Best Pop Singer/Vocalist of the First Half of 2012

I hope to decide very soon who was the best pop singer/vocalist for the first half of 2012. That was the year I started writing about Pop songs including my lists of 10 Best Pop Songs of the first half and 25 Best Pop Songs for the year of 2012. I'm doing a first-half list and a full-year list again this year.

Last year, I mentioned the three leaders I chose in the category of Best Pop Vocalist for the First Half of 2012. They were Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, and Ne-Yo. I'm also calling that category Best Pop Singer, but this isn't a Live Performance competition. While I care about hearing how they sound in Live videos, this is only about how their singing voices sound in the recordings. It doesn't have to be a studio recording because someone can record it any method and put it on YouTube.com or anywhere that it's available to listeners. I'm not much into rules and I really don't have rules. It's my decision though, regarding who gets in and why or why not.

Today, I'm adding Ai Shinozaki to the list. Of course, her name also appears as Shinozaki Ai. I don't think that I saw her video last year, so the song which I listened to many times in the recent months is called "Play for Free" may be in last year's second half list of best pop songs, which I haven't done yet, or I could make an exception and put it on a list for this year. Some of those videos uploaded to YouTube in the first half of 2012 were deleted or no longer available. That could have been why I didn't find it on time for last year. Those videos were listed by English language. However, thanks to my recent searches in Japanese, I was able to find the video.

I think she is a great singer and as far as I can tell this video first appeared in June 2012, therefore she qualifies for the first half of 2012 Best Pop Singer/Vocalist. I found a good upload of the video/song either today or yesterday on the Chinese video website Youku. That's at www.youku.com and I wanted to put that on here or my music reviews blog site, but I couldn't figure out how to do that since I didn't see a way to share on Blogger.com blogs like there is on YouTube. I will try to do that from YouTube even though the upload date is different.

Comparing Two Iced Coffees

I wanted to write about iced coffee... The last time I went out for iced coffee it was very good and I drank two iced coffees. I had the Jack in the Box iced coffee first and wasn't sure I would have another iced coffee later, but as it turned out I did wind up over at McDonald's, in the drive-thru, for that second iced coffee.

Jack in the Box's iced coffee was a little bit better than McDonald's iced coffee this time. However, it couldn't be much closer and there was almost no difference between the two because both had very good flavor. I also compared how much ice was in the cup and both appeared to be the right amount, not too much or too little. Both iced coffees were strong enough and it tasted fresh to me. That's important. Also, it was the right shade, not too dark or light, the flavors were very good, and it wasn't too sweet but slightly sweet which I feel is correct. I can't say there was much difference in quality between the two iced coffees, but this was a win for Jack in the Box.

I don't have much more to add but if I can think of anything else then I write about it some other time.

Relaxing with a Carl's Jr. Orange Cream Shake

ORANGE CREAM 

Ice Cream Shake

3.50

I can really taste how this is "orange cream" flavor and made me feel relaxed. It's a very smooth shake and doesn't have strong orange flavor and no aftertaste of orange. There's whipped cream on top like many shakes these days. I would say it's a normal size for a shake, not too large like some shakes. This shake was $3.50 and the words and price below the picture are what was on the drive-thru menu. It was just before noon on a July day.