My annual list of Best New Songs I Heard is usually reserved for songs I had never heard before. Sometimes, I throw in songs I had heard before, but never nearly as good that a version I just heard for the first time. This song falls in that second category, though it doesn’t quite have the gap for me to put on my list this year because of how many great versions I have heard in the past. Still, it was good enough that I know, for me, it was the best rendition of this song that I have ever heard among the many I have heard.
The Star Spangled Banner is played at so many events I watch, on television or in person, that I am sure I have heard over 1000 renditions of it over the years. Naturally, there have been some outstanding versions among them, as well as some pretty grotesque ones. To me, though, Colbie Caillat’s version at the opening game of the National Football League season between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints was the best rendition of the song I have ever heard. Sorry, I don’t know the guitarist’s name.
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She sung it quietly and built it, without having to rely on volume power to peak. She didn’t need more drums or instruments to come in, or additional parts, either. She just rocked it gently a tad more each time and achieved the effect. That’s a hard thing to do!
The television footage of the players and crowd were also inspiring, and credits go to the NBC camera crew for capturing all that. Lots of players and coaches with hands over their heart, standing pretty still mostly, too. I also liked the shot of Jared Allen with the helmet held high. The New Orleans fans deserve credit for being in such solemn attention. A little cheer here or there in the right places can have just as good an impact as a roaring crowd all the way through like at some events. But you know, the right rendition will help you be like that to listen and be proud rather than not pay attention for any number of reasons.
All and all, I thought it was just superb. Too bad the online version I have above had the image and sound timing just a tad off to make it look like Colbie badly lip synced it.
I saw some online articles today on the rendition by Colbie Caillat. She’s got the Net talking about it, that’s for sure. There were likes and dislikes, and loves and hates, as to be expected. However, I’ve got to say the reasonings given for those who didn’t like it weren’t very sound. If the reasonings those people generally gave were valid, they should just go plunk it out on an out of tune synthesizer, or just get their computer to mechanically play it. They should appreciate how flexible their national anthem is that they could think so poorly of such a performance and yet, some people like myself think it’s the best rendition they’ve ever heard!
Leave me a comment with some other favourite renditions of the Star Spangled Banner if you care to share. Thanks!
Meanwhile, I’m going to look up some more of Colbie’s music. I had never heard of her till last night, but man, did she impress and got a new fan for that performance!
The media is also to blame. I’m not sure whether to call the editors who allowed it on their popular news sources “stupid” for running the story like it’s legitimate news, or “smart but immoral” for putting it out knowing stuff like that sells, even if there’s no substance to it.
An above average high school student could have done a better job on such a project! Soroya basically did a bad high school project, if you ask me.
Think of that as a challenge for you high schoolers out there looking for a good Science Fair or other project to do. It’s a project that should be fun and engaging if you’re a Facebook fan, and there should be at least a few of you out there who qualify. Then social network together to pool results and get a decent sample size… which Soroya never even came close. And fix some flaws critiqued here.
Here are a few tragic fatal flaws of that “study”.
Lack of sample size with just 100 subjects
For a site with 500 million users, all Soroya can show for it is 100 users? I know it was an undergraduate thesis, but people used to have to work for their thesis, you know? Also, in the electronic media for this day and age, you’d think she could get more than 100 people to do some tests! If you were going to target 100, call it a term project and leave it at that! Don’t go screaming you’ve got a study on your hands and seek attention.
Oh, wait. I think that’s narcissism!
Which professor let that be called research anyway??? Soroya did publicly admit the sample size was a weakness to the “study”, but that’s not a weakness. That doesn’t constitute a study in this case. If I did a study of 1, I could say the same thing. Of course, nobody would call it a study due to the sample size of just 1. So at how many do you call a study, and why? With that many users and statistically significant polls of merit needing around 1000 subjects, 100 subjects is still way too few to be enough data to call a study!
Soroya also had the audacity to talk about gender differences on a sample size of 50 or so people! Did she ever take statistics? And who vetted this to allow it???
All subjects were 18-25 years old
Since when did humans outside of 18-25 years old not qualify as “people”? You can’t draw a conclusion for “Facebook users” on this demographic alone. The media did that more than Soroya, but she implied it enough not to title the study “18-25 year old Facebook users” for a subject group. And were the 100 selected even representative of all 18-25 year olds? There must be literature to determine that “average” to compare to the test group narcissism and insecurity profile. Hey, maybe 18-25 year olds at York are just more narcissistic and insecure than the typical group and uses Facebook as a symptom of it!
You can make that call. 🙂
Causality… or lack thereof
So are more active Facebook users narcissistic and/or insecure? Or are narcissistic and/or insecure people use Facebook more actively? Does Soroya know the difference? In case she doesn’t, let me clarify. The first is what the media story and her so-called “study” suggests. So everyone who uses Facebook more actively are narcissistic and insecure. The second means only some of the people who use Facebook more actively are narcissistic and/or insecure, and that you can’t tell if they are by the level of their Facebook activity.
But that doesn’t sell or cause a stir or make anybody care as people could have told you that on their own instinct and be right. I’m not even sure if narcissistic and/or insecure people use Facebook a lot because you’d also have to look at the ones who don’t use Facebook and see what portion they make up, never mind those who don’t use it much.
Soroya’s pretentious “research” can’t prove any causality, but she comments on all kinds of causality.
If I had to bet on any connection between Facebook usage and narcissism and/or insecurity, though, I’d easily bet on the second reason. I’d bet narcissistic and/or insecure people use Facebook more actively, not that more active users are narcisstic.
Carefully constructed self-image???
Beyond the ridiculous conclusions drawn by Soroya on causality, she then dared to speculate on meanings of symptoms of narcissism and insecurity. For example, the more active users had carefully constructed images of themselves, to project their best features and hide their worst, or that their profile is nothing really like them. Um. Does Soroya even know anything about Facebook usage?
The active users are the ones who get caught for affairs, missing work, lying to their friends, or just plainly do other less than appropriate things. They’re the ones Facebook etiquette guides were written for, cause they’re so blind to what their actions says about them to know better!
Reasons for Facebook usage unaccounted for
Does Soroya have any idea if people in this subject use Facebook for the same reasons as other demographics by any division? I mean, seniors tend to flock to Facebook and social media to be better up to date and involved in the lives of their adolescent or older grandchildren. Is that narcissism or insecurity?
Or maybe it’s love and caring. But wait, that doesn’t sell.
Some musicians I know add friends like crazy not because they care, but because they can show potential promoters and labels a nice base of fan support. Is that narcissism or insecurity?
Or maybe it’s just good old fashioned business and public relations. But wait, that doesn’t sell, either.
Final thoughts
There are many more problems with Soroya’s “high school project”. I don’t need to bore you with more as I think I’ve discredited it enough to make it worthless. I’ll just throw in a few commentaries to conclude.
Who knew it was so easy to get 15 minutes of fame these days?
I wonder what Soroya thought of Canadians possibly being among narcissistic and insecure people in the world. We have 47.9% of the population connected, a higher percentage than any nation with over 10 million people. We also have the 4th most users in the world (CTV, June 2, 2010), without anywhere near the 4th largest population in the world! Would she have said most of us use Facebook passively like we are on a lot of things? Sure we didn’t all sign up only to be passive, did we?
High school students reading this, or Parents of them, try the challenge I had for high school students at the beginning. Seriously!
And where did Soroya get accepted into medical school? I won’t fault the school in case she didn’t tell them about this work to get in. For the love of God, Allah and the Buddha, I hope Soroya never be allowed to do research until she learns some more about what research is about! Just stick to areas in Med School one only has to memorize things or use one’s hands or something that doesn’t require research type of critical thinking!
But to end positively, congratulations for raising awareness on the Facebook usage issue, Soroya. I just wouldn’t have used sensationalism in the name of research to get credibility and attention.
By the way, Soroya, how did you fare on your own test?
Good luck in Med School. Just don’t tell the media which one accepted you for your school’s sake!
For the past four years, I have made it a habit to note songs I heard for the first time in those years which I really liked a lot. I share these with friends and family at the end of the year as a personalized gift, but more recently, I have blogged about them as well to share with readers who happen by. This is the latest on my Best Song I First Heard in 2010 list.
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When you find yourself in some far off place
And it causes you to rethink some things
You start to sense that slowly you’re becoming someone else
And then you find yourself
When you make new friends in a brand new town
And you start to think about settling down
The things that would have been lost on you
Are now clear as a bell
And you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
Well you go through life
So sure of where you’re heading
And you wind up lost
And it’s the best thing that could have happened
Cause sometimes when you lose your way, it’s really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
When you meet the one, that you’ve been waiting for
And she’s everything, that you want and more
You look at her and you finally start to live for someone else
And then you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
We go through life
So sure of where we’re headed
And we wind up lost
And its the best thing that could have happened
Cause sometimes when you lose your way, it’s really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
.
Brad Paisley
It’s the first country song that has made my list. Country isn’t my favourite genre of music, to say the least, but this song isn’t typically country. If you look at the lyrics below, you’ll see that the singer doesn’t lose anything. Rather, things were lost on him.
More shockingly, he finds something… and it’s himself!
In all seriousness, it’s a spiritual song, and those work for me if done right and well. I don’t care what genre it’d be in, whether country, rap or Martian Space Age punk.
If you’ve never heard this song, I hope you will like it. It’s easy enough to sing along and learn to play on guitar. I see chords for it are pretty simple. I will learn it and put it in PDF tabs for guitar and ukulele like other songs I have tabbed that way (with notes) on this site.
I came across this song flipping the channels just a few nights before this. It was from the Disney Pixar Cars soundtrack. It stopped me dead in my tracks, that’s for sure.
I wonder, though, is the rest of Brad’s stuff this good? I guess I’ll have to do some research to find out.
The last song which made my Best Song I First Heard in 2010 list was The No-No Song, covered by Ringo Starr. Links to other songs that have made my list this year, as well as my list from some previous years, can be found through those past posts. Enjoy!
Food miles is a nice concept for awareness, but a meaningless and impractical ideal to believe in for eating local. Eat local for the economy, not the environment. It doesn’t sound as “romantic”, to idealize something for money rather than for the Earth. However, you’re likely idealizing something you wouldn’t be able to prove to be true.
The old Goal #3 was to take a food miles inventory in fall, winter and spring.
The old Goal #4 was improve upon my food miles average from (late) fall to spring when the abundance of local produce might be similar. This was to show I had incorporated more local food and fresh food into my diet.
Digital Citizen 