Long Time No Post

As evidenced by my complete lack of posts for the past, oh, 4 months, I have once again let my blog fall into disrepair.  After the blogging-mania that occurred during my summer stint in South Korea, I guess I kind of burned out, not to mention that this past semester has been the absolute most insane one I have ever experienced.  Not like that is really any excuse for just abandoning a blog, but, well, I WAS busy.

Anyway.  Recently I have been noticing more and more rock, dance and pop songs featuring saxophones, a development I am quite enjoying.  Saxes have been relegated to jazz-only for too long (not that there is anything wrong with jazz).  And so, for your listening pleasure (or perhaps not, if you don't like club music), some of the songs that I think are bringing about the revival of the saxophone:

In the Dark by Dev

I, like many people, presumably, had never heard of Dev until she collaborated with Far East Movement, that most unusual of entities, a hip-hop quartet of Asians, and the Cataracts on the song "Like a G6" that became popular last fall.   In this new song "In the Dark," Dev is working once again with the Cataracts, on a song that features a catchy sax hook, though I have to admit that the film portion of the music video is kind of horrifying.

Mr Saxobeat by Alexandra Stan

As a nice segue into this song, many have compared it to Dev's "In the Dark," though considering "Mr Saxobeat" came out 3 months earlier, "In the Dark" looks kind of like a copycat.  The music video, like Dev's, makes no sense, but I guess that's a common theme for music videos, and I might be asking too much of them for them to actually have, oh, even a tenuous relation to the song.  In case you are wondering, this is a Eurodance song, as Stan is a Romanian recording artist.  I love the fact that songs from Europe and the UK are starting to get more play on US stations . . . gives some relief from the Miley-Selena-Bieber headache the current American music industry is creating.

Calabria by Enur featuring Natasja

Now this is one song that is pretty much guaranteed to get stuck in your head and/or drive you crazy.  And the music video is, no surprise, weird.  Coming from Denmark, this song was a big hit a few years ago, but still regularly appears on my Pandora stations, likely because of its infinitely catchiness and trippy beat.  Definitely has a strong sax line going on, but so many other beats that you might forget what on earth you're listening to by the time you realize it.

Three songs is hardly a comprehensive list to prove that the saxophone is the revived instrument of the decade, but I'm glad to see it at least appearing, something I can't remember really happening for at least the past few years.  And actually, now that I think about it, the entrance of the sax very much seems to correspond with the rise of Europop here in the US, it will be interesting to see how or if that trend continues.

That is all for now.