music meme

again, from Eggplant Boy, another letter meme. (It took me long enough to get to it.) This time, if you respond, I'll hand you a letter and you have to come up with five songs and say a little bit about them. And because I want to, I'll even let Mike the Blogless play, if he still reads this blog (I admit, for a while, I seemed like bitterspice the blogless).

OK, so Eggplant Boy gave me a B:

1) Bodhisattva by Steely Dan: I didn't go with the more obvious Black Cow, which I had mentioned in an earlier blog post. I love Steely Dan when they are sardonic, though this particular song is rather short on lyrics. But it's irony and sarcasm in less than 40 words and a killer guitar riff at the end. And the strange thing is, if you just read the lyrics, you would completely miss the sarcasm. You can keep your damn "Reelin in the Years;" Steely Dan is one of the reasons I never wanted to become a musician. I'm basically lazy, and they already play what's going on in my head.

2) Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants: I remember this song when it came out. May I be cool now?

3) Black Coffee in Bed by Squeeze: How could I not include my favorite band? Even if the only B song I can think of is my least favorite by Squeeze. I hate the beat and the lyrics are kind of plodding. The video is particularly dreadful, with the eyelined Glenn not playing guitar or any instrument, like they were your run of the mill New Wave band. Ah, EB, why couldn't you have given me an "S" for "Striking Matches," or P for "Piccadilly?" But he didn't, and so here we are. But a lot of people like the song and the video, though, go fig. Ah, but after I wrote that little diatribe, I thought of "By Your Side." OK, so that's really the song.

4) Butterflies by Sia: Shockingly, this kind of obscure song seems to be the most played song in my iTunes, which contains barely a fraction of my music collection. I've been obsessed with this song because I love songs with surprises. It starts out with an acoustic guitar riff that makes you think it's going to be some folky-mopey girl in the subway song. 45 seconds into the song, we start to get the synths and the weird electronica background vocals. Sia's main singing voice has an appealing breathy conversational delivery, at least on that song. I'm not sure how many people in the U.S. know about this singer, but her song "Breathe Me" was a hit because it was used as the last song in "Six Feet Under."

5) Bloodletting (The Vampire Song) by Concrete Blonde: I think this is an example of me thinking, "Hm. What song starts witha B?" Bloodletting is not my favorite Concrete Blonde song, because even though I like the band, I'm just not all that into vampires. Sorry.

OK, your turn. Maybe I can be as evil?