In late January, I proposed a Facebook meme to share a love song a day for February that contains Valentine’s Day.
Here were the first, second and third sets of seven songs I had shared.
Below is the fourth and final set of seven great love songs I shared, with some short commentary for each. Actually, for the Februaries with 29 days, I’ve included a bonus song.
Facebook’s Newsfeed of your Facebook friends’ posts scrolls with time as new ones are added, pushing old ones toward the bottom… sort of. It’s not quite that simple that new ones push old ones down. Facebook as a complex algorithm (math formula) that mixes things up a bit. So how do you beat this algorithm?
Snoopy
Last weekend, the first weekend in December, there was a global campaign on Facebook where people replace their profile pictures with their favourite cartoon character/s.
I was happy to see a lot of my Facebook friends took part. It was really interesting to see what everybody chose for their characters.
Being the curious type, the two most obvious question I had were which characters were the most popular, and which were interesting?
For the most interesting, I would have to give that to my friend Dan, who chose Banana Man.
For the most popular, that’s a much harder question to answer with any confidence. I don’t have enough Facebook friends to get a statistically significant result. Fortunately, I have this site which I estimate provided about 20,000 cartoon pictures to people looking for them over the weekend. Talk about suffocating from smog from the traffic from my blog! OMG!!!
Of course, I don’t have all the comic book characters out there, but I probably have about 500, of which 250 were here. That’s a decent sample size variety for me. I also have visitors from around the world.
From stats on this website, from what I could tell, Snoopy from the Peanuts strip was the most popular character (sometimes with Charlie Brown and Woodstock so hard to separate them out.
Comic book heroine Wonder Woman was a close second.
My Melody from the Hello Kitty strip was third.
Wilma Flintsone was fourth.
Homer Simpson was fifth.
Cinnamoroll from Hello Kitty was sixth.
Catwoman was seventh.
Love-a-lot Bear from the Care Bears was eighth.
Pebbles Flintstone was ninth.
Finally, Lucky Bear from the Care Bears was tenth.
I haven’t seen any articles yet which gives a large sample size for the most popular character, but if you do, please do share.
What about among your Facebook friends? Who was the most popular character or most popular cartoon strip?
And don’t forget about the most interesting character you saw.
This is just a great song, especially the version performed at Columbia Records’ 30th Anniversary Tribute for Bob Dylan that seems to have been ripped off the Net, but here’s a close version in rehearsal.
It is also the version I tabbed. I never thought I’d say it but thank goodness for Chinese video sites that still holds videos like the one above as YouTube has grown up and wimped out to copyright threats.
My Back Pages, Bob Dylan Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF
My Back Pages, Bob Dylan Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
My Back Pages, Bob Dylan Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF
My Back Pages, Bob Dylan Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
Bob Dylan
These tabs all fit on one page to avoid the inconvenience of page turns. However, the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) may be too small for your eyes. If so, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
Just a few notes to the tabs. In verses 4-6, there is a slight change in one of the lines from the same line for verses 1-3, so I have highlighted the note in red. It’s a little thing, but gives the song a little “ooomph” after 3 go arounds of the verse and chorus. Despite having 6 verses, a great song doesn’t get boring with repetition. You just find ways to lift it even more, like with that little note in red.
On the ukulele tab, I have added a little chord modification for that note. I have labeled the chord with an asterisk and denoted it as basically a C chord but with the finger on the bottom A string to be on the 5th fret instead of the 3rd fret. Written out in fret and string numbers, it is 0005 (fifth fret fourth string from top down) rather 0003 for a regular C chord. The labeling is in the tab sheet. I have not done this for the guitar tabs because there isn’t anything similar and the C chord on the guitar handles the slight disharmony (C chord, D note) just fine.
Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 8.1
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.
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)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Upload of this video sometimes seems a bit slow so please be patient.
from Avenue Q
Rick Lyon and John Tartaglia
Love and humour, not just in song but also video spoof. (blog post)
from Avenue Q
Stephanie D’Abruzzo, Rick Lyon & the Guys
Possibly the funniest song I have ever heard! (blog post)
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)
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.
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)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
by Bob Dylan
Judy Collins
Judy Collins gives this sad Dylan song a haunting rendition. (blog post)
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).
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!)
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.
by Mike Batt
Katie Melua
Pretty much describes what feeling in love feels like to me. (blog post)
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)
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.
from Cabaret
Ron Rifkin, Michelle Pawk
A charming little song about marriage. A compact version is shown below.
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)
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!
Digital Citizen 