Masked Mom's Media Monday: The (Over and Over) List

This one goes out to Crazy MomCat who has no doubt long since forgotten that in my first Media Monday post when I said I wouldn't listen to John Corbett's album over and over, she asked me what albums I do listen to over and over because she hasn't bought new music in ages...

Here, finally, is my over and over list, but I must warn you, MomCat (and anyone else who's interested), not only do I have weird tastes (as mentioned in a previous warning and as is evident from my previous Media Monday reviews), but some of this stuff is not as "new" as others.

P!nk: Especially M!sundaztood and I'm Not Dead. I've never heard her first album (Can't Take Me Home)--it's one of those things I always meant to get around to and the third album, Try This didn't seem to "click" with me the way the other two albums did (though I did like "Trouble" and "God Is A DJ"). I love the girl-power lyrics and her vocal range and I figure anyone who can hold her own with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler ("Misery" from M!s-undaztood) has got something your ordinary "pop princess" lacks.

Train: I got hooked on them with "Drops of Jupiter" from the album of the same name--coming a little late to the party, which sometimes seems to be the story of my life, I didn't hear "Drops of Jupiter" until well after the release of the follow-up album My Private Nation. My Private Nation is my over and over album of theirs. I love every song on it. I like Drops of Jupiter (the album) almost as much, but it's just not the one I reach for time and time again. (I also like "Meet Virginia" which is the only song I've heard from their debut album Train.)

Matchbox 20: Everything of theirs is amazing to me. I know, I know, I'm a geek. And I've read a lot of the mediocre and downright crappy reviews and I understand all about how "watered down" it all is, blah, blah, blah. I don't care. What I know is that when I'm listening to any of their albums--I love each song so much that I'm sad to see it end and I actually think about hitting repeat so I can hear the same song twice in a row but then the next song starts and it's so good and I love it so much that I don't want it to ever end. I love Rob Thomas's voice and I love the lyrics and I love the music. Special favorites: "Damn" from Yourself or Someone Like You (especially the second time he says "damn" in the third verse--turn it up and sit real close...damn.); "Rest Stop," "Black and White People," "If You're Gone," and "Last Beautiful Girl" from Mad Season; "Could I Be You," "All I Need," "Hand Me Down" and "You're So Real" from More Than You Think You Are.

Rob Thomas: It probably comes as no surprise that I pre-ordered Rob's solo album and that the day (April 19, 2005) it came out was an event in my sad little life. Again, I love every track and I think that's just rare and amazing and Rob Thomas is just so...amazing. And isn't it amazing how many times I can squeeze amazing into one post? It's been over a year since this album came out and I still listen to it at least two or three times a week--and perhaps more telling, I listen to it several times in a row each time I listen to it.

Billy Joel: So he isn't aging well and some of the stuff in the news about him in the past few years has been downright distressing and I haven't been able to listen to most of the stuff he's put out since 1986, but...Glass Houses, The Stranger, and Songs in the Attic are still in my over and over pile. (Favorites: "Vienna" from The Stranger, "You're My Home" from Songs in the Attic, and "Sleeping With the Television On" from Glass Houses.)

iTunes: I'd like to say right up front that I don't have an iPod. Can't afford one and even if I could, I'm not sure I'd get one since it's probably way too technologically advanced for me and I find something comforting about CDs you can actually hold in your hands. But the excellent thing about iTunes (and something I'm not sure everyone knows) is that you don't need an iPod to use it and the software is FREE! You can import your CDs you already own, download (for 99 cents!) practically any dang song you can think of, and you can burn your own CDs that are combinations of EXACTLY the songs you want to listen to at that moment. The software is amazing--we haven't had a single problem with it in the three years we've been running it--it's fast and accurate and just cooler than crap.

Anyway--a lot of the "albums" I listen to over and over are self-created. Here's a small sampling of stuff I've purchased from iTunes in the past few months:
Natasha Bedingfield ("Unwritten"), Kelly Clarkson ("Walk Away"), KT Tunstall ("Black Horse & Cherry Tree"), Little Big Town ("Bring It On Home"), Billy Currington ("Must Be Doing Something Right" and "Why, Why, Why"), Sugarland (the whole album Twice The Speed of Life), and on and on and on.

iTunes is the secret--you can see lists of new music, you can preview a song before you buy it, you don't have to buy the whole album (which might suck except for the one song the artist released as a single), you don't have to leave your house, hell, you don't even have to get dressed (but I don't recommend sitting bare-assed on a leather chair--don't ask me how I know). iTunes is why my brother remarked in my dining room on a recent Saturday night, "This is the only place I've ever been where I can hear Tanya Tucker and Eminem* on the same CD."

*Hey, I know Eminmen doesn't have the best reputation among white women in their thirties. He's gotten a real bad rap (rap, ha ha, get it?), some of which he deserves but some of the stuff he's put out in recent years is actually kind of genius in its lyrics and the beat is, well, catchy, as long as you've had a precautionary dose of migraine medication first.