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2020, 27, Her Version of Events, Playlist,

The List

I have a desire to share my favorite love songs with the world: from the sound track for my primary school crush to my current national anthem, which I need to be banned from because of the insane number of times I have listened to the song on repeat in the last two months.

Please be nice in the comments because I believe the romantic part of Oreoluwa that is always in sleuth mood is about to be unleashed on the world.

Here goes nothing.

  1. All My Life by K-Ci and Jojo – You will have to thank my mum and uncle Demola for introducing me to this song, and music in general. When the realization of having feelings and what not hit me, the lyrics of the song felt like the only thing that captured everything I was feeling in that moment. 
  2. Two is Better Than One by Boys Like Girls – This song is on the Boys Like Girls ‘Love Drunk’ album from 2009. The album has got a song for every stage of love, from the tenderness that comes with falling in love to the heartache of lost love, and it is worth checking out. This song is on the list because I spent most of life believing love, with its component parts, was a fantasy and this song started the process of changing my mind. Shout out to my brother for knowing his way around torrents and downloading the album. 
  3. The Only Exception by Paramore – This song sums up how I feel about relationships; all the walls I have built to shield my Jell-O heart from melting, how I walk out from behind my walls when I am sure a person is an exception to all my many rules and my Jell-O heart is willing to take the risk of melting because it can’t afford to watch this person get away. 
  4. Where I Sleep By Emeli Sandé – “Except this is us and this is love, and this is where I’m home…” I love the idea of having a person I feel completely comfortable with, a person that is home on sunny and rainy days. Because really, everyone needs a home. 
  5. Please Keep Loving Me by James TW – I think James TW is one of the most underrated artists but we will get into that on another day. The song reminds me of all the things that can go wrong because I am who I am but in-spite of those things my heart is on my sleeve and loving is what I hope to keep doing. 
  6. Still Into You by Paramore – Love can start feeling familiar after a while, like a constant that no longer sparks excitement. But this song recounts important moments and captures the feelings in those moments. Maybe we need to stock up on those almost perfect moments to get through the hard ones in between. 
  7. Put It All On Me by Ed Sheeran and Ella Mai – “I need a strong heart and a soft touch”. I enjoy every line of this song and I have listened, sang along and danced to it an embarrassing number of times. It is just about having a home, a place to rest after the world has battered you.
  8. Grow As We Go by Ben Platt – This song reminds me of a line I wrote in my journal a few months ago: ‘’Love is active, it takes up its own life form, always evolving, to treat it as static is to bring about its death’’.  I believe we are evolving individually and life is boring alone, so why not evolve with another? Ben Platt captures this perfectly in this song. 
  9. Happy by Morayo and Johnny Drille –  It is just a happy, feel-good song that usually makes me dance and yes, I dance on very rare occasions. 

I am sure you have enjoyed the embarrassing debut of my romantic side. Again I ask, please be gentle with her. 

I have included a link to the playlist and also included other songs not listed above that I enjoy listening to!

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJwhC1-37_4c3SQXPzajoktbRYXObxIRW

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/user/oreoluwaabidoye/playlist/4Ut4FwIPQmknARBc9WqU8N?si=BOb8Y-7oTp6AFxAAvAxd-Q

February 18, 2020
Adventure, Lifestyle, Music Review,

Johnny’s Room Live – A New Precedent

An event that was supposed to be for 150 people in a room, ended up being an event for 3000+ people in a park. If there are any doubts about the success of Johnny’s Room [turned Johnny’s Park], that small detail should lay that to rest. But of course there isn’t any one disputing [I hope].Johnny’s Room Live was not just a success in the fact that it was able to sell out 6 times over, but it was a success in that it set a huge precedent for the kind of music that we consider commercially viable in the Nigerian industry. It was able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the market for alternative music exists in Nigeria. When you hear people in their thousands singing at the top of their lungs to Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” or Coldplay’s “Fix You” you know there is an untapped market. My hope is that this event, beyond setting precedent, would cause many other Nigerian artistes and musicians to explore the vast arrays of sounds and expressions outside of the status quo that many are content with.

Although the event started 30 minutes after it’s stated 7 o’clock start time, and finished well after its 9 o’clock end time, it was very enjoyable. We can chuck the poor time management to the fact that there were still queues of people trying to get in even after it eventually started. It was clear that they were not expecting such scores of people, because the glow bands that they used as entry receipts finished before 7 o’clock.

The sound engineering by Showgear was very well done, as always – the band sounded great. You could tell they were really enjoying their sound when David Rhino came forward to shred during their first set. I’m a believer of standing gigs, so whether it was an intentional choice or a result of short time to re-plan I count it as a plus that a majority of us were standing. It kept the energy levels high even at the slower tempo songs. It wasn’t until Johnny went into this long-winded story that people started looking for respite for their feet. A monologue that I felt was necessary as a lot of things needed to be said at such a historic event.
The surprise appearances of Tijan, Ric Hassani, Forever, Kenny Blac and, of course, Simi were all very electrifying with people running from the back to watch Simi perform on stage.

I think the success of the event, and the reason there were so many people in attendance, was largely because of the rhetoric surrounding it. The event was not marketed as just a concert it was (whether intentionally or not) marketed with the earnest humility that Johnny is known for, a humility that his many social media followers have been able to identify and appreciate. So they weren’t simply there to listen to “Good music” (which, there is no debate, was present), but they were there as a sort of confirmation, saying that humility, a clean message, strong values can also be celebrated.

October 17, 2018