23 January 2013 (Wednesday)

5 students came today, including 2 new students.

One of the new students, from Japan, said he likes Japanese rap. As an example we played "Grateful Days" (video, song info) by Dragon Ash (info). In particular he likes the combination of the man's voice with the woman's voice in this song.

The next song was "Look At Me Now" (video, lyrics, song info) by Chris Brown (info).  The student who chose this song had heard it in a club and liked it in that environment. But none of us can understand the raps without looking at the lyrics -- Busta Rhymes (info) just raps too fast!!

Next we heard "Imagine Me Without You" (video with lyrics, song info) by Jaci Velasquez (info).  Since this song is about love and being with or without a person's love I asked the students whether they think it is better to:
a/ "love but then lose love"
or
b/ "never love in the first place" 

Most students in the class are romantic and believe it is better to know the feeling of love, even if it is followed by pain, then to not know love at all. Let's hope that the suffering for love is minimal for all of us!

The next song chosen was "All The Right Moves" (video, lyrics, song info) by OneRepublic (info). The student who chose this song thought the band is from Seattle, but Wikipedia says they are from Colorado.

The music in that song made me think of the song "Crystal" (video, lyrics, song info) by New Order (info). My favorite part of this song is the background vocals that go "woo hoo" and "yeah".

Speaking of "woo hoo" I had to play another of my favorite songs which has this background vocal: "Maybe Tomorrow (video, lyrics, song info) by Stereophonics (info). This is one of my favorite songs, partly because of the "woo hoo's" throughout the song as well as the subject of "finding home".  

As a person who has lived abroad a lot I have often thought about where "home" is.  We talked in the class about where each student feels "home" is and where they would like to raise a family. I also asked if they would be open to marrying a person who is not from their home country. Most said they are open to marrying someone from a different country.

The next song was "Welcome To The Black Parade" (video, lyrics, song info) by My Chemical Romance (info). The student who chose it said his friends like singing karaoke to this song.

I asked the student what his favorite song to sing karaoke to is. He said he likes singing to "She's Gone" (video, lyrics, song info) by Steelheart (info), which is one of the most popular karaoke songs in Korea -- people like to sing the high notes.

Back to the subject of "home" that we had talked about before, one of the students chose the song "Home" (video, lyrics, song info) by Michael Buble (info). 

The last song of the day was "Do You Hear The People Sing" (video, lyrics, song info) from the musical Les Miserables (info). (But now I'm not sure if this is the same version of the video we watched in class...)

With that we were done for the day -- I hope to see everyone again next Wednesday!