Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Songs I Wish Were Books!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by my other blog The Broke and the Bookish.

I LOVE music, I'm always playing it in the background while I'm reading and YES to this TTT topic basically!! :)

1. Up All Night by Rosemary's Sons: this one is by a Dutch band and I LOVE the song and the images it conjures up, so I'd love if someone wrote a book inspired by this!

2. Gravity by Sara Bareilles: this song is everything. I would read it if it was a book. But this basically goes for all of Sara's songs, because they're all stories.

3. Lost by Jonathan Jeremiah: I'm a sucker for love songs and this is beautiful, talking about a flawed love that can't do without the other person.

4. Goodbye To You by Michelle Branch: I would love to read a story about the love and the life that she's saying goodbye to and choosing to be on her own.

5. Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen: because this would obviously be the cutest summer love story ever and I love me some fluffy awesomeness!

6. All In by Lifehouse: It was really hard for me to pick just one of Lifehouse's songs because OMG so much love for all of them! All about taking that leap and giving your all to someone else, I love it.

7. Accidentally in Love by The Counting Crows: Yes, it's another love song, but this would make for such a cute fluffly read in my opinion and I need more of those!

8. So Close by John McLaughlin: 'So close and still so far', I imagine that one seemingly unattainable love or the one whose off-limits like the brother's best friend or something like that. JUST MAKE IT WORK OK?

9. Stuck by Stacie Orrico: this song resonated SO well with 16/17-year old Daisy, I used to play it on repeat and to me it's so much about that time before I met my boyfriend when I used to crush on boys and it was just such an uncertain time in that I never knew what was up with this one guy and just UGH FRUSTRATION. "I hate you, but I love you". Yeah, that's basically right.

10. I'd Rather Be With You by Joshua Radin: I'm thinking another lovely fluffly contemporary romance. So obviously YES.

And this bonus one is one that I think Jamie will forgive me for stealing from her list:

Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy: this is one that along with Stuck resonated with late-teenage Daisy and I used to listen to it on repeat all day long.

Any you'd love to see made into books as well?

Review of For the Record by Charlotte Huang

Title/Author: For the Record by Charlotte Huang
Publisher/Date published: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, November 10th 2015
How I got this book: received it from the publisher as an egalley

Goodreads summary: Chelsea thought she knew what being a rock star was like... until she became one. After losing a TV talent show, she slid back into small-town anonymity. But one phone call changed everything

Now she’s the lead singer of the band Melbourne, performing in sold-out clubs every night and living on a bus with three gorgeous and talented guys. The bummer is that the band barely tolerates her. And when teen heartthrob Lucas Rivers take an interest in her, Chelsea is suddenly famous, bringing Melbourne to the next level — not that they’re happy about that. Her feelings for Beckett, Melbourne’s bassist, are making life even more complicated.

Chelsea only has the summer tour to make the band — and their fans — love her. If she doesn’t, she’ll be back in Michigan for senior year, dying a slow death. The paparazzi, the haters, the grueling schedule... Chelsea believed she could handle it. But what if she can’t?

So I am totally in love with shows and books about the music industry and the people in it. Music is such a part of my life and I wish I had the skills to actually make music myself, but the most I can do is sing along (WAY out of tune) while in the car/alone in my home/at clubs. So I was super excited to read For The Record, cause it sounded really cute and just my kind of thing.

The thing is, I did like For the Record, but from the summary I would have thought that there would be more swoons. And it was sadly lacking in swoony moments for me. I mean, I liked Chelsea, I did feel like she could have stood up for herself a bit more while the whole band was being a jerk to her. I mean, wow, I get that they don't like that she's been pushed on them by their label, but that's not really her fault and just GROW UP ok? So it sucks that your last lead singer didn't work out. I felt that they should really just have given Chelsea a fair chance from the start or that they should have told their manager they weren't ok with a label-picked new lead singer and that they wanted to pick one themselves. The problem with their attitude was that I wasn't really feeling any of the guys. I can get where they're coming from, but it's not endearing, and it's also what made me a bit iffy about the feelings Chelsea develops for Beckett (as alluded to in the summary), one of the guys from the band.

While Beckett may not have been the one who was nastiest to Chelsea, he's not really supportive either and so he seems like a nice guy underneath, but I was just over it and needed a whole lot of convincing to start rooting for them. Add in the REALLY bad choice Chelsea makes by hooking up with Lucas Rivers, who is just a little too smooth for my liking and also just an arrogant douche. This does not make for swoony reading for me.

Another problem I had with For the Record is that Chelsea's best friend joins them on tour as the merchandise girl and then breaks one of the rules and after that makes a huge NO-NO that made me question whether she was actually Chelsea's friend. I mean, WOW. I can't imagine doing that to my best friend. Or any of my friends. Or even one of my lesser known acquaintances. That was just crossing the line WAY OVER. The line is not even in sight anymore.

I did like reading about the band being on tour and all of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. I liked the backstory about Chelsea's hometown and what happened to her with her former boyfriend, though it did make me wonder if EVERY boy she meets has douchebag potential, I mean, there are some good ones out there. I liked the whole insight in to what it's like to live on a bus with the same people for months and getting cabin fever and all that, that was pretty fun. And I liked discovering that there's a whole lot more to the band drama than we get at first sight, I'd sorta guessed some of it, but OMG it was WAY worse!

I just wish that there had been more swoons, cause I was really counting on this to be a cute contemporary with a huge swoonfactor (I mean, how can making music with a guy you like be anything less than romantic??), but it never fully got there for me.

My rating: 2,5 stars

Songs for Saturday (2)

I thought it was time to put the spotlight on some of the songs I love again. I've recently fallen in love with Sara Bareilles' new CD 'Kaleidoscope', it's amazing! I loved her first album 'Little Voices' and saw her perform live, which was so, so beautiful.
The one song that keeps playing in my head over and over again:



Beautiful!

I also discovered she did a really cool cover of Beyonce's Single Ladies, a completely different interpretation.

And I'm going to see this Dutch band on Wednesday, they're fairly new and I think they'll be amazing live!



Any new songs that have caught your attention? Or older ones that still hold a special place in your heart? Please do share! :)

Tunes on Tuesday

This could as easily have been called (and will in the future at random probably be) Tunes on Thursday, Music Monday, What Are You Listening on Wednesday, Song for Saturday etc.

I was going to participate in Top Ten Tuesday, until I realised my kids would probably kill me if I named them after book characters.

I got the urge to tell you about some of the songs I love to listen to at the moment.
But first I want to have an honorable mention to this awesome piece of lyrics:
I'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song
from Sugar We're Going Down by Fall Out Boy (just heard it on the radio, isn't it awesome?)

I'm going to spotlight 3 songs today:



This song is SOOO amazing! I almost always love her songs and am getting my hands on her new album soon.



I thought I'd show a little patriotism and showcase a Dutch artist, this is actually live at the radioshow I always listen to in the morning. I've been singing along to this in my car at the top of my lungs every time I got stuck in a traffic jam or was just cruising along.



And last but not least this beautiful song that I had forgotten all about until I heard it on the radio last Friday. It perfectly describes the heartache I remember from my teens.

So that's it for this Tunes On Tuesday, which may or may not return in the future.

Tell me, what are you listening to these days?