Might Be the Nicest, Sweetest Pimp Ever

It would be easy to call Stephen Barnes another little Internet novelty singer because a lot of his songs are pretty novel. Take his acoustic cover of "Swing" by Savage. I never thought that song could be heartwarming, but he sings "knees bent, ass out, come on push your ass out" in such a tender way.

But is that really so surprising from the man behind "Might Be a Pimp," the sweetest little song you've ever heard about prostitutes.

"I might be a pimp
And you might be a ho
But baby I will love you until I grow old"

Awww. It's fun, catchy, and - to make a good deal better - free! All Stephen's songs are available for free download on his PureVolume, and yes, all of them are just as sweet and heartwarming as his songs about prostitution.

If you're in the mood for something a bit more wholesome (but no less novel), I'd recommend my personal favorite Stephen Barnes song, "Handstands for Kelsey." It's an acoustic cover of a mash-up of "Bruises" by Chairlift and "Kelsey" by Metro Station, and no, it does not sound as bad as you think it should. It actually sounds pretty amazing. Check it out. On his MySpace player because this song isn't on YouTube. I trust that even all you Facebookies can find the song :)

Stephen's MySpace looks like a clone of NeverShoutNever's, or at least a younger brother trying his best to imitate NSN. And that's probably no coincidence - when Stephen sent me a friend request, I saw NSN listed as one of our 8 mutual friends. Of course, Stephen is nowhere near as successful as NSN - NSN has over 136 times as many MySpace friends as Stephen (yeah, I did the math). But Stephen's songs trade the simplicity and childlike joy of many of NSN's songs for more sophisticated songwriting. Although I must admit, NeverShoutNever's songs keep getting more and more elaborate, as anyone who's heard The Summer EP knows.

...Well, I don't really have anything newsworthy to say about Stephen Barnes; I just heard his music for the first time about an hour ago, actually. So I don't really know what he's up to, so I guess I'll just leave this here... But wasn't that cover of "Swing" newsworthy enough, even if the original Savage/Soulja Boy song was released almost a year ago and Stephen's cover was released months ago? I thought the whole world needed to know about it ASAP.

Edit: Jaykay, apparently any similarities between Stephen's profile and NeverShoutNever's are purely coincidental. Stephen told me he's not a big fan of NSN and is "trying to be nothing like nsn."
I guess even musicians don't have to like all their MySpace friends...