We are now talking about Norway, a country that I’ve been slowly finding interest. It’s actually on my Top 20 list to visit on my bucket list!
When I tried to figure the lineup for my Tune Tuesday, I thought I’d put out the word that I was searching for all kinds of music from Norway and surprisingly, I had somebody tweet me back on Twitter with like a nice selection of artists but since I didn’t write them out so not only did I lose the list but the person who sent it to me! Unfortunately the artist that I told myself to not forget is actually Danish, not Norwegian! So I’m forced to only talk about one person!
Alan Walker is an upcoming DJ, he’s been finding some recent success with his song “Faded” that came out in 2015, but I had only heard it at the end of last year! The version that I was listening to was remixed by Dutch DJ Tiesto with the title “Northen Lights Remix” since he’s done another remix. The song was played roughly everywhere! I think I heard it every hour, seven days a week. It’s been remixed by other DJs like Dash Berlin and Slushii. The most recent song I’ve heard on the radio is “Alone” and it was remixed by Belgian DJ Lost Frequencies. I don’t like it as much as “Faded” but it is growing on me so that’s a good sign!
Have you heard of Alan Walker’s music? Are there any more Norwegian musicians I need to keep an eye out for next year’s lineup?
I am very infamous at finding songs on the radio and never figuring out what it was called or who the artist was either. It sucks! I say “infamous” because I’ve always had this problem even as a kid. Here’s the sad part about it, once I got two songs confused with three different singers. Stevie Nicks, Reba McEntire, and Celine Dion. It was the worst because my mom couldn’t get me to stop arguing about them. I was very wrong and I didn’t want to admit to it. Thankfully, she doesn’t remember this at all so I’m good!
I use to listen to the radio a lot, before we got our Sirius XM channels on our TV where they’re generous enough to include the artist name and song title while it’s on. Well, majority of time they do! The radio on my iPod nano has it where you can find out the same thing while you’re listening to the song. My love for the radio is back, not like it really went away, but this makes it a lot better!
The first time I ever liked a song but didn’t know who is was by was when I was in elementary school. At the end of the school year, the fifth graders graduated and always got a video of their time in the last year before heading to middle school. This song was literally the “go to” song and every year I would learn it more and more by only hearing it that one time out of the year. I went through this maybe four times before I graduated from fifth grade. After that, I never heard i again until maybe 2008 when I had my TV on a local channel on my TV and the announcer had played the song and was nice enough to tell the whole world or just me the lingering question. It was called “Graduation” by Vitmin C. The song came out in 2000, so that means I went through seven years of not knowing a thing but the chorus. The second time this happened I remembered hearing the song somewhere and I just loved it! I only heard it once of course! I really liked the freaking song and when I couldn’t find it again I was really mad, but like everything else I couldn’t do anything about it! We didn’t have internet or Spotify back then so finding songs was a bit of a bitch! I found the song in 2007 and didn’t find it again until 2011. The song and get ready for this was “Falling Down” Duran Duran. The beat is really great and it did feature Justin Timberlake too!
However, this post isn’t about all of the songs that I’ve lost. This is about the song that was basically fading from my memory, which I have to say is very scary! I’ve been listening to all types of music since I was about seven years old. In school, you’re forced to read books in class–out loud–I was never comfortable with reading in class at all. It didn’t matter if I was reading to the class or I was hearing it through the tape. When we were out of school my mom and nana would try their best to get my sister and I to get books from the library and my sister LOVED to read. I loved the fact that they let you rent CDs for a week!! I had a good selection to choose from, they had two different shelves with six rows of albums and oh my goodness for a young music lover, this was my dream! However at this time I was still not able to listen to a full album on my own yet. I use to rent the CD of mixed songs in the genre of dance. At first I only liked it for two songs and as I listened to it more and more I kept liking other songs too.
I remember the last time I rented the CD because I was still playing on PlayStation 2. Shut up, this was like 2004! After I came home from having my surgeries playing the games made me less upset about not seeing my friends and favorite nurses! Anyways, I remember playing Crash and I was listening to this CD and a couple others. The third track on this album was my jam! Like, it was so good that I managed to memorize the words and medley of it. And then we stopped going to the library. I still knew how the song went at the time, but overtime it was slowly fading. After a few years I began to really miss it. Two years ago, they shut down the library and built a new one. It finally opened last year but they didn’t have the CDs out for rental when we went there. I was bummed! Since I always find new music every week I’m “replacing” other favorites of mine. Whenever you hear a song you use to love though, you’re instantly into it again and you have to remind yourself to buy it on iTunes.
Now that there is YouTube and Spotify, I actually have less of a chance of not knowing the song or artist if I can get myself to memorize a line or two. My biggest accomplishment was using the record button on our DVRs to my advantage! I still have a song in mine that I need to find the answers to it. This past February, when I got into listening to Diplo’s music I was originally wanting to find this song specifically. I tried looking it up on both Google and Spotify, but the only thing I remembered of the CD were the colors of case itself. I knew it was hot pink, lime green, and black lettering. I also knew it was a bunch of early 2000’s dance tracks. I couldn’t describe the song, hell I have trouble doing that on here!! I went through Spotify’s collection of early dance (mostly) trance tracks. Whenever I found one on there I put it on a playlist, but I wasn’t finding the right one. That’s when I started listening to BPM on my TV as an every day thing and getting into others DJs along the way!
The second to last week of September, I woke up to having the picture of the CD title in my head! It was an improvement from the last time! I sat up and put up Google to try my luck one more time. I put in the words “totally” and “dance” into the box and at first I found an album I use to rent, not the one I wanted but we were getting there. So I rearranged the words again before giving up and then… I found it. Totally Dance. Hot pink and lime green cover and title. Right songs in the same arrangement I remembered them in! There were remixes of Dream and Pink’s hit songs at the time. This was the time when the biggest dance song came out: Darude’s “Sandstorm” and lastly the only DJ that was on it that STILL makes music now was Tiesto! That stuff doesn’t really matter though, all I wanted to know what was the third track’s name and artist. It was “Look At Us” by Sarina Paris the Beam & Yanou mix. No wonder why I had such a difficult time finding it! I hadn’t heard from either person since finding this song years ago! I was soooo happy that I had found it finally, but they didn’t have this exact remix on Spotify just the original version of the track. I could deal with that!
Now that I have found this song, I haven’t listened to it as much as I had hoped. Maybe it’s because it’s not in the same way I remembered hearing it as a kid. I don’t know. It could also be from the fact that I have been finding more newer songs that have recently been released. I’m glad the song is no longer lingering deep inside my head. Have you ever had a song that you used to listen to all the time but then lost it?
Throughout the years, my music has grown beyond what I even wanted. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing. I think everybody should try to expand their love of music. There’s always more than what they play on the radio. In every country, I feel like I should have a list of what gets me the most. I’m pretty sure The Netherlands is a good candidate for the third spot. I definitely don’t need anybody to help whenever I go to talk about my favorite artists and bands from there that’s for sure. Since last year, the genre was mainly metal except for Don Diablo in the EDM category. I thought I’d use more in that genre for a change.
I always think Within Temptation started the trend of NL music on the rock/metal side, but Tiesto started it on the EDM side. Except what really gets me is that I don’t have an exact date of when I got into Tiesto’s music. I want to say 2009, but I feel like it was much earlier than that, like towards 2007. It could work honestly, I’ve always been into dance music and he’s one the older DJs and so I could have heard his music earlier in my teenage years and had to hide it. I shouldn’t say that, I didn’t hide my music at least not to my parents they generally don’t care, but since at this point dance music wasn’t at its peak like it is now so “hiding” it back then would have been easy! I hid that I liked Cascada for years so it could happen! Anyways, I love Tiesto’s music. I got interested in his music when I went looking for more trance style back in 2011-12. Ended up finding his albums Kaleidoscope and In Search of Sunrise 4 – Latin America. I have a weakness for tracks over 4-5 minutes long! Don’t judge me!
Tiesto has amazing music, but he’s (thankfully) not the only great Dutch DJ out there. There’s actually quite a bit that I like to listen to, but if I had named them all we’d be here forever! I think Tiesto is great for the older generations, but both Martin Garrix and Hardwell are great for the younger generations of music lovers and ravers. I can’t say who I like the most between these two, they have their own styles. I’ve been interested in Martin’s music I heard “Animals” on the radio. I lost it after I downloaded it because I thought it would sound differently on my stereo and it didn’t, but my love for the song grew back for it after it was part of a dance routine on Dancing With The Stars. I’m surprised my mom didn’t ask ,me what the song was called after that! She usually does! I can’t wait until his debut album comes out. I’ve been looking forward to that since March! I found out about Hardwell’s music through Spotify of course, but I didn’t start like REALLY listening to him until I started listening to the Sirius XM BPM channel and that’s when I really got into his stuff!
I love remixes and mashups! I love listening to mashups alot. I am pretty good at figuring out if two different could sound good. Too bad I don’t have the software to do that. I have tons of songs that could go together. I love going on YouTube and just seraching for new music. Sometimes it’s not even “new” music, its just old stuff I”ve never heard of. I regret that later, because I’ve usually heard before but never gave it a chance. That’s how it usually happens.
I am one of those people that is hard to impress. If I’ve heard it one way I usually don’t like it the other way. There’s one song that I like and its a cover from I’m guessing an 80s band. My parents say they ruined it. I’m talking about Santana ft. Chris Daughtery in “Photograph.” Apparently everybody I know hates it. Everybody’s been trying to get me to listen to the original and I just don’t want to. I like cover songs better sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some cover songs are REALLY good. Especially if little kids (9-13) sing them. If a teenager is singing a song on YouTube its because they want to be like Justin Beiber. Sorry.
I love remixes of dance songs! Its kinda strange having one DJ do a song and then another one remixing it. It’s kind of interesting! I love Wynder Gordon’s song “Dirty Talk” but I love Laidback Luke’s remix to it as well. I love when DJ’s have songs that are 10 minutes and have no words. Its complete heaven for me. Especially if its a slow song. It puts a smile on my face if its a slow ballad/dance track. Tiesto has one like that and I was completely in love with it.
Got Meghan's Blog 