29/7/15 - Rachel Platten, Anna Kendrick, Hailee Steinfeld and Youtube Singers

Cover art of Fight Song

So, a song that everyone has been going crazy over recently is Fight Song by Rachel Platten. As someone who has been in love with Rachel's music for a long time, I've seen her career grow: having more than one song on ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars; a song in Finding Carter; a song in the film The Good Guy; having Fight Song used in promos and TV shows across the globe; going on tour with Colbie Caillat and Christina Perri and being signed to Columbia Records. She has recently been nominated for two Teen Choice awards. Fight Song has reached number 8 on the US Billboard Hot 100, number 2 on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart, number 10 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, number 1 on the Billboard digital singles chart, number 8 on the Billboard Radio Songs chart, number 11 on their Pop Songs chart, and number 14 on Billboard's Songs of The Summer chart. It also reached number 2 on the Australian Singles Chart, number 8 in New Zealand, number 9 on the Billboard Canadian chart, and number 5 on the Billboard Canadian digital sales chart. It has also reached platinum sales in the US, selling over a million copies.


Okay so I bet you're like, 'why is Anna Kendrick in the title when she doesn't have a song coming out and she only has that cup song thing?' Well my answer is, BECAUSE SHE'S AMAZING. Yes, it's true she only has one song but that one song has over 220 million Youtube views and went 3x platinum in the US. However, she also has starred in over 30 films in 12 years, 4 of these being movie-musicals... So that means: MORE ANNA SONGS!!! :) Obviously she kills it in Pitch Perfect 1 & 2, but she is also incredible in he Last Five Years and Into The Woods. My 3 favourite Anna performances from TLFY and Into The Woods are:

1. Still Hurting - TLFY
2. On The Steps Of The Palace - Into The Woods
3. A Summer In Ohio - TLFY

As well as these, she's performed at Trevor Live 2013, the Kennedy Centre Honours, Christmas in Washington, Saturday Night Live and was part of the opening of the Oscars 2015.




Cover art of Love Myself

Clearly all of the Pitch Perfect 1 & 2 cast are insanely talented, but I think that Hailee Steinfeld is one of the best. Aside from being extremely stunning, her voice is extraordinarily soulful and beautiful. She recently covered Jessie J's Flashlight and performed an acoustic version of Stitches with Shawn Mended and is soon releasing her own song Love Myself on August 7th.

At only the age of 18, she has starred in 10 feature-length films, 5 short films, 4 TV shows and two music videos - most recently starring as The Trinity in Taylor Swift's Bad Blood- and has been nominated for over 20 awards.


Okay so finally, one of my favourite things to do is watch cover artists on Youtube. I love discovering new talent and watching them gain fans and improve, like I did with Rachel Platten. It's great when you hear an amazing singer and can promote them and want them to do amazing. And no its not just 11 year old girls doing Cups. My two absolute favourite 'Youtube singers' are Sam Tsui and Craig Yopp.

I've watched Sam for about 2 years now. I found him because in 2013 him and his producer/frequent collaborator toured the US and Canada with Alex Goot, Against the Current, Landon Austin, Luke Conard, and King the Kid. Being a huge fan of Alex, KTK and Against The Current, I checked him out. I was amazed. His cover of Stay by Rihanna was magical and later in 2014, Stay With Me was perfection.


With Craig, I've watched him for about a year. Again, the first video I watched of his was a cover of Rihanna's Stay. I then watched his cover of one of my favourite songs at the time, Bang Bang by Jessie J, Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande and it was astounding. But my all time favourite video of his, has to be Ed Sheeran, Photograph. If I'm being honest, I think its better than the original...


So that's all for today. I'll post more next week :)

1/7/15 - Lady Antebellum, Carrie Underwood and Chilling In The Sun

So where to start.

Hi,

Two of my favourite country artists at the moment are the two mentioned in the title - Lady Antebellum and Carrie Underwood. So shall we start with how I got into them both?

Well Lady Antebellum: I was watching Pretty Little Liars, as I usually do, except this was when I noticed that the music was incredible so I was listening, like really listening, and I heard this song. It went, 'For me you'll always be 18, and beautiful and dancing away with my heart'. I went on TuneFind and looked at the episode I was watching, 4x13 Bring Down The Hoe, and looked for the description, Paige & Emily dance, and then I searched it on YouTube and fell in love with the music that they sing.

As for Carrie Underwood, anything my sister buys on iTunes goes onto my phone and she just happens to love country music, Carrie Underwood in particular and I thought, nah it's not for me, but then I watched Pitch Perfect 2 (You should watch it if you haven't already) and so I obviously listened to the soundtrack and I saw the Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood was sang by Anna Kendrick in the film, so I was like 'If Anna Kendrick has sung it, I have to love it' so I just listened to it and then Jesus, Take The Wheel and I was just shocked that I loved it as much as I did.

In about 2010, I heard Need You Know by Lady Antebellum except it was sang by Lea Michele and Mark Salling in Glee and then when I heard it in February I was astounded by the fact that I hadn't thought about listening to the original earlier because Lady Antebellum's music really is marvellous.

Another thing is that, THERE IS SUNSHINE IN THE UK! So, because of that I thought I would tell you some of my favourite chilled songs. My top 5 are:

1. In My Veins - Andrew Belle
2. High Hopes - Kodaline
3. Such Great Heights - Iron and Wine
4. Make You Feel - Alina Baraz & Galimantias
5. From The Sky - Peter Bradley Adams

A friend of mine has a chilled playlist on Soundcloud. Her account is w_hitty. The link to her playlist is https://soundcloud.com/w_hitty/sets/chilled-shit

-J