These are a few of my favorite things: Music

2008 has been the year of Music for me...

Starting the year with a great song that was free on itunes, called Regina Spektor - My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year) (a cover of a song by Peggy Lee). You can listen to it by clicking the link and 'play this' - or search for it on itunes.

It is such a beautiful song that really makes me happy, even with the background sounds of planes, sirens and fireworks /machine guns (depending on how you look at it)... this is the world we live in. I will be listening to it through the year, after all- New Years is my favorite holiday!

I'm also delighted that Jack Johnson + Coldplay will have new CDs out this year.

Other artists and songs I'm enjoying are David Gray, Massive Attack, and a bit of Jan Delay + Juli for some German influence.

German itunes and US itunes (and all other countries that have itunes) are distinctly different. Sometimes living abroad I feel like I am really out of the pop culture loop. Just the other night Brock + Manuel were talking about the TV show The Office. I've heard of it, but I've never seen one episode.

Music is no different. We get less American rap, but suddenly I know who Tokio Hotel, Sido, and Blushido are (I'm not even linking to those). Despite differences in music, other things are universal, like the two rappers not getting along. When I look at the itunes most popular list in the US, there are always new songs from people I've never heard of. I know things have gotten bad when we are now getting something called 'High School Musical' dubbed into German.

Another example is Natasha Bedingfield's song 'Soulmate'. For months we've been able to download it on German itunes, however it's just coming out in the US. Another one I really enjoy is 'Just Hold Me' by Maria Mena, which I can only get on German itunes, yet for some reason, 'Schlechtes Vorbild' by Sido is available in the US. I'll never understand it.

I guess it's nice we have both US and German itunes accounts, so we have the best of both worlds.