
"Carol of the Bells" is one of my all-time favorite Christmas songs. In particular, I like it because it has an interesting pedigree, as I covered here : ...it was composed in the Ukraine and first performed in 1916. In 1936, lyrics were added for a performance by Arturo Toscanini on the radio, with other lyrics used on other occasions. In the Seventies, the music was used as background in annual commercials for André sparkling wine. I've heard maybe a hundred renditions, and even the lesser ones don't really suck. You [...]

It took me all morning to figure out from what song Pascal Parisot and his better half Frederique Dastrevigne took the string-part for J'aime J'aime . Ofcourse, the clue was in the title: They , by Jem. And she stole it from Swingle Singers' adaptation of Bach's Prelude in F Minor. Phew. Fredda's Toutes mes aventures is a very good album by Fredda (Parisot produced and wrote nearly everything, together they form Radiomatic ). I like Fredda's bit posh voice, the songs are well-crafted with nods to country and latin-american styles [...]
As I believe I've made abundantly clear, I am at heart a huge fan of pop music. But what is pop? When is a piece of music pure pop confection? I think there are two elements that tip the scales. When you hear them, they instantly transform the song to pop. Handclaps Background singers going ba-ba-ba-ba You've got to give me the handclaps, right? You could take the crunchiest Einstürzende Neubauten track and [...]