I was just randomly looking around YouTube for some music to listen to and I stumbled upon “On The Rocks”, who according to their website are “the University of Oregon’s premiere all male a capella ensemble”. After watching quite a few of their videos I have to say, they are pretty good!

Looking into it a bit further, I discovered a whole a capella university thing with hundreds of these groups in universities all around America. America really does seem to know how to make university awesome fun…

My favourite so far of the “On The Rocks” performances is definitely this video in which they Rick Roll the NYC Subway:

The first video I saw of theirs which was also pretty good was their cover of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”:

Here’s another group called Discord from the University of Pennsylvania singing Everything by Michael Bublé:

Overall I’m pretty impressed. I love finding people making music through talent and great voices rather than auto tune and digital touch ups.

Reward for those making it to the end of the post – UC Santa Cruz sing “I’m on a Boat” (for those who’ve never seen the original clip – it is hilarious):

I was looking around on YouTube and started finding a few songs which have been covered by other artists. Sure, it’s great to hear average people with great voices cover songs but it’s also interesting to hear a celebrity sing a song other than their own (by celebrity I mean an established artist who has generally reached fame and status). It’s always intriguing to hear a song sung by someone else with a different sound so I thought I’d put them all in a post for anyone else interested in hearing a few song covers! My favourites are definitely the Paramore cover of Kings of Leon, Green Day’s cover of Queen and definitely Michael Buble’s cover of Maroon 5 (listen to it!).

Paramore cover Kings of Leon – Use Somebody
Absolutely love this version of the song. I’m not sure what it is but I’m not a big fan of Kings of Leon at all (not a big fan of their sound for some reason), something about Paramore’s cover really helped me enjoy the song a lot more…

Guy Sebastian covers Miley Cyrus – The Climb
He does a pretty good job, as is to be expected by the brilliant voice he has!

Daughtry covers Lady Gaga – Poker Face
It might not match the original but I still enjoyed this acoustic version!

Green Day covers Queen – We Are the Champions
I enjoyed this! It would have been amazing to be in that crowd…

Michael Buble covers Maroon 5 – This Love
Definitely not as good as the original. Please – listen to it at least until the second verse, it becomes brilliant!!!

Mandy Moore covers Rhianna – Umbrella
Totally different sound when Mandy Moore covers this song. I’m not a big fan of either version but it was interesting enough to include here.

Katy Perry covers Sam Sparro – Black and Gold
Not a big fan of either song but thought Katy Perry did it quite well.

The new album - The Light and Shade

It’s the first entire album i’ve listened to from start to finish for quite a while, which is already quite an achievement in an age of iTunes single song downloads! I do come into this with a bit of bias as a huge Jaywalker fan, i’ve gone to one of their shows (very disappointed I didn’t get a chance to see them on their current tour for this album) and interviewed Jase, the lead singer, during my year as an editor for Vertigo. He’s a great guy, really genuine, humble, passionate about music and a lot of fun to talk to.

With high hopes and expectations for the album, it definitely started out at a disadvantage though. The first play through left me a little unsure of whether it truely got even close to my crazy expectations.

I was slightly caught off guard at the change they’d made to ‘Hold On’ which had become ‘Faces of February’. It’s a song they’d played live at a gig (the song was on YouTube) in rememberance of the Victorian bushfires but was adjusted to have a new chorus. After about a day though, I had the new version stuck in my head and definitely saw the improvement, both to the song as a whole and the true meaning behind it.

In fact, not only was ‘Faces of February’ stuck in my head but other songs also would come and go on playback in my head, ‘Little Universe’, ‘Famous to Me’, ‘Green Light’, ‘Finest Hour’… My love of the album grew quite quickly as I realised there were actually only two songs I wasn’t a big fan of (the two final songs of the album).That doesn’t happen often for an album, especially for me! Usually for albums I get one or two songs that stand out and get stuck in my head and then have to wait for a new album to come out to find other stand out songs from the artist. I’m kind of picky that way!

‘The Light and Shade’ brings a nice mix of songs about inspiration, perseverance, celebration, personal growth and looking to the future. It has a great variety of sounds and styles – just as I started to think it was all sounding a little similar, ‘Famous to Me’ started with a guitar sound that reminds me a little of Santana! As a guy living way too much of his life on public transport seeing the same people day after day, I totally related to the song too.

‘Little Universe’ was an unexpected favourite for me. It’s got an energy and sound which took me by surprise. Love the song and think it would sound awesome live!

‘Lost in London’, ‘Hard Times’ and ‘Sure Feels Good Tonight’ were three songs I’d heard many times before the album came out. ‘Sure Feels Good Tonight’ was my favourite Jaywalker song so far. As most albums go, I was expecting these to be the best songs on the album, but the new songs definitely hold their own and were brilliant in their own right! It’s become hard to choose a favourite now.

Overall, I’d give the album about an 9/10, it’s definitely a great album which i’ll be listening to for quite a while. If you haven’t heard Jaywalker’s music, definitely check them out (their myspace is here, their official site is here). They’re currently part of the “Breaking New Artists” promotion by Sanity, HMV and Virgin Music stores, so hopefully I’ll get to hear their music on the radio soon!