Fun-A-Day 2016, day twenty

Yesterday for 2003, Emma was excited about the possibility of me getting Outkast’s “Hey Ya” because she thought it would give me a good excuse to draw the version of Andre 3000 from the Key & Peele sketch “Outkast Reunion”.  Unfortunately that song wasn’t selected, but because it was a #1 song at the end of 2003, I had another shot at it for 2004 as it hung around the top spot until early February.  Alas, I didn’t get it again today…but I did get another Outkast song, “The Way You Move“.

Most Outkast videos have some interesting elements to them and this one isn’t any different.  There’s a few shots in this video that I considered drawing, but ultimately, even though he is not featured in this song, I was lead back to the version of Andre 3000 (“It’s not 2999.  It’s not 3001”) from this Key & Peele sketch.

“One green half-caff half decaf mint mocha latte, foam on the bottom, in a vase or ‘vahz.'”

Fun-A-Day 2016, day nineteen

Not much to say today.  The year was 2003.  50 Cent’s “21 Questions” was the selection.  There’s a great split-screen scene in the video with 50 Cent on the payphone in prison on one side and his lady all dolled up talking on the cellphone on the other side of the screen, so I decided to draw that.  The guy I drew doesn’t look like 50 Cent at all, but otherwise I think I drew it pretty decently today.

Fun-A-Day 2016, day eighteen

2001 was the year that Nickelback broke and rode their first hit “How You Remind Me” into the first several weeks of 2002 at #1.  The world will never be the same.

Yes, Nickelback are horrible but there is something so catchy about lots of their songs that I so often just end up leaving them on when they come on the radio.  “How You Remind Me” is probably their best and I say that almost exclusively because of that great little drum fill at :17 and 2:37.

Avril Lavigne, who married Nickelback’s lead singer Chad Kroeger in 2012 (and split last year), did a cover of this song, which is not good. There is one interesting difference between the two versions.  Despite both being Canadians, they take different takes on their pronunciation of the word “sorry”.  The Nickelback version has always been funny to me because they say it in a very Canadian way (sore-e) so that it really rhymes with the next lines ending word “story”.  Avril goes with a more American pronunciation of “sorry” but then makes “story” sound like “starry” to keep the rhyming intact.  Just odd.

Drawing rock bands with lots of hair makes life easier since I can’t seem to really draw the shape of a human head correctly.

Fun-A-Day 2016, day seventeen

2001.  Today’s song is “I’m Real” by Jennifer Lopez.  Strangely J-Lo released two versions of this song – an original one and the “Murder Inc Remix” featuring Ja-Rule.  Aside from the name of the songs, there really isn’t much similar between the two songs.

Originally when looking for the video I stumbled upon the original version.  This version is a bit more dance-y pop.  In the video J-Lo rolls into town on a motorcycle all the while little kids along the way are “wow”ing at her and running after her cycle.  Then she rolls into town and the guy at the gas station can’t take his eyes off her so he starts overflowing the gas tank he’s filling.  Eventually J-Lo attracts the town’s inhabitants (a surprisingly diverse bunch for what appears to be a midwest town) where there is an epic dance sequence.

The “Murder Inc” Remix has a bit more of a hip-hop influence and is a duet with Ja-Rule.  This is the version that hit #1.  I guess in the non-radio-edit version J-Lo drops some N-bombs which caused some controversy at the time (apparently Ja-Rule wrote her lyrics and he thought it was fine).  The video is just shots of J-Lo and Ja-Rule from around the block, at the club, on the basketball court, etc.  There’s a playfulness to their relationship in the video that, despite not doing a good job of drawing J-Lo, I feel like I did a good job capturing.

Fun-A-Day, day sixteen

Into the new millennium today.  Lots of good shit on the 2000 list – Destiny’s Child, Christina Aguilera?  Yep yep.  But also Creed and Matchbox 20.  Instead today I got someone who has shown up on these lists almost as much as Mariah Carey (who, yes, was on this list with “Thank God I Found You”, Janet Jackson with “Doesn’t Really Matter“.

In many ways this is class Janet.  The dancing in the video still has some of the Rhythm Nation vibes.  Janet keep shining that classic Jackson family smile.  Her voice sounds like it always has.  But then there are some things about this song that make it very 2000.  The music sounds so much like N’Sync.  The video takes place in some sorta futuristic turn-of-the-century space apartment and the dance segments occur on some flying space disc, all of which feels very 200o to me.  And then, of course, there is the inclusion of the robot dog at the beginning of the video.

Fun-A-Day 2016, day fifteen

1999 had a lot of songs that I hoped I would get today but that didn’t happen.  Instead, I did a lot of vetoing.

Veto #1 – First song I got today was R Kelly’s “I’m Your Angel”.  Despite thinking that R. Kelly is an extremely talented artist, for the most part I try to avoid him after reading more about the evidence against him and his predation of teenage girls.  I think this article was the one that really did it for me.  Full disclosure – I still will listen to “Ignition (Remix)”.  But today I decided I didn’t want to focus on him.

Veto #2 – Next spin of the random number generator got me TLC’s “No Scrubs”.  It’s a great song that I love and it also spawned Sporty Thievz “No Pigeons” rebuttal, but despite all of this, I had already done a TLC song, so I opted to skip.

Veto #3 – Oh shit, another Mariah Carey song, “Heartbreaker” featuring Jay-Z.  Emma and I actually watched the video last night when we saw it on the list because neither of us could remember it.  Not her best work.  But once again, since I had already covered Mariah in this project, I vetoed her.

Try the random number generator again and it gave me Brandy “Have You Ever?”  I wasn’t feeling it so I was going to veto it again.  But the random number generator once again gave me TLC and then Mariah again.  It really didn’t want me to have one of the other songs.  I then thought about going back to R Kelly and just doing that song, but then 1) couldn’t find a video for the song, and 2) realized the song was some type of duet with Celine Dion(?).  I think I tried again and it gave me a Santana song, so I said, you know what, Brandy will do just fine.

I haven’t followed Brandy closely over the years.  I feel like every couple years I hear one of her songs and I’m like, not bad, but they’re really nothing that sticks with you.  She’s got a lovely voice and the songwriting is there but unless you are really into her style of R&B, it’s not going to leave a lasting impression.

Here you have a song/video focusing on being in love with someone you are close with who just doesn’t love you back the same way.  In the video she is watching over her friends house while he is out of town and she goes through his clothes and puts on his suits and hangs out in his house.  As Emma pointed out, this video could have benefited from a little simplifying.  There are some points where within a lines worth of lyrics, they’ve cut to 6 different versions of Brandy in different rooms, wearing different clothes and with different hairs.  It’s a pretty chill laid back song and video and all of a sudden things get a little crazy with the video editing.

Anyway, not too much exciting to draw from the video so here’s Brandy sitting on the bed wearing a suit several sizes too large for her.

Fun-A-Day 2016, day fourteen

Each day after completing my day’s drawing and blog write-up I’ve been taking a quick sneak-peek at the next day’s possible songs.  Last night I pulled up the list of #1 songs for 1998 and said “I have no idea what most of these songs are.”  Lots of familiar names (hey look, another Mariah Carey song) but I wasn’t familiar with too many of the actual songs.  I think “Get Jiggy With It” and “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” were the ones that stood out to me.  When I read through the list, Emma said “You’d recognize that Savage Garden one” and today I got to find out if that was true.

Sitting down to breakfast I queued up the video for “Truly Madly Deeply” and took a look.  I had been under the impression that with a name like Savage Garden these guys would have been a bit more rocking, but it was super boring pop rock.  If I had heard this song before it certainly didn’t leave an impression on me. Nothing about it seemed familiar at all.

Yet Emma was stoked. She danced around and sang as she prepared to head off to work.  The song and the video were so boring and unmemorable that I opted to do an “inspired by” drawing today instead of something directly from the video.

Note: your drawing skills do not improve when you are drawing the person nearest and dearest to you.  My apologies to Emma for what I did to your nose/mouth combination.  She was wearing her work safety glasses with the side shields, so that’s part of the reason she looks like such a nerd, but mostly it is just my drawing skills.

Fun-A-Day 2016, day thirteen

1997 was the year that Bad Boy Records dominated the top 10 – two Notorious B.I.G. songs, two Puff Daddy songs and a Mariah Carey song (yes, another) that was produced by Puff Daddy.

Puff Daddy’s first single “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” is today’s selection.  The lyrics are laid over a slightly modified version of the sample from Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” with the chorus borrowing lyrics from Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride”.  For me, these elements are the most notable parts of the song.  The actual rapping of Puff Daddy and feature artist Mase on this track are pretty unremarkable.

By 1997 I wasn’t really listening to much hip hop anymore. Most of the stuff coming out didn’t really hold my attention, including Puff Daddy.  I found his rapping forgettable and it seemed, based on his first couple singles, that he was mostly just rapping over other people’s music that had hardly been modified (his “I’ll Be Missing You” track was basically just him wrapping over the music from The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”).  This wasn’t sampling.  It just seemed kinda lazy and boring.

Anyway, looking back on these songs now, they still don’t hold much appeal for me. Listening to “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down”, it really just seems like a poor version of “The Message” and all it made me want to do is listen to Grandmaster Flash’s original.

Fun-A-Day 2016, day twelve

1996.  This was the year I graduated college.  I was still a few years out from listening to the radio regularly again.  There were some great #1’s this year in “No Diggity” and “Tha Crossroads“, of course Mariah Carey held it down for like 16 weeks with a couple different songs, but then there was some real rough stuff in the #1 spot that year too.  Somehow Los Del Rio held the #1 spot for 14 weeks with “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)“.

This song has stuck its claws into our cultural fabric rearing its head at weddings and other such gatherings where people might be inclined to do line dances for some reason.

I think the “Bayside Boys Mix” is just the version with the English female rap portion of the song.  It’s pretty weak but from those lyrics you get some of the sense of the song, that it is about a woman dumping her man for two of his friends.  Thanks to watching this video they make it more clear that the situation is that her boyfriend is getting conscripted into the military so she has an affair with these two other guys.  Seems a weird song to dance to at weddings, but then lots of people also choose “Every Breath You Take” as a wedding song, so the world is a funny place where people pay little mind to the lyrics of songs.

Also, the group Los Del Rio are two guys who formed the band in 1962, which makes these guys likely in their mid-50s when they released this song?  Not what I expected.  Anyway, generally terrible song.  Would have preferred to have gotten “Tha Crossroads” cuz that video is insane in the best possible way.

Fun-A-Day 2016, day eleven

1995.  And we have TLC’s “Waterfalls“.  At the time, I think I was probably more aware of TLC at this time due to Left Eye’s arson arrest rather than for the songs they were putting out at this time.  But despite being a fairly laid back song, “Waterfalls” developed some fairly significant staying power.  One can only guess as to how much Left Eye’s various relationship problems, the arson and her eventual early death helped keep TLC’s music in people’s minds and how much that is responsibility for their continued popularity.

The lyrics to this song are a bit heavier than you might think.  Only two verses – one about a young kid who disregards his mother and goes out to sell drugs and gets killed and a second about a guy who gets an STD from a woman who “gives him loving that his body can’t handle.”

For their part, the TLC ladies spend most of the video standing not quite knee deep in the water, their dancing consisting mostly of some chill top rocking while their feet seem to be buried in the sand because their legs barely move.  Then at the end of the video they transform into water people dancing under a waterfall.

Anyway, even before watching the video I knew I wanted to do a Left Eye RIP piece, but upon watching the video are either panned out pretty far or pretty up close.  Found this one still where its neither too close or too far out with her hands up.  In the video she looks pretty tough, but this drawing makes her look kinda scared/panicked.