Holiday Spending

Gifts are the most common money spenders during the holidays. Christmas is a big holiday where a lot of gifts are purchased and given to people all around the world, whether it’s for a grandchild or a sister out of state. When people hear the word Christmas, they think of gifts. Do you?  You may think differently; you may think of spending your money to people in need.  A lot of Christmas gifts consume a large expense including UGGs or IPads. Instead of buying gifts for others, why don’t you give the money to the people suffering to buy a house or help the starving kids in different counties? I’m not sure people understand that others can’t afford expensive items. I know some people especially kids love toys and love the thought of opening their favorite present that’s underneath the Christmas tree on Christmas morning, but you shouldn’t be thinking of toys, think of getting together as a family and being able to hug your mom or dad on Christmas and say “Merry Christmas” because not many people get to do that. Christmas isn’t just about gifts, it’s about the birth of Christ and some people forget that. According to many articles, it is the one holiday with the most money spent. Christmas may be the largest holiday in terms of expenses, but Thanksgiving is also a very expensive holiday. Turkey and other food pertaining to Thanksgiving dinner can be very expensive. Not all people may eat the traditional Thanksgiving dinner but a lot of people do and the expenses including the food are expensive. Any Holiday including food can be expensive. Including Christmas, you have to buy the food for the Christmas parties. Valentine’s Day is also a food expense holiday because of the dinners relationships go to. Also the gifts the girlfriends get include diamonds and jewelry. I believe people don’t understand the meaning of a dollar bill. Some people see it useless and some people see it as a big effect on their life. People use their money differently and I don’t think some of those people understand that instead of buying something you may not use in a couple of years, they can give the money to someone in need so they can use it for a lifetime.

OneRepublic Native Album

OneRepublic is an American rock band from Colorado Springs, Colorado. They formed as a band in 1996. The lead singer, Ryan Tedder, had become friends with Zach Filkins their senior year. They made their rock band “a beautiful mess” a good start with attending at small gigs and coffee shops until they parted their ways and went to college. They reunited with an addition of a couple more members in the band in 2002 and wrote their first full album.

As the years went on, they had a lot of success with singles being on the US Billboard Hot 100. Also having their second album, waking up, number 18 on the US Billboard 200 and selling over 200,00 copies in the US. Waking Up was later certified Gold in the US for sales of over 500,000.OneRepublic supported many other bands on tour including Maroon 5 and Pink.

OneRepublic’s third album, Native, hit success with many singles including “If I Lose Myself” and “Counting Stars.” Counting stars has become their most successful single from the album thus far, and the band's biggest release in recent years.

Counting stars is very fast pace with the verses showing a joyful view.  I really enjoyed listening to this song and many songs on the album. A lot of songs on the Native album have a message including this one. The life lesson in this song is to be hopeful and optimistic in life. The music video to this single was very clever.  Ryan Tedder represents a broke man in the bottom of a filthy, wrecked building. It shows the toughness of life and the many problems that go with it. You get through life with hope that it will get better. The other people in the music video are having a great time in the upper part of the building dancing and partying. This shows the people with no stress in their life. The alligator in the music video represents the greedy people of the money hungry people.

I was a really big fan of OneRepublic’s first hit “Apologize” on their first album, although I never listened to a lot of the rest of the songs on that album. After the single “Counting Stars” came out I started to listen to more of OneRepublic. I would give this album honestly 4.5 stars out of 5. OneRepublic has a lot of energy in every one of their songs from beginning to end.  I really enjoyed listening to their songs on the native album.

Album Reviews

By Caryn Ganz

October 15, 2013

Scotty McCreery

*Country*

3/5

The 2011 debut from American Idol champ Scotty McCreery was a bumpy pickup-truck ride through generic country tropes, but two years later, the baritone has cranked out brighter tunes about a topic more befitting a 19-year-old star: getting some. The title track — one of five co-written by McCreery — describes a cheery booty call, and on "Blue Jean Baby," he can't peel his eyes off a girl in a pair of Levi's "showin' off a little skin." But amid the tailgates and stolen kisses, McCreery drops "Something More," a midtempo tear-jerker that'll strike a chord on either side of the Mason-Dixon.

 

By Mike Powell

November 1, 2013

Matt White

*Soul Pop*

  2/5                  

Matt White's blandly reassuring soul pop has been featured throughout Hollywood movies and network TV, most recently on The Bachelorette. No surprise: His pose is wholesome (with a dash of danger), his storylines familiar and his problems solvable in four minutes or less. Standouts on his third album – "Around the World in 80 Days," especially – have more life than his strained falsetto might sometimes lead you to believe, but that's not saying much: Mayer Hawthorne still looks heavy metal by comparison. White's struggle is trying to sound sincere in a genre that rewards cliché. "I don't want those silly love songs," he sings. "I don't know what they will prove." Then he writes one.

 

By Will Hermes

October 18, 2013

The Head and the Heart

*Sub Pop*
3/5

"The world's just spinning a little too fast," declare these Seattle folk rockers on album number two, earnestly pumping the brakes. Their strummy singalongs make them kin to the Mumfords, their choral singing to neighbors Fleet Foxes. But they're most compelling when the harmonies fray ("Fire/Fear") and whenever marble-mouth singer-violinist Charity Rose Thielen grabs the mic ("Summertime").

By Will Hermes

October 18, 2013

Van Morrison

*Rock*

4.5/5

"Here we go to the main course!" ad-libs Van Morrison on an extended "Caravan," one of the shaggy outtakes on this fi ve-disc unpacking of the Belfast bard's 1970 jazzy-pop masterpiece. That LP is nearly all main course, and if the numerous alternate takes here often feel incomplete without their sublime, brassy final arrangements, they compensate with intimacy – see "Into the Mystic," take 11, mainly just Morrison and acoustic guitar. The set's grail is the long-lost outtake "I Shall Sing," a Caribbean-style confection that became a signature for many (Miriam Makeba, Judy Mowatt, Art Garfunkel). Its author delivers a meaty, scatted-up reading here, alongside a ferocious early version of the soul burner "I've Been Working" (His Band and the Street Choir) and a roadhouse-piano reading of Bessie Smith's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" – the sound of an Irish bluesman cruising at high altitude.

By Caryn Ganz

October 7, 2013

Nelly

*Hip-Hop/Rap*
2/5

Nelly's seventh album opens strong with a brilliantly chill Nicki Minaj cameo on a gloriously narcotic Pharrell track ("Get Like Me") and a characteristically romantic turn from Future ("Give U Dat"), but wraps weakly with a jangly jam featuring country duo Florida Georgia Line and a cheesy ballad with Nelly Furtado. Nelly the rapper can still pull big guests but isn't sure whether to shout, whisper or sing to get our attention. He tries airy pop-hop on "Heaven" and calls in T.I. to rap around a 10-year-old Dave Chappelle joke on "Rick James." He'd have been better off making "I'm rich, bitch!" jokes around the time of "Hot in Herre."

By Jon Dolan

October 7, 2013

Lorde

*Pop*

4/5

New artists in 2013 don't come any "2013"-ier than Lorde. Ella Yelich-O'Connor is 16, but she could be 25. She sings tough and raps soft. She's from New Zealand, but she could just as easily be from Tampa or Glasgow or Dubrovnik. On her debut, she's a tiny-life teenager and a throne-watching pop comer with a sound that recalls the Internet hip-hop of Kitty Pryde, the cold-storage torch pop of Lana Del Rey and the primal self-dredging of Florence Welch, while still sounding strangely sui generis. "Maybe the Internet raised us/Or maybe people are jerks," she muses on "A World Alone." She's a child of the cloud.
Yet Pure Heroine feels surprisingly real and fully formed, punching through sparse, cushily booming post-hip-hop tracks with vividly searching lyrics about growing up too fast that can seem at once arrogant and pensive. "We're so happy even when we're smiling out of fear," she sings on "Tennis Court." Songs like the hit "Royals" are foreboding but catchy, hushed but hype. She's great at dissecting her so-called life ("We're hollow like the bottles that we drain") and at evoking the feeling of loving hip-hop even as its impossible fantasies turn you inside out. "Team" is an ode to her friend crew, with a beat that booms like Run-DMC playing from inside a stu ed animal. But the song feels proudly isolated: "I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air/So there/I'm kind of older than I was when I reveled without a care." Ball up your fists anxiously at your sides to this shit.

Sinkhole Situation

A family living in Dunedin, Florida notices a screened in room fell into a hole. A sinkhole has formed on an early morning. About 70 feet wide and 50 feet deep and growing. If it rains the hole may get worse.  Seven homes in all were evacuated.  Hole will be filled in soon but not all families may return to their home.

Question?

When you hear the word "dance" in a conversation, what pops into your head?