fun. and other musical celebrations

Two days ago, I rediscovered my love for Nate Ruess's voice. However, let me start with a little history:

On family road trips, my oldest younger brother would often dominate the tunes. On one of the rarer occasions, all 8 of us in the car really liked one of the bands he played. The title of the album was "Interventions and Lullabies" which was the first studio album of "The Format." "The First Single" with its poppy lyrics and random clapping was played over and over with family clapping and singing aloud. This song was followed by "Tune Out" whose lyrics were a bit more questionable, but we all sang along anyway. The Format was one of the first bands that my brother and I agreed on. The rest of the family caught on to the trendy music a little quicker than I did. From there, my brother and I have traded music secrets every now and then (even though I haven't checked in recently).

With a emotional attachment to the band, I became very loyal. I visited their website, downloaded the songs, watched tour dates and the like. I waited intently for them to release their second album since I new all their songs by heart and needed new material. It happened that they were releasing their second album "Dog Problems" while on a road trip with my sister and best friend, so we picked it up. My youngest sister and I listened to it over and over again (much the chagrin of my best friend who I'm sure was tired of it) for the rest of the road trip. "Oceans" was a favorite tune just cause it was so needy but so catchy at the same time. Still a favorite. When I moved away I received two cards with the lyrics written down in full in them. No message, just lyrics to our favorite shared tune. So I rocked out to "Dog Problems" for years. Then, The Format broke up. I never made it to a show, and was pretty sad.

My brother told me sometime last Christmas that Nate Ruess was starting a new band named fun. He was pretty optimistic about it. I forgot about this until yesterday when I was thinking about music and cruising through the itunes store. I listened to the 30 sec promos and after liking most of them bought the album. After deleting the 1 song with the unnecessary expletive, I have listened in its entirety and can say that Nate and his crew have done it again. So, if you too want to enjoy the spectacular joy that the Format or Nate Ruess can bring you I would check out "Aim and Ignite" by fun. or either album that I've mentioned by The Format. I've listed my favorite songs involving Nate Ruess and the play count* that it has in itunes.

Thank you Nate Ruess for making my life that much more poppy emo punk.

Oceans (90)

The First Single (Cause A Scene) (74)

She Doesn't Get it (61)

Inches and Falling (29)

A Mess to Be Made (26)

Career Day (26)

I'm Ready, I Am (25)

Tune Out (22)

Snails (20)

I'm guessing the play count will get pretty high for:

Walking the Dog (3)

All the Pretty Girls (3)

*For a frame of reference, Oceans tops itunes playcount list with 90. There are approx. 134 songs between the top and snails at a play count of 20. There are about 2000 songs that I actually listen to in my library. About half of those have a playcount of 1-7 so are not listened to at all really.