays to Johnson's strength of creating Laid-back, chilled music and his consistency throughout his numerous albums though not the worst thing in the world (if it's not broke, why fix it?) does lead to wondering if Johnson will ever be bold enough to step out of his comfort zone or if we can simply expect to continue hearing similar sounding albums with every release. The safety of Johnson's sound however has led to to him even managing to get a soundtrack he created for the movie "Curious George" to the number 1 spot in the US Billboard charts.

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Callum

CallumsBlog: The Fab Four

The Beatles
Post 4
10/3/15



There isn't much to say about The Beatles that hasn't been said already. The group will forever been known as one of the greatest bands that has ever existed.
The group was made up of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr and the group existed during the 1960's.

The group were huge commercial hits all over the world and to this day the music they created is still regarded as some of the best, I still remember the first time I ever heard the Beatles, I was in the car with my dad and Yellow Submarine came on and immediately I was obsessed! I loved everything about the track from the title to the extremely odd song lyrics and I had that song on repeat for what seemed like hours and hours and when we got home I started digging around the old records in my house to find as many Beatles tracks as possible and so began my love affair with the band.

To this day I still carry the same amount of passion for the Beatles as I had when I first heard them I even have a Yellow Submarine poster framed in my bedroom.

The real only difference between then and now is my favourite Beatles track is no longer Yellow Submarine, after seeing the Yellow Submarine movie that accompanied the album another track from the soundtrack really stuck with me. "Nowhere Man" saw The Beatles regenerate the life of a so called Nowhere Man so he could change his life for the better and ever since then the song has always been the song of The Beatles that I managed to relate to.

The Beatles popularity to this day still means that the band for marketers are still a cash cow. Beatles merchandise and records are still popular desirable.
When the bands discography was finally made available for purchase on digital download sites such as iTunes in 2010 it saw the band receive a huge spike in sales for the band as people were able to get the entire works of the greatest band who ever lived at the click of a mouse.







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Callum

CallumsBlog: Chasing Yesterday

"Chasing Yesterday" By Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Post 3
10/3/15



"Chasing Yesterday" is the 2nd album of Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds and is currently (as of writing this blog) the fastest selling album of 2015.
The album was announced on the 13th October 2014 with the debut single from the album "In The Heat of The Moment" released on the 23 October 2014 with the accompanying music video released the same day.

It was the follow-up album to The High Flying Birds first album which like this album was released to immediate praise as well as taking the number 1 spot in the UK album charts. 

The second single released from the album was "Ballad of the Mighty I" Gallagher has said he personally believes this particular track is one of the best tracks he has ever made and says the track was massively helped with the input he received from Johnny Marr who is formerly the guitarist for The Smiths and both Marr and Gallagher have been awarded NME Magazines "God like genius award".


Personally my favourite song off of the album is "Lock all the doors". It is just blaring with excitement and personality from start to finish. Lyrically the song is far from Gallagher's best work, however musically the intro to the song is an immediate crowd pleaser and I cannot wait until I see the band perform this song when they headline the T in the Park festival in July as the passion and energy coming from the song will send the crowd into a frenzy.

Chasing Yesterday from start to finish is an incredible album from the huge guitar riffs in "Lock all the doors" to the slower more emotional songs such as "The dying of the light" the album never wavers in quality. Gallagher has once again managed to exceed expectations just like he did with the bands self titled debut album and he has been rewarded for it with yet another number 1 album.

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Callum

CallumsBlog: The T in the Park 2015 Lineup

Post 2
3/3/15

T IN THE PARK LINEUP

After seeing The View had been announced for this years festival I finally caved and decided it was time to write up my opinion on this years line-up. The past couple of years have been tough for me at T in the park as the lineups have been really very weak when compared to other summer music festivals. Calvin Harris headlining 2 years in a row infuriated me to the point I near bored people to death with my huge rants about how the festival was becoming unoriginal and had ran dry of ideas however this year the festival seems to be revitalised with the move from Balado to Strathallan. The line-up with a couple of exceptions (Avicii and David Guetta as headliners! Really?) this year is incredible to say the least many of my personal favourite bands such as Kasabian, St. Vincent, Jamie T, Peace, Alabama Shakes and of course Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Who's new album will be reviewed in a future blog post!)
The Libertines were the first band announced for the festival this year which didn't massively excite me or get me hugely hopeful that the festival would go back to it's glory days as I had seen The Libertines previously at the Barrowlands and was far from impressed by them and with the festival circuit this year they seemed like they were simply going to be an obvious and easy announcement just like the Arctic Monkeys were at T and most other festivals last year.

Kasabian being announced sent me sky rocketing! I was finally getting to see the band who's live performances had evaded me ever since the release of West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum and I just could not have been any happier or so I thought. Zane Lowe (who was announcing the line-up on his 7 PM Radio 1 show) announced that closing T in the Park this year would be Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. I was certain he would have been playing this year but I could never have predicted that he would have been headlining the festival but of course being a Gallagher brother and in my opinion the far superior Gallagher brother, he obviously has the power to draw in huge crowds. Noel's incredible solo material is what will largely draw the crowd to his performance but of course it has a huge part to do with Noel being part of the band Oasis.

So in conclusion T in the park might finally be going back to being a festival to be reckoned with and I can't wait until it does!

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Callum