Favourite Songs I Heard for the First Time in 2009

What were your favourite pieces of music that you heard for the first time last year?

I don’t necessarily mean music that came out last year, just that you heard it for the first time last year because it was new to you. If you care to share, you can put it in the comments following the post. I’d love to know to expand my musical horizons.

Below are a list of favourite songs I heard for the first time in 2009, enough that would fit on CD were I to have made one. Most were from musicals as I really got into them in 2009 after my classic jazz year in 2008. A few were one-off takes on television events, though, so I’ll start with one that was both. It was available on YouTube like most of my selections so I have included the videos to have the music right here for you. I also linked the songs to blog posts I did inspired by them, where I did one.

Someone Like You

from Jekyll & Hyde
Linda Eder & Frank Wildhorn on 2000 PBS Special
Linda Eder delivers a loving performance of this gorgeous song with touching lyrics, accompanied by husband Frank Wildhorn, who had composed the song. (blog post)

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If You Were Gay

from Avenue Q
Rick Lyon and John Tartaglia

Love and humour, not just in song but also video spoof. (blog post)

The Internet is for Porn

from Avenue Q
Stephanie D’Abruzzo, Rick Lyon & the Guys
Possibly the funniest song I have ever heard! (blog post)

Mix Tape

from Avenue Q
Stephanie D’Abruzzo and John Tartaglia

A song that dragged my emotions up and down, enhanced by Stephanie’s nuances of acting while singing this song. (blog post)

As Long as You’re Mine

from Wicked
Idina Menzel and Norbert Leo Butz
An often overlooked song from Wicked that I only heard once I saw the musical, rather than hearing the more popular songs from it. However, I loved it immediately, especially the soft-spoken ending.

Academy Awards 2009 Introduction

Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway
This number was both brilliant and unexpected in being clever, funny and spectacularly performed. My intro to the full talents of Hugh Jackman. (blog post)

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Monologue Song

from Saturday Night Live November 7, 2009
Taylor Swift

How to trash everybody you want to with class and humour while being really cute about it. (blog post)

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Dark Eyes

by Bob Dylan
Judy Collins
Judy Collins gives this sad Dylan song a haunting rendition. (blog post)

Better Angels

Lesley Gore
The original It’s My Party girl seriously grows up with this beautiful tune I first heard on CSI Miami (compilation video of episode shown below).

I Got a Feeling

Black Eyed Peas
Just an awesome dance song, ’nuff said cause I’m getting dancing! Best 2009 song in my opinion. (I chose the flash mob version shown on Oprah for the video cause it’s also so awesome!)

Wake-up

The Arcade Fire
I heard this song via the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are and thought they had made a pretty good choice for a theme song.

The Closest Thing to Crazy

by Mike Batt
Katie Melua
Pretty much describes what feeling in love feels like to me. (blog post)

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Gayla Peevey
I heard it on a Telus commercial and loved it immediately, a bit surprised I had never heard this 1950s seasonal classic until now. (blog post)

You’ve Gotta Have a Gimmick

from There’s No Business Like Show Business
Bernadette Peters, Julia McKenzie, Ruthie Henshall
This is probably the ultimate example of my claim that girls have all the fun songs in musicals, and the video only emphasizes the point.

Married

from Cabaret
Ron Rifkin, Michelle Pawk
A charming little song about marriage. A compact version is shown below.

Mystery

performed on the show Inside the Actor’s Studio
Hugh Laurie
A hilarious and charming example of how lyric writing sometimes feels like to me, trying to find desperate rhymes and more desperate words that conform with desperate rhymes. (blog post)

Love, Look in my Window

from Hello Dolly!
Ethel Merman

There isn’t a video for this one but the piece was written for Ethel Merman when she joined Hello Dolly! If you hear her perform it with the emotions she does, you’ll know why it was written for her. I can hardly keep from crying at points in it. Probably good I don’t have the music for that reason!

Favourite Drug Facebook Tagging Survey Meme

This is a concept I had come up with, Facebook surveys using picture tagging the way Facebook tagging memes are done. I created it because there aren’t any Facebook survey tools, at least not applications where everyone would have to sign up for the application to use it. I know those applications are free, but not everyone is keen to giving away their personal info and have all kinds of applications as part of their Facebook navigation.

These survey tagging memes work a bit backwards to those tagging memes. Instead of tagging a character with one of your friends’ names to tell them what you think of them, or incite an action as my Facebook 2.0 action memes encourage users to do, they tag their choice of survey answer on your posted meme. You don’t really need to tell many people about it. As you tag your answer, and a few others tag, notifications are sent out and people will be curious what someone else got tagged for. When they check, they can then decide if they want to tag themselves as well, just like the instruction says on the graphic.

Please note that these surveys are public to a person’s friends, at least, pending their privacy setting. So don’t declare anything you wouldn’t want the world to know!

As for the theme of this survey, drugs, it was the idea that came to my head when I sought out something everyone knows, may have experience with and may not be shy to answer. The “drugs” are not all hard drugs so lots of people could answer things like caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and Crackbook (aka Facebook given its addiction to some). Molecular models of the active ingredient, or ingredient which gives a drug effect on you, were used to represent the drug for an interesting look, and so this would not be used as a drug identification guide by anybody. Links are provided after the graphic for more information on the drugs, including impact so people can be well-informed. You can move your mouse over the drug or names tagged to see what lights up and see people’s answers later on.

I think you’d be surprised with this survey and others I plan to have, on the answers some of your friends will give you! I don’t know how many people can tag themselves into a picture, but if you max out, can you let me know? Thanks!

Here’s how to get this Facebook survey meme to suggest a match:

  • Click on the picture to get it at full size.
  • Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
  • Upload it to your Facebook profile.
  • Tag your choice and ask a few friends to tag their choices.
  • Click the Back button on your browser to return to this post.

Please click here for a complete list of Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.

Dedicated to gangstas in da hood, Mexican drug cartel members in da wood-en coffins, Lindsay Lohan and others in detox or retox!

Caffeine – found in pop, coffee, chocolates and other common foods eaten.

Cocaine – also known as rock, freebase, coke, snow, nose candy, flake, blow, big C, lady, white and snowbirds, the crack form is just more brutal of cocaine and crack cocaine.

Codeine – found in codeine Tylenol and some cough medicine, and is probably the most commonly used drug.

Crackbook – also known as Facebook, but as a drug given what it does to some people’s lives.

Crystal Meth – an amphetamine also known as crank, crystal methadrine, and speed.

Ecstasy – also known as MDMA (methylenedioxy-methamphetamine), Adam, clarity, ecstasy, Eve, lover’s speed, peace, STP, X, XTC.

Ethanol – the active chemical family of alcohols in much of the alcohol drank around the world.

Heroin – also known as Smack, Horse, Mud, Brown sugar, Junk, Black tar, and Big H.

Marijuana – hashish is a more concentrated form of marijuana, which is commonly referred to as “pot”, among other names like reefer, grass, weed, dope, ganja, Mary Jane or Sinsemilla, with cannabis as the active ingredient.

Nicotine – the infamous active ingredient in cigarettes and aids to quit smoking, although there are plenty of other crap in cigarettes to help kill smokers.

Opium – 90% of the world supply is grown in Afghanistan, funding the Taliban, and includes morphine as one form, with other names as Paregoric, Dover’s Powder, Parepectolin.

Oxycontin – the pharmaceutical tradename of oxycondone.

Ritalin – is one commercial name for a stimulant called methylphenidate or MPH.

Turpentine – various hydrocarbons that also include gasoline, sniffed as a drug.

Valium (diazepam) – one trade name for tranquilizers, with others including Librium, Miltown, Serax, Equanil, Miltown, and Tranxene.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 8.6

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