Mike McCready

These guys (Axis of Awesome) can show you that all you need are four chords (and a drummer) and you’ve got yourself a hit pop song. Take a look:

I run a little music blog over at http://song.cat. It’s a blog where each day three songs face off against each other and the site’s visitors vote on which song goes on to the next day to take on two new songs. If a song wins for 10 days in a row the song goes to the Wall of Fame (also visible on the site). In addition to the wall of fame, there’s a page called Mike’s Picks (terribly narcissistic isn’t it?) and that’s where I put songs I’ve heard recently that I think are particularly good, whether they’ve won the face-off’s or not and in some cases, even if they haven’t been on the blog but I’ve otherwise come across them.

Here are a few I’ve been into recently:

Let’s say you don’t work in the music business. Let’s just say you’re an average fan and a musician somehow gets your attention long enough to convince you to listen to their music. You listen. You hate it. Maybe it’s just not your style. Maybe it’s just plain bad. Either way, you’re less likely to give the next musician the chance. And you’re even less likely the time after that and so on until finally you’d rather kiss your sister than listen to another artist try to convince you to give their song a spin.

The official line is that the group fought with EMI (their label) to be able to post this video online and make it freely available. But we know that’s not true. Making viral videos has become OK GO’s trademark. Not allowing the video to go viral would be shooting themselves in the foot. OKGO is [...]

In early November, just as the DotCat Song Blog was getting nearly 1000 unique visitors each day I had to stop updating it. I was just getting too overwhelmed and I needed to step back and get organized. Today, just in time for 2010 it’s back as the SongCat Blog (http://song.cat). Everyday we’ll post three [...]

I’ve noticed a minor trend in Spanish language music becoming more influenced by American and British Pop and it is creating some very interesting fusion sounds and styles. I think we’re going to hear more of it in the near future.

Sometimes it takes a couple listens for a song to sink in; to grow on you. Then a there are songs you just can’t get out of your head after one listen. Germans call that kind of song an ear worm because it bores into your brain and begs another and another listen. “Human Drama” [...]

You may remember a song a few years ago by British boy band vet Lee Ryan called Turn Your Car Around. It was written and originally recorded by New Zealand artist and my friend Ben Novak.

When you hear this song you’re going to want to pass it along.

Click here to see this post on The Huffington Post I’m a sucker for a good love song but these days you don’t often come across love songs that strike the right balance. They’re either clichés of themselves, cross the frontier into corny or they’re more about sex appeal and desire than about heartfelt, honest, [...]