Good thread! Music has been an important part of my life so I could probably write a book on this topic. But I'll limit myself to the most recent time I was just blown away.
Devin Townsend performing Kingdom for EMGTV.
I knew of Devin from when Steve Vai selected him as his singer when he was 17 years old. He stayed with Vai for a bit, left, and started some extreme metal bands which I was not interested in at all. Then he started a solo career. I'm not familiar with his music besides having heard a few songs here and there on SiriusXM.
Then a couple of months ago, for some reason the video for
Kingdom showed up in my Youtube feed, and out of curiosity or boredom I clicked on it.
When he started singing at about the one minute mark my jaw dropped. As the Brits might say, I was gobsmacked. It's an incredibly powerful, clean, almost operatic vocal that builds to a fry that you'd think would shred his cords, then he seamlessly returns to clean for the "Stay with me, Lord" chorus.
It's a moving, uplifting song that is buoyed by Devin's humor and mugging for the camera. For example, he says he's going to play the most epic guitar solo in EMGTV history, then proceeds to tremolo pick a few notes (the irony is that he's such a good guitarist he probably could rip off an epic solo).
There are a lot of songs that move me, from Pink Floyd's
Time to Allman Bro's
Blue Sky to Opeth's
Coil to Irma Thomas's
Anyone Who Knows What Love is (Will Understand). I hadn't heard anything new in quite a while that had that same affect until
Kingdom.
As a technical side note, the "EMG" in EMGTV is the company that makes guitar pickups. Devin's performance was a demo for the two types of EMG pickups he uses in his guitar. His guitar and vocals are recorded live; all of the other instruments are from the studio backing tracks.