This morning at Stitely we jumped at the first chance to play Peter Bjorn and John’s “Second Chance” for this week’s Music Monday. Chicago was fortunate enough to have this Swedish trio visit Lincoln Hall in May of 2011, the same year in which this song was released on their album “Gimme Some.” You might also recognize their name from the popular single “” released back in 2007. Enjoy!
Blech! With the gloomy sky and impending rain everyone at Stitely needs a pick-me-up. Luckily, today’s music pick, “Hallways” by Montreal band Islands, is an instant mood booster (according to HuffPo). This single is from latest album “A Sleep & A Forgetting” which debuted last Valentine’s Day. We just love this fun video!
Keep warm everyone!
After a six year musical hiatus, Justin Timberlake‘s brand new single, “Suit & Tie,” debuted today at 12 a.m. to delighted fans everywhere. Produced by Timbaland and featuring Jay Z, it’s sure to be a huge hit! Of course Stitely‘s very own salesperson Paige was one of the first to download the new single and shared it with us today. Justin’s new album, “The 20/20 Experience,” will be released later in 2013. Enjoy!
On Saturday December 8 my choir (“Chicago’s choir”), the Wicker Park Choral Singers, debuted our holiday concert, It Takes A Village. While the whole program was filled with fantastic music, two of my favorite songs to sing were by Haitian composers. Written in Creole, these songs incorporated a number of percussive elements derived from the sounds of traditional Haitian instruments, syncopated rhythms, and A LOT of multicultural flair. Here’s a nice write-up from OurUrbanTimes.com about Saturday’s performance and click here for program notes to give you more info about the pieces. Check out the concert recordings below and enjoy!
“Twa Tanbou” by Sydney Guillaume
“Noel Ayisyen” by Emile Desamours
Cheers and Happy Holidays!
Rachel
So we’ve come back around to another Monday. Hopefully your weekend was as great as ours! Today, Stitely wanted to share with you a rising hip hop artist named Macklemore and one of his hit songs this year “Same Love”. Macklemore, also known by is real name Ben Haggerty grew up in Seattle, Washington and has been releasing music independently since 2000 but has only recently gained a strong following from the mainstream music world. Since teaming up with producer Ryan Lewis in 2010 the two have gained popularity through the web and have thus far accumulated over 41 million hits on Youtube.
Don’t worry, he can take the heat.
“Same Love” deals with same sex marriage and rejecting homophobia as a norm promoted within the culture and genre of hip hop and life in general. The message to get across from Macklemore’s song is that love is unconditional. Love is everywhere. Love heals the things that we thought were broken. It take’s a lot of courage for a straight rapper to call out his own industry for its irrational fears.
For having that strength to stand for what is right, we salute you Macklemore. Your positive messages in the rest of your music shows that you’re deeper than the average rapper. And you have a sense of humor as well?! (Check out Thrift Shop; it’s awesome.) It’s people like Macklemore that make Stitely proud to be a part of Stand Up.
“We press play/ Don’t press pause/ Progress, march on!”
Happy Monday everyone! Happy December! Time has just flown by this year but we wanted to take a moment to think about what’s really important. Yes, we were thinking about you. More specifically Frank Ocean‘s “Thinkin’ Bout You”. To get even more into the nitty gritty we were thinking back to SNL earlier this year where Frank Ocean was the musical guest and John Mayer joined up with the talented R&B singer songwriter to play guitar for both musical numbers. Sigh. What a handsome team.
Shh he’s reached Zen
Ocean’s song has been everywhere this year and for good reason, his first debut studio album Channel Orange came out this year in July and has spread like wild fire across the radio, internet and every which way. In addition to being widely successful with his debut album, he is also a member of the hip hop collective OFTGKTA more commonly known as Odd Future.
A soft spoken man with a voice of an angel. We’ll take it. Also it’s been said that Beyonce Knowles cried the first time she listened to this track. True or not, you have to admit you can’t blame her. Here at Stitely we feel the same way. We all agreed, he’s an artist we all love.
After stuffing our faces with turkey and watching hours of football last week (go Bears!), everyone at Stitely needed a complex instrumental tune to break us out of our food comas. Check out Perpetuum Mobile from Penguin Café Orchestra, a group envisioned and founded by British musician Simon Jeffes as a result of food poisoning! After becoming ill, Jeffes had a strange vision and a poem came to him describing the “Penguin Café”. He began writing about the imagined café, and eventually began writing music that would be played in the café. Check out this interview with Jeffes about his vision & the beginnings of the Orchestra.
