22 January 2009 (Thursday)

After last week's small turnout I was curious to see how many showed up for the next class... Eight students came, four of whom were new. This quarter is starting off so differently from other quarters! But of course I am enjoying the class, as always!

I asked one of the new students to pick a song. He choose "Take Me To Your Heart" (video, lyrics) by Michael Learns To Rock (bio).







Another new student chose the next song: Celine Dion (bio) "A New Day Has Come" (video, lyrics).








Somehow we started talking about the theme music to the old TV comedy "Friends" (info). We listened to the theme song "I'll Be There For You" (video, lyrics) and I explained what "DOA" means in the lyrics (it's short for "dead on arrival", i.e. the lyric "your love life's DOA" means "you love life is totally dead.")

Speaking of tv comedies, I mentioned that my favorite comedy is "My Name Is Earl" (info) which is one at 8pm on Thursdays. But it is so full of references to American culture that I doubt my students would think it's actually very funny...

I also told the class about another US cultural phenomenon: The late night talk shows that start at 11.30pm after the news. On Channel 5 is "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" (info) and on Channel 7 is "Late Night With David Letterman" (info). For millions of Americans every evening ends watching the news, then falling asleep watching Leno or Letterman.


Another Celine Dion song was chosen and I had to tell the class that the late night comedians often make jokes about how over-dramatic Ms. Dion can be. But there's no denying she is extremely popular!

We watched Celine Dion duet with Il Divo (bio) on "I Believe In You" (video, lyrics). Actually, we were looking for the song she duets where the guy sings in Italian, but now I've forgotten which song we found...




At this point we all agreed we needed something non-Celine Dion, something heavier. "Crawling" (video, lyrics) by Linkin Park (bio) was suggested and watched.

Um, that was a bit *too* heavy for most of the class!...



We settled on something in the middle of Linkin Park and Celine Dion: Rihanna (bio) "Umbrella" (video, lyrics).





Rihanna is friends with Chris Brown (bio), so we watched his song "With You" (video, lyrics).

One of the new students, Vu, likes the dancing in Chris's song "Say Goodbye" (video, lyrics), so we watched that as the last song of the day.

I noted that the lyrics of "Say Goodbye" are almost exactly opposite of those of "With You" -- girls, beware of that guy! ;-)