Odds and Ends #1

The Paul McCartney series will continue soon - this is just a post, and probably a regular series, to get down some of the random music-related thoughts in my head that don't necessarily merit their own posts.

• The Kingston Trio's version of "Seasons in the Sun" loses all of the nuance the traditional French had.  Terry Jacks's removes any depth.
• Once the McCartney series is over, at some point I need to get around to doing a Taylor Swift post.
• Linguistically interesting: I don't speak Japanese/Korean, and I speak Spanish but much less fluently than I used to.  I listen to a lot of music from many languages though, and I don't know the words to the bulk of it.  I noticed when I fake-sing Japanese or Korean, it sounds like either "na na na na na" or "da da da da da" (where I place my tongue on the roof of my mouth is somewhere between the two).  But when I fake-sing Spanish it's closer to "ti ti ti ti" or "dee dee dee".  I have no idea why this is.
• "Elenore" by the Turtles is really great, for a parody song.  (Maybe deserves its own post too.)
• I prefer Kimbra when she sings more for rhythmic effect (most of "Settle Down" and "Good Intent") than for lyrical/melodic effect ("Plain Gold Ring", etc)
• I enjoy some songs by Rihanna and Nelly Furtado for beat/catchiness' sake, and I understand that their voices may be naturally more inclined to sound like theirs than mine is, but man it must be hard to sing that strongly and nasally all the time.  It's hard to breathe that way.  Chest voice!  Not head voice!
• Saw this a while back, but I didn't have a music blog at the time.  This is a great article.
• In "The Queen" by Lady Gaga, she sounds like a chocobo.  "I can be the que-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-een, the KWEH-KWEH-queen, the KWEH-KWEH queen..."