#Blockbuster Songs of 2000s

[teaboot]

Different actors and artists I mistakenly thought were the same person for a really long time:

Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller (? Tall face dad man? Comedy. Brown hair blue eyes. Early 2000's Blockbuster Video regulars.)

Kiera Knightly and Natalie Portman (Scary and pretty like an android that would eject me from the space shuttle)

Kiera Knightly and Kristen Stewart (K-names, queer kid kryptonite, pretty)

Justin Timberlake and Orlando Bloom (Pretty face white man, teens love him)

Ryan Reynolds and Paul Rudd (Thin face brown hair white guy? Comedy? Superhero with red suit. Immature dad vibes. "Pull my finger" type energy)

Celine Dion and Shakira (Pretty and tall multilingual blonde singers?)

Michelle Pfeifer and Uma Thurman (Odd name? Blonde? 2010 era songs about them)

Gene Wilder and Mike Myers (Cannot explain)

Individual actors I always thought were two different actors:

Lucy Liu in "Kill Bill" and Lucy Liu in everything else (I keep thinking Kill Bill came out in the early 70's and Lucy Liu does NOT look older than my mom)

Natalie Dormer (Though she was a bunch of different blonde women who looked alike but it's just her)

Actors and artists who I cannot recall ever seeing in my life, whose appearances I make up in my head whenever people talk about them:

Uma Thurman (Blonde? Very pretty. Red lipstick. Like Marilyn Monroe but a sharper chin.)

Stevie Wonder (A handsome Black gentleman in his late forties. Always in a tuxedo.)

Gilbert Godfrey (Peewee Herman??)

Celebrities I can picture in my mind with absolute photographic clarity:

Mike Tyson

Doug Jones

Miss Piggy

Public figures whose names I've heard of through pop culture osmosis but retained zero information about:

Roger Whittaker

Grace Earl Jones

Casey Anthony (??? A person??)

Akon

Greta Herwig (I think that's a person)

Tony Montana (Fictional???)

[oharaslove]

La Playlist

summary: You work at a Blockbuster store in Nueva York. Every day is the same, you daydreaming about a guy to come in and sweep you off your feet. To make you his. Will today be any different?

word count: 5k

tags: Miguel x fem!reader, 90's/early 2000's AU

warnings: PinV, unprotected sex (wrap it up guys!), oral f! receiving. Let me know if there is something else!

song:

It was just another day in this awful city, Nueva York. 

Like always, you woke up thanks to your alarm, went to the bathroom, did your routine, and had breakfast, before getting ready for your job. But not as any other day, you decided to dress cute today, show your figure, look nice. You worked at a Blockbuster, nothing interesting. Not a single man worthy of your attention ever crossed the doors of the store, but something was telling you that today was going to be different. 

You picked your best outfit, did your make up and hair and off you were, trying to get on time without messing up your appearance. You were the only working the opening shift, the mornings always being slow, and today wasn’t the exception. 

Upon arriving you opened the store and got to work, placing the movies that were returned the previous day on their respective shelves. Once the work was done, you checked the notebook with the movies already on rent and the dates that they were supposed to be returned. 

After staring at it for like half an hour you huffed. Can’t this day become any more boring? People came and went on the street, some glancing inside, but never coming in. It wasn’t like they were your knight in shining armor. None of the men walking in front of the glass seemed to catch your eye. Just when I dressed myself up. What a waste of time

You continued staring out the window for a couple minutes, elbow on the counter in front of you, with your chin resting on the palm of your hand. 

The summer sun was beginning to enter the store, hitting your face lightly. The warmth spread through your body, lulling you to sleep. Trying to stay awake, you grabbed your mp3, plugged your headphones and began listening to music: La Playlist by Emilia Mernes blasting through your ears making you forget about the world around you. 

You closed your eyes, feeling the music. You hummed to the rhythm, losing yourself into it, almost missing the ring of the bell of the door, signalling someone coming in. Almost

That split second could have been the biggest mistake of your life. 

Opening your eyes, you expected a normal client, you know, a group of teenagers looking for something fun to watch, a nerd searching for his superhero movies or a woman trying to find a romcom capable of tearing her away from her troubled/awful love life. 

What you did not expect was a Greek god entering through that door. 

The tall man, with perfect tan skin and brown locks strolled into the store with his hands on his front pockets. He was wearing a black tank top on top of a white one with navy blue jeans. The sun hit his skin perfectly, it reflecting on his huge arms, accentuating his veins. 

The longer you looked at him, the more perfect he was. His face was probably sculpted by all the gods combined, creating a perfect structure. High and sharp cheekbones, a beautiful nose and really kissable lips. 

The guy nodded your way, acknowledging you, but you were too distracted to notice, daydreaming about all the things you would love him to do to you. The brunette turned his back to you, giving you a perfect view of his huge shoulders, his body built like an inverted triangle. 

Oh, how you wished he could lift you up so you could wrap your legs on his tiny waist

You continued admiring him from afar, not even realizing you were biting your lip until you tasted blood. Pull yourself together girl, you thought. It is not everyday that you see a man like this. Time to shine.

Pulling yourself off the counter you tried to fix yourself, tidying your hair, smoothing your top and making sure your skirt was presentable. You took a deep breath, calming yourself, preparing for what you were about to do. You couldn’t mess this up.

You walked silently behind him, aiming not to startle him. He was in the science fiction section. Interesting. He didn’t strike you as the nerd type, but whatever. Your plan wasn’t to engage in conversation, but something else. Something more physical. 

Stopping just a few centimeters away from him you couldn’t decide how to call his attention. Should you touch his shoulder? Or was that too much. You didn’t want to scare him off. You decided to go with a softer approach. 

You cleared your throat lightly, catching his attention. 

The man turned his neck towards you, looking you up and down with a smirk on his face. Oh.

“I was wondering when you were going to come and say hi” he said, the smirk never leaving his face. 

His voice was smooth and low, turning your legs into jelly. He turned his whole body towards you, crossing his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge. Damn, how you wish you could wrap your hands around them and squeeze them.

“Darling?” he asked, staring right into you. 

“Oh, I-” you said startled. You didn’t think you were staring at him for that long for him to notice. 

In that moment, the most beautiful sound you had ever heard erupted from his mouth. His laugh was like a breath of fresh air. His lips curled upwards, showing his white teeth. You could feel yourself growing hot. Your cheeks burning, your ears, and other parts too, but for entirely different reasons. 

“Ay nena,” he began, after calming down. “You are so adorable.”

He reached forward, grabbing your chin between his thumb and index finger. You closed your eyes for a second, trying to calm yourself down and make sense of what he was doing to you. When you opened them back again, his eyes bore into you, a smirk back in his lips. He knew you were his. He had you just where he wanted, and you would let him do anything to you. Anything.

He stepped towards you, making you step back, before he used his other hand to grab your waist, keeping you in place, close to his body.

“Uh uh uh” he taunted. “Don’t run away from me. It is too late for that now.”

You gulped. Oh, the things his voice was doing to you, and he could tell.

His touch was burning you. The skin to skin contact becoming too much, but at the same time not enough. You needed him somewhere else, somewhere you couldn’t reach properly, not even alone in your bedroom, with no one but yourself and your running mind. 

You knew he would make you see colors, but you needed to feel it, to sense it. You needed him to touch you, more than he was touching you now. 

He inched his face closer, the air coming out of his barely open mouth hitting your face. The cologne he was wearing entering your system, like a drug, making you more obsessed of what you already were. 

He stared down at you, running his eyes through your face, enjoying the reaction, the control, he had on you. You couldn’t help but do the same, staring at him through your half lidded eyes, drinking him in, inhaling him, feeling his chest touch yours with every breath he took. 

The tension in the room could be cut with a knife, the temperature rising by the second. If neither of you took it to the next level, you feared you could explode. 

The man moved the hand that was holding your chin to grasp your neck lightly, leaving his thumb free to run it across your skin. Beginning on your pulse point of your neck, pressing lightly, making a whimper escape your lips, despite your efforts of keeping it in. 

His lips curled up, enjoying every little reaction he coaxed out of you. His thumb continued exploring your skin, caressing your cheek and continuing on your bottom lip. His eyes were focused on the trace of his finger, amazed at how your saliva coated his thumb. 

The teasing was becoming unbearable, making you act. Gaining courage you grabbed his right wrist, keeping his hand close to your mouth, while licking his thumb, before sucking it between your lips. 

For a split second, his smirk fell off his face, eyes opening, amazed and surprised by your actions. His eyes became hungry, darkening. His left hand grasped your waist harder, squeezing your flesh.

You continued sucking his thumb, moving your tongue along it, trying to not break eye contact, daring him to do the next move. 

The thrill of getting caught made the situation so much hotter, your mind running with all the places he could take you in, the you *wish* he would take you in. 

The man pressed his thumb into your tongue, catching you off guard, making you moan around him, closing your eyes. He used his thumb and index finger to grab your tongue and pull it out of your mouth lightly before moving forward and clashing his lips with yours. 

The kiss was messy, hungry, hot. Teeth clashing against teeth, lips moving against lips, tongues fighting for dominance. You moaned into his mouth, the taste of him being exactly how you imagined. 

He took the opportunity to enter your mouth, exploring it. His hands moved to your head, keeping it in place. One of his hands was on your neck, putting pressure lightly while the other played with your hair. 

Your mind became fussy, the intensity of the kiss pushing all the thoughts out of your head, the only thing on your brain was **him**. Your hands started to wonder, starting at his chest, down to his tone abs and onto his head, playing with his perfect brown locks. 

You pressed your body against him, your tits against his firm chest. The action making him moan in your mouth, making you smile. 

His hand on your head grabbed a handful of your hair, pulling you backwards, away from his mouth lightly. You both were breathing heavily against each other, mouths still at each other’s reach. Your eyes were closed, not daring to open them, hoping this was only the beginning. 

“Nena,” he said, breathlessly. 

“Mmm”

“Look at me,” he demanded. 

Opening your eyes slowly you were met with his. His hair was messy, thanks to you playing with it, his mouth merely centimeters away from you, looking plump from all the kissing.

You saw his mouth moving, clearly talking to you, but you were too dazed. 

He pulled at your hair, making you look straight into his eyes. 

“Sweetheart”

“Mmm”

“I said,” he continued. “Is there a better place for us to continue? I would take you right here, but I fear that there are a lot of prying eyes, and I want you all to myself.”

You looked at him with an open mouth, losing the ability to speak. *He wanted to continue*. He looked at you with a smirk on his face. 

“Did the baby lose the ability to speak?” he mocked.

“I-” you gulped, your mouth feeling dry all of a sudden. “The-there is a backroom.”

“Good girl.” he smiled. “Show me.”

You nodded at the best of your ability with his grip on your hair. He let you go. The second his touch left your body you missed it, feeling empty. 

You stepped back, your hands falling from his chest. Staring at his hungry eyes you could see he was becoming impatient, and so were you.

Carefully, you grabbed his right hand, tugging it towards you, signalling him to follow you. You walked towards the backroom, a million thoughts running through your mind. 

You were fucked, you were so fucked. If another client entered those doors and caught you two in this situation, you were fucked. You would lose your job, and probably no other job would take you. But, honestly? Who the fuck cares? This was a once in a lifetime chance.

You had a Greek god behind you, who was willing to make you feel like never before. Among those thoughts were the things he could do to you. Whatever he did, you knew he was going to be good. 

You reached the backroom closed door. You put your free hand on it, and looked back at him, making sure he was still there, despite feeling his warmth in the palm of your hand. You locked eyes with the guy, before looking past him to the front door, the fear of getting caught still on you back of your mind. 

“Hey,” he said, snapping you out of your thoughts, your eyes staring back at him. “We are fine. I am going to take care of you.”

You wanted to believe him, oh so desperately. You were ready to throw yourself in his arms. The way he affirmed that statement making you feel safe, taken care of. 

You smile shyly before nodding and making the final push on the door, opening it. 

He let go of your hand, grabbing your waist and urging you into the small room, hurrying into himself before shutting the door, leaving the outside world behind. 

“This is much better,” he talked into the darkness, the only source of light being the small gap between the door and the floor and wall. “I wish I could see you better though.” His hand never left your body, caressing the skin of your sides and front, becoming bolder. 

Desperately, you tried to find the cord connected to the lamp on the roof. You needed to see him too, you wanted to see him in all his glory. Reaching across the air you grabbed the cord and pulled, the room becoming illuminated instantly. 

Smiling, you looked at him, finding him already staring at you. He looked you up and down before licking his lips, the action making you nervous. 

He stepped towards you, determination clear in his eyes. You walked back into the table behind you, your back hitting its side, trapping you between it and his body. 

“I thought,” he said, grabbing your waist harshly, grasping at your flesh, making you yelp from the sudden action. “I’ve told you not to run away.”

“Am not.” you said, placing the palm of your hands on his chest, pushing back a little to stare at his face. 

The man smirked, before pulling you towards him and taking your bottom lip between his, sucking at it, making you moan into his mouth. Both his hands were now exploring your body. Your hips, your waist, your back, your neck, every part of your body was being touched by him, except where you needed him most. 

“Siir-” pulling back from the kiss, you whined not knowing his name. *How could you forget to ask that?*

“What’s wrong baby?” he said, caressing your cheek tenderly, far different from the touches he was giving you a few seconds ago while exploring your mouth with his tongue. 

“I need you.” you said shyly, scared of meeting his gaze.

“Yeah?” he smirked, his lips brushing against yours, taunting you.

“Mmm” you nodded, not thinking clearly, his smell surrounded you, intoxicating you. The taste of him lingering on your mouth, your brain asking for more, your heart about to explode. 

He chuckled, amused by how desperate you were, but so was he, you could feel it. 

The man grabbed your neck, pulling you back again against him. His mouth coming in contact with your again messily. Your hands, that were on his chest, surrounded his neck, playing with the hair behind it, twirling, pulling, making him moan in your mouth, giving you the opportunity to explore him with your tongue. 

His hands on your body moved to your hips, pulling you up. The sudden movement surprised you, making you bite his bottom lip, making him groan. He placed you on the table, your legs wrapping around his waist, just where they belonged. 

He pulled back hissing, a slight cut on his bottom lip, a bit of blood pooling out of it. He touched his lip with his fingers, drawing out some blood. 

“Cheeky,” he smirked, before smashing his lips with yours, smiling into the kiss. The taste of blood combined with his made you moan. The friction of your bodies was more intense thanks to the new position. You could feel his hard on brushing against your core with every push and pull of your bodies. 

He for sure could feel how wet you were, the only barrier between the front of his jeans and your heat being your panties, thanks to your skirt being pulled up thanks to him. 

His hands fell to your legs, massaging your outer upper thighs, squeezing the flesh, teasing you. His kisses moved to the corner of your mouth to your cheek and down to your neck, finding your sweet spot immediately, just as you two were meant to be from the start. 

You pulled at his hair, making him groan and grind his body against yours, pulling a moan out of you, his hard on brushing against your clit with every thrust of his hips. His lips sucking at the skin of your neck. You moved your head to the side, leaving him more room. 

You were panting now, his touch, his lips, his scent, him, was all you could think of. Your mouth opened and it was becoming difficult to breathe. Your chest rising and falling, as your hardened nipples rubbed against his chest. 

His hands moved to your inner legs, inching closer and closer to where you needed him most. You could swear your wetness was spilling out of your panties and onto the wood of the table. You should be embarrassed, but you couldn’t care less. 

Getting tired of your neck, the man moved his kisses down the center of your throat to the valley of your breasts. Moving one hand from your thighs to grasp one of your tits, making you arch your back, giving your all to him. 

While one of his hands was massaging the skin on your inner thigh, the other was massaging your breast, his thumb caressing your hardened nipple through the material of your top and bra. Moans were spilling left and right from your chest, followed by whines and whimpers begging him to do more, to touch you properly. 

“Sir, please.” you whined, out of breath. “Take it off, please.” you begged, shutting your eyes tightly, focusing on the feeling on his hands across your skin. 

“Anything you want” he answered, detaching his lips from the skin of your chest, where he had been carefully sucking a hickey. 

Straightening himself up, he grabbed the ends of your top, pulling it upwards, signalling you to put your hands up. And so you did, letting him pull the top over your head, leaving behind a layer of clothes between you two. 

He groaned, after tossing your top behind, having a clearer look at your chest. 

“You are so damn beautiful” he whispered, caressing your new exposed skin with the back of his fingers. 

Using both his hands, he pulled the straps of your bra down, giving him access to your naked shoulders. Carefully, he inched closer, giving slight pecks on your skin, moving from your shoulder to your neck, and down to the other shoulder. You shudder, feeling exposed. 

You pulled him closer, grabbing the fabric of his tank tops, slipping your hands beneath them, wanting to touch his warm skin. He hissed, feeling the contact of your cold hand compared to the skin of his torso. You could feel the muscles move beneath the palm of your hand, caressing his abs and chest and back again. He got the message, pulling back from your embrace, he grabbed his shirts and took them off, leaving him topless in front of you, in all his glory.

“Like what you see?” he smirked, clearly seeing your wide eyes and open mouth. 

You bit your lip, and nodded, a smile creeping its way on your face. He chuckled before attacking your chest again with his lips, sucking the skin on top of your breast between his lips, biting it. You arched your back, the feeling too intense, but not enough. 

His hands slipped behind your back, undoing the back of your bra, letting it fall. The cold air hit your chest, your nipples hardening further. Thankfully, the man grasped one tit in each of his big hands, massaging them, keeping them warm, making you moan from the friction. 

Not long after, he replaced one of his hands with his lips, sucking your nipple into his mouth. His mouth was warm, the feeling shooting right to your core. You needed him to be down there. You were growing desperate, all the teasing was becoming too much for you to handle. Every second he spent far from your core was torture. 

You used your hands to pull his hair, pulling his lips away from your breasts, while also pushing his shoulder down, trying to signal him to go downwards. 

He pulled back, smirking, looking up at you smiling like the devil, while you panted, looking at him through half lidded eyes. 

He kissed down your stomach, reaching the waistband of your skirt. The man pulled your legs on top of his shoulders, giving him full access to your pussy. Pulling your skirt up, he came in contact with your wet panties. He pulled them to the side, watching the wetness spill into the table. He groaned, delighted by the sight. 

He used his fingers to gather as much as he could, before putting them on his mouth and sucking. Closing his eyes he moaned at the taste. 

He grabbed your panties, pulling them down your legs, before diving right in into your heat. He took your clit into his mouth, kissing it, sucking, making you see stars. He used his tongue, pushing it and pressing at it.

“Siirr,” you moaned, arching your back, you pushed yourself closer to his mouth, and pressed your head against the wall behind you. You used your hands to keep him there, pulling at his hair, pressing his mouth closer.

He groaned into you, the vibrations making you whimper. He moved downwards, his tongue entering you. His muscle moving with experience, hitting all the right places. Your legs began to shake, your muscles turning into jelly, the pressure on your lower belly becoming stronger and stronger, like a ticking bomb, about to explode. 

The man continued to explore your insides, his nose brushing against your clit deliciously, making you grind against him, trying to reach your high. 

He pulled back, out of breath, your juices covering his chin, mouth, and nose. He moved his thumb to press circles against your clit, keeping you in that spot, still stimulating you, but not enough to push you over the edge. 

“Pleasee,” you begged, wanting him back in your heat. 

“Shhh, darling, I got you”

He dived right in, replacing his thumb with his mouth and pushing one finger into your hole, stretching you out. You moaned at the feeling, the pressure on your belly rising. He didn’t give you time to adjust, pushing another finger in, and then another, moving them in and out of you at a fast speed, hitting all the right places. 

“Sirr, I-” you began, but you were unable to continue when a moan interrupted you. Your vision became blurry and your legs began to shake. You came around his fingers and onto his mouth, your body aching into him. 

You shut your eyes, trying to regain control of your breathing. Panting rapidly you didn’t realize the man had stood up, leaving your heat. Your chest was rising up and down still, but you managed to open your eyes slowly. 

Before you, he stood, face covered in your juices, his hard on prominent on his jeans. 

“Do you-” you swallowed, still trying to catch your breath. “Do you need help with that, handsome?” you smirked. 

He mimicked your expression, walking again between your legs. 

“If you are up for it, beba” he said, right in front of your mouth. So close you could almost touch his lips with your own.

You wrapped your legs around his waist again, caging him and your arms around his neck before moving forward and capturing his lips in yours. The taste of yourself on his tongue made you moan, the kiss growing hungrier by the second. 

Your nails dug at his back, scratching it. You moved your hands forward, towards his chest, running your nails through his skin, feeling the muscles rippled with every movement. You reached the waistband of his jeans, undoing his belt and the button of his trousers, pulling the zipper down. 

While one hand moved towards the back of his head, keeping him close to your mouth, the other went downwards, massaging his dick through his boxers. He groaned into your mouth, making you smile for a split second before biting his bottom lip and pulling it. You moved towards his neck, sucking at it, while your hand wandered into his briefs, tugging at his cock, cupping his balls.

He threw his head back, groaning, giving you a good view of his Adam apple bobbing thanks to his hard swallowing. He grabbed your wrist, pulling your hand out of his pants, before pulling them down completely, letting his dick free, it hitting his lower stomach, once it came out of his boxers. 

You stared at it, dumbfounded. His cock bigger than you had imagined, you didn’t know if you would be able to fit it in, but you needed it inside you. 

He grabbed his dick, pumping it before putting it in contact with your pussy, spreading your lips with his tips, coating it with your juices. His precum was mixing with yours. 

With one hand on the table beside you, he fell forwards, resting his head against yours. Both of you looked downwards, where your bodies were about to connect, watching him move his tip back and forth, and pressing it against your clit. 

After teasing for a little more, he positioned himself in front of your hole. 

“Are you ready?” He said, looking right into your eyes. 

You look back and forth between his eyes, before nodding against him. 

At your confirmation, he pushed his tip into your hole, the stretch being too much. You threw your head back, shutting your eyes. You bit your lip, trying not to let a sound out. The man latched at your neck, sucking at it, distracting you from the pain of his dick stretching your walls while entering you. 

He grabbed your waist harshly, your walls pulsating and swallowing him in oh so heavenly. You grabbed his shoulders, trying to stay on this Earth, his dick making you see stars, and he wasn’t even all in.

He continued pushing, despite your whimpers and whines, knowing you could handle it. Once your hips were together, you let out a big breath, one you didn’t know you were holding. He lift himself up from your neck, being at eye level with you. 

“Mmm, move.” you whined, opening your eyes slightly, looking at him. 

He nodded, not being able to talk thanks to your tightness. He used both his hands to grab your waist to keep you in place. He pulled back, a small part of his dick leaving your pussy to be pushed back in again. He repeated the movement a couple of times before finding a steady rhythm. 

The only sounds being heard in the room were the slapping of skin against skin and your heavy breathing. His hips grinding into yours, his balls hitting your ass rapidly. The man was pulling all his cock out before pulling it back in with force, hitting your sweet spot every time, making you moan uncontrollably. You scratched his back, trying to sit upright, his movements making you shake and bounce on the table. 

Every now and then he would kiss your lips, before going down and kissing your neck and breasts, overstimulating you. His pace was becoming irregular. He was close, and so were you. He pecked your lips, before resting his forehead against yours, his breath hitting your face with every pant. His chest was rising up and down. 

“Yes, right there” you moaned, brushing against his. 

He groaned. “You-” he whimpered. “You like that?” he continued grinding his hips against yours. 

“Yeah” you said, out of breath, nodding. 

“Are you coming beba?”

“Mmm”

You shut your eyes, basking the feeling of him inside you, him around you. Just all of him. The pressure on your belly was about to snap again, only this time more intense than before. The man let go of your waist with one of his hands to rub circles on your clit. Your legs wrapped around his waist began to shake, becoming loose. You began to grind against him, chasing your high, your breasts brushing against his chest, your nails digging on his back, your moans getting caught by his kisses.

Just when you were about to come, the bell on top of the door rang and you heard the sound of low battery coming from your mp3. 

Snapping your eyes open, you saw the Greek god of a man walking away from the store, after closing the door behind him, making the bell jingle. 

You were in the same position as when he had entered; elbow resting on the counter, chin resting on the palm of your hand. Your mp3 had run out of battery, and all the events of this mystery man made you his, lost with it. The only reminder of that man was the wetness between your legs. A heat that you knew you wouldn’t be able to calm down when your shift was finished. Not even when you were under the covers, naked, imagining the man who just left your movie store.

HIII GUYSSS!!! I am so sorry for the unexpected hiatus. Honestly, I was soo sick, I could barely stand up from the bed to eat. Anyway, hope you like this!! It is my first time writing smut, so it might be a little rough on the eyes, sorry there!!

Anyway, I based this on the song I linked above. I really encourage you to listen to it! It is in Spanish, but it is really good!!

I hope that after writing this I can sit down and write Chapter 2 of the Soulmate AU. I promise I will finish it, I won't leave you hanging. I will keep you posted about how it goes.

I hope you enjoyed this!!

Thank you @glaciertea for helping me!!

[black-arcana]

"Oh my god, there was so much talk: ‘I bet there’s a real rivalry going on!'" How Within Temptation and Tarja Turunen formed the ultimate symphonic metal tag team for blockbuster single Paradise (What About Us?)

Two symphonic metal icons united for this powerhouse 2013 single. Sharon and Tarja tell us how it all came together

(Image credit: Press)

When Within Temptation and Nightwish released their debut albums in 1997, there wasn’t a name for the kind of music they made. Within Temptation’s Enter, released in April, took obvious influence from gothic metal bands like Paradise Lost, but its grandiose, elegiac compositions and symphonic undertones hinted at the direction the band would eventually take. Conversely, Nightwish’s Angels Fall First, released in November, approached metal from a different direction, drawing more directly and heavily on folk and classical music. Ultimately, both bands would spearhead the symphonic metal movement of the early 2000s. But, anchored as it was around two charismatic women – Sharon den Adel and Tarja Turunen respectively – history tells us surely there must have been some rivalry. Symphonic metal’s answer to Blur vs Oasis perhaps, or Mustaine vs Metallica?

"You look so beautiful, Sharon!” beams Tarja, as her counterpart joins a Zoom call. Erm... maybe not then.

Hammer is speaking to both vocalists more than a decade on from their collaboration on the Within Temptation song Paradise (What About Us?), the lead single from 2014’s Hydra. As soon as Sharon joins, any notion of tension is quashed. Tarja’s expressive face lights up and the pair chat animatedly.

There’s a clear camaraderie between them as they joke and discuss new developments. Which raises the question, was the ‘rivalry’ just a load of bollocks?

“Oh my God! There was so much talk, like, ‘I bet there’s a real rivalry going on between you and Sharon’,” Tarja says, hissing like a cat to illustrate her point. “I was just very happy to see more girls singing in bands. It made me feel really proud of the movement. I still am!”

“We didn’t even really become aware of the idea of ‘symphonic metal’ until later when journalists started giving it a name,” Sharon admits. “I don’t think there was much overlap between Nightwish and Within Temptation. The music was very different but because there were some similarities, people had to give it a name!”

Those similarities were enough to turn Within Temptation and Nightwish into leaders of the burgeoning symphonic metal movement, however. Sharon and Tarja were soon upheld as inspirations for a subsequent wave of symphonically inclined artists that included Epica, Leaves’ Eyes and Delain, dispelling the notion of metal as a boys’ club.

“We often felt like the strange duck on the festival bill because there was a woman in the band where most bands had male singers,” Sharon says. “Plus, I wasn’t really from the scene when I started out – I was a big grunge girl!”

“I started out in classical music so I was a complete weirdo in metal, too!” Tarja chimes in. “Though I never let that experience bother me. I felt the embrace of the crowd, but also our colleagues were really nice, so I never needed to grow balls. Although, maybe I got used to it, because I had two brothers at home and was the only girl in my primary class. Six years with nothing but boys! Urgh!”

Although separated by more than 2,000 kilometres, it wasn’t long before the pair became aware of each other’s work.

“When I first heard Within Temptation, I was like, ‘This woman has such an angelic voice’,” recalls Tarja. “We must’ve still been working on that first Nightwish record, so I’ve been aware of them from the very beginning, really!”

“The first time I became aware of Nightwish, we played a festival together,” says Sharon. “People were really excited about the band so we went to see them. We were blown away by Tarja’s presence onstage. It was so powerful... so diva!”

However, the bands’ chances to cross paths proved surprisingly few and far between. By the end of the 2000s, Within Temptation were undeniably still symphonic metal scene leaders. They’d also grown tired of the tag. Both 2004’s The Silent Force and 2007’s The Heart Of Everything had topped the charts in their native Netherlands – as well as charting internationally – but the group were getting increasingly itchy about where they could go next. 2011’s The Unforgiving was a sprawling, multimedia concept record that saw the band incorporate more pop influence into their music. Now the pressure was on to reinvent themselves again.

“Hydra was our most difficult album,” Sharon acknowledges. “We were very much searching for direction, because we’d already achieved our biggest sound. So it wasn’t like we could go much bigger than that, particularly in terms of symphonics. We were searching for a way to evolve and take inspiration from something new.”

It was an exciting time, but the creative tumult meant some ideas almost got scrapped entirely.

“Paradise (What About Us?) was one of the few more typical Within Temptation songs on that album, but that whole record took a lot of searching,” Sharon remembers. “I actually wrote it with our keyboardist, Martijn [Spierenburg], and when I first looked back on it I was like, ‘Urgh, this is too much!’ It was Robert [Westerholt, guitars and Sharon’s husband] who insisted it was really good, and he wrote the song’s main riff. I had originally written it with just lines on the piano, but he added a whole different flavour to it that really worked. Otherwise Paradise might’ve ended up in the waste bin!”

During the writing process for the record, Within Temptation decided to reach out to a number of guest vocalists, feeling they could add unique flavours to the music. They signed up former Killswitch Engage vocalist Howard Jones, Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner and even rapper Xzibit, but by far their biggest coup was enlisting Tarja to sing on lead single Paradise (What About Us)?.

“There were two reasons we wanted Tarja for Paradise,” Sharon admits. “Not only for her voice – we felt like she could really add something – but also because in a more literal sense we figured it would be paradise for the fans! Ha ha ha!”

As it turned out, Tarja was delighted by the opportunity. She’d been trying to catch up with Sharon over the years, but their schedules had never aligned. Now they were working together, they could connect properly.

“It felt like I’d known her forever,” Tarja says happily. “I kind of felt that connection even before we met; Sharon must have gone through so many similar things to myself. We could recognise each other.”

Although they were bonding, there was still a distance between Tarja and Sharon – physically, at least. Tarja provided her vocals remotely from a studio in Buenos Aires, where she was living with her husband and infant daughter.

“I was bubbling with the joy of being a new mother and my family travelled with me everywhere, even to the studio when I recorded [2013 album] Colours In The Dark,” Tarja says. “I’d faced a lot of challenges of my own; I wasn’t really trusting in my abilities as a songwriter, for example. Paradise helped me so much, because it was so nice to even be asked about something like that. I think I had been waiting – without knowing – for something big to really happen. I didn’t doubt for a millisecond that this collaboration would be special!”

As it turned out, the distance also helped Tarja interpret the song, and gave her a bit of breathing room to work on ideas.

“I was really nervous!” she admits. “I think if Sharon and the guys had been next to me, that would have been something completely different. Because I was somewhere else, I could get into the song in my own way.”

“That’s also beautiful, because it means Tarja’s meaning for the song became its own thing,” Sharon adds. “For me, the song was about how we never learn from our mistakes as human beings. Because it’s such a big and cinematic song, Tarja’s voice added that enormity to it. She’s the empress!”

Released on September 27 2013, Paradise (What About Us?) finally united two of symphonic metal’s leading ladies. Predictably, the response was ecstatic from critics and fans alike, and to date the song has amassed more than 30 million streams on Spotify, as well as more than 100 million on YouTube. In turn, when its parent album, Hydra, was released on February 4, it quickly became Within Temptation’s most successful release to date, topping the charts at home in the Netherlands while landing a Top 10 position in the UK (No.6) and Top 20 in the US (No.16).

More than a decade on from its release, Paradise (What About Us?) feels like the moment Within Temptation drew a line under everything that had come before, saluting the original leading lights of symphonic metal while also elevating them beyond the genre and into arena-conquering territory.

“Doing a song together, when nobody expected it, was so positive on every level,” Sharon says. “We still have this connection after all these years, and our friendship has only grown from that point.”

“It gave me a new friend in my life,” agrees Tarja. “It’s a song of friendship to me. I’m so happy we could bring people joy and love by working on this together.”

Within Temptation's latest album Bleed Out is out now. The band tour the UK with Tarja Turunen in support this month

[justforbooks]

Maggie Smith: the magisterial star of Harry Potter and Downton had the courage and talent to do absolutely everything

The real-life dame and on-screen dowager countess, who has died aged 89, earned fame in her 70s and 80s for blockbuster roles. But her early work at the National Theatre marked her out as a talent for the ages

Dame Maggie Smith’s trophy cabinet reflected her extraordinary achievements across theatre, film and television – and in the biggest arenas of British and US culture, from the BBC to Hollywood, the West End to Broadway. A measure of her versatility and durability is that, in the 1960s, she played nine major roles in the formative years of the National Theatre, but also, from the start of the 2000s, appeared in five series of Downton Abbey, the ITV Sunday night series that became one of the biggest popular hits of the new millennium.

Her role in that show was Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, who lived in such a bubble of exclusive comfort that, in trademark one-liners, she would drawl in mystification, for example: “What is a ‘weekend’?” That acerbic superiority was a signature throughout Smith’s career, including the part that brought her first Academy award in 1970, against a shortlist also featuring Liza Minnelli and Jane Fonda, for the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, adapted from Muriel Spark’s novel about a maverick, arrogant schoolteacher in Edinburgh.

Smith consistently had the courage and talent to do unexpected things. Her second Oscar, in 1979, was for California Suite, with a script by Neil Simon and a cast of high Hollywood talent including Alan Alda and Walter Matthau. Introducing an element of postmodernism to a mainstream comedy, Smith played exactly what she had been at the start of the decade: an English actress up for her first Academy award.

Another surprise on her CV demonstrated an ability to play it straight and dark. In 2019, after 12 years away from the stage, Smith, at the age of 84, performed a 100-minute monologue at the Bridge theatre in London. A German Life was adapted by Christopher Hampton from a documentary movie interview given, at the age of 102 (the show was a rare case of an octogenarian ageing up for a part), by Brunhilde Pomsel, who worked for the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels during the Holocaust, but who continued to deny complicity or guilt. With typical meticulousness, Smith refused to accept the part until she had proved to herself at home that she could memorise an extended solo. Combining enduringly impeccable technique with the guts to test it again at such an age, it was a late triumph in an astonishing career.

Margaret Smith – she preferred her full first name, the “Maggie” imposed on her to distinguish from another performer on the Equity register – was born in Ilford, Essex. Her mother, who worked as a secretary, was Scottish, so useful for the creation of the Brodie brogue. Her father, Nathaniel, was a pathologist, whose academic posting to Oxford led to his daughter attending the city’s girls’ high school.

Despite joining the Oxford Playhouse Company at 16, rather than going to college, Smith benefited from the local varsity theatrical privileges, cast in Oxford University Dramatic Society productions, including revues, which, at the time were attended by national critics.

Such was the impact she made in comedy skits and songs that, aged 21, she was part of an ensemble recruited to appear on Broadway in a revue called New Faces of 1956. In London, during the following two years, she appeared, with co-stars including Kenneth Williams, in an English show, Share My Lettuce, billed as “a diversion with music”, with a script by Bamber Gascoigne.

At that point, Smith seemed set to be a sketch-and-music comedian, especially when Strip the Willow, a play about the survivors of a nuclear war in the UK, failed to transfer to London from a UK tour. It was written by Beverley Cross, whom Smith had met at the Oxford Playhouse. He wrote the play for her as an attempted seduction, the first description of her character being “beautiful. As elegant and sophisticated as a top international model. A great sense of fun. A marvellous girl.’’

However, at that stage, no lasting relationship occurred. And Smith’s serious dramatic career was launched when she appeared, again paired with Kenneth Williams, in a double bill of plays, The Private Ear and The Public Eye, by Peter Shaffer, in 1962. These won Smith her first Evening Standard best actress statuette, at the age of 27, and caught the attention of Sir Laurence Olivier, then establishing, at Chichester, the first attempt at a National Theatre. Crucially to the development of her reputation, Olivier trusted her not only with comedy – such as The Recruiting Officer, George Farquhar’s early 18th-century farce – but also tragedy: she was Desdemona to Olivier’s performance in the title role of Othello.

Also at the National, Smith formed a relationship with the actor Robert Stephens, who became her first husband, and father of her sons, who, as Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, followed their parents into acting.

Dramatic Exchanges, a collection of correspondence from the National Theatre archives, shows the close creative relationship between Olivier and Smith. A habitual nicknamer, he addressed her as “Mageen”. He had long told her that her perfect role would be Millamant, a strong-willed woman conspiring to achieve a desired marriage, in William Congreve’s Restoration comedy The Way of the World. But, in 1968, with Smith having left the company following her marriage with Stephens and pregnant with their first child, Olivier proceeded to stage the play with Geraldine McEwan as Millamant.

Olivier’s letter of apology to Smith contained elaborately verbose admiration. Smith wrote a reply of pained regret concluding: “Well, what’s the point of trying to tell you my feelings. They obviously count for so very little. It was nice of you to say you will devote your energies to my return but really I do not think it would be wise of me to believe that either. Margaret.”

There is a waspish, unforgiving tone in that letter that was part of Smith’s personality; some of those who worked with her, especially younger actors struggling with their roles, were wounded by witty but cruel putdowns.

That bad casting luck at the National, though, was more than balanced out. Had Julie Andrews, in the same year, not turned down the Jean Brodie movie, Smith would never have played the part that redefined her career. With her American bankability increased by a US tour of Noël Coward’s Private Lives, Smith used it to go into a kind of theatrical exile from Olivier and Britain. From 1976 to 1980, she played four summer seasons at the Shakespeare festival in Stratford, Ontario, conceived as a sort of ex-pat RSC-National, where she finally played the part of Millamant and other roles that might have been expected in London, such as Lady Macbeth.

Smith fell into a happy rhythm of filming gigs split with Canadian acting sabbaticals. While she rehearsed or acted, Beverley Cross wrote to her, having become Smith’s second husband in 1975 following her divorce from Robert Stephens.

When Smith returned to London theatre, she took over from Diana Rigg as the troubled modern colonial wife Ruth Carson, in Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day. She confirmed her resurgence with two more Evening Standard awards, in 1981 and 1984, for London runs of shows she had premiered in Canada. In Virginia, by Edna O’Brien, she was the writer Virginia Woolf, for whom Smith’s gift for haughty wit made her natural casting. Then, 16 years after the disappointment with Olivier, she finally played the coveted role in The Way of the World in her own city.

Smith, in contradiction of the standard professional graphs, had, after that slight mid-career dip, a third act even more glorious than her first. Shaffer wrote for her Lettice and Lovage, a comedy maximising her command of sardonic superiority, as Lettice Douffet, a tour guide who begins to embellish history. She took the play to New York, where she won a Tony award. Smith also became an Alan Bennett specialist. She co-starred with Michael Palin in the movie A Private Function in 1984, as a Yorkshire woman using a black-market pig to prevent wartime rationing thwarting her upward mobility. In the 1988 first series of Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues for television, she was a vicar’s wife, anxious about private sins, in A Bed Among the Lentils. On stage (1999) and screen (2015), she was memorable as The Lady in the Van, a fictionalised version of Miss Shepherd, a Catholic evangelist tramp who for some years lived in a caravan on Bennett’s driveway.

There was a trio of West End appearances in plays by the great American dramatist Edward Albee: as the oldest (90-something) of three versions of the writer’s imperious mother in Three Tall Women (1994); playing a vicious drunk in a family menaced by an unnamed “plague” in A Delicate Balance (1997); and a mysterious matriarch visiting a deathbed in The Lady from Dubuque (2007), a rare flop that put Smith off theatre.

Another reason for her retreat from theatre was, unusually for a septuagenarian performer, a vast demand from movie studios. Between 2001 and 2011, she appeared in seven of the eight Harry Potter films, as Professor Minerva McGonagall, transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts, her embodiment of the formidable Scottish academic seeming to contain affectionate nods to Brodie. The part brought Smith considerable wealth – she joked about the “Harry Potter pension fund” – and a vast new fanbase that, she complained, made it impossible for her to shop in Waitrose any more.

Her cinematic renaissance had also included Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (2001). In this English country house drama, written by Julian Fellowes, Smith’s character was at least a first cousin to her Downton Abbey countess. Appearing in a TV series with an average audience of 10 million made it even harder for Dame Maggie (as she had become in 1990) to go shopping. But this late superstardom, half a century or more after her first major theatre and movie successes, confirmed that she was an actor with the rare ability to do anything she wanted anywhere.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

"It’s more than sales – it inspired an entire generation of young girls to know they had a place in heavy music." Inside Fallen: the album that turned Evanescence into instant 21st century metal superstars

No rock band had an explosive a rise in the 2000s as Evanescence. This is the story of their classic debut album

Evanescence’s Amy Lee was at one of the many awards ceremonies she attended back in the first half of the 2000s when she was approached by a fan. This wasn’t unusual in itself, except this fan happened to be rapper and mogul P. Diddy.

“He said, ‘I love your album, I listen to it when I work out’,” Amy tells Hammer today. “And I was like ‘Really? That’s awesome!’ That was surprising to me. You know who I am? That’s weird.” Weird is right. Just a couple of years earlier, Amy had been a shy, aspiring singer and songwriter who had played no more than a handful of times with the band she’d co-founded as 13-year-old almost a decade earlier. And now here she was, getting star-spotted by hip hop A-listers at swanky awards ceremonies.

“What do they call that thing? Imposter syndrome!” she recalls today. “I definitely felt like I’d snuck in the back door and somehow got to go to the Grammys. Like, ‘I’m not supposed to be here and people do not know who we are and this is a prank.’ I think part of that is just it all happening so fast and being so young.”

The reason for the attention was down to the blockbusting success of Evanescence’s debut album, Fallen. Originally released in March 2003, and about to be reissued as a deluxe 20th anniversary edition, Fallen appeared at the tail-end of the nu metal boom. It offered a gothier, more dramatic take on that sound, which bridged nu metal and both the rising symphonic metal and emo scenes. It would go on to sell more than 10 million copies in the US alone, turning Amy Lee into an icon and role model for a generation of young, female fans.

Amy describes the young, pre-Evanescence version of herself as “a little bit shy”. Earlier this year, she told Hammer’s sister magazine, Classic Rock, that the death of her younger sister, Bonnie, when Amy was six, was a catalyst for “this soul, spirit- searching, expression mode”, which would eventually manifest itself in music. She wrote her first song aged 12, and others quickly followed. “I wrote plenty of songs that were crap,” she says with a laugh. “You just haven’t heard them.”

Things became more serious when she met future Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody in 1994 at a Christian Youth Camp in Little Rock, Arkansas, where her family had moved to a few years earlier. She was 13 and Ben a year older, though the two decided they could make music together. Amy describes their initial endeavours as “more like an electronic duo, like Massive Attack” than an actual band, though some of their early songs would end up on Fallen, including Imaginary, Whisper and My Immortal.

The nascent Evanescence didn’t play a gig for nearly six years, partly because of their youth, and partly because they wanted to concentrate on honing the songs they were writing. “The live part for me at that time just wasn’t my focus,” she shrugs. “I wanted to make stuff.”

Their first release was a self-titled debut EP that came out in 1998 via local label Bigwig, followed by another EP, Sound Asleep, the following year (both featured songs that appeared on Fallen). They’d played a few a low-key acoustic shows in their early days, but their first proper, plugged-in show was at a bar named Vinos in Little Rock on January 2, 1999, less than a month after Amy turned 17.

“It was difficult to be on stage at first,” she says. “I had to really work at being a good performer. I remember the first time we played a gig and four people knew the chorus to one of our dumb little songs,” she adds, self-effacingly trailing off.

It was an early version of My Immortal that caught the attention of Diana Meltzer, head of A&R at Wind-up Records, in 2001. Amy had just enrolled in college to study music theory composition when she got the message that Wind-up were interested in Evanescence - essentially herself and Ben.

“I still wanted to make music, but I was going to study so that maybe one day I could work on film scores as a backup plan,” she says. “We got signed three months in. I had one semester of school. I literally went from graduating high school to moving to LA and making our album in a year and a half.”

Producer Dave Fortman can remember the first time he heard Amy Lee sing Bring Me To Life in the studio. The guitarist in 1990s rockers Ugly Kid Joe pivoted to production after the 1997 break-up of that band, working with the likes of Superjoint Ritual and Crowbar before signing on to produce the debut album by an unknown band from Arkansas called Evanescence. After listening to their demo, he jumped at the chance to work with them. And then came the moment when Amy began singing in the studio.

“Amy was in the booth and this voice just came out,” Dave tells Hammer. “My engineer, who has worked with some of the biggest names in music bar none, turned to me with his jaw on the floor and said, 'Goddamn! This girl can sing.’ You just forgot where you were, you weren’t working anymore, you were just in awe of her. They were the most talented people in their age I’d ever been in contact with.”

The Evanescence that recorded Fallen was Amy and Ben, plus keyboard player/string arranger/co-songwriter David Hodges (who joined the band in 1999) and an array of session musicians, including future Guns N’ Roses/Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese. Dave Fortman estimates the album cost around $250,000 to make – a sizeable sum now, but relatively modest at a time when seven-figure budgets weren’t uncommon (Korn’s 2002 album Untouchables reportedly cost $4 million). Some of that budget went on the real-life orchestra that Amy insisted on using for many of the songs – a bold move for a new band, when an electronic recreation would have been cheaper.

“None of us were ever going to back down on that,” says Dave Fortman. “It had to be that way or it wasn’t going to work. We recorded the orchestra in Seattle where they have no union, so it was cheaper. If we’d have known it was going to smash in the way it did, hell yeah, we would have just recorded them in LA!”

Evanescence didn’t get everything their way. Bring Me To Life, which addressed Amy’s feelings of numbness while in an abusive relationship,  was augmented by the inclusion of rapper Paul McCoy in an attempt to appeal to the nu metal market - a decision that went  against the band’s wishes. “I was so scared in the beginning that we were going forward with something  that wasn’t a perfectly honest picture of who we were,” Amy told Metal Hammer earlier this year. “But it didn’t last long. After a few songs, the mainstream was able to hear more than the one song and it was like, ‘OK, they at least sort of get what we are.’”

Advance expectations for Fallen were modest when it was released on March 4, 2003. “If it had gone gold [500,000 copies], we’d have A all been delighted with that,” says Dave Fortman. As it turned out, the album smashed it, selling more than 140,000 copies in its first week of release alone and reaching No.7 in the US Billboard charts. Bring Me To Life was a huge factor in that success. Like My Immortal, the song made its first appearance on the big- budget, Ben Affleck-starring Daredevil movie, which hit cinemas a few months before Fallen came out. 

When it was released as a single in its own right, accompanied by an expensive-looking urban-gothic video that saw a nightdress- clad Amy somnambulantly climbing the side of a tower block, like a cross between a character from an Anne Rice novel and a comic book superhero, Wind-up reps had to beg radio stations to play it (“A chick with piano on a rock station?” was a common response). Those that did air it soon found their phone lines jammed with people who wanted to know what it was that they’d just heard. It entered the US Top 10 and did even better in the UK, where it reached No.1.

Bring Me To Life and subsequent singles Going Under and My Immortal put wind in Fallen’s sails. Those 140,000 sales shot upwards at a vertiginous rate: within a month, it had sold more than a million copies in the US alone. By the middle of 2004, it had reached seven million (in 2022, Fallen was awarded a diamond certificate for US sales of more than 10 million). The speed of the ascent left Amy Lee dazed. “There was just so much going on,” she says, exhaling. “I don’t know if I got to focus on it that hard at the time.” 

The label wanted to get Evanescence out on the road to capitalise on that initial success. A touring band was assembled around Amy and Ben – guitarist John LeCompt, drummer Rocky Gray and bassist Will Boyd were recruited to back them. Their rise as a live band was equally dizzying. The day Fallen was released, Evanescence headlined the 200-capacity Engine Room in Houston, Texas. Three months later, they made their first UK appearance playing the Main Stage at the inaugural Download festival, sandwiched between Stone Sour and Mudvayne. Two weeks after that, they returned to the UK to headline a sold-out show at London’s prestigious Astoria.

Inevitably, given the scale and velocity of Evanescence’s success, it didn’t take long for the backlash to kick in. Amy was the focus of much of the criticism, with the barbs ranging from the petty (one magazine questioned her goth credentials) to the outright misogynistic (she was painted as a diva with absolutely nothing to back it up other than the fact she was a woman). Evanescence themselves were perceived by some of their detractors as nothing more than a cynical marketing experiment; the phrase “Linkin Park with a girl singer” appeared a depressing number of times back then, which diminished the decade or so Amy and Ben had invested in their band and music.

“I felt a lot like people wanted to see me fail, especially in the beginning,” Amy says. “I think it’s partially that they want to see if you’re the real thing, and when you shoot up so fast and you have a lot of success really quickly, I think there’s a little bit of a human nature thing that wants to poke a hole in that. I felt on the defence, I felt misunderstood – I’ve got a badass, bitchy look on my face on the album cover, so obviously I must be some kind of bitch.”

Amy was just 21 when Fallen was released, and the criticism took a toll on her. “It was hard as a young person to feel misunderstood,” she reflects today. Things became even more complicated when Ben left acrimoniously in October 2003, just six months after the release of Fallen, with creative differences cited at the time as the reason for the split (in 2010, he admitted to trying to force the singer out of the band they had founded together).

“I felt frustrated,” says Amy. “I wanted to hide a bit in that initial aftermath. People always wanted to attach me to drama, like Ben leaving the band. All of that was trying to be made to make me look bad, like it’s my fault or, ‘Well now it’s going to suck because she didn’t actually do any of the work, obviously all the men behind her did all the writing and the creation.’ It just made me angry a lot.”

The criticism and fractured personal relationships may have been difficult to deal with, but the impact Evanescence had was undeniable. Fallen landed at a transitional time for metal. By 2003, nu metal was on a downward trajectory creatively and commercially, with scene heavyweights Korn and Limp Bizkit both releasing dud albums in the shape of Take A Look In The Mirror and Results May Vary respectively. The New Wave Of American Heavy Metal was bubbling up, but it didn’t possess the same kind of mainstream crossover potential.

Fallen was different. Nu metal may have been in its DNA, but so was goth and electronic music. It was heavy enough for metal fans but it was also dramatic and heartfelt enough to draw in the emo crowd and pop fans alike. The soaring piano ballad My Immortal, with its narrative of a grieving relative haunted by the spirit of the family member they’re mourning, and Going Under, another song detailing the feelings of hopelessness that come from suffering in an abusive relationship, were unquestionably dark, but Evanescence wrapped them up in ear-worm hooks and gothic allure, while Amy’s presence imbued them with a distinctly feminine spirit that was a world away from nu metal’s over-testosteroned aggro.

The broad-church appeal of Fallen was reflected in the range of musicians who garlanded it with praise. Over the years, it’s been cited as an inspiration by everyone from Lzzy Hale and The Pretty Reckless’s Taylor Momsen to pop star Kelly Clarkson. Björk praised Evanescence and so, more surprisingly, did Lemmy, a man not known for his love of goth-tinged ballads.

“They’re fucking excellent,” said the late Motörhead frontman when asked for his view of the band. Even more significant – and noticeable – was the devotion Evanescence, and Amy in particular, almost instantly inspired among fans, especially female ones. The look she sported in music videos, magazine photo shoots and TV interviews – goth-style corsets, black and red eye make-up - was taken up by countless rock club kids up and down the country.

But arguably the most lasting impact Fallen has had is musical. It marked a changing of the guard: not just the end of nu metal, but the beginning of the rise of symphonic metal. Bands such as Nightwish and Within Temptation released albums before Fallen, making sizable waves in mainland Europe, but Evanescence put a distinctly American spin on it, turbocharging symphonic metal’s rise on the back of Fallen’s success. Even now, Amy’s too modest to acknowledge the influence that Fallen had.

“People are always asking me that question: ‘What is it about that album that resonated with people so much?’” she says. “I don’t know. Some of it’s just out of your control. At that age and that time in my life, I don’t think I would have given myself that credit.”

Dave Fortman is far more forthright on the subject. “Did I notice it?!” he says. “How could you not?! That’s what happens when you become, not just a big band, but an icon. She truly changed things. All those symphonic bands that came in their wake? They’re all Amy’s children.”

Fallen helped turn Evanescence into one of the biggest bands of the 21st century. They beat superstar rapper 50 Cent to the award for Best New Artist at the 2004 Grammy Awards (Bring Me To Life also took the trophy for Best Hard Rock Performance). To date, the record has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide – only Adele, Eminem, Norah Jones, Lady Gaga and Linkin Park released albums that have sold more during that time.

Dave calls Fallen “a life- changing album”. He explains: “It’s more than sales – it inspired an entire generation of young girls to know they had a place in heavy music. To show they didn’t have to ever compromise.” It’s a sentiment Amy shares as she looks back at the shy 21-year-old of 2003.

“It was crazy, it was awesome,” she says. “But there was a lot for me that was going on personally, turmoil and relationships within our band. It was just this wild time where so many things that felt huge were happening at the same time. Did it change the musical landscape? I don’t know. But it inspired somebody for something good, it made them walk back from the edge, feel their self-worth in some way. I think it’s truly a gift and a blessing in my life.”

Originally printed in Metal Hammer #381

[rayslittlekitten]

All I Have To Give

“Crush” Masterlist

A/N: So "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" came on shuffle and it made me think of young Benny. My headcanon is Benny absolutely loves pop music, particularly boybands in the late 90s-early 2000 era. Also that he's a hopeless romantic and everything kinda fell into place with him in the "Crush" universe. Hope you enjoy this little cute piece about Benny with pop songs sprinkled in there.

Rating: G

Word Count: 559

Pairing: Benny Miller & BFF! GN!Reader (reader is F in some of the other fics, but this can be read as GN), Benny Miller x OCs (named and unnamed)

Plot: Benny’s got all the love to give and he's been trying to find someone to give it all to.

Contains: Benjamin being a hopeless romantic and some late 90s-early 2000 pop music references

There goes your best friend nervously walking up to the waitress who's been the apple of his eye for the last two months. He thinks that her memorizing his usual order is a sign she's interested. You don't want to burst his little bubble letting him know she also memorized yours.

That lover boy is the most hopelessly romantic person you've ever met - to a fault. Once he falls in love, he gets tunnel vision and obsesses over them. You blame it on pop music. He'll never publicly admit it, but the Backstreet Boys are his favorite boyband. He never learns his lesson though. His heart has been broken so many times, you're sure it has turned into sand. You gotta admire him though. All these rejections and heartaches never deters him from looking for love again. He's just a puppy. Literally. Give him head pets and treats, and he'll eat out of the palm of your hands.

You remember in the summer after sophomore year, on the last day of school, Ben worked up the courage to ask his current crush at the time, Kristina out after being the Invisible Man all year. He even got a summer job so he knew he'd have money to take her out. She said yes, and after a few dates, you both saw her getting cozy with a different blonde - Jaime Carter, who had a resemblance to Nick Carter. He would even tell girls that he's related to him, which you both knew was bullshit.

That summer, you must have heard Britney's "From the Bottom of my Broken Heart" more times than any song ever. NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" was a close second. As much as he loved "Show Me The Meaning of Being Lonely", the reminder of Nick Carter made it worse. Lover Boy was hurting and pop music was his way to soothe his heart.

Then a month later, Linda walked into the doors of his job and subsequently, into his life. As he described it to you, it was like a movie moment. It happened in slow motion while Savage Garden’s “I Knew I Loves You” played in the background. When summer ended, so did his time with Linda when she went back home. She was only in town to visit family. Gone.

Once school started again, and the new girl became the new object of his affection. He worked up the courage to ask her to the Junior Winter Wonderland Bash and Christmas came early for him when she said yes. Couple of months later, he felt like his death came early when she became someone else's valentine. All or Nothing.

Then there was Tina from the music store, Becky from the movie theater, Maria from Blockbuster, Vivian at the bowling alley. Rinse, recycle and repeat. This went well into adulthood.

And today? No different. You watch Benny as he makes his way back to the booth with an extra pep in his step.

"I got her number!" Benny flashes the napkin along with his teeth.

"Good job!" You high five him and tussle his hair. "You want the rest of my fries?" you offer.

"Oooh!" His eyes light up and his ears perk up as he digs in.

20 years later and still a puppy. And every time, you hope he gets his fairytale ending.

[parisbytaylorswift]

My F-1 Trillion thoughts

TLDR: The slow songs are better, I love Dolly, and most of these did not need to be features

Wrong Ones (Tim McGraw): VERY stadium country. Not totally my thing but I respect it. If this is setting the stage for the rest, I hope the features deliver.

Finer Things (Hank Williams Jr.): Oh. Definitely not my thing. Sounds like a Florida Georgia Line song. That’s not a good thing. Could’ve been a lot better with a more toned-down acoustic production style. I guess this is the pseudo-title track for the album? I like the album title on it’s own but I hope this song isn’t representative of the whole thing.

I had some help (Morgan Wallen): I’ve heard this one before, and yeah, I really don’t like Morgan Wallen. If it hadn’t been a feature, I think I could at least accept this a fun catchy pop-country song. But I really don’t think Posty needed the “help” on this one.

Pour Me a Drink (Blake Shelton): Post’s voice works so well for a country song, I just don’t understand why there’s so many unnecessary features on this album. This could’ve been a solo song is a statement that applies to most all of these. That said, lyrically, it’s a fun blue collar anthem. . . being sung by a The Voice judge. It’s just hard to take Blake Shelton seriously when we tries to do these blue collar anthems, and feels appropriating

Have the Heart (Dolly Parton): DOLLY CAN DO NO WRONG. THIS is a well used feature. Very rhinestone cowboy reminiscent. This is Taylor Swift’s cowboy like me without the criminal activity and with a much more hopeful sound.

What Don’t Belong To Me: FINALLY. A solo track. Post sounds great on these more personal ballad style songs. A great catchy ear worm chorus is a staple of his, and this is that! There’s no mistaking this for a Post Malone song, even with a genre change-up. I like the true to form songwriting style.

Goes without Saying (Brad Paisley): This is a pop song with a banjo. This is gonna be on country radios for a long time, isn’t it? The new unavoidable Brad Paisley song I guess. Not terrible or anything, just okay.

Guy for That (Luke Combs): THIS DIDN’T NEED TO BE A FEATURE!!! More stadium country okayishness.

Nosedive (Lainey Wilson): It sounds good when Post slows down!! The more emotional ballads of this album are the best parts. I can see this being used in a blockbuster romance movie soundtrack based off a Nicholas Sparks book.

Losers (Jelly Roll): 10 years ago this would’ve been used in a Disney movie about middle school bullying. In 2024, teenagers are going to bully sing this AT the losers sitting in the back of football bleachers.

Devil I’ve Been (Ernest): She fixed him! (Really she did!) Unfortunately his friends are still demons.

Never Love You Again (Sierra Ferrell): Slow songs are great!! Do this more!! The slow bass line works great here.

Missin’ You Like This (Luke Combs): Luke Combs again? Really? The slowed down wistful love song is nice here, but really, really, didn’t need to be a feature.

California Sober (Chris Stapleton): Another feature done really well. The harmonizing route with both their voices is great compared to the alternating style on other tracks. Stapleton and Post’s voices are great together, and makes for a really fun sound.

Hide My Gun (HARDY): Again, the slower songs are the best ones here for letting Post really shine for who he is. Also, murder!!!

Right About You: I love a good song title pun (Kacey Musgraves’ Space Cowboy you are beloved), the ‘right/writing about you’ bit here is very appealing. It lands well, and it’s a fun love song about being famous for your heartbreak.

M-E-X-I-C-O (Billy Strings): YEEHAW!!!!!! A ridiculous story song is always fun! Hell yeah man take her daddy’s money and blow it in Vegas and get shot out of chapel alongside Elvis on your way to Mexico!

Yours: Sounds like an early 2000s post-9/11 sad country song to be made with a sad sepia filtered music video. But! I do respect the lyrics and everything Post did with it. There isn;’t really anything wrong with sounding twenty years ago is twenty years ago was good. Just glad this album didn’t get a Toby Keith feature.

[popmusicu]

Roots of pop in 80s and 90s

The 1980s and 1990s were transformative decades for pop culture, marked by rapid technological advancements, the rise of new music genres, and a growing global interconnectedness. These years not only witnessed the emergence of iconic artists and trends but also set the stage for the digital age that defines contemporary pop culture.

The 1980s began with a technological revolution in the music industry. The advent of the music video, propelled by the launch of MTV in 1981, transformed how music was consumed and promoted. Artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince harnessed the visual medium to create memorable and influential music videos that were as important as their songs. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" became a cultural milestone, blending groundbreaking special effects with innovative choreography.

Synth-pop and new wave dominated the early 80s, characterized by the extensive use of synthesizers and electronic instruments. Bands like Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, and The Human League epitomized the sound of the decade, blending catchy melodies with a futuristic aesthetic. At the same time, hip-hop emerged from the streets of New York City, with pioneers like Grandmaster Flash, Run-D.M.C., and LL Cool J laying the groundwork for a genre that would become a global phenomenon.

The late 80s saw the rise of glam metal and hair bands, with acts like Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, and Guns N' Roses dominating the airwaves with their high-energy performances and flamboyant styles. However, the transition to the 90s marked a dramatic shift in musical tastes. Grunge exploded onto the scene, with bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden embodying the angst and disillusionment of Generation X. This raw, unpolished sound was a stark contrast to the polished excess of the 80s, reflecting a cultural yearning for authenticity.

The 1990s were also the golden age of hip-hop, which evolved into a dominant cultural force. The East Coast-West Coast rivalry, personified by artists like Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., brought the genre to mainstream prominence. Meanwhile, alternative rock and Britpop, with bands like Radiohead, Oasis, and Blur, offered a diverse musical landscape that catered to a wide array of tastes.

The 90s also witnessed the birth of boy bands and pop princesses, with acts like *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera capturing the hearts of millions. This era's pop music was characterized by its polished production, catchy hooks, and broad appeal, setting the stage for the teen pop explosion of the early 2000s.

Television and film also played crucial roles in shaping 80s and 90s pop culture. Shows like "The Simpsons," "Friends," and "The X-Files" became cultural touchstones, while blockbuster films like "E.T.," "Star Wars," and "Titanic" defined cinematic experiences for a generation. The rise of cable television and home video revolutionized media consumption, allowing for greater access and diversity in entertainment choices.

In conclusion, the 1980s and 1990s were foundational decades for modern pop culture, marked by significant shifts in music, media, and technology. The era's influence is still felt today, as contemporary pop culture continues to draw inspiration from the groundbreaking trends and innovations of these transformative years.

Rocío Carrasco Coloma

[denimbex1986]

'Christopher Nolan was lauded as best director at the Golden Globes for “Oppenheimer,” a grim, three-hour historical drama that ignited the box office.

It marks Nolan’s first Globe win, having been previously nominated for writing 2000’s “Memento,” writing and directing 2010’s “Inception” and directing 2017’s “Dunkirk.” In this year’s director race, Nolan was up against Bradley Cooper for “Maestro,” Greta Gerwig for “Barbie,” Yorgos Lanthimos for “Poor Things,” Martin Scorsese for “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Celine Song for “Past Lives.”

“The only time I’ve ever been on this stage before was accepting one of these on behalf of our dear friend, Heath Ledger, and that was complicated and challenging for me,” Nolan said. “In the middle of speaking, I got all stuck, and Robert Downey Jr. caught my eye and gave me a look of love and support — the same look he’s giving me now.”

Nolan directed Ledger in 2008’s comic book smash “The Dark Knight.” The actor died at the age 28 of an accidental overdose after filming was complete but before the movie was released. His haunting portrayal of the Joker earned him numerous posthumous awards, including the Golden Globe and Oscar for best supporting actor.

This time around, Nolan said from the stage, “I thought it would be simpler accepting for myself. But, as a director, I realize I can only accept this on behalf of people. As directors, we bring people together and we try to get them to give their best.” He shouted out the ensemble of “Oppenheimer,” including Cillian Murphy, whom Nolan called “my partner in crime for 20 years,” as well as “the incredible work of our amazing crew.”

Later in the night, Murphy took home the Globe for lead actor in a drama and thanked Nolan for “having faith in me for 20 years.”

“I knew the first time I walked on a Christopher Nolan set that it was different,” Murphy, who worked with Nolan on “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Inception” and “Dunkirk,” said during his acceptance speech. “I could tell by the level of rigor, the level of focus, the level of dedication, the complete lack of any seating options for actors that I was in the hands of the visionary director and master.”

“Oppenheimer,” the unlikiest of summer blockbusters, crushed expectations to become the third-highest grossing release of 2023 with $951 million worldwide. The movie, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “American Prometheus,” stars Murphy as American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the development of the atomic bomb. Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh and Alden Ehrenreich round out the cast.

“Oppenheimer” has been nominated for eight Golden Globes — the second-most of any film this year — including best actor (Murphy), supporting actor (Downey Jr.), supporting actress (Blunt), screenplay and motion picture – drama.'

[lovelykhaleesiii]

Share the dream babe. I sleep like a rock, don’t dream, and need to live vicariously.

damn that’s tough, I don’t dream a lot either but this was from a quick nap LMAO

OKAY I just want to say this was a DREAM nothing more. This shit’s not possible but bitch can a girl dream. @tvrgvryen babe you wanted to hear it so, here it is 💛🥲

SO I was with TGC in like those old shopping centres like first built in the early 2000s (very specific) and we’re just walking around like a normal couple, you know holding hands and shit. Then there was like this Blockbuster and we went to pick up some films to watch together, and we noticed this man like advertising something and all these couples heading to the back where he was. Tom was like “let’s go see babe” like begging me to go with him, and I eventually cave in.

This is where it gets weird…

So the product the guy was selling was literally a video or this tape that if you watch it you’re guaranteed to have the BEST LIKE UNEARTHLY sex ever. And Tom sees all these people just buying it, and then the guy goes “it’ll make the guys have fun & your girlfriend very fertile.” And me being me, I was like “Tom this is a scam” trying to drag him by his arm, but he was like let’s try and immediately buys it.

We then race back to our apartment and Tom immediately puts the tape on, I’m trying to put shit away but he lifts me over his shoulder and puts me down on the couch, right when the tape starts playing.

YALL WHEN I TELL YOU I CACKLED THIS NEXT PART WHEN I WOKE UP.

this shit was literally just all these like boring, 90s type of ads playing of food, like chocolate and sweets and chicken. It was so fucking weird but we both just sat and watched thinking it would be over soon and that’s when the real shit happens. The longer we waited we got into this like trance. 5 mins later, I look over at Tom and he looks back at me…

WHEN I TELL YOU I LEAPED ONTO HIS LAP, IM TELLING YOU I FUCKING LEAPT.

I was grinding so hard on his pants and he’s desperately trying to undo everything. We’re just fucking making out, tongues and all, pulling his hair and his fucking motorboating my tits.

Finally we get his pants off, and I must’ve been wearing like a really short dress, and he literally rips apart my thong and shoved his dick so fucking deep into my cunt, I swear I felt something for like a split second bitch. Anyways he’s like DESPERATE, like literally thrusting up into me, his cock fucking THROBBING. And it was weird it was like I could see us fucking from afar, like out of body.

And I can see him grabbing my ass cheeks. But his fucking groans….. ughhhhhh like it was DEEP BITCH.

Then he pins me down onto the couch so I’m laying and he’s on top & he’s still fucking raw dogging it. I’m literally moaning and screaming his name, and I’m pretty sure I called him Aegon but like he wasn’t phased funnily enough.

Then like it spans to him fucking me up the wall, like my back is against it, and he’s keeping me up with his cock still in me and his thighs supporting me and his arms holding my thighs. Still fucking raw dogging it.

Mind you those fucking ads and cheerful songs are playing in the background, it gave me like those sex pollen fanfic vibes.

ANYWHO it sort of like time jumped and he’s back on the couch like finally coming to senses and it must’ve been a full week of this non stop sex, cause our house plants look wilted and the food that was out was off now. Like he even slept with his cock in me, tiny thrusts during the night, like a dog HAHAHAH.

And I took like a pregnancy test cause I came out of it earlier than he did, so when I saw he was back to his normal self. I sat beside him and was like “I’m pregnant”, and he was just nodding and smiling, his hand gripping my thigh, and he goes “it actually worked”.

AND THAT WAS IT!!!! Didn’t even get to the domestic part 😭😭😭😭

I couldn’t take myself serious when I woke up 🤭

PS THIS IS WHAT HE LOOKED LIKE IN THE DREAM JUST FYI

[straightfacedstrangeness]

Broly movie semi-liveblog because of reasons

I only ever watched the original Broly movie once or twice cus of the suuuper long fight scene ending (and I think it came out, or we borrowed it from Blockbuster, around the time I was losing interest in DBZ)…which is great cus watching it now after the reboot movie has me going in almost totally fresh

Krillin’s puppy song (and how he just pauses then keeps singing after the ship lands X’D so you just hear him wailing in the background during Paragus’ big speech)

Paragus: I’m starting a new planet and I want you to be king Vegeta: :/ Paragus: Uhh…there’s also this big strong bad guy and only YOU can stop him! Vegeta: :/ Trunks: Dad, don’t go with him Vegeta: DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! *goes out of spite*

Vegeta gets to the planet, gets his ear talked off by Paragus, sees Paragus’ whole army, doesn’t react to anything, but takes one look at the big buff shirtless dude covered in jewelry and decides “I want to be alone with that guy for a while” (Trunks: “DAD NO” Vegeta: “DON’T KINKSHAME ME”)

Son “cat trying to convince you it didn’t just eat five minutes ago” Goku

“Golly, who could the Legendary Super Saiyan be?” *shows a whole flashback of Broly being the Legendary Super Saiyan and names the movie “Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan”*

Still gets me that the fan-favorite His Power Is Maximum villain’s weakness is that he flips out at the sight of the guy who cried in the crib next to him when they were babies

I’d still fight Master Roshi if I could risk getting within ten feet of him but thanks man for deflating the tension every time it gets serious here. And more importantly, giving my boy Oolong an actual reason to be here (designated driver). Which kinky freak on staff came up with that sequence of the two of them in bed together though?? XD

Realizing I haven’t seen the old DBZ movies since before my dad got his giant TV, and watching this thing in HD on a huge screen with surround sound blasting the doofy 2000s grunge rock songs shoehorned into the soundtrack just feels so wrong X’D

With Paragus’ whole thing being about trapping Vegeta on this planet so a comet can smush him, how much funnier would it have been if Goku had just shown up and immediately IT’d everyone back to Earth

This version of Broly is SO annoying, OMFG. Hulked-out glowing guy cackling about how he was gonna kill a child, “What do you expect from a true freak?! Wahaha~” Like 100% one of those guys who saw The Dark Knight and went “the Joker’s so dark and edgy, I wanna be just like him” Shut up already

Actually Broly’s fixation on hurting Gohan to upset Goku plus the Trunks-Vegeta dynamic could’ve made for an interesting subplot about father-son relationships, but nope I guess. Gohan and Trunks aren’t even in the reboot movie where they really dig into Paragus’ abuse of Broly (just a brief scene of Goten and Trunks calling Bulma for two seconds to tell her plot stuff)

Piccolo dragging Vegeta to the battle by his hair

I also actually love sad scared Vegeta because it makes him so much more interesting. Goku’s an excitable child whose relationship with martial arts is basically like a good work ethic, so he hears about someone stronger than him and gets all excited cus he wants to test his strength by fighting them. Vegeta’s an arrogant jerk generally used to getting his own way, so he hears about someone stronger than him and his first instinct is to go “pff, no way,” then when it’s clear the person IS much stronger he just shuts down. Probably a remnant of being terrorized and probably physically beaten by Frieza or his minions as a kid, cus you KNOW he wasn’t gonna just start taking orders from some guy who isn’t even his king dad

The classic DBZ squeaky foot noise when Broly walks...bless

“I’m the prince of all Saiyans, even you, Broly” “Then please try your best to make me kneel before you” Get a ROOM

“Did he really think I would die just because this planet is about to explode?”

*gives you my power, but in a tsundere way*

I’d been wanting to watch the first bunch of movies for a while since they use clips from em in the Ocean dub opening, but wound up with the 2nd movie set cus I found a good deal and the Broly reboot made me curious to revisit the original…now I’m torn between going on to Return Of Cooler & Super Android 13 my dumb funny beloveds, or going back to the 1st movie set and working my way up to truly Earn them XD

[cyarsk52-20]

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How God Hates Us All made Slayer great again

In 2001 Slayer re-established themselves as kings of metal with their church-baiting warcry God Hates Us All.

September 10, 2021Words:Ian Winwood

In the summer of 2001, Slayer took to the road in the United States as part of the Extreme Steel tour with Pantera. On a bill that also featured Morbid Angel, Static-X and Skrape, one day Kerry King played the Texan cowboys from hell a number of songs from his group’s as-yet-untitled new album. Responding to a line from the track Disciple, Kerry was told, “Man, God Hates All would look [great on] a shirt.” It would, he agreed, but it would work better still as the title for Slayer’s ninth studio LP. 

“How can you look at the world and think God doesn’t hate us?” wondered the guitarist. Kerry King was once asked to nominate his own superpower and answered that he would like to be able to set churches ablaze simply by walking past them. In Slayer World, this made him the band’s most qualified theologian.

“Wars, disease…” he said. “If we’re so perfect, why are we so fucked?”

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God appeared to agree. God Hates Us All was released on September 11, 2001, mere hours before passenger planes were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the most Slayer-esque act of the modern age. Five years later, these atrocities would inspire Jihad, the band’s finest song of the 21st century. They would also throw the world into a state of flux for the next decade and more.

Ahead of the curve, the world of heavy music had been in turmoil for a number of years. The advent of nu-metal in the middle years of the 1990s saw the sound and look of metal change in remarkable and pliant ways. Tunings went down and guitar solos were eschewed. Long hair was no longer de rigueur. Baseball caps and vivid oversized sportswear became the wardrobe of the choice.

In truth, Slayer had endured a difficult decade anyway. Leaving aside the Seasons In The Abyss album, from 1990, the final 10 years of the 20th century had seen the band unveil just two further of albums of original material. Caught in a nu-metal storm, Diabolus In Musica, from 1998, provided a nod to these changing times. The Californian quartet’s most adventurous release – never again would they attempt to write songs as innovative as Stain Of Mind and Wicked – and by far their most intriguing, Slayer’s attempts to park their tank on a new cutting-edge lacked just one thing: an identity.

In this, the group were not alone. Iron Maidenslogged through a swathe of the 1990s with singer Blaze Bayley, a solid presence who lacked the charisma of his predecessor Bruce Dickinson. Even market leaders Metallica spent the second half of the decade attempting to escape the shadow of their 31-million selling Black Album. Between 1996 and 1999, the San Franciscans released four albums, only one of which – S&M – was met with anything approaching universal acclaim. The group did, though, start the 21st century in reassuring style, with the convincing I Disappear, from the 2000 summer blockbuster Mission: Impossible 2.

In the fullness of time, it would take Metallica a further eight years to re-establish their identity with the slightly-too-comfortable Death Magnetic album. Iron Maiden exorcised their recent past with ruthless efficiency by re-recruiting Bruce Dickinson and releasing Brave New World, in 2000, an LP that reassured listeners that normal service had been resumed. But it was Slayer who returned from their brief paddle into uncharted waters with the greatest sense of urgency and violent panache. 

As an album, God Hates Us All reassured its constituents that the band had come home to the thrash-tastic turf that would not exist without them. More than this, over the course of a further three studio albums this stall would budge not an inch in the years that elapsed until the group called it a night in 2019. In his own blunt style, Kerry King explained that, “I want us to be the AC/DC of thrash. I want people to know exactly what they’re going to get when they hear us.”

Which is not to say that the band’s first album of the new century was merely an exercise in nostalgia. Recorded in Vancouver, God Hates Us All was produced by Matt Hyde, whose subsequent credits would include Deftones and Parkway Drive. Accompanying this modern sound were lyrics that eschewed the Satanic and occult themes with which the group had established their identity in years past with songs such as Altar Of Sacrifice, Spill The Blood, and Born Of Fire. In its own quiet way, this too was a nod to metal’s unlikely march toward self-examination. 

“There’s no Satanic or supernatural elements to [the album],” Kerry King explained. “It’s just more about things that people can relate to. All our albums are angry, but this one is really pissed-off because it’s inward looking. I’m usually the Dungeons & Dragons spooky dude. On this record I made a conscious decision not to do that. I wanted to keep our dark themes, but also to write stuff that people can relate to. I tried to think about what pisses me off and why and how people could relate to that, rather than saying, ‘The Devil’s over there fucking your mother’, or something.”

Accompanied by a crisp music video for the song Bloodline – the band’s first since Dittohead, seven years earlier – God Hates Us All is not Slayer’s best album. But it is one of their most assured, and one which cemented their contemporary relevance to a new generation of metalhead. In 1991, the group capped off their first 10 years of active service with a live album titled Decade Of Aggression; yet the ’90s could have been called Decade Of Relative Uncertainty. But after years of laziness – only one track, the supreme Disorder, featuring Ice-T, breached the silence spanning 1990 and 1994 – and excursions such as the thrilling but contextually misguided punk-covers set Undisputed Attitude (1996), once again Slayer were back in a game of their own creation.

On the day that God Hates Us All was released, the Californians planned to fly to Europe to embark on the Tattoo The Planet tour, co-headlined by Pantera. Stranded in Dublin following the fall of the Twin Towers, the Texan group embarked on a row that would break their band apart forever. One week later, Kerry King and co. crossed the Atlantic and topped the bill unaided. In doing so, once more they stood alone as the kings of very, very, very heavy metal. 

Read this next:

The stories behind Slayer's 20 biggest songs

The 25 greatest thrash albums ever

South Of Heaven is the album where Slayer truly became evil

Check out more

Sent from my iPhone

[realcrocodiletears]

new music debrief - GUTS by olivia rodrigo

At this point in her career, Olivia finds herself at a crossroads with her identity in the media. Is Olivia Rodrigo a public figure, or a musician? With the singles Olivia, now 20, put out this time around it's easy to believe this narrative of her being just another industry plant, just another brand, just another Taylor Swift. On the surface, GUTS not only meets the expectations set by her blockbuster debut. It shatters them. Going deeper than that, GUTS is a mosaic of storytelling, experiments, and growth. Listening to this album it is apparent that Olivia has not only grown as an artist, but as a person.

GUTS expands on Olivia's breakup formula, it redirects her image and proves to all of us that there is more to her and her writing than just a sappy heartbreak record. Vampire and bad idea right bring us to believe leading up to the record, that it will mimic SOUR, capitalizing on a formula that worked perfectly in the past. The singles are thankfully some of the weakest tracks on this album, contributing very little to the overall message of GUTS. GUTS is about growing as a person, navigating one's identity, and taking the hurt as an opportunity to make oneself better. Sonically, GUTS takes the soft melodies of SOUR and opens 3 more doors; the grungier, the brighter, the sincerer. This time around GUTS offers variety in places SOUR lacked, experimenting a lot with different sounds stretching to different genres. Pretty isn't Pretty could easily be mistaken for a 2010s indie-pop anthem, all-american bitch is reflective of early 2000's pop-punk, and love is embarrassing being a chart-topping candidate.

Olivia's songwriting capability and potential blows me away. Coming from SOUR, she did a very good job at being descriptive, painting accurate pictures for the listener to follow along with. Not only does she do this part of her songwriting better, but she also does even more. Olivia does a very good job of giving us a metaphorical approach. On logical, Olivia describes the delusions that love puts us through. On this track, she says "you got me thinkin' two plus two equals five" and "The sky is green the grass is red". I absolutely adore this approach to the concept on this track. It puts her feelings into perspective in a way that isn't direct which a lot of artists overlook. In the 4th track, lacy, Olivia uses descriptive imagery through lines such as "skin like puff pastry" or "eyes white as daisies". It tells us, the listener, how perfect Lacy may be, and in doing so it also tells us Olivia's struggle with such a comparison.

The subject matter on GUTS as mentioned goes past SOUR's teenage heartthrob and dives into more mature topics as Olivia navigates adulthood. And for the fans growing alongside Olivia, these are topics that may resonate perfectly with them. Olivia gets personal on making the bed and shares the pressures of fame and perception even from those close to her. The grudge brings us back to a familiar place, being Olivia's messy relationship history. This time, though, Olivia approaches it personally and depicts the feeling of being lost with no direction rather than just hurt and angry. Not to mention the bridge on this song is the best of the whole record, easily the highlight of the album.

GUTS is by no means a perfect record, nor is it consistent. GUTS struggles to stay on theme with some sillier concepts scattered throughout the record that contribute very little to the message Olivia wants to convey. get him back! serves as a poorly executed anthem that leaves a sour taste (no pun intended) in the listener's mouth. The verse is a big no-no for me, but overall it strays away from the production, writing, and sincerity of the record. Similarly, ballad of a homeschooled girl follows in comparable footsteps, opting for the juvenile subject matter of social suicide and cute boys. I feel as though Olivia puts her best foot forward when not trying to please anyone. Writing fun tracks is amazing, but it's not surprising that her slower songs are typically her best. I would like to see Olivia take these negative topics however during her lower moments, and translate them to her more upbeat tracks.

Olivia's sophomore album serves as a sign of growth for her as an artist. It's apparent in her writing that she is in this business out of love for what she creates and that is evident throughout this whole record. However, Olivia is still in search of herself, and her sound. Spanning genres and experimenting on more than one occasion on this record, it'd be nice to see consistency on her next project. Overall, I'm so impressed with the highs on this record and it is a testament to where she can take her music next. I'm not sure if I can pick between GUTS and SOUR just yet, but with all the expectations in place going into the album, it's safe to say Olivia has exceeded them.

7/10

~ will

[madnesslovelymy]

My favorite moments  (and some lines) from Inside Job Part 1

- Robotus saying “Did you say Brett? I love that guy”.

- Brett saying “Man, Reagan. Your robot is so sick!” while Robotus (now Alpha Beta) is punching him.

- Akira reference.

- Reagan says to Alpha Beta that Netflix paid millions for Friends.

- Mr. Mothman counting Regan’s HR violations.

- Rand swearing to tell the truth on a Godzilla 2000 DVD.

- Rand and Reagan trying to hug each other, but they felt uncomfortable. In Episode 9, they do a distance hug.

- Reagan telling her mother she is single by choice because she has a job doing very important things. Next scene is something not so important for her.

- THE DRONE THRONE!

- Bear-O starting to work at Cognito Inc. and everybody just accept it.

- “Power is attracted to me, honey”.

- Reagan calling an extraction team in her third date at the movies. The person behind them saw everything and says nothing.

- Brian’s first message to Reagan was a meme and a bad pun.

- Animorph reference (I never read the books, tho).

- “Do you have any idea how dangerous I’d be if I had zero self-doubt?”

- Brett and Reagan being confused watching J.R’s Sex-Deck history.

- “Brett’s got a point...”. Brett smiles. “...for the first time ever” . Brett’s face changes.

- Reagan not knowing any media or references from the 80′s.

- “Brett, I’d lie to you, but I just don’t respect you enough”.

- Myc falling from the plane, expecting his pants would work like parachutes but doesn’t work and screams.

- “We can’t let a whole town get killed on our watch. We’ll get fired. Or promoted? I can never remember how evil we are”.

- When the teacher said is okay to abuse the students physically because is “socially acceptable” in the 80′s.

- The interaction between Reagan and the Blockbuster guy. I don’t know why, but I really like that minor character.

- The Remakes song.

- The whole episode about the flat-earthers.

- Myc doing spoilers about the ending of Breaking Bad and Andre using his memory erasers to (re)watch the ending. As a person who didn’t see Breaking Bad, I kinda saw it coming.

- Reagan being confused about Rafe bringing a bear rug just to make a pun.

- Reagan “being direct” to Steve, but in reality was being mean or rude (maybe for her that means “being direct”, let’s remember Reagan lacks social skills). Then, she’s trying to break up with Rafe in the nicest way possible (character development), but Rafe is being so dramatic and behave like a victim and the people around her see her as the bad person.

- When Rafe texts Reagan “Wouldn’t it be so funny if we had kids? Just kidding! Unless...” and Reagan throws his phone and says “Fuck it” and proceeds to fake her death.

- Rafe and Skullfinger being gay to each other.

- “Goddamn it, can’t even enjoy my death in peace”.

- Reagan being far away from Rand and doesn’t care if she dies in the moon because “she’s already dead inside”. 

- Brett and Reagan sharing their daddy issues.

- At the end of the Episode 8, Myc explaining that the moon landing was real, so the real Buzz Aldrin doesn’t sue Shion Takeuchi and the whole crew is funny. Also, the “Don’t sues us, Buzz Aldrin” having the same style font of “The more you know” is hilarious.

- Glenn dab.

- Brett saying a reference about an episode of South Park (Insheeption, S14E10). As a person who like South Park, I like that and I get the reference.

- Bear-O not targeting Brett because he knows he’s a good influence for Reagan. But Bear-O targets Rand, the person who built it.

- The disgusted face of Brett when her parents doesn’t care that Reagan is going to the dance with a stranger in their thirties.

- “I’m gonna tell you what I told Leonardo DiCaprio when he begged me to rig the Oscars. If you were the best, ya woulda won”.

- Andre destroying the Wi-Fi, so Alpha Beta doesn’t discovers what are furries. Even though, I think he knows what are furries, since Reagan connect him to the Internet in the first episode (specifically Facebook).

- “They [Furries] are a valid community. It’s not always a sexual thing, but usually”.

- Myc being sarcastic, in general.

- Brett and Reagan being best friends, of course! Thanks to Brett, Reagan is able to hug, improve her social skills and talk about her feelings. And thanks to Reagan, Brett doesn’t have to please or like everyone and is more assertive.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Just the Best 2/2001 2001 Pop / Euro-House / Trance / R&B / Pop-Rock / Europop / Pop-Punk / Dance-Pop / Hip Hop

God, do I really love going through these Now That's What I Call Music!-type comps from Europe. Late 90s/early 2000s releases like these always make for such fun, eclectic trips down memory lane, but from the perspective of a different region of the world. Our top 40 charts in America share a lot in common with other places, and that leads to a nice nostalgia rush for everyone involved, but there's also a lot of music we don't share in common at all. So the goal when listening to these ephemeral things is to get some of that good nostalgia, discover a few sweet tracks that you weren’t previously familiar with, and then hopefully find something so patently absurd and terrible that you really can't help but just smile at how ridiculous it is. And fortunately, I was able to tick all three of those boxes with this 28th dispatch from Germany's Just the Best series.

So let's start with all of this goofy and gaudy, brain-melting Eurotrash madness first, because that happens to arrive immediately on this double-disc in the form of an unbelievably awful and BIG nu-rap-metal cover of, yep, you guessed it, "Kumbaya," by Mittermeier vs. Guano Babes. But get this, y'all (as I pull up a chair and proceed to sit in it backwards): they didn't actually end up calling their version of the song "Kumbaya;" they called it "Kumba Yo!" instead, which should really give you an idea of just how cool this song actually is 😎. I mean, they even loaded it up with turntable scratches and there's a quieter beatboxed portion too! It really is such a dynamic work!

But we're really only just getting started here, folks, because later on in this first disc is also an utterly mindless Italian Eurohouse groove by a group called The Pizza Boys, who deliver their debut hit, "Oh Le Le," with verses about pizza pie that sound like they're being sung by a robot! And, honestly, does it really get more Italian than that?

Tomato, mozzarella Pizza bella, pizza bella Salami, margherita Pizza pazza, dolce vita!

And then there's this group of Danish teenage girls called Little Trees, who end up supplying a piece of manufactured, cotton-candied Europop fluff in...wait for it..."Help I'm a Fish," which apparently served as the title track for a 2001 animated box office bomb by the same name (also called A Fish Tale, which is *not* to be confused with the much more successful 3D-animated 2004 film, Shark Tale), and also somehow managed to fall just outside of the top ten on the UK's Singles chart as well. I've pretty clearly never seen this song's corresponding movie before, but this definitely feels like one of those soundtrack tunes that—just like how cheesy rap songs used to do it in the credit rolls for family-oriented blockbusters in the 80s and 90s—explains the plot of the movie through its very own lyrics. So I think this flick's about the wacky adventures of a kid who gets turned into a fish after ingesting a magic potion. But thankfully, the ending isn't spoiled through the song, so you'll just have to watch it for yourself in order to find out if the kid ultimately chooses in the end to go back to being a human, or if they decide to remain a fish. It's all so suspenseful, I know, but guess what else? The English-language version of the movie also happens to star not only a then-completely-unknown Aaron Paul, but also...Alan Rickman?!?

Alright, enough of this lunacy. Next section.

Let's get to the nostalgia portion of this post, which actually won't be very long, because I think there's only three songs across these two discs that actually turned out to be hits in the States: one-hit wonder Wheatus' radio-friendly nerdy Hot Topic anthem, "Teenage Dirtbag" (currently stuck in my head), which features frontman Brendan B. Brown singing every vocal part, including the falsetto of the female character that he himself is smitten with; the Britney Spears ballad, "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know," which was co-written by Shania Twain and didn't actually chart in the States because it was never released as a single here and only aired on the radio; and then brief R&B star Joe's "Stutter," which, much to my surprise, actually managed to top Billboard's Hot 100 chart for four whole weeks back in 2001?! 😯 An okay slate overall, I guess, but usually when it comes to Euro comps like these, somewhere between about a quarter and a third of their selections are songs that were popular in the US. So, on the early 2000s US nostalgia front, this release seems to be a bit of an anomaly.

And now, to finish with something else that also came as a bit of a surprise: some pretty decent dance tunes. Most of the time, these comps might come with one or two good dance tracks, and then the rest will be these disposable hunks of plastic junk that feel inexplicable as to how people ever unironically enjoyed them in the first place. And, to be clear, there's still a bunch of those types of tunes that are on here (see Gigi D'Agostino's monotonously stupid "Super (Riscaldamento)," featuring Albertino, for example). But there's also a good amount of tracks on this release that, I think, feel both pretty fun and well-made too. Stuffy trance snobs may still bristle at the songs that I'm going to list as highlights here anyway, but I really enjoyed the tribal drum-infused "Played A-Live (The Bongo Song)," by Safri Duo, as well as Airheadz' "Stanley (Here I Am)," which strangely goes on these brief trip hop detours that smack of Dido's "Thank You." Plus, there's a *really* good vocal house tune from French group Superfunk too called "Last Dance (And I Come Over)" that feels kinda perfect for a pool party.

So, another long and strange turn-of-the-millennium trip through the nutty German mainstream is in the books here. Didn't really end up getting the nostalgia rush that I thought I was gonna get, but the unexpected dose of good dance tunes made up for that anyway. And that small handful of extremely tacky and beyond-the-pale Eurotrash could also definitely come in handy for the next time I end up reaching a plastered state of delirium as well 🥴😅.

Highlights:

CD1:

Wheatus - "Teenage Dirtbag" CD2:

Safri Duo - "Played-A-Live (The Bongo Song)" Airheadz - "Stanley (Here I Am)" Rui da Silva feat. Cassandra - "Touch Me" Superfunk feat. Everis Pellius - "Last Dance (And I Come Over)" RMB - "Deep Down Below" Svenson & Gielen - "The Beauty of Silence"

Lowlights:

CD1:

Mittermeier vs. Guano Babes - "Kumba Yo!" Little Trees - "Help I'm a Fish" Pizza Boys - "Oh Le Le" Glow - "President of Boarderland"

[have-a-hiddles]

Xennial-approved.

Analog childhood. Digital adulthood. Best of both worlds.

Long ramble below:

Xennial is a micro-generation between Gen X and Gen Y (Millennials); born between 1977 and 1983. Also called the Star Wars generation since those are the same years that the original trilogy came out. We don't fully identify with Gen X experiences because we were babies/young children when major events happened. We had experiences as teens/adults that Millennials did not; the Gulf War, 9/11, the OJ trials. I was one of those schoolkids who watched the Challenger blow up on live TV in my classroom.

I had a choice between going outside to play (bit boring since I was the only kid in the neighborhood) or play inside with dolls or action figures. I would put on a movie of some kind and then use my toys to act out what was happening on the screen.

I remember being the only one in the house who knew how to program the VCR. I remember thinking Teddy Ruxpin was the height of technology. Up there with Simon and Bop-It. I remember being the only one in the house who knew how to use the internet and having to steer my mom away from the first sneaky phishing scams. I remember asking my mom for a zip drive for Christmas because I needed to be able to save all of my university homework in one place (art school, so both artwork and papers). I remember when Amazon only sold BOOKS. (I bought several to do research on my senior thesis.)

I know how to use a fax machine, a payphone, a microfiche, a rolodex, a rotary phone, a flatbed scanner, a Scantron reader, and the entire gamut of cell phones. I know how to use Photoshop, Word, Excel, Premiere. I can build a (admittedly simple) website by myself because I taught myself HTML.

I was an ace at the original Super Mario Brothers on Super Nintendo. Pretty good with PlayStation (I remember the game Medievil, mostly). I've had accounts for WoW, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Lord of the Rings Online. These days, I play Sims 4 mostly.

My young childhood, I had LPs and a tiny kid-centric record player that was purple and pink. It could close up and had a handle so it could be taken places. I bought my first cassette tapes before I turned 10 (one was a Muppets compilation and the other was Meat Loaf's Bat Outta Hell). I got my first CDs in the late 90s (Alanis Morrissette, Tori Amos). Now, I have a Spotify list that consistently has to give me warnings that I've "Liked" too many songs. I once made mix taps/CDs for friends. Now I make moodboard playlists. I owned a record player, a boom box, a Walkman, a Discman, an MP3 player.

My parents bought into cable TV super early on (1983). I remember when the Disney Channel was brand-spanking new. I remember PRISM (Philadelphia Regional In-home Sports and Movies). Had a ton of VCR tapes. Had LOTS of blank tapes that I'd record movies off of cable onto. I used a heavy-as-fuck camcorder to film my senior thesis concert for uni. Got my first DVDs for Christmas of 2000 (Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and some other Disney movies). Started collecting Blu-ray discs in 2008. I had a Blockbuster membership. Joined Netflix back when they were still doing mail-in DVDs (which I always ripped to a blank DVD). Bought subscriptions to HBO Max and Disney+ pretty much the day they became available. Had a gigantic CRT television for a LONG time (like over a decade) until it bit the dust because a mover dropped it during a move).

I never had "nuclear attack" drills in school. I also never had "active shooter" drills. I only ever had fire drills. I was 13 when the Soviet Union fell. I was a senior at University when Columbine happed. I was a year out of college when 9/11 happened.

Best of both worlds, both at a frivolous level and at a very serious level.