Desire Avenue

Or I suppose you could say-which Stina song first turned your head? that you might play to someone to get them interested?
(I'm thinking of Matt Butterfly's radio show now! hey,Matt we can make you a playlist!).
OK,for me-

The first Stina song that turned my head was 'Under your command'.And when I heard 'Stations' I was smitten.I don't think I'd hesitate to try those on a radio audience.

I think with Stina its all about her 'singing'.....either you love it or it irritates the hell out of you.

The melodies,the instrumentation,the words,the ideas,the concepts......none of that matters if you don't like her vocals.

So really,in order to turn someone onto Stina's work then its got to be a fairly straight forward vocal performance from Stina,sung within the framework of a straight forward 'pop song'.
Nothing too clever,nothing too intricate,just something thats got a memorable melody and got a few 'hook's that the listener can take in and appreciate on the one listen.

With all that in mind,I would nominate either 'Another Story Girl' or 'Sharon and Hope'.

Well some people may have heard "Little Star" sometime of course, so you could play that, and then play some completely different track of Stina to show how wide her musical repertoir is. So probably something of Dynamite or PAS. If you'd like to keep it 'light', not to scare the lot of them away, then i'd play something of TWIS that's not too dark, like Butterfly

It begs the question whether it's worth worrying about people being 'scared away'.If you're a fan of Stina,you're probably going to love her dark side,so why not show that.
If I'd heard something more drippy first off-which 'Little Star' slightly tends towards,-I might not have bothered with anything else.
If they're frightened away,good riddance.

sound world wrote:If I'd heard something more drippy first off-which 'Little Star' slightly tends towards,-I might not have bothered with anything else.
If they're frightened away,good riddance.

Thus speaks Mr.Soundworld,who is not Stina's financial adviser incidentally.

Well whoever her financial adviser is,she hasn't listened to them,thankfully!

Its a catch22 situation really.
Whilst its admirable that Stina hasn't sold out and aimed her music (and its performance) towards greater commercial appeal,the downside is that the smaller sales=smaller income= lower turnover of albums and less chance of Stina playing live.

And with the rapid change in the music industry this past decade,means the chances of a large company ever getting behind Stina again is very remote.

I think there's more to that than the changes taking place in the music industry.

I'd play them .... Lori Glory. Lull them into a false sense of security.

blue wrote:
I'd play them .... Lori Glory. Lull them into a false sense of security.

If I'd heard that first,I probably wouldn't have bothered to listen to Stina again! Lucky I didn't...

For me it's the jazzy arrangements (even on Dynamite) that connects each Stina album with each other. So I would play them Butterfly to tease.

sound world wrote:

blue wrote:
I'd play them .... Lori Glory. Lull them into a false sense of security.

If I'd heard that first,I probably wouldn't have bothered to listen to Stina again! Lucky I didn't...

Well,thats how I feel about the whole 'Memories Of A Color' album.

I first heard "So this is Goodbye" - a tough start. To draw in the complete novice there is "Sharon and Hope", intelligent and deep, yet light and poppy in outlook. To impress someone with a highly poetic and inventive song I'd go for "The Story of Alan Bean".

sound world wrote:Or I suppose you could say-which Stina song first turned your head? that you might play to someone to get them interested?
(I'm thinking of Matt Butterfly's radio show now! hey,Matt we can make you a playlist!).
OK,for me-

The first Stina song that turned my head was 'Under your command'.And when I heard 'Stations' I was smitten.I don't think I'd hesitate to try those on a radio audience.

Thanks for helping me out, Sound World. This thread will come in handy.

I'm taking your thoughts and suggestions on board guys.

"Under Your Command"
"Stations"

- Might turn heads

Under your command is a very spooky track for me. However a great opener of what's to come on the album "Dynamite. Although it sums up the album, I don't think it will keep listener's attentions for too long though, as they might get bored (just being honest).

Stations is a good suggestion if I don't go with "Circus" in the end. Circus really blew me away when I first heard it. A track with little running time can feel so much longer, with the amount of emotional energy it has.


"fairly straight forward vocal performance",

"Nothing too clever,nothing too intricate,just something thats got a memorable melody and got a few 'hook's that the listener can take in and appreciate on the one listen."

"With all that in mind,I would nominate either 'Another Story Girl' or 'Sharon and Hope'"

I know what you mean by chosing those records. They are quite poppy and straightfoward. Unfortunately, as radio friendly as they are-(and thats what im obviouslly doing, a radio show) i really don't rate those songs highly. So I'll find it hard to play them, if i myself skip them on albums. There isn't many tracks I dislike of sweet Stina's but those are two tracks out of about four out of all six albums that I dislike."

"Nothing too clever" - that is one thing I have to keep telling myself. I always want to be too clever, especially in terms of music, always trying to find the extarordinary. I'm thinking now, however, that the "too weird" music could be a turn off for listeners and therefore I'll loose an audience to promote scandinavian music too.

My adverts for the show and now just about the nationality genre, which dosen't mean im not going to be picky but some tracks might sound commercial and mainstream. I don't want to have to restrict myself to "unpredictable" music as I was going to before.

wirbel wrote:Well some people may have heard "Little Star" sometime of course, so you could play that, and then play some completely different track of Stina to show how wide her musical repertoir is. So probably something of Dynamite or PAS. If you'd like to keep it 'light', not to scare the lot of them away, then i'd play something of TWIS that's not too dark, like Butterfly

Very good point. I may actually play "Little Star" because people who have seen "Romeo and Juliet" may recognize the song from the past but have no idea where it came from and who it's by. Great point!

Little Star ---------------(Darker Side) Dynamite ------------(A Cover) People Are Strange -------------(Jazz and more lounge sounding [if that's the right word] of "On Falling or The Morning Belongs To The Night."

On the other hand, for TWIS, I'm leaning towards Butterfly because of it's quirky lyrics and quirky sound. It's very imaginative. It creates a mis-matched picture inside my head.

Having said that, Stina is like no artist on the planet (Duh!) so i do want to address that very fact through her music, so there is going to have be at least 1 or 2 extraordinarily experimental tracks.

Fotunately on my show, (like many shows on 6Music) singles don't have any priorities over album tracks.