7 posts tagged “esthero”
Audio: Share a great duet.
My favorite:
I'm not even a huge fan of John Forte, but the summer this album came out, I was just building up my collection to impress the boys who were serious crate diggers. I remember looking through the liner notes the day I got this album before I even popped it in my CD player and discovering Esthero was featured on one of the cuts. I actually remember everything about the exact moment I first heard this song.
Here are some others that I'm not really sure count as duets:
Audio: If you could sing like anyone, living or dead, who would you choose to sound like? Share a song of theirs.
Submitted by aa.
Ah! I love the music questions.
Now, the obvious answer to this question (at least for me) is Esthero. From what I hear, they never even used an autotuner when she was in the studio recording Wikked Lil Grrls, and her live voice is absolutely amazing. Every time I've seen her in concert her voice has always always always sounded on point -- usually even better than her recorded stuff. This is her singing "Fastlane," my favoritest song in the world, the one that I use for The R to My V's ring tone.
(I just really hate that spoken word bit in the middle -- always have, but it's originally by Jemeni, the girl who does "No More Dating DJs" which I have a love/hate relationship with, not by Esthero.)
I love female vocalists by the dozens. There's Amy Winehouse, Imogen Heap, Nina Persson, Keyshia Cole, Teedra Moses, Res, I could keep going on. I love them, but Esthero's the only one I'd truly want to sound like. And write like. And maybe dance like, too.
Finally, a video of the performance she did two years ago. This is my favorite song on the album and I remember seeing her do this at Avalon back in 2005 and I was literally in tears. My cousin stumbling upon this and sending me the link this weekend was perfect timing.
Audio: Share a great love song.
As much as I hate Valentine's Day and romance in general (just check my MySpace playlist -- and add me if you want, Vox friends!), I could go on for days answering this question. Let me dig into my digital archive here...
This one is a classic, of course. I cut up the hook to use as a ringtone:
And I'm gonna hate myself for posting this for the sap factor -- this is probably the sappiest song I've ever heard in my life and I know I'm about to lose whatever little street cred I had, LOL -- but I really do love this song too:
The acoustic version of this song, with bassline and drums taken out, somehow make the song that much more romantic too. I actually didn't like the song until I heard this version, which sounds almost identical to the original.
But it can't be all rainbows and unicorns, right? Here are two of my favorite "love songs" from Esthero. "I Love You" is my signature Valentine's Day song, and I always give it as a downloadable freebie on February 14th, even though it's essentially a break-up song:
Yesterday, a guy came into the store buying Feist's Let It Die. So I said, "Oh, you're a Feist fan?" and he goes "Yeah, actually I'm buying a copy for my sister." So naturally, I say, "Well, I think you'd really like Esthero." And he said, "Wow, cool, I'll have to look her up on the Hype Machine!" so we exchanged info -- I wrote "Esthero" on his receipt, and he wrote the Hype Machine address on a bookmark we had lying around, and I checked it out this morning to see what kind of results would come up. And this video popped up on the sidebar, the very first video that introduced me to Esthero and started it all.
It came from the 1998 movie, Slam, starring Saul Williams, which was rec'd to me by an online friend. I was really into spoken word and performance poetry back then, and I was actually on my high school's slam team (don't laugh!), so this movie was a perfect match for me. Actually, now that I think about it, falling in love with Esthero feels completely serendipitous, but I get sentimental and make too many signs of things like that. Ha. Anyway, enjoy.
This one is from another concert I went to in 2005. It was taken by a girl I actually know on LiveJournal, but never actually got to meet her at the show. Ha.
What you must know is that this is probably my favorite Esthero song of all time. The sound is kind of low and doesn't match the video, but it's a full length of the whole song. She adds the "You Got Me" hook which seems to fit perfectly in the song -- like, how were these two songs not written together? I actually remember crying when she did this song. By the time she did "My Torture" I was pretty much emotionally wrecked, but I can't find a video of that one, unfortunately. =/
What song best describes your current mood?
Submitted by Section31.
Cool, so on Vox you can upload your own audio files? I could make a whole mixtape here.
But I'll go just go with one song right now. I know it's too damn early to be choosing a song like this, but I'm itching to get plastered every night this week and two nights ago I drank a whole bottle of wine by myself, so let's be real here.
Every time I listen to Esthero feels like the first time I've heard her. She is, by far and wide, my favorite artist of all time. So know I say this with only the utmost respect.
This song has the brattiest lyrics ever written, and I can actually relate to them with every part of my being. I was actually just telling Nicole yesterday over beers what a fucked up person I can be, how I absolutely cannot deal with people who don't understand the concept of leaving me the fuck alone when I need to be left the fuck alone. So I guess I sort of feel in on the joke whenever I hear this song. It's so over-the-top ridiculous with its brattiness and drama, but the beat is mid-tempo and jazzy and it ends like a big Broadway finish; it actually ends up being kind of funny. This is pretty much my personality put to music.
