When I asked for a song suggestion Kerry piped up wanting to see Justin Timberlake's "My Love", just like we saw last week. As with last week -- and it is a recurring theme -- one of the students mentioned that she likes the songs because the lyrics are easy to understand.
Next up Stephanie from Hong Kong chose "It Ends Tonight" (video, lyrics) by The All American Rejects (bio). She likes how this song starts calmly then gets progressively more powerful. It makes her feel strong when she listens to it.
Kerry suggested that if Stephanie likes that last song, then she should hear "Lips Of An Angel" (video, lyrics) by Hinder (bio). I thought that Kerry was right on with that suggestion, that Hinder is quite similar to The All American Rejects, but Stephanie didn't agree and didn't like the Hinder song.
Listening to these two "alternative" bands made me think of Modest Mouse (bio), the Seattle band who recently had the #1 album in the US with "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank" (on Amazon). I asked if anyone in the class has heard of Modest Mouse. No one had, so I played the video for the first single, Dashboard (lyrics).The class definitely did not like this song so it got taken off after about 30 seconds.
I asked if anyone knew of other Seattle bands. Someone mentioned Jimi Hendrix (bio), a statue of whom is on the street corner just outside our classroom. Most people in the class didn't know who Jimi Hendrix is. The statue was actually commissioned by the first company I worked for out of university, AEI Music Network.I asked if anyone knew any of the Seattle grunge bands: Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains. Blank stares and lightly shaken heads. The glorious music of my youth isn't even on their radar screens.
Someone did say they know the local band Death Cab For Cutie (bio). So we put on the video for "Soul Meets Body" (video, lyrics)So far all the music today had been guitar-oriented and pretty rockin'. At this point the people in the class who like calmer music were getting a bit restless.
I asked one of the guys in the class to pick a song: "Never Had A Dream Come True" (video, lyrics) by S Club 7 (bio) was his choice. I remarked that it seems like the *guys* in the class are more romantic than the women, hahaha! Again, the reason for liking this song is the now common refrain "The lyrics are easy to understand."
I asked one of the guys who likes classical music to pick a song. He chose a song by Richard Clayderman (bio), but now I can't remember which song it was!At this point the YouTube website went down and we couldn't access videos anymore -- a disaster for this class!
Izumi had brought a CD single of a song she recently bought: "Smile" (video, lyrics) by Lily Allen (bio) so we played the song with just the lyrics on the screen but not the video. The song was popular in the class. I mentioned that Lily Allen recently played a sold-out concert in Seattle (Seattle Times review, Seattle PI review).It was now 5pm, the scheduled hour was up. I said that I would stay and keep talking about music for anyone who wanted to stay. A few people left, but about 8 people stayed.
Since YouTube was down we now switched to playing songs off of the students' mp3 players.
Someone asked if we can play non-English songs. Sure!, I replied. Titus played "To You" (video) by a Hong Kong singer, Leslie Cheung (bio).
Next we heard two New Age instrumental songs from a Korean artist. I can't remember the artists name, but the Hong Kong students recognized the songs -- and *love* the songs! -- from a Korean soap opera called "Goong" (info). Apparently South Korean soap operas are beloved throughout Asia. Many people download them from the internet and watch them with subtitles.
For the last song of the day we listened to "Hollaback Girl" (video, lyrics) by Gwen Stefani (bio). On the screen I saw the lyrics "This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S" so I explained that the world "bananas" is old slang for "crazy".
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