I JUST sent mine in! It's far from awesome, but it will get me to the next round, which is cool. I had so many problems this week and over-thought it and second guessed myself. It was just ridiculous. I really didn't want to do a piano song, since there are some VERY good piano players in this Fu, but I couldn't make the song work on electric guitar, and I didn't have the quiet at home to record my acoustic. I wrote THREE other songs at least 3/4 complete for this. Two of them were certainly better than the one I recorded, but one would offend some people and the other might have been considered to derivative of something from pop culture lyrically. I didn't start recording until noon today. Why didn't I just take the challenge at face value instead of trying to find a clever twist. Ahhhgggg!
Sorry for venting. :) I look forward to hearing all of the other submissions. Congrats to everyone who got something in!
Good luck to all the contestants! I look forward to hearing what's been created.
Hmm... Some unscrupulous person could offer to vote for Covenant's song in exchange for his vote in the tourney...
I ended up not creating a shadow entry, due mostly to time constraints (and having previously decided to spend time working on a different song throughout this month), but I will share the 2-3 raw ideas that I had. All of these ideas came to me before my last post, where I complained that lyrics were hard. You'll see why I complained after reading.
1) Someone who's happy even though everything is going wrong. He's fired from his job, so he's happy he doesn't have to stress out (about deadlines) anymore, and he can do what he wants to; he loses his car, so he doesn't have pay for gas (which makes him happy); he loses his house, so now he doesn't have to mow the lawn. Sort of an anti-Shop-Vac, I guess. I think this idea had the most potential (and I won't be surprised if someone(s) else took the same approach) but I never watered it enough to let it grow. Closest thing I had to an idea for actual lyrics here was something along the lines of the following rhyme (but I don't have the rhythm right): My boss said I shouldn't come in on Monday, / Now I don't have to worry about my 401K.
2) A chorus (originally conceived to go with the above idea, but then it grew a mind of it's own) about a guy who is apparently happy that he hasn't had to sell (or donate?) his organs. I'm so happy that I'm here, and I'm not even dead. I'm happy I still have my spleen and I still have my head. Except for my appendix, I'm still in one part. I'm happy that I still have you, and I still have my heart.
3) Another chorus, this time in an upbeat bluegrass-style. This literally came out of no-where, and I have no clue what is happening here, but I think it fits insanity rather than happiness... Ride a pony, hug a cow; Dance with chickens, kiss a sow; Everyday is filled with charm, At the Happy Farm
I was never able to put my shadow entry together either. Too busy with an animation project. I had an idea of really horrible stuff happening to someone with the verse running through my head,
Im going to my happy place My happy place, my happy place The sun is bright, the sky is blue Theres no one else Just me and you In my happy place
Verse one was a murder scene Theres blood everywhere and he's the suspect in his gf/wifes murder His world is falling apart But I'm going to my happy place Verse two In prison dealing with violence or whatever But Im going to my happy place Verse three They shaved my head and strapped me down My family is gathered round...
But Im going to my happy place Theres no one else Just me and you
And I can kill you again.
musically I had a feeling similar to a Detektivbyran song.
For my vote, the bidding starts at one really good song!
Good point, MaW, whether tongue-in-cheek or not. I hate it when merit takes second place to affiliation. In fact, I was thinking of something to say about Eurovision, but is there anything meaningful to be said about Eurovision?
There might be, but I'm not sure what it is. I feel that Eurovision should be important, but I'm still astonished by how cultural and political influences affect even the public voting. I always try and vote for the best song.
Although I think the UK took a better approach this year - usually they give us a vote between a selection of songs and artists who appear out of nowhere and are universally awful. Running it as a public talent competition at least demystifies the process by which the talentless hacks are selected for our vote (and as it turns out, the woman can sing even if the song is a disappointingly soppy gooey yawnfest).
Drifting rather off topic there though.
The song I was trying to write for a shadow entry was about what it's like when you wake up in the morning thinking you have to go to work and dreading it, and then looking out of the window to find that there's a foot of snow and you don't have to go. Subsequent verses concerned the process of building a snowman in the front garden for all to see.
Unfortunately, as seems to be becoming a theme for me, I had serious problems with the chorus.
If you take a look at the word cloud of my song lyrics, you'll immediately see where I got my inspiration from. I wasn't sure about writing a zombie song, but a couple of friends (who are actually ignorant of JoCo) urged me to go for it. Much fun was had during the recordings; hopefully some of it will translate to you when the music is put online.
Molly, Jeff, Joe, CrabbyDaddy and Hank all wrote better songs than any of the masters, though for the masters I'd say Innes was the best.
Mike Lombardo's song is great too actually, and I would have voted for it, but he flat-out admitted he wrote the song before the contest even began.. for a school assignment. Yeah, call me a rules-nazi if you must, but that just didn't seem right to me so NO VOTE FOR MIKE! 1 YEAR!
I've just started listening, but if they're all this good, it might be the best round of Song Fu ever....
Joe: Fantastic! Nice JoCo theme, and I think JoCo would be proud of that song....
Molly: I had high hopes for this one, because, you know, it's Molly. Glad to see she surpassed expectations.... it's impossible not to smile while listening to that song!
Spaceparanoids: Hilarious, and I think you could get the whole country (and world) humming along with that one....
Now, First of all, thank you ALL for your comments! [shucks]
I have a couple of favourites myself, Oddly enough, where Jeff really likes mine, I really like HIS ! (Some clever stuff... "Facebook friends wont friend you back... like it !!)
Has anyone else had problems with Heather's and Hazen's? Sounds like *tape slippage* whenever they play!
I also have to admit to being underwhelmed at the 'Masters' ' stuff. Innes' is good, [MESSAGE REDACTED]... that isn't based on the theme at all! (Naughty Neil!! ;' ) )
I have a million comments I could make, but I don't wanna hog an 'already full of Joe' page!
ETA: Wow.. I'm sitting 4th! And seeing as how Molly is sitting first (no surprise - I think its a little unfair that she is in this as a *challenger*. To my mind, She should have been in as a Master before this Garfunkel and Oates pair.) Anyway... to me.. that means morally, I'm sitting third!
(Either way... no matter what comes up I think it's gonna be P&S v Molly for the final. (Which, I think, may put people off challenging in the future - Its like a *rigged game*... kinda...)
Still.. THANK YOU to all that have voted for me so far !
;' )
(PS) VERY surprised that P&S is winning the Masters'.. or rather, I'm not surprised, but ... Well...
If technical difficulties end up doing me in, I'm gonna be sad . At least my co-workers liked it.
EDIT: Oh my god. That's horrible! I did everything right, though! Right encode rate. Even did my master in WAVs. I'm boned. At least the mp3 download sounds great.
Put up a post asking that people D/L yours to listen to... Or contact Ken and ask him directly to FIX it! (Cos it *sounded* like I'd have liked it, but to be honest, I couldn;t listen to it cos of the whole slippage thang!)
I listened to the downloads of all, and they all seemed to play okay, although the quality of the source material in a small number of them was questionable.
I must admit to being disappointed with all three Master entries. Hoping for something more exciting there next time.
Molly's first place is definitely valid, what surprised me was that she's so far ahead of people like Covenant, whose song was, I thought, equally as good. Still, not everybody shares my taste!
Molly is kind of a unique case.... she's got herself a "master-level" fanbase (over 11,000 subscribers on her youtube channel), so she may be misplaced as a "challenger" in this contest. On the other hand, she only has a couple of original songs, which certainly doesn't put her in a category with P&S or Innes.
I agree that a bunch of challengers out-mastered the masters in this round. Lots of talent on these here forums!
I have listened to only a few so far, but I must say I'm extremely impressed with SpaceParanoids if this is really the first time he's written lyrics and recorded himself singing. Heck, if it weren't the first time, it makes no ounce of difference to it being a lovely song - great concept, great execution, seriously catchy!
I listened to a few of them at work, because my iPod had run out of battery and I have a work computer with sound now. All I remember is that neither Neil Innes's nor Paul and Storm's tunes really went with the theme, Cov's was very funny and if I had to guess, I'd say that Edric Haleen's was in a minor key. Anyway, then I went off to a meeting with one of the tunes in my head (I wasn't sure which.) Then I think the tune in my head changed to something of my own devising, and some almost-certainly-original lyrics for it appeared. I wrote down the lyrics and have just played the tune into GarageBand for later reference, so I'll aim to finish an unexpected late 'shadow' entry (you might call it a five-o'clock shadow) by Sunday midnight (no wait, that's a moonlight shadow.) But I wouldn't be at all surprised if the tune is in fact identical to one of the existing ones, possibly Covenant's. I'm going to listen to it now to find out. But it's late and I have to sleep and I'd need to clear some space on my iPod before I download the rest of them, so unfortunately I won't be listening to them all day tomorrow (unless I listen on the work PC, but then they wouldn't be scrobbled.)
Hmm, I maybe took a few notes from Covenant's song (notably the ones in the word 'happy', which is the same as half the times that word appears in my song), but it's not too similar.
(For those just joining us QSE [Quick Stop Entertainment, the hosts of Song Fu]'s voting system was notoriously atrocious in the first two Song-Fu contests -- take a look in past forum threads for acres of complaints about it.)
I assume it must be working at *their* end, as I said, friends are telling me I have more votes than *I* can see...
And I just noticed this is a *cumulative* competition this time... Even MORE reason why Molly should have been in the Masters section. (She has more votes than all of them put together !)
ETA: Its updated! Nice to see I've broken 100 ! (Even NICER to see the top 4 ALL have more votes than the masters!)
;' ) I am VERY excited by all of this! (Can you tell!!?)
Well, it also helps that people can vote for 5 challengers, but only 1 Master
As for the songs... I like Joe's, and Molly's, and Jeff's is kindo fun too. I haven't listened to too many more, because I was listening to them at school, and something funky was going on (Digression alert). It's a computer in this one teacher's room... it only seems to be this computer. I have to use earphones, because she has a class then. The balance is shifted completely to the left ear. The volume control doesn't suggest that, though. It's not my earphones, because the right ear works otherwise... It's the oddest thing.
Anyway, one of the other ones that I listened to was SpaceParanoids... Musically, I liked it. But I can't vote for it, because I don't agree with what it says Not to turn this into a new Political Statements thread, but I don't think Bush was nearly as bad as pretty much everyone made him out to be, and it somewhat irks me when people do nothing but bash him... So, sorry. I did enjoy the music.
Do the top five vote-getters go on to round two? I'm currently sitting pretty in sixth place. It would be very sad to come so close to advancing but miss out... thanks to Mike "here's some song I wrote for a school assignment" Lombardo, who is just ahead of me in votes.
@SpaceParanoids I didn't read the smal print either. Like I said above (2 posts above! ;' ) ) This is NOT a knock-out contest this time. It's a cumulative vote. After (I think 3) rounds the one with the most votes takes on the *Master* with the most votes.
(So, even MORE of a certainty what the final will be now...) ;' )
ETA: I've edited my earlier post. Neil Innes just had his song up on his webpage VERY soon after the topic was announced. Looking at his Twitter, it looks like he was informed of the topic before it went *Live*.
@Angelastic: Edric's entry is hard (at least for me) to classify as strictly major or minor. I'm not sure exactly what's going on -- maybe more modal, or atonal. I don't really know. For a better example of a minor key entry, listen to the chorus of Mick's Happy People (the poor things only got 7 votes, and I was one of them).
Top four for me were Molly's (duh), Crabbydad's "H.A.P.P.Y." (cute!), Haleen's "(Happiness)" (nostalgic contrapunctal soundscape), and Hallelujah Ape's "Do What You Want". The fifth choice was a tough tossup between Mick's "Happy People" (dystopian joy), Insane Ian's "Happy" (the rhyme in the last line is pure genius!), and maybe o8jedi's "Wide-Eyed Happy". In the end Mick won on a whim.
I must say Edric's one is very brave - knowing that everybody else will go for quick wins and catchiness, he went reasonably deep, both lyrically and musically. Definitely a Sondheim fan; I'm putting the inspiration somewhere between Company and Pacific Overtures. Or can the lyrical "pointillism" point to Sunday in the Park with George?
Thanks for that - that quote's going straight up on my website!
So I've taken up my traditional place at the bottom of the leaderboard, but those votes do at least mean that 9 people liked my song better than 20 other songs, so that's not too bad.
@Covenant: Wonderful arrangement - you must be pleased with the results of your new purchase - it sounds great! Even without your JoCo reference, this has a 1st of May feel to it. Made me laugh quite a bit.
@SpaceParanoids: Along with Joe's, this was the other song that made me laugh aloud. Excellent first effort!
I was pretty disappointed with the P&S entry, not their finest hour, but if you're going to sing a song about an instrument, would it be too much to ask to use the actual instrument instead of a clearly sampled version? I found the machine-gun sounds too distracting to enjoy the song for what it was.
I was pretty disappointed with the P&S entry, not their finest hour,
I just listened to their latest podcast this morning, which was made before they submitted their song. It was pretty clear that they weren't happy with it so far, and were hoping it would come together at the last minute....
I'm still working my way through the entries, savouring them all before voting. A few semirandom thoughts...
Pity about Mike Lombardo. Because of him "breaking the rules" I won't be voting for him, but I do think it's a great song, and obviously a recording rooted in live performance, which always scores extra points with me.
I wonder to what degree different listeners focus on lyrics, music or just plain feel. In terms of feel, Jeff's song is absolutely fantastic, and I'd gladly listen to it in the car any day (never mind I don't have a car, let's pretend.) Somehow it doesn't matter that the vocals are a bit low in the mix, since they may have been anything.
SpaceParanoids' one is still very difficult for me to stop repeating incessantly (Covenant's had that honor before) and is probably the most satisfying in terms of musical form; I love the half-time changes and the chord structure. I'm kind of waiting for Shruti to pipe up about the about the perceived accents in the chorus though ;-) And although I'm sure some people won't agree with the sentiment, even if only 10% did, they would love the song even more for that.
Paul & Storm score points for doing something sensible in 5/4. They would be a clear Masters winner for me; although Neil Innes' song is entertaining, it doesn't sit well with the given constraint.
Paul & Storm score points for doing something sensible in 5/4. They would be a clear Masters winner for me; although Neil Innes' song is entertaining, it doesn't sit well with the given constraint.
It has a meter? ;-) (I've only listened to it once - at the end of the podcast.)
Yup, the main bit is a kind-of calypso in 5/4. I always listen out when things are in 5 or 7 if they manage to do it without two quarter notes in the bass on the last two beats of the bar - that is the easiest way to make sure you don't get lost (think "Take Five") but it is more challenging to go without that.
Just been listening to "Caroline" again, and it's got one chord that just makes me insanely happy in the chorus:
D C#mi7add4 F#7 Bmi7
Me and Ca - ro - line
That F#7 on "-ro-" does it for me ;-) (And I won't go into the C# thingy unless someone REALLY wants to get that conversation going)
Man, there are really some great songs here! Nice work Covenant! The five that I picked were Covenant's, Molly's, Mike L's, Crabby Daddy's and Jeff's; I also picked Garfunkel and Oates' song out of the professionals, the only issue I have with it is that the vocals are so low in volume that it's hard to decipher what some of the lines in the song are (maybe it's just me...or my computer >.>).
Well, I'm listening to the songs all day today on my iPod, and I have to say, I'm feeling pretty happy right now. Well done, everyone! I'm not paying full attention to the songs, since I'm also working, but each time one of them particularly catches my attention then I increase (or decrease) its star rating (starting at 3.) At the end of the day there will hopefully be five with five stars. Quite a lot have 3 already. [ETA: If we're going to be technical, I start at undefined, and the first change goes to 2 or 3.]
Paul and Storm's one didn't really impress me at first, but... did I just hear a Cheech & Chong reference in the background? That gets them a point. Points don't necessarily convert to votes, though (ETA: they might, however, convert into jaffa cakes. We'll see.) At this point I'll probably vote for Garfunkel and Oates' song, because it makes me happy and the other masters' songs don't fit the theme especially well. (Although the challenge said 'happy song' and not necessarily 'song about happiness' so I guess about half the songs ever written are admissible.)
Comments
Okay.. if you send me 10CHF and I'll photocopy it and send it back to you...... ;' )
@MaW...
I'd *like* to think I have that... But ultimately [TV presenter voice] "YOU Decide!!! [/off]
;' )
Sorry for venting. :) I look forward to hearing all of the other submissions. Congrats to everyone who got something in!
Hmm... Some unscrupulous person could offer to vote for Covenant's song in exchange for his vote in the tourney...
I ended up not creating a shadow entry, due mostly to time constraints (and having previously decided to spend time working on a different song throughout this month), but I will share the 2-3 raw ideas that I had. All of these ideas came to me before my last post, where I complained that lyrics were hard. You'll see why I complained after reading.
1) Someone who's happy even though everything is going wrong. He's fired from his job, so he's happy he doesn't have to stress out (about deadlines) anymore, and he can do what he wants to; he loses his car, so he doesn't have pay for gas (which makes him happy); he loses his house, so now he doesn't have to mow the lawn. Sort of an anti-Shop-Vac, I guess. I think this idea had the most potential (and I won't be surprised if someone(s) else took the same approach) but I never watered it enough to let it grow. Closest thing I had to an idea for actual lyrics here was something along the lines of the following rhyme (but I don't have the rhythm right):
My boss said I shouldn't come in on Monday, / Now I don't have to worry about my 401K.
2) A chorus (originally conceived to go with the above idea, but then it grew a mind of it's own) about a guy who is apparently happy that he hasn't had to sell (or donate?) his organs.
I'm so happy that I'm here, and I'm not even dead.
I'm happy I still have my spleen and I still have my head.
Except for my appendix, I'm still in one part.
I'm happy that I still have you, and I still have my heart.
3) Another chorus, this time in an upbeat bluegrass-style. This literally came out of no-where, and I have no clue what is happening here, but I think it fits insanity rather than happiness...
Ride a pony, hug a cow;
Dance with chickens, kiss a sow;
Everyday is filled with charm,
At the Happy Farm
So yeah... no entry from me. :-)
I had an idea of really horrible stuff happening to someone with the verse running through my head,
Im going to my happy place
My happy place, my happy place
The sun is bright, the sky is blue
Theres no one else
Just me and you
In my happy place
Verse one was a murder scene
Theres blood everywhere and
he's the suspect in his gf/wifes murder
His world is falling apart
But I'm going to my happy place
Verse two
In prison dealing with violence or whatever
But Im going to my happy place
Verse three
They shaved my head and strapped me down
My family is gathered round...
But Im going to my happy place
Theres no one else
Just me and you
And I can kill you again.
musically I had a feeling similar to a Detektivbyran song.
Although I think the UK took a better approach this year - usually they give us a vote between a selection of songs and artists who appear out of nowhere and are universally awful. Running it as a public talent competition at least demystifies the process by which the talentless hacks are selected for our vote (and as it turns out, the woman can sing even if the song is a disappointingly soppy gooey yawnfest).
Drifting rather off topic there though.
The song I was trying to write for a shadow entry was about what it's like when you wake up in the morning thinking you have to go to work and dreading it, and then looking out of the window to find that there's a foot of snow and you don't have to go. Subsequent verses concerned the process of building a snowman in the front garden for all to see.
Unfortunately, as seems to be becoming a theme for me, I had serious problems with the chorus.
Covenant, I love your First of May reference
Molly's song is inspiring.
Jutze: who knew being a zombie was so good? I shall have to consider a career change.
Edit: SpaceParanoids' song arrived finally, and it's a cracker.
Good thing I can vote for five challengers, it's going to be tough to choose between this lot.
Edit 2: Voted, and found the results so far quite surprising...
Mike Lombardo's song is great too actually, and I would have voted for it, but he flat-out admitted he wrote the song before the contest even began.. for a school assignment.
Yeah, call me a rules-nazi if you must, but that just didn't seem right to me so NO VOTE FOR MIKE! 1 YEAR!
I want to know if my entry's doing well!
Joe: Fantastic! Nice JoCo theme, and I think JoCo would be proud of that song....
Molly: I had high hopes for this one, because, you know, it's Molly. Glad to see she surpassed expectations.... it's impossible not to smile while listening to that song!
Spaceparanoids: Hilarious, and I think you could get the whole country (and world) humming along with that one....
Now, First of all, thank you ALL for your comments! [shucks]
I have a couple of favourites myself, Oddly enough, where Jeff really likes mine, I really like HIS !
(Some clever stuff... "Facebook friends wont friend you back... like it !!)
Has anyone else had problems with Heather's and Hazen's? Sounds like *tape slippage* whenever they play!
I also have to admit to being underwhelmed at the 'Masters' ' stuff.
Innes' is good, [MESSAGE REDACTED]... that isn't based on the theme at all!
(Naughty Neil!! ;' ) )
I have a million comments I could make, but I don't wanna hog an 'already full of Joe' page!
ETA:
Wow.. I'm sitting 4th!
And seeing as how Molly is sitting first (no surprise - I think its a little unfair that she is in this as a *challenger*.
To my mind, She should have been in as a Master before this Garfunkel and Oates pair.)
Anyway... to me.. that means morally, I'm sitting third!
(Either way... no matter what comes up I think it's gonna be P&S v Molly for the final.
(Which, I think, may put people off challenging in the future - Its like a *rigged game*... kinda...)
Still.. THANK YOU to all that have voted for me so far !
;' )
(PS) VERY surprised that P&S is winning the Masters'.. or rather, I'm not surprised, but ... Well...
If technical difficulties end up doing me in, I'm gonna be sad
EDIT: Oh my god. That's horrible! I did everything right, though! Right encode rate. Even did my master in WAVs. I'm boned. At least the mp3 download sounds great.
Or contact Ken and ask him directly to FIX it!
(Cos it *sounded* like I'd have liked it, but to be honest, I couldn;t listen to it cos of the whole slippage thang!)
But I seem to be rising up the listings. That's a good sign.
I must admit to being disappointed with all three Master entries. Hoping for something more exciting there next time.
Molly's first place is definitely valid, what surprised me was that she's so far ahead of people like Covenant, whose song was, I thought, equally as good. Still, not everybody shares my taste!
I agree that a bunch of challengers out-mastered the masters in this round. Lots of talent on these here forums!
That is lame as hell.
err. that was not supposed to be a rhyme.
Im So stupid. I do that all the time.
And you didn't... uhm... knowicist?
Now I sit and wait and hope and pray.
Hmm, I maybe took a few notes from Covenant's song (notably the ones in the word 'happy', which is the same as half the times that word appears in my song), but it's not too similar.
(The song fu page isn't updating for me! I've just been emailed from a friend saying how cool it is that I'm on 90 odd votes.. I can only see 84 !)
(For those just joining us QSE [Quick Stop Entertainment, the hosts of Song Fu]'s voting system was notoriously atrocious in the first two Song-Fu contests -- take a look in past forum threads for acres of complaints about it.)
And I just noticed this is a *cumulative* competition this time...
Even MORE reason why Molly should have been in the Masters section.
(She has more votes than all of them put together !)
ETA:
Its updated!
Nice to see I've broken 100 !
(Even NICER to see the top 4 ALL have more votes than the masters!)
;' )
I am VERY excited by all of this! (Can you tell!!?)
As for the songs... I like Joe's, and Molly's, and Jeff's is kindo fun too. I haven't listened to too many more, because I was listening to them at school, and something funky was going on (Digression alert). It's a computer in this one teacher's room... it only seems to be this computer. I have to use earphones, because she has a class then. The balance is shifted completely to the left ear. The volume control doesn't suggest that, though. It's not my earphones, because the right ear works otherwise... It's the oddest thing.
Anyway, one of the other ones that I listened to was SpaceParanoids... Musically, I liked it. But I can't vote for it, because I don't agree with what it says Not to turn this into a new Political Statements thread, but I don't think Bush was nearly as bad as pretty much everyone made him out to be, and it somewhat irks me when people do nothing but bash him... So, sorry. I did enjoy the music.
Do the top five vote-getters go on to round two? I'm currently sitting pretty in sixth place. It would be very sad to come so close to advancing but miss out... thanks to Mike "here's some song I wrote for a school assignment" Lombardo, who is just ahead of me in votes.
I didn't read the smal print either.
Like I said above (2 posts above! ;' ) )
This is NOT a knock-out contest this time. It's a cumulative vote.
After (I think 3) rounds the one with the most votes takes on the *Master* with the most votes.
(So, even MORE of a certainty what the final will be now...) ;' )
ETA:
I've edited my earlier post. Neil Innes just had his song up on his webpage VERY soon after the topic was announced. Looking at his Twitter, it looks like he was informed of the topic before it went *Live*.
Actually... not really. Submitting prior work seems to go against the spirit of the contest, if you ask me.
Well, (as of the present moment) 11 of 22's still a good thing for this first round, right?
Top four for me were Molly's (duh), Crabbydad's "H.A.P.P.Y." (cute!), Haleen's "(Happiness)" (nostalgic contrapunctal soundscape), and Hallelujah Ape's "Do What You Want". The fifth choice was a tough tossup between Mick's "Happy People" (dystopian joy), Insane Ian's "Happy" (the rhyme in the last line is pure genius!), and maybe o8jedi's "Wide-Eyed Happy". In the end Mick won on a whim.
Why, "Duh"?
So I've taken up my traditional place at the bottom of the leaderboard, but those votes do at least mean that 9 people liked my song better than 20 other songs, so that's not too bad.
@Covenant: Wonderful arrangement - you must be pleased with the results of your new purchase - it sounds great! Even without your JoCo reference, this has a 1st of May feel to it. Made me laugh quite a bit.
@SpaceParanoids: Along with Joe's, this was the other song that made me laugh aloud. Excellent first effort!
I was pretty disappointed with the P&S entry, not their finest hour, but if you're going to sing a song about an instrument, would it be too much to ask to use the actual instrument instead of a clearly sampled version? I found the machine-gun sounds too distracting to enjoy the song for what it was.
Pity about Mike Lombardo. Because of him "breaking the rules" I won't be voting for him, but I do think it's a great song, and obviously a recording rooted in live performance, which always scores extra points with me.
I wonder to what degree different listeners focus on lyrics, music or just plain feel. In terms of feel, Jeff's song is absolutely fantastic, and I'd gladly listen to it in the car any day (never mind I don't have a car, let's pretend.) Somehow it doesn't matter that the vocals are a bit low in the mix, since they may have been anything.
SpaceParanoids' one is still very difficult for me to stop repeating incessantly (Covenant's had that honor before) and is probably the most satisfying in terms of musical form; I love the half-time changes and the chord structure. I'm kind of waiting for Shruti to pipe up about the about the perceived accents in the chorus though ;-) And although I'm sure some people won't agree with the sentiment, even if only 10% did, they would love the song even more for that.
Paul & Storm score points for doing something sensible in 5/4. They would be a clear Masters winner for me; although Neil Innes' song is entertaining, it doesn't sit well with the given constraint.
Just been listening to "Caroline" again, and it's got one chord that just makes me insanely happy in the chorus:
D C#mi7add4 F#7 Bmi7 Me and Ca - ro - lineThat F#7 on "-ro-" does it for me ;-) (And I won't go into the C# thingy unless someone REALLY wants to get that conversation going)
Paul and Storm's one didn't really impress me at first, but... did I just hear a Cheech & Chong reference in the background? That gets them a point. Points don't necessarily convert to votes, though (ETA: they might, however, convert into jaffa cakes. We'll see.) At this point I'll probably vote for Garfunkel and Oates' song, because it makes me happy and the other masters' songs don't fit the theme especially well. (Although the challenge said 'happy song' and not necessarily 'song about happiness' so I guess about half the songs ever written are admissible.)