Tainted Tainted Love

I had no idea until just now that the 1981 Soft Cell hit "Tainted Love" is actually a cover of a 1965 Gloria Jones song.  For those of you who don't know, Gloria Jones was also the longtime girlfriend of T-Rex frontman and (arguably) founder of glam rock, Marc Bolan, and was behind the wheel of their Mini when it struck a sycamore tree on September 16, 1977 (also the day before my parents got married) causing Bolan to meet his untimely death. It's a small world?



On a side note, this makes me a little less upset about Rihanna sampling the 1981 version of "Tainted Love" for her 2006 song "SOS."

NYTimes Picks Top Ten Composers

For those interested in classical music, the New York Times ran a pretty interesting piece last month discussing history's top composers with the ultimate goal of creating a list of the greatest ten.  Spoiler alert: Bach wins.

Though I have a strong appreciation for classical music, by no means am I an expert in the field, so I'll refrain from providing much of any type of critique of the author's inevitable opinion.  I will say however, that I was a bit dissapointed not to see Chopin on the list (call it a pianist's bias... he did write the Opus 28, aka the Preludes, of which one music historian said, "if all piano music in the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote should be cast for Chopin's Preludes).  I was also surprised to see Debussy make it all the way to number five.  Although, he was French, afterall. Damn Times and their liberal bias...

You can find the complete collection of articles here:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/top-10-composers-the-final-list/

Barack Obama on Being Smooth

You may not agree with his politics, but you can't argue with his taste in music:



You should probably listen to the man - not only is he the President, but he landed the beautiful and intelligent Michelle. Clearly he knows what he's talking about.

Youtube won't let me embed the video for the original version of Dionne Warwick's "Walk on By," but if you haven't heard it, you can copy and paste the below url into your browser.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO073fekFfA