Doriano Carta

I’ve always liked Ace of Base and this song… which wasn’t one of their biggest hits here in the USA. Still, it’s a fun song with a simple but true message. It IS a beautiful life!

You can do what you want just seize the day
What you’re doing tomorrow’s gonna come your way
Don’t you ever consider givin’ up, you will find, oooh
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
I just wanna be here beside you
stay until the break of dawn
Take a walk in the park when you feel down
There’s so many things there
that’s gonna lift you up
See the nature in bloom a laughing child
Such a dream, oooh
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
I just wanna be here beside you
I just wanna be here beside you
stay until the break of dawn
You’re looking for somewhere to belong
You’re standing all alone
for someone to guide you on your way
Now and Forever
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
I just wanna be anybody
Living in different ways
It’s a beautiful life
I’m gonna take you to a place I’ve never been
before oh yeah
It’s a beautiful life
I’m gonna take you in my arms and fly away
with you tonight
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life, oh oh ooo
It’s a beautiful life
[x2]

On twitter tonight, I asked everyone to name some good actors turned singers but no one could come up with any. We did come up with a slew of bad ones though. Here are just some of them. I will add more to the playlist with time.

Here are my favorite moments from So You Think You Can Dance over the course of its 5 seasons. I will continue to add more over time so check back often.

The recording industry bible, Billboard Magazine, has recently launched an entirely overhauled website with Billboard.com that sports a fresh new look and loaded with social media goodness. For example, they’ve added the ability to join via facebook connect which means you can share your musical taste with your friends on Facebook. Their twitter name is @billboarddotcom. Also important to note is the vastly improved performance of the site as every webpage seems to load much faster than before.

Can You Feel The Music?

You’ll also notice that you’ll be able to share your thoughts and opinions on just about anything  on the site via the little heart for adding to your favorites list, the say something chat icon for posting a comment and the share icon for sharing it on several popular networks such as twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more. This makes the experience more personal and hopefully more viral for Billboard.

Number One with a Bullet

The heart and soul of Billboard will always be its music charts, of course. The great news is that they no longer limit you to seeing only half of the chart for free! So, instead of seeing only the top 50 of the hot 100, you can now see the entire 100 hottest songs in the country. The same with the Top 200 albums in the land and many other charts. You can checkout the quickest rising songs and those that are cooling off the fastest.

Another Sweet new feature is the ability to play entire songs, instead of just 30 second samples. You also have the option to purchase the song if you so desire.

The new music player appears on the left side of the site at all times in a collapsible window along with the visualization lancher located just beneath it.

The Visualizer is a slick way to checkout the entire history of your favorite artists in a visual manner with a timeline and chart statistics for each release. The visualizer can also track the history of a particular album or even a song itself, displaying its peak position and longevity on the charts.

As an example, here’s the visualization of the career of the boss

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know

One of the things I enjoy most about Billboard is the amount of information they provide for all of your favorite artists. In addition to the cool visualization tool, you can get more details about an artist, song or album by clicking on their name or the title of the song or album. Here’s the artist page for the red hot Black Eyed Peas.

Notice the plethora of info available. It starts with the basics page which shows the latest news regarding that artist, then there’s the incredible chart history area that shows every detail of all charted songs and albums. The biography section gives an excellent Wikipedia style wrap up of their history. The Albums, compilations and Songs areas list all of their charted works with the option to play just about any of them. There’s also a discussion board to communicate with other fans of your favorite artist as well as a video section where you can watch their music videos.

Hot Music News

The other fun and important section will be the now expanded NEWS section which will share the latest information in the industry as well as cool music chart trivia. There’s also a New Releases section for tracking the absolute latest new music.

There’s also a live section for live streams of music events going on all around the world. You’ll be able to view a calendar of events and schedule it or search for any artist that you like to see where and when they will be performing.

Fun and Games

There’s a fun Chart Game where you play music exec and try to predict which five artists will be the most popular. You earn points and get ranked on a chart yourself with other players. Winners receive cool prizes like free songs from lala.com.
 
 
Another new feature that will surely be a “hit” (pardon the pun) is the “Soundtrack of My Life” which lets you create a playlist of number one songs for important moments of your life such as your birthday, your first kiss, your graduation day, the day you m
et your spouse/partnder, etc. When it’s all done you can then quickly and easily share the playlist with friends on many social networks.

CODA

I think all of these changes along with the availability of the API to developers makes Billboard.com much more relevant today, not just for music industry professionals and artists but now for music fans as well.

Here’s the incredibly moving dance number from “So You Think You Can Dance” choreographed by Tyce DiOrio as a tribute to those fighting breast cancer. Melissa (ballerina) and Ade were magnificent in their performance. She conveyed such power and emotion and grace while Ade displayed his strength and agility. I love the way she throws herself into his arms without fear and the ending is so breath-taking as he helps her sore towards the light. Amazing experience. The song is “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush. It’s been around for over 20 years and a timeless classic. Here’s more about it’s popularity.

We all know about Irene Cara from FAME as Coco and from the wonderful “What a Feeling” song from FlashDance. However, not too many might remember or even know about this gem called “The Dream (Hold on to Your Dream” from an obscure movie called “DC CAB” which I’ve always liked a lot. Yes, it’s a silly movie about a bunch of goofy cabbies but it was great fun and the movie had an excellent soundtrack featuring songs composed by the legendary Giorgio Moroder (including this song and the aforementioned What a Feeling).

Here are some scenes

The Dream (Hold on to Your Dream)

I’ve been chasing dreams for so long
Just one step behind and then they’re gone
Illusions of love would come and go
I guess you have to hurt before you grow
And everybody knows
Never let go of the, never let go of the dream
I always seem to lose what I thought was mine
And many times I tried to leave it behind
Deep inside, hope was still alive
Deep inside, dreams will never die
That is why we’re movin’ closer to the truth
It’s really great for me to be here
I’ve won over the pain and the fear
It’s been so very hard through the years
Been looking through a rainbow of tears
And still I never really let go of the dream
Sometimes I saw my life just falling apart
And all the rejection tearing at my heart
Deep inside, hope was still alive
Deep inside, dreams will never die
If you try there’ll be so much more for you
It’s really great for me to be here
I’ve won over the pain and the fear
It’s been so very hard through the years
Been looking through a rainbow of tears
And still I never really let go of the dream
We can all be free, we hold the key
If we can see what we wanna be
Life’s never easy, you get no guarantees
Why not give your all and see what you can find

Here’s the first time most of us ever heard or saw Josh Groban many years ago when he performed in Allie McBeal as this nerdy guy who sings at the prom. No one listens at first but then they hear that voice and everyone stops and becomes spellbound. It’s such a great scene. It was like the original Susan Boyle moment, the complete surprise of hearing such a voice coming from such an unsuspecting person. I miss that show a lot too.

Josh sang another song on McBeal called “To Where You Are” (video)

The Black Eyed Peas were amazing on this week’s So You Think You Can Dance performing their new number one song on Billboard’s Hot 100, “I Gotta Feeling”. By the way, they replaced their own song at number one by breaking a 12-week run at the summit for “Boom Boom Pow”. They are the hottest act in the music industry today. I know it’s all because of Fergie.

It’s such a good feeling song too. Who hasn’t had that feeling that the night ahead is going to especially good for one reason or another? I like how each member plays a part in this performance and the way confetti comes streaming down at the end. Such a party tune.

Here’s the official music video which is great too

Here are the lyrics. I love any song that’ll use the word mozoltov… how cool is that?

I gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good good night (x3)
Tonight’s the night night
Let’s live it up
I got my money
Let’s spend it up
Go out and smash it
Like Oh My God
Jump off that sofa
Let’s get get OFF
I know that we’ll have a ball
If we get down
And go out
And just loose it all
I feel stressed out
I wanna let it go
Lets go way out spaced out
And loosing all control
Fill up my cup
Mozoltov
Look at her dancing
Just take it off
Lets paint the town
We’ll shut it down
Let’s burn the roof
And then we’ll do it again
Lets Do it (x3)
And live it up
I gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good good night (x2)
Tonight’s the night
Let’s live it up
I got my money
Lets spend it up
Go out and smash it
Like Oh My God
Jump off that sofa
Lets get get OFF
Fill up my cup (Drink)
Mozolotov (Lahyme)
Look at her dancing (Move it Move it)
Just take it off
Lets paint the town
We’ll shut it down
Lets burn the roof
And then we’ll do it again
Lets do it (x3)
Let’s live it up
Here we come
Here we go
We gotta rock
Easy come
Easy go
Now we on top
Feel the shot
Body rock
Rock it don’t stop
Round and round
Up and down
Around the clock
Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday,
Saturday and Sunday
Get get get get get
With us you know what we say
Party everyday p-p-p-party
Party everyday
I gotta feeling that tonight gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good good night(x2)

I don’t normally write about a movie BEFORE I see it but every once in a while I do when everything about a movie seems like a winner to me. “Julie & Julia” has all the “ingredients” for a delicious recipe. OK, sorry about all the bad puns. Here’s why I cannot wait to see this one.

The movie is about two true stories involving the legendary Julia Childs and a secretary who launched a blog that documented her cooking recipes from Childs’ book. The plot and the fact that Meryl Streep plays Julia Childs are enough reasons for me to see this one already but there’s more! Amy Adams, one of my favorite actresses today, plays the blogger Julie! Then there’s Stanley Tucci as Julia’s inspirational husband.

As if all that weren’t enough, there’s the writer and director, Nora Ephron! Yes, the same brilliant force behind some of the most beloved romantic comedies such as “Sleepless in Seattle”, “You’ve Got Mail”, “When Harry Met Sally” and more! I will be shocked if I don’t love this movie.

Here’s the trailer