Elton John & Billy Joel

I’m sure that most everyone has a favorite singer.  I have two: Elton John and Billy Joel.  My criteria for this is simple – I like a larger number of songs by these two artists than any other.  And I have a hard time picking one over the other.  This has me thinking about what it is about these singers’ songs that makes me enjoy them so.  

I’m not sure if there’s a simple answer to this, but something that I have noticed  about Elton John’s and Billy Joel’s numbers is that the piano/keyboard is an integral part of almost all their songs.  When I took this notion and applied it to many other different songs that I enjoy, whether it’s something old like Imagine (John Lennon) or Bad Day (Daniel Powter), they all have the central piano themes in them.  Perhaps this is the determining factor. I wonder if this is true of most people – that there’s a central element of a song or tune that takes their fancy…

Here are a couple of great songs by both artists:

Om Shanti Om

Okay, this movie was released seemingly ages ago, but I got to see it just a few days ago.

I was very disappointed.  With all the hoopla around Deepika Padukone and Shah Rukh Khan after this film, I was truly expecting something special.  But it turned out to be a strange tale that I simply could not relate to, on an intellectual or entertainment basis.  For a guy who thoroughly enjoyed films that defy reality such as Big , Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Mr India, a movie about a guy who dies and reinarnates himself in order to bring the killer of his unrequited love to justice was a bit too much to digest.

I’m not writing a review for it, but suffice to say that I would rate it 3 out of a possible 10 points.  Which means that the last Hindi movie that I saw and really liked was the Munnabhai sequel.

Another nice song

I heard this song on a Volvo T.V. commercial and it has become my present favorite. The artist is a Swedish guy called Melpo Mene.  The song itself is a quiet, almost dreamy (maybe self-reflective) love song with soft tones – maybe a good way to describe it is very-soft psychedelic rock.

Here’s a Youtube video of the song and commercial (No, I’m not making a plug for Volvo, but the mechanical roof is very cool!).