Been on every stage in every place

Part two of the Blue feature, now that Z-Share is back up and working (I decided just to give it its own post instead of editing it into the one below)! The songs today were never singles in the UK, I think, though "Only Words I Know" was released in some countries.

After The Show--the cutesy side of Blue. Midtempo and centered around the boys asking "if you're still gonna care for me/after the show, when I'm no longer on MTV." You could criticize the sentiment as manufactured if you wanted to, but why bother when the song is this boppy and cute? I have a soft spot for it, too, because I associate it with the end of one of my favorite seasons of Speech and Debate, when coaches were forced to move on to other jobs--it was a bit of a stretch, but the similarities to me at the time (between worries about what will happen after a group's music career ends and the group breaks apart and what will happen after the tournaments end and an almost-family breaks apart) gave the song a little extra meaning. The song is questioning the future and unsure about what will happen, but it's far from depressing--it's not exactly happy, but it might cause you to smile.

Only Words I Know--dancier (though not really much faster) and less cute than "After The Show," "Only Words I Know" has a lot of singing by an unnamed female vocalist. It's also Latin-influenced and features gimmicky use of Spanish. The album insert contains some atrocious misspellings of the Spanish phrases used here, unless it's just informal Spanish that I'm unfamiliar with ("onde" instead of "donde," "gutsa" instead of "gusta," "um" instead of "un," "querio" instead of "quiero," "qui" instead of "aqui")--for a group that built so much of their success on appealing to non-English speaking countries, I was surprised that there literally must not have been anyone who spoke Spanish proofreading the lyrics. That doesn't detract from the song, though.

The Gift--another cute song, probably a little slower than "After The Show." This one has piano backing and, though it still has percussion and tiny electronic noises, it's more minimal than "After The Show."

To buy The Best of Blue, which has the first two songs featured today, go here (physical) (make sure to get the version with two discs--the "fan edition"--if you want today's songs); to buy "Only Words I Know" digitally, go here; to buy 4Ever Blue, which has "The Gift," go here (physical) or here (digital)

Next up: if nothing else comes up, that three-day special I mentioned on Tuesday...I'll see if I can do some sort of mini-post tonight.

blue