Girl I'm Gonna Miss You

I can't be the only one who watched Behind the Music: Milli Vanilli multiple times in the late 90's/early 2000's. I was a chubby, weird kid, and I was kind of stuck in a neverending cycle where being weird and chubby led to me watching a lot of VH1, which in turn led to me being weirder and chubbier AD INFINITUM.
Anyway. If you've seen that particular BTM, you know that the story of Milli Vanilli is a pretty tragic one. So I've got a soft spot for those two guys, because any of us (as long as we were young, reasonably attractive, muscular African-American men) could've fallen into that same opportunity. And Oh My G is this song good.

Tunes

Trying to decide whether or not I'll drag H. with me to see Jesse Malin in two weeks. This is my favorite of his songs. Can you tell he's BFFs with Ryan Adams?

Another Song I Love

I've written before about my love of John Legend, but I've never mentioned my love of the song "Everybody Knows." I really love this song, but I only remembered it because it shares a title with a Ryan Adams song. I am only a little ashamed to mention that for awhile, I used to listen to this song multiple times a day. Alex can keep posting about all those cool indie bands he listens to, and I'll just let you know about all the pop songs I listen to.

Christopher Cross

I will admit that I'm only a casual fan of 30 Rock. Yes, whenever I watch it I love it, but also I always feel like I'm not the target audience. I mean, I earnestly love the Midwest a little TOO much. Regardless, this song from the upcoming 30 Rock soundtrack is GREAT! Clearly there are echoes of "Arthur's Theme" going on here. I predict Alex will love this one. You can download it on Pitchfork.

One of my Favorite Songs

Alex went through a serious Herb Alpert phase in high school (you know how teenage boys are), and I definitely suffered from secondhand Alpert. Except I wouldn't call it suffering. I have a casual like of all things Alpert, but I fell hard for this song. I don't listen to it too much anymore, but there was a time in my life where I listened to it multiple times daily. I think that if my life had a LastFM page, this song would have the highest play count. There's just something about it. It's much more restrained than most Herb Alpert songs, although it still features the bombast and horn sections you'd expect. It's rich in 70's schmaltz while still being sweet. Naturally, it was written by Burt Bacharach. Also, this video is bananas.

Something Embarrassing

Usher (or Ursher, as some people refer to him) is, in my opinion, exactly as famous as he should be. He has a nice voice, but that's about all it is. "Nice." Silky smooth, but not really anything earth-shattering. Yet I actually like (okay, love) every Usher song I've ever heard. The man is incapable of releasing anything less than a jam. Even "Yeah," which annoyed me with its ubiquity way back in 2004, is still pretty solid.
That being said, here's something embarrassing. Do you remember the Usher/Alicia Keys collaboration "My Boo"? What's that? You don't? How could you forget a white-hot collab between two musical superstars? Probably because it wasn't very good. This song is pretty awful, but it is ALWAYS stuck in my head. I'm not really exaggerating. There's a constant voice that drones, "I don't know about y'all, but I know 'bout us," in the back of my head as I go about my daily tasks. And you'd be surprised how often the word "Boo" is brought up in normal conversation, once again bringing the haunting (ha) melody back to me. Enjoy.

Dr. Dog

The Winter Blues have already set in. This means I'm mostly listening to slow jams. Here's one of my favorite Dr. Dog songs. It's off of their B-sides comp, Passed Away, which I really can't recommend enough. It makes me really despairingly sad in the way that most slow love songs do. For a second I thought this would make a great first dance at a wedding some day in the distant future, but then I thought that maybe one shouldn't choose a song with the word "pee" in it.