March Playlist

Hello again.

I hope everyone has been enjoying their spring breaks. I am thoroughly happy that spring is here because I really miss the greenery and of course the gardening that comes with it.

I am so sorry for never posting about our third garden, but I think I have a way to incorporate it with whatever we do this year. We have a little nursery in my nephew’s playroom. There is a dresser in there that has enough space to like five containers of various veggies to grow indoors, and my dad put a couple of his LED lights on top of them in the daytime, and they’ve been growing like weeds! It’s absolutely insane on the progress our green beans, lettuce and radishes have been making in the last few days.

Here are some of the early photos my mom took earlier in the month.

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I’m definitely looking forward to going outside and hang out with my cats for longer than five to ten minutes top, I’d like to get down and scoot out onto the deck again, I need to get as much exercise as possible–I’m not interested in getting my body into shape. It’s already a shape and I’m okay with it at the moment. All jokes aside, I enjoy being at the cats level. They seem to enjoy it a lot too. Some of them know if I am on the ground, they can get more pets, however, they have yet to figure out I also like to read while on the ground too, and there’s one that usually does not like to see my books. All of us (the cats and myself) are very spoiled but we can’t deny we don’t enjoy it though.

Besides all of the pretty things growing in our house, I’ve been listening to a lot of great music lately.

I have listened to quite a few albums this past month, and with promising results. I started with VÉRITÉ and her new release, “Love You Forever” and I loved this album so much. I absolutely love VÉRITÉ’s moody music, she reminds me of a poppier BANKS. The next album was Pop Evil’s “Skeletons” and that is a really good record. I enjoyed it a lot. And the final “new” releases, Ava McMahon, who was a member of Celtic Woman (I refer her as Eabha as that is her real name in Irish Gaelic) released a new EP called Scéalta this past week and she has a beautiful voice, and even though I don’t know the Gaelic language, it obviously doesn’t stop me from listening to her music.

For some odd reason I get into these spurts where I will focus all of my musical attention on a single artist or band and this month, I was hooked on Asking Alexandria. I was a late bloomer–honestly, I remember hearing about them in 2005-06 with Bring Me The Horizon but I was nowhere near ready for metalcore at that point in my life, so I stayed as far away as possible. And then all of a sudden, Danny left the band and I weirdly got into them with Denis as lead vocalist and I did like him but you can’t replace Danny’s voice though. Nowadays, the whole “metalcore” vibe they had in their days has disappeared, but I love this transformation into hard rock, and it fits with Danny’s voice now and honestly the music they’re creating now is much better, but of course that’s my opinion.

Before I leave you be for the rest of the day (or night), here is my Top 20 for March. If you’d like to check out the rest of the Spotify playlist, click here.

Black Out Days by Phantogram
Grand by Kane Brown
Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus
Evil by Hollywood Undead
Temporary by VÉRITÉ
Fukk Sleep by A$AP Rocky featuring FKA Twigs
Inside Out by The Chainsmokers featuring Charlee
Let Down by Palisandes
Feel The Waters by Sarah Reeves
Animals – Orchestral Version by Architects
Empire by Beth Crowley
Until the Levee by Joy Williams
Sound of Glory by Pop Evil
See What’s On The Inside by Asking Alexandria
1985 by Bowling For Soup
Already Damned by Crimson Adored featuring Lauren Babic
I’d Do Anything by Simple Plan
What Could Have Been by Sting featuring Ray Chen
I’m Dangerous by The EverLove
Lullaby of Woe by Ashley Serena

What were you listening to this March? Drop your top three favorite tracks in the comments below.

February Playlist

Hello!

For the past two months, I’ve been somewhat out of it. I haven’t wanted to blog at all, and for a time it was purely laziness on my part because I rush to get everything done during Blogmas and I don’t get to enjoy everything that makes the holidays exciting.

Just one little thing….

I’ve had this feeling for about three or four years now. I’ve wanted to stop blogging. There wasn’t anything wrong with my content or schedule, I think it’s me. Maybe it’s time to take a break from everything about Got Meghan’s Blog.

For now, though, I will only be on here every other month and publishing new posts within the last two weeks of each month. I may not even go on for six days, it just might be book reviews and playlists, sometimes you may see other stuff. It’ll be interesting how long this idea lasts, whether I continue blogging or not, I’ll always be around and on my social media too. You can find them on the right side of my site.

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Within the last two months I’ve listened to an array of albums.

In January, I was thoroughly obsessed with power/symphonic metal band Kamelot’s older records like Epica (2003) and Poetry for the Poisoned (2010) featuring original vocalist Roy Khan. I really love current leader Tommy Karevik’s voice, but I’ve never really given Roy’s voice a chance, so I started going through their past albums, which hasn’t seemed odd now that I’ve seen they are releasing a new album this year, called The Awakening in March, which sounds really cool, so I’m very excited about it!

The second band I was into, was Sleeping With Sirens. I watched the music video of “Let You Down” with Charlotte Sands and I really enjoyed it, and I’ve never been into male vocalists with a falsetto voice, but once I heard that song and then later on I heard the title track of their new album, “Complete Collapse” on SXM Octane, I decided to give it a chance one night where I couldn’t sleep, and I like it. My favorite was “Us” with Dorothy.

For February, I was pulled into two more albums. An old favorite of mine: Xandra, they are a symphonic metal based in The Netherlands, and they recently introduced their new singer, her name is Ambre, and she does both clean and harsh vocals on their album, “The Wonders Still Awaiting” and I actually love this album. Xandria’s been through a hard road, with everchanging vocalists, but I’m glad to see this band pushing through and releasing a brand-new album for their fans.

The final band I’ve been crazy for is I Prevail. Now I’ve liked certain songs from them in the last five years, like “Every Time You Leave” with Delaney Jane. And I heard their songs “Deep End” and “Body Bag” on Octane, and after getting out of the last three bands, I decided to give their album “TRUE POWER” a shot and again, I loved it! I like how you have the harder and up-beat songs at the front of the record and the ballads toward the end. Since they have two separate vocalists, I find this arrangement gives each person a place to showcases their talent fairly.

If you haven’t listened to any of these albums, I highly suggest you do so! I’ve included several songs in my January and February Spotify playlists. If you want to check out the January list, click here. Now, here are my Top 14 songs for this month, and this is your link for that playlist.

Special by Georgi Kay
Queen by Loren Gray
Brooklyn by MALINDA
Hold Me, Help Me by Halocene
Fantasy by Mariah Carey
Black Sheep by Dorothy
Ghetto Supastar (This Is What You Are) by Pras featuring Ol’ Dirity Bastard & Mya
Lost by Linkin Park
Beaver Cage by Butcher Babies
Get There First by Austin Snell
Drowning by Atreyu
Dead Reckoning by Pop Evil featuring Fit For A King
Bad Man by Disburted
The Reason by Hoobastank

As my final note, I wanted to talk to you about one of my favorite bands ever, Linkin Park releasing a new single called “Lost” for the 20th Anniversary for their second album Meteora, and it’s the first song that the band’s released in a long time. Since the passing of Chester Bennington, they’ve been somewhat quiet as a band. Mike Shinoda released a solo album a couple of years ago and it did very well, but all of the LP soldiers wonder how the band will continue and being able to put something like this little gem was beautiful. One thing I thought was interesting in the first time listening to it, was while Chester was doing the second verse, seemed to bring out some emotional feelings for Chester. Did you notice it too?

What were your favorite albums and/or songs for both January and February? Let me know in the cemments!

September Playlist + Meet My Niece!

Hello everyone!

This past month has been pretty crazy and I’m happy to be done with it honestly.

The beginning of it was interesting though, my sister has expected contractions throughout her pregnancies, but she went to the hospital more frequent with this one, and the most recent weren’t necessarily had anything to do with my niece. She had some issues with her breathing and her feet were very swollen, and she was told to rest more and put up her feet, and she tried to do everything the doctor requested but she still had complications, so she went to the hospital to be checked out and when she came home over two weeks later, we had welcomed our newest member into the family!

💗 MEET KIMBER MAE 💗

In my baby announcement back in May, I mentioned that I wasn’t going to share her name until she was born, mainly for the suspense but I also didn’t know whether or not her parents would change it last minute.

Kimber is a preemie, like moi, but at least she didn’t weight like two pounds and have to spend roughly 70 days in the NICU! Despite this though, she actually weights one pound less than her brother Nolan. We are all in agreement that we definitely don’t remember Nolan ever being this small! Nolan was a chunky baby but she’s very petite. A big difference between she and Nolan is that Kimber loves to be swaddled whereas Nolan has never enjoyed being wrapped up. He’s even four years old and he does not sleep with a blanket on him!

Since she came so early, as she was supposed to be born in early October, we had to make some adjustments to our plans of having my nephew come to our house while Blondie was in the hospital, we assumed it would be like two days, but it turned out to be two weeks. He went to his dad’s house on certain days but for the most part he stayed at our house, and he was a very good boy. He was very helpful to us, especially my dad and I, with our issues lately. I watched a LOT of toddler based educational shows like Paw Patrol, Blippi, and Cocomelon. By the end though, I was growing to be a fan of Blippi’s videos at Children’s Museums and Zoos. And at night we switched between Bluey (another favorite of mine!) and Muffet Babies. He seemed to enjoy having a sleepover in Aunt Meg’s room.

When Blondie was officially allowed to go home, she came to our house, and I finally got to meet her after almost a week after she was born. I was thrilled as this meant that I could have her on my bed like I did when Nolan was a baby. My mom got her a bouncy seat thingy in the beginning of her pregnancy, and we got to test it out and we found out that even though she enjoyed sitting in it, she seemed even smaller! I swore she gave me a little smile that next morning too!

Now let’s move on to the sad part of this post. I was hoping to write a separate one, but I thought it would look strange since I included Kimber’s announcement in this one.

I am very sad that Her Majesty the Queen has died. She was the reason why I became obsessed with the British royals and other monarchs in Eastern Europe, as I was curious about why she had the Roman Numeral “II” behind her name and that’s when I discovered my love of the Plantagenet and Tudor dynasties.

I have watched many documentaries on the Queen’s 70 reign in the last few years. I’ve enjoyed seeing her all dressed up, doing engagements out in public in various colors and her signature smile, hat and bags. She always seemed so interested in everything! I will forever enjoy the opening of the opening ceremony of the Olympics in 2012, where she walks the walls of Buckingham Palace with James Bond and her corgies, and acts like she drops out of the helicopter into that arena, I knew it was fake but it still shocked me they would do something like that. She must’ve had her say in the way of the segment too, after all she is the Queen, she wasn’t going to do something that showed her in a negative way, and joining Daniel Craig, allows us as the audience and fans to see her playfulness and overall sense of humor!

After 70 years of her reign, we now have a King and will probably have one for quite a while as after King Charles is William, The Prince of Wales, and his son Prince George of Wales. This part is a part weird, but I’m sure I am not alone in my thinking, but I am curious on how the British royals will evolve into this new order, and still be able to be caring human beings to themselves and others around the world.

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As you can imagine, having to experience all of these new changes in a matter of two weeks, I haven’t been able to listen to music nor read my books as much as I normally do, I am finally trying to keep up with my stuff but I’m trying to take it easy as well.

This month saw a lot of good and bad things, but I still had my music to get me through it. So, I hope you enjoy my Top 20 below. If you’d like to play the entire monthly playlist on Spotify, click here

Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac
Fallin’ For You by Colbie Calliat
Sometimes A Prayer Will Do by Celtic Woman
All She Wanna Do by John Legend
Late Night Talking by Harry Styles
Brand New by Ben Rector
Love Me Anyway by P!nk featuring Chris Stapleton
Vegas by Doja Cat
Choke by The Warning featuring grandson and Zero 9:36
Shivering by Illenium featuring Spiritbox
Kickstart My Heart by Halocene featuring Shershen&Zaritskaya
Bow Down by Rain Paris
Toxic by Charlotte Wessels
Try Again by Aaliyah
Come, Little Children by Clovet Mae
Godless by BANKS
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost by Eklipse featuring Melissa Bonny
Bom Bidi Bom by Nick Jonas featuring Nicki Minaj
Black Widow by Fame On Fire featuring Twiggy

What were listening to this month? Name your top three favorites in the comments!

Summer ’22 Playlist

Well hello there!

Every summer for the past six years, I’ve done an actual summer playlist on here. I’ve loved putting them together for not only you, but for myself because then I can keep track of these amazing songs year after year. I suppose if you wanted to go back even further on what I liked to listen to prior to these individual posts, you can look through at June through September and you might find some more jams that way, it’s just going to be time-consuming on you though. My only regret is I just wish my Spotify worked in 2016-18 so that I could have collected even more and shared them with you but can’t quite fix it now.

In the beginning, I was obsessed with EDM (electronic dance music) and I would go crazy for anything that would come out in mid-March in that genre and see how it would become the summer jam of the year. However, this summer I was really drawn to rock music, and I mean, the majority of the playlist below is made up of rock and heavy metal tracks, I don’t mind the switch one bit honestly. Some of the songs were released at the start of the year and depending on my love for it and how much its played on the various Sirius XM stations I listen to, will make its way to the summer playlist, so I hope everyone loves on what I’ve been enjoying lately and maybe you’ll find your anthem for the year, that is if you haven’t already!

Here is my Top 12 songs of the summer. Want to check out the entire playlist? Click here.

Rest in Peace by Dorothy
About Damn Time by Lizzo
ABCDEFU by GAYLE
Eye of The Storm by Pop Evil
Cleopatra by Train featuring Sofia Reyes
Pink Rover by Scene Queen
Trap God by Hollywood Undead
Voices In My Head by Falling In Reserve
Meteorite by BANKS
Pink Venom by BLACKPINK
Happy Ending by Demi Lovato
Boyfriend by Dove Cameron

Now have I found my anthem for the year? I don’t think so. Every time I think I’ve found it though, it changes on me, so that definitely doesn’t help me out at all, but any of these songs on the list above can be a great reminder of summer 2022. I would really love to hear your favorites on your own list in the comments.

Artist Highlight | For Mallory

Hello and welcome to my newest music series: Artist Highlight!

I generally wanted a space to talk about a single musician or band a month, but back in early April, when I went up north to visit with my family, my cousin’s daughter brought her violin and played us some songs she’s been learning in her class. She did a really great job and after the performance I asked her how she was able to play it and she explained to us in great detail. I hope she continues to play the violin or maybe switch/take on another instrument later on, if she ever does this, I hope it’s the cello! I love the cello just as much as I love the violin.

A little later I asked her if she’d ever heard of Lindsey Stirling before, and she told me no, which really puzzled me but then again, it didn’t, because in school, she’s probably forced to know classic works and nursery rhymes at this stage, so in a way to help introduce her and everybody else who happens to read this, to other violinists!

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Let’s start with the lovely Lindsey Stirling.

I didn’t find out about her through America’s Got Talent in 2010, I actually found her on YouTube like most people–but I think I would have enjoyed seeing her on the show a lot! Anyways, the first song I heard was “Crystalize” of course and remember seeing the music video, thinking these two really work together. Although her music was considered hip hop on the show, for this song she had kicked up the dubstep hype that was going around at that time. I was hooked to her channel my whole senior year and honestly believe she cemented my drive for modern symphonic music.

Before Lindsey came into my life, the first violinist I was ever “introduced’ to was back in 2004, this year at its core was a changing time for me. I had just started on my hip hop phase and so I was listening to a lot of unique beats on my own without being heavily influenced by my mother. The song in question was Twista’s “Overnight Celebrity” as it features an actual violist on the track, Miri Ben-Air. I remember watching the music video for the song and was stuck by the fact there was a woman violinist. It seems kind of scary that this was the second time I was listening to two very different genres of music together and absolutely loving and wanting more of it. I had begun this a year before when Evanescence’s debut album came out in 2003.

After the song disappeared, I didn’t find anything like it again until around late 2007 or early 2008. I had found these two girl groups from England, bond and eScala. They were not your average girl groups of that time, they never actually sang, they were a string quartet. This was my first show that if you’re a part of a group, you don’t a singer. Unfortunately, by the time I had found both of them, they were on hiatus and honestly haven’t released anything new for a couple of decades.

Later on in my life, this would sort of happen again as I had discovered Apocalyptica, which was originally a tribute band for Metallica out of Finland! They have three celloists and one drummer and they make symphonic metal music. I’ve talked a bit about them over the years. They have a lot of cool songs like “Broken Pieces” with Lacey Sturm and “White Room” with Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix.

There is another group I found back in 2015 I think, it was when the symphonic metal band Kamelot came out with “Silverthorn” as it was the band’s first album with a new singer. They had a song called “My Confession” and they featured the German group Eklipse and even though they were all woman, I wouldn’t consider them a pop-y, although they have done some covers of David Guetta’s “Titanium” with Sia, and ‘Cry Me a River” by Justin Timberlake, they do like to take risks and create renditions of popular rock songs, and my favorite is still “Weak Fantasy by Nightwish.

Back in 2017, when I was on Netflix, I had found the Han Zimmer: Live in Prague and was just stunned by the fact that this huge music producer was getting together with his longtime friends and putting on shows for everyone. I mean, he performed at Lollapalooza a couple of years ago! How in the heck does that happen?! Anyways, the show itself was absolutely amazing and I will not lie, I totally cried when Lebo M came out to perform some of “The Lion King” songs on stage! There were a lot of elements I enjoyed but I really fell in love with the violinist Rusanda Panfill and celloist Tina Guo. You may already know Tina’s work without even know it as she is the one who did the Wonder Woman main theme. These ladies really play beautifully and definitely recommend that concert to anyone.

I was never truly able to learn to read music nor do I feel the need to play any instrument, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love seeing other artists become so passionate with their work though, it’s so interesting to see these musicians put everything into their work. Whenever I watch concerts on YouTube, I love to see them basically one eye on the maestro and the other on the sheets on the podium in front of them. They tend to have some intense facial expressions and they always seems to change with whatever tempo they are playing at that moment.

If you would like to check out the artists I’ve mentioned and/or any others (because I had an even bigger list to start, but we’d be here forever!) that fit in this post, click here to the Spotify playlist!