Stella by Starlight

Hey youz guyz. So, we have worked soooo hard to finish our new song With Stars, sort of as a gesture of thanks to MTVu and all of you who have voted. It's a slower song, though not lacking energy (we hope). Perhaps we're exposing our sensitive side (gasp!) ??????? That will be up to you to decide. It should be posting to this profile friday or saturday. Until then, here's the lyrics:



I was free, oh no

Time and me before

A world in black and white

We said our first goodbyes



Where do you go? I'll stay with you wherever you go



Heavy hands held hard

Keeping up with stars

On your skin they march

Moving arm in arm



Where do you go? I'll stay with you wherever you go

Where do you go? I'll stay with you wherever you go



Endless spark, burning up the air, burning up the air

In the dark, only you are there, only you are there with me.



From your eyes, first light

Hits mine so bright.



Where do you go? I'll stay with you wherever you go

Where do you go? I'll stay with you wherever you go

so a lot of the time, no one can understand me when im (trying) my best to sing clearly...oh well, i guess im just 'balla 07/08. here are lyrics to songs i sing, if you couldnt understand them before, hopefully now the songs can mean something!



invisible:

you must be invisible/ but why start now/ i can see you now/ you must be some alien/ do you come in peace/ do you come for me/ do you come in peace/ will you take me away/ i was hoping for a fight/ but you were gone in a flash of light/ do I run away/ do i tell the news/ now all eyes on me/ can i disappear/ like you/ this must be some awful hoax



depth perception:

in the grizzley maze are you lost but not afraid are you tired are you ready for a change/ set in all your ways on a float in a parade but im still convinced youre smiling right at me/ whats that you say/ no no no no/ spent but never cheap i go walking down your street playing with my past thats tugging at my feet/ left in dissaray all the paint has washed away but i still can see you selling lemonade/ does this key open your door/ no no no no/ in the grizzley maze are you lost but not afraid does a minotaur illuminate the way/ left in dissaray like a mess you cant ignore though i never thought youd match with the decor/ but does this key open your door/ no no no no



as good as it gets:

i see you there i see you looking at me and i see you there i see you talking about me/ and through these walls i see straight through through your ugly facade/ but despite all your hate you want me to wait as you toss me the bait and i take it with a grain of salt/ and its easy when you look at me/ when youre blinded by what you see/ just fake what you believe/ oh its as good as it gets/ she buys batteries/ she reads magazines and she needs something we both cant bring/ but she acts like shes on top in bed instead of me/ she seems too afraid to acknowledge my pain theres something she needs to **** (take) this part of me/ when you cant seem to make that move/ when you dont seem to know what to do/ when youre too afraid of what you might lose/ oh its as good as it gets



lata playas

$$$nate$$$

I know...we are in a competition for Best Music ON CAMPUS, so it seems odd to talk about the potential downsides of being a college band. When you give it some thought (and I'm sure many of you other musicians on this site that are still in college will agree) there are a huge number of downsides to the college music scene.



First, the covers. Any great college band knows that at one time our another they were a very mediocre cover band. What better way to learn the tricks of the trade than to learn from the best, right? We learn from our idols, covet their success and talent, and hone our skills on their polished songs. However, we soon learn that making inventive and groundbreaking songs means eventually dropping the security blanket of 'covers' and opting to explore the harsh world of songwriting. It's difficult at first to leave behind what appears to be guaranteed applause: if you play someones favorite song by his or her favorite band, they will have to like you at least a little. But like any other part of life, true success takes risks.



You might wonder how the college band is affected by this conflict any more than any other struggling new group. Well, simply its context. We are at a time when the world seems to being demanding that we set ourselves apart through action, opinion, and thought. We are supposed to find ourselves in these four years, or so we think. This same stress to develop that we feel as students we also feel as musicians. Just as most of us really begin to discover ourselves we are pushed by listeners and our fellow musicians to create music that is groundbreaking, deep, and meaningful. For many groups, this proves an impossible task. They can't handle the personal and artistic risks that come along with making different music, so they fall back into emulation. They recreate their favorite songs of the past with new lyrics in a different key and call it music. Honestly...how many copies of the same pop-punk band have you seen lately? Are there clones of Red Hot Chili Peppers roaming free on college campuses across the country playing more or less the same songs? You get the picture. Can we blame them? No...we've all felt the urge to go with the sure thing; to take the easy road that is emulation. But to truly make something new, we have to be a little bit bold. We have to push the limits of ourselves and create. Though it can be especially hard in the context of the University, we owe it to ourselves to try. At least thats what we think...



Greg of Stella by Starlight

People tend to think of bands as concrete, homogenous organisms as opposed to a collection of individuals with different personalities, interests, ideas, and goals. I have often become so angry when bands that I want to see don’t tour, don’t release an album quickly enough, ESPECIALLY when bands that I like break up or just stop creating good music. Weezer comes to mind, N’Sync, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, The Police, The Cardigans, AQUA, Soundgarden, The Beatles, The Talking Heads, New Kids on the Block, Creed. Okay, just kidding the world improved drastically after the falling out of Creed.



So what happened? What happens with the dynamics of the band that causes these kinds of withdrawals, breakups, fall-aparts, and in the end failures?



One idea is lack of popularity. If a band isn’t getting all kinds of attention, maybe they lose sight of their musical mission and fall apart. But we all know this isn’t quite true. Just look at The Beatles; they were on top of the world.



What about internal disputes and ego battles? This seems to have a lot more tread when exploring the trajectory and fate of bands. For failed bands there seems to be one member, sometimes two that instead of achieving musical greatness with the band seems to only be constrained by the band. Paul Simon, Chris Cornell, John Lennon, David Byrne, Justin Timberlake is a great example. I would posit that when an individual becomes bigger than the band, the band fails.



We need only look to the reunion of great bands, like The Police, Smashing Pumpkins, The Pixies, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, to understand that there is something special about bands that is particularly creative though elusive. It’s a quality that we can all identify with. It’s the existence of a group that is larger than the individuals. This creates a greater chance of success, whereas the domination of a band by an individual member generally leads to band failure. Take Radiohead – look at the new album On Rainbows. I mean these guys are true prophets, releasing another incredibly inventive album directly on their website by cutting our labels and middlemen. Though Thom Yorke is the frontman, Radiohead is much larger than just him (duh, Johnny Greenwood).



I don’t mean to over simplify the complexity of the modern band, obviously economic concerns determine a lot about what bands do and how the trajectory of their careers (short and long) are played out. But in the end, Stella by Starlight fill an interesting niche in all of this madness. We are all best friends. We all ended up together by chance at Duke, and we all work well together in music. We do music for fun and for helping other people to have fun. We are unsigned, undiscovered, un-everything, but we are a strong band with strong individuals that make it up. CHECK OUT OUR NEW RECORDINGS!!! We are really shooting for the stars, so get excited about a new sound.

Hey anyone who may be reading this. We have posted two new songs from our upcoming release The Electric Sugar. They are Invisible and Depth Perception. We hope you like it. We're trying hard to balance the rock and syth pop elements that are in our band. Also, tomorrow we are posting an actual blog. It's one that we've been working on together about band dynamics, and it should be a fun read, so check back tomorrow to read it.



Best of luck to everyone in the Woodie Award competition!!!



-Stella by Starlight