Music: Six Beautiful Tunes Worth Checking Out

Some of my favorite beautiful tunes...

 

From time to time on Worthy Of A Bigger Audience I collect together six tunes of a similar category, such as cover versions or remixes, and today it’s the turn of songs which in my opinion are totally beautiful tunes. 

Moments Of Pleasure from Kate Bush's The Red Shoes album.

1) Moments Of Pleasure
by Kate Bush
This is quite a big statement to make, but Moments Of Pleasure is one of my all time favourite tunes and in my opinion deserves to be recognised alongside some of Kate’s more well known classics such as Wuthering Heights or Running Up That Hill.  It maybe doesn’t have quite the widespread commercial appeal as those two tracks but the maturity and the power of this tune is immense.  As well as a hauntingly beautiful piano track, it also features some very personal lyrics from Kate which fit the music perfectly.
Find it on Kate’s The Red Shoes album.

The Worthy Of A Bigger Audience 2012 Awards (Part 3)

My favourite B side, cover version and remix featured on Worthy Of A Bigger Audience during 2012.

Over the last two weeks I’ve rounded off the year by choosing a favourite from each category (albums, movies, TV shows, etc) featured on Worthy Of A Bigger Audience during 2012.  As well as regular reviews, however, I occasionally feature music related posts such as Six Cover Versions Worth Checking Out, Six Remixes Worth Checking Out and Six B Sides Worth Checking Out, so to round things off completely here are my favourite cover version, remix and B side (or bonus track) featured on Worthy Of A Bigger Audience during 2012:

Lady With The Spinning Head can be found as
one of the bonus tracks on U2's One CD single.

B Sides (Bonus Tracks):

1) Never Want To See You Cry by The Verve (B side to Lucky Man)
2) Lady With The Spinning Head by U2 (B side to One)
3) For Where There Is Love, There Will Always Be Miracles by The Charlatans (B side to Up At The Lake)
4) Headset by Underworld (B side to Two Months Off)
5) Won’t Let You Down by Oasis (B side to Lyla)
6) Lull by Radiohead (B side to Karma Police)

All six of these tracks are brilliant B sides but the tune I love the most is probably Lady With The Spinning Head which as mentioned in my original post is immediately recognisable as an early version of The Fly.  The song has an infectious motivating energy which fills you with enthusiasm when you listen to it and it also provides an interesting insight into the U2 song writing process.

Winner – Lady With The Spinning Head by U2

Music: Six B Sides Worth Checking Out

Or ‘bonus tracks’ as they’re known nowadays.

With the way music is packaged and sold nowadays B sides are becoming a dying concept, with downloads meaning that the necessity for a B side (or bonus track) to go with a single has been greatly diminished.  Many artists do still include B sides/bonus tracks as part of a single bundle, but they often simply include a few remixes or live versions of a previous song and the bonus tracks sometimes feel as if they are simply there to make the numbers up.  This is a shame as if you go back a few years, there were some excellent B sides to be found accompanying the ‘A’ sides on many singles.

So to highlight that point, here are six of my favourite B sides which I recommend checking out…

Never Want To See You Cry, found as one of
the bonus tracks to The Verve's Lucky Man.

1) The Verve – Never Want To See You Cry

Never Want To See You Cry featured as the second track on The Verve’s three track Lucky Man CD single, sandwiched between the brilliant ‘Lucky Man’ and ‘History’.  Between such illustrious company you would expect most songs to be well and truly put in the shade, but although Never Want To See You Cry is not quite in the very same league as Lucky Man and History it nevertheless comfortably holds its own.

It opens up with a simple but hauntingly beautiful violin melody before the acoustic guitar kicks in and like most songs by The Verve from that era it’s a song filled with emotion.  The whole song has a happy vibe to it but this is especially so when the violin riff plays during the chorus.  Never Want To See You Cry would fit in perfectly on The Verve’s Urban Hymns album and therefore it goes without saying that it’s definitely worth tracking down.

Music: Six Remixes Worth Checking Out

My first memory of ever coming across a remix was many years ago on the 12” single of We Take Mystery (To Bed) by Gary Numan.  The B side featured an extended remix and it was basically just the original version of the song with an extra two choruses stuck onto the end, but nevertheless the idea of having two different versions of a song was a concept which seemed quite radical at the time and greatly appealed to me.

Thankfully, remixes have come a long way since those days so nowadays I love remixes even more and love searching out reworkings of songs which have been given a fresh perspective.  So on that theme here are six remixes I recommend checking out.

1) Austere (The Naked And Famous Remix) by The Joy Formidable

Any track combining the talents of the brilliant The Joy Formidable and the excellent The Naked And Famous is a pretty safe guarantee for success and as you’d expect this track produces the goods.  There’s something about this remix which just makes me feel happy every time I listen to it.  To be fair, that’s also true of the original but with the original there was more of a motivating vibe to the song, whereas this remix leaves you simply wanting to lay back and enjoy the moment.

Find it on The Joy Formidable’s cleverly titled Roarities EP.

Music: Six Cover Versions Worth Checking Out

In my opinion there’s not much point in covering another artist’s song if you’re just going to reproduce a perfect recreation of the original.  For a cover version to be worthwhile the cover artists should add their own personality to it, so for this selection of cover versions I’ve tried to include covers which do just that.

Tori Amos' version of Smells Like Teen Spirit
can be found on the US version of her Crucify EP.

1) Smells Like Teen Spirit by Tori Amos
(Originally by Nirvana)

The first cover on this list unarguably ticks that box and is Tori Amos’ version of the Nirvana classic Smells Like Teen Spirit.  Although no-one will ever be able to recreate the brilliance of the original, Tori has nevertheless produced her own unique version which is excellent in its own way.  It’s a beautiful rendition but with a touch of bleakness thrown in and as you’d expect from Tori it’s dripping with emotion.  Find it tucked away as one of the bonus tracks on the US version of Tori’s Crucify EP.