Dion: King of my Heart

If you’ve read a few of my other posts, you may have noticed that I really like old music. I love swing and jazz and the type of music they played on American Bandstand; songs like the ones on the Grease soundtrack. As I’ve said before, I attribute this to my mom. She grew up in the 50′s and went to Woodstock and was a screaming Beatles fangirl–so basically my mom is one of the coolest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Of course, this means that she raised me listening to the music she loved, as most parents raise their children, so I grew up listening to the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Shirelles, Sha-Na-Na, James Taylor, and the like.

Now, I’m not the type of person who believes that my music taste is somehow more sophisticated or mature or whatever just because I like older music while more people my age seem to like the more mainstream stuff. I really dislike those people. I will say though, that one of my pet peeves is modern-day artists who sample older music and completely butcher the original song. I’ve definitely heard some hip hop/rap that has successfully sampled music from the 60′s and 70′s, but the bad outweighs the good.

Recently, and I’m not about to bash my roommate’s taste in music, don’t worry, said roommate was listening to a song by the rapper G-Eazy. I’d never heard of him or the song she was playing, but something about the underlying track caught my attention and I felt like I’d heard the song that had been sampled. When I looked up G-Eazy’s song, I found that the sample was titled Runaround Sue by Dion and so I found that song and listened to it. While I’m still not sure whether or not I’ve actually heard it before, I did fall head over heels in love with the song, so obviously I looked up the rest of Dion’s music and found a whole bunch of tracks that I put in my current playlist. Basically, despite our slightly different tastes in music, my roommate is the reason I discovered Dion and his fantastic, swoon-causing music. A few of the songs are by Dion & the Belmonts, the Belmonts being the group he was a part of before he decided to continue as a solo artist. Anyways, here are my favorites by Dion (& the Belmonts) and I hope you enjoy!

Emily

Runaround Sue

Dream Lover

A Teenager In Love

Why Can’t We Be Sweethearts

I Wonder Why

Take Good Care Of My Baby

Will Love Ever Come My Way

‘Cause who doesn’t like some oldies every now and then?

How am I doing with these titles? I’m kind of running out of ideas if you hadn’t already noticed, haha. Anyways, if it wasn’t obvious in my last post, I really like music from the ’50s and ’60s–around that time, you know, with bands like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, etc. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of that type of music, including the soundtrack from one of my favorite movies, Grease, which if you haven’t seen, you’re definitely missing out. I would make this post about that soundtrack, but I don’t want to steal Ayolah’s soundtrack appreciation idea, so I’ll share one of my favorite songs from it instead.

In addition to those, there are a few songs I’m sharing from the TV show, American Dreams. I don’t know if any of you have heard of that show, but my mom and I used to watch it on NBC every Sunday and my mom loved it so much because the show basically portrayed her childhood. I’ll only share a few, but the whole album they made from the show is really, really good.

Earth Angel // The Penguins

Those Magic Changes // Sha-Na-Na

My Girl // The Temptations

She’s Not There // The Zombies

You Really Got Me // The Kinks

I considered adding a few of my favorite tracks of the Beatles, but there are so many songs of theirs that I love and I figure basically everyone knows who they are and has heard at least one of their songs (or at least the cool kids have) and if you haven’t, then shame on you.

Have a great weekend and enjoy!

Emily