Wednesday, February 28, 2024

On a musical note

I only recently noticed (via Youtube) Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox (it's been around for 10 years now), and while I'm not always in the mood to listen to modern songs transformed into an alternative, older style, some entries really hit the spot.   (It is also easy to imagine going to a concert by them as being a very enjoyable night out for which the word "sophisticated" would seem apt.)

I really like the minimalist approach to the edit free videos, too, and wonder about how many takes the average song needs.

Anyhow, I will post two that I was watching last night, and liked a lot.   The first makes a melodramatic song fun:

 

The second one features a gay American Chinese guy (Kenton Chen) who seems to have a diverse career in LA as an actor and singer in various groupings.  As many people say in the comments (it has 38,000 - all of them swooning over the performance, and the video has had 35 million views) his voice is just wonderful.  I said to my daughter it's very "clean" - by which I meant precise, I guess.  She said "so in tune" which I suppose is a more accurate way of putting it:

 

There are other videos of him (appearing much "gayer") including a funk style cover of Hey Jude which I thought was pretty good, actually. (I'm not the biggest fan of the original.) But in every song, his vocal performance is just so good I feel he ought to be more famous.

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