Okay, so here's a post that I manufactured for the express purpose of having an excuse to post the second song in this list, with which I am currently obsessed. That being said, I discovered several heretofore unknown-to-me singers here and was pleasantly surprised to find that a couple of singers I was already familiar with just happened to hail from New Zealand. So, yeah...enjoy them! ~ JH
Part two in a five-part miniseries, this post features songs with "Down" in the title. If you were disappointed by the lack of familiar artists in part one, you may find that you recognize a larger number of artists in this particular collection. Enjoy! ~ JH
1) Group 1 Crew ~ "Goin' Down"
2) Linkin Park ~ "Burn It Down"
3) Kimbra ~ "Settle Down"
4) Goo Goo Dolls ~ "Long Way Down"
5) Nine Inch Nails ~ "Down In It"
6) Mikky Ekko ~ "Pull Me Down"
7) Audio Adrenaline ~ "Get Down"
8) Dash Berlin ~ "Till The Sky Falls Down"
9) Jack Johnson ~ "Upside Down"
10) Johnny Cash ~ "God's Gonna Cut You Down"
11) Cage The Elephant ~ "Shake Me Down"
12) Alice In Chains ~ "Down In A Hole"
13) Emmy Rossum ~ "Slow Me Down"
14) Amy MacDonald ~ "Slow It Down"
15) Charlie Daniels Band ~ "The Devil Went Down To Georgia"
16) Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers ~ "I Won't Back Down"
In case you didn't see or read yesterday's post, I'll recap the intro as succinctly as I can. A mononym is "a one-word name by which a person is known." Many singers, songwriters, and musicians in the industry are (or have historically been) commonly known by a single name. Yesterday, I posted a collection of songs by mononymous female singers. Today, it's the singularly-named guys' turn. Enjoy! ~ JH
(NOTE: Several notable mononymous males are absent from this list, but that is by design. Prince not only has a comprehensive catalogue of wildly inappropriate music, but he also seems to have wiped his entire music video collection off the face of YouTube. Bono [U2] is a great singer, but he hasn't really done a whole lot solo, so I excluded him from consideration here. Yanni is a popular musician, but he isn't much of a singer. Eminem and Drake may be highly talented rappers in their own right, but their lyrics are so foul that I declined to post any of their music here.)
1) Sting ~ "Fields Of Gold" (You can't go wrong with this guy – classic song, classic voice.)
2) Moby ~ "Raining Again" (Moby doesn't always sing the vocals for his songs, but when he does he's not half bad!)
3) Matisyahu ~ "One Day" (Wonderful song by a one-of-a-kind musician – a Hasidic Jew who sings reggae music!)
4) Beck ~ "Loser" (Some of the most bizarre lyrics ever set to music can be found right here in this song.)
5) Tedashii ft. BenJah ~ "Last Goodbye" (Two mononymous guys in one song – ha! Warning: You might want to have your Kleenexes handy...)
7) Liberace ~ "I'll Be Seeing You" (Good googly-moogly, that outfit!)
8) Babyface ~ "Every Time I Close My Eyes" (This guy's voice is smooth as silk – in other words, I'm jealous!)
9) D'Angelo ~ "Cruisin'" (A classic old-school R & B song given a new-school vibe – I like it!)
10) Donovan ~ "Mellow Yellow" (Donovan had to be on some serious drugs when he wrote this song – and maybe when he performed it, too – there's no other explanation for the blatant weirdness...)
11) Gotye ft. Kimbra ~ "Somebody That I Used To Know" (A great song by two talented singers – both of whom are mononymous!)
12) Seal ~ "Kiss From A Rose" (This was one of Seal's better ballads back in the day.)
13) PSY ~ "Gangnam Style" (Oh, yes, I went there...)
14) will.i.am ft. Cheryl Cole ~ "Heartbreaker" (Technically, I suppose you could say will.i.am is three different words, but I'm going with it anyway.)
15) Morrissey ~ "Alma Matters" (I've heard a lot about this guy, but this is the first time I've actually listened to a song by him – nice voice...)
