John Mayer

So today I entered my blog while thinking of an idea to write a post about. I was looking for different music releases, or band news, when all of the sudden my mixpod automatically started playing "Why Georgia" by John Mayer and then inspiration struck me. Considering the fact that John Mayer is my favorite musician, I decided to write a post about him, his career and achievements. So here we go...

He was born on 1977 in Conneticut. Later on he attended Berklee College of Music (my dream college!), but left it to record his first two albums. In 2003 (with only 26 years) he won his first Grammy award for his song "Your body is a wonderland".
To this day he has won 7 Grammy awards and many others, recorded 4 albums and done hundreds of concerts.

He is my favorite musician because of his unique skills in composing, singing and guitar playing. I also enjoy his different musical styles that go from rock and pop to funk and blues. But the thing I like the most about him is his live performaces, because on stage he proves his talent and amazes the audience. My favorite John Mayer's concert is "Where the light is" (2008)

Altough all of his songs are great, the best 10 songs are:
1. Daughters
2. Stop This Train
3. Neon
4. I Don't Need No Doctor
5. Gravity
6. Why Georgia
7. Vultures
8. Belief
9. Who says
10. Friends, Lovers or Nothing

Lily Allen: Singer or Fashionista?

I guess the situation shouldn't be to choose only one. I mean, people could be musicians and designers at the same time, like Beyonce, Gwen Stefani, Fergie, Bono (U2), Justin Timberlake etc... But it seems like Lily Allen has already selected only one of them. And, unfortunately, it wasn't music.

Her decision of leaving music to create a vintage project called "Lucy in Disguise" with her sister, was influenced by the abuse of illegal file sharing (music downloads). Allen claims that it is a lack of respect to a musicians job, since their work is being stolen, so she decided to cancel her record contracts and play only concerts until the end of the year:

"Just so you know, I have not renegotiated my record contract and have no plans to make another record. I do however remain a fan of new music, so this is not some selfish crusade"

She also mentioned that illegal music downloading doesn't provide any type of economical benefit for the artist, so that her carrer wasn't been economically sustainable for her:

"The days of me making money from recording music have been and gone as far as I'm concerned, so I don't (at this point) stand to profit from legislation, except future purchases of previously recorded material (which won't be much)" 

Because of this reasons, she started a campaign against file sharing in her, now deleted, own blog (yes, even Lily Allen has one!) called "It's Not Alright".

In my opinion, I think that technology has changed lives in many ways, one of them being the copyrights violations. Illegal downloads have definetely changed they way we looked at music, but the only solution is not to try to stop it, cause it just won't happen, but to take advantage of it, and benefit from it. For example by distributing songs in the internet, to promote the band and gain popularity, or to please fans, like Coldplay did with their single "Violet Hill" which was free to download from their official website for one week.

All I have to say is that I think we should take advantage of the difficulties and move on, instead of being stuck and quit.

References:
- http://www.spinner.com/2009/09/24/lily-allen-says-she-wont-make-another-record/
- http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/02/lily_allen_1.html