Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today let's go into another Evening Groove / Three Tune Tuesday post.

As always, thanks to @ablaze for making this series. Lots of people participate in it! Follow the tags to find a ton of good music recommendation.

Today I have a bit of a strange mixture of genres. No uniting theme, just three songs that popped in my head during the past few days and survived there long enough for me to write down. See what you think of them!

Culture Club - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me

Last week @bozz posted this song. It's a good song. As soon as I heard it, I immediately got vibes of Culture Club. The effects on the voice and the overall grove of the song just put that Boy George and that 80s New Wave sound in my head.

So for this week, I thought we'd start with one of their biggest hits. This song was released as a single in 1982 and immediately went to number 1 in the UK and number 2 in the US. It probably would have hit number 1 in the US, but Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" juggernaut held that space.

It's a weird video, featuring blackface would probably makes it problematic today. All the adults back there were obsessed with Boy George's appearance and the question of his sexual orientation, but us kids, we just grooved out to the music. So let's now jump back to 1982 and enjoy this hit.

Yuju Ohno - Theme from Lupin III

This song is iconic. Lupin III is a very long running anime series, beginning in 1971 and still going strong today. Both the character and song have been around so long that everyone in Japan knows them. The theme song is a bit of hard bop influenced fusion jazz. It's extremely catchy, which goes a long way towards explaining why it is so popular and has remained the character's theme song for so long.

There are a great many variations of the song. They alter it a bit every year and with every performance. When I was searching YouTube for versions, this one jumped out at me. See what you think.

If that song makes you curious about the show, here is one of the show openings to enjoy.

Weird Al - White and Nerdy

Two weeks ago, @nuthman posted about an album he owned when he was a kid. He was talking about first albums (go read his post and that made me think of Weird Al. I think my first album may have been a Beach Boys compilation that my dad got me, or maybe the Rocky III soundtrack. Maybe not. I don't remember timings anymore. But I do remember that early in his career my cousin introduced me to Weird Al and I fell in love. I bought all his cassettes with my weekly allowance. At the time that was only 3 or 4 of them, so not a huge investment. He definitely wasn't as well respected as he has become, so I remember I had to visit a few music stores to find them because they didn't carry him. I think it wasn't until Even Worse in 1988 that Al started to gain more esteem. Not only was that album everywhere, but MTV showed the Fat music video at least a few times everyday.

Anyway, White and Nerdy is a fairly recent one, released in 2006 on his Straight Outta Lynwood album. It is a parody of "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire. Of the song Al said the lyrics were easy to write because it is his life. Both song and album have been certified platinum. The first time I heard this song was in the lobby of a school I was working at at the time—my first job in Japan. I remember listening and finding it incredibly funny and cracking up. Many of the Japanese staff looked at me a little shocked and asked me why I was laughing at such a cool song. I guess they were playing it because it sounded cool and that they couldn't understand the lyrics.

So what's your favorite?

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.