"It's time that the fat cats had a heart attack"

“Uprising” is a song by my favorite music band Muse and is featured on their fourth studio album “The Resistance”.  It was released on 2009 and it was written by the leader of the band, Matt Bellamy.

The lyrics of that song talks about rebellion against politicians, big companies and everyone who wants to dominate and control the people using the power that they have by a bad way. As Bellamy said, “This song is influenced by glam rock, 80s synths, riots and the more eccentric protesters at the recent G2O protests. It expresses a general mistrust of bankers, global corporations, and politicians”. In simple words, it’s a protest song.

In the music video, we can see the band playing on the back of a truck through a miniature city. Through the window of a TV shop the band looks at TVs with teddy bears on the screens and Bellamy smashes the window and TV’s with his guitar, as rebelling against them.  As the video progresses we see the people burning teddy bears on a bonfire, and later the bears (who are characterized with small fangs, claws and reptilian eyes) emerge from the floor and start attacking the city.  

These teddy bears represent, for me, the global corporations, the politicians and the people who want to control the masses for their own purposes. They are characterized as teddy bears that destroy the city because they look very innocent externally but actually, they have bad intentions.

"Skyscraper"

  "Skyscraper" is one of my favorite songs, especially chose her because I like what he wants to convey and also for the energy delivered by the song.
  The song is about you have to be strong, you need to get ahead but in the past I've done his suffering, you have "thrown and trampled on the ground", one with a positive thought can rise again as a "skyscraper".

   "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato that was written after the singer was released from a rehabilitation center. By knowing this event can be inferred, not necessarily a person can depress someone just has to be taken into account, it also goes further sinking ourselves, because some people can put themselves barriers and that makes the power follow up.

   The image of a skyscraper in the song suggests that it takes a lot of strength and courage to tear down a building that size, then you can relate that to hurt a person takes an extraordinary force. Although self can have the strength and courage to collapse himself.

"Dead Leaves"

Before I start to talk about the song that I chose, I want to let you know that it was really hard to choose an English song because I lost connection with this kind of music. Since last year and maybe before that, my music preferences are in the other side of the world.  To create this post I started to listen to a lot of American an English music, but I couldn’t find a song that makes me feel the same way that my favorite Korean song, so I decided to talk about that song.

The song I chose is called “Dead Leaves". This song has a special meaning for me. During summer holidays I was kind of depressed. I cried a lot for no reason. I argued with my parents almost every day and I thought “this is my end”, but when I listened this song… everything change, “this is just a phase, I need to get up and change my mind." And I did it. Maybe it's a bit silly, but the song worked really well.

About the artist: The rapper of this song is called Woo Jiho (우지호) or ZICO as he prefers to be called. He’s a South Korean producer, composer and rapper from the Hip Hop group Block B (블락비). He also has lived in Japan and Canada. His stage name “ZICO” was inspired in his Japanese friend who called him like that because they failed at pronounce “Jiho”.  He’s my favorite rapper but also, one of my role models.

About the song: The song is from an online album called “ZICO on the Block 1.5” The album has 6 songs, the most of them are inspired in the past and present of ZICO and how did he feel during his hard times. This song “Dead Leaves” is the 5^th track and it talks about sickness and loneliness. My favorite part of the lyrics is “In order to be reborn, I’m dying right now” I took those words as my motto. This song has a different meanings for each person, it can talk about suicide, hard times or depression. And maybe other persons have another meaning for it too
Also the song doesn't have a music video but has a picture as an album cover. In the pic, ZICO is with his head shaved as an apologize to Korea and his fans due to a controversy where Block B was involved. I think it's part of the message of the song. 

Here’s the song with English subtitles.

We're are all living in America

Hello to one and all, I’m here to show you the music video that I just can’t get off my head these days.

I just love the well-made satires, the ones that make you think about something not falling in the obvious, ridiculous and easy ways that you can see in many famous and not so famous humorists, musicians and filmmakers trying to send a message in ways that are absolutely not creative nor fun, just an obscene rage shout to the world.

The song we’re talking is Amerika, made by Rammstein, a pretty famous and controversial band from Germany. This song came out on 2004 and this might not see too important but a little analysis will make you change your mind.

The messages on the clip see pretty obvious at first, but the criticism is directed to another way that most people think. Let me explain myself: First, the flagrant message is the damage that USA has made and is making to the world cultures, for instance in the video we can see the Buddhist kids eating McDonald-like hamburgers, an Asian young man imitating a 50’s young badass guy and a Middle East man with sneakers taking them off before his ceremonial pray. All this matching with a clear lyric saying “We’re living in America, Coca Cola; sometimes war”.

So, is there a hidden message? Of course there is!, as I said before the year 2004 is pretty important, the USA president George Bush was spreading a hate message around the world about “freedom and war”, and, many many people were aware of this. So the song and video itself is a criticism to the US-American point of view that Bush was showing to the world: the American lifestyle is the best, is the only one that is correct and EVERYONE in the world should live our culture and share our values.

The topics on this video don’t touch the globalization factor that might explain a big part of the phenomena that are shown in the video, but the creative works have to omit parts to focus on another, because these kind of videos and stuff show us things that we have to take care of, things that we have to be aware of, creating consciousness and not showing us an absolute truth that we must follow.

Take care, have a nice day and thank you for reading.

- Yair

I Don't Wanna be a Stupid Girl

Stupid Girls" by Pink is a great song that talk about how the mass media and "showbiz" is influencing in a bad way to all the people, in this case girls. In this video we can see how the image of "perfect but stupids girls" that media imposes is altering the role of the women in our current society. There's a lot of women that want to be recognized by their work or their capacities, and that want to contribute to our society, but there are, at the same time, girls that want to be just pretties and sexies or date famous people to have their "fifteen minutes of fame". 

The video is very attractive because shows an ironic vision of "stupid girls" with a combination of reality with exaggeration and, at the same time, shows how other women feel about it. Some people can agreed to the point of view of Pink and other people can think that's a wrong vision, but it will depend of how we relate with TV and mass media in general. 

This video shows the way of live of some American's showbitz girls and the girls that try to follow their acts to be like them. The video's message was sent because it was neccesary, like a warning of the wrong role of the women that need to be changed.

"I hope I die before I get old."

"My Generation" is a song by one of my favorites music bands, The Who, and at the same time, one of my favorite songs of all the time. The lyrics were written by the guitarrist of the group, Pete Townshend, in 1965 and it was released for their debut album "My Generation".

As the songwriter, Townshend, said "The song was very much about trying to find a place in society." it was taken as a "rebel song" for people of the era because the lyrics.

One of the highlights of the song is that the instruments play it in an aggresive and heavy way and for the first time in the rock history, a bass solo is featured in a song. Also the vocalist, Roger Daltrey, sings here with a kind of stutter (as if he was showing a sort of frustration or wanting to say something that it isn't allowed in the time).

I love this song because it has a meaning of change for this new generation of the sixties. Adults, back then, were so conservative and new ideas were hard criticized by them (remember it was an era full of changes: hippies, liberal thinking, different lifestyles, new music, free love) so they needed to say that youth generation wasn't better or worst than others, it was just different and they required to be heard.

What I understand in their famous line "I hope I die before I get old" is that they do not want to grow up like conservative and boring adults, they prefer to die instead of being like the old people they are facing.

I want to show their live performance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 where The Who made their famous scene destroying their instruments and exploiting Keith Moon's drum kit at the end of the song.

Enjoy it!