I feel like the first 5-10 seconds of the chorus is using the same vocal melody as KAte Bush's Running up the Hill. Great song nonetheless. I think they came to the US to tour once and I hope that they are able to come around again.

As it turns out I had no female artists for the letter U in my iTunes so I move on to the Vs.

Veruca Salt: The first song gets regular airplay on my radio station and the second is their contribution to the Neil Young tribute album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC9AUR-iTo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vq_Vf-j1HE

Victor Krauss: This is included because his sister Alison Krauss sings the vocals on this track from his album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFg1vS7OXdU

Virginia O'Brien: I'm a fan of the Marx Brothers and this comes from one of their lesser movies. What struck me was how she gave no facial expressions when she performed. I guess that was her schtick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZXGEz8HY4M

The Ws:

Wanda Jackson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt7PPidlIvg

The Watson Twins; The last of the songs from the all-female Neil Young tribute album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m63-ZHDmGs

No Xs

Only one Y.

Yvonne Elliman: From one of the few musicals I enjoyed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFsnptQEWvM

No Zs.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system I'm trying to decide if i want to investigate the music of Zendaya. She killed it as Chani in the Dune movies. Much impressed. The first Science fiction movies I've seen that were true to the source material to my satisfaction.

YouTube Music Reactors

I'm very curious if any of the people here watch Music Reactors on YouTube or other sites and would share their thoughts.

I watch music reactors fairly regularly on YouTube. For any not familiar, these are people who watch music videos on screen, usually for the "first" time, and share their thoughts. Occasionally you can discover recent releases by familiar artists or even new performers for the first time. There's a spectrum of usefulness. Some have decent insights; some are woefully laughable. Sometimes after watching an interesting video, I look at earlier things they have done, and it can be disappointing. Supposed music fans who have never heard of Adele, Pink Floyd, Guns 'N' Roses, Stevie Winwood, etc., etc., etc., make you wonder what musical connection they actually have. I can understand younger reactors or even non-Western reactors "discovering" things others might think obvious, but it makes you wonder about those purporting to be knowledgeable who you would think know better.

A random example. I saw a reaction to a Jimi Hendrix Tribute show where the reactor was all excited about Slash performing "Hey Joe". He didn't know Mitch Mitchell (drummer from Jimi Hendrix Experience) or Stevie Winwood (Traffic and Blind Faith) and didn't even mention bassist Billy Cox (Band of Gypsys with Jimi Hendrix).

Here is the original video and then the reactor video. I like the original performance. I don't think it necessary to watch the entire reactor video. After I minute or two, you get the idea.

HEY JOE (Stevie Winwood, Mitch Mitchell, Billy Cox, Slash)- This was interesting.
HEY JOE REACTION - This is hard to watch. Particularly his comment "You don't take the stage with Slash and pay tribute to Jimi Hendrix unless you know what you're doing....."

The "reaction" genre on YouTube hasn't been a thing for me for a long time. I'd probably find it more interesting if I saw the (in my mind, more likely) reactors skipping over stuff that doesn't interest them. When I want to see reactions, I just read the comments!

I fully admit I may be calloused about this, as I've been a long-time listener to a ("pop", even though they would deny it) "culture" podcast that often is little more than the same three reviewers "reacting" to... whatever. I have kept listening because I often get a little bit of insight or historical context into the work... but those folks are so polite to each other that even when they have a difference of opinion about whatever work they are reviewing, the conversation is mostly "yes, and..."

I know I've told this story before about Steve Winwood, but years ago I went to Mere Bulles in Nashville on Broadway (I think). It was a restaurant/club with restaurant upstairs and club downstairs. I was meeting some people there and I went to the club where the drummer for Billy Joel was playing with his band, Liberty and Justice for all. Liberty Devito introduces Traffic drummer Jim Capaldi and Liberty moves off of the kit and starts playing some hand percussion.

The place is getting wild. I start dancing with one of the girls I was meeting there. The next song they introduce Carmine Appice who drummed with Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart and a s*it-load of other greats. Carmine's the man. He gets behind the kit and Capaldi steps out to play wood block or something. They're really jamming now.

The song ends and I'm still out there on the dance floor right in front of the stage and they start playing an old Spencer Davis song, Gimme Some Loving. It has that great percussive intro and Carmine, Liberty and Capaldi are driving the song. The organ comes in and I'm still dancing, but I have my back to stage. The singer starts, "Well my temperatures rising, and It hasn't hit me yet that he sounds identical to Steve Winwood. But now I'm thinking, This can't be a coincidence.

I shift my lady friend and turn to face the stage and it's Winwood. I'm 5-10 feet away and the place is going insane. He was never introduced. After a few songs the guys leave the stage and I'm sweaty and have had a bunch of drinks and I geel amazing.

The next day, I'm on the convention floor and manning the booth. I'm talking to some guy who starts talking about hearing that Winwood appeared at a local club. So I begin to tell him about my previous night's tale and I get to the part about turning around to see that it was Steve Winwood singing and I mimic turning around, and you guessed it. Winwood is behind me listening to me tell this tale. I was shocked once again.

Turns out he married an American girl and they had a home in Nashville as well as one in England. We talked for a good ten minutes or so about his music, bands and people he had performed with. It was so cool, he was there with people but had wandered off to do his own thing and popped into my booth to just check things out. He was amazing and super-nice.

As he left I took a cue from one of the songs they played at Mere Bulles, and said, "You're not just a man, you're THE man. He laughed and went on his way.

Life is like comedy, timing is everything.

I'm a Man
Gimme Some Loving

That's a great story! I am curious about this convention you attended and the booth too. Could you shed some more details?

I have watched 2-3 unless you count the Rick Beato why this song is great series. I never got into them because they all seemed so phony because they all had titles of "Reaction of Joe Shmoe listening to Don't Stop Believing for the first time." Sorry, but if you are my age or older and have not heard that song I would be incredibly surprised since it has been everywhere for the past almost 40 years now.

The ironic thing is that I love MST3K, but I just don't care for reaction videos.

So a random band popped up from the algorithm called, Saturday Night Satan. I kinda had to click on it. I suggest you do to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fb_3rT_bNs

I only ever bought their Sister Sweetly album which had this track and another track that were played regularly in the 90s on KSHE 95 before the big corporations ruined the station.

This was the other track KSHE played:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZyT5IugA0A

This one didn't get airplay but I thought it stood out too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trggg9HzF7Y

Addendum: Apparently it was released as a single and used in a movie soundtrack but for some reason KSHE didn't play it that I know of.

As for the reactor videos, I haven't really watched them but I do remember seeing videos in my feed such as classical flautist reacts to hearing Ian Anderson for the first time and others of that nature.

I can't get overly enthusiastic about the lackluster categories being suggested in the discussion thread. Not particularly imaginative I think. I brought up Skullbrother's suggestion of comic book character related tunes with a suggestion to allow other fictional or even historical characters that have influenced music but apparently even Skullbrother doesn't seem to support that anymore. I guess I'll just ride it out and see what they decide. People of color might be interesting because I like to showcase obscure artists that people may not have been exposed to because of their age or other reasons.

I'd be delighted to do a blues rock wars but that would probably go over like a lead balloon with the crowd we have now. Country too but I'd probably regret that because I'm old school country and most new country would leave me cold. I'd go for a classical music war so everybody could get that out of their system and I wouldn't have to endure the debacle that was the instrumental rock wars again.

It was a NAMM convention {North American Music Merchants) and it was back when I was working for Warner Bros. Music Publications. NAMM has a winter show usually held in Anaheim, but there was a time when we did it at the LA convention Center right near the Staples Center.

The Summer show used to move around, but then they just started hosting it in Nashville. Lots of musicians, bands and everyone has a great time. Saw one show where Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Steve Stevens, Rick Nielson and Allan Holdsworth jammed on stage. I wanna say that Billy Sheehan played bass for the most part. That was at a summer show in Chicago.

I went to both Summer and Winter shows for about 21 straight years. Met lots of people and saw great performances.

So this is the first of a couple of very interesting posts today by our friends. Opened the link, was a bit repelled by all the demonic lyrics and imagery, but really liked the music from this Greek band. Band is enjoyable, and the singer's voice is really good. It all blends together well. Listened to a couple of other songs and was torn as to whether I would listen in the future. Demons/good rock?

Then I flashed back to 1970, and the first time I heard the brand-new Black Sabbath debut album. Is this SNS debut album as groundbreaking as that was? I don't really think nearly so, but the music is still good. The question I ask myself is that even though Black Sabbath used occultism as a gimmick, and these people seem to be true believers, should I care? I understand that in Greece there is a large doom metal following, so it could be cosplay. But again, should I care? I don't know yet.

I looked over the list of previous Rock Wars, and don't really see any that strike me as specifically genre based. Show tunes, instrumentals, and a couple of others do narrow the possible nominations, but still don't seem to be really genre based. All the Rock Wars subjects do narrow the possible noms, I guess that is the point, but would still allow any genre to be selected.

I probably would enjoy a Blues or even a Country contest. But the comment "most new country would leave me cold" sort of hints at a difficulty - defining what is in the genre. There has been so much crossover in the last few years that many genre lines are severely blurred. That said, if you want to push for one of those in the future, I will try to support it. It may be a bit late in the current process to make much progress, but if you want to throw it in the mix, then make it one of your "votes" to enshrine it in the listings.

WHITE HORSE (Chris Stapleton) - This definitely isn't old school country, with strong elements of Blues and Rock, but I really like it.