Musician of the Month | Shannon Saunders

Hello and welcome to this month's edition of musician of the month! As the title tells you, this month it's going to be on the wonderful and gorgeous Shannon Saunders! Now, I know that many of you might not know who she is, as she doesn't belong to some big record label and get played on the radio, but in my opinion, she's much better than half of the people that are played on the radio.

 

Shannon Saunders is unique in many many different ways. She's not afraid to be different, and she even set up her own record label "Lovejoy Records" because she wanted to have more control over what she released and when. Some of you may be thinking that Lovejoy is just a nice little name she thought up because it sounds pretty, but one other thing about Shannon Saunders is the amount she shares about her personal life on various social medias. I know it sounds weird, but I think I probably know more about her than the people who live down my road. ( ~ would just like to say I don't stalk her. to be fair to me my neighbours are REALLY unsociable ~ ) She tells us all about what's going on in her life, shares her holiday snaps with us, and posts videos of her gorgeous and incredibly adorable little nephew, Pierson. (I literally want to keep him, in a non-abductive-and-completely-legal way. yeah.) So anyway, back to the main point about Lovejoy records. Shannon also has a blog on her official website (which of course she designed and runs all by herself), and she posted this about why she chose "Lovejoy Records":

"Basically, My nan's mum was a very popular character in our family as she was always singing, joking around, telling hilarious stories and just being a bloody brilliant woman. My nan's mum's surname was Lovejoy so we all decided in the family it would only be right, now my nan's passed away, to call the label "Lovejoy Records" in honour of her."

N'awww, that's nice isn't it? And do you know what else is nice? HER BLOODY FANTASTIC VOICE. Honestly, if you don't fall in love, I recommend that you go get your hearing tested. Seriously. I'm not joking. Miss Saunders currently has 4 songs you can buy on iTunes, two of which she recorded for the Disney film "Tangled", and those are called "The Glow" and "I see the light". Shannon has posted covers on her YouTube for a good few years now, and they are all incredible. She's actually introduced me to other artists through her covers, for example Christina Perri and Jessie Ware. Personally, my favourite covers she's done are a cover of Kodaline's "All I Want" and "I Can't Make You Love Me", amongst many more (of course). Even though these are all amazing, where Shannon really shines is in her ridiculously good songwriting skills! I mean, this girl is incredible. Her tunes are always mega-catchy, and her lyrics are insane. Two of Shannon's originals are on iTunes that you can buy, her first ever single "Heart of Blue", and her more recent one, "Scars". As I've mentioned before, Shannon shares a lot of her life with her followers, and she also recommends a lot of other singers on her Twitter pages, such as Hobbie Stuart (who I am now addicted to - and he's rather easy on the eye as well ;) ) In fact, I'm so obsessed with Mr Stuart at the moment, I may have to do a blog post about him soon. (This gives me an excuse to say that I am being "productive" whilst looking at videos of him and pictures of him. Sounds good to me.)

Another lovely thing about the wonderful Miss Saunders is how much you feel you can relate to her as a teenage girl. She's honestly a normal human being, who's just been gifted with the voice of a goddess (and the looks to be honest). Her lyrics are so easy to relate to, and she has normal problems that she talks about, for example, her heartbreaks, her friends, and not knowing what outfit to wear for the day (even though she looks gorgeous in practically everything...*sigh*). She also doesn't use huge famous people in her advertising and to do things such as making her music videos. She recorded both of her music videos to go with the singles on iTunes with the wonderful Damian Weilers, and amazingly, her video "Heart of Blue" video only cost £9 to make (for the tube and bus fare), compared to the hundreds, or maybe even thousands (I'm not clued up on these things) that other pop "stars" cost to make a music video.

If I haven't convinced you yet that she is one of the most perfect human beings on the universe, here are 3 more reasons you should love her/want to be her/her best friend.

1. She is literally the only girl who can wear double denim and STILL look fabulous
2. She is like me and without releasing calls everyone and everything "lovely". Seriously, just check out anything she posts
3. She posts hilarious and relatable tweets on the good ol' twitter. My two favourites currently:
1. "The ;) face always seems a bit sexual doesn't it? If you saw my ;) face in real life you'd think differently."
2. "Some people are like flies. The buzzy annoying ones that smack into the windows and never seem to leave"

Yup, this girl is actually the definition of perfect.

Soooo....I think I have well and truly emptied my brain of all things that are currently residing there. I'm sure I'll think of more reasons as to why I love Shannon Saunders but maybe in the mean time you should check out her own music, videos, and make your own reasons up!

Possibly my favourite ever cover in the whole wide world by a YouTuber:

Shannon's newest single, which you can buy on iTunes (link on her social networks and in video description).

My favourite original by Shannon, which is unfortunately not on iTunes :(

lemmie hear ya say chuuunne!

How to stalk Shannon (in a friendly and completely legal way):
Twitter
Official Website
Facebook
Youtube
Instagram

~ Sorry if this post is rambly. I've got mountains of school work and had to work unexpectedly today, so I think I've made up a few words here and there ~

Thank you!

❤

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Festival Fun

I live in the south coast of England, and I am very lucky with where I live, due to the fact that I live really close to the New Forest, and if I ever wanted to go to the beach, it's just a 20 minute drive away.

A little heart for all you lovely readers ❤ 

Last weekend was the annual Bournemouth Air Festival, which is a lovely weekend of planes, entertainment, attempting to get a tan and getting a lovely sunburn! I feel like I should give you a little warning here: this post is very picture heavy. 

Here are a few of the best pictures I took during the day time I thought I should share with you lovely readers. I've sorted them in an order which isn't chronological, but it sort of makes sense (I've basically grouped the planes together, you'll get the idea). I did this because over the four days, quite a lot of the planes flew more than once with different weather and lighting conditions etc, so I basically put all the pictures of the Eurofighter together, all the Red Arrow pictures together etc...

So, without further ado, here are some pictures I took of the aircraft at the air festival!

If any of you are wondering, from the top to the bottom, the planes are: the battle of britain memorial flight (including the lancaster and spitfires), then the sea vixen, then the eurofighter (which is incredibly loud!), and then the colourful one is Miss Demeanour. After that, of course, is my personal favourite, the red arrows! I've mainly used the pictures of the red arrows from their performance on the Saturday, due to the lovely clear blue sky (and so the pictures were better!), but they flew on the Thursday, Friday and the Saturday. The final picture is of a plane during the Night Air segment of the festival, and the night before (when my camera battery unfortunately died :( ), it actually had fireworks on it! I think that this plane is from O Brien's Flying Circus, but I'm not 100% sure).

Unfortunately, on the last day the Vulcan had a fuel leak so it couldn't fly, which I was super sad about because I'm a bit of a plane geek, and it's probably the last year it'll be flying due to funding issues :( But on the bright side, I also took some random pictures of the picturesque South Coast and random objects/animals for you!

 

I named the seagull on the right Marcel...because he got all the birds :')
If you don't understand don't worry, my jokes are never any good.

We spotted where Kodaline was staying before their concert so I quickly snapped these pictures whilst they were watching the planes, Vinny's (the drummer) face makes me smile every time I see it in the second picture, he was so excited when the planes came!

Last year, a local radio station decided to hold two concerts in the evening,with tickets priced at only £3.50 - a bloody bargain if you ask me! We didn't find out about it until the week before, and we managed to grab ourselves some tickets for the second concert, which was amazing! I saw Ben Montague, Ryan O'Shaughnessy, Matt Cardle, The Loveable Rogues, Lawson and Scouting For Girls! But the night before (which we couldn't grab any tickets for), we went down to the pub and because of how close it was to the open stage area, we could just about see the artists (nice one dad!), we also saw Amelia Lily, Honey Ryder, Newton Faulkner and Rizzle Kicks!

Although this year they doubled the ticket price (still good though!), the line up was just as super duper. On the Friday there was Diana Vickers, Stooshe, Lucy Spraggan, Shane Filan, The Feeling and Blue! On the Saturday night, I was really REALLY lucky because there were quite a few of my favourite singers/bands of ALL TIME! The line-up was Neon Jungle, Newton Faulkner, The Loveable Rogues, Lisa Stansfield, and Kodaline. Here are a few pictures of each of the acts. Unfortunately on the Friday night my camera battery died halfway through the concert and I had no spare, so I had to switch to my phone camera, so that's why there is a sudden decrease in quality. Sorry. Because of this, I put all the Friday night photos on one collage so that the quality doesn't appear as bad :) Enjoy!

Top Row L-R: Diana Vickers, Stooshe, Lucy Spraggan, Shane Filan
Middle Row: The Feeling
Bottom Row: Blue

Neon Jungle

Newton Faulkner

The Loveable Rogues

Lisa Stansfield

Kodaline

 I loved every minute of the Bournemouth Air Festival this year, and will definitely be going again next year (26th-31st August 2014!), you can find all the information about this here. The only advice I would give you that isn't given on this website is that it would be a better idea to go to a beach other than the stretch between Bournemouth and Boscombe pier, as this is absolutely PACKED. We went to a beach near a place called Southbourne, mainly because it's where my friend has a beach hut, but also because it was only a 30 minute walk from Boscombe pier, but also because the beach was nearly empty but you could still see all the planes!

Thank you for reading - apologies for how long it was, I didn't mean for it to be!

P.S. I'm feeling super snazzy & sophisticated blogging from the beach ;)

P.P.S. Happy September!

❤

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Musician of the Month | Nina Nesbitt

Helllo my lovelies! I've decided that I'm going to have a new segment on my blog, called MUSICIAN OF THE MONTH! *ooooooohhh*

I think that it's pretty obvious what this section will entail, but just in case you haven't cottoned on yet, basically, once a month I will select a musician and I will share with you why I love them so much!

Now, originally I was going to have my all-time favourite YouTube artist as my first post in this segment, but I've decided that I'm going to tell you about someone who actually is releasing a song soon onto iTunes, so maybe, possibly (a hint at one of my favourite YouTube duos!) you could help me get this girl into the top ten? It would be very much appreciated!

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to my very first musician of the month!

(Note - this is the August artist!)

 

Nina Nesbitt!

Yes, that's right, the first Musician of the Month is the fluffy-haired, Scottish singer who's going to take the UK by storm, and what better time to feature her than just after the premiere of the New John Lewis advert, in which she sings the song?!!

perfecto.

Before people start saying that it's not her song, I know. I know that it's a Fleetwood Mac cover, and I adore both versions. I love the spin that Nina has put on it. On the John Lewis adverts, they never use original songs. In the past, Ellie Goulding did a cover (Your Song by Elton John), and Gabrielle Aplin last Christmas covered The Power Of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. (Both of which, may I say, reached no. 1 in the UK iTunes charts! - Hopefully this is a prophesy that Nina Nesbitt with her cover of Don't Stop will also fulfill!)

I first discovered Nina Nesbitt in July 2012 when her single "Only Love" was featured as the iTunes single of the week in the UK. I can remember going on a really long car journey to see my family, and listening to that song on repeat for a good solid 2 hours, and then switching between Avril Lavigne after that, and then back to a bit of Nina.

Since that car journey and my epiphany after the exposure to the beautiful vocals of Miss Nesbitt, I've been converted to a Nesbian. I'm hooked, and let's just say that I have a lot of proof (i.e. I have every single song that she's released on iTunes on my iPod.) Yeah. Not only is she a B-E-A-Utiful singer and songwriter, but I am also in love with the way she dresses and her obsession with Instagram. It's one face I don't mind clogging up my feed.

If you've watched any of Nina's videos, you may find that you know her face. Before being a musician, she was actually a model, but at the beginning of her modelling career, she had brown hair, but she bleached it mid-way through, so there are a mixture of modelling shots where she has different coloured hair. She says she stopped modelling because she was told she was "too fat". WHAAAAAAAATTTT?!? These people must be crazy, because Nina is anything but fat, I mean, just look at her girl!

Another reason why you may recognise Nina Nesbitt is because she appeared in the music video for "Drunk" by Ed Sheeran (lemmie hear you say chuuuuuuunne!). Since meeting Ed, she also supported him on his European tour, and then later on supported Example after he heard her amazing cover of his song "Stay Awake".

She received a bit more recognition in April this year, as her song "Stay Out" from her EP "Stay Out" was put on the 'A List' on BBC Radio 1, which means that it got a lot of airplay prior to it's release, and subsequently it entered at no. 21 on the iTunes chart, but fell to no. 41 the following week :(. However, I strongly urge you go and check this song out, as it is a gorgeous catchy tune. I'm never sure of the genre that she sings, with people saying it ranges from BritPop, to rock, and a hint of country. To be honest, I'm hopeless with musical genres, but all I know is that Nina Nesbitt is DEFINITELY a musician to watch, as I'm sure she is going to be very big in the future!

Here are all the links you need to support (and love) Nina as much as I do:

Official Website

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

Instagram

Wikipedia page

Thank You!

❤

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