niallon – I Knew You Were Trouble

I Knew You Were Trouble

Taylor Swift. Taylor. Swift. Honestly there are rants I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice to say nobody should be all that surprised to hear I’m really not much of a fan, save for the handful of her songs that I’m really a fan of. That is, I can recognise great songwriting regardless of my thoughts on the artist. This is one of said songs, an absolutely cracking pop tune. Not entirely lyrically though, contrary to what I would usually find praise for. So what makes it so good?

niallon – No One

My history with Alicia Keys’ music is definitely the most accidental hipster I’ve ever been. When she exploded onto the scene with “Fallin'” I didn’t think it was bad but as a song it didn’t totally grab me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great great modern classic and in a general sense I felt that way from first listen. I didn’t seem to see what the world was seeing though. No it was later in her career that my interest was well and truly piqued. It was ‘As I Am’ that sealed the deal.

niallon – Monster Mashup 2

I’m another life I used to make short films. I’ve been a horror fan all my life and myself and a mate used to make short horror films and a few dramas to boot. I was never one of those kids you hear about that grew up to be Spielbergs and Scorceses who were making 8mm shorts in their childhood and always wanted to be a filmmaker but I have always loved the craft.

niallon – North And South

First things first, I’ve missed a few posts. The original idea behind these companion blog posts was that I would talk a bit about the song being covered but I pretty quickly ran out of superlatives for all the songs and artists I was covering. I shifted over instead to using each given cover as an opportunity for me to discuss a related topic I’d had floating around my mind. In order to not diminish that concept, I held off on a few write ups like “Beautiful Day” and “Human” because I simply couldn’t naturally think up of a topic to write on. Ideally I would have weekly posts in conjunction with the YouTube uploads but to be honest I’d rather post when I’ve something decent to say rather then just for the hell of it. Like this week.

niallon – Blackbird

12 years and no tracks from The Beatles. What the hell Niall? Yeah I’ll be honest that surprised even me, but then The Beatles have never really featured much in my songbook. That’s mostly on account of my favourite songs from them being the least guitar friendly to be honest, but I also have a tendency to learn the obscure tracks much sooner than the favourites. So the likes of “Love Me Do” and “Hard Days Night” would have merrily passed me by in my learnings.

niallon – Lola

Back to the requests and again a song that I’d never have thought to cover in a million years. Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks is one of my all time favourites so that’s always been the song from their reporteoire I’ve had eyed up to cover, and if I’m being honest I wasn’t sure how coverable Lola is nowadays.

niallon – Take On Me

I f**king love this song. Obviously one might assume that if I’ve chosen a song to cover I’m probably a fan of the original, but there are some songs that I truly love, so much so I tend to think twice about covering them. Some past examples of those are Mr Brightside and National Anthem where the song pretty much terrified me at the thought of covering it. I don’t really know why I take that attitude. I mean with the average view count on the videos being around the 100/200 mark should I really be that bothered?

niallon – You May Be Right

This track really brought to a head how much I love the requests concept. Not only was this a song that was totally unknown to us all (well definitely myself and Peter, it seems Vicki is quite a Billy Joel fan), but it was requested way back before we had even upgraded to a three piece outfit. Not only that but even the duo videos were a rarity, scattered between weeks of solo vids. Initially I wondered if a solo reimagining was in line for this track, then it moved on to myself and Peter considering a multi track pre-record, before it finally landed here with a full band performance.

niallon – Merry Xmas Everybody

Man it’s been one hell of a year. Things got extremely quiet on the niallon front earlier this year, with Peter away we had one solitary upload carrying us through most of the first 4 months of the year (and even that video was filmed late 2016!) We got back on course in June though with Mr Brightside and really that video served as a bit of a watershed video for our channel. We were actually primarily looking to get a cover of This Is What It Feels Like done in that session and Mr Brightside was an off the cuff attempt that wound up being the main video from the day. The reason this became such a landmark video for us was because until that point we had been very business like with the niallon channel at times, everything was laid out in a neat plan because that way then we couldn’t screw it up. We were being smart and prepared, but as a result we were missing out on the great music that can be created through spontaneity.

niallon – National Anthem

Yes I forgot to do a write up on ‘Zombie’ (and ‘The Funeral’ come to think of it) and yes we’re back to solo videos this week. I can be consistent in my inconsistency though, haven’t you heard?