Name: 'Growing Up' Sampler by Jody Cooper
Duration: 6 min 40 s
Description: A little sampler of my second original album 'Growing Up'. If you like what you hear and would like to check out more, click on the 'buy' link or go here: http://jodycooper.bandcamp.com/album/growing-up

Love Will Tear Us Apart cover live at The Tunnels 3/3/11

'Breathe In' - Song for Mona

The first time I died, it didn’t take too long
Till I wafted up to those pearly gates
But they kinda looked like a fast-food drive-through
And a disembodied voice said “Please wait.”
Then it came back on the intercom
And said “For here? Or to go?”
And I shyly said, “I think I’m dead
Am I at the wrong window?”

The voice said, “Don’t fret, sugar,
I see it’s your first time around.
The way things work here, you can stay with us now
Or if you want, you can head back down
For one more cycle.
So what’s it gonna be?
Are you ready for eternity in paradise?”
I said, “Well, let me see…”

Nope, I’ll have one with everything
All the happiness, all the pain
Give me one life with everything
All the flowers growing in the rain
I said, I’ll have one with everything
All the love, all the loss
Give me one life with everything
I don’t care how much it costs

So I’m back down here doing everything
For the first time once again
Of course I lost my last-life memories
But every now and then
The sun shines a little sweeter
The breeze blows oh so kind
And somehow I know, before I go
And leave this all behind

I want to have one with everything
All the happiness, all the pain
Give me one life with everything
All the flowers growing in the rain
Yeah, I’ll have one with everything
All the love, all the loss
Give me one life with everything
And I don’t care how much it costs
I don’t care how much it costs

One with Everything

A version of the 'Gayatri Mantra', with harp, voice and percussion from a CD called 'Higher Vision' available on iTunes by Maureen Hunter and Niaz McGuire.

Gayatri Mantra

A little sampler of my second original album 'Growing Up'. If you like what you hear and would like to check out more, click on the 'buy' link or go here: http://jodycooper.bandcamp.com/album/growing-up

'Growing Up' Sampler

First mix for audition of Beat it by Michael Jackson, recorded by The Top Guns

Beat it Mix 1

Multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, performer, busker and “Walking Jukebox“ - Jody Cooper has many guises. His own songs combine a love of melody and style experimentation borrowed from his parents record collection (The Beatles meets Kraftwerk) with his distinctive, powerful voice and lyrics that, as he puts it, “look beyond the surface, to tackle the reality of things and the uncomfortable truths they tell”.

Growing up in the eighties as an English boy in a rural Scottish town, Jody always felt he had to try harder than the next kid: “People would look at me strangely because I spoke 'funny', so I learnt to embrace that and combine it with my love of performing in order to feel accepted”. Starting with violin lessons and classroom performances at the age of six – for which he inherited the moniker 'Elton Cooper' – and later teaching himself piano, bass and guitar. “I couldn't really read music”, he remembers. “Luckily, I discovered I had a natural aptitude for picking things up simply by listening to them”. He started writing his own songs at the age of fourteen, and at sixteen he awoke one morning with a voice in his head telling him he would be a musician. From then on, music became the only thing that mattered.

After many years performing in bands as a self-employed musician, in 2006 he decided to go back to school and get a degree in music at the University of Liverpool. In 2007 he realised a long-held dream of releasing his own album entitled 'Ten a Penny' – a self-financed and self-produced project five years in the making. After a stint with 'Sense of Sound' (an a cappella group whose collaborations include Seal, Damon Albarn, Jon Bon Jovi and Imogen Heap), several releases and European tours followed ('Growing Up' and 'Free Thyself' (2012); 'The Troubadour' EP (2013)) and in 2013, after years playing for saturated British audiences and following in the footsteps of his childhood heroes The Beatles, he left the UK and relocated to Germany to pursue his music career. In 2015 he released his first download-only singles: “Silence” – inspired by the plight of the Bahá'ís in Iran – and “Immortal Friend” – a song written for his brother and occasional band colleague Robbie Cooper: an exceptional drummer who died of a rare and aggressive form of cancer in 2014. 

After his first visit and concerts to the U.S. in 2016, 2017 saw the release of his most ambitious project so far, 'Serenades and Odes to a Cracked World (Part 1)': his first crowd-funded concept album on the theme of disintegration (part 1). Jody states: “With everything that's happening in the world, the time has come for people to start engaging with the problems around them in an attempt to make a positive change. This album is my attempt”.

During the pandemic, while the world was in lockdown, Jody started work on his next work entitled 'The Love & Loss Project': a quasi-concept album that will tease one song out at a time into 2025 and beyond.

If you would like to check out any of my albums or purchase them, please follow the link below:

http://songs.jodycoopermusic.com

My hope is that you find something of yourselves in these little songs of mine. If you have any questions or comments and would like to get in touch, just drop me a line!

Best wishes,

Jody

'Growing Up' Sampler

Jody Cooper

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