5 Songs to Get You Through the Week #166

5 Songs to Get You Through the Week is a feature I run on Young Ears, Fresh Perspective on Sundays/early hours of Monday morning where I pick out 5 tunes that I think are notable and tell you a bit about them. The point is to give you some rocking music to help you deal with your weekday blues. You can either listen to one each day, listen to them all at once, or any other combination that you feel. As long as you can get through the week without the man getting you down, that's all I care about. Without further ado, here are the 5 tracks I've picked out for this week:

1. Blue on Black, by Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Last week for work I was doing a review of the new Five Finger Death Punch album and I found that it had a cover of this blues grooving classic. They did a pretty decent job, but there is nothing quite like the earthy, down home, bluesy soul of the original. When it comes to music, more often than not the original artist got it right the first time and that is most certainly the case here. It is an essential modern(ish) blues tune for sure.

2. My Melancholy Blues, by Queen

I feel like the world's worst Queen fan right now. It wasn't until I was writing a Queen related piece for work last week that I happened upon this hidden gem of a song. This song is gorgeous and features some of the best singing Freddie Mercury ever did. Rather than being a loud rocking tune or one of their ballads, this is a straight up smokers lounge piano driven jazz piece. It's so laid back, yet will still fill you with chills at the sheer emotion in it.

3. Black and Blue, by Whitesnake

Speaking of the colours blue and black, here is a song with a similar title from Whitesnake. This is from the early days where they weren't teasing their hair up to Mount Everest or wearing spandex. This is a fun times up and dancing bluesy rock n' roll tune driven by both guitar AND piano simultaneously, something that Whitesnake used to be pretty good at doing until David Coverdale decided it was more important to be popular and rich.

4. Party of Special Things to Do, by The White Stripes

When it comes to covers as I mentioned earlier, the original is usually the best. However, this is one of the rare cases where I feel the opposite. The original Captain Beefheart version of this tune is great and fantastic, but The White Stripes added this raw, stripped down, punk rock edge to it that brought it to a whole other level. It definitely has more punch and buzz to it, which quite frankly I think it needed.

5. Chapter Four, by Avenged Sevenfold

This is without a single shadow of a doubt my absolute favorite Avenged Sevenfold tracks of all time. It combines elements of the more melodic A7X we all know and love with the edgier metalcore elements that they started out with in a way that gives chills and hits that spot directly. It manages to find this balance that not many bands ever do. Plus, who doesn't love a dark, driving heavy metal song about the story of Cane and Abel?