Here’s Part One. These are some of the songs we got between July and December.
1. Problem – Ariana Grande feat. Iggy Azalea
2. The Princess Who Saved Herself – Jonathan Coulton
3. Alienation’s For The Rich – They Might Be Giants
4. Count Me In – Dove Cameron
5. What I Like About You – The Romantics
6. Happy – Pharrell Williams
7. Tacky – Weird Al Yankovic
8. #SELFIE – The Chainsmokers
9. Song For Someone – U2
10. Ghostbusters – Ray Parker, Jr.
Again, TV (“Count Me In”) and movies (“Ghostbusters” – I recorded a showing on the TiVo for the express purpose of watching it with the girls, who loved it) were common inspirations. “The Princess Who Saved Herself” was a Kickstarter reward. “Alienation’s For The Rich” was on a free download of TMBG performing their first album live. We too were sucked in by Weird Al’s song-and-video-a-day album release, thus “Tacky” and subsequently “Happy”. I still don’t understand the fuss over Songs of Innocence. It’s a good album, and hey, free music. “What I Like About You” was inspired by Scalzi’s 80s dance party music set list, as it was a grievous oversight on his part. “Problem” and “#SELFIE” were songs the girls asked for, I forget the reason.
That’s not quite the end of the story. I went on a fairly sizable post-Christmas buying binge, which I’ll detail in Part 3. Among other things, that means I no longer have credit at the iTunes store. That may or may not change our often spontaneous buying habits, I don’t know. I’ve been reviewing some “Best of 2014” lists to see if there’s anything there I should have known about but didn’t. You can assume anything that results from that will be on my 2015 year in music review.