I'm on such a kraftwerk tip these days that I could recommend loads of their tracks, but this one is a real classic - there they all are, looking super-geeky on the cover, and then they serve up an ice-cool 8 minutes complaining about the horrors of fame. It's the normal kraftwerk thing - robotic beats, beautiful, simple melodies, and heavily accented singing, and going on for a LONG TIME.

My favourite bit is when one of the guys counts in the song - ein, zwei, drei, vier! As if - as if! - the machines need telling the tempo...

I've been a huge fan of the UK-based "wuss-rock" band Coldplay since their debut album "Parachutes." One night, as I was watching a much-anticipated episode of my favorite TV show, "Smallville" - an episode called "Rosetta" guest-starring Christopher Reeve - I heart the heart-rendering chords of lead singer Christ Martin's piano and thought aloud "Hey, that's Coldplay!" I hadn't yet heard that song, so I surfed onto a "Smallville" fansite to check the title and found that it was called "The Scientist" from Coldplay's most recent album "A Rush of Blood to the Head."
"The Scientist" is a song that will remind you of being in love - more likely, of being in love with someone who doesn't love you back or with someone whom you pissed off and doesn't want to be around you anymore. It's basically the most perfect song about unrequieted love. It is beautiful and haunting, as many of Coldplay's songs are. Give it a listen. You won't regret it.

After the prologue of Baz Luhrmann's controversial, modern retelling of William Shakespeare's tragedy "Romeo and Juliet," the audience is blasted away by a hoard of harmonious voices chanting a loud, haunting song to the beat of an angry drum. This song, in which a narrator begins "Two households, both alike in dignity...", is called "O Verona," the song which Baz Luhrmann himself calls "an almighty orchestral chord." Its sister song, "O Verona (Reprise)" is uninterrupted by the narrator, and the listener is able to appreciate its musical quality in a fuller fashion. Personally, I couldn't decide whether to recommend "O Verona" or "O Verona (Reprise)" to you. They are both extraordinary recordings on what is, I believe, one of the greatest musical scores to a motion picture ever produced.