Curio Cabinet / Song Curio

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
 

Okay, so maybe Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber wasn't a Canadian pop star and Calvin Klein underwear model, but he remains one of Baroque classical music's outstanding figures. Born on August 12, 1644, Biber was a Bohemian-Austrian virtuoso on the violin, who shredded on the instrument like no one before him: his unique playing style and reach allowed for standard playing at much higher registers on the violin neck, and he experimented with scordatura, or alternate tunings for his stringed instrument. Many of the pieces that make up the Mystery Sonatas feature detuned violin parts to allow for varied and unusual harmonies set against a basso continuo (a bass figure, often played on an organ). Perhaps the most outstanding of them is the sixteenth and final piece, The Guardian Angel Passacaglia in G Minor, a work for solo violin which is played in triplet time, with a repeating theme in the bass. Over about nine minutes, the soloist hypnotically returns to the bass notes, while building increasingly dramatic flurries in the higher registers. The unparalleled beauty of this sacred music is so good, we can almost forgive H. I. F. Biber for not being a teenage heartthrob.
 

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Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
 

Shall I compare thee to a winter's day? For baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, who was born 340 years ago, art and poetry both played their part in inspiring The Four Seasons violin concertos (small orchestral works with soloists). Marco Ricci's landscape paintings provided Vivaldi with a view of weather and mood changes in the seasons. For each of his four concertos, Vivaldi wrote a sonnet poem to detail each scene described by the music: in the first movement of the Winter concerto, the punctuation of notes in the strings fall "shivering, frozen… [like] snow in biting, stinging winds." The constant pounding rhythm—contrasted with the furious swirls in the solo violin—paint an early image of program music (a piece that describes a scene), long before it was cool to do so in classical music. Though Vivaldi wrote over 500 concertos, this one remains a favorite, even if it does make us want to curl up next to a fire with a cup of hot chocolate!

 

Below: a translated version of the Winter poem. Vivaldi's Four Seasons are sometimes performed with readings of the sonnets before each concerto.
 

Winter
 

[I: Allegro non molto]
 

To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
in the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
to run, stamping one’s feet every moment,
our teeth chattering in the extreme cold.
 

[II: Largo]
 

Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.
 

[III: Allegro]
 

We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,
for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,
rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home
despite the locked and bolted doors …
this is winter, which nonetheless
brings its own delights.
 

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Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
 

We didn't know what we had till he was gone. On February 23, 1968, Otis Redding's The Dock of the Bay album was released, featuring the first song to ever posthumously hit #1: (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay. 1967 saw Redding bring his soul act to enthusiastic crowds at the Monterey Pop Festival, a feat that made him believe he could appeal to pop audiences. Taking inspiration from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album and a stay in the San Francisco Bay, Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper penned (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay in late 1967 as a career-reinvention track. Gone was the loud showmanship, and in its place was a gentler vocal performance that allowed melancholic lyrics to shine through. Redding's drifting whistle at the end was only supposed to act as a placeholder until he finished a final verse—one he never got to because of the ill-fated plane crash a few days later. In the wake of the tragedy, Cropper was left to finish and mix one of the best pop tracks of the 20th century, giving the world a taste of what Redding was capable of.
 

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Image credit & copyright: Photofest
 

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
 

Barbara Streisand's home in Malibu is the stuff of celebrity legend. The singer reportedly has an early 20th-century mall in her basement. Though you won't find a Sunglass Hut or Hot Topic down there, her collections of clothing, dolls, and a reported frozen yogurt kiosk each have their own storage space in the form of storefronts. Streisand poked fun at her own interior decorating habits in her duet with comedienne Melissa McCarthy on the show tune Anything You Can Do. From the 2016 album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, McCarthy and Streisand have a jazzy battle over movie roles, ridiculous last name pronunciations, and (eventually) musical and emotional harmony. Few people can claim their first time in a recording studio was with Streisand, though that's exactly what happened to McCarthy. As for Babs, she can add the tune and album to her mantle—where six other decades' worth of her chart-topping albums are probably displayed!
 

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Image credit & copyright: Paramount Pictures
 

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
 

We oughta know who inspired Alanis Morissette's biggest hit! Much speculation has been given to the unidentified scorned lover cited in her debut U.S. single You Oughta Know, from her June 1995 album Jagged Little Pill. One of the internet's favorite rumors is that it was Dave Coulier of the television series Full House. Aside from jokingly telling comedian Larry David on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Morissette has kept her lips firmly sealed on the subject. What we do know is You Oughta Know wasn't just a flash-in-the-pan hit. Rock 'n' roll heavyweights Dave Navarro and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers helped shape the guitar and bass parts to match Morissette's searing vocals. The track also employs staples of '90s music, namely mixing live and programmed drum machine rhythm parts, and running away with the "loud-quiet-loud" sonic dynamic made popular by the Pixies and Nirvana. All these elements came together to propel You Oughta Know to the top of Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, and help sell a whopping 15 million copies of Jagged Little Pill—and those aren't hard facts to swallow!

 

Explicit content warning: this video contains strong language.
 

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Image credit & copyright: Terry O'Neill / Iconic Images / Getty Images
 

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
 

Dancing around the living room has never looked so good. In a recently released promotional video for the Apple HomePod speaker, director Spike Jonze recruited electronica and dance artist FKA Twigs to quite literally push the boundaries of her apartment. Twigs comes home from a dreary workday to find out listening to the trippy 'Til It's Over by Anderson .Paak transforms her home into a colorful dance studio. Jonze, who directed mind-bending features like Being John Malkovich and elaborately-choreographed music videos like Fatboy Slim's Praise You, surprisingly went CGI-less for the short film; Twigs' room extends the boundaries of reality using a combination of levers, hydraulics, and the production crew pushing movable walls. .Paak's genre-defying sound provides the perfect soundtrack; 'Til It's Over combines hip-hop samples, a live jazz band (The Free Nationals), and .Paak's own hot beats played on the drums. His work recalls some of the smoothest '70s funk and soul with a futuristic twist. Next time we think of redecorating, we're definitely going to turn up .Paak's song and do it in style!
 

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Image credit & copyright: Apple
 

In the early '80s, few brands blatantly borrowed from the pop-inspired, saturated-color aesthetic of the Memphis Group as MTV did. So it was no wonder that when the music video channel told Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits that they wanted a concept video for the band's song, Money for Nothing, the brightly-tacky Memphis aesthetics would be applied to an early computer animation video. Knopfler—who was already an established guitar virtuoso and respected songwriter—wasn't sold on the idea initially. It took director Steve Barron of Rushes Postproduction a few tries to get the singer behind the idea of having two blue-collar luddites acting out the lyrics in a geometric pastel world. Luckily, Knopfler came around and the video for Money for Nothing eventually earned the Video of the Year award at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1986. Not bad for a song that was about an appliance store worker criticizing MTV's music videos!
 

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Image credit & copyright: Warner Bros.
 

One of the most gorgeous and tender indie-folk songs just happened to come from the phenomenon known as OPM—or the original Philippine music scene. The recently released Oras ("Time") by band Munimuni is a gentle guitar and swirling flute-driven tune that reminds listeners of the impermanence of life. Vocalist and guitarist Adj Jiao began playing with the other four members of the band while they were attending the University of the Philippines in 2012. There they began developing a sound they called "makata pop," which they've described as a "rediscovery of the beauty of Filipino poetry" and a lyrical embrace of all the nuances in their mother tongue. Reportedly, Munimuni is a part-time project, as all members have other full-time commitments. But if Oras is any indication, the quintet is likely to gain a big following for their introspective songs and ability to remind their fellow citizens to step back every once in a while and appreciate all the beauty surrounding them.
 

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Image credit & copyright: Munimuni, Nukie Timtiman
 

Elvis' version may be the most famous one, but in 1952, Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton became the first person to growl those infamous words "You ain't nothing but a hound dog." It's easy to believe the swingin' 12-bar blues was destined for greatness; it was an early composition by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who would go on to pen over 70 chart hits like Love Potion No. 9 and Stand By Me. The track also kicked off the recording career of Big Mama Thornton: a 25-year-old, six-foot-tall powerhouse singer who was regularly upstaging the main acts she opened for. When Hound Dog was released in 1953, it became a #1 R&B hit, selling over 500,000 copies. As for Elvis, somehow he didn't get the memo on her song, with his version said to have been inspired by a Las Vegas lounge act named Freddie Ball. We're not sure whether or not Ball was a real cool cat, but one thing's for sure—Thornton's influence on blues and rock 'n' roll deserves a howling salute on the 92nd anniversary of her birthday.
 

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Image credit & copyright: Photofest
 

For a man with such an obscure legacy, guitarist Davy Graham was ahead of the times. The '60s British folk revivalist, who died on December 15, 2008, popularized DADGAD tuning and inspired acclaimed musicians like Simon & Garfunkel. In all of Graham's instrumentals, the mysteries of the guitar seem ready to expose themselves to the ear, as is the case in the tranquil Cry Me A River, released on his 1963 album, The Guitar Player. The foundation of the song—commonplace, descending minor arpeggios that resolve in major chords—closely resemble the A minor acoustic interlude of Led Zeppelin's legendary tune, Stairway to Heaven (1971). Though bassist Mark Andes of the band Spirit unsuccessfully took Zeppelin to court in 2014, believing that Zeppelin stole from Spirit's 1968 song Taurus to create Heaven's introduction, Graham's Cry Me A River exposes the simplistic and unowned beauty that supports all three of these songs. When playing and composing music, always appreciate the bare essentials!
 

Image credit & copyright: BBC News
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this desert-themed favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Make classical music cool again! Hans Zimmer is leading a new charge to bring orchestral works to the masses, if only ones from his highest-grossing movies. The German-born film score composer was persuaded to "look [his] audience in the eye" by his unlikely musical buds, Johnny Marr (guitarist for the Smiths) and Pharrell Williams (legendary hip-hop producer and absurd hat wearer). So he scheduled a massive world tour fit for his epic compositions. It's hard to think of a better person than Zimmer to bring classical music to the masses. His scores—which include Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lion King, Rain Man, and the Batman trilogy—sometimes make use of unconventional orchestra instruments like electric guitar and bass. Not to mention Zimmer has some pop chops; he used to fill in on keyboards for the Buggles, of Video Killed the Radio Star fame. Hans Zimmer Live pulled into town at Indio, California, to do an evening set at the second weekend of Coachella 2017. We're loving his medley of music from the scores of Inception and Interstellar, although we can't imagine it was easy for fans to listen to an hour of film score mashups, only to be followed by the usual festival fare. If you, like the rest of us mortals, weren't able to make it out to the festival, check out a clip of the performance below:  

Saint Nicholas' benevolence has been the subject of countless stories and artworks, though one, in particular, could give Stephen Sondheim's Sweeny Todd a run for its money. The French children's song La légende de Saint Nicolas tells of three boys who end up in the salting-tub of an evil butcher after they seek lodging in his home. After the initial scare of the first few verses, St. Nicholas meets the same butcher years later. As his cannibalistic plot is discovered, the butcher runs away from his house, wracked with guilt. The three boys, now free from their captor, are then restored to their whole forms when St. Nicholas performs a miracle. Though the song may tread odd territory with its terrifying butcher (in other countries, the butcher is an innkeeper), the tale is actually a common one told of St. Nicholas' good deeds and his dedication to protecting the lives of children. No matter how difficult their circumstances may be!
 

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Image credit & copyright: 123RF
 

For a song about letting one's guard down, singer-songwriter KT Tunstall's video for Human Being sure inspire us to suit up with arm and shin guards. Maybe it's because the '80s synth and guitar-sounds are set to a VHS-quality recording of Eccaia Sampson's nunchuck skills, which are as dazzling as they are dangerous. Tunstall was introduced to Sampson's work by her father, who is a guitar tech for the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies, and once she saw the eight-year-old girl's work, she knew it was perfect for Human Being. "The song is all about fighting to be something… you're trying to impress, you're trying to be the best that you can possibly be, but at the end of it all, you are just human," the musician said. For Tunstall, who broke out nearly a decade ago with her hit Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, her newest single reflects a wider conversation about physicality. If Human Being's video is any indicator, the visceral side of Tunstall's songwriting is sounding as exciting and electric as ever.

 

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Image credit & copyright: KT Tunstall
 

Ludwig van Beethoven's music is known for its passionate tones, but perhaps none so much as the Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor for solo piano, otherwise known as Für Elise. Penned for a romantic interest, Beethoven's Für Elise is a popular example of rondo music, which features an obsessive principal refrain that alternates with contrasting themes. Like a letter from a secret admirer, the subdued tune was actually meant for Beethoven's love interest rather than a public audience. Born this month in 1770, Beethoven never published the piece during his lifetime; instead, music scholar Ludwig Nohl discovered it 40 years after the composer's death, sparking widespread interest in the woman for whom it had been written. But there was little confirmation of the existence of this mysterious woman; instead, it turned out that Beethoven had fallen in love with—and in 1810 proposed to—a woman named Therese. Unlucky for Beethoven, Therese opted to go the more practical route and marry a state official rather than a musician. Lucky for listeners, his unrequited love yielded a gorgeous, melancholy tune that has stood the test of time—even if the love that inspired it didn't!
 

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This historical epic made some history of its own. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, the film Alexander Nevsky, released 80 years ago this month, features the thrilling music of Sergei Prokofiev. The Russian composer brought the full range of his talents to the score, which tells the story of 13th-century Teutonic knights from the Holy Roman Empire invading Russia. The film uses music instead of dialogue to advance the plot. While filming, Eisenstein read some early drafts of Prokofiev's score for inspiration before shooting scenes, such as the famous Battle of Ice scene that has inspired similar moments in many later films. When the armies march towards each other, Prokofiev has the brass instruments in the orchestra play low, static chords that create a "chug-chug" sound to evoke impending conflict. Meanwhile, woodwinds give a sense of the furious wind that's swirling around both armies. Prokofiev and Eisenstein's experimentation was possible partly because sound was a relatively new addition to cinema in the 1930s. Nowadays, composers only score films once they've been completely shot. But if they can find a composer like Prokofiev, we might beg modern directors to reconsider.
 

 
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Image credit & copyright: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this city-themed favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

We Built This City served as a much needed second act for the rock group, Starship. Having started their musical careers in the 1960s as Jefferson Airplane, the group was considered washed up by the time they released We Built This City in May 1985. The song's punchy lyrics challenge an anonymous person, possibly a music executive who'd made some disparaging remarks about the group. Lead singers Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas protest this doubter's money-mindedness while also reminding him of their own community contributions. The song hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 partly because of its celebration of an underground, urban aesthetic; it even contains shout-outs to San Francisco, New York, and Cleveland, which got radio DJs in those cities excited about playing the record. The song's Grammy nomination also served as a reminder that group members hadn't yet lost their pizzazz. In recent years, the tune has come under fire from music critics who find it a bit too ridiculous. But we're on team Starship over here! Don't you remember? They built this city on rock and roll!
 

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Image credit & copyright: George Rose / Getty Images
 

In the world of Pokémon, one man's sounds are as ubiquitous as Pikachu's "pika pika" utterances. Game developer and composer Junichi Masuda has created the soundtracks for over a dozen Pokémon games, having begun working with the series' initial concept team at Game Freak in Tokyo, Japan. After lending his 8-bit synthesizer skills to Nintendo titles like Yoshi and Mario & Wario, Masuda created the first battle themes for Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue for Game Boy handheld systems in 1996. In the tradition of Japanese role-playing video games, Masuda gets the blood pumping in Pokémon battle music with fast bass lines, trills in the upper register, and perilous themes in the mid-range. It's the perfect track to heighten the tension in a face-off between Pikachu and Charizard, or during a cardio-heavy attempt to catch all the creatures at public parks and grocery stores on the Pokémon Go phone app!

 

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Image credit & copyright: TV Over Mind
 

Every great musician has to start somewhere, and for Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, that somewhere was with the less-than-stellar opera La Vida Breve ("The Brief Life"). De Falla's 1913 work featured nearly as much instrumental music as vocals. Perhaps even odder was the one-hour, straightforward plot and libretto by Carlos Fernandez Shaw: a young gypsy woman named Salud falls for a wealthy man named Paco, who is betrothed to another. When Salud tries to win back Paco by crashing his wedding, Paco rejects her, and Salud dies from grief. La Vida Breve wasn't all a bust for de Falla though; with the encouragement of his friend and French composer Claude Debussy, the Spanish maestro re-worked many of the orchestrations, which prompted some of the instrumentals to live on in contemporary classical repertoires. Take the Danza from the start of Act II, whose dizzy triple meter melodies have been translated for guitar and violin soloists as a lively example of early 20th-century Spanish music. La Vida Breve may not have been the hit de Falla expected, but he did move on to bigger and better works in his lifetime. We can't say the same for Salud, though.

 

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Image credit & copyright: XL Semanal
 

A bow-wow-wow, yippie-yo yippie-yay-shout out to Doggystyle's 25th anniversary this past week, the debut album by rapper Snoop Dogg. Back in the early '90s, Snoop was a smooth-voiced protégé of Dr. Dre and a debut artist on Death Row Records—a label soon to be known as the epicenter of West Coast rap. Snoop's debut single Who Am I? (What's My Name) took the hedonistic atmosphere of his recording sessions onto the radio airwaves, while Dre's production team gave it the rhythmic g-funk backbone that would come to define the West Coast rap sound. With g-funk, Dre and crew layered cheap keyboard sounds and drum machine tracks atop samples of Parliament-Funkadelic songs. In the case of Who Am I?, the catchy chants and choruses come from George Clinton's appropriately canine-themed Atomic Dog. On the success of What's My Name?, Doggystyle debuted at #1, selling 80,000 copies in its first week. These days, Snoop Dogg is known as Martha Stewart's co-chef and the person who's popularized words with "-izzle" at the end, but in 1993, The Doggfather proved he was one of the biggest stars of gangsta rap.
 

Explicit content warning: this video contains strong images and language.  
 

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Image credit & copyright: Death Row Records / Interscope / Atlantic Records
 

The Queen of Rock 'n Roll and the Queen Mother of Wakanda! Singer Tina Turner and actress Angela Bassett have more in common than their membership in pop culture's royal family. Bassett played Turner, who turns 79 today, in the 1993 film, What's Love Got to Do With It? (above right). For Turner, the song that gave that film its name established her success as a solo artist. In the early 80s, after divorcing her musical partner and abusive husband, Ike Turner, she began performing on her own. What's Love Got to Do With It?, released in 1984 when Turner was 44, features a strong, danceable beat and lyrics that are both defiant and vulnerable: "Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?" The song, a chart-topping hit, helped make Turner one of the best-selling artists of all time. Meanwhile, Angela Bassett received an Academy Award nomination for her remarkable portrayal of Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It? (many believe she should have won the Oscar) and her career has flourished since; she recently played the stunning Queen in Black Panther, and the head of the CIA in Mission Impossible - Fallout. Long live the queens!  

Below: Tina Turner earlier this year; Angela Bassett in Black Panther.
 

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Image credit & copyright: Billboard; Michael Leckie, The Sunday Times; Vanity Fair, Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures/Marvel Studios.