Favorite THing #24: Michael Bublé

Since I have yet to write a blog about one of my all time, favorite favorite favorite things Michael Bublé, I thought it would be a good idea to wrie one in honor of the glorious Michael Bublé concert that Amy and I attended last night.

Mini Deal and I first became aware of him 5 years ago when I went and bought the Down with Love soundtrack (really, I just wanted the Ewan McGregor song on it, but at that time iTunes wasn't as prevalent). Both Mini and I immediatly fell in love with two songs on the cd by an artist by the name of Michael Bublé, which we thought was a gloriously funny name. As fate would have it, he was playing a concert at Foxwoods later that week, which Mini and I decided to go to since we love concerts. That is where our love affair started. 5 concerts later and its still going strong.

The thing about MB, or the Boob as Mini calls him, is that he isn't just a great musician, but he's a great performer too. His concerts are always different and always great. The man is hilarious-from his ragging of guys in the audience whose wives dragged them there, to throwing in really random funny songs, like Elvis or YMCA. He's an old school performer and that is something I greatly admire. He doesn't just show up, sing some songs and go home - he puts on a great show.

I was glad to share my love of the Boob with Amy last night, and hope more and more people will love him as much as me. But seriously people, stop buying up all his concert tickets so I can't sit in the front!

Favorite Thing #14: Amos Lee

One of the great things about ITunes is the suggestion feature. back in December, I had a $15 credit to use up in ITunes and I was kind of lost as to what I wanted to get. At the time, I had been listening to John Mayer's newest album, Continuum, pretty much non-stop. I love the bluesy, relaxed feel to the album and the fact that you could listen to the whole album and every song flowed right into the next until the cd went silent, and you started it over again. So I searched for albums like John Mayer's Continuum and was referred to Amos Lee. I bought the album without listening to any of the clips and fell in love! It has a great folk meets blues meets jazz feel to it. Like the John Mayer album, I can listen to this all the way through without wanting to skip a single song or even noticing how much time has passed. I need to get the rest of his albums, but I have been resisting because his debut album was like magic for me, and I'm afraid of ruining it.

I tried to be technologically savvy and load a music player, but it was too much work, so on the toolbar on the right I loaded a clip thing from Amazon that you can check out. My favorite song has to be Arms of a Woman, but the clip Amazon has isn't the greatest. Hopefully, I can get at least one person to love him as much as me.

Favorite Thing #1: Mika

As you may or may not know, Queen is probably one of my all-time favorite artists. So, when my sister told me "you have to listen to this guy Mika. He sounds just like Freddie Mercury", I was a little sceptical. How could anyone sound like Freddie and not be just a hack. So, I did a little research and found he was described as "Freddie Mercury meets the Scissor Sisters meets David Bowie." Anyone who knows me knows that while I may love Queen, I absolutely HEART Bowie. I gave Mika a shot and I was not disappointed. His song "Grace Kelley" is such an exuberant, head bopping song that I could listen to it on repeat a million times and the kitschy lyrics of "Big Girl (You are Beautiful)" and "Lollipop" get me smiling every time. And if his songs are good, his videos are even better. I first saw a Mika video for "Grace Kelly" in Greece last year (Europeans and South Africans are obsessed with him) and I laughed the whole time. But the best video (and song for that matter) by far has to be "Big Girls". Check it out and hopefully you too will become a Mika fan.