Michael Mikey Brennan: The Albums That Made Me Play Guitar

           Elvis Presley - Girls! Girls! Girls! (Soundtrack)

Elvis was the reason I started playing guitar; I first got into him when I was 11, after hearing his version of 'Blue Suede Shoes' at school which my teacher showed me a live performance of, I was completely blown away by his superb stage presence and incredible guitar skills. He was a phenomenal performer, he was everything I wanted to be. I never had any of his albums when I was growing up but I did have this film called, 'Girls! Girls! Girls!', which my dad bought me shortly after I became a fan. The film's soundtrack is amazing, 'Because Of Love' is one of my personal favourites, but I also love 'We'll Be Together', his guitar playing on that song is fantastic. 

                    Justin Bieber - My Worlds Acoustic 

As much as I hate to admit it today, I can't deny my past, I was a massive Justin Bieber fan when I was younger; in fact, I was obsessed with him. One of the first albums I bought with my own money was 'My Worlds - Collection' - a compilation album that contains three albums in one; his debut EP, 'My World' and album, 'My World 2.0' and the remix album 'My Worlds Acoustic' - which I bought after seeing his film, Never Say Never at the cinema, which my mum took me to see in 3D. I was 12 at the time and had only just recently become a Belieber, after seeing him on The X Factor in 2010 performing 'Somebody To Love' and 'Baby'. Although I'm so big on him as much as I used to be, 'My Worlds Acoustic' is still one of my favourite albums of all time; it was one of the main albums that inspired me to become an acoustic musician. Dan Kanter (Bieber's guitarist) is a great player, him and Bieber were two of my first ever guitar heroes. The first track I listened to from this album was the acoustic version of 'Baby', which I actually prefer to the original.

                           Cody Simpson - 4U EP

Like Bieber, Cody Simpson was one of my biggest inspirations as a child, both of them were big influences on me and my ambitions of becoming a pop star; in fact, they - along with Tyler Ward - inspired me to start posting covers to YouTube. Cody had some great songs; 'One', 'Perfect', 'iYiY', 'Summertime', 'On My Mind', 'All Day'... those songs take me back, so many great memories! '4U' was a great EP, the acoustic version of 'iYiY' from it is so beautiful, Cody was and still is a great songwriter and a fantastic singer, him and his music will always have a special place in my heart. 

                                   Ed Sheeran - + 

Loads of acoustic musicians have inspired me as a singer/songwriter but I don't think any of them have inspired me as much as Ed Sheeran. I started playing guitar when I was 12, at that time he was in the charts with his debut single, 'The A Team', I remember seeing him perform it on The Crush and after watching that performance I knew I wanted to become an acoustic musician, I wanted to be like him. '+' is one of my favourite albums of all time, to me it's a masterpiece.

                 Bruno Mars - Doo-Wops And Hooligans

Like Ed Sheeran, I've been a fan of Bruno Mars since day one too, still love his debut album, 'Doo-Wops And Hooligans', which is also one of my favourite albums of all time. I remember buying it when it first came out, falling in love with it and listening to it over and over again - it was that good! One of my all time favourite tracks is 'Count On Me', I remember first hearing it and thinking to myself; "I've got to learn that on guitar!" I didn't have and wasn't playing a guitar at the time of this album's release so I suppose you could say this is one of the albums that inspired me to start playing. 

                         One Direction - Up All Night

                                      

Guilty as charged, I was a big One Direction fan when I was younger, I always wanted to be Niall Horan, boy, could he play guitar. I've been a fan of them ever since day one too; I watched them on The X Factor in 2010, I followed them throughout and after The X Factor, all the way through their career to the departure of Zayn's in 2015, to the break up and I am continuing to follow them all as solo artists right now as we speak. 'Up All Night' was a fantastic album. When I first started playing guitar two of the first songs I learnt were 'What Makes You Beautiful' and 'One Thing'.

     Jason Mraz - We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.

Jason Mraz was an early influence of mine, he's a great songwriter; I remember hearing 'I'm Yours' on the radio for the first time ever as a child and falling in love with it almost immediately. It was such a stunning acoustic song; in other words, it was beautiful! Although some of the lyrics are a bit weird; such as the phrase, "I will nibble your ear", it's still a fantastic love song none the less. Once you've heard it will echo in your ears and remain in your heart for the rest of your life. But if you haven't listened to the full album [We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.] you're missing out big time, everything single song on that album is just as beautiful as 'I'm Yours'. 

                    James Blunt - Back To Bedlam 

James Blunt was another early influence on me. He's not everyone's cup of tea and I understand why some people don't like him, but I think he's great, I wouldn't say I'm a die hard fan though, but a fan just the same, it depends on my mood. 'You're Beautiful' came out in 2005 when I was six years old and I remember hearing it on the radio when it first came out - of course, I heard the censored version in which the phrase, "Fucking high" was changed to "Flying high" -. The intro riff is amazing and very well written. I don't know how he does it, when I try to play that intro I'm terrible; in fact, despite all my years of my playing guitar and hearing that intro multiple times I still can't play it to save my life. What a great songwriter James Blunt is.

      Glee Cast - The Music, The Complete Season Two 

I was a massive Glee fan when I was a kid; in fact, both Mr. Croft and I were both massive Glee fans. He was basically a Will Schuester wannabe, hence why he volunteered to do the school's glee club! It was one of my favourite TV shows ever. My first introduction into the show was through Chord Overstreet (Sam Evans)'s cover of Justin Bieber's 'Baby', which I stumbled across on YouTube, it was thanks to that video that I started watching the show. Overstreet's guitar playing is absolutely superb, though that turned out to be no surprise, as I later on discovered he's the son of one of my favourite country songwriters, Paul Overstreet.

            

 

                     

                             

    

                                               

MidKent College Level 3 Music Performance students to record covers of 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' and 'We Are The World' for a course assignment

MidKent College's Music Performance students from the Medway Campus are set to record studio covers of the classic charity singles, 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' (Band Aid, 1984) and 'We Are The World' (USA For Africa, 1985) for a course assignment. Level 3 Music Performance student, Michael Mikey Brennan explains further information about the project below.

I am delighted to announce that in December I will be participating alongside my fellow Level 3 Music Performance course vocalists from MidKent College in a re-recording of two of my favourite charity songs; 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' by Band Aid and 'We Are The World' by USA For Africa. However, that being said, I didn't actually want to take part in re-recording of these songs to being with and if it was up to me, I probably wouldn't, unfortunately for me though, I have no choice in the matter as this is an assignment task set by my course tutor, Kennie for our course unit, 'Session Musician', which, like every unit, I want to achieve a Distinction on - equilvant to an A grade -, and obviously the only way I can only get that Distinction is by taking part in this unit, otherwise I'll get unclassified on it, meaning that I won't pass the unit due to not taking part in the main task project - the re-recording of two charity singles - and therefore will not pass the course and won't qualify for university; in other words, I'll be screwed and my future as a professional vocalist will go down the drain without a Level 3 music qualification or a university degree. 

The reason why I didn't initially want to to re-cover these songs is not because I dislike them or anything, because I don't dislike them, in fact, I love them, as I said they are two of my favourite charity songs and 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' is probably my second favourite Christmas song ('Wonderful Christmastime' by Paul McCartney being my all time favourite), I remember singing 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' as a child every single year when the holiday season came around, my parents used to play it around the house all the time and I remember hearing it on the radio (my local radio stations, Heart Kent and Kmfm) throughout the holidays every year as well. The reason is because to me 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' and 'We Are The World', are masterpieces, absolute classics, beautifully arranged and very well structured and produced; in simpler terms, I didn't want to ruin these masterpieces. Not to mention these songs are incredibly unique and I don't think anyone could ever re-create something that could even come close to comparing to these classics, and not just in terms of covering but also in the sense of writing something from the inspiration of these two songs; as a matter of fact, 'Another Bower Grove Christmas' was inspired by 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', which may not come across as a surprise giving the fact that they are both Christmas charity songs (by the way, to those of you who may be unaware, I didn't write 'Another Bower Grove Christmas', Mr. Starks did). Although in my opinion 'Another Bower Grove Christmas' is a masterpiece and a very well written track, it doesn't come near to comparing towards a classic like 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', mind you though, 'Another Bower Grove Christmas' wasn't entirely influenced by 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', it was merely just inspired by it in the sense of creating a Christmas charity single, 'Another Bower Grove Christmas' is its own special unique song; in other words, you can't compare it to 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' as they are both two different songs entirely, as far as comparisons to the two songs go, they are only similar due to both being Christmas charity songs, otherwise they are nothing alike whatsoever. I must be honest, I'm not a fan of the cover versions of 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' and 'We Are The World', though I appreciate them of course, as they were all recorded for a good cause and as far as I'm concerned anything that's made for charity is okay in my book, but their just not my cup of tea, despite that the covers in question - "Artists For Haiti: We Are The World (2010)" and "Band Aid 30: Do They Know It's Christmas? (2014)" - feature some artists who I admire a lot and some who I am influenced and inspired by. I will say one positive thing about the Artists For Haiti version of 'We Are The World' though, at least they kept Michael Jackson's parts in, thus not completely ruining the masterpiece.

However, don't get me wrong, not meaning to contradict myself, but I still rest my case when I say that I am delighted, and honoured to be participating in this project and re-recording these two amazing songs, because I am delighted and honoured; in fact, I am very excited, especially since a lot of my heroes featured in these songs, so I am absolutely honoured to be covering and singing the famous lyrics once sung by the artists who I worship and adore; especially Michael Jackson, my favourite artist of all time and biggest influence and greatest inspiration, whose lines I will be singing in 'We Are The World' (in fact, this was agreement made by me and Kennie; essentially I agreed that I would take part in this project on the condition that I get to sing Michael Jackson's lines, though of course, I would have had to take part in it regardless, as I said, it's the only way I can pass the course and qualify for university, there's no other way of succeeding in this aspect of the course without taking part in this project and therefore there is no other way of getting into university without this unit qualification). In addition, in 'We Are The World' I will also be singing Bruce Springsteen's lines and the opening lines, originally sung by Lionel Richie (co-writer, alongside Michael Jackson of 'We Are The World') and in 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' I will be singing the opening lines, originally sung by Paul Young, as well as the lines originally portrayed by Simon Le Bon and Sting. The covers will be produced by the amazing, ElijahPaul and we will be singing to backing tracks, because unfortunately we are unable to get any musicians to play for us, as all the musicians on the course are currently working on rehearsing material for the college pantomime, Cinderella (which you can buy tickets for here). I am hoping to showcase the recordings on social media once they are done and there is the possibility that I may be able to distribute them for downloading and streaming (on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer etc.), but I'm afraid I can't make any promises as I am currently having issues with distributing covers (which is one of the main reasons why my recent live EP is not available on any downloading and streaming platforms, apart from Bandcamp at the moment), hopefully I'll fix the problem at some point and will be able to distribute these two upcoming covers, but at the moment due to being tied up with college work I am unable to look into the problem and fix it. However, regardless of whether I am able to distribute them or not I will showcase them one way or another.

At this point I have no idea when I'll be able to share the recordings, as it will depend when in December we record them and when we finish and how long it takes for Elijah for edit and master them, but I'm going to assume January. Please stay tuned for further information.

- Michael Mikey Brennan, MidKent College, Level 3 Music Performance Year 2 Student

                                                               

                                                                                     

                                                                           

Noel Gallagher's songwriting has inspired several singer/songwriters including 19 year old singer/songwriter, Michael Mikey Brennan from Kent. 

"[Noel Gallagher is] a brilliant songwriter and a fantastic lyricist and poet, to me he's the Bob Dylan of BritPop (or Universal Rock as he prefers to be classed as, just like Green Day prefer to be classed as Punk Rock than Pop Punk - though I'm not sure if Universal Rock is an official genre -) his lyrics are fantastic and his guitar skills are superb and yet so simple, but at the same time their fantastic too. 'Wonderwall' is literally one of the easiest songs to play on guitar, anyway and everyone can play it, I can play it and I can't play guitar to save my life! If anyone tells you they can't play 'Wonderwall' they're wrong, they can, they've just never tried, when I first attempted it I learnt it in like 3 minutes, it's a peace of cake! - one of my favourite Oasis songs is 'She's Electric', an incredibly catchy sick tune, I particularly like the guitar solo, it's probably my favourite song from the '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' album too, which is a fantastic album by the way, as is Oasis' before album, 'Definitely Maybe' (their debut album), an absolute classic. They're probably one of my favourite bands to be fair, but I wouldn't put them up there next to The Beatles (although both The Beatles and Oasis have been a massive impact on my own music style and songwriting and I love them both) as much as Oasis would love to be called The Beatles of their generation, I for one, wouldn't concern with that comparision, no band could or can ever compare to the brilliance of The Beatles, but on the other hand, like The Beatles, Oasis are just as unique in their own way and there will never be another band like them". - Michael Mikey Brennan 

Michael Mikey Brennan's Favourite Movies

Toy Story (1995)

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

Toy Story 3 (2010)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

School of Rock (2003)

Shrek (2001)

Shrek 2 (2004)

Babe (1995)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Happy Gilmore (1996)