Kamis, 02 Februari 2012

>>The Songs That Changed My Life<< Jared Leto

"Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2."
"There was an anthems quality to that song and it
had such importance. It had conviction and
a righteousness that I really responded to. There was meaning here, there was blood behind this song, and it really woke me up to the opportunity you can have with art. This song showed that it’s okay to stand up and make a statement with what you do."

"Moonshadow - Cat Stevens."
My mother was into a lot of folk music like Bob
Dylan, Joni Mitchel, and Cat Stevens spoke to me loudly and clearly about the sheer joy of music. It’s just so blissfully happy. I never really responded too much to cheerful music, but I really like the honesty and warm feeling in this. It’s so surreal, and in the hippy time when I grew up it was perfectly acceptable to sing with your kids about all these psychedelic things like moon shadows.

"Me And My Arrow - Nilsson."
It’s about a boy who lives a land where everyone had a cone-shaped head. It’s a genius, fascinating record. This is a complete artistic statement, a bit like The Beatles ‘Yellow Submarine’, and it was made for children. It’s this guy singing about him and his dog, and they go on an adventure to this land where all the coneheads are very difficult to deal with. It came with artwork, which was very interesting and psychedelic. It had a
real impact on the art of people of my generation.

" Every Breath You Take - The Police."
When I was a kid, I didn’t think reggae, it just sounded like The Police, but as you get older,
you realise how clever they were mixing reggae up
in the way they did. This is a great example of the
strongest elements The Police had. They had such an
incredible sense of melody, of musicianship, but it was very simple stuff that they did, and it made the songs come alive and breathe properly. To be smart and simple at the same time is very difficult.
String’s lyrics are incredible, but they’re so simple, he’s very good with imagery.

"Plainsong - The Cure."
Very beautiful and hunting, and devastatingly
melancholy,but the sounds-capes created are
massive. I really like that. It’s been a big influence
on my own songwriting. Ultimately, what I love about The Cure is the emotional content, there’s always a lot in Robert Smith’s voice, and that connects with a certain type of person. It’s unconventional, but it’s in a way that says it’s okay to be unashamedly melancholy and beautiful.

"Baba O’reilly - The Who"
The thing with The Who is they were grandiose immediate, raw, but they had moments of mass instrumentation experimentation. Pop elements, too, although that didn’t register when I first heard them. There was something completely soulful about The Who, something rebellious, and all of that’s captured in this song.

"Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin"
Led Zeppelin really opened my eyes what opportunity there was to be had with music.
‘Whole Lotta Love’ completely summed up that
band how heavy they were, how far out they were,
and I think it kind of distills everything that wonderful
about rock music into itself. It’s got a huge amount of energy to it, and the first time I heard this was the first time I’d ever really heard any music with as much swagger and excitement as Led Zeppelin
had.

"Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper"
When I was a kid there was a punk girl that lived in
my neighborhood that I had a crush on, but I was
always too quite to ask out. She used to sing that song as she was walking home from school. Underneath all the cheese, and the fact that Cyndi Lauper singing it in the 1980s, it’s still a terrific song, and If she came out and sang it at any rock show, everyone would love it, because the bottom line is that it’s a wonderful song."