Comes With Music is Nokia’s music subscription service that allows you to download as much music as you like for a year, or longer if you choose to extend the subscription. Currently, there are over six million tracks to choose from. It's a great way to build your own music library, which is precisely what we’ve been doing. So, why not check out what the Letter L has to offer on Comes With Music…
After having a couple of false starts recently, the youngest member of the family (12-year-old daughter) seems to have hit her stride with the Letter L. This is largely due to her favourite pop star being Avril Lavigne. The Sk8ter Chick seems to have turned into a bit of a pop diva of late but that doesn’t stop girl of the house swooping on The Best Damn Thing, Under My Skin, Let Go and even the Live EP, Control Room.
Happy that stroppy rebellion is under her belt, she moves on to something a little more pop-tastic – Lady GaGa, Little Boots and Pixie Lott. Blonde, interchangeable and influenced by disco and the naff early 80s, each of them seems to have been cooked up in a marketing meeting rather more than anything else but the kids love ‘em so who are we to complain?
Lady GaGa has one album on Comes With Music, The Fame, and the same goes for Little Boots, New in Town. Pixie Lott is so new that only here Nokia Single of the Week, Mama Do, is on there. It'll be interesting to see which, if any, has a good career ahead of them int he pop industry. Cynicism aside, my daughter likes them and all get added and the mini disco in the living room begins!
In complete contrast, when teenage boy takes his turn at the Comes With Music controls, it’s all very serious and rock. Lacuna Coil are one of those bands that Metal Hammer love and have a string of albums under their bullet belt, such as Visual Karma, Karmacode and Unleashed Memories that all get added to the list.
Limp Biscuit started life as a Skate Punk act and had a couple of hits earlier this decade but will be remembered largely as a bad with a baseball cap wearing crap rapper as a front man and a guitarist who liked to pretend he was a robot! Album choices on Comes With Music are limited, with Results May Vary, Significant Other and The Collection seeming to be the sum total of what’s on offer.
Less Than Jake are another Skate Punks who seem to have made the festival circuit, rather than the charts, their natural home. There rather lengthy back catalogue is on Comes With Music, but the boy plumbs for Pezcore, Losers, Kings and Things We Don’t Understand, and Hello Rockview to be going on with.
I’ve decided to make my Letter L choices for the most part around the Blues. We’re talking old Delta Blues where it all began and no one typifies this old style of Blues than Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter. Midnight Special is the song that he’ll always be remembered for but the mix of gospel and field-hand songs are worth hunting down. Midnight Special is a good place to start, as is Leadbelly Essential Gold. However, Comes With Music has thrown up a real treasure-trove of Document Records releases starting with 1939. There are four volumes for that year alone on Comes With Music and all of them get added to my download list. I’ll be back for 1940 soon!
One of my personal favourite Blues players is Lightnin’ Hopkins, who it is reported spent ten years in prison for accidentally running over a pig! Lightnin’ Hopkins is a good sampler to get started with, largely as it has Loneseome Dog Blues on it but also nab Country Blues as well as Morning Blues as a couple of general soundtracks.
Th’Legendary Shack Shakers may not be an old blues act but they’ve got the spirit alive in them. Comes With Music has two albums – Believe, Ichabod! - listed under quite different spellings but we track them down and add them to the mix.
Another band who were very clearly influenced by the Blues was Led Zeppelin and turns out to be her indoors first choice. The Zep covered a lot of old Blues tunes, perhaps the best example being Killing Floor. All the old albums are on there, as well as last year’s Mothership, which is a 24 track Best Of. Along with this, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti and The Song Remains the Same all get added.
Her second choice stays within the realms of big arena rock: Linkin Park. I know nothing about them other than the entire back catalogue is on Comes With Music, so choosing a couple of sample albums isn’t easy. Choosing Road to Revolution, Re-animation and Hybrid Theory, lady of the house promises to be back for more!
Letter L: 32 albums downloaded
290 Comes With Music albums downloaded to date