Videos of the Week January 29th

Solid mix of music and sheer entertainment value in this week's top five. Led by an out of this world collaboration between Jimmy Fallon, Sia, The Roots and...Natalie Portman? Random doesn't begin to explain that collection of talent on one stage, but it came together quite well on the Mardi Gras classic Iko Iko. If that's not random enough for you, how about some Obama clips dubbed together to form Justin Bieber's I'm Sorry? I'm not sure it was as good as Thriller or Hotline Bling, but baracksdubs takes attention to detail to another level.

In the world of music, there was high profile EDM collabo, a captivating Wiz Khalifa freestyle and a debut single from Baauer. You might recognize The Right Song from a previously posted song by Oliver and Tiesto (Wombass), but this time Natalie La Rose blesses the bouncy beat with vocals. It's a rare occasion where I think the instrumental wins over the vocal version. It was a tumultuous week for Wiz Khalifa, but that didn't prevent him from showing off his ability to twist everyone's favorite Adele track into a weed anthem. Last but not least was the premiere of Baauer's new single Day Ones. Truth be told it deserved it's own post, but you can bank on plenty more releases from his upcoming album Aa to surface on this portion of the internet...#DayOnes
Jimmy Fallon, Sia, Natalie Portman & The Roots Perform Iko Iko

President Obama Sings Justin Bieber's I'm Sorry

Tiesto & Oliver Heldens feat Natalie La Rose - The Right Song (Video)

Wiz Khalifa Goes in on Adele's Hello

Baauer Performs Day Ones with LeiKeli47 on Colbert

Photo Credit: YouTube

Videos of the Week January 8th

Admittedly, it was an underwhelming week for videos. Rarely am I ever scraping the barrel for a top five, but it was a slow start for the year. I say that but Kendrick Lamar's debut performance of his latest Untitled track on Fallon was the show stopper of the week. You want to talk about energy in a performance! He brought his A game to the party.

Coming in a close second was Gallant, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists. With the help of Sufjan Stevens, he showed again why he's THE rising star when it comes to R&B vocalists. Continuing with an R&B tip, Majid Jordan made news this week when they released the tracklist for their upcoming album along with the new video for their latest single Something About You. In electronic news, if you were wondering how easy or hard it is to make a track, Flux Pavilion was willing to show you in a matter of ten minutes. Pretty cool how it all comes together more quickly than you'd imagine. And last, but not least, your boy Yonas came through with yet another interesting cover. This time, he did work on Adele's Hello. But, to his credit, he put his own interesting rock twist on it with the help of Living in Fiction...#Yonas
Kendrick Lamar - Untitled 2 (Live on Fallon)

Gallant & Sufjan Stevens - Blue Bucket of Gold (In-studio Video)

Majid Jordan - Something About You (Video)

Flux Pavilion Makes a Track in 10 Minutes

Yonas feat Living in Fiction - Hello (Adele Cover)

Photo Credit: YouTube

Videos of the Week November 27th

I'll be honest, with the American Music Awards being last weekend, it was tough picking my top five favorite videos of the week. To make things simple, I picked the most novel and interesting performance of the night, which went to Pentatonix. Their orchestra aided acapella rendition was quite a sight to see. Similarly, SNL's Thanksgiving gone bad where Adele's Hello saves that day was a pretty funny skit. Yes, the song is getting to be extremely overplayed, but I like that people are being creative with it now at least.

The final bit of novelty of the week came from the Muppets and Eminem My Name Is mash up. Every time I click on one of those videos, I roll my eyes thinking that this one is going to be just like the last ones. Then, I watch the video and end up being really entertained, so take that for what it's worth. In the world of music, Avicii created an inspirational mini-movie for his newest single Arrows. Really cool father daughter story having to do with high jumping, so give that a watch. And last but not least, Alex, Drew, and Tritonal came through with a typically entertaining competitive spin class video for Until You Were Gone. Everyone seems to fall in love with their spin instructor, so it was fun to see them poking fun at something that a lot of people can relate with...#UntilYouWereGone
The Chainsmokers & Tritonal – Until You Were Gone (Feat. Emily Warren) (Video)

A Thanksgiving Miracle From Adele

Pentatonix Star Wars Tribute at the American Music Awards

Avicii - Broken Arrows (Video)

The Muppets Singing Eminem's My Name Is
Photo Credit: YouTube

Adele's Hello Gets Hella Mello

In case you haven't heard Adele's new single Hello or the millions of remixes of the track, here's another to throw on the pile. At first, it'll be tough to tell that you're listening to a remix, but after the hook marshemello injects a heavy amount of bass to the original. It's a characteristically cheery, snappy and bouncy rendition of what may someday be considered a classic. If you were to press me to pick a favorite between this mix and Good Life version, I'd probably give the nod to the Trop House re-make I posted two weeks ago. I will say that marshmello's version was successful in that breathes much needed life into a song that is becoming borderline overplayed and monotonous. Overall this one fits in well with mello's growing collection of vibrant and happy tunes, so if you can get over it being yet another Hello remix, you just might like it...#HelloMello

Adele's Hello Was Made for Trop House

You knew it was coming sooner or later, but credit Konglomerate and Good Life for beating everyone to the punch. The "it" I'm talking about is a Tropical House cover of Adele's Hello. Back when Adele was blowing up a few years back, Trop House wasn't anything more than a novel daydream. After one listen of the remix below, you'll join me in thinking "why didn't something like this happen earlier?" because Adele's mellow style fits like a glove over the flutes and high pitched synths. Even though the vocals come from Gabe Maulion rather than Adele, you're going to be hard pressed convincing me you can tell much of a difference since it sounds like a sample from the original. All in all, this is one of the better Trop House covers I've heard in 2015...#GoodLife

Adele - Hello (Good Life & Konglomerate Cover)

Stephen Re-imagines Adele's Hello

By now you've undoubtedly heard Adele's new comeback single Hello and taken the time to recognize it's limitless potential. There simply aren't many people in the world who have the vocal talent of Adele, so it shouldn't be a surprise that her new video for the single has over 190 million views on YouTube in ten days. Feel free and give it a listen below if you found a way to not watch it at some point over the past week...
Admittedly, her original version of the track deserves it's own post, so I'm a bit remorseful that I waited until a noteworthy cover comes along to post her version. By no means is Stephen's cover (below) anywhere near as powerful as the original, but it's a really interesting re-imagination of Hello...

Where Adele's vocal range takes the cake on the original, Stephen adds a rock element to the track that is really intriguing. I've posted a few tracks of his and with each track I'm gaining more of an appreciation for his music. Great artists grow on you and he's doing everything he can to be memorable. Keep him in mind for breakout artist of 2016 and keep it locked here for anything new he puts out...#StephenSwartz
Photo Credit: YouTube

Adele's New Bond Theme Skyfall Dubstep Style

I debated long and hard whether or not to post the original version of @OfficialAdele's new James Bond theme song Skyfall. In the 24/7 cycle of never-ending music releases on the blogosphere, any hesitation to post something generally results in moving on to the next big thing, which is how things get left behind.

Keeping that in mind, when I heard the @ClarkKentSB and @CuddleOscar's Dubstep flavored remix of Adele's new hit, there wasn't any hesitation this time. Sometimes all it takes is a push or small packet of EDM to sweeten up the drink a bit. What I like best about the remix is that it doesn't blow up the original and try to make it something completely different. In a subtle way, it adds to what's already there and while some may call that too simplistic or discount it for not being very different from the original, I've got no problem with it. Sometimes the best design is like the existing design with one important element changed.

In other news, Adele welcomed a baby boy into the world today...#CongratsAdele

Adele - Skyfall (Clark Kent & Oscar Daniel Remix)

Javier Colon Covers Adele's Someone Like You (Live)

For the first time in quite a while I attended a concert that wasn't marked by high energy craziness (i.e. deadmau5, volbeat, ratatat, LCD Soundsystem). Instead, it was an intimate, acoustic setting where three talented individuals took the stage with not much more than a guitar and a piano. I'm going to keep my commentary short today because a more long winded review of the concert is going to follow in the next week when I'm able to get all of the media posted. I rarely let the cat out of the bag before doing a thorough review, but when @javstwtr covers @officialadele on stage for the first time and does a solo acoutic rendition of her hit Someone Like You, I'm willing to break protocol.

I'd consider it one of the many highlights of the show and a welcome surprise as part of the three song encore. I don't need to dress it up at all, the only thing I'm really urging you to do is press play below and give it a listen. Absolutely amazing and something that I was fortunate to witness in person...#Speechless

Javier Colon Covers Adele's Someone Like You

Feel free to check out Javier's new album title Come Through For You on iTunes

Videos of the Week

What a random NBA 2K12 commercial with the likes of MJ, Drake, Brian Wilson and Mark Cuban. Three of the hottest concert tickets this fall include Adele (ridiculous how much her tickets are going on stub hub), J Cole and Big Sean. It's called marketing folks, make yourself visible so people will go watch. Give bloggers something to embed to their site!. I realize I'm only a part of the game and that's cool with me as long as you're reading and clicking around...

T-Pain feat Lily Allen & Wiz Khalifa - 5 O'clock (Video)

Big Sean - I Am Finally Famous Tour Trailer

Adele - Someone Like You (Video)

Drake and Micheal Jordan's NBA 2K12 Commercial

J Cole - Daddy's Little Girl (Video)

Enrique Iglesias feat Pitbull - I Like How it Feels (Video)

Videos of the Week

Bunch of great new concert videos have been surfacing from summer tours of late like Kanye/Cudi and Linkin Park covering @officialadele's Rolling in the Deep. Kinda creeped out by the Skylar Grey video, but still love the track and her new one Invisible. @araabmuzik is an absolute beast on the MPC. If I were to learn a skill it would be the ability to manipulate samples like he does. Plenty more to follow, indulge below folks, lots of good stuff...
@kanyewest & @wizardcud Perform All of the Lights (Live in Milwaukee)

@skylargrey - Dance Without You (Video)

@CeeLoGreen feat @RealWizKhalifa - Bright Lights Bigger City (Remix) (Video)

@araabmuzik destroys the MPC (Live)

@thegame feat @JTIMBERLAKE & Pharrell - Ain't No Doubt About It (Video)

@linkinpark Performing Rolling in the Deep(Live)

Who Rocked it Better? Adele, Mike Posner, John Legend - Rolling in the Deep

Continuing the week long promotionfest of @officialadele's music, I'm feeling foolish for not having posted her most widely recognized, lead single off 21, Rolling in the Deep. In case you've been living under a rock aren't one of the 28 million people who saw the video on YouTube, check it out along with the track below for your convenience...

Adele - Rolling in the Deep
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There's no secret that the way she pulled off the original version by channeling the deepest soulful harmony imaginable, it'd be hard to top it. Enter fellow Grammy award winner @johnlegend, who adds his own classy brand of soul on the cover. Did he do it justice? I'll take Adele's original, but I appreciate the male version and would still put it on a mix for either of my parents...#OnlyTheClassyHipHop

John Legend - Rolling in the Deep (cover)
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That leaves the wild card, @MIKEPOSNER who adds has his own gentle swagger to the original. I'm a bigger fan of his version than John Legend's because I dig the electronic vibe and scratches added in, making it sound completely different. In other words, it had to sound completely different to even compete because there isn't a voice out there that can compete with the 1000 cc's of soul injected into the original version. Call it runner up or best alternative version, either way, thumbs up, like button...all that ish, it's well done...

Mike Posner - Rolling in the Deep (cover)
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Adele and Forte Set Fire to the Rain

I'm waaaay late, but fully running behind the @officialadele bandwagon. I haven't heard a woman with as much organic soul in her voice since @jossstone and I'd even go as far as to say she's twice as good as @iamduffymusic despite sounding eerily similar. Right now I'm zoning out to her rendition of @311's Love Song and the only thing that's missing is that whiny background guitar riff that sets offsets the sappy lyrics to perfection.

Not to be discounted is @gilbereforte's emotional verses that find a way to match the powerful hook delivered by Adele on the original track. My girl just said, "This reminds me of Rihanna and Eminem" and I can't disagree, the raw emotion can be compared to I Love the Way You Lie. Also deserving mention is @UnknownNick aka Twice as Nice who weaved Gilbere's verses in while adding a Hip Hop touch to the beat, preserving the quality of the original and taking it a step further to make it appeal to Hip Hop heads.

A+ track, clearly one of my favorites this month, not enough praise or time of day to give this one justice...

Adele feat Gibere Forte - Set Fire to the Rain (Remix)

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