#Also I like listening to him talk he has a very interesting cadence and overall soothing voice quality

[moth-flowers]

moth-flowers #17

[astrarche-x]

The Radiant Emperor audiobooks: a (subjective) comparison

So, because I need to absorb these books through every means possible, I've also listened to the audiobooks in the languages I'm fluent in (Polish, English, French), even though generally I don't listen to audiobooks at all.

Here are my impressions, categorized. I made a separate category for Ouyang's voice not only because he is my fave, but because his voice is described the most specifically of all in the novel and I was really curious to hear the narrators' interpretations of him.

English (narrated by Natalie Naudus)

narration tone: the most captivating narration of the three imo: very vivid, the narrator changes tone frequently and does it well :)

characters' voices: I loved Zhu the most, spot on impression imo. Other characters' voices are top notch, really differentiated and convey a lot of emotion.

Ouyang's voice: very good job with making him sound angry - I usually imagine him speaking in a more "cold, but collected" manner, but the impression of him almost screaming at his officers was great, 10/10, lives in my mind rent free now (along with the stellar delivery of ''why does this untalented bitch play so loudly'')

other remarks: The narrator pronounces the names in accordance with Chinese pronounciation (I guess?), which is very very cool and gives a more authentic vibe. ("Yesen" did throw me out of immersion every time, but that's a me issue.)

overall: most fun audiobook of the three imo

Polish (narrated by Maciej Kowalik)

narration tone: the narrator has a very irritating cadence - "readingonehalfofthesentenceveryfast.....pause.... and then the other half normally", which was probably supposed to build tension, but made the audiobook rather unbearable.

characters' voices: top notch impression of drunk Esen, 10/10. okay in general, though I couldn't bear Ma.

Ouyang's voice: This is the only one of these three audiobooks narrated by a man and it was interesting to hear his interpretation of Ouyang; while not really on the "no voice mutation" side, of course, this version really made the point to make him sound lighter than every other guy but still masculine. very very cool, no notes

other remarks: The audiobook is broken into smaller parts than the book chapters; it's more like one-two scenes from the book per audiobook chapter, and while I think it's an interesting move, I'm not sure if it helps with navigation

overall: it's okay, it's in my language, so that's it I guess. The Ouyang impression is one of its few redeeming qualities.

French (narrated by Sabine Napierala)

narration tone: the most pleasing of the three imo; sometimes the narrator could have used a bit more variation in the tone, though, bc at times I found myself carried away by the sound of her voice and my mind drifting.

characters' voices: GREAT impression of Baoxiang, the best here, no contest; you can really hear the performance Ouyang talks about in SWBTS. This was what I didn't know I needed. Also great Ma and pretty nice impression of Esen. And voices for every character are so different!

Ouyang's voice: here the narrator really nailed the impression that Ma has in HWDTW: raspy yet with something feminine in it. (Maybe it's just the French language is very well suited to that particular kind of voice.) Different from the Polish version, yet still fitting perfectly.

on that note: Ouyang adressing Esen with 2nd person plural (vous) all the time while Esen adresses him with 2nd person singular (tu)... very important to me. the French really went for highlighting the power imbalance between them and I am unwell. (It's a pity, though, that in the '"Come to Bianliang with me" scene the translator didn't make Ouyang use "tu" for maximum shock effect.)

other remarks: There is a musical jingle before every chapter! Fancy :) On the flip side, there isn't a French audiobook for HWDTW yet :( I hope they make it soon bc I can't wait for all the Baoxiang parts honestly

overall: the most relaxing of the three imo (which can be both a blessing and a curse). Definitely my fave but I'm biased on account of going through my ''I miss speaking French on a daily basis'' hours.

[wowerehouse]

I was talking about this with my partner earlier: One thing that's being pretty nicely highlighted in Reunification is the difference in how each of my Horde characters is multilingual.

Because they all are, to a degree--if they weren't they wouldn't be able to hold a conversation with Tyrande at all. But how they approach that, and the mistakes they make or don't make, are intentionally different, and it's really interesting to me to write as well!

For example: Vaz. Vaz is an extremely gifted linguist (and, separately, a gifted linguist, ladies). She is a full-on polyglot, she speaks like seven languages and is conversational in several more. She calls herself a diplomat, most people call her a spy; in reality, her role is as a linguist and translator/interpreter who also turns into a giant tiger and kills people sometimes, something that I feel we should implement more fully in our own world as it would make government functions much more interesting.

She could hold a functional touristy conversation in Gutterspeak easily--Hello, My Name Is, Where Is The Bathroom And/Or Portal To Orgrimmar, I Have Been Infected By Blight And Require Emergency Medical Treatment, numbers from 1-20, you know, basic necessities--and considers herself not to speak it at all, by her own standards.

She's an excellent interpreter as evidenced by her facilitating conversation between Kemm and Tyrande in Chapter 14. She doesn't translate word-for-word; she uses the culturally appropriate equivalent greetings, stops to explain a translation where it's relevant, leaves untranslatable words intact, and overall slips seamlessly in and out of both languages' cultural contexts in order to preserve the connotations behind everyone's chosen words. She even clarifies why she won't use the Zandali 'equivalent' of some terms, instead passing them on in Darnassian, because their connotations are so different.

So: Vazkri speaks with confidence, she doesn't stumble over conjugations, she can tell jokes fluidly and make puns. Kemm, on the other hand, does not have a gift for languages. He's already a shy, sensitive, deeply autistic soul who's uncomfortable with conversation in Orcish, languages don't come naturally to him.

So Kemm speaks foreign languages like a student--he didn't learn naturally by immersion, he has to put real effort into it. He's studied the languages and is doing his best to learn them by memorizing rules that he has to actively apply in his head, he's thinking in Orcish and mentally translating the sentences before speaking.

As such, Kemm speaks...not more slowly, but with more hesitance. He holds a conversational pace but isn't as quick out of the gate, essentially--and he's more inclined toward pauses. He sometimes drops articles, fucks up verb tenses and conjugations, and is much more confident and fluent when using more common social phrases that he has both used himself and heard used by others extremely often. If/when we get Kemm speaking Orcish from the point of view of someone who also speaks Orcish, his cadence will be very different!

Vaz's little cousin Ihz on the other hand is a lovely, pure-hearted fucking disaster of a woman.

Ihz learned solely by immersion. She's not a linguist by inclination and she also doesn't travel with her cousin like Kemm does, so she's not exactly getting a formal education. However, Ihz also travels a lot, she's literally a supply train--and she's been exposed to a LOT of neutral factions and joint operations, as well.

Ihz is common in Orcish and Zandali, which she grew up speaking; conversational in Darnassian; and is, also, fully fluent in Common! She's worked with a lot of Alliance, especially in Northrend and the Plaguelands, and she's smart--she picked up the language from being around it and listening to interpreters.

(Ihz can say "mule" in fourteen languages and "fuck off, mate" in ten. This is the extent of her formal education in such matters because it's all that's really important.)

The thing is, and I try to portray this with mixed success: Ihz speaks fucking weird. Not in the sense of The Warcraft Linguistic Racism Bingo problem, this is Ihz-specific; she's not a natural linguist but she IS a natural POLYGLOT with the end result being that she picks up vocabulary, pronunciation, slang, and even grammar constructions from, like...every language on Azeroth? Except maybe what the Naga speak, and frankly, if the Naga have any good swear words she might add those to her personal lexicon.

It's why I, ages ago, gave Ihz the verbal tic of using "aye," she got it from the dwarven paladins she worked with in the plaguelands--it's got a good mouthfeel and fits with Zandali phonemes, she ended up liking it as a general verbal acknowledgement. She incorporates a lot of loanwords. She also, though this is very difficult to convey in text, sometimes picks up...interesting....pronunciations. Like, there are definitely Common words that she consistently pronounces with a Darnassian accent, because she got them from kaldorei who were themselves speaking, inexpertly, a second language.

(When I lived in Germany, I had a classmate who had a DISTINCT and distinctively Irish accent--not just in pronunciations but in a grammatical lilt that's hard to put into words. She had NO IDEA her accent was Irish and in fact assumed she had a noticeable GERMAN accent until I told her--turns out, she'd done an exchange-student program in Dublin a few years back and was DELIGHTED to learn that she'd successfully picked up their accent, because she hadn't noticed it happening! That's Ihz.)

So basically: Kemm studies languages, Vaz learns them, and Ihz gets infected by them like a disease or some kind of perhaps fungus.

[castlebyersafterdark]

being attracted to voices is like the most inexplicable thing to me, meaning so hard to explain. some voices are just hot but why? i remember a Black Books episode about this, where the woman heard her old flame had become a radio forecaster so she would tune in late at night and masturbate hahahhaa

but with noah, is it the lowness and vocal fry you like? is it easy to imagine him making certain.... noises lmao? cos i feel like his overall tone and vibe is very goofy, but i guess his voice is low. such a nice contrast for will's sweetness too. meanwhile finn's squeaky high register is just so unique. he actually had a lower-sounding voice in s2 than s4 lmao... that sincerity of childhood where you wanna be taken seriously. but in s4, mike is more manic so i think the higher register comes out in panic and frustration. noah is clearly also leaning into queerisms like using pet names for everyone like 'babe' as well as embracing a campier vocal style at times.

Always fun comparing different perspectives, because voices are one of the most important things to me when it comes to real attraction. There's your every day surface level attraction from just looking at people but then you start breaking down the finer details and voice is just a really big one with me. For sure. And HA! The vocal fry hahaha, aww I find his cadence and the way he talks really cute, in character and out of character. But a few of those longer videos he's shared, where it's just him kind of talking to himself (like narrating the makeup, or that one where he was describing his day, a few of the clips I've seen from those very relaxed bedside live videos) he just has this soft soothing voice and I really like it. It's deeper but not super deep, it's just... repeating myself, but soothing. I could listen to this guy read the phone book.

I like how Finn sounds too, but it's def not as captivating as Noah to me, though I like the way he sometimes slips into an odd pronunciation that sounds sooo Canadian but his accent is not as strong as others I've heard. I'm really into accents of all types and the variations of how people talk. Finn just sounds interesting, so it's compelling, but in a different way to me.

Because I'm incapable of not, gotta talk up 💙 because this is actually super relevant, for those who follow the lore. Yes, I sat there like a creep waiting for the hot guy at the party wake up, but I partially stuck around all night because I wanted to keep listening to him talk...

[anonil88]

Malcolm and Marie live blog

I don't usually do liveblogs for movies but yea.

Spoilers ahead!!

I love that its modern timed but very 70s stylized.

A tune indeed.

When you are high and drunk on success and

How the white critic reacts is why I feel like gatekeeping my scripts. At the same time some things I do make are about race or involve.

Marie sitting on the patio smoking is a mood whenever men are talking.

So he's pretentious and unaware.

Whoever chose the music for this, I feel like we would be Spotify mutuals.

Can this nigga stop pacing.

Also can he stop talking;

Marie is so tired and unimpressed.

Also little booties matter and are to be bitten.

Oooo the tension and the jazz.

Title Card over mac and cheese.

Shitty boxes mac and cheese but still mac and cheese.

Tbh i always wonder if spouses/significant others get upset when their spouses don't acknowledge them during speeches.

John sounds so much like his dad but I really hope his acting style differs from his dad a lot.

Guilty confession?

He did not profit off of his partners backstory and then not even acknowledge her.....I.....

If that ever happened to me catch me cussing my partner out during the beginning credits, the end credits, in the car, and at home.

GASLIGHTER!

The way I'm excited for Zendaya to give me some, oooo can she work with Regina King. Please on my knees I pray.

Um no that's not your job to coddle your lead.

He's a dick and the type of dick who makes himself look like a good person around other people.

If Sam Levinson is trying to make his viewers more of misandrist, it's working.

I feel like Marie has her flaws probably a lot of them and we will surely see as this continues, but Malcolm needs to learn how to apologize sincerely.

70s vibes! 70s vibes!

Them kissing and talking about criticism and dreams makes me miss a partner. A partner that I've had and haven't had.

Women really are behind every great man.

Yea sir you fucked a happy moment.

Oh visual allegories for looking in from the outside and cat and mouse chasing and looking from the outside in.

She's saying she doesn't feel noticed by you.

Gas lighter :0 he called her an emotional support dog, bruh.

I would LOVE to co-write or take a writing class held by Sam Levinson. The fights i write are very much in this same realm of reflection and anger and monologue.

Sam.....sam.....are all the sides inside of you doing okay sir?

The ugly side of dating and being in a relationship with someone who struggles with their own demons.

Honestly I could close my eyes and listen to this script being read without seeing these characters visually. Just close my eyes and get a sense of these characters like it was a radio story.

Oh. Oh this is a new wheelhouse of Zendaya acting; a different voice is like breaking through here and her expressions aren't the same we are used to. You can literally hear another character in there....hmm.

Mans is outside really fighting with his invisible demons lmfao.

Selfish ass, how after everything she said you came out of it thinking about your own craft and self instead of how you hurt her.

So she's conditional.

Me: did sam (a white man) say nigga this many times in his script or are the actors adding their own inflections. Not just the lingo used but the topic of race and directing etc. being written by a white writer about black characters is always gonna be a critique when you're writer is a white person.

Alexa play Broken Girls by Saba

He is so hurtful.

A clown nigga a clown look in the fucking mirror you bozo head ass looking like you need some Mehron clown white and a size 16 in clown shoes.

John is doing a really swell performance and reading of these lines.

He is reading her for her insecurities by bringing up his experiences with other women and that.....is yikes.

Arguments can get messy like this in real life but it takes a lot of maturity and control to either not let it get to this point or have a healthy conversation afterwards.

This film is really shot on some very crisp lenses.

They sitting there like 🚬🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️.

Leftover Mac and Cheese and unfinished cigarettes.

The nyt etc. pay walls are so annoying, but there is a work around look at the articles on incognito or add a period at the end of the url.

He sounds like his daddy so much here, weird, this is the only part I'm eh on the dialogue it feels real but a bit out of pace in how they are bouncing off one another.

Nail scissors? So the end is not the only part he based off of Marie. 🙄

ITS A GOOD REVIEW YOU DINGUS but also its a full review they are going to critique things. She isn't wrong though he did profit off of a woman's story that was not his own to profit from.

Yes Malcolm because unfortunately all marginalized people look through a lens of life that is inherently political because of the world they live in.

He is so mad and upset and had a lot on his chest. But I think he Malcolm and Sam are talking about something thats an issue and a non issue. Being critiqued for you art is hard but also Malcolm is not super self aware. He's like a stand in figure of for example rich depop sellers who wanna be oppressed so badly they yell at others instead of examining their own personal behaviors and ethics.

Oh Marie, when you know the spark is gone and you pick fights because.

He ain't even ask her to read?

One critic I have for most of hollywood actors is they learn their cry and that is it. A change from this is Margot Robbie, I adore her fluctuations of crying being similar but the crying is carried differently for each character. If I had to say any actor that does a cry scene amazing its this woman right here (Amy Adams)

You stole her story from her and gave it away, she has a right to be upset and angry and a rubber band ball of emotions.

Citizen Kane, not the cinematography, but the story is it even that good? (Unpopular opinion but meh, maybe in my rewatch it will be better.)

But that is what people want authenticity and whatever authenticity means to them. What is real for one is false for another.

To be honest look at the criticism of Euphoria, well earned, but a lot of people were like this isn't real even though he literally wrote about his own life. People said it was inauthentic like....wtf.

Ahh the smoking is just a habit, he quit and she didn't.

CAST ZENDAYA IN A HORROR MOVIE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING. Get Lupita and Zendaya and some more black actors preferably less known ones in a horror movie. One with a interesting script and story, directed by Regina King. Please and thankyou.

I love Marie yep that was amazing.

Behind every great man is a greater woman, one that deserves her credit for how she has stood behind. I wonder the stories of those women, what they have sacrificed or not sacrificed. Their thoughts and feelings when the world is surrounding their partner and views them as a plus one. (I'd write a short script about this but I think do I have the time, can I, or am I equipped ?)

He is a shitty person for bringing up his exes, like she even said I don't wanna know any of that.

Imagine being on anti depressents and rarely having a sex drive and then when you do your partner starts talking about their exes and tearing you apart for all your faults.

I love when you see peaks of Zendaya's cadence in roles.

Tension, what if's and he didn't even bring her up in his speech.

Marie to herself and the audience:

He is not afraid that he will loose her but as my character says in my unreleased story, "i can't wait til you give me a fucking reason to leave your ass." Malcolm expects everything in order for not even doing the bare minimum and she is only asking him for something as simple as consideration. She just wants him to be considerate. He wants to get married and considers their relationship like rolling down a hill at full speed and he cannot apologize, he cannot be considerate, and he cannot admit his wrongs. He can only offer her I love yous that he probably does mean but he does not back up outside of what he's done for her in the past. The past which was more of her experience than his and he sees his part in it as a burden. He doesn't use his own vantage point of the past to further his career he uses her. He does all of these things without a real apology or thankyou because he is not afraid to loose her.

The restrictions of quarantine and the panorama have made Sam's writing very no frills. I wonder how other films from other directors and writers that are filmed in small contained crews like this will be structured. But this was a very good movie gonna add to my letter box 3.3-3.5

Oh shit this is my song,

Ratings/overall thoughts:

Script is like a C+, B- : I could go into my heavier big brain thoughts on the script but I don't feel like it. You catch hints of it above it centers conversation on race and privilege, mainly the writers and questions i have that won't be answered but Sam did make me grow disdain for Malcolm over a short time. Which is sometimes hard to do because im one sympathetic person but the sympathy i have for Malcolm is at 0. Maybe a 2 at some scenes but then it quickly goes back to 0. Some parts of the dialogue miss the mark or hit the are off balanced. While some of it like Malcolm's bathroom speech albeit mean is really strong or their conversation when he comes back from peeing really shines for me.

Performances: B+ to A- because they carried the script further than it could of gone with less talented actors. The monologues do well to showcase their current skill levels which are already high af and leave room for anticipation in where these actors go next.

Zendaya holding a knife: A+ with a gold star. That switch on and off and on is delectable.

John being a shitty boyfriend but following Marie like a lost puppy: B+ with a good job written at the bottom of the paper, Malcolm being nervous a frantic dialed up with more realistic nervousness would have sold me completely on Malcolm's anxious waiting.

Cinematography: A and a participation award.

The mac and cheese: A+ for the easy mac. Wish it was like Annie's or Velveeta.

Cigarettes: Participation award and their picture hung up for student of the month. Why the grill lighter? Everytime Malcolm opened up his mouth Marie was like sparks fly.

The music: A++ with a prize. Whoever picked the music probably makes good Spotify playlists.

[stopeatingwhales]

vinyl searching (pt. 1) x graham coxon

okok i'm so sorry i haven't posted in such a long amount of time, but i'm back! (and hopefully for much longer this time haha). this was requested to me a very long time ago and i fell in love with the entire concept immediately - i'm sorry it took so unbelievably long to post it!! i might make a second part to this as i felt like i haven’t properly put the story to an end so look out for that!

Pairing: 1999 graham coxon x reader

Warnings: nothing!

Word count: 3.421

part two

Requested by anon (I’m so sorry this is so late) x

༉‧₊˚✧

Cutting open my last box of new vinyl, I quickly scanned through the contents, figuring out what genres it had consisted of. I discovered a brimmed box of popular 80s vinyls ready to be organised as I allowed my nimble finger to slowly caress every bump that was conveyed whilst it went through every single record. Working in a record shop was often tiring due to the amount of physical labour you have to commit to doing (it really takes a toll on your back sometimes), but it overall was a magical experience, with a lot of perks: free vinyls every once in a while, the ability to snatch a first copy of a highly anticipated album before it got sold out, and ultimately being able to be surrounded by art constantly. It was a genuine blessing to be able to work in a shop that abides and requires your whole passion, because it can never go to waste. What was beautiful about music was that, regardless of personality, fashion or who you genuinely were, everyone can connect to some form of it, whether it be rock, pop, hip/hop, rap, anything. A simple strum of a guitar or mumble of a lyric can manipulate one’s mind so diligently that you become so enthralled by that rhythm to the point it consumes and dictates your entire outlook on existentialism and surroundings of life. You are free to interpret what you like from either lyrics, melodies or even music videos; music is there for one form a bonding with it, not to be told specifically what this or that means, otherwise it loses its enchanting wizardry. Unsurprisingly, you are never able to free yourself from the affiliation that you receive from music, as it is infinite, absolute, limitless without end. Every day, every hour, every minute, there is either a small group, or just one person, attempting to create melodies and cadences that can resonate with people for the rest of their lives - and once they’ve cracked that specific coding, that in which takes overwhelming amounts of dedication, you have created something that is unforgettable to maybe a nation, or a couple, or just one single person. Regardless of the amount, with such ability, you carry the ultimate power that no grade, mark or report card, can ever prove to show. 

Exhaling, I began to stock up the few crates that were beginning to gain empty space in between the few vinyls that embraced them. Attempting to organise them as quickly as I could, I hummed along to the soft music that was escaping out of the radio. Usually, during the day, there wouldn’t be much activity in the store, so having to care for the place by myself wasn’t something out of the ordinary. The shop tended to be more of a second home to me; it never became excessively stressful, and being able to conversate with customers about opinions on specific albums or ‘which album by this or that artist is their best?’ was always an enjoyable part of the day as it simply felt as if it was a random conversation instigated in a bar. Almost as if you’re discoursing with a long lost friend; you gain this sort of connection between specific albums that both mean something to you, and despite the fact that it could mean completely opposing ideas, you were both able to share that connection the music was able to provoke. The shop was moderately small, with 6 rows of 5 crates (two on either side of the wall) aligned neatly, three quarters of a metre separating each in order to allow those to walk around. Having the space quite compact yet overflowing with all sorts of music was what made the space so enthralling. You could have your favourite album of all time sitting there, patiently lingering for your grasp and attraction to seep in, and eventually your purchase - all you seemingly had to do was rummage for it. That in specific is what makes record searching so entertaining, simply scanning through crates of records until you find something that appeals to you. And although you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, if a band has put enough effort in their covers, it would appeal to people more, and therefore allow more sales to seep through. Situated on the end of a high street which had countless amounts of civilians walking into multiple stores each day, only a few customers had come in every so often as it only sold vinyls, and CDs were becoming more of an attraction these days. It didn’t bother me all that much - I definitely preferred having only a few customers in and out every couple of hours in comparison to groups of screaming teenagers begging for the chance that I might have the Californication vinyl by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. 

Once I had completed distributing the vinyls to their designated boxes, I put the large - now empty - cardboard box behind the counter to place in the rubbish after my shift was over. As if on cue, I was met with the light ringing sounds that escaped from the bell at the top of the clear glass door, indicating that someone had arrived in the shop. Swiftly turning my head to figure out who it was, I was met with the sight of Graham Coxon, a usual customer, and an amazing lead guitarist in one of the most known bands in Britain as of this moment due to their latest album titled 13, Blur. News had surfaced that the band were having troubles between each other, and it became apparent that Graham hadn’t played on the album that much. He looked a little scruffy, his short hair untidy but that didn’t make him look horrible, it suited him very much. There were small dark circles forming on his eyes, exposing ideations that he may not have slept, or been able to sleep, which played on my heart strings a little. Although he was a heart-throb of many young girls over the coming years, especially during the height of the Britpop era, he had the demeanor completely contrasting against those projected to the nation by his other bandmates. Graham was quiet, reticent, composed, and it was obvious that the entire Britpop era didn’t work to well for him - being put up against Oasis to fight for the supposed ‘king’ of a genre proved its mental strains on him, to the point he had began drinking to escape his struggles. Me and Graham had become quite good friends over the months that he had been visiting the store, so a shocked face and beg for an autograph was something that by no means would be happening in this given moment. I always felt that because of Graham’s restrictive attitude, it caused him to be quite secluded from maintaining a lot of friendships - although that may just be an assumption. “You alright?” I asked sweetly, putting on a soft smile as I made my way over to the counter. 

“Yeah, fine thanks. You?” He replied, exchanging the same smile which caused my heart to patter in an unsteady rhythm as he paced over to one of the crates, beginning his search for something new. Over time as mine and Graham’s friendship had bloomed, I felt myself forming a sort of tenderness for him. The way he stared at the ground whilst speaking to someone; the way he ruffled through his dark coloured hair ever so often; the way he bit his lip when conflicted against what album he should buy, were all things that I had taken into note after I had caught my eyes staring at him repeatedly, every single time he had entered the shop. And of course, he was immensely good looking, which only added to the long list of things that made me so captivated by his presence. Sometimes he would meet my eyes, to which I would instantly look away, hot flushes forming on both my cheeks over the sudden embarrassment I would receive from being caught admiring someone. Then again, would you not continue to stare at someone who carried an undeniable amount of beauty, that they were so oblivious to understanding that they had?

“I’m alright, we’ve got a couple new 80s records in the crate over there if you’re interested.” I said, exiting the counter as my finger pointed towards the freshly updated crate. Whenever Graham had come into the shop, he tended to spend a good chunk of his time in here, which made me almost addicted to his presence there constantly. We would talk about a lot of things, bridging from best albums of specific decades, to what our favorite candy was. It was a joyful experience, talking to someone that you would have seemingly looked up to for such a long period of time, watching them grow musically, but also physically. In ‘91, all the boys from Blur had charmed themselves with tattered bowl-cuts, which indirectly emphasised their innocent-yet-psychedelic look. Now, his hair was in a much different state, almost completely short yet there was still a small chunk of hair covering his forehead. I much preferred this look of his, though. He looked mature, and pairing with his personality that I have come to be somewhat close with, it boosted his attractiveness. Whenever he left the shop, I would be accompanied with such boredom and sadness right afterwards. I seemingly wanted him here, all the time, adding to the fondness that I had formed for him. 

Shifting his gaze to interlock eyes with mine, I felt my heart begin to form into the same unsteady pattern it composed when he had reciprocated my smile. “I’ve pretty much listened to everything that had appealed to me from that decade, it was when I was growing up you know.” He chuckled, which caused my cheeks to heat up a little at the sound of his lovely laugh that I sadly didn’t hear so often than I would’ve liked. 

“Well, what have you been coming in here to search for then?” I questioned, slowly making my way to stand next to him as I analysed his actions, his index finger grazing over each album name, mirroring how I was earlier when scanning through the vinyls I needed to unpack. I was able to gain a whiff of his aroma standing near him - he smelled like cigarettes and cologne, a combination that when mixed would sound quite disgusting, but they somehow complimented each other. I attempted to edge my body closer to his, to take a greater look at what exactly he was doing, without it coming across as suggestive. I would have no courage to do something that evocative, anyways.

I allowed my arm to rest on the other crates as my hand held my face. I felt Graham’s stare switch from the vinyls to quickly take a look at me, noticing my new positioning. A very short silence was shared between the pair of us, almost as if Graham was trying to find the right words to say, whilst the music from the radio had continued on playing. “Not too sure, just want to find something to listen to,” he began, slowly trailing off his sentence as he pulled a record out and examined its cover. “I’ve worn out all of my records at this point so I’m practically desperate for something else.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place!” I grinned, making eye contact with him for a short second, before switching to look at the album he was looking at. He was holding up Pavement’s 1997 album, Brighten the Corners. The cover was quite colourful and artsy, almost as if it had come straight out of a cartoon. “Play that on the record player, see if you like it.” 

Moving over to the record player that was situated by the cashier, he took the record out of its sleeve, placing it on the turntable as carefully as possible. I turned my body around to watch him place the stylus on the grooves of the record, my body fixated in place. Every so often I would glance at the walls of the shop, which were decorated messily with band posters and tour-dates of multiple bands that you were able to purchase in-store. Although it was untidy, it added to the sensation of music; you don’t need to be the smartest, the most organised, the most put-together person in order to make an amazing album. All you could have is three chords that you are unaware of the names, and you’ve got a song. The Sex Pistols done it, and the message they portrayed was that no matter who you are, you can make music. It’s universal. Sometimes my gaze shifted to look through the window that portrayed the cars passing down the road, with the occasional person walking past. The comparison of outside, where it professedly looked very dull and unhappy, and the liveliness of such a small shop, is what proves the power of music. Life is tedious without some colour in it. Regardless of anything though, my eyes would always trail back to Graham, whose back was resting on the counter where the cashier was, intently listening to the music draining from the turntable. The sweet sounds of pop songs that were once splashing out of the radio were now inaudible; the record player emitted music that was much louder, so it was now the only thing you could hear inside the closed space. By the look of Graham’s expression it seemed that his desperation to listen to something new was much needed than I had come to expect; it was almost as if he depended on the new music to soothe him away from whatever thoughts, or distressing moods that were battling his mind. 

Once the song had ended, I decided to ask for his opinion on it. “What do you think?” 

I watched him intently as his eyes fluttered back open, examining his facial features slightly. Our eyes had met, and they stayed fixed in place as I began admiring his honey-like orbs. “It was good, might as well get it to hear the rest of the album.” He answered, sighing slightly at the end of his sentence. It was quite obvious, to me, that he had been going through something that he wasn’t able to quite mention or bring up to anyone - especially me, as I am only just a worker he knew quite well inside a record shop. It enthralled me slightly, how mysterious he was, although he was completely projected to the limelight of Top Of The Pops and many interviews countless amounts of times over the years. The thought of asking him how he was always played in my mind; his reaction however, frightened me to the point of me avoiding the topic. I didn’t want to come across as patronising, I simply cared for him, for someone I didn’t even know all that well, too much. 

Graham placed the vinyl back into its sleeve gently, and then made his way to where he previously stood - next to me. Although our bodies weren’t touching, I felt as if my skin was entering the gates of hell due to the amount of heat that had been emitting from my skin. He began looking through the same vinyl crate that he did before, whilst my eyes inspected his hands, allowing my thoughts to randomly drift on the feeling of his hand in mine. How soft his palm may feel, how warm it would be - like a hug from a loved one when you needed it most, their touch, caressing, having so much impact that it completely changes your entire mood for a short period of time. How they could perfectly merge together, his and mine. Or not, though either way it would release a sensation of my teenage-girl like self, squealing inside over the fact that a boy that I've seemingly fallen for is in grasp of my palm. I doubt that he was feeling the same things that I was, but in moments so silent but loud, exactly like this one, it was all I could muster a thought about. “You have lovely eyes.” 

I noticed Graham pause in his movements once those accidental words slipped off my mouth. Mentally cursing myself, my gaze was fixed on him. The air was a little tense, the pit in my stomach completely empty from my unneeded slip-up of words. “Thank you…” He replied, shifting his gaze over to look at me. He seemed taken aback to my sudden compliment, which made me feel a little embarrassed, causing my cheeks to heat up slightly. “Yours are lovely too.”  

My heart fluttered slightly towards the compliment he passed back to me, my lip sinking into my teeth in anticipation towards where the conversation was headed. Graham’s awkward self carried on searching through vinyls, and began walking over to different crates in search for something else. I moved to position myself behind the till, where my gaze followed him as he preoccupied himself in the cover art of multiple vinyls he had taken out, admiring them or looking perplexed by them, then putting them back into their original place if they weren’t appealing to him. I began humming along to the new song that began playing on the radio, as I played with my fingers, deciding on forwarding the conversation to something else. “What are you up to this week?”

“Nothing much… I’m probably going to stay at home. There’s not much to do these days.” He answered, his eyes glued onto the vinyls he had now found. My heart sank after those words left his mouth, almost in pity for him - he didn’t seem like he was fully okay, then again no one is, but it came across as if he had been struggling quite a bit mentally and that he needed someone to be there for him, yet he didn’t know exactly how to ask for it, or maybe he felt cowardly to ask. He began to walk over to the cashier, instigating the fact that he had found the records he’s decided to buy - filling my stomach up in an unusual mix of sadness and anticipation. I wanted him to be here, all the time. 

“So I assume you’re not doing anything tonight?” I questioned, taking the vinyls from his hand in order to scan them and place in a bag. I avoided his stare whilst asking, though I could feel the burn of his eyes intently staring at every move I made. 

“Yeah, the most I’m going to do is probably listen to these vinyls at home.”

With the little amount of courage I had spared inside, I decided to take a big leap of my conscience and ask him a question he’s undoubtedly been asked so many times before. Lifting my gaze to connect eyes with him after I had finished neatly placing everything into a plastic bag, I handed the vinyls to him. “Do you want to go out tonight?”

“I mean I’d like to go out.” He responded, completely oblivious to what I was egging towards, which only bubbled the apprehension inside me even more. I began to second guess the idea of me asking him out to do something together.

“Graham.” I sternly responded, a hint of annoyance laced between my voice when I spoke his name. 

“What?” 

Sighing to myself, I realised that his oblivion wasn’t on purpose, which brought the same feeling of a sinking heart in my body. I came to realise that Graham had been so isolated, so deserted from society, that he was completely blind towards someone taking an interest in him. Inhaling sharply, I asked, with my sweetest smile. “Would you like to go out with me tonight?” 

Graham’s expression had completely changed from his delirium to shocked. His eyes widened, a reddish tint forming on his cheeks as his lip sank into his bottom teeth. A couple seconds were shared between us staring closely at each other's eyes, as I tried to decipher what was going through his mind. “I- Uh- Yes, sure.” 

The little stutter that rolled off his tongue warmed my heart as the beam on my face began to widen. I noticed a small smile starting to curve at the bottom of his lip. “That’ll be fifty pounds, please.”

[drewschermickblindone]

Drew Schermick Reviews:

Louis Gibbor & DJ JahBluez- The Supernatural Progression of the Boom Bap

  I have had the pleasure of being in the studio to witness the magic my two friends St.Louis Gibbor & DJ JahBluez can create.

After watching and listening to them do their thing, I can profess that they are indeed the real deal.  Gibbor is among not only one of Arizona's most passionate and creative MCs but a true force in all of underground West Coast hip-hop.

His lyrical style and song writing is, dare I say, avant garde in his delivery of raw and left field approach to rap.

Jah is one of the most seasoned and invested producers in all of hip-hop; his approach to beat making and song crafting is second to none.

His production keeps evolving and as I take notice of the vast list of artists he has collaborated with. His catalogue is intimidating.

When my friend asked me to have a listen and offer some critique of their new project, I was excited from the start.

So now we have for you:

The Supernatural Progression of the Boom Bap-

  Movement-

           The opening track Movement begins with some ethereal synths.

Gibbor enters the track with some smooth vocals speaking of and on the weight of the world and its effect on him and those closest to him.

The hook is Gibbor repeating "the movement" with a nice reverb/delay with Jah inserting a nice soulful sample that pairs with St. Louis's hook.

Jah's kick and snare plus hihats mingle well with his synth based melody, which complements gibbor and medusa's lyrics and vocals nicely.

Medusa, the undisputed goddess queen of underground hip-hop, is so elegant and her contribution to this track only strengthens its resolve of subject matter and musical vision.

Gibbor ends the track with some abstract poetry about WOMEN, race, melanin, sex, love, and man's conflict with female interactions.

Jah brings in an interesting distorted clapping type sample at the end that wraps up the track with some mesmerizing production.

A truly beautiful track and a perfect way to kick off the record.

 Homesick-

           Jah's whirly strings and heavy snare begin the track, with Gibbor coming to give the DJ his props before talking about going back home to his people back in Cali. Gibbor proceeds to flow faster and demonstrate his lyrical velocity by telling a road trip story which flows into the lovely chorus where he pays homage to Albert Hammond's It Never Rains...

           While Jah brings in a beautiful female vocal sample, Gibbor raises his singing range as Jah brings in some dope biggie scratches.

           818 213 indeed.

  Scorpions' Kiss-          The vinyl crackle at the beginning of this track shifts my attention from Cali to the Middle East. Jah's production here is fine art.

                       The clarinet (woodwinds), flute, and boom bap drums emulate a type of Egyptian Noir drama score where the gods Gibbor, OHM & Myka9 come with so much heat

                       I feel as if I am in the desert on a tour to solve an ancient mystery.  Gibbor and Myka's styles mesh so well and Ohm's verse at first feels out of place and replicable, but on a second listen, I feel as if his contribution balances out their more singsong approach with his AOTAesque hard raps that complement the scene and cinematic style.

           The takeaway message of this track seems to be about cherishing the moments in time that make up our narrative and legend, overcoming our fears, and enduring.

           This is like an extraordinary film in music/song form, an epic track that deserves much attention and acclaim.

 Darling Carla-

 The strings and synths make one feel as if something is lurking around the corner.

Gibbor comes in stripped down speaking poetically about a woman/wife.

Gibbor seems to get personal and to speak tragically and romantically about a magical love and time lost.  

           I can relate and sympathize with track on a personal level, as I have had similar failed relationships that I can attribute to my brokenness.

           Hurt people hurt people; this cliché explains the last verse of the track where he opens up with a vulnerability rarely seen/scene in hip-hop.

             I am captivated and deeply touched by this one.

  This That-

Jah's sped up cuts that open and come in and out of this track are dope and fun laying the foundation for this banger.

Tomeicko kicks off the first verse with some interesting cadence and delivery. Her content is a bit dry. Some battle /semi-conscious raps work for this more straightforward track.

Volume 10 second verse is what we all would expect, respect, and admire from the West Coast legend. Gibbor's final verse, in my humble opinion, eclipses the first two verses.

I am most enthralled and into the beat and production on this track. Jah creates something fresh yet oddly reminiscent of the 1990s; it works and this song acts as a nice reprieve after the serious and heartbreaking feel of Darling Carla, thus moving the album forward in a cohesive placement.

  Play times over-

Play times is a haunting tune where Gibbor explores some horrorcore and social-political type verses.  

Despite his dark delivery and subject, his vocal stylings are very polished and he is clearly preaching what he truly believes, questioning our exploitations and personal beliefs that shape our society.

He delves into some religious rhetoric and critique which may be triggering for some, or for those with open minds, a lot of content to digest and ask yourself about; your own values and idealizations come into question.

Overall, a very deep, debating, thought provoking, and brave track that is a possible nod to Revelations?

  PSA12-

 Named by JahBluez. Public Service Announcement 12. The 12 has multiple meanings to him but he is primarily speaking on the Technic 1200 turntable.

My roommates The Adepts shine on this dope cut.

Dapper Dan kicks things off rhyming about graff and the failings of society.

Midknight comes straight in after Dap with some more social commentary followed by a nice vocal sample that transitions the track to Gibbor's world, where he continues to touch on the state of the nation with a shout-out out to his higher power; his delivery here is exceptional.

OHM follows, dropping more knowledge followed by a sick turntable demonstration by Blesd1.

Ohm comes back in again giving props to the Shapeshifters and co.

Overall, it’s a decent track that keeps the album flowing, and hearing my close homies get some shine on such an exceptional record brings me a smile.

  Give it your all-

 Gibbor goes all in speaking his truth over a dope beat with a nice conga bleed into the programmed drums complimented by a slick sample give it your all.

This song is inspiring and begs the listener to give 100% to all their endeavors

 The perfect insurgents-

Another track with Dapper Dan & ohm illuminating conspiracies and finding our purpose in the madness.

The production is solid but feels less inspired than the other songs on this album.

OHM comes with more social-political hip-hop. Ohm’s delivery on this verse is ill and noteworthy.

Gibbor’s chorus is for real and epic. Dan spits some misogyny/spiritual bars, almost contracting himself, but reeling himself back with an enlightened style that is cool as ice.

Gibbor's last verse comes also with more worldview commentary but starts to feel redundant after the last two tracks.

I'm trying to find more connection to the title referencing the insurgency and becoming radicalized and forging alliances against the evils of the world, but I think I can hear it subtly in this one.

  The Fraternity-

 Jah lays down some military type production with the drumline type beat and the trumpet sample. Jah's cuts between verses are really dope and adds dimension.

Mista Crane, my friend NOK, Embrae, and Gibbor all hold their weight on this gargantuan track. Nod your head to this banger where these heavyweight MCs illuminate the hypocrisy and failed political system, the negative forces that threaten our vision and drive us as artists and men bringing the fire to this standout track.

Gibbor’s finishes off the track with one of his finest verses on the album touching on spiritual revolution and those who are asleep at the wheel.  This one bangs and commands RESPECT.

  The Ghost-

 We are now at the final closing track titled "The Ghost"

Piano and horns float as Gibbor's poetic stylings have me in a trance.

He delves into the existential, self, and ego. Then, out of nowhere, he comes in with this Myka9esque hook featuring soulful, wild, quick, and exhilarating singing that finishes off the album on a poignant note.

A gorgeous whirlwind of a song and a perfect ending with Jah bringing in the wind. I love it.

 8/10

()()()()4/5 mics

 Drew Schermick 2021

[irandrura]

Now, just for fun, I’m going to list everyone I recruited and give some brief thoughts on each one. If I spend more time on a person, it’s because I found them more interesting, or did more supports, or the like.

I did go a bit overboard recruiting people, but I feel validated by that decision considering the number of people I might have had to kill otherwise. As it is I only had to kill two people I didn’t want to ��� Lorenz and Caspar; Linhardt also appeared but I was able to avoid him – and while I’m sad, especially since I should have gotten Caspar for the paralogue with Mercedes and the Death Knight, it could have been a lot worse.

I will, however, skip the four DLC kids, since apparently you need to start their supports in White Clouds, I missed them, and didn’t feel like going back. So I don’t have the content there.

Here we go:

Byleth: I covered some of my thoughts on him in the post on Jeralt. I wouldn’t say that I dislike Byleth as such, but because Byleth has no dialogue and has few definite character traits beyond “doesn’t show emotion much” and maybe “likes being a teacher”, there isn’t much to work with. I suppose I find Byleth a serviceable enough player avatar protagonist, but if I were writing fan fiction or anything, I think I would need to work hard to develop a memorable personality for Byleth. As it is, Byleth only works because you imagine yourself in his or her shoes.

Sothis: I was originally quite worried about Sothis, since I thought she might be too sexualised. Fire Emblem has a bit of a tradition of uncomfortable loli characters, but fortunately in the game itself Sothis was not that bad, and definitely walks back the creepiness level from someone like Nowi. Instead it felt a bit more like Byleth was playing the same role as Micaiah, with a child-like fragment of the goddess accompanying him. I suspect other routes do more with Sothis, though, because on this route, you could probably cut Sothis from the game entirely without losing much. Azure Moon seems to be the route that is least interested in the history of the goddess, so I should not judge too prematurely.

Dimitri: The hero of this route, even if he sometimes feels like an anti-hero, or even just a psychotic maniac we unfortunately have to deal with. Of the three house leaders, I think it’s fair to say that Dimitri looks the most like a traditional FE protagonist, but as it shakes out, he might be one of the least. He seems to be quite straitlaced, reliable, and even bland at the start, but a lot of that turns out to be a cover and he goes on a real emotional journey, I suspect to a much greater extent than the other two. I do think his emotional arc goes a bit too fast and the game should have spent more time on it, but it was still a good idea, and I genuinely appreciate just how messed up and traumatised Dimitri is. He has issues, he suffers, he runs off into the wilderness and talks to ghosts, but I like it. I feel like he validates the idea that it’s okay to not have everything together. For him, overcoming his demons was the real triumph, and defeating the Empire was just a coda.

Dedue: He reminds me quite a bit of the Tellius games, with their overall subtheme of selfless service and lord/vassal relationships. Like Dimitri, he has issues, but because he’s such a quiet and reserved person, it can be easy to miss them. I suspect he’s a very easy character to misinterpret as well, both IC and OOC, where the temptation for Westerners to interpret him in terms of contemporary racial politics is going to cause problems. But ultimately I quite liked him, and felt that his faithful service really ennobles the person he serves. My one concern or regret around Dedue is that he isn’t present during the period of Dimitri’s madness, so we never get to see how his dedication to his lord might be tested. Would he enable or even encourage Dimitri’s instability? On the other hand, it seems like the belief that Dedue was dead was a major contributor to Dimitri’s madness in the first place, so perhaps if he’d been around, he would have held his friend back from the brink.

Felix: I like that Felix never stops entirely being an asshole. As time goes by his abrasiveness seems less important, and you get a better understanding of why he feels the way he does, but he’s still a bit of a jerk even to the very end, and that’s part of who he is. I also appreciate that he plays a useful role in being the only Blue Lion who actively dislikes knights and chivalry, so he’s important for the way he can provoke the others into justifying themselves. After all, the Blue Lions are a bit of a knight fan club, and he provides some contrast. Nonetheless, for all his scowling, he is a faithful retainer and can be relied on.

Ashe: He’s just a sweetheart, really. A commoner background contrasts nicely with the others, his lockpicking skill is useful, and he’s just generally very genuine and kind. Plus his appearance and voice-acting sell that he’s a bit younger than the others and on the callow side. I feel like he’s one of the characters who grows most in overall maturity, and his journey towards knighthood is probably the longest. He was a character I relied on a lot and I never got tired of him taking down the boss with a single arrow from halfway across the map. In my playthrough he ended up together with Petra and I am sure the knightly order they create will go on to be fantastic.

Sylvain: I’m a little confused by Sylvain. Early on it seems like he irrepressibly flirts with every girl he sees and always gets dumped, but later on, in part two, he clarifies that girls constantly flirt with him because they want to marry into a bloodline with a crest. It seems like it can’t be both ways? I suppose the best reading might be that Sylvain constantly flirts with strangers, who don’t know his heritage or his crest, while rejecting advances from people who do know about them, because what he really wants is someone who loves him as a person, not as a mere opportunity to increase in social status. For someone who seems so cheery and laid-back on the outside, he actually has some real problems beneath it all. That said, at times I was a bit suspicious of the translation: there are a few opportunities to call him a jerk, and I wonder if those were added, since otherwise his flirting seems like it’s presented as harmless, fun, or even a charming character quirk.

Mercedes: I didn’t think a whole lot of Mercedes at first: the caring healer character appears in a lot of FE games, she didn’t seem to put much of a twist on it, and I found her voice acting a little stilted at first. I suppose, to be fair, a soon-to-be-ordained friend of mine has a similar cadence, so it’s possible, but it did throw me off a little. For the most part I found Mercedes very reliable and my primary healer/mage, but I think a more full judgement of her character will need to wait until I do her paralogue with Caspar. Her family background and relationship with the Death Knight seem key to understanding her.

Annette: The translators and voice actor were clearly having fun with her dorky improvised songs, and I love them. They’re great. That said, Annette didn’t really come alive for me as a character until she got to interact with Gilbert. He’s probably a more interesting character than she is, really, but their relationship is what makes them both start to stand out. Overall I find her likeable and reliable, but, Gilbert aside, not one of the most fascinating characters on the roster.

Ingrid: Again, a quite straightforward character in many ways. She wants to be a knight. She trains hard. She becomes a knight. Okay. I did find it a bit odd that even at the end of the game she still talks about wanting to be a knight, even though she’s spent the last few missions entirely in the Falcon Knight and Holy Knight classes, has battled across the continent at the side of her liege, and has defeated countless enemy champions. Eventually I wanted to ask her, “What more could you possibly need to do before you’re a knight?” There is some drama around marriage and social expectations for her as well, and it surprised me that it took her so long to figure out that she could be a knight and serve her family. Her family don’t want a political alliance through marriage or anything: it is specifically money and resources that they need. Knighthood seems like a career that can bring you great wealth – plunder, ransoms, tournament rewards, etc. – so it seems like knighthood, no less than marriage to a wealthy noble after a crest, could be a path to restoring her family’s fortunes. (Also, she was the one I S-supported, so I suppose the marriage plan worked out anyway. *shrug*)

Ferdinand: Everything about him is laser-focused on this question of, “What is nobility?” At times it got a bit tedious, and I wanted him to just shut up about being a noble for five minutes. However, while he laid it on a bit thick sometimes, what I like about him is the way that his character development seems like it could really change based on which route he ends up in. After Edelgard declares war and dispossesses his father, he has a really interesting choice to make: take up arms against her and join the resistance, or accept her offer of rank and power in the Empire. Since I recruited him at the very last minute, in the last month before the assault on the monastery, I might have imagined him struggling with that choice, and I like to picture him debating the importance of visible rank and status to the nobility that he tries so hard to achieve. I could easily imagine him going either way on that choice, believing in Edelgard’s vision or passionately warring against it, and that to me made him much more interesting.

Bernadetta: Her voice actor was clearly having a ton of fun. The energy she brought to the role made the character very entertaining to listen to. That said, I feel bad for her: her extreme social anxiety is sometimes played for laughs, but knowing that it’s the result of an abusive childhood makes it quite a bit less funny. Oddly my favourite support with her was Bernadetta/Sylvain, mainly because of the supports that I saw, he was the only one who made a serious attempt to respect her boundaries and to communicate with her in a way she would find comfortable. Seriously, writing her a letter and tucking it into a book was quite clever and sensitive of him... even if he ruined it by just walking up afterwards and saying hello.

Dorothea: Judging from the online stats the game showed on loading screens, Dorothea must be one of the most popular characters in the game, and was deployed almost every mission. This makes it a bit awkward that I never really deployed her at all, or focused much on her. I don’t have anything against her, and she seems interesting enough, but I suppose I already had enough mages and other people were higher priority. Oh dear. Maybe next time. She seems to be a popular choice for the dancer class, but since I made Marianne my dancer…

Petra: On the other hand, I did like Petra a lot, built her as an assassin, and got a lot of use from her. I wonder what her odd speech pattern is in Japanese? Looks like in Japanese she misunderstands idioms, rather than misuses the present continuous tense. At any rate, I really like the role Petra plays in worldbuilding, since her status as an outsider taken to the empire to be educated as a hostage serves to characterise both Brigid and the empire itself. Like Ferdinand, I also think she’s in a fascinating position where she could plausibly end up either pro- or anti-empire. I enjoyed being able to fight for freedom and self-determination, but I could also see her buying into Edelgard’s vision of a reformed empire. That sort of flexibility seems really valuable in a game with different routes like this.

Raphael: Unfortunately another character I recruited only at the last minute and didn’t get to spend that much time with. The fact that I avoided brawlers probably didn’t help. However, from what I did see, I liked that they included a character who genuinely struggles with his studies, and I also thought it interesting that he presents yet another character who wants to be a knight, but for a totally different reason. Ashe has a romantic view of knighthood; Ingrid has a relatively romantic view as well but also thinks of fighting for her ideals; Felix outright hates knighthood and chivalry as a bunch of lies. In contrast, Raphael’s pragmatism is a little refreshing. He just wants to support his family, given his strength fighting seems like a good way to do it, and knighthood promises more stability than mercenary work. Good for him.

Ignatz: And yet another character thinking about knighthood, albeit again for a different reason. He doesn’t want to be a knight as such, but has to because it’s his duty. At times even I got a bit sick of the game constantly talking about knighthood, but the wide range of opinions on it was definitely a good thing. Alas, all Ignatz wants to do is paint and worship the goddess. Sadly I used Ashe as my main archer, so I didn’t see as much of Ignatz as I might have liked. Another playthrough, then.

Lysithea: See above, really. I get the impression she’s a quite popular character, but as with Dorothea, I already had a few mages and didn’t have much need for her. I’m guessing she would have a lot more importance on a route where her backstory with what are presumably creepy Slitherer magical experiments is more relevant? As it is, sorry, I just didn’t see that much. Young, likes sweets, ambitious in order to help her family because she hasn’t got long to live… but that’s about all I got.

Marianne: On the other hand, I did use Marianne quite extensively. She was my backup healer after Mercedes, and she was my dancer, so she was very useful. (Some might say it was cruel to make her dance in public: I thought it might help build her confidence!) Her paralogue also stood out to me as one of the most interesting and fun. At first I thought her self-loathing might be irrational or a symptom of depression, but it turns out that she actually has quite an understandable reason for thinking that she’s awful and that no one should  ever get close to her. Bringing peace to her ancestor and giving her the opportunity to increase her confidence and bloom as a person was very heartwarming. Her character arc gave me some WAFFy feelings, and I enjoy that sometimes.

Leonie: It’s weird to me that a character defined by her relationship with Jeralt, the player’s father, is so easy to miss recruiting. Nonetheless I did pick her up, because I love cavaliers and use far too many of them. Still, most of the other cavaliers were nobles, which made Leonie’s role as a mercenary knight a nice change. I think it might have worked better, though, if I’d known a bit more about the role of mercenaries in Fódlan. Are there mercenary companies? How do they usually find work? It would have been nice to know a bit more about the world that Byleth supposedly comes from, and which Leonie is so keen to break into.

Seteth: I was not a big fan of Seteth at first, but he grew on me, which surprises me particularly since I was on a route that never actually explains what his deal is. I feel like every long-term series fan, on meeting Seteth and Flayn, must have gone “oh they’re dragons”, because they fit that archetype just so closely, but somehow I got through the entire arc without anyone figuring it out. Nonetheless, while he starts off as quite suspicious of you, and even hostile, I enjoyed how further supports gradually humanised him. Seteth/Felix or Seteth/Ingrid, for instance, stood out to me as nice: the older man going out of his way to give practical advice to someone who’s still sorting himself or herself out. He’s a good mentor. I know often the thing people remember about Fire Emblem is the young protagonists and the shipping and so on, but sometimes it’s the older, more mature characters that I find the most interesting.

Flayn: In contrast, I did not find Flayn as interesting as Seteth. She’s a nice enough person, and the enthusiasm of the Flayn/Dedue support was cute, but ultimately I didn’t see that much of her. Mercedes and Marianne were my primary healers, and Byleth had a high Faith skill as well, so I didn’t need another one and didn’t take her along that often. I hope there are more depths, because as it is, I wasn’t that struck by her.

Hanneman: Another character I generally did not take along, so most of what I learned about Hanneman was around crests and his scientific curiosity. I think Hanneman supports my previous speculation that Fódlan might be starting on an intellectual renaissance at the time of the game. He is the Father of Crestology, even though crests have been known for a thousand years. That suggests that the organised, academic study of such matters is in its infancy.

Manuela: Again, not someone I looked at too closely, and her most obvious character trait, her romantic loneliness, could be a little bit cringeworthy at times. I would have to do more supports and look more closely at her to form a stronger opinion. The parts that I found most interesting with regard to her were about her history with the opera. Her relationship with Dorothea seems like it might reveal some more about both of them, but alas I didn’t use each character much.

Gilbert: On the other hand, I did use Gilbert quite a lot, since Dedue went missing for a while and I needed a substitute tank. Gilbert is clearly a loyal man who has suffered an immense amount, especially under the weight of guilt and self-doubt. It’s striking that he abandoned his family and homeland and fled to the church in order to assuage the weight of guilt he felt for the king’s death; but in the end the separation from his family only intensified feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Nonetheless, despite being a man who’s really screwed quite a lot up, he stoically tries to coordinate the Faerghus war effort, even when Dimitri is in his worst state. I was very glad to eventually get the Annette/Gilbert paired ending, as a valuable reminder that even at Gilbert’s age, it is possible to start healing and putting your life back together.

Alois: I really only got the Byleth support with Alois, so I don’t have that much to say. His cheery optimism is a nice change after a lot of the other faculty and knights are either serious or sad, and I enjoy horrible puns as much as the next man, but I think I need to see more.

Catherine: Speaking of cheery knights, Catherine’s rough-and-tumble confidence is also pretty appealing. Unlike the students, Catherine is strong and she knows that she’s strong, with a confidence that comes of years of fighting. What I saw of her personality I generally liked, and I learned a bit about her history, but I’m going to hold off on any further comments until I get some more context for her and Rhea. She is obviously incredibly devoted to the archbishop who saved her life, and in some ways seems to have reinvented her life from who she was before (cf. Dedue, the loyal service theme again), but I think I should need to see a route where Rhea plays a larger role before I come to conclusions.

Shamir: I like Shamir quite a lot, and she might be my favourite of the knights, even though she doesn’t have much to do with the actual plot. Her outsider status is the most striking thing about her: unlike pretty much everyone else, she has no personal investment in Fódlan or its politics, which frees her to focus on the needs of the moment. I would like to know a bit more about Dagda and Brigid, to be honest, but I suspect I’ve seen all there is to see already...

Cyril: Unfortunately I never used him. I can tell that he’s the Est of the game, a young character who probably has excellent growths and can excel in any class, but my roster felt pretty complete by the time I got him, he didn’t seem like he had interesting relationships with other characters that I might want to explore, and he’s so young that I feel uncomfortable making him a soldier. I can completely accept that there might be really good material around him, perhaps especially on the Golden Deer route where Almyra might come up, but as it is I don’t know any of it.

Anna: Yep, she’s Anna. Not much to say. Anna is always the same character, and Fódlan’s Anna doesn’t seem particularly special or unique.

 …phew, that took much longer than I thought. These games and their giant casts, man.

[theharellan]

Part three to this post, I had to put it in a new one because with the three together it was getting very long.

trigger warning for: suicidal thoughts

Solas’ cadence and body language in the scene where he returns to Skyhold reads as so tired. Like, just exhausted.

I’m paraphrasing here, but: “I guess I owe Varric an ale, I wasn’t sure you were coming back.” This middle response the Inquisitor can take reads as kind of callous considering what Solas just went through, like either they and Varric had a bet on if Solas would come back or they’re joking about having a bet. The response gets worse when I think about my headcanons, but even just taking canon into account betting on the circumstances of a friend who just lost a loved one is kind of a dick move. Like, not purple Hawke levels, but up there.

I wrote about this just a couple weeks ago, but in the interest of having all of this in one post I’ll say it again here: Solas is gone from the Inquisition at least two weeks, the trip to the Exalted Plains takes that long, and he arrives after the Inquisitor. I’d say it’s likely more like three weeks before he returns.

During this time is inconsolable, far from the composed albeit tired person he presents when he arrives back at Skyhold. There’s no doubt in my mind that he wept openly about Wisdom’s death. Per my headcanons, they have known each other for millennia, before he was an evanuris or anyone of import, one of the first people to ever listen to him and one of his largest sources of inspiration throughout the ages. Losing it, especially to such violence, near destroys him.

If you pick that middle response, Solas will reply “for a short time, neither was I.” This doesn’t come off as particularly strange without context, but given context-- what? He remains with the Inquisition to heal the sky and find his orb, I doubt he would’ve defaulted to other options without seeing that one through, nor could I see him abandoning his plan. I generally interpret this as a vague allusion to Solas having suicidal thoughts during this period, it’s the only way I could see him considering not coming back. All the more with my Solas.

I’m so glad the Inquisitor gets the option to just ask “are you ok?” because tbh...... it’s a good question for him to hear. His reply is also telling, I wouldn’t call it a mask slip in this case as his comment about Halamshiral, but rather letting the Inquisitor in a little: “It hurts, it always does” rings with the same tune as his banter with Blackwall, where his history as a soldier shines through.

I want to talk a little about Wisdom and what little characterisation it has. If you read the codex entry you get about it, you find that it has been summoned once before. Solas says it would be glad to debate and talk without being bound, and this entry backs up that observation. It was glad to share knowledge without being forced to, and accepted a scholar’s lifework as gladly as it did a young boy’s stories about his mother. This reminds me of Solas and how he will tell stories about a matchmaking spirit with as much reverence as he does retellings of battles, and reinforces why Wisdom meant so much to him. In low-approval conversations Solas makes reference to people who have called him a madman for his beliefs, which likely includes everything from his insistence that spirits are people to his opposition to Elvhenan’s cruel excesses. What it means for Wisdom and Solas’ relationship in particular is that it encouraged questions and encouraged him with questions in return, even when he was young and his world was small and he had little to offer. Some of this is obviously headcanon/speculation/etc on my part, but I do wish that there was more Solas and Wisdom content out there, because if we take what little we know about Wisdom and everything we know about Solas, you can easily see why he loved it so and why its death might have stopped him completely in his tracks.

I think that finding that little wisp of what remains of Wisdom is ultimately what pushes him to press on, the thought that someday something good will be there again. That, and the thought that if he doesn’t press on this will happen again and again to other spirits as undeserving of that fate as Wisdom.

How this entire quest effects Solas and his relationship with the Inquisitor varies, I do think that Inquisitors who undercut him in moments mentioned above may receive less trust despite earning his friendship (he has loved worse people). Rather than speculate on it here I may talk about it on Thora sometime then reblog it here, as hers is one I can speculate on. Overall doing this for him does instill in him the weird thought that someone might actually want to have his back with no strings attached. Trusting them in this quest was difficult, I think asking for help and being shot down or humoured was what he feared, so an Inquisitor who takes his plight and grief seriously would both mean a lot and be intimidating to reflect upon when it was all over.

Some final notes that I neglected to mention in the first part:

Ian knows about Wisdom’s fate before anyone else. By that point he and Ian are sharing a bed and oftentimes dreams, which is the method Wisdom uses to call out to him. It’s a revealing moment for them, likely the first time Solas completely fails to contain his symptoms in front of Ian because it takes time for him to collect himself to ask the Inquisitor for a favour, and as noted above it doesn’t take long for him to get emotional about it. It changes their dynamic and while I can’t speak for how Ian would feel, for Solas it’s another step towards trusting Ian completely with himself and his heart. Knowing now that Ian has to see his own anxieties, but that he still listens and loves him, means a lot.

[interesting-blog-name]

“Indie Rock” MEGAREVIEW (Hippo Campus - Bashful Creatures/Bad Suns - Language & Perspective/COIN - How Will You Know If You Never Try)

“Indie rock” is a term I never understood. It obviously should be used to describe rock by independent bands, but what counts as independent anymore? Bands like Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse are categorized as “indie”, much like Mac DeMarco, and they have reached a point in their careers of worldwide fame, but they’re still considered “indie”, not because they record their music at home with a $15 mic, but because of their sound. It’s hard to describe, but it’s a light brand of rock that has undistorted guitars, pop structures, and something of a Summer vibe to them. I really don’t know how to technically describe indie rock as a genre, but I have yet to listen to an indie rock album, so I got three short albums from bands that my some of my friends listen to, all under the “indie” umbrella (according to Wikipedia), to see if I actually like the style.

 Hippo Campus – Bashful Creatures

It’s a solid EP. Not much more to say.

I really don’t know what to comment on in this, because I feel like the biggest problem with the “indie” “genre” is that the bands all sound the same, and for a 6-track EP, how much variety can you really ask for? Also considering this is their debut EP. The instrumentation is fine, especially the guitars, which I think really embody the whole summertime feel of the genre, and standout in almost all tracks here, and the singer’s voice is memorable enough, and doesn’t leave anything to be desired at any point. He’s also super hot The songwriting is that youthful, lovey dovey shit you’d hear in a teen romance movie (“Art school girl with ignorant bliss. Peace, weed, cocaine, and mushrooms and shit”) but it’s tolerable (except in Souls, that song’s chorus is a little too generic for me, I think; even though I like how the song starts kind of toned down and suddenly blows up). The closest the EP gets to having even the slightest bit of edge is on the title track, an anthem about not caring about what others think and being yourself, and Suicide Saturday, the biggest song in here, which talks about social suicide and college parties and all that. Unfortunately, they’re also the most forgettable songs.

Sophie So has a really catchy hook, and showcases Jake’s higher pitched vocals very well, it is easily my favorite song. On Little Grace, the biggest change-up is the dub rhythm that sneaks up in the middle of the song, but it doesn’t stand out, and the chorus is the most annoying in the EP. Opportunistic has a fast cadence to it that sets it apart a little bit, plus the guitar fingering is notable, but the track isn’t anything superb or whatever.

It is executed well, doesn’t bring anything new, but I’d listen to it in the car.

 FAVORITE TRACK: Sophie So

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Bashful Creatures

 Like a 6/10

“You came back, you wanted to see through my two-colored eyes. You left me at home with a handful of downtrodden sighs.”

 Bad Suns – Language & Perspective

I had known Cardiac Arrest for almost three years now, an upbeat song I’d enjoyed a little, so I chose Bad Suns for the second album, and I was disappointed.

After the first three tracks, I had the feeling Language & Perspective had nothing interesting to offer, and I was mostly right. Nearly all songs here could be described as something like “indie-pop”, but with a huge emphasis on the “pop” aspect. The tracks are all so goddamn formulaic and predictable, songs like Take My Love and Run, Learn to Trust and We Move Like the Ocean sound like they literally copy-paste themselves halfway into them until they end, and Sleep Paralysis swaps what could be an actual verse with like 20 seconds of onomatopoeia. The song topics are generic and bland as well, most of them being about “[coming] to you on my hands and knees” and dreaming about an ex late at night and stuff like that, or general teenage anxiety and overthinking, and that would be tolerable if the band at least said it with some kind of variation, but they don’t, it’s just surface-level love and regret songs back to back.

An exception to the bland songwriting in the album is the song Salt, where lead singer Christo sings from the perspective of his transgender friend. I’m not trans, so I can’t relate nor understand if the lyrics are accurate, but the thing is he isn’t either. From the Genius annotations, it seems the friend was pleased though, and said the feelings expressed in the song were things she actually felt, but was never able to describe, so I guess that’s cool of him to dedicate a whole song to her experience. Still, unfortunately the track isn’t such a standout instrumentally or vocally, but one thing I liked was how the hook finishes at the end of the song, when “these memories are nothing to me, just salt” becomes “salt to the wound”, so yeah that was cool.

Language & Perspective is at its best when the hooks are catchy and you just don’t give a fuck. Songs like Cardiac Arrest, We Move Like the Ocean and Pretend are super easy to sing along to, and sound perfect for when you’re in a car driving against the sun (I know I said the exact same thing for the last album leave me alone), especially because of Bowman’s impressive singing, but without that thin veil of sugary pop, what does this album have that stands out? Matthew James, Take My Love and Run, Transpose (which sounds like it could be on a really corny Nike commercial) and Learn to Love just aren’t as memorable and fun, and so they end up coming off as generic, bland and at times annoying, just because they don’t hold up to the melodic fun little hooks on the other songs.

I can’t hate on Dancing on Quicksand and Rearview however, as even though the first’s lyrics aren’t standouts, I can’t help but love how groovy the song is, and the latter, while the melodies aren’t the most memorable here, the lyrics, to me, sound like they have a little more life and personality to them, even if they remain somewhat vague. I have to admit Sleep Paralysis is a mixed highlight for me, despite the lyrics being especially repetitive, just because of how grand the ending sounds and how the eerier chord progression brings at least something new to the album.

Also, really quick before I wrap it up, why the fuck is 20 Years not in the album? It’s in an EP they released the same year which features Cardiac Arrest, Transpose and Salt and it would easily be my favorite track if it was in the tracklist, maybe because it’s just really relatable to me how your teen years pass without you noticing, but it’s also so mellow and would bring such a refreshing little moment in the record.

My difficulties with this album is that I do like and see myself in the future bumping a lot of these songs individually, if I shut down a few parts of my brain and disregard half the lyrics, but when they’re all crumbled together into a project, their single qualities fade and their flaws unite to form a pretty unsatisfying listen; nearly all songs feel static, formulaic, and don’t progress or amount to much – which is pretty noticeable if you realize all songs span from 3:03 to 3:53 minutes - and the instrumentation brings almost nothing to the overall experience, it’s pretty much a backdrop for Bowman to sing his heart over, without much personality of its own. So while it’s not awful, it’s not good either.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Dancing on Quicksand, Rearview

LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: Learn to Trust, Take My Love and Run

 4.7/10

“You let your hair down, your face is made up, you know this town so well”

 COIN – How Will You Know If You Never Try

COIN is the least familiar band of the three here, as I’ve only heard Growing Pains from them and I don’t remember anything from the track, but as a quick intro, the band is from Nashville, Tennessee and consisted of 4 members: Chase Lawrence on vocals and synthesizer, Ryan Winnen on drums, Joe Memmel on guitar and backing vocals, and Zach Dyke on bass until he left two years ago.

After listening to the first three tracks of the album, my expectations were pretty high, but after finishing, I feel like this album is reminiscent of a poorly-heated microwave meal: the first three tracks are decreasingly good, the middle of the album is raw, and the last three go back to being increasingly good, with the only exception being the bright spot that is track 7, Heart Eyes, a romantic, entrancing little jam that I can’t help but love.

My big grip with HWYKIYNT is that, for 11 tracks, COIN doesn’t let go of the ear-destroying instrumental breakdowns (it’s not like it’s heavy metal or anything, but the mixing makes it sound like the guitars blow up at some points), tuned up guitars and formulaic song structures, and that leads to many tracks becoming rather forgettable amongst the others. There are, of course, exceptions, but they’re few and I’d say not well-located within the album: Don’t Cry, 2020 is the big standout in the album for me, and I fell in love with it first listen (the context of today being 2020 also helps, I guess), Boyfriend’s defining synth-line and bubblegum qualities make for a lot of enjoyment, especially paired with the light-hearted passive-aggressiveness and rejection on the lyrics, and Talk Too Much, their biggest song, has some cute little lyrics, and an ultra-pop hook that centers the whole song around it and is impossible not so sing along to; but immediately after, the album starts to slow down its hype with I Don’t Wanna Dance, which has an appealing vocal performance by Chase, and starts promisingly with the synths, but is too simple to go anywhere.

Hannah is probably the most forgettable song here, and brings absolutely nothing to the album, and Are We Alone?’s lyrics are cute and focused but really simplistic; in this song specifically, I think the breakdown the band employs right after the hook is really unnecessary, and the song would do better without it. After that is Heart Eyes, which I’ve mentioned before as one of my favorites, mostly because it tones it down a bit, something that really needed to happen at some point this deep into the record.

The song Lately II contains the hidden track Nothing Matters and deals with Chase losing his newborn nephew, a sequel to Lately off the band’s debut album. On the outside, it sounds like just another cheerful song, but the lyrics taken into context I’m sure are very meaningful to Chase and his family; besides that I enjoy the heavier drums in this track and the loose vocal melodies right after the chorus, plus the closing instrumentals are also a nice addition, but I don’t really understand the need to include a hidden track into it; I understand the themes are intertwined, but it could have very well been a separate track, and the way it is slightly harms the song when isolated from the album into, for example, a playlist or a one-time listen, but whatever.

I don’t have much to say about Feeling, it’s your average hype indie-rock track, something you’d maybe hear in a FIFA video game soundtrack, but to its credit, it doesn’t go overboard in itself, the vocals and guitar performances feel very grounded and safe, in a good way. And to finish this off, Miranda Beach brings some solid guitars to the table, they feel very textured and pierce through every other sound; the song is definitely one of the most infectious and ear-catching on here. Closing it all up, Malibu 1992 is the slow jam the album was in need of for 11 tracks. Very stripped back and patient compared to the rest of the song, which makes it stand out naturally, but that doesn’t mean the song is superb or anything, it’s just a refreshing taste.

Throughout a lot of the tracks here I was waiting for something more, a slightly different approach to a song, more introspective lyrics, but it never really came in a way that stood out, and because of that, the start of the album ends up more solid than the rest of it, in my opinion. It isn’t a bad album, but it isn’t amazing either. I feel it’s very derivative, the lyrics are not a standout, and while some songs may be bops, I don’t feel it is strong as a whole project.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Don’t Cry, 2020; Miranda Beach; Talk Too Much; Heart Eyes

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Hannah

 I’m feeling a strong 5 to a light 6 on this one. 

“You’re so concerned about your future, yeah, but tomorrow’s just another day.”

[thesinglesjukebox]

LIL UZI VERT - FREE UZI

[6.29]

Please do not contact us about the free Uzi...

Taylor Alatorre: "Free Uzi": is that a command or a description? The pitched-up vocals may be his cheeky protest against an allegedly stingy contract, but they also make him sound younger and less established, an effect heightened by the use of a 2012 drill instrumental from a then 16-year-old G Herbo. It's not only label restrictions from which he's freed himself, but the mercurial demands of hip-hop trendiness; this is a space where he can imitate mixtape-era Lil Wayne to his heart's content. Beyond the superficial thrill of hearing an unrestrained Uzi go to battle with the very concept of dead air, there aren't any lyrical corkscrews of Weezy caliber, and the verbal parkour preempts his usual talent for melodic phrasing. This is a statement record that says very little other than "Uzi is still out here," which, all told, is still worth a listen. [5]

Julian Axelrod: The first time I heard this, in the woozy hours of the evening when its streaming futures were uncertain, the progressively pitched-up vocals made me think it was fake. Maybe the choice was a sly legal maneuver to sidestep Atlantic's legal team, but it's also the perfect garnish for Uzi's motormouthed cartoon cadence. It feels like he's been trapped in a cave for 30 years writing punchlines about getting head, only to burst free and rap so fast he transcends dimensions. (Shouts to G Herbo, whose original flow is more earthbound but no less urgent.) It's honestly wild that rappers are still subject to label drama and "delayed" projects; it feels so 2004. But watching bitter MCs work through label frustrations by turning a throwaway mixtape beat to mincemeat will never get old. [7]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Many will properly observe that "Free Uzi" relies on DJ L's beat for the older song by G Herbo (then Lil' Herb) "Gangway." Few besides that will observe that, unlike the preceding record, "Free Uzi" features an actually competent street rapper. Yes, yes, enough talk has been made about Uzi being a "rockstar" or implying that he's actually a Fueled by Ramen kid trapped in the body of a tattooed rapper, a narrative that's thoroughly misguided and racially patronizing in ways that rarely get taken to task. But thankfully we have a record such as "Free Uzi" to dispel that. It's deliberately within the style of East Coast hard-nose rap, which remains in drill territory these days and is an influence on him via the generation that brought us Durk and Keef -- so why not revisit the classics? It's a constant battering of machine-gun flowing and bars that demonstrates his abilities to fit in with the contemporaries you never knew he was actually among. Despite his inconsistent releases in the last year or so, it's fair to say Uzi's more than equipped to fit in wherever the present requires him to. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The good and bad of "Free Uzi" stem from its very nature -- it's a leak-that's-not-a-leak and a stab at creative revival from an artist who has seemed creatively disengaged over the last year. So, fittingly, it's both full of energy and bad ideas (shouts out to the Big Bang Theory.) It's uneven and probably should have stayed in the fault, but there's just enough promise here to remind listeners of why they wanted Uzi back in the first place. [5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Considering Lil Uzi Vert is an internet darling more for singing along to Paramore, and the fact SoundCloud rap as a genre gets attention more for how its artists take inspiration from outside of rap, it's perhaps natural that I don't really have a good grasp on what rap music Uzi listens to besides the ones made by his peers. So Uzi swiping a Chicago drill beat used by G Herbo in 2012 was quite revelatory in that he's a rapper's rapper first no matter what other interests float around his orbit. He approaches the recycled beat in a manner that recalls '00s mixtape-era Lil Wayne: a new dexterous flow, a bars-first mentality, and a very loose handle on pop structure. The chorus blends with the rest of the oversized verses, and he spits in such breakneck speed, he doesn't give enough time for the punchlines to properly digest. But his high-pitched taunting voice oozes with confidence that every chirp still feels like a punch to the ego. [6]

Iris Xie: Damn, I was actually hoping that I didn't hear the word "ejaculate" in the song, like I thought I misheard and that he said "coat check" or something, but I checked and no, he said ejaculate. But I'm actually impressed by his non-stop demeanor here, as Lil Uzi Vert sounds like the Roadrunner trying to outrun himself and everyone else coming for him, but -- whoops, he's gonna switch and run on them! His pace is the sonic equivalent of those incredibly, ridiculously fast zombies in Train to Busan. Also, there's a bracing urgency to his flow, punctuated by the trap beats that sound like sharp aluminum clinking on other metals, which provide an ace backdrop to his relentlessness. Regarding the lyrics themselves, I guess it just occurred to me now that there's a purpose to the detail of bravado and come-uppance in rap and that it's not just bluster, because it helps reinforce the messaging of the hustle presented in the music. Also, wordplay abounds -- "Wonton, flood the block with some Wock' in it/They saw I was comin' so they all just start hoppin' fence" is just one of many really nice examples of consonance and assonance. Specifically, that wonton, block, wok line is a fun callback to how both Asian and Black cultural production do influence each other quite a bit and permeate the inner dialogues of a lot of artists. But overall, there's a lot to enjoy about this song, even if I was thrown off at first. [6]

Ashley John: "Free Uzi" is the incessant buzz and stab of a tattoo needle. Uzi pummels forward so confidently you forget when the track started or if it has always been this black whir in the back of your head. Uzi's grit coupled with his muscle memory melody remind us of the hole that exists in modern rap when he's not around to fill it. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS - SPRING 2020

It’s been a while since I’ve had to look at a blank Microsoft Word document and write these words but: welcome to REVIEWING THE CHARTS! 

This may or may not be a pretty long episode but this is also the start of a new edition of the show in which the format is changed pretty immensely. After a couple years of this chart show, I’m going to be honest: I got bored of doing it every week, so I simply stopped doing it. I reviewed songs in secret, wrote notes of future potential episodes, but never released anything. However, recently, I’ve decided that perhaps it would be smarter to not cancel the show but adopt a new format. Basically, I will not do an episode every week, rather every month, where I review each new arrival on the UK Top 40 during that month, without covering any of the nonsense that happened during that month outside of the new arrivals. I’ve actually been wanting to change the format to this for a while but after doing the BRITs special I’ve decided that this actually might be a more palatable workload. Hopefully this’ll work and I can get back into this chart thing and start enjoying looking out for new music again but we’ll see; potentially if I enjoy this I can get back to the weekly stuff. So, let’s start off the new format with a bunch of garbage from March, April AND May that I didn’t review, in chronological order, rounding up everything that I missed in these interim weeks. So, let’s start:

MARCH NE W ARRIVALS: 01/03

#40 – “Moral of the Story” – Ashe

Produced by FINNEAS and Noah Conrad

This is Ashe, a female singer-songwriter from California who got big on TikTok. This song, from the soundtrack of Netflix comedy To All the Boys (Haven’t watched it), is produced by FINNEAS, as he branches out from just producing for his sister Billie. Yup, that’s my pre-amble. The song is pretty cute, and I admit I quite like Ashe’s sing-songy, musical theatre style of singing, which is actually more of a spoken style in the verses. FINNNEAS’ production isn’t too bad, either, with an infectious and jaunty piano melody as well as some cool, explosive choir samples during the post-chorus that sound pretty cool. Admittedly, I’m not listening to this with my headphones (Not currently working because of course they’re not), so I can’t really tell about the mixing (which is something FINNEAS has gotten wrong a worrying number of times). For Ashe’s first UK Top 40 hit and first hit in general, it’s not a bad song at all. I’m not going to save it or praise it to high heavens, but for what it’s worth, I can’t complain. Decent track.

#39 – “City of Angels” - 24kGoldn

Produced by Neek and Omer Fedi

Speaking of people who got big off of TikTok and have their first UK Top 40 hit, here is 24kGoldn, a rapper-singer also from California. You probably know him from his breakout single, “Valentino”, but this other single from his debut EP, Dropped Outta College (Classy), seems to be the bigger hit worldwide. I hate “Valentino”, for the record, and I think it’s practically unlistenable garbage, so I don’t expect to like this. Also, fun fact: This trap-rap song about sex and drugs does not have any profanity. Kids these days with their clean, acceptable music. To be fair, I don’t actually hate this, mostly because of that catchy guitar line used as the main backing for what isn’t actually a trap-rap beat and instead kind of a power-pop type drum beat, with this Juice WRLD rip-off vocally riffing over it in a way that’s just disrespectful to the producers. Jokes aside, this is a good song, with a pretty catchy chorus, though admittedly an underdeveloped structure, with only one verse and two choruses. It’s kind of edgy nonsense but I could see an emo-pop band doing this justice, so I can appreciate it, actually; I do like the rough-around-the-edges vocal style in this context a lot more than “Valentino”. Also, this kid got a Fetty Wap feature on his EP. I’m jealous.

#34 – “Mice” – Aitch

Produced by LiTek and WhYJay

Ah, this guy, back again for more whitebread British trap, hey? Well, I guess I’ll give him another chance; the guy keeps coming back on the chart so there’s got to be some appeal to him, right? Well, nah, not really. This beat is kind of funky but it’s just his other big hit’s beat with less instruments anyway. It’s got the flute, it’s got the crow, it’s got this white dude talking over it. If you make a song that’s just one verse and has a standard beat, you should know that people expect BARS – if the focus is on Aitch, and not the minimalist beat, which didn’t need two producers, or the catchy club chorus and hook, then we need impressive flow or lyricism. You know, wordplay, cool punchlines, something. Aitch doesn’t even have bars. How are you going to make a song about bars when you don’t have bars? I mean, the flow does get impressive by the end and I’m astounded by how he just keeps going here, especially when he’s got nothing interesting to say, and he does ride the beat fine, until he literally gives up at the end. Like, come on, this is a lead single, not a SoundCloud loosie one-off. At least try.

#33 – “Dior” – Pop Smoke (featuring Gunna)

Produced by 808Melo

When this charted, the late Pop Smoke would have recently passed away as result of a shooting and home invasion. I was never a fan of Pop Smoke, and I won’t pretend to be like most of the people listening to his songs after his death. I can say that anyone who is murdered by cowardly thugs at age 20 deserves at least a respectful message and best wishes to his mourning family and close friends. May he rest in peace. You hear that, record labels? In peace. Don’t milk this guy’s unfinished material like you did X. At least be respectful with it like they did with Peep (mostly) and Mac. My feelings on the song are irrelevant at this point, and I feel like bringing them up would be almost disrespectful, but it is my obligation to say that I don’t like the song, his uninteresting cadence, his somewhat homophobic lyrics or the shitty Gunna guest verse on the remix. The beat admittedly does kind of bang but otherwise, I’m just not a fan; the rest of his posthumous album is actually quite a bit better. I personally really like “Snitching” and “Make it Rain”. Regardless, rest in peace, Pop Smoke, and I’ll stop the review here.

#21 – “On” – BTS (featuring Sia)

Produced by Pdogg and Mick Schultz

Oh, yeah, these Korean boys are back... kind of. I mean, they’re always gunning for a “comeback” but it does feel arbitrary to have comebacks every four months. I like BTS for the most part, and their songs do tend to grow on me a lot as time goes on. “Boy with Luv” is such a grower, as are “Fake Love” and “Make it Right”. However, I didn’t like the lead-off single from Map of the Soul: 7 (“Black Swan”) to be interested enough in this new album, so I haven’t listened to it and probably never will; I never actually listened to the last album. I was hoping that this new single wouldn’t fall into the trap a lot of K-pop does, and, oops, it does. There’s a chaotic structure that mixes tribal drumming intros with spacey trap drums, awkwardly Auto-Tuned bilingual singing and rapping from all of the boys, none of which sound particularly good here, not even in the chorus, which has a lot less groove than the other singles I like from them, with a pretty stiff, electronic drum beat. The flow isn’t particularly impressive and I don’t really buy in to the cute aesthetic of the music, so overall, this is just ear fluff that serves little purpose to me other than wasting my time. The Sia remix isn’t any better, either. Congratulations on the top five hit in the US, though, boys. I hope the record label isn’t treating you that bad, although they probably are, knowing the situation with some other overworked bands there. I won’t make any baseless assumptions, though. In terms of K-pop, I prefer YUMDDA. Check him out, I like “Flight” especially.

#20 – “After Hours” – the Weeknd

Produced by the Weeknd, DaHeala and Illangelo

By this time, the Weeknd has released his album, obviously, but at this time, it was a promotional single that came out of nowhere and surprised everyone with how non-single it was. Despite me loving the two lead singles, I didn’t listen to the album for whatever reason (I should probably get on that, actually, since it’s the Weeknd I’m probably missing some good stuff), so let’s hope the title track boasting a six-minute runtime and no discernible chorus gives me a good taste for the album. I mean, the production here is pretty sweet, for the most part, and I like the urgency given by the alarming synths in the intro, coupled with a pretty tight falsetto and grand vocal performance from the Weeknd as always (Can I call him Abel?). I can’t help but feel the song does drag on a bit, though, and I hope that’s not just my attention span but this does get a bit tedious, especially due to very little interesting development towards the climax in the intro, which means the drop feels abrupt and thus not satisfactory in the least, but it’s a pretty great beat admittedly. Actually, the song reminds me of one of my favourite songs of all time, “Instant Crush” by Daft Punk and Julian Casablancas, which is a similarly eerie robotic funk song with vocoder-mangled falsetto vocals. Whilst that song is constantly emotive and full of great hooks from each and every inch of the music, vocals and lyrics, this one feels completely aimless, and after four and a half minutes, it just meanders for a little bit, proving itself as a bit of a waste of time, frankly, even if the lyrics are very well-written albeit vague and perhaps not necessarily too profound or interesting, especially since this is building up a story presented throughout the album. I appreciate this for what it is, but it could have been a LOT better.

Conclusion

Best of the Week probably goes to “City of Angels” by 24kGoldn, which isn’t what I expected but it’s the only song I actually saved from this bunch. “After Hours” by the Weeknd gets the Honourable Mention, but just barely. Worst of the Week would be a bit of a dick move if it went to anyone else but Aitch for “Mice”, and there isn’t really anything worth a Dishonourable Mention here. Let’s move on.

NEW ARRIVALS: 08/03 #40 – “Blueberry Faygo” – Lil Mosey

Produced by Callan

Listen, I really didn’t want to like this stupid TikTok dance song that samples a cheesy 80s R&B track by Johnny Gill, but, man, this is just inescapably catchy. Lil Mosey is a pretty pathetic rapper on his own, so I didn’t expect him to hold himself in any capacity here, but he flows and rides the beat well enough, which is surprising considering his hot garbage fire of an XXL cypher verse. The real standout here for Lil Mosey’s first UK Top 40 hit is the beat from Callan. You just can’t resist the soulful sample and jovial vocal samples here, it’s such an addictive, fun track, and that’s without Li Mosey rapping a repetitive but infectious chorus that can’t get out of my head at all. Yes, he doesn’t talk about anything interesting here, at all, and he bites TAY-K of all people in the first verse, but the verses are short and they immediately transition back to that sweet, sweet chorus. I feel like this is the stuff Lil Yachty should still be making right now, but alas, he’s being Oprah, I think. Yeah, I love this type of cloud rap that just oozes sunshine and beachfronts. It’s not a great rap song and it’s not even a great song, but it’s impossible to resist that beat, and it’s not like this kid from Seattle who may or may not be able to say the N-word is ruining that for me.

#35 – “Death Bed” – Powfu featuring beabadoobee

Produced by Otterpop

Or, as it now wants me to call it, “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)”. It’s not often a song just straight-up renames itself but hey, it’s the streaming era. Anything can happen. Speaking of unpredictability, this is the first UK Top 40 hit single for both half-Filipino BRIT Award nominee beabadoobee as well as sadboi Canadian rapper Powfu, and the first UK Top 40 hit single for the genre of lo-fi hip hop beats to relax and study to. You love to see it: lo-fi hip hop in the charts. Honestly, this genre gets way too much slack and there are releases I adore from people like Jinsang and GentleBeatz, and if you look at it in a broader sense, you can look at stuff like MIKE, Navy Blue or the newer Earl Sweatshirt stuff, and I eat that stuff up now, so what I’m saying is: you can’t really go wrong with lo-fi hip hop... until you do. This song sucks. Powfu’s flow is cringeworthy at best, and the pitched-up beabadoobee sample runs through the whole song, becoming pretty irritating by the end of the song in all honesty, despite the original song being pretty sweet, in my opinion. This got big on TikTok, and listen: Powfu can’t sing and he can barely rap (This dude’s flow sounds like it came from Looperman.com), but I won’t complain about people digging the undeservedly maligned genre of lo-fi hip hop in 2020, so I’ll accept Powfu and I’ll accept Will Smith’s quarantine beats, if it makes people accept and appreciate the genre just a bit more.

#28 – “Boyfriend” – Mabel

Produced by Steve Mac

Mabel will not bring anything interesting to the Tabel. I can almost guarantee it. I don’t mind Mabel at all, I mean, Neneh Cherry’s daughter has got to have some talent, right, but relistening to her discography, I noticed it is plagued by bland and uninteresting R&B production. I love her voice and some of the songs are still pretty fun, especially “Don’t Call Me Up”, but overall, I find myself disappointed and the potential wasted. This song is actually pretty okay, to be fair, as most of her songs are, but mostly due to an interesting sample choice – “Remember Me” by house DJ Lex Blackmore, or Blue Boy. “Remember Me” was a massive hit for him, and in reality, the sample here is actually a sample of a sample (from “Woman of the Ghetto” by Marlena Shaw), but my favourite song of his is “Sandman”, which is an infectious and fantastic song that I think is quite underrated, despite performing somewhat well on the charts at the time. You should check it out, it’s amazing. This song, on the other hand, has no interesting characteristics other than said sample. Thanks, Mabel, very cool. Let’s move on to something interesting.

#5 – “Stupid Love” – Lady Gaga

Produced by Tchami and BloodPop

I mean, I hope this is interesting. It’s the big return for Lady Gaga onto the pop scene after A Star is Born practically saved her career, and with BloodPop behind the boards, it’s got to be at least interesting, right? Right? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. I actually like the sound of the chugging 80s synths here that remind me of the 2010s club boom, which of course was Lady Gaga’s heyday, and while I didn’t exactly expect lyrical depth from that era of Gaga, I expected some of the development in her music since to shine through here and it just hasn’t, making this song feel really shallow and empty, and dare I say, boring. Gaga’s vocals here are as good as ever, and in fact, quite unique in the pre-chorus, and I can definitely say the whole song is just one train of constant hooks playing on top of each other, but the transitions are shoddy and abrupt, the vocaloid drop is typical and whilst it sounds great and is well-implemented, strips the song of the character it could otherwise have, especially coming from one of the most interesting and engaging pop singers of the last decade. I can see why this underperformed, as this song is like a Simpsons rerun with all of the funny jokes cut out. Basically, it’s disappointing.

Conclusion

I don’t think there can be an Honourable or Dishonourable Mention here, but Best and Worst of the Week fall out pretty nicely. Best of the Week goes to, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Lil Mosey for “Blueberry Faygo”, whilst Worst of the Week goes to “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)” by Powfu and beabadoobee, for just being the epitome of dullness. Again, let’s move on to something different.

NEW ARRIVALS: 15/03 ALBUM BOMB: Eternal Atake – Lil Uzi Vert

Hey, an album I actually listened to – and liked! Lil Uzi Vert has always been hit or miss with me and whilst Eternal Atake is more of the same in that regard, its highest highs are incredible, especially in the middle third of the album, but overall, despite some filler and straight-up bad tracks sprinkled throughout, Uzi’s sophomore effort is very enjoyable, slightly more so than its pointless deluxe reissue (although I come back to “Bean (Kobe)” with Chief Keef a lot more than I’d like to admit). Now that I’ve praised the album, let’s talk about one of its worst songs, because, well, that’s how chart works.

#37 – “P2”

Produced by TM88

Should this really count as a new song? I mean, it’s a glorified “XO TOUR Llif3” remix, with the same producer, practically the same chorus and definitely the same premise, and whilst I didn’t like the original, I understand its purpose, story and appeal. Here, despite my respect of the continuation of the song’s narrative, I question the existence of the song. Did the original need a continuation? Not at all. Does this cheapen the original song’s impact, legacy and influence? I mean, not directly, but instead of being able to appreciate the original in the context of one-off hit single by charismatic emo-rapper, I know have to comprehend it as the disappointing sequel to a film that was never all that great in the first place. I’m not a film buff so I can’t think of an analogy that’ll work for that exactly, but you know how there was that old episode of SpongeBob with Bubble Buddy that was fun but overall pretty forgettable? Yeah, they tried to bring him back in season eight but the new episode was just bland and didn’t even promise what a sequel should promise, whilst also being pretty pointless as the original’s cliffhanger worked fine and added to the episode, as did the overall mystery of the Bubble Buddy character that had been dissolved with the creation of a new episode? Yeah, that’s my analogy, don’t care. Next song.

#36 – “Baby Pluto”

Produced by Cousin Vinny, Bugz Ronin, Brandon Finessin and Ike Beatz

Now THIS is the Uzi I like. Much like “Free Uzi”, which probably should have been on the album, this is Uzi spitting rapidly with a slippery flow that at times creeps into off-beat territory but isn’t noticeable because his energy level is astounding and rubs off on the listener. Lil Uzi’s charisma and tone is determined yet loose, and he switches from flow to flow and from topic to topic swiftly and without a care in the world. It helps that the beat from the Working on Dying collective is freaking incredible (Although not the best beat on the album), with sweet glistening piano loops and sci-fi sound effects dropped in for some reason or other. The beat is also genius in how it cuts off exactly where you’d expect it to drop, teasing you every time that Lil Uzi’s flow reaches the point where the beat should logically drop, until it finally does and it is so satisfying, especially when Uzi gets in his lower register and actually sounds intimidating. The term “Baby Pluto”, whilst being a nickname Uzi uses, isn’t even mentioned in the chorus, but there’s an equally iconic line here, “I turned to an addict, I bought me a Patek”, which is just poetry. I don’t know exactly why he’s going to war, either, but hey, it sounds cool, right? “I bought a G-wagon, that shit was the BRABUS”? I have no clue what the hell that means, but it sounds awesome. He’s so casual in how he goes from verse to verse and from flow to flow, it sounds effortless. Lyrically, it’s all over the place (But generally correlates to luxury) – his neck is “on squeegee”, he mentions Ouija boards because of course he does, he seemingly doesn’t understand the concept of blindness (Seriously, Uzi, Stevie Wonder couldn’t see THEM, not the other way around). In the second verse, he brags about being a pescatarian (In a pretty clever way) and moves states for again, seemingly no reason. And, of course, in the third verse, he says he is so sex-deprived that he’d even do it with your girlfriend in a Honda Accord. Sure, there are some filler lines (I don’t think any “icy wrist” pun can beat Future’s ridiculously blunt “I just put my whole damn arm in the fridge”), but they go by so quickly and so breezily you don’t notice them. This is a great song, and an incredible introduction to the album as a whole.

NE W ARRIVALS #39 – “Supalonely” – BENEE and Gus Dapperton

Produced by Josh Fountain and Gus Dapperton

A song by zoomers for zoomers which got big on TikTok. It’ll make sense in the context of this depressing pandemic, in fact all pop music seems like it’s having suicidal thoughts right now. I’ve heard of Gus Dapperton before; he was on the 13 Reasons Why soundtrack with a vaguely 80s-sounding indie pop song that to be fair, I actually really liked! In fact, listening to it now, I think “Of Lacking Spectacle” should have actually been the big hit, but alas, we have “Supalonely” by BENEE, who I’ve never heard before. She’s from New Zealand but her biggest listening audience is Jakarta, Indonesia, for whatever reason, and I guess I should get onto the song... wow, this sure is a song. It’s like the groovy funk and disco pop without much groove or even funk – this song feels really staccato, especially due to that droning chorus, intentionally of course but accentuated by more sincere, Auto-Tuned inflections and ad-libs that add emotion and character that take this song from being “understandably boring and annoying due to its subject matter and hence better in that it reflects those emotions effectively” to being “wasted potential and perhaps just a failure at making a pop song”. I like to use the word “janky”, but so far, most of these songs have been too competent for my liking. Oh, and Gus Dapperton sucks here too. Have fun with your guitar lick you found on FL Studio, guys, but I’m not a fan.

#26 – “Self-Obsessed” – Da Beatfreakz featuring Krept & Konan, D-Block Europe and Deno

Produced by Da Beatfreakz

If you’re not British, you will statistically have no idea who these people are. If you’re British, you will statistically have no idea who most of these people are. Da Beatfreakz produce a lot of British trap and Afroswing hits, Krept & Konan are one of the biggest grime duos of all time, Deno was a guy who was vaguely funny on a song once so we kept him around, and D-Block Europe... well, they’re D-Block Europe. Just as I was talking about songs being too competent, we review this song, which will likely be a trainwreck. Firstly, let’s get it out of the way: what dumb shit does Young Adz say in this song? Well, it’s not initially clear who’s self-obsessed but he’s talking about a woman here, because we’ve got to love that sweet, sweet misogyny, which is even blunter and more disgusting in British rap for whatever reason. You know that if you already ate it in the Porsche, you’re not legally obliged to give her some more, right? You can just give who is assumingly  a prostitute a wad of cash and drive off, as you are big famous rapper man. In the chorus, he also says he sells crack but only smokes marijuana, which is reassuring I suppose, and that he plays chess on his Louis Vuitton bag because he is bored. Okay, he’s trying to say that he’s so rich he could deface designer fashion but playing chess isn’t exactly a messy activity, and I highly doubt this man knows how to strategically play it. Also, who are you playing chess with? The prostitute, or the other member of D-Block Europe, Dirtbike LB? Speaking of, his verse depicts the time where he was thinking about the... anatomy of the woman his best friend was... interacting with when he crashed that Porsche. Also, if this woman is so self-obsessed, why are you not letting her get a Louis bag before she sucks you off? I know it’s just flexing and rapper talk, but it’s painfully not self-aware. He also has an odd moment of feeling love for the woman but immediately retracts it after a one-line topic shift, because of course he does.

Girl, I hate it when that love’s feeling strange / Paid cash for the car, that’s the Range / If I ever said, “I love you”, then I think I’ve gone insane

Wait, how many cars do you have? Oh, and Young Adz comes in immediately afterwards.

Long story short, made a boy do the running man

Oh, and he’s actually kind of funny on purpose for once.

Three litres of blood, swapped it for a couple grand

Wait, wh—

Should have saw her face when I crushed a Xan

Huh?

Every bitch want to f*** a man

Somebody’s got to tell this dude about lesbians before it’s too late. This is all, in typical D-Block fashion, rapped awkwardly and stiffly with 17 layers of malfunctioning Auto-Tune and reverb coating the two until they’re indistinguishable over a beat that... admittedly, this one’s pretty good, but I swear it’s a fluke. Oh, and if you hadn’t had enough of Young Adz, his ad-libs are all over Konan and Deno’s verses. No-one else says anything interesting, by the way.

Said she want to F a drug dealer, but, baby, I wasn’t raised in the trap

Bro, then why are you on this song? Deno’s whole verse seemingly revolves around the fact he has never sold drugs and doesn’t use swear words. Yeah, this is tough, but exactly what I expected.

#3 – “Rain” – Aitch, AJ Tracey and Tay Keith

Produced by Tay Keith

Tay Keith’s beats are all the same. Aitch’s bars are all the same. It’s a perfect combination. At least AJ Tracey could be amusing here, and admittedly he is, with a catchy chorus and a pretty great verse, where not only does his flow stand out as particularly interesting but he throws a lot of funny pop culture references in there too, like Kenan Thompson, Bugs Bunny and the ridiculous “gyal on curry, neck McFlurry”, which he accentuates with a “bling-baow”? The first line is actually a reference to an obscure term for people from Manchester coined by Liam Gallagher, and Aitch is from Manchester, so, you know, it’s those nice little additional touches that count, and while AJ’s verse isn’t exactly flooded with wordplay, Aitch, come on, man, step your game up. Your flow and rhyme scheme is excellent but you have absolutely nothing to say. There’s a vague Blueface reference, I think, but that’s all. Ultimately, the song isn’t bad at all, and the beat is pretty menacing and slaps pretty hard, with both rappers riding it effectively, especially Aitch’s straightforward, intimidating triplet flow in the pre-chorus and AJ’s more rapid, free-flowing cadence, and, hell, I have a soft spot for that dumb eagle caw sound... but I mean, it’s just more of the same, and I can’t think of a way to restructure it that makes sense; without the chorus it’s too short and directionless, without Aitch it’s too staccato, and without AJ Tracey, it’s outright garbage, so, yeah, mixed feelings but I can listen to this with no issue. Oh, yeah, and this is Tay Keith’s first UK top 40 hit as a credited artist.

Conclusion

Best of the Week definitely goes to “Baby Pluto” by Lil Uzi Vert, with an Honourable Mention to Aitch, AJ Tracey and Tay Keith for “Rain” because, well, it’s somewhat entertaining, I guess. Worst of the Week goes to “Self-Obsessed” by whoever the hell with a Dishonourable Mention to “Supalonely” by BENEE and Gus Dapperton for existing simply without purpose. Let’s move onto something different.

NEW ARRIVALS: 22/03 #37 – “Papi Chulo” – Octavian and Skepta

Produced by Go Grizzly, YoungKio and BricksDaMane

Or something exactly the bloody same. This is Octavian’s first UK Top 40 hit. Welcome to the chart. As you can tell by the Skepta, this is a British rap song that might have some more quality to it than usual. So, it’s produced by the “Old Town Road” producer, YoungKio, and it’s got a Latin-flavoured guitar, as well as stupid falsetto skrrt ad-libs instead of a chorus, gross sex talk that is just unpleasant to listen to, misogyny for days, and Octavian sounding like Sean Paul on painkillers. Yeah, just absolutely disposable, exhaustingly dull garbage which I don’t have much to say about. Maybe doing this in bulk is getting to me.

#35 – “The Take” – Tory Lanez featuring C**** B****

Produced by Sergio R., Play Picasso, Papi Yerr, Tory Lanez, Alo905 and Rajah

There was a Drake interview where he said he squashed his beef with CB because it was “silly” and “girl stuff”... you know, like when he gruesomely and infamously assaulted Rihanna. Silly girl stuff. Yeah, I’m glad you and Ray William Johnson are on the same page, Drake – I hope at least someone gets that reference. I am not listening to CB, I am not helping CB, I am not funding his bail next time he kicks a woman in the face for not liking his new five-hour epic about having sex with your girlfriend. Tory Lanez, please don’t play as an enabler or apologist for this man anymore. I’ve heard your album, you know how to rap, don’t give any playtime to this sicko who barely knows how to function as a non-violent, law-abiding citizen. Thanks, Tory.

Edit: Fuck, nevermind. Both of these guys make me sick.

#34 – “Boss Bitch” – Doja Cat

Produced by Sky Adams and Imad Royal

Finally, someone talented this week. I don’t know why this song actually peaked and debuted this high though – I don’t know if the film it was attached to, DC’s Birds of Prey, did particularly well here in the UK, but I know the nation likes the Harley Quinn character enough for E4 to start airing the mediocre animated series to much appraisal, so I’d assume the song got popular off of that, maybe? Otherwise, Doja Cat’s a pretty big star now so it’s a good choice for the soundtrack, especially since she does give off the same vibe as a lot of the film. Yes, I did watch the movie, and it was, as most movies I have watched, vaguely tolerable. This song was in it, during a scene that I remember being colourful. What insight. Anyway, the main focus here is the song itself, and yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Sure, you can rip on how derivative of Nicki Minaj it is, and she does sound exactly like her here sometimes, especially with the Barbie references, but you can’t deny that infectious, simplistic mantra of a chorus, and the pure charisma diffusing out of the sassy lyrics and nasal, aggressive vocals from Doja, often resorting to yelling, as well as that noisy house-pop beat with chimes and screaming in the background. It is just a beautifully chaotic song, especially with the off-beat pitch-shifted vocal loops in the final chorus; hell, it doesn’t really work well as a pop song because it’s just so bloody all over the place, and, yeah, I can dig this. It’s pretty much a complete mess, but it takes you along for a ride with it, so I’ll endorse it.

#32 – “No Judgement” – Niall Horan

Produced by Tobias Jesso Jr. and Julian Bunetta

Before I write this section, I am going to take a break because I have written entries for a bunch of songs in the span of an hour and a half if that, including one or two that were very long, hence I am starting to grow tired of the chart music and also sound very cynical. I didn’t want to sound too cynical when talking about a pop song like this, which is frankly just existent and relatively inoffensive, even if its funky tropical guitar beat does feel dated and Niall Horan’s vocal presence is so small compared to “Nice to Meet You”, which is a really good song, and—Goddamn it, I���m reviewing the song anyway. Okay, well, let me just conclude this and then I’ll take a rest.

Conclusion

No Mentions of any sort here because there’s one garbage song, one awesome song, one song I cannot mathematically have an opinion on, and one which I do not want to listen to due to being morally righteous or something like that. So, yeah, obviously Best of the Week is Doja Cat’s “Boss Bitch” and Worst of the Week is “Papi Chulo” by Octavian and Skepta. See, this different format works out well because this would have been a short-ass episode otherwise. I’m barely awake now and actively feel myself nodding off every few sentences – sorry for any errors due to this but I can’t be bothered to fix them – so I’ll see you when I’ve rested, I hope.

NEW ARRIVALS: 29/03 #39 – “War” – Mastermind and Bandokay

Produced by LiTek

Just so you know, I had to check the Spotify credits for this song because there is seemingly no Genius lyrics page with all the details and such (as of my writing this). It exists, for sure, but it just lists the artists, the title and displays a “no lyrics available” message, with the cryptic song bio of “Mastermind X #OFB Bandokay”. I mean, sure. Well, I have no idea who these guys are, but their song kind of bangs. Well, at least the beat does, produced by LiTek, who I have also never heard of. That fluctuating flute paired with the pretty intense, exploding trap patterns make for a rap song that actually feels like it’s fulfilling the purpose trap should. I say that without taking into consideration that both of these guys can’t rap for squat and that most of the time, their high-pitched nasal Auto-Tuned whining – or “crooning”, if I’m being kind – is pretty aggravating and pretty derivative of their American contemporaries. British hip hop has never been particularly unique but with the pretty great drill beat here I expected at least some attempt to reflect its intensity in the vocals, but alas, this is just okay, if that.

Oh, apparently Bandokay was the son of the late Mark Duggan, who was killed by police, leading to the 2011 England riots. The more you know.

#36 – “Sunday Best” – Surfaces

Produced by Forrest and Colin Padalecki

I listened to this once without writing anything about it, and honestly, yeah, that’s enough. I should, hypothetically, love this song. Surfaces are two dudes with pretty alt-rock voices who decided to make a pretty, cute pink indie-pop song with a pretty nice trap skitter and simple piano chords, as well as a lot of robotic stuttering. This sounds like it should be some great, catchy stuff, but I actually found this pretty infectious in a different way, which may sound insensitive considering the current state of the world, but I don’t care, this song is garbage. These guys can’t sing, and they don’t want to attempt to hide that fact, instead obnoxiously sharing that with the world through their egregiously optimistic lyrics that seem pretty reassuring in these times, if you’re into shallow, vague rhymes and repetitive fluff that substitutes any kind of genuine, inspiring message or motive. I would say I’m disappointed, but I’m not entirely sure how low my expectations were in the first place.

#34 – “Flowers” – Nathan Dawe featuring Jaykae

Produced by Nathan Dawe

I assumed this would be another trap or grime song but actually this seems to be a DJ once again using uncredited female vocals for his electro house tune fused with dance-pop and a bit of UK garage. I am pretty intrigued by Jaykae’s feature though since he’s a rapper. The song focuses on the UK garage sample used, which is “Flowers” by Sweet Female Attitude and Cutfather, which was a pretty massive song for the genre in the year 2000 that seems to be pretty adored amongst British musicians. It’s been covered by Bastille, remixed by AJ Tracey and finally sampled by Nathan Dawe and Jaykae. I recognise the song – I don’t particularly like it but I respect in how it is a pioneer of the Vocaloid drop that became big in electropop, house and related genres like future and bubblegum bass decades afterwards. Nowadays, despite some pretty and surprisingly modern production at times – it definitely sounds like some bubblegum bass stuff from years later – it’s a pretty sloppy song, thanks to some unneeded complexity in the drop, and ends up sounding clunky as all hell. This new song uses the stems of the vocals – or perhaps a re-recording from the group themselves, or at least a pretty damn good impression – to create a pretty standard house tune that is nothing to write home about but is joyful enough and pretty club-ready. I like the vocodered “Whoa, baby” in the pre-chorus, but overall it just seems like a lazy flip of the original, especially since the drop is basically unchanged. Jaykae’s verse attempts to recreate the hype of a fun verse the DJ or a classic grime MC would add at a club and I do appreciate the new nostalgia for this type of music, but his verse is also kind of garbage. Also, despite his lyrics, this song is decidedly not the type of music you would sip lean to, but, sure, Jaykae, whatever you’re into.

#17 – “In Your Eyes” – the Weeknd

Produced by Max Martin, Oscar Holter and the Weeknd

It’s the Weeknd’s 22nd UK Top 40 hit: the double A-side with “Heartless” was released oddly, with “Blinding Lights” here being released days after and about a week after, was finally accompanied by a music video that’s really just an advertisement for Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Neither single got to experience their best possible tracking week in full, but nonetheless, both are still pretty high because it’s the Weeknd, and I’m actually somewhat excited for this. I’ve heard that it interpolates A-ha’s cheesy 80s synthpop classic “Take on Me”, and it wouldn’t be the first rendition I’ve heard of the song in 2019. That would be Weezer’s hilarious cover on both the Jimmy Fallon show (Where they played it with kids’ toys) and their “Teal Album”. Sorry, I bring Weezer up too much. Is the song good? Hell, yes. It starts with an overwhelming wave of ominous distortion before retro 80s synths quickly come in and an iconic, reverb-heavy drum pattern comes in that sounds awfully familiar – it’s probably also from “Take on Me”. The synth riff, as typical with 1980s synthpop, is hilariously grandiose and egregious, but the Weeknd kills it here as well, not letting the instrumental or even the freaking bongos playing during the verse shine over him or put him off. He blends in with the airy synth painting in the chorus, and it is gorgeous, it really is. I wish this was a tad catchier but that definitely will be a possibility for it to grow on me later on (Which hopefully it does, it’s already perfectly qualified for my best of 2020 list). The Weeknd’s vocals on the bridge are oddly powerful, and that last moment in the penultimate chorus where there is this epic beeping synth that rises until the synth riff drops once again is awesome. The pre-chorus is probably my favourite part, though, especially when the synths cut out for it to just be the Weeknd over the drums, right before the chorus kicks in. I love this so much, unexpectedly so, and I’m so glad it charted so high. I hope it survives the Christmas songs, though.

Okay, all jokes aside, this is a good song, albeit safe as all hell. I feel like I’ve heard this song a bunch of times before, not just in “Blinding Lights”, and Abel can perform, sing and even produce better than this, so I’m left with little to no original insight. I’ve grown to like the Weeknd more when he’s on his depressed trap-R&B style as well, so this is even less appealing to me now. Oh, yeah, and the Doja Cat remix is cool, in fact I might prefer her verse to the original song. She flows pretty well. Oh, and I figured I should specify the Doja Cat stuff would have been written before the whole ‘oops, she’s racist’ scandal. I don’t defend her on that really. In fact, due to a lot of this being written in bulk at different periods of time (Half of this review is from January, the other half being from both May and July), some things may be pretty dated or currently untrue.

Conclusion

The only good song here is Abel’s, so I guess Best of the Week is going to “In Your Eyes” by the Weeknd and Worst of the Week goes to Surfaces’ “Sunday Best”. Nothing else here is all that good or bad, or even worthy of a mention, so next month?

APRIL NEW ARRIVALS: 05/04 ALBUM BOMB: Insomnia – Skepta, Chip and Young Adz

No, I didn’t listen to this album either. What, you think I’d listen to an album by a guy called Young Adz? The Guardian gave it four stars because it had Skepta on it, if you’re interested. Let’s just listen to the songs and get this over with. It’s Young Adz so it’ll have some funny lyrics at least.

#32 – “Mains”

Produced by Skepta

Oh, no, I like this song. This beat, produced by Skepta, is actually pretty incredible, with a very catchy, joyful flute loop smoothly placed under a pretty hard trap beat, which sounds really cutesy, kind of like some Lil Yachty stuff. And Skepta, of course, being Skepta, pretty much kills it – in a good way, that is. His flow is impeccable and I mean, how can’t you ride a beat you produced? Young Adz is actually fine here, and I’d argue his ad-libs actually add to the experience here rather than subtract from it as usual. I’m actually starting to like this guy’s zany charm. He’s much better than Chip, who sounds rusty as hell here, with some badly-fitting Auto-Tune and an off-beat flow. The whole song is one verse between a chorus, with all three rappers sharing the verse pretty much equally. Young Adz kills his second verse in a way I never expected him to, and I love how his ad-libs are implemented into the beat and his “WHAT?! SKEET!” yells are honestly really charming. Yeah, this is pretty good, but it’s Young Adz so...

I’mma whip that crack like banana pudding again / When I step in the bando, fiends and the workers act like Vladimir Putin just came

Got a little three-two concealed in my boxers, call that fire in the mains

You know, now that this guy has improved, these ridiculous non-sequiturs start to sound more like a genuinely funny guy rather than just... an idiot. Also, this:

Come in her p****, a lava lamp

That’s just gross, man.

#18 – “Waze”

Produced by Cardo

I hope this one is good, I mean, I’ve never liked Cardo as a producer, but trap has always been dependent on the vocalists anyway, and Skepta and Adz have both never been ones to disappoint, each in their unique ways. The music video for this is rather pretentiously subtitled “the movie” for whatever reason, by the way. The song, despite the beat coming in via a fade out, which is an odd decision, is pretty okay beat-wise, albeit uninteresting. Young Adz decides to be a lot slower and whinier here so he’s pretty boring and much worse than when he goes on his speedy, rapid, ad-lib-a-plenty verses. Chip tries to be badass but ends up sounding pretty dull, although his verse about rappers claiming they’re the best when they’re the only people in the room is kind of funny, unlike Adz here, who isn’t even humorous here. Skepta is just as bad as Chip, arguably worse, with a really short verse, so, yeah, this album is looking pretty inconsistent so far, just from two tracks. The album’s actually pretty short so I might listen later.

NEW ARRIVALS #38 – “If the World Was Ending” – JP Saxe and Julia Michaels

Produced by FINNEAS

I don’t know who JP Saxe is, I assume he’s some industry playlist singer. Julia Michaels we know, I assume, and FINNEAS is, of course, the producer of Billie Eilish’s hits and her brother. However, most of the time, his other productions don’t end up being nearly as interesting, unique or really anything like his work with Billie. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe that’s a bad thing, I, however, do not care, because frankly, nothing he produces outside of his solo work and with Billie ends up being all that noteworthy. His voice is just a typical white-guy-with-an-acoustic-guitar voice, the instrumentation is minimal and generic (I swear I’ve heard that same piano sound hundreds of times before). This song has been contextualised to relate to the whole COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences but that is arguably as ridiculous as the whole 5G garbage. Speaking of garbage, this song. Music criticism, everybody.

#28 – “Savage” – Megan Thee Stallion (featuring Beyoncé)

Produced by J. White Did It

I haven’t listened to a Megan Thee Stallion project but what I’ve heard ranges from tolerable to pretty damn great. I particularly really enjoy her breakout single “Big Ole Freak” and of course, I applauded “Hot Girl Summer” with Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla $ign on this show before. On the other hand, songs like “Captain Hook” or “Cash Shit” with DaBaby, where Meg boasts about her prowess in both the bank and bedroom over a pretty simple bass-heavy trap beat are just dull to me, regardless of how funny her wordplay is or how occasionally impressive her flows happen to be. “Captain Hook” especially, I mean, at least “Cash Shit” had the DaBaby verse, splashy percussion and sound effects and some pretty memorable bars, as well as the iconic profanity-laden chorus. I haven’t listened to the Suga EP but I did like the lead single, “B.I.T.C.H.”, with the pretty nice 2Pac sample flip. Given that and the other songs I like from her, she may be at her best when she’s rapping over a soulful, early-2000s-esque R&B beat with a helpful pattering of trap skitters. Considering this is produced by J. White Did It, whose discography consists of cheap pianos, stiff trap drum patterns and blocky 808s, he sells off to mostly female rappers like Cardi B or Iggy Koopa, I’m not expecting that, I’m expecting a boring brag-rap song that Megan sounds way too good to be on, and, yeah, pretty much. To be fair to J. White Did It, this beat is pretty nice with the smooth keys and the driving beat behind Megan who kills it with the sass here in the verses, even with an overly repetitive chorus. I especially like the opening verse where she’s the hood Mona Lisa and breaks a [gnarly dude] to pieces, although the second verse has its equal share of notable and funny lines.

I keep a knot, I keep a watch, I keep a whip, ooh / Let's play a game, Simon says I'm still that bitch, ayy

A while ago, I made SpongeBob say the second verse using artificial intelligence and that was funny. Again, music criticism, everybody. Beyoncé isn’t out of place on the remix but I still think she’s not intriguing as a rapper, and I personally prefer her trailing ad-libs in the chorus. I do appreciate Megan adding like three new verses, which is pretty unprecedented, but the two do not have chemistry and it just feels like Beyoncé singing along to the original song sometimes, although her second verse is a lot better. I still prefer the original, though, it’s just more concise. Oh, and there’s an official chopped-and-screwed remix of this, and it’s pretty good, although it doesn’t give me the same ethereal vibe DJ Screw does. The whole “Say So” vs. “Savage” thing was a bunch of malarkey, by the way. No malarkey in Bikini Bottom, please.

#12 – “Believe It” – PARTYNEXTDOOR and Rihanna

Produced by NinetyFour, Cardiak and Bizness Boi

I still can’t tell if PARTYNEXTDOOR is a parody of alt-R&B yet. As with most of Drake’s OVO signees, he makes most sense as a backing vocalist for Drake. I like him ooohing on “Ratchet Happy Birthday”, which is a ridiculous joke song in itself, and his crooning on “Loyal” is just hilariously awful, so he’s just Drake’s friend who decided he could be funny and sing R&B songs, right? So. how did this dude get Rihanna? Okay, I’m half-joking, he’s a serious R&B singer, he just happens to be bad at it. We’ll talk more about Drake in a bit, so let’s listen to the single from PARTY’s most recent album... PARTYMOBILE. Come on, this has to be satire. Anyway, this collaboration is a perfect fit, mostly because PARTY wrote a bunch of Rihanna’s recent songs, but the song itself is a pretty soulless washed-out guitar lick under some inconsistently intricate vocal layering, a gross chipmunk vocal sample, a boring trap skitter and barely any Rihanna.

You got the power, p***y power

I can’t be the only one who thinks this guy is joking, right?

#9 – “Break Up Song” – Little Mix

Produced by Goldfingers and KAMILLE

Little Mix are a girl group practically formed by a talent show that have had more longevity than anyone would have expected but after leaving their awful label management under Simon Cowell, they’ve pretty much consistently flopped. They have these high debuts and drop off pretty quick, whilst Cowell is making cameos in sub-par Scooby-Doo movies. The whole team isn’t doing well after their decade of success, really, and one of them’s hosting a show on MTV or something? I don’t know, I keep getting adverts for it. This is not a good song. It is a vaguely EDM-fused pop song with some reverb-heavy 80s-esque drums. It sounds a bit like “Blinding Lights” production-wise. The lyrics are a remnant of the Industrial Revolution, the melodies could rebuild the Berlin wall, and the song has about as much worthwhile content as the Jewish Autonomous Oblast has Jews. That sounds a lot better than it is, but trust me, this song is just empty and void of anything. It makes his three-minute runtime feel like a Star Wars VHS, complete with grain.

#6 – “Break My Heart” – Dua Lipa

Produced by The Monsters & Strangerz and watt

Now THIS is some good nostalgic dance-pop. I loved the album, it was full of energetic, perfectly-constructed and excellently written bops, although it was slightly knocked down a few points by some filler, which sounds weird saying about a 37-minute record, so it’s a lot more or a bit less noticeable than a longer effort, if that makes sense. In this case, I was jamming out to the infectious hooks so much I didn’t even notice that two or three of the tracks were samey and boring... including the second single, for some reason. I still think “Physical” is pretty mediocre. This song, however, is one of the highlights of the album. The groove here is undeniable and Dua’s voice compliments the at-times minimalist production perfectly, especially in the intro where it’s just her and the bassline before it abruptly transitions into a dreamy pre-chorus full of strings... and then drops back into the pure funk for the chorus, full with strings and horns that despite sounding particularly 90s are effectively timeless. Is this anything that impressive production-wise? Well, no, it is a pretty simple track which is admittedly at times kind of sloppy and rushed, especially in said chorus, but the little touches like the spitter-spatter of 808s in the first few bars of the chorus before it truly drops are there, and they are pretty sweet. The bridge is my only real complaint because I don’t really see the point in its existence since it just repeats a line from the chorus in a really short string break and it seems kind of messy overall, kind of dampening an already fragile structure. Okay, well, it’s not a perfect song, and its flaws are evident towards the end of the song, but I can’t say that detracts from the experience for me overall. Oh, yeah, and I don’t usually watch the videos for these songs when or before I review them but, oh, my God, Dua Lipa in this video is so--

Conclusion

Okay, so Best of the Week is actually pretty much a toss-up here because there are two great songs with pretty obvious flaws that debuted this week, but I’ll give it to Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart”, with Honourable Mention going to “Mains” by Skepta, Chip and Young Adz. Worst of the Week is also pretty difficult to plot, but I think I’ll give it to “Believe It” by PARTYNEXTDOOR and Rihanna for just being a joke of an R&B track, with a Dishonourable Mention to “Break Up Song” by Little Mix. Moving on...

NEW ARRIVALS: 12/04 #39 – “This City” – Sam Fischer

Produced by Jimmy Robbins

Am I the only one who thinks Jimmy Robbins is a funny name? No? Okay, well, let us discuss this next song then. Who’s Sam Fischer, you ask? Well, I  had no idea either so I looked him up and found out that he was some R&B singer from Sydney, Australia, and this song is a single he released in January of 2018 that happened to get big on TikTok – so big in fact that RCA Records slid in his DMs and signed him to re-release the song. So surely there must be something in this song to make it memorable to the average TikTok viewer, and hopefully something good. Before I talk about the song though, the Genius page at the time I’m reading it and writing this is hilarious and kind of heartwarming. Seemingly, this guy communicates with his fans via poorly-written Genius annotations, and there’s specifically this one person in the comments, Genius user “Sechser”, who is lonely, or “lonley”, during quarantine, and she wishes to express this on this Genius lyrics page for whatever reason, leading to someone else asking if they were on Instagram so they could talk. That’s nice and friendly, unlike my reaction to the person who said the song was underrated when it had four Goddamn remixes, including some from Anne-Marie and Kane Brown. While I’m on Genius, I might as well explain what the song is about: being exhausted and tired by the city you live in, and becoming disillusioned by everything going on around you, but not in Sydney, Australia. No, instead, this is a diss track towards Los Angeles, California. Clearly a cultural and economic hub that happens not be the capital of one of the biggest and wealthiest English-speaking countries in the world wasn’t good enough for him, so he moved to another one that fit the exact same description. Oh, and the song? It’s kind of boring. It’s just a white guy with an oddly-mixed acoustic guitar and vocal chords as generic as the plastic finger snaps that suck the power out of this power ballad. If this were the only pop music I knew existed, I’d say pop is dead. Let’s move on.

#34 – “Thank You Baked Potato” – Matt Lucas

Produced by Kevan Frost

Okay, so at this point, the UK is on full quarantine COVID-19 lockdown mode, and I am forced to talk about this in this episode because of this unfunny racist Anthony Fantano-looking motherf—

Okay, so back story: Matt Lucas is a comedian who got big off of the comedy show Little Britain with David Walliams and as a connoisseur of the Dave television channel, I conclude that he’s not very funny. Due to the fact that he portrayed iconic British stereotypes of the 90s and 2000s, such as the disabled guy (?), homophobic homosexual (Wait--) and... okay, so I don’t know how he got so loved by the British public, but he’s a bald guy who people found funny and now he’s making charity singles, not the first time he’s done so either. He also lent his voice to Gnomeo and Juliet because, well, of course, and fittingly this is a children’s song. In the early stages of the pandemic, Europe was asking everyone to wash their hands and stuff like that, focusing on the hygiene ethics that you should follow every day to prevent spread of the virus. So he adapted this song he wrote on some comedy show a couple years ago to fit with the ongoing pandemic, and it’s going to help the NHS workers. It’s a valuable cause for a guy who is ‘very sorry’ but also ‘very willing’ to bring back the blackface from not the 1920s but the mid-2000s, and also really eager to defend Israel’s breach of international law only when Black Lives Matter starts to comment on the situation in the occupied territories. He has also been rather cryptically tweeting videos daily despite his pinned Tweet claiming he has been taking a break from the platform, seemingly to hide his gross-out jokes and gross-out politics in case anyone realises that no, this man isn’t as much of a CBeebies-friendly happy chap with a bald shiny head and enthusiasm as you could have suggested. He’s still got the bald head I suppose but that’s beside the point. The song is (vaguely) listenable despite being completely irrelevant to the cause and also completely bad because he puts on this nasal annoying voice for half of it, when he can’t sing anyway. It’s almost like he’s making a mockery of the pandemic. Regardless of the song’s contents and history, we can all agree it’s a children’s song with a runtime of barely a single minute, hence it shouldn’t be in the UK Top 40, or even the charts at all. At least the guy who made “Baby Shark” wasn’t racist. Free Palestine. Anyway: Drake.

#2 – “Toosie Slide” – Drake

Produced by OZ

You know, I didn’t like “Nonstop”. In fact, I really hated “Nonstop” – but there was at least some charm in it, intentional or not. You know, the Tay Keith beat kind of bangs for what it’s worth, and some of the lyrics are really that bad that they cycle all the way back to being really funny again. “I just took it left like I’m ambidex’”, “Yeah, I’m light-skinned but I’m still a dark [gnarly dude]”, “Bills so big, I call ‘em Williams, for real”? Only Drake could make up garbage this humiliating for both him and the listener, and kind of get away with it. Surely, he can replicate that in “Toosie Slide”, his new drab, dry trap banger with a pretty audible lack of colour, especially in this time of depressing quarantine and lockdown and... yeah, no, this song just doesn’t work in any context. It was propelled by TikTok and is effectively and by all intentions, a dance song much like “Watch Me” or “Crank That Soulja Boy”. Unlike “Crank That”, however, it is not a song you can use in a mash-up or DJ mix, it is not a song you can exploit or have fun with, or even really dance to, despite the cynical, unabashed trend-hopping on display here. Maybe that’s the point, right? I mean, in the video, he’s dancing by himself in his massive mansion where he keeps art of Chairman Mao (Relatable) with a ski mask on, so maybe this intends to reflect the current lockdown period... but I can’t even stretch that far enough, and I tend to stretch the meanings of songs a lot on this show. Sure, musically, with its ambient synths and piano loops, it works as a parallel to real-life, and I guess how easy and depressingly boring the dance is also reflects that, but the rest of the song is completely irrelevant to both the lockdown and dance.

Black leather gloves, no sequins

Oh, thanks for specifying that you have no sequins, Drake, I appreciate that, it really helps create the imagery of a dull white void or a single balloon in the wind, drifting into thin air.

It goes: Right foot up, left foot slide, left foot up, right foot slide

Alright, so that’s a pretty simple set of instructions, I mean, I could do—

Basically, I’m saying, “Either way, we ‘bout to slide”, ayy

So the last instruction was not an instruction but just a recommendation? I just have to slide and that counts as a Toosie Slide?

Can’t let this one slide

So you are prohibiting any form of sliding. Got it.

Don’t you want to dance with me? No? I could dance like Michael Jack... son / I could give you thug pass... ion / It’s a Thriller in the trap... where we from

Okay, first of all, you cannot dance like Michael Jackson, secondly other than “Smooth Criminal” and I guess, “Bad”, he had very little thug passion. Thirdly, this is just lazy and Goddamn unbearably so. He mumbles to himself in a single, droning Auto-Tuned vocal layer, with little to no dynamics in the vocal at all, and clearly an obscene lack of effort that is just despicably abusive of the platform Drake has. He built his career through connections and a universal, likeable charisma, and he is doing a solo song where he shows absolutely no unique charisma at all. After not long ago reviewing “Baby Pluto”, where Lil Uzi masterfully creates a burst of character through rapping about being vapid, materialistic, and having as little character as possible, this is just shockingly bad, honestly. How are you going to make a simple, fun dance for children sound this grading and colourless? It’s almost impressive, honestly, which makes a nice contrast for the non-existent but nonetheless pathetic bars on this track. “It’s a Thriller in the trap where we from”? Bro, he said the Michael Jackson album and he just compared himself to Michael Jackson! This guy’s a genius? Oh, and he said this trap house he most likely did not grow up in or participate to the extent of having any detailed memories about that would constitute a rap verse was as scary as Michael Jackson! Wow, Drake, how many millionaire kiddy-fiddlers were in your meth labs? Jesus Christ, this is just deplorable, honestly. I try not to get upset or mad at songs anymore on this show because it’s just sounds at the end of the day, but this may just be the worst song I’ve reviewed this year so far. Usually I can put up with Drake’s nonsensical garbling or misogynistic rambles but without anything to sugarcoat Drake’s questionable morality and ethics, we can just see a pure-bred Aubrey Graham doing what he does best: being an absolutely miserable man in his thirties surrounded by yes-men and drunk on star power. It doesn’t even have an insensitive and nonsensical reference to Osama bin Laden like the other big Drake singles completely lacking in structure that were released this year, “Life is Good” and “Oprah’s Bank Account”, which by the way are both pretty great songs.

I could give you satisfac... tion

That’s not even a freaking Michael Jackson song—you know what, let’s just conclude this. I’m sick of this.

Conclusion

Oh, I wonder who will be getting Worst of the Week. Yeah, it’s obviously “Toosie Slide” by Drake, and I haven’t even written the reviews for the other songs while I’m writing this one, so make of that what you will; I will be more opinionated on the rest of the songs by the next sentence.

I wish I wasn’t. Both of those songs were garbage. No Best of the Week.

NEW ARRIVALS: 19/04 #39 – “Skechers” – DripReport

Produced by Ouhboy

This is a TikTok meme in which the Indian YouTuber talks about a woman being attractive because of her light-up Skechers. That is the song. That is the joke. Let’s move on.

No, but seriously, while I don’t find the song funny I appreciate it being some kind of lighthearted fun in what seems like a dour pop scene. The trap beat here is freaking pathetic though, and don’t get me started on the Tyga remix; seriously, I’m surprised his verse didn’t make Skechers cease-and-desist Tyga for defamation. The Badshah guy on the other remix kind of kills it though. Oh, and the actual Skechers gave away like a million face masks because of this song so I guess I do respect this stupid freaking song for its... cultural impact. Yeah, shawty bad with the Skechers. It’s a movement.

#24 – “Rover” – S1mba featuring DTG (DejiTheGamer)

Produced by RELYT

S1mba is a Zimbabwean musician who spent his first nine years under Mugabe before moving to Swindon, England, where he started listening to gospel music. DTG is a YouTuber from Croydon. Naturally, their big breakthrough single is a trap-Afroswing song about cars, or specifically the women that young British men can potentially attract with said cars... and somehow it is pretty good. That chorus is undeniably infectious and S1mba is a pretty damn charismatic guy who honestly sounds pretty good singing in the pre-chorus. DTG is considerably less impressive, Auto-crooning repeated lyrics several times with very little effort put into the inflections or cadences. The pianos here are pretty solid and I particularly like the strings in the outro. Also, the build-up to the third chorus is pretty epic. There are also four remixes of this song, including big names like ZieZie, Joel Corry and Lil Tecca, accumulating about 10 people across five songs. I listened to them all and here are my opinions: On the first remix, Poundz sounds kind of awkward as an auto-crooner, ZieZie sounds pretty great – I don’t really know why his verse is bilingual but sure, why not – and Ivorian Doll, who I assume is rather fittingly from Cote d’Ivoire, sounds great rapping but her stuttered singing is less than impressive. S1mba provides a new verse here and it’s pretty mediocre. The Lil Tecca remix is pretty great actually, with Tecca riding the beat effortlessly. Maybe the song can have some popularity stateside because of this? I mean, Young T & Bugsey did it with “Don’t Rush”, which I was surprised to see. Tecca sounds great on the outro, too. Oh, and there’s an Australian remix, too, because Aussie drill is a thing, apparently. The Youngn Lipz guy wastes time, and is not really sounding very Australian unlike the thickly-accented Hooligan Hefs who provides a pretty good verse which is kind of tonally out of place, which is the same with the Hooks guy. And finally, the house remix with Joel Corry, which is censored for some reason but I imagine is getting a lot of radio play despite being a lot less interesting and joyful than the original. It’s a pretty danceable, club-ready banger but you can’t really just get a song’s isolated vocals and put it on an unrelated house beat and expect the best... okay, well maybe Imanbek can, but that’s not the point. Joel Corry just does his thing here, and his thing is pretty freaking boring. Also, I’d like to point out that this is only the remix with DTG on it, and is hence not one of the best remixes. I’d put this above the Aussie remix and the first remix with Poundz and ZieZie (which ZieZie kind of carries), but below the original and the Tecca remix, which is my personal favourite and the one I’ll be saving. I really hope this remix trend continues to be a thing because I’m getting so much more writing out of this. Also, apparently this song is about a specific Range Rover – the 2019 Land Rover Evoque. Great.

Conclusion

“Skechers” by DripReport is Worst of the Week. I know it’s harmless and ultimately just a fun time but that Tyga remix is a crime against humanity, so “Rover” by S1mba featuring DTG and eight other dudes is Best of the Week. I mean, there’s only two songs so you could probably infer this conclusion.

NEW ARRIVALS: 26/04 #39 – “Where We’re Going” – Gerry Cinnamon

Produced by ???

Yeah, neither Genius or Spotify knows who produced this. I assume it’s the artist, Gerry Cinnamon, but that’s just my best guess. He’s an acoustic guitarist from Scotland, which is a bad sign, but this is actually a pretty damn good song. It’s a new wave-ish post-punk song with a fast-paced folkish riff that reminds me of The Cure, specifically a slightly more depressive “Just Like Heaven” came into mind immediately. Cinnamon isn’t a bad vocalist but his performance here is kind of sub-par and lyrically the song suffers from la-la-la syndrome but it makes perfect sense in the profanity-laden, careless tone of the lyrics and the song itself, which relies on the oddly profound hook of “Where we’re going this shit don’t matter”. Whilst I like this song a lot, I am slightly turned off by its dreariness which would work if the song weren’t four minutes, which is perhaps a couple choruses too long, but yeah, this is pretty good for what it is. I’m surprised it’s here in the UK Top 40, but this guy has been big in Scotland for a while so I guess this is his big single. He seems like more of an album artist, anyway. I need to listen to this guy’s album, perhaps.

#29 – “Rockstar” – DaBaby featuring Roddy Ricch

Produced by SethInTheKitchen

It’s funny how two songs can be so different yet so similar. At its core, both this and “Where We’re Going” are profane, carefree and reckless pop songs with acoustic guitar as a focal instrument and a pretty bleak-sounding atmosphere to it all, which is fitting with the world being bricks and all. The main difference between the songs is that DaBaby is not a Scottish punk singer, and, last time I checked, neither was Roddy RIcch, although things change pretty fast in the music industry, and Taylor Swift just released her overhyped indie folk album as I’m writing this, so who knows? It’s not even her best album. I stand by reputation being her best but I don’t think I should elaborate on that hot take until “cardigan” inevitably debuts at #1. This is the second #1 hit trap song in the US to be a duet between two rappers about being a rockstar (this one is stylised in uppercase rather than lowercase, though). DaBaby also made a song about being a “Pop Star”, which Drake and DJ Khaled did a couple weeks ago. Trap-rappers are really original, I swear. Anyway, the acoustic plucking here courtesy of SethInTheKitchen is pretty funky here, but the drums do feel pretty stiff here. I love the Auto-Tuned “Oooooooh” that I think Roddy provides; again, the second #1 this guy has had with a vocal gimmick. DaBaby flows impressively in his first verse, where he recounts when he killed a man in front of his daughter and that he’d do it again. As you do. Roddy isn’t particularly interesting here but his Young Thug impression hasn’t worn off on me yet, so, yeah, pretty okay, decent song. Not many lyrics to analyse here, either.

Brand new Lamborghini, f*** a cop car / With a pistol on my hip like I’m a cop

This line in the chorus inspired DaBaby to release a “Black Lives Matter” remix of the song, and whilst it’s not as good as the original, simply because the beat doesn’t drop or hit as hard due to the extended intro and the song’s brevity is kind of its main saving point for me, I really respect his introductory verse on the remix where he raps viciously without a beat about police brutality, even referring to personal experiences he’s had with systematic racism in the United States. Also, in both versions, the sudden and brazen “SETHINTHEKITCHEN” producer tag never fails to get a chuckle out of me. Now that we’ve listened to two pretty respectable pieces of art, how about some manufactured plastic-wrapped garbage made in a factory by television producers?

#25 – “You Taught Me What Love Is (Britain’s Got Talent Live Recording)” – Beth Porch

Produced by Matt Banks, Charlie Irwin and Paul Jones

Those are the producers of Britain’s Got Talent, if you’re wondering. Spotify doesn’t list any producer credits because of course, they don’t. This is not really a typical pop song rather it is Simon Cowell’s attempt at replicating an indie-girl songwriter with an acoustic guitar and typical indie-girl voice, and, man, I don’t like half of those artists and Porch here can sing, but come on, this is just pathetic and desperate. I remember when Cowell started the talent shows, he didn’t have to directly replicate other trends really because he was making and defining the sound of British pop music in a way. It wasn’t very good but you can remember some of his signatures that are still present in remnants of pop music on the island today, especially this song, which has the skyscraper chorus and crowd cheering at the end, but God, this is just sad. I’m glad we’ve moved past the need for singer-songwriters, boy bands and girl groups created by reality television for the sake of putting more money in old rich white guys’ pockets. If I were doing this show any earlier than 2015, I feel like it would have been plagued by this stuff. Thank God for the streaming era, I suppose.

#20 – “I’m Ready” – Sam Smith and Demi Lovato

Produced by ILYA

This is a Sam Smith song featuring guest vocals from Demi Lovato. They are both good vocalists. The production from ILYA is not very interesting. Okay, I take it back, the production here is kind of cool, because it’s half an intimidating dated trap song and half a piano-based power ballad, and neither of these guys are convincing on a deep sliding 808 or rattling hi-hats. Oh, yeah, and the trap beat sucks. Like what’s with that snare? Yeah, this is garbage. I’m not sure why I expected otherwise, to be honest. If this is motivational to you, all respect to you but to me, this is pure cremation.

#5 – “Times Like These (BBC Radio 1 Stay Home Live Lounge)” – Live Lounge Allstars

Produced by Fraser T. Smith

“Times Like These” is actually my favourite Foo Fighters song; I’ve never been a big fan of the band but they have some incredible songs that I love very dearly and “Times Like These” is one of them. I guess it’s a fitting song for the current situation but I’m not expecting the Live Lounge Allstars to bring anything other than a washed-out, dry and bland cover of this classic. Who are the Allstars? Well, BBC Radio 1 has a series called Live Lounge where artists perform covers live or something to that effect – I don’t watch/listen to it – and this song features a lot of artists from that show who are more relevant, commercially viable or connected to Foo Fighters genre-wise, including Simon Neil, Zara Larsson, Sam Fender, Rita Ora, Rag’n’Bone Man, Paloma Faith, Mabel, Hailee Steinfeld, Grace Carter, Coldplay, Celeste, Biffy Clyro, Anne-Marie, AJ Tracey (Wha—), 5 Seconds of Summer, Dermot Kennedy, Sean Paul (Because of course), YUNGBLUD, Sigrid, Royal Blood, Dua Lipa, Bastille, Ellie Goulding, Jess Glynne, and of course, the only Foo Fighters present, Dave Grohl and drummer Taylor Hawkins. I’m not going to pretend this song doesn’t have potential (I love Royal Blood and Dua Lipa, hell, a cover of this song with just those guys – or even Bastille – could work pretty damn well) but this is over-flooded with completely random artists, other than a couple rock bands picked out so they could replicate some sense of vague guitarism, whatever that means. Anyway, let’s remind ourselves why “Times Like These” works in the first place: it’s a lighthearted adult alternative song with a real message to learn from mistakes and to always think about the decisions you make before you hurt feelings or you feel guilty. It’s got a maddeningly infectious chorus, an iconic guitar riff and a so bad it’s good music video. It’s what the Foo Fighters are good at making, but it’s warmer and perhaps more intimate than usual, being based on actual events and internal drama within the band. It’s almost a diss track Dave Grohl wrote to himself, but in the most jovial tone possible with metaphors that are just odd and creative enough to be memorable to the listener. In the song, he beats himself up for being indecisive, ignorant and confused, before reassuring us and himself that he will learn from these lessons and become a better person, even if he has to drill the mantra into our heads. It’s just a great song... and it doesn’t really work in the context of this pandemic. Sure, the whole vague idea of becoming a better person in the new normal following lockdown, and how the lockdown will be troubling for the mental health of the British public, but otherwise, I mean, it’s a song that specifically refers to an event in Dave Grohl’s life, and has the typical, sludgy post-grunge vocals and some charmingly janky production choices (There, I said it), such as that echoing vocal in the verses. It all makes sense in the context of the song, though; here, it just feels impersonal. Sure, Grohl himself wrote off on it and contributed to the song, but there’s a certain lack of sincerity to the vocals here that makes the song’s profound lyrics feel cheap. I’m not going to say they disrespected a classic anthem. After all, “Times Like These” isn’t a brilliantly written song in the first place and it’s not like it’s influential or held in high regard. These singers are generally pretty talented, albeit not showing their best performances here. Despite that, with the slow, acoustic trod of this new cover, the shadow of dullness that looms over the whole song, and some outright garbage vocal performances from Simon Neil and YUNGBLUD, it doesn’t hold up to the original in any way. I wish this wasn’t acoustic either; again, Bastille, Royal Blood, Dua Lipa, Biffy Clyro and Coldplay could all do great covers of this song with some electric backing and some actual Goddamn energy. As is, it’s just a shoddily made charity single that misses the point of the original song completely. Oh, yeah, and the AJ Tracey guest rap verse is freaking AWFUL, and so out of place. It’s about making a wicked pasta bake, seemingly, and is capped off by Sean Paul giving the best performance out of any of the singers here, because, well, of course, he does. It’s Sean Paul. Big up the dude on the glockenspiel as well.

#1 – “You’ll Never Walk Alone” – Michael Ball, Captain Tom Moore and the NHS Voices of Care Choir

Produced by Nick Patrick

Reviewing this song misses the point of the song, as this isn’t a song for you to listen to, really. This is a song for you to appreciate and respect the charitable cause it represents. Captain Tom Moore is an army veteran who is 100 years old, making him the oldest person to ever get a #1 on the chart. He served in India and Burma during the Second World War, and 70-odd years later, he started walking laps around his garden to raise charity for NHS workers, and, naturally, he garnered media attention and attracted more than £30 million in donations. This song in particular is pretty special to a lot of Britons because of its attachment to the Liverpool football team (it’s been a crowd chant for a while after it was originally written by Rogers-Hammerstein in 1945 and further covered by Gerry and the Peacemakers in 1963). Even The Weeknd, who was #1 at the time, asked his fans to give him the #1 instead. Several people were inspired by Moore and practiced similar fundraising efforts that also raised millions for similar causes. After the song was released, Queen Elizabeth II, who is also approaching 100, knighted Moore, so, yes, he is Captain Sir Thomas Moore. I have nothing but respect for the man and his service to the country. To many people in the United Kingdom, especially elderly people who have had particular struggles during the pandemic and increased loneliness, especially without the otherwise regular family visits, he is a hero, and I completely understand that. I mean, the guy was on Blankety Blank once in 1983, so you’ve at least got to respect him for that. If you have the time, read up on the man’s life story, because as one would expect, he’s been through a hell of a lot in 100 years.

Conclusion

I can’t give Worst of the Week to charity singles, I’m sorry, I don’t have it in me. Sure, the Allstars butchered a great Foo Fighters classic, but if it helps people in these trying times, then I can’t say the song is worthy of my bile, really. So Worst of the Week goes to “I’m Ready” by Sam Smith and Demi Lovato, and Best of the Week goes to “Where We’re Going” by Gerry Cinnamon. Next month.

MAY NEW ARRIVALS: 03/05 #39 – “Kings & Queens” – Ava Max

Produced by Cirkut and RedOne

I just today found out that Cirkut ISN’T Dr. Luke. For some reason I always assumed so. Anyways, Ava Max is back to prove she’s not a one-hit wonder by making her one hit another time. Man, I’m just so bored of this. One of the reasons I stopped bothering or trying to make these blogs and music review list type things is that I gravitate less than ever towards music reviewing and journalism. I would love to use this hobby and passion for some good at some point and maybe make a career out of it but as an Internet music critic who reviews nearly exclusively chart music, this shit is just boring – and 2020’s supposed to be a really cool, unique interesting year for the charts. I’m kind of disillusioned with the whole cinematic top 10 build-up and this massive, melodramatic aggravated assault on the #1 worst song, when in reality everything is subjective and it’s not worth doing that. I mean, as well as I rested my case about “Taki Taki”, it doesn’t remove the song from existence or the charts. People won’t stop liking the song, it’s just my measly opinion, and, yes, while I think the whole idea of reviewing art is futile and at times counterproductive or toxic, it is completely fair to say your opinion on something, otherwise I wouldn’t be still writing this months after this song had first charted. I just don’t get the idea of a pop music reviewing community or whatever, which obviously does exist, and you’re probably a part of it if you’re reading this in all honesty, if you even got  this far. In the bluntest way possible, they just argue with each other. I don’t know, maybe I’m thinking way too much into this, it’s just a bit of fun but I just don’t care for the whole slog of reviewing five songs every week when I know I won’t like half of them. I feel like when I started, I viewed myself as one of those music-reviewing YouTubers with Pokémon avatars and top 20 rankings, and yeah, I don’t get that anymore from doing this. I just get apathy, although when I do feel happy and productive, which isn’t often nowadays, this is one of the first things I start thinking of and start doing so that should show that maybe chipping at this brick wall of Top 40 singles every couple months is fun? I don’t know. I decided today that I’ll release this block as the first part of this wall of sound, no pun intended, and I don’t know how good that’ll make me feel after releasing it. It’s definitely a relief, I guess. Anyway, Ava Max, I guess.

If all of the kings had the queens on the throne / We would pop champagne and raise a toast

Wait, sorry what was that?

We would pop champagne and raise a toast

Sorry, could you clarify that first part?

We would pop champagne

No. NO.

Pop champagne

#38 – “Don’t Need Love” – 220 KID and GRACEY

Produced by Will Graydon, Sam Brennan and Mark Ralph

Okay, back from mental trauma, is this song good? I don’t know, man, I don’t know who these guys are. 220 KID is a self-proclaimed “fizzy pop” artist from the UK, and GRACEY is a singer from Brighton who at some point lost her voice. Sure. This is their breakthrough song, I assume because of TikTok since they both don’t have an album yet, and I haven’t heard anything about them or their other singles, but I’m probably just ignorant. I mean, this is 220 KID’s debut single so they might just be a great, upcoming artist. I wouldn’t be able to tell because this is just really a mediocre house-pop song in theory. I mean, it has the exact same robotic, distorted and echoey vocal production, similarly thumping bassy beats, a stitched-up vocal drop, but something about this sounds cold. Maybe it’s the weak albeit bouncy production and snapping, maybe it’s the odd amount of dead space, maybe it’s the admittedly cool-sounding synth pads, but really, I think it’s just that non-existent drop. It doesn’t feel climactic, it doesn’t feel like anything, it just feels like someone ate the charting dance-pop singles from the past three years and regurgitated it. GRACEY sounds really nice in the falsetto towards the end now, and I like the melodies in the verse, I suppose. It’s not all bad, not that it was bad in the first place, just sonically void of personality. Also, there are way too many remixes and different releases but I still listened to all of them. The acoustic version is really sweet, and I think I actually really like how this song is written when hearing it stripped-down, but her desperate moaning in the chorus of the acoustic version feels a lot more genuine than the pitch-shifted garbage we get on the official, not that it doesn’t sound awkward on all versions. The Majestic remix is kind of nuts and I like the UK garage production but it’s way too long, and the TCTS remix is just the original with annoying beeping.

#26 – “Righteous” – Juice WRLD

Produced by Charlie Handsome and Nick Mira

I’m still pretty hurt that Juice passed. To be only 21 and die so suddenly after such a successful albeit brief career, at a moment where Juice seemed to be on top of the world more or less, is a tragic reality and Juice seemed like a nice, genuine guy from interviews so it was pretty shocking to hear the news, to say the least. Now, this gets awkward, like Pop Smoke from earlier, in the case that I was not a fan of Juice WRLD, and I’m still not. I think he was a very talented songwriter who attracted a fanbase due to a pretty unique 2000s emo-pop-inspired brand of trap, and he wrote some of my favourite emo rap songs ever, like “Lean wit Me” or “Robbery”, which is a damn excellent song and one of my favourites of last year. It even was in the top five of my Spotify Rewind 2019 playlist, I love that song to bits. However, most of his music had not appealed to me, and to be honest, I haven’t listened to that posthumous album, Legends Never Die, and probably never will because of that. I don’t want to dislike an album that serves as a genuine tribute to a good person, and I also am not sure if I’d be able to get through the entirety of the album, to be honest, mostly because of this song, which impacts me emotionally in a way not many songs do. The instrumental consists of a pretty sparse, spacey and minimal guitar-based trap skitter that is just a perfect base for Juice to pour his emotions onto in a way that feels eerie and sad but also pretty accepting, which makes the lyrics feel haunting, especially because the topics he discusses are mostly centred around how he thinks death for him is imminent. The first lines of the chorus already hit so hard with how he pictures himself as a “righteous” angel figure in his all-white Gucci suit and says, “I know that the truth is so hard to digest”. Then Juice continues to talk about the sheer quantity of drugs he’s consuming, which is just harrowing. This song feels like Juice was introducing someone to his lifestyle and realising how depressing and draining it was as he goes, especially in the first verse, where by the end he starts reassuring someone, who could be his girlfriend, his audience and fanbase, but most dauntingly, himself, that he’ll get out of this addiction and lifestyle at some point, when, in reality, he passed before he could even try, and he passed as a consequence of this lifestyle. In the second verse, he parallels how he died in his lyrics, saying and almost threatening to his inner demons, who he characterises as people he knows (but they “don’t know [him] like that”), that he will “take a pill for the thrill, have a relapse” and “crash”. The fact that this song is sprinkled with the silly, melodramatic metaphors not atypical to Juice, makes this song feel directly personal and not a retelling of the same line a lot of emo-rappers have sang and sadly, some have fallen victim to, about taking copius amounts of Xanax and codeine. Much like “Robbery” and a lot of his other work, Juice adopts a longing and nasal cadence and vocal delivery, but it feels much more trained and tuneful here, especially among the subtle vocal samples in the verse, and it is used sparingly in turn with a more muted delivery, particularly prominent in the chorus and the second verse, which connotes Juice’s lethargic acceptance with a lifestyle that he fell victim to. I don’t react emotionally that much to music, and I think that’s the same with a lot of people, but those first two lines in the chorus hit like a dagger and sound so great while doing so. Rest in peace Jared Higgins, and may the beauty of this song reflect on your talent.

#14 – “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” – The 1975

Produced by Jonathan Gilmore, George Daniel and Matthew Healy

I really loved “Me & You Together Song” but I find it hard to get behind anything else these guys made, really. They actually released an 80-minute album this May featuring backing vocals from Greta Thunberg, because of course, they did. I feel like if they started making music that was more natural and organic and didn’t try to make Pitchfork-bait political statements or whatever, I would appreciate them more. Not that I’m against political statements in songs – I’m definitely not, in fact, I’m sad “The Bigger Picture” by Lil Baby missed the top 40 this year – but the 1975, particularly Matt Healy, have never commented on pop culture in a way that’s not incoherent, preachy and frankly kind of stupid and obnoxious. Thankfully, this song, their biggest so far, is just about meeting a girl on FaceTime so you know, it makes me much more optimistic. The intro is really pleasant ambiance, but that awkward main guitar/bass riff makes it sound a lot less serene and more chaotic, even with FKA twigs providing some choral background vocals. Then the steady drums and 80s synths drown it out and once again, it suddenly becomes a fun, catchy song, even if Healy sounds really annoying with some inflections and notes that just sound... kind of horrific, especially with the multi-tracking that makes him even more irritating. He sounds even worse on the pre-chorus, but the cheesy and unabashed chorus where he says “Maybe I would like you better if you take off your clothes” followed by this corny, clearly synthesised horn riff, is just incredible. I kind of have to embrace Healy’s incompetence here because I can’t help myself but chuckle hearing him shout over 80’s beats in a way I guess isn’t too dissimilar to bands like Duran Duran, and hey, I love Duran Duran, and this is a good replica of a post-new wave 80’s synthpop track, even with a Goddamn saxophone solo. Is it too long? Yes, but so were those 80’s songs, and they just awkwardly faded out afterwards, and there is a shorter edit without the intro that cuts a whole minute off the track, meaning it starts just as awkwardly as it finishes, but that’s kind of the charm. Yeah, this is a pretty fun track, and maybe that Notes on a Conditional Form album is worth checking out. Maybe I give the 1975 too much flack. Wait, nevermind, no, I don’t, they’re called the 1975.

#11 – “The Scotts” – THE SCOTTS (Travis Scott and Kid Cudi)

Produced by Dot da Genius, Plain Pat and Take a Daytrip

Whoever decided to call this song “THE SCOTTS” is a brilliant mind and intellectual. Not only do I laugh every time I see this song title, just on pure absurdity alone, but it’s also by The Scotts. No one will proudly say, “Yeah, I’m listening to “THE SCOTTS” by THE SCOTTS.” It’s also in all caps as if it’s this monumental, groundbreaking track, or at least an important, interesting one, but it’s actually just because all Travis Scott songs will be TITLED LIKE THIS NOW, ever since ASTROWORLD. It also amuses me that this makes absolutely no sense if you tell someone that this is actually a collaborative project between Kid Cudi and Jacques Webster. Travis Scott’s name isn’t even Scott, and Kid Cudi’s never used it in his name, although admittedly, in a lot of songs – and many I adore and remember fondly – he does say his name, Scott Mescudi, or some shortened variation of it. He doesn’t do it here, but Travis does say “You lettin’ THE SCOTTS outside”, as if it’s dangerous to let THE SCOTTS outside of their zone or outside of their cage or whatever. This song was also performed and premiered live on Fortnite, has like ten different vinyl editions to bump up its sales (It went #1 on the Hot 100 in the US in fact), and, man, the very idea of this song and everything surrounding it is just funny to me. Too bad the song’s not. I really like the keys loop used here coupled with some great-sounding drum fills but it is just destroyed by this ugly, slow bassy trap skitter and really gross-sounding Travis Scott vocals. He just uses this one lethargic flow, and switches it briefly in less of a technical or interesting way than Cudi does later in the song, delivering a really great verse, but my issue is that it sounds like a Travis Scott verse. He even tries to do his ad-libs. Then there’s this chiptune outro that sounds like a Mike Dean idea, mostly because it sounds kind of cool but doesn’t go anywhere and doesn’t do anything to improve this shoddy song and its messy, dare I say, janky structure. “Baptized in Fire” is a much better collaboration from these two, and it’s telling that that one doesn’t have a verse from Travis at all. Rodeo is still amazing, but this guy has been disappointing and underwhelming for such a long time now. Maybe he’s lost his charm, but even with ASTROWORLD, where his experimental production shines and he is the most energetic he is in recent years, he just sounds tired and lazy. And Cudi, well, he’s Cudi. He’s made some of my favourite songs of all time, and some of the most confusing garbage I’ve ever heard. The duality of man.

#6 – “Houdini” – KSI featuring Swarmz and Tion Wayne

Produced by AjProductions and Jacob Manson

Hey, this mildly amusing but definitely not my thing YouTuber got two of my favourites of the recent crop of British Afroswing and drill rappers on the same track. That’s something, right? I mean, yes, this is something, because this beat is AWESOME. It’s so full of joy and energy, even with the dark 808 tones and sparse vocal tones. I just love the bouncy, funky production on this thing and Swarmz kills it on the chorus with his typical happy nasal tone. Stormzy also kind of kills it, at least for the first half where he flows really swiftly and with a lot of smooth swagger, before he starts listing things and saying “Check” afterwards, for whatever reason. Tion Wayne delivers the clumsy fun he usually does, and whilst neither him or anyone here really brings any interesting lines or wordplay with them to the track, except a really awful corny line from KSI where he says his fourth letter is getting bigger in the alphabet, the track still feels really fun and cheerful, and most importantly full. Even when there’s literally silence, or no-one’s saying anything, it never feels like there’s dead space because the beat is always doing something cool. This is notable especially when Tion Wayne starts flowing really awkwardly and even when the beat cuts out for a really odd, nothing line, it still feels kind of worth it. Not much to say about this song other than it bangs, and a lot more than I’d expect from a guy like KSI.

Conclusion

I actually have pretty positive feelings on this week, which is good to go out on, I suppose. Best of the Week is obviously and undeniably going to the late Juice WRLD’s “Righteous”, with tied Honourable Mentions to the 1975’s “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” and, yes, KSI’s “Houdini” featuring Swarmz and Tion Wayne. There’s not much to complain about here, so Worst of the Week goes to “Kings & Queens” by Ava Max for the kind of vapid nothingness I can’t even bring myself to stay on topic to talk about and Dishonourable Mention to “THE SCOTTS” by THE SCOTTS because it’s “THE SCOTTS” by THE SCOTTS, and I don’t know about you but to me, that’s just laughable. See you in the next year, hopefully.

[coldtomyflash]

Hi, I hope you're doing well! I always enjoy reading any of your speech analyses. If you're still into doing them could you analysis some more of Caitlin's speech habits?

(Sorry this took me 5ever.)

Caitlin’s speech falls into two broad categories. Scientific babble, and regular. I’ll be focusing on day to day speech, but note that most of what I’ll say applies even to her science babble scenes, with one of the major differences being she gets longer lines (but not necessarily longer sentences) when in science-mode.

Anyway, there’s only a few major things I have to discuss about her speech. One is that she’s pretty formal / polite until she knows someone on a personal level. People are often addressed by their rank (”Dr. Wells” and “Dr. Stein”) and she calls Barry “Mr. Allen” until she gets to know him.

It’s pretty clear that being polite is a default setting to her, in most situations.

However, when Caitlin is made to charge/control of a situation, she can drop that entirely and snap orders.

Completely unafraid to lecture or snap if/when she deems it necessary. Often times this comes up because of something emotional, snapping at one of the men surrounding her for being an ass.

But then, sometimes it’s because people are telling her what to do, and Caitlin doesn’t appreciate having her competence questioned. She likes control quite a bit, and reacts negatively when people get in the way of that.

Speech-wise, what we see in those above situations is her using exclamations and admonishments as reminders. 

Also note that like the above quote about being “quite the pair, Mr. Allen”, Caitlin uses names (Harry, Julian) a decent amount in her speech, especially to give a little more weight to a statement. She does it at both the start and end of a sentence, I noticed, but especially when she’s admonishing, it goes at the end. When she’s being gentler, it’s more likely she’ll open on the name.

Something I find interesting about her speech is that it’s largely devoid of adjectives. Not entirely, because sometimes you need to say something like “the last person”…

But even the way she uses her sparing adjectives, it’s seldom for anything but a necessary purpose to explain something. It’s not really to add depth or floweriness to her language.

“It’s too dangerous” - while ‘dangerous’ is technically an adjective, she’s really only using it to illustrate a point.

Speaking of points, it’s worth noting that the majority of Caitlin’s sentences are simple declarative sentences, and short ones. That or imperative (like “Listen, Harry” is imperative, or “don’t ask me” from above, and so is):

Or else sometimes carrying an implicit order instead of an explicit one.

Again, note the sentences being short and with a single clause. Naturally, there are exceptions (again, from above “I don’t know anything about having powers so I’m the last person you should talk too”), but it is a prevalent trend (even when in science mode, like “check your math” from the first gif above is a short imperative sentence).

Sometimes, she’s just stating things as they are, or saying what they have to do.

And in here you’ll see that across a lot of these examples, she opens with “we” instead of “I”, speaking for the team. There’s a lot of imperative or “you should” and a lot of “we [verb]” when saying what the team has done or should do. 

Not that she never asks instead of orders, but asking involves more vulnerability for her and comes out less than ordering.

(Takes literally being on the surgery table to ask lol, but that’s just one example. Caitlin doesn’t say “please” a lot though, for all her formality).

And actually, across a lot of the above examples, she tends to lead with “I” in sentences expressing deeper emotion, insecurity (about not knowing how to talk to Jesse, or her control over her powers) or when she’s nervous and seeking affirmation. More examples:

(Fear makes for a pretty vulnerable and emotional admission, right?)

(Again, note the imperative order here: “use them”. She really does take control more than people realize, I think).

Also, combine that with her asking questions when she needs affirmation or assurance or, like above, is vulnerable (and needs stitching up). 

Don’t forget though that much like my post about how she actually does swear sometimes (and get drunk and party and have fun, she’s a three-dimensional person, here), Caitlin can also be bold. She made this bet on Barry, after all.

Simple, declarative, still her, but remember that she isn’t always the killjoy if you’re writing her. Remember that she’s sneaky too, and demands things from others without apologizing for it. 

Also, I wanted to include some examples of her going off a bit longer. We see from the two examples below that when she’s talking about something she’s helped figure out on the team, she goes into a longer explanation. Still no adjectives though, and still simple clauses that don’t interweave much.

That and, when explaining something, she opens with “okay” and hedges a bit more, like “okay, well” and “okay, but” even though she keeps is mostly simple overall.

Also, just want to point this out: Caitlin uses a lot of contractions (”didn’t, don’t, you’ve, I’ve, I’m, can’t, it’s, we’re” etc). Also, we see here that she uses “[noun]’s not” rather than “isn’t” or “ain’t” (definitely not ain’t) for her “is not” short form. 

A good example for when she doesn’t use a contraction, and instead says the full word, is emotionally for emphasis in reassuring her friend.

Not “’ll never” and not “won’t” but “will never” fully spelled out. That’s atypical for her and definitely for emphasis.

Some final notes (half because I took the time to track down all these gifs). Caitlin having fun tends to be a little more fun in her speech, too. A little more casual. “Well then,” and “As Cisco would say” instead of giving orders or implicit commands or explanations.

(Caitlin being adorable and relaxing her speech to reassure her friend and have a bit of fun with him, using an adverb as an intensifier (”totally”, when she normally only uses “too”).

It’s also worth pointing out that much like her simple sentence structure, Caitlin’s word choice tends to be very simple (outside of science babble). It complements the simple form of her speech. 

“He knows” and not “He found out” or “He’s aware” or “he determined” or “he uncovered the truth” or something. It’s… perfunctory? Her speech is… well, she was never an English major. Her speech is, above all, functional. 

A simple answer to a simple question.

Trailing off because expressing it in simple terms is going to be difficult because it’s emotional for her, and she likes to communicate in simple terms.

Vocally, Caitlin’s speech, like the rest of her, can be “uptight”, not even so much in her manner as in her voice - strained, quiet but creaking with emphasis when stressed. Admonishing. That being said, it’s also quite soft at times, when reassuring someone, or excited, especially around Cisco, or when talking science.

So don’t discount the importance of cadence of voice, but also, facial expression. Caitlin doesn’t talk a lot with her whole body (unlike, say, Wally, or even Barry) and she’s not quite a hand-talker in the way that Len is. She uses her hands a bit, especially when giving an explanation with her hands up or splayed, sort of gesturing in a pretty controlled way, or to point at herself sometimes, but her hand movements aren’t predicable in the way that Len’s are, and aren’t used quite as much for emphasis.

So with her, you’ll get a lot more traction if you describe her expressions. Intense eyes and tense muscles when she’s angry and giving orders. Befuddled or bemused with a kind of “what now” face if she is affronted or disagrees.

She makes great faces, honestly, but it’s especially her eyes and mouth you’ll want to pay attention to. Pouting, eyebrows draw together in confusion or else in sympathy, or to ask for something and she’s trying to make herself look cute/innocent/idk. She gets very wide-eyed when expressing fear, and looks very tired when emotionally strained, but she’s suffered so much loss that’s unsurprising.

So… go forth and write some Caitlin :) Her speech is actually pretty easy to write, it’s making it distinct from everyone else’s that’ll be the challenge I think?

[vescoisland]

Daybe's Thoughts on The New Jason Isbell Record, Without Research

H/T to Mr. Thoughts on The Dead

I wanted to like this album. Well, at first I was wary, but by the time they FINALLY released it, after holding it for 8 weeks during national quarantine, the whole time which the record had been finished, mastered and pressed, I had talked myself into wanting to like it. 

  I don’t hate it so much as….

  I WANTED TO LIKE IT. 

  I have a friend who hates slow music. This isn’t the thing where I’m “asking for a friend.” She really says “even fast songs that are actually slow music are terrible.”

  About 86% of the time I 100% agree with her. This is where we get to the heart of my problem with Jason Isbell solo records. 

  This is boring music. 

  I get it, it’s Poignant. Keep mining the purity of the south with a gothic twist. Tell me again how sobriety is hard. 

  Either that or have the courage to be a drunken buffoon – which makes you poetic. 

  Overall this is a boring samey-sounding album, and I would argue his second misstep in terms of music that I’ll return to, after The Nashville Sound, which is a fucking snoozer.

  After his dig in the press about Ryan Adams, I learned that there is a song on The Nashville Sound called “Chaos and Clothes” which is about Ryan Adams. I had to look up the song and listen to it upon hearing the title, because I didn’t have any recollection of having heard it. 

  It’s not a good song.

  Or a remarkable song.

  Despite being about a guy he’s obviously obsessed with, amirite?

  I do like the line about “Death Metal T Shirts” though. 

  Be better if it was The Eagles of Death Metal. 

  Or All Night Drug Prowling Wolves. 

  You were doing a good job of keeping this on track

  Oh yeah, Reunions. New album by Mr. and Mrs. Jason Isbell and The 400 Units

  That’s not fair. You barely mention Yoko Tammy in your song by song review bit you stole from Thoughts on The Dead after Chrid and Chaz made fun of you. 

  AHEM

  Released to much fanfare and press ogling. 

  So much press ogling that I got caught up and started to ogle. 

  In politics there’s The Full Russert. 

  So what do we call Koppleman Pod, Hyden Fawning, New York Times Article and a full length story on The CBS Sunday Morning Liberal Good Time Power Hour?

  “Pay attention to this one Southern guy who let’s you in on the jokes we tell about our neighbors?”

  You’re such a dick 

  I didn’t love any of the songs I heard that were released as a teaser. I thought they were all pretty meh, for pretty much the same reasons.

  They weren’t terrible but they also led me to not pre-order the album. 

  I pre-ordered it but you heard it before me!

  Howzat?

  I ordered direct from the label and it finally just got here yesterday

  Shoulda ordered it from an Indie™ Record Store, from the approved list of Stores Tammy Likes

  Shouldn’t the label be treated the same way? It’s direct from them. No Middleman. More change to jingle in the coin purse between her tits!

  Now you’re starting to sound like me.

  Quiet you. I still haven’t listened. Sorry they changed the rules on my halfway through not releasing their album. They sure weren’t in a hurry.

  It’s a slower pace of life down here, Gar. 

  I hate you – I’m just saying they could have included people like me who ordered direct from the label and gave them more money for her Tammy Tops and his terrible sneaker habit

It’s not about MONEY, MAAAAANNN! They’re supporting indie shops. The Plandemic is wreaking havoc on the economy, and we gotta save the dudes who made enough in banking during the last crisis to open over priced record stores to sell hipster douchebags like us vinyl copies of stuff we used to own on CD. 

  I’m losing patience. You told me you had “some thoughts” on the new record. I accused you of having a weird obsession, to show me you don’t you stole an idea we gave you about a dumb blog…

  Yeah

  I only listened to three of the four songs released before the full record was put out.

  I didn’t listen to Only Children. Keep reading – I guess I still haven’t.

  THE POINT! 

  Oh yeah. 

  The other day, in the run up to the release, I flashed to a long forgotten review of Wilco’s “Summerteeth” from the time it was released that said something to the effect of “Jeff Tweedy still thinks repeating the name of the same over and over is a good stand in for a real chorus” 

  The same might be said for Jason Isbell on Reunions

  What Have I Done to Help? 

            Jesus Christ Trump has broken everyone’s brains. 

This song was written after reading the Mr. Rogers anecdote “Look to the helpers too many times”

            This is better than I thought

            The lyrics are better than I thought 

            It’s too repetitive

            It’s too long 

  Dreamsicle

            Did they make the vinyl orange because of this song?

            Or is it called dreamsicle because they wanted Orange vinyl?

            This is very dangerously close to being a Cracker Barrel country song. 

            Did granddaddy take you fishin? 

            Lightning Bugs?? 

            Where’s Dave Daniels?

  Only Children

            I’m listening to this as I write my thoughts in real time

            I forgot to write anything down here

            Unremarkable

  Overseas 

            The sound is interesting at first 

This is where I can hear what he was talking about in interviews about chasing an 80s sound 

            Whooo boy 

            Lyrics bad

            Chorus worse

  Eyes Closed

            80s Soundz!

            Are we sure this isn’t produced by Ryan Adams?

            Sounds like Isbell cum Kcor and Llor Era DRA 

            Still just repeating the name of the song as the chorus 

  River

            He’s a slave owner?

            CANCELLED!

            OK he’s some kind of rich guy who did bad things to get money?

            But tries to take care of his people?  

            Guilty Conscience Melodrama

            Not the worst song on here 

            Is there a Spanish guitar undertone?

“Wake up staring at my wife”à Fiddle Lick is either self-awareness or a complete lack of awareness about Yoko Tammy. 

I’m gonna go with B, because say what you will about them, he is very dedicated to her and that’s nice to see. Especially after she offered to by McAllan for his not quite relapse so he didn’t have to drink Listerine. 

  Be Afraid

            What Have I Done to Help Redux?

            Two sides of the same extremely repetitive recitation of the song title as chorus coin

            It actually sounds a little like a Truckers song at the beginning

            Morphs into that 80s/Springsteen/DRA sound 

  St. Peter’s Autograph 

            Is this in a higher key than it should be? Is that what they call it? I’m not a musician

WAY TOO SLOW. I heard him talk about this on Koppelman, so I was prepared for it  to be slow. But it’s like not slow enough to be a dirge. Maybe they shoulda made it a dirge?

Nails that folk singer thing where it’s like mumbly and then clear tho.

  It Gets Easier

            I haven’t had a drink in almost a year. 10 ½ months. I’ve had 2 drinking dreams.

            I’ve never really been tempted to drink 

            So this doesn’t ring true to my experience

            DON’T MAKE IT ABOUT YOU 

            Who dreams about anything twice a week? 

            What adult remembers their dreams?

            It’s for effect, you dummy! 

OH, well, the effect it had on me is “I guess I was never an actual alcoholic. Maybe I’m just a real partier?”

This gets to the heart of my question about mining sobriety for too much? 

MEH. AS FUCK 

It’s been remarkably easier to not drink than to make it through this record

That’s a cheap shot! 

I know. 

  Sometimes in reviews and in our terrible internet meme-based culture you have to stake out one side and die on that hill. 

  That’s a mixed metaphor 

  Tammy wouldn’t allow it

  She was gonna be an English teacher before the rack job.

  That’s made up, isn’t it?

  Maybe

  Where were we?

  Oh yeah, I don’t hate this song, or any song on this album 

  I just expect more 

  That’s your problem 

  What is?

  Expectations! 

  It’s True

  I tried very hard to set the bar low, figuring it might surprise me

  Then I read reviews and interviews.

  The one where he talks about over producing his first album really got to you didn’t it? Celebrities – they’re try hards just like us! 

  I like Jason 

He’s witty and funny

And a Great Musician

He’s a good ambassador 

For the region 

For getting cleaned up

For the Bitter Southerner Meets Stoner Dad Who Watches Southern Charm and Likes Expensive Sneakers set

  You mean you?

  OF COURSE!

  I want to like this more

It’s very slow

And doesn’t do much for me

  It’s…….. a Jason Isbell Record. 

  I cued it up again, trying to focus on the sound on my second run through.

  Ya know The Vibe? The thing that you can’t put your finger on that makes a thing a thing. 

  Sure.

  Anyway, my mind drifted to seeing him in concert again.

  The setting was definitely more Lyric Theater than MPAC. 

  The crowd was a lot of selvage denim, beards and elaborate barbershop hair cuts. Work boots, but like, $250 work boots. Belt buckles. 

  Like you’d dress if you were 4 inches shorter and had muscle tone?

  You’re not my real dad!

  A lot of dudes with their eyes closed, singing along to these songs like they’re hymns. Drinking in the “depth” of Saint Isbell. 

  House lights are down. Stage lighting is just a spot on him 

  Don’t forget the soft lighting on Tammy!

  Did you notice I barely mentioned her in the review? She really takes a step back here, IMO. 

  Strangely that might not be a good thing?

  Jesus now you’re a Tammy apologist?

  She don’t gotta apologize for them titties!

  GET BACK TO THE FAKE SHOW YOU CONJURED UP, YOU DUNCE

  Right after he sings “It gets easier”

  He says “But it never gets easy!” and the house lights come up, and his voice goes up 3 notches in volume, and the stoned dads (some of whom are sipping 1-3 canned IPAs) cheer. 

  Rinse Repeat

  JESUS, YOU HATE FUN

  Kind of 

  There’s another song on here

  What?

  Yeah – Letting You Go

  Oh yeah, the bro country sounding joint about his daughter?

  I actually like this and give it a pass for being a cheesy dad song.

If I still drank, I’d cue this up and get weepy!

You just said you don’t think about drinking!

I said I don’t DREAM about drinking!

  You are so fucking awful

  The. Worst. 

  Also, this sounds like something I know. 

  The cadence. The flow of the song. 

  Jesus you do this all the time

  I DO NOT 

  Remember the time you got blotto at Springsteen and insisted that American Land was the same as The Georgia Tech fight song?

  It is!

  It is not! 

Well, it sounded like it that night

  We know, you sang it the whole way home

  I was dreaming about drinking! 

  God you’re a dick, but I’m going to let that one pass before this ends up being 5000 words

  Why does a Dawg know the words to Rambling Wreck?

              We are both going to have to let some things pass if you ever want me to end this

                           ……

    (this sounds weirdly like Seven Years in Michigan in parts)

(the fiddle really ads something)

(Super 8 is still his best song)

      KILL. YOUR. SELF. 

             Check out this episode!

[konstantinwrites]

Treasures from the Roof of the Insurmountable, Part 1

Small Worlds XI (Wassily Kandinsky)

Hi friends! So, I ranked all 42 songs of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. It was as simple as comparing each song to every other and missing every social event for a month. I didn’t give /10 scores and didn’t add a bunch of space between songs to signify gaps in quality, like a cool blog would. However, many generous friends of mine reviewed these songs as well. For an alternative, reasonable point of view, theirs is here.

I understand that asking to listen to 42 three-minute songs on the Internet should be reserved for astonishing lovers, but I hope that you’ll give them a play. The reviews are based primarily on the studio versions, linked in the title, but for fun I more strongly recommend the embedded live performances. This turned into an epic nine-parter only by luck -- Tumblr wisely halts this kind of obsessiveness by setting a limit of five embedded videos per post. 

Anyway, I think you’ll like at least some songs. Not this next one, but some.

42: Spirit of the Night by Valentina Monetta and Jimmie Wilson (San Marino) (Returnee, Eurovision 2012, 2013, 2014)

I will make a conscious effort not to embalm you in Eurovision completely, but I have to bend here since Valentina Monetta breaks all unwritten rules anyway. This was her fourth Eurovision appearance, all for the Most Serene Republic of San Marino, in six years. San Marino houses less people than you saw this weekend, sure, but there are probably a few other musicians in the country that would like a boost to their career.

Maybe some of them were on stage for 2012’s timely “The Social Network Song” (titled “The Facebook Song”, pre-zucc), with which Valentina began her pillage of this contest. (If you have patience for exactly one hyperlink...)

 The lyrics incandesce:

Are you ready for a little chat?/And a song about the Internet It's a story ‘bout a social door/You’ve never seen before;

And the “Social Network” music video, all morning bedsheets and Safari browsing and wild leers into camera, is like the aftertaste of a burp from the dude who ran ARK Music Factory. 

Throughout the last eon, the early to mid 2010′s, peace still ruled. It was underpinned by dark respect for the creature, and fear, but effective and true peace it was. In Year 3, Monetta qualified to the grand final. Appearing in that show was supposed to be the prologue to another Sammarinese age of serenity. Yes, she breathed too hard and accidentally set the Finnish commentators on fire, then threshed her wings and flew out through the arena roof. Human Eurovision performers have gimmicks, too. It was our Monetta, we prayed to her benevolence, and she made other countries and micronational principalities respect us as well.

But we grew tired of living in fear ourselves. If our Monetta was truly done with this world, we would be happy to raise a new generation in peace. Families waited to resettle back to their birth land, planning carefully. At dawn, sometimes, you noted the unsavory magicks in the distance, still discharging in the air. The tribe elders knew that kids were their most important constituency: every evening, a few fun rhymes with the kids that made each of the elders look silly; every forgathering, the children could run off after roll call. Irreverence and joy, with which the children played games on the hills, was as crucial as the considered warnings that the adults were made to hear.

Come spring, at the agora, Elder Dendroch took his deepest breath of the year, all wheeze, as he screwed in the VGA cable to the projector, casting the San Marino 2015 Eurovision artist announcement onto the smooth side of the hill. During the countdown, even All-Naked Christoph went silent. This was to determine his capacity to continue to gyrate himself around the fire each morning without being clawed by Monetta and thrown into the nearest cactus. Her swift retributions of All-Naked Christoph was one of the few Acts that the tribe was grateful for; however, now they yearned for calm and agency. They were ready to pay the price -- and cover their eyes at breakfast.

What a cheer, then. It was, indeed, someone else for 2015. The slothful bards were worth their silver on this day, spooling blunt limericks on the spot, tribesfolk teary with laughter. The eyes of all, awash with joy and soapy bubbles, feasted on daydreams about this new era. Resettling back to town, with everything as it has been (apart from the bread, now a furry green pet), we gleefully watched Anita Simoncini rap -- for we could scream, “No!”. The year after that, Serhat proselytized us, trying to make what sounded like, “I am a dick tit” happen. We loved telling him that it’s not going to happen, and besides, he was the neighboring queen’s chief accountant and she was not letting him out on any more trips like that. Our power was back.

But, well... You saw the rest. You saw 2017. Not even Mostly-Naked Christoph thought that eurodance would rise again. Not even the gloomiest of the kids ever had in mind that Monetta was always in control, and that there is nothing that we can ever do but point our projector at the stars.

“Spirit of the Night” is a dance anthem structured around a conversation between two horny and dim-witted patrons of a San Marino club. “Hey, are you the one I dream about?/Baby, I am.” After successfully capturing his target’s interest with this awful line, the man proceeds to use amateur pick-up artistry to delve into the murky depths of her insecurity. “Every time I see you smile/There is sadness in your eyes.” 

Luckily for him, his quarry eats this obvious nonsense up. After connecting through dance, he seals the deal by revealing that he’s a hurt, insecure man who is in need of a woman to protect him. “Hey, are you the one to take my pain?/Just take my hand/I’ve been so hurt before, it’s hard to trust again.” Nonstop key changes and a reference to obscure weather phenomena attempt to mask the utter vacuity of “Spirit of the Night,” but nobody is fooled. 1/10.

Richard Hansen

41: Keep The Faith by Tamara Gachechiladze (Georgia)

Ten seconds in, this has all the potential in our supercluster. It becomes “Keep The Faith”, but that moody horn-driven bar can lead into a Jay-Z track, a Antony and the Johnsons symphony, or the title screen of “Swordfish”. But it becomes “Keep The Faith”, and it’s a little awkward; I live and work in Georgia, and super enjoy this country. 

However, this song is derivative garbage, devoid of any sensory pleasure. It has many siblings, songs of this type, all grey, parts-per-million pollutant specks. It’s a pure ballad and a very specific type of ballad, none of which have ever been enjoyable: pie-eyed on piano, throaty-vocaled, vowel-elongating, forcefully important, crudely pitch-raising, artless fat zeppelins of songs, avoiding melodiousness by purpose and not even by chance. 

I like the few seconds in the bridge where Tamara and the backup singers go, “Oh - ohhh - oh! - ohhh!”, and I like the final string cadences, the last two notes in the song. I wish they’d signaled the end to something not so comprehensively dopey.

Please also let me just add here that I adore “Mzeo” by Mari Mamadashvili, the Georgian winner of Junior Eurovision 2016. 

I’ve cried listening to it. I’ve showed her performance to many people. Don’t revoke my residence permit. Look at how much good stuff Billy wrote.

Having heard a plethora of Georgian music over the past year, I really didn’t have my hopes up going into this one. But I have to hand it to Tamriko, she may have actually pulled it off. The song’s video isn’t much to talk about, and I found the opening lyrics about hiding behind a veil and then panning to a woman in a hijab to be slightly off color, but the tune and subsequent lyrics are actually pretty cool. One might say the video had my sentiments shaken, but not stirred. That’s right, I referenced James Bond (Jamesi Bondi) and how could I not? The ominous violin, three-key piano repetition and horns - the song practically screams, “put us in the next movie!” and I happen to agree.

If we got rid of the whole weird hip-but-frowning aspect and replaced it with an unmistakable gun-toting secret agent silhouette, complete with tastefully nude female figurines, Georgia might actually have a hit on their hands. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in letting music speak for itself and in many ways this song does, but at the end of the day it’s also a pop song and that music video HAS to be tight. Get this out to Eon Productions, Georgia; I’ll be disappointed if Ed Sheeran gets to do another title sequence.

As far as vocals go, Tamro fits the role pretty nicely - she can really belt it and it adds to the overall grandness of the song. As a matter of fact, grand is probably the word I would use to describe this. It’s the kind of song that makes you clench your fists and pump your arms dramatically and ceremoniously. Tamo’s powerful vocals and lyrics are engaging and entertaining; my only real worry is that with such a Bond-sounding song, people might have a difficult time seeing it as its own thing. Not to mention, if people dislike James Bond, they’re probably just going to see this as some hack interpretation of an Adele hit. While some might view it as lacking in theme originality, I see it as a distinguished work operating in a certain genre (a difficult one at that). I don’t think the sky will be falling on this song any time soon! Qochagh, Sakartvelo! 8/10.

Billy Moran

40: Gravity by Hovig (Cyprus)

The lifetime of this adult contemporary rockvomit is: released to the suffering masses, all 4th grade boys for three days repeat-blast “Gravity” on the family speakers, then torrent Battlefield and yelp and chaotically shake their faces to its menu music and forget about “Gravity” forever. No other integration of this song into a human life can be permitted.

This wailing, free trial-distortion-effects, tragically detached one-dimensional nonsense would take aback a NHL video highlights editor, and they’re immune to this stuff. “Gravity” is for a montage of, like, a corrupted toothpaste factory, where the toothpaste is evil. There is something a little demonic with the toothpaste. It’s been breached. There are lich in the toothpaste, hiding themselves and their sorcery, and they now terrorize users of toothpaste all over the world. Only those who still use tooth powder have not yet turned. With this paragraph, I have now released more beauty into this world than the Cypriot entry. I’m not proud of putting lich and toothpaste together. I know I’ll answer for this one day. Sometimes you have to drive a point home.

This is a solidly made pop ballad with a catchy chorus that I could see getting good radio play for about two weeks before being promptly forgotten. While somewhat catchy on first listen, it quickly loses its appeal and you realize there is nothing more there than another over-produced pop song that makes oatmeal look plain and generic. This song is the definition of standard, meaningless pop. It's begging for some sort of edge to it, some sprinkles to go with its vanilla. As is, I'd much rather listen to “Hook” by Blues Travelers.

Ryan Haskell

39: Dying to Try by Brendan Murray (Ireland)

I like Brendan’s voice. For 54 seconds, he makes a serviceable dyingtotry. I like that the first line of this Segway-speed ballad gets close to saying, “Take a leak of faith with me”. I like his tuneful delivery through the lightly layered first minute, and you could stroll to this and take sips of still water and feel correct.

Then the songwriters take out their game hunting rifles, trundle us into the basement and serve us a soup of impotent key change, never-ending chorus and string accompaniment, all of which we would spoon out of the dish in a less savage situation. You eat — you have to — belch, relax a bit, and then notice Brendan at the table, his meal long finished, as he mouths to you, “trying to die”.

As an American who grew up American, with American parents and American grandparents, I myself am American. That said, I definitely identify with the Irish a bit - they’re my ancestral roots and I root for the guys for sure. But I have to say, Brendan Murray, bud, you let me down. The song can be summed up in one word: boring. The kid looks to be about 15 and, sure, he has some pipes (little Irish pun there), but I have to believe these impressively high notes he’s hitting have more to do with his lack of pubic advancement and less with actual talent.

The music video takes us on the journey of love’s rocky road, complete with a daughter of Elrond and a poodle man that would make Dr. Moreau jealous. Perhaps I would have paid more attention to the lyrics if the featured couple were less visually jarring. I mean, the woman was fine… But the poodle man! That hair! There’s a million elf-y looking guys in Ireland to complement the girl, and they choose that guy!

My biggest complaint comes at the peak of the song’s rising action. Brian is walking through the grassy knolls of Ireland, as one does, and the viewer is treated to a beautiful melancholy landscape that just screams of Ireland. But instead of giving the listener something to complement the breathtaking view, we get a gospel choir harmony as Brian dives into his chorus. It was the perfect moment to incorporate cultural music - so poorly utilized by Israel - and Ireland missed it! If a lovely flute had accompanied Brian as the camera raced across the Irish shoreline back to our visually perplexing couple, I think I would have poured a shot of Jameson on the spot and shed a tear for all the struggling lovers in the emerald isle. Instead, the song loses its identity and all my invested interest is gone with it.

Brian, the wise fifteen-year-old he is, ever wary of love’s slings and arrows, tells us, “No one can promise that love will ever learn how to fly”, but I can promise Brian that his song won’t be flying to the top of any billboard charts. Maybe something a little more fun next year, huh Ireland? Sláinte! 4/10.

Billy Moran

38: My Turn by Martina Bárta (Czech Republic)

The indifferently mute student can be the most frustrating. Staring at the arithmetic poster for two minutes at a time, boring with their pen more and more millimeters of their desk hole, finding the right moments to sip a hidden can of Fanta with the vigilance of a mosquito pursuing a meal from a human absentmindedly playing the Chrome dinosaur game -- apathetic students cause little obvious trouble in class. However, asked to contribute to any task, their monastic silence and translucency can drop a teacher’s command of the classroom to the floor. Other students, especially ones wavering between “kind of paying attention” and the Frowning Face With Open Mouth emoji, sense the student’s apathy, think that the lessons are, indeed, for nothing, and mentally teleport themselves out of there as well.

Which brings me to “My Turn”. It would be out of date during Pangaea, but out of date is very often fine. The prime disappointment is that it has a harmonious, sentimental melody to throw around, as most ballads do, but concretely refuses to get out of the hotel elevator, or the Saturday morning wine tasting. There are many piano works like these; it shouldn’t be an excuse to bunt and be another, especially because it’s got a pleasant tune. I’ve listened to “My Turn” at least 30 times and can recall the main progression with roughly the same clarity as remembering why Fletcher Christian mutinied and vamoosed to Pitcairn Island, the Wikipedia summary of which I probably read once, or maybe someone told me. Before going home, Teacher Eurovision will leave an inspirational message for Martina on her desk. “You can be different!” The next morning it’ll only be used with a shout of, “Kobe!” and be another clump a few feet from the trash basket.

Czech Republic’s Eurovision results, 2007 (debut) to 2017:  28th in a 28-song semifinal; 18th in a 19-song semifinal; 18th in a 18-song semifinal; Not participating for five years (understandably); 13th in a 17-song semifinal; 9th in a 18-song semifinal, 25th in a 26-song final; 13th in a 18-song semifinal.

Czech selection committee: just put a donk on it. You’ll like the results.

Not only did Ms. Martina choose to submit a song written in English to the Annual Eurovision Ritual, helping the beast of globalization devour her culture and language, but she also submitted a song with lyrics so boring that they flee from my mind immediately after I’ve heard them, as if Gilderoy Lockhart himself has just charmed them directly out of my cerebellum. Lyrics: 2/10.

Luckily, the music video itself is far more interesting than the song itself. I’m at least 80% sure this video depicts what people experience while rolling on Ecstasy. Nude bodies of various age and shape, writhing in ways that are at once harmonious and cacophonous. Here an old white man finds peace in a warm-towel embrace of a large black man. There a bald man hangs his head in his ultimate shame only to be comforted by an equally bald woman. At one point the bacchanalian dancers just all freeze and turn their heads sharply to one side, staring at the audience with eyes that contain something between abject misery and ultimate pleasure. Disturbing! Music video: 7/10. I found this video hilarious. Personal enjoyment: 9/10.

Cody Phillips