Comes With Music is an essential of Nokia Music, as the one-year subscription allows you to download as much music as you like, for free! Over the last six months we've been putting this service to the test and with the end in sight, we thought we'd group the Letters, X, Y and Z together, in the hope we can pluck some brilliant albums from the ether. Check out the final installment of our Comes With Music building a library experiment...
Comes With Music has been a real treat, allowing us to download well over 500 albums in the course of our experiment. And that's only the albums we've documented, as we've constantly been adding stuff – the latest being the new Muse album for the lady of the house, Mariachi El Bronx for me – and in reality we've managed to bag just short of 700 albums! This is pretty amazing when you consider that even once the subscription has lapsed they are ours to keep!
We've reached the Letters X, Y and Z and with so few bands actually using these letters for names, we thought it wise to group them together.
Letter X
XTC are one of those quintessential bands that never really got the recognition they deserve in this country. However, they continue to plough a furrow iand have released a great back catalogue, we gorge on White Music, The Compact XTC, Nonsuch, Mummer, Skylarking, Oranges and Lemons, Drums and Wires, English Settlement, Black Sea, The Big Express, Go2, Rag'n'Bone Buffet, Explode Together and Dear God.
X-Ray Spex were one of those bands who are forever locked in with the spirit of '77 and the British Punk movement. Poly Styrene and her band only have one album on Comes With Music Germ Free Adolescents, we bag, tag and download it and move on to a modern band very much in the spirit of Poly and pals.
Letter Y
Lady of the house gets the Letter Y off to a rockin' start with the Yeah, Yeah Yeahs. The NYC noiseniks have three albums to their name and all are on Comes With Music, so we bag It's Blitz, Show Your Bones and Fever Go Tell.
Yo La Tango have had a longer career than most and while they've never hit the mainstream, they have a huge following. So, it seems a little odd that only two of their albums, May I Sing With Me from 1992 and this year's Popular Songs is actually on Comes With Music.
Yellowcard is a choice made by teenage boy and I've no idea who they are other than they seem to have had three albums, Paperwalls, Lights and Sound and Where We Stand, giving us all a chance to check them out.
Letter Z
ZZ Top are one of those bands that seem to be stuck in the 80's MTV boogie loop – do they ever show anything on MTV but for Legs-era stuff? They've had a career longer than their beards, which is saying something, so you'll find some old time Southern Boogie, as well as the more famous stuff. So, starting with the Greatest Hits, we also add Eliminator, Fandango, Tres Hombres, Rancho Texicano and the 59 track The ZZ Top Six pack.
Zwan was the short-lived project of Billy Corgan before he went back to what he does best, fronting The Smashing Pumpkins. Zwan only released one album, Mary Star of the Sea, so we add it to the stack before turning to the final act we want to add - Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, the love-god of Grebo should have been driving to the MTV Awards in a cadillac drawn by swans by this point in his career. Instead, Z seems to be a footnote in the bible of rock decadence. To make matters worse, Comes With Music seems to have forgotten everything he ever did, expect for Prime Mover, the band's one and only Top Ten hit.
So, there we have it, our guide through Comes With Music for the Letters X, Y and Z hasn't been a major haul but we've managed to add a fair number of albums to the collection. So, is it worth investing in a Comes With Music subscription? Well, if you like music, then we'd say you need it in your life. Even without trying we've added 560 albums! In reality, this is now well over 700 albums and growing every day!
Letter w: 30 albums downloaded
560 Comes With Music albums downloaded to date