Head on over to the Huffington Post to pick The Most Annoying Songs Of All Time. They’ve got quite a few doozies in there.

You know what’s been bugging me the last day or so? The opening lines to “The Way You Love Me” by Keith Follese & Michael Dulaney:

If I could grant
You one wish
I’d wish you could see the way you kiss

See it? See what I mean? If I’m going to grant you a wish, what does it matter what I’d wish?

Sorry. Little things like that in songs really grate on me.

For anyone who doesn’t know Wendy Jans, she’s an incredibly talented singer and songwriter here in Nashville, and she’s one of the first people Karsten and I met in town six and a half years ago. She’s done vocals on one of our demos, and has been a fun person to watch grow and gain momentum. Here she’s recorded a home acoustic performance of “Say Say Say” and I think you’ll like it as much as I do.

It’s never happened to me. But that’s exactly what happened to Lucas.

At Sunday night’s “Unwigged and Unplugged” show, featuring Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest, the following brand-new things occurred:

* I was handed a live mic and allowed to address the artists on stage.

* My name was spoken aloud from that hallowed stage (twice, actually…)

And…

* I was proposed to from said stage.

Let me interrupt to say: Lucas and I met at a party a few weeks ago, and we had a long talk about music, social media, and the digital economy (what a kickin’ party, right?). So when, from my balcony seat, I saw him and another friend, Yvonne, in the second row being handed a live mic to ask the performers a question, I was excited about his fun opportunity to interact with Guest, McKean, and Shearer.

It went well — he asked about who would play them in a J.J. Abrams prequel of Spinal Tap, and they ran with it.

Guest responded first by saying, obviously, Nigel should be played by comedian Martin Lawrence. Shearer, apparently unaware that Dwayne Johnson stopped going by this name a while back, said Nigel would be better suited being played by The Rock. Seth Green got thrown into the equation by McKean.

But then when McKean asked Lucas to marry him in a quick aside, I about collapsed. There’s more to the story: here’s the rest.

Not sure if I’ve ever talked about this here, but I just happened across this article about the Nashville Number System and wanted to point out how cool it is to watch session players use this. As the article points out:

So what’s so great about the Nashville Number System? Just realize that all of the musicians who play the guitar, keyboard and other parts you hear in the songs on all your CDs, use this system everyday when they record. When they do a session, there is no printed music. There are no sheets of paper with little black notes on lines on the page. No, they come into the studio, find a seat, take a pad of paper and a pencil and write themselves a number chart as the engineer plays a demo of the song they will record that day. What they are listening to in order to make their chart is a rough recording of the song. Many times it is only a guitar or piano and a singer. These musicians make up all the parts you eventually hear right there on the spot using their number chart as a guide.

(via How to Understand the Nashville Number System Part 1 | eHow.com)

It really is kind of a strange and humbling feeling to walk into the studio after spending sometimes countless hours on a song just to see it reduced to scribbled numbers on a single sheet of paper, and then played flawlessly.

From David Wild writing at Huffington Post: Honk If You Wrote Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” Too.

I would like to take the opportunity to claim that I wrote Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.” In fact, I wrote “Viva La Vida” just about an hour ago after hearing the news that my pal Yusuf — the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens — feels that the undeniable Coldplay smash is too close for comfort to one section of his “Foreigner Suite” from his 1973 album “The Foreigner.”

Interesting. I couldn’t quite place “The Foreigner” so I went to Lala.com to give it a listen (the most relevant section starts around 3:36). Sure, I can hear the similarity, but I’m not sure it would have jumped out at me or anything. (I’m not even going to listen to “Viva la Vida” again for reference, as much as I love that song, because then it will be stuck on endless loop in my head.)

What do you think? Same song or merely similar in the way that many songs are similar?

It was a little bit of a shock to me to learn yesterday that Ticketmaster has decided to close Nashville-based Echo, which is a company I’ve danced close to for some time but never danced with, if you know what I mean. I have friends that work there, and have followed their trajectory for some time. But:

Staffers were told today they will lose their jobs in 60 days.

And then, on the same day, to learn that Passalong Networks is soon to be no more? I mean, not that any demise within the music industry is altogether shocking at this point, but the impact of both closures being announced on the same day makes it seem a little freaky.

I hope my friends who work at both companies are able to find work quickly.

I saw on Spence Smith’s blog where he mentioned that he goes out every so often for a run while listening to music that inspires him, and how creatively refreshing that is, and so on.

I do this, too, and have created playlists in iTunes and now in Pandora called “muse songs” and “muse artists”. In some cases it’s the songs that inspire me to write, and in some cases it’s the consistent genius of the songwriters.

Spence listed some of his muse songwriters:

James Taylor, John Williams, Sting, Bono/The Edge, Chris Martin, Sheryl Crow, Bruce Hornsby, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Jacob Dylan, John Hiatt, McCartney/Lennon, The Rolling Stones…

And in fact, Spence’s muses and my muses overlap a bit, which is not surprising, I guess, since we’re both songwriters (at very different levels of accomplishment, mind you) looking to the undeniable greats of recent pop music for inspiration. My muse writer list includes (but as they say in legalese, is not limited to) Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Aimee Mann, Shawn Colvin, and several others. My muse song list includes “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell, “Everytime You Go Away” by Hall & Oates, “The Boy in The Bubble” by Paul Simon, “Ghost” by Indigo Girls, and again, several others.

Of course now having written this, I want to throw on some headphones and go out for a run and soak in the creativity of these geniuses. And I will, soon, but for now, I’ll start with just the part where I put the headphones on, right here at my desk.

I hadn’t heard about the Depeche Mode iTunes Pass fiasco:

Just recently, Apple introduced its iTunes Pass program with Depeche Mode, only to find the proposition dismantled by the internet itself.  The Pass builds extras around a formal album release date, and packages everything into a multi-week program.

But all of that is predicated on scarcity and control.  What happens when the album leaks?  That is exactly what happened with Depeche Mode, to the surprise of few.  Buyers were left holding the bag on an $18.99 extravagance, while those paying $0 were granted access to the entire album - and various extras as well.

(via Resnikoff’s Parting Shot: Not Your Father’s Release Schedule… — Digital Music News.)

Interesting attempts to innovate and consequences in the music industry right now. I’m just realizing I didn’t blog here about the Leadership Music Digital Summit Karsten and I attended a few weeks ago, and what my impressions of that were. This was basically it: there’s so much disruption in this industry right now, and some very bright minds are trying many different approaches to make something new work, find a new model, build out lucrative side businesses from that model, etc. But it seems that the disruption is happening faster than the innovation, and that’s really freaking everyone out.

I mean, truly, that was my overriding impression from that conference: not one of hope and excitement, but one of a general anxiety and fear about what happens next.

But the flip side of that is, it’s just about anyone’s game right now. Anyone with an idea could come along and innovate on behalf of music makers, and on behalf of music lovers. There certainly are innovators already. It’s just that there’s so much room for more.

I know I shouldn’t have a favorite, but I do. I can’t help it. I mean, just look at her:

More puppies - just waiting to be adopted! - over at Newscoma.