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The Oeuvreblog Trend

I've posted already about More Words About Music and Songs, my current blog project within which I write an essay about every Talking Heads song, one at a time. Since then, however, quite a few more have popped up...both Q magazine and The New York Post have written about the trend (the former mentioning mine by name), and I have to admit it's an interesting phenomenon, this, using as it does the formal rigidity of the default blog to its advantage.

The current, operational song-by-song blogs of which I'm aware are as follows:

All My Little Words - The Magnetic Fields
Blursongs - Blur
Emotional Karaoke - The Mountain Goats
Fragments of a Cale Season - John Cale
Fridgebuzz - Radiohead
Hyper-Ballads - Bjork
I Got a Message For You - Robyn Hitchcock
More Words About Music and Songs - Talking Heads (That's me...!)
More Than Ten - Pearl Jam
Music From a Bachelor's Den - Pulp
My Impression Now - Guided by Voices
One Imaginary Blog - The Cure
Paraguay and Laos - The Bluetones
Pop Songs 07 - R.E.M. (The inspiration for all of these blogs, either directly or in-)
Ten Thousand Lies - Nine Inch Nails
Too Many Words, Too Many Words - Low

So who out there is going to get a Wordpress account and set up the inevitable Bowie one?

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Comments

I would totally do a Bowie if i could be arsed typing the word "amazing" that many times a day. Which I can't

By Michael Lacey
June 30, 2007 @ 6:57 pm

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There are actually a lot of great bands left to explore...I'm surprised there is no Bowie blog...but, then again, the size of his discography must be terrifying. (Ditto Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Frank Zappa...all of whom I'd love to see get this treatment but no way in hell would I sign up for that kind of responsibility.)

Still, bands like The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground and Led Zepplin all have manageable catalogues...and all of that's just classic rock...there's room for many more, and I'm excited to see a lot of these come to life.

By Philip J Reed, VSc
June 30, 2007 @ 7:05 pm

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Thanks for the links - I'm looking forward to reading Blursongs, in particular...

By Seb
July 01, 2007 @ 1:21 am

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Anytime, Seb. That's a pretty well-written one, even though I'm not familiar with the material he's discussing.

I really should say that a song-by-song blog by Michael Lacey could potentially be hugely entertaining...

By Philip J Reed, VSc
July 01, 2007 @ 1:32 am

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Thanks for the thumbs up! ;-)

Oh, and as for David Bowie: there's a really good song-by-song book called "The Complete David Bowie" by Nicholas Pegg that's well worth the money.

I'm hoping someone is starting a Depeche Mode blog. Their catalogue seems quite well suited for such a treatment. And I'm considering making a second one for Duran Duran.

By Martijn from Blursongs
July 02, 2007 @ 10:42 am

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Still, bands like The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground and Led Zepplin all have manageable catalogues...and all of that's just classic rock...there's room for many more, and I'm excited to see a lot of these come to life.

Who needs an online song-by-song analysis of the Beatles when you've got Revolution in the Head? :-)

Or if you're inclined towards more technical music theory, there's always this...

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-notes_on.shtml

By Nick R
July 07, 2007 @ 10:01 pm

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>Who needs an online song-by-song analysis of the Beatles

Well, in fairness, the blogs listed above have the habit not on analyzing songs but exploring them. They're not written by professional music critics or professionals who have studied the band...they're written by fans...and so the blog basically becomes a series of essays inspired by the songs, rather than any hard and fast attempt to make them fit a certain shape.

It's fun...it's peoples' experience of music that really excites me. Which is not to say that technical music theory is uninteresting. Of course not...it's fascinating stuff. But for the time being, I'm really enjoying these blogs of personal experience and appreciation...and it'd be refreshing to know that music by these artists is still inspiring people, right now, today.

By Philip J Reed, VSc
July 07, 2007 @ 11:24 pm

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