Homemade Rage #1: Armstrong, Europe, Ruby

Thanks to the wonderful capacity of Youtube videos to be embedded in other web pages, I can do this: little collected groups of pop music videos I've selected for you to watch and listen to. I'm thinking of doing three videos each time, which seems nicely manageable and can fill 10-15 minutes of your day. This time around I've embedded tracks from Craig Armstrong, Europe and Ruby. I hope you like them.

Craig Armstrong is a phenomenal musician and composer - his music has backed an increasing number of Hollywood movies. This track, "Wake Up in New York", was from his second studio album As If To Nothing, and features vocals by Evan Dando. It's just a beautiful song, wonderfully performed.



I loved the rock band Europe when I was about 12 years old. I am not ashamed. This is actually a rather surprising 2008 acoustic version of "The Final Countdown", their biggest hit. Yes, this does mean that Europe are still around - who'd have guessed?



This third and final video is "Tiny Meat", by Ruby. The band only recorded two studio albums, but I loved them both. I think this is easily their best song. I can't actually remember when I first heard these guys - most likely it was via my brother, who is a lot more knowledgeable about popular music than I'll ever be.