White and Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovic



Photo: Paul Ittoop



He's weird. He's Al. He's done some of the best song parodies. And he has a whole lot of songs available for free and legal downloads from Freegal.

Weird Al Yankovich credits his success to a "warped outlook" caused by accordion lessons. He recorded his first big hit in the college radio stations bathroom, a parody of "My Sharona" called "My Bologna."

Weird Al is still putting out the hits, but what happened to The Knack?

Only a true geek could write something like "White and Nerdy." Segways, Klingon, the Renaissance Fair, Kirk and Picard: it’s all here.

Donny Osmond always seemed like white bread bland, but I have to say he really laid it on the line for this video. This take is as funny as Yankovic’s finished product.

Crazy Town by Jason Aldean



Photo: Kaldari

   Jason Aldean. He's free on Freegal. And he's one of the best country musicians today.

"It's a crazy town, full of neon dreams
Everybody plays
Everybody sings.."

I've loved this ode to Nashville by Jason Aldean since I heard it on one of those "best of" country albums.

Some hard-core fiddle playing gets it started.

And in the middle you get to yell out  "Bang, bang, bang!" with him in the chorus. Any song that lets you yell "Bang, bang, bang!" is good with me.

Cost of Livin' by Ronnie Dunn



Photo: Daniel Schwen



“Cost of Livin’” is available for a free and legal download from the Freegal site. To learn how to Freegal works, click here.

I’ve always thought that country songs lyrics have the best imagery, and this song is a case in point.

On the surface, it’s a matter-of-fact account of a man who is out of work and needs a job. He’s not given to overstatement, but in the details you can hear a quiet desperation:

“I work weekends, if I have to, nights and holidays

                           

Give you forty, and then some, whatever it takes.”

Dunn's voice carries the emotion perfectly.

It’s reminiscent of the plaintive songs that came out the Great Depression.

Dunn (one-half of the duo Brooks & Dunn) is off to a fine start with his solo career.

Barefoot Blue Jean Nights by Jake Owen



Photo: Marcos André

 It's blue jean week here on free and legal music downloads.

Jake Owens' "Barefoot Blue Jean Nights" is 2012's country summer anthem, a song about sitting by the water, cold beer, and singing songs with the old guitar. Really, what else do you need in a summer song?

Fun facts about Jake Owen:

1. He has a fraternal twin named Jerrod.
2. He was going to be a golfer. But a water skiing accident left him injured and depressed. He picked up an old guitar and started strumming it for solace.

We should all do so well with whatever cheers us up. (Any careers in chocolate?)

Barefoot Blue Jean Nights is available for a free and legal download from Freegal.

Forever in Blue Jeans by Neil Diamond

Photo: Lion Hirth

Neil Diamond has about a gazillion songs on Freegal.

I counted 39 albums from 1966 to 2008. Dude's been busy.

You've got your "Hot August Nights," Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show," "Desiree," "America," all the Diamond you could want.

Remember Jonathan Livingston Seagull? The soundtrack is there. Mom took my sister and me to the drive-in to see it when I was 11. I remember it as a couple of hours watching a bird in the water. But the album was cool. It made more money than the movie.

"Forever in Blue Jeans" is my favorite Neil Diamond song. It's catchy in a growly-voiced sort of way. It will always be the summer of '79, listening on KOMA radio when they turned the signal up at night.

Fun fact about Neil Diamond: that's actually his name. Who'da thought? Son of Kieve and Rose Diamond. With a name like that, he had to go into show business.

Hi middle name is Leslie. You can kinda see why he didn't include that is his name. Doesn't have quite the right macho.

You can get free and legal downloads of "Forever in Blue Jeans" at the Freegal site.



Somebody That I Used to Know by Walk Off the Earth

I came across this song on Freegal's top 100 hits. It's categorized as "alternative" music.

I'm still trying to figure out how so much music can be "alternative," but the nearest I can tell is that it's defined by what it's not. Not country--not rap--not bland and over-produced pop.

This song is moody and catches deep in your brain to the point where you find yourself internally humming the chorus several times a day.


photo: Scott Meltzer

Then I came across this video cover of the song with words like "Gotye" and "WOTE," both of which sound like uber-cool slang that I'm not a part of.

I did a little digging and found out that Gotye is the Australian singer who wrote and performed the first song.

WOTE is an acronym for Walk Off the Earth, a Canadian indie band that made it big, largely owing to the success of this video which went viral and garnered 125 million hits in four months.

Five people on one guitar. This is really cool.

The WOTE version is the one available through Freegal. I see that they have a few other songs available including "Little Boxes," the 1962 satire that captures suburban life.

To learn how you can download Walk Off the Earth's songs free and legally, check out this information about Freegal

"So What" by Pink

This song has one of the greatest break-up song openings.  Get out the air guitars and beat on the air drums.


Dancing with the Stars' hottie Gilles Marini did the Paso Doble to it. I don't always like modern songs with the classic dances, but this one really worked.

The video is worth a look. Says Pink on her website "If you EVER get a chance to drive a lawnmower down Sunset Blvd - I highly suggest it."

This song, along with a bunch of other Pink hits, is available on Freegal

Photo credit Daisy Romwall

Three Dog Night

The popular band that sold more concert tickets than any other from 1969-1974 has been touring again.  I attended their sold-out concert June 10, 2012 at Hudson Gardens in Littleton, Colorado. Lead Singer Cory Wells told us that one night, an audience member said  that he thought the song “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” was the great-great-great-grandaddy of  rap songs, presumably because of the spoken verses.   

Inspired by this fan, the band provided a bit of comic relief by doing a rap version of the song (with a little bit of music commentary thrown in for good measure.)

After putting on their backwards caps and flashing a few rap moves, they launched into lines like “You don’t need to sing/ all you do is rhyme,” and “You don’t need no talent, just attitude.”

Photo: mrpattersonsir

Three Dog Night Songs Available for Free

The songs from the album Three Dog Night Greatest Hits Live are available to download for free from Freegal. The songs include:

One

One Man Band

Family of Man

Eli’s Coming

Easy to Be Hard

Never Been to Spain

Mama Told Me (Not to Come)

Old-Fashioned Love Song

Celebrate

Try a Little Tenderness

Joy to the World

Liar

Carrie Underwood – Good Girls

I remember when Carrie Underwood was just one of a bunch of contenders on American Idol. She seemed pretty good, but so were some of the others.

Then one day Simon Cowell said, "I predict that you are going to not only win American Idol, but you are going to be the top-selling American Idol winner ever."

He was right. I would say you can tell by that smug look on his face, but he always has that look.

This is Underwood's newest.

This song is now available for free music download on Freegal

photo credit : Faguo shoes 

Just Another American Saturday Night – Brad Paisley

The Fourth of July reminds me of this up-tempo song.

Paisley sings of things America has borrowed from other cultures – Italian leather boots, German cars, Canadian bacon, pizza pie – things that become so commonplace that we have almost forgotten that they originated in another country.

As part of a family with German, Irish, and Chinese traditions, I like the sentiment.
You can get free legal downloads of this song through Freegal
Photo: Cyril Mayer

Call Me, Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen

Wow! Freegal is really up to date.

This song has been dubbed "the song of summer 2012."

It was originally written a folk song, but turned inot a pop song by the producer. It's hit number one in several countries, and has inspired a ton of spoofs on YouTube.

It's available for a free and legal download from Freegal.




Photo: egen bild

"The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert

The first house that I lived in was a little 8 x 24 trailer, and this song captures the feeling of that little childhood home perfectly.

This meditative tune was originally meant for country singer Blake Shelton (now Miranda Lambert's husband.)

But when Lambert heard the song, she was so touched by it, that Shelton encouraged her to records it.

"The House That Built Me," became Lambert's first number one song on the country charts, and she won a Grammy for it in 2011.

When Lambert sings her slow songs, she reminds me a little of singer Nanci Griffith.


photo credti: Ellen Mackey c 2012

The song is available for a free and legal download from Freegal.

To read more about Miranda Lambert, click here.