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hermioneisavirgo-blog · 5 years ago

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Lover Album Review

After listening to Taylor Swift’s 18-track album all the way through, my mind is blown. I grew up with Taylor’s music, as I first heard “Fearless” when I was 12 years old and have been an avid listener ever since. I just moved into my first apartment in Minneapolis, and I am so pleased that “Lover” can be the soundtrack to the beginning of the rest of my life.

“I Forgot That You Existed” is a banger for a first track. This song emulates a different emotion than we have heard from Taylor before. The upbeat background and snaps create a foundation of optimism, goofiness, and sheer “indifference”. The lyrics are words that anybody can relate to - who hasn’t experienced that blissful feeling when you recognize that you haven’t thought of that dreaded person who shall not be named for days, or even weeks? I was instantly pulled in with this opener.

“Cruel Summer” made me fall in love even more. The beat immediately made me feel like an August night of sitting in the back of an Uber with my friends on a Friday night, windows rolled down and hair going crazy. With this track, we get our first “blue” used in the album. If you’ve listened, you know that the word “blue” appears all over the place. Taylor exemplifies the poetess in her with lines like, “Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes, and if I bleed you’ll be the last to know.”

“Lover”...what can I even say? Not much - this is first dance wedding reception material. This gives me such flashbacks to some of Taylor’s older country-esque songs, with bright-eyed excitement. I get the same feeling here as I do when I listen to “Enchanted” or “Hey Stephen”. However, in contrast to those songs, here she is taking control and stands in a pool of her own confidence as she boldly professes that she has grown and made strides from her days of hopelessly pining for men who weren’t really worth her time.

“The Man”. Okay. Thank you so much for this, Taylor. Made me think of “If I Were a Boy” by Beyonce. This is infused with the feeling of being “tired and angry” like “somebody should be”, which is how Halsey describes similar feelings of being bothered how the lowly boys of this world seem to get whatever the heck they want. You really would be the man, Taylor. Think, for real, as she’s even said in interviews: if she were a man writing songs about even the shortest of flings, that would never be considered taboo and worthy of shaming. This is made evident by the thousands of male singer-songwriters who do just that and are widely accepted.

“The Archer” gave me “Red” album vibes, but that’s just me. “I hate my reflection for years and years...” really got me. From the very beginning of this song, the underlying line grows steadily. It almost feels like one of those never-ending videos where the tone appears to be increasing but never really does...gave me a sense of infinity. Very lush, injected with an emotional pen as she recalls different perspectives from different lovers and relationships.

“I Think He Knows” made me want to DANCE. And I did. A lot. The beat is almost hip-hop club-ish with the bass. It seemed like such an interesting song in contrast to “I Know Places”, from “1989″, which has a haunting sound and alludes to the idea that it’s hard for Taylor to ever feel like she has privacy with her private life. With this song, she isn’t focused on the people looking in at her life, but instead she delves into that private relationship. It makes me feel like she is caring less and less about what people see and what people know. She’s just LIVING her life.

And now, we have reached my favorite song of the album. Thanks for this one, Taylor. Seriously. “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” doesn’t even sound like any “type” of Taylor we’ve heard before. With the very beginning notes, I called it that I would cry by the end of this. The first verse immediately made me picture the “You Belong With Me” music video with the band uniform and prom dress. Taylor portrays two different sides of a coin in that video, and I feel a bit of that in this song. I really hope she does a music video of this song. I have always loved her more haunting melodies, particularly in the “Red” album (or in “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” - the most underrated song on "reputation”), but this took it to an entirely new level. I am OBSESSED.

“Paper Rings” is so playful, and a great mental break after processing the absurd depth in the previous song. Gave me “Stay, Stay, Stay” vibes. She sound so jovial and happy in this song, and I am so glad to hear her this way.

“Cornelia Street” is one of the fully Taylor Swift-composed songs on the album. This type of song I see myself rocking out to as I power walk down the street in autumn. In the lyrics, she talks about how losing this love would be devastating to the point of taking eternity to heal from. It is a familiar feeling, when you are in so deep with someone who you feel has become a part of you, impermeably and forever.

“Death By a Thousand Cuts” starts off by explaining just what she means. “Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts...” which is an interesting line to hear right after “Cornelia Street”, which invests in the narrative that saying goodbye would be an impossible feat after experiencing connection this strong. The instruments in this song are layered (clear guitar at the beginning with shuffling beats that come in and even something that sounds like a harpsichord??) and even though the message is a painful one, this baroque-poppy feel makes me want to DANCE MORE. But maybe with a lot of moves that make it look like I am in excruciating pain lol.

“London Boy”’s beat is fire flame. It’s a give-in that this song is about Joe Alwyn and as someone who has seen “The Favourite”, I can attest to the dimples and the accent. It’s clear her relationship is not only a a deep love, but also lots of fun, adventure, stepping outside her comfort zone, and recognizing that she can find home in someone who doesn’t live in her own backyard (*ahem* “White Horse”).

“Soon You’ll Get Better” (feat. Dixie Chicks) is simply beautiful. Reminiscent of her country days, as well. Reminds me of “Never Grow Up”. Since the speculation is that this song is about her mother, I find it poignant and very “Taylor” that it’s track 12. “The Best Day” is also track 12 on “Fearless” and was always one of my favorites. Underneath the main message of trying to find comfort in a super tough and scary time, I find that Taylor is enunciating the idea that she is growing up and things will change in her relationship to her parents no matter what. That’s just the way of life. Very moving.

“False God” begins with a sexy little saxophone riff. Shortly after, we get to hear that poetic line she teased on her Spotify playlist: “And I can’t talk to you when you’re like this...staring out the window like I’m not your favorite town - I’m New York City!” The message with this song gives me a “bigger picture” sense. Even though she is making references to heaven and hell within interactions with her lover, I can also view the “times like this” that “they warned us about” as the times we are living in now: terrifying and unclear with a leader who professes division and tearing down much more than love and building up.

“You Need To Calm Down” is by far the single that I listened to the most before the album dropped. As a queer woman who “passes” as a “straight” cis woman and who took a very long time to admit to herself and others the truth, this song greatly boosted my confidence in Taylor as she opens up about where she stands, loudly and proudly. And that beat is so VIBRANT and fun.

At the start of “Afterglow”, we get yet ANOTHER use of “blue”. (There are lots that I didn’t mention, but it just is so prominent here.) This is a beautiful, lush, apology song in which Taylor unveils how deeply she wants her lover to stay despite her shortcomings and miscommunications. I felt this one hard and wish I could play it for a lot of my ex-best friends.

“ME!” (feat. Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco) is colorful, glorious, confident, cheerful, and is something that I could see being played at a pep rally. The message is clear: being yourself will ultimately win you every prize that is yours to win. Whether that be a lover or whatever your heart desires!! This is a truth I have come to realize recently. It’s a hard, treacherous lesson, and I feel that Taylor is showing that she’s finally finding out what it means to be truly herself with this tune.

“It’s Nice To Have A Friend” is the cutest song Taylor has ever written and recorded, by far. I think I hear steel pan in the background, adding to the layered sound of playfulness. That trumpet in the middle is so triumphant and an interesting addition to the dynamic! It feels very innocent and loving, maybe she wrote this with her cats in mind :)

“Daylight” is a gorgeous closing track. As this wraps up the album, it is quite clear that Taylor feels like she can breathe more deeply now that she has met, known, and loved her lover. It appears that everything has changed, and she can see much more clearly. This song made me think of “Clean” from “1989″, due to the notion that she is leaving the darkness and fogginess and entering a world where she feels fresh and sees everything clearly. Her lover is obviously a wonderful match for her spunky, stoked, sensitive, Sagittarius self. “You are what you love.” What a precious way to close my favorite new album.

Overall - Taylor’s “Lover” incorporates many familiar Taylor sounds while also introducing lots of new things we’ve never heard. From the lush synths in “Cruel Summer” to Cautious Clay’s influence in “London Boy”, it is clear that Taylor has crafted something that signifies a new era for her. As she turns 30 at the end of this year, she has seven studio albums to be extremely proud of. Thank you, Taylor, for being such a strong beam of light as I navigated high school hallways, college parties, and the ups and downs of falling in love.

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drunklander · 6 years ago

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Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 401

Oh hey, y’all. We’re back for another season of that show we keep watching in hopes it’ll get back to its season one glory Outlander! Since I’m incapable of keeping my Opinions to myself and have no filter after a few drinks, I’m gonna do drunk recaps that no one asked for or wants again this year. Because why not. So buckle up, randos, because under the cut you will find nothing of substance, zero insights and absolutely no analysis!

Before I dive into the stream of consciousness, quasi-incoherent beat-by-beat nonsense, I just want to say that I overall liked this episode. I definitely enjoyed it more from the comfort of my own couch than in the theater with thousands of screaming sycophants at NYCC. It definitely had me singing along to the Federalist Papers part of Non Stop all day though. A series of scenes, tangentially related, introducing the Colonies to the public. Some are obviously just there to just set up the plot of the season or like check a residual box from last season. But some are solid world-building and character moments. And, because it’s Outlander, some are like *side eye*.

But I’m for real excited for the first half of this season! The second half of Drums is a dumpster fire (fucking Rogergate...) and it seems like the show is going to stick pretty close to the book, so I’m going to try my hardest to not let preemptive feelings about that nonsense cloud potential enjoyment of the first bit. Because dammit, I love me some domestic!Frasers. So yeah, happy end of hiatus, y’all!

Ok I don’t want to start off on a downer note, but jfc. I get what they were going for with the 2000 B.C. stone circle stuff, but omg no. I don’t care if certain indigenous peoples really did make stone circles and dance around them as the sun rose. I know they’re trying to show the universality of circles and these time portal thingies or whatever, but by making the parallel with the druids at Craigh na Dun, it’s basically being like “Oh hey! These Native American folks from *checks notes* North America are just like the white folks we’ve been hanging with for the last three seasons!” It came off to me like erasing the unique cultures of the diverse peoples of North America in favor of framing them as a generic group of “natives” who do the white people stone dance. And in a season that’s going to deal heavily with multiple tribes, this really isn’t giving me much confidence in how they’re going to handle the rest of the Native American characters.

I’m really hoping someone else will articulate that better than I did. Because I feel like I’m not communicating well what my actual issue with the sequence was.

Petition to make Jamie wear a hat at all times to hide his horrible bangs.

Gavin Hayes has to be being hanged for literally the dumbest crime ever. But he seems pretty chill about it so...

Ok I never liked book!Bonnet as a character (like obvi he’s a terrible person so I was never going to like him as a person, but I was always annoyed that he was still around rather than appreciating him as a villain), but even from that presumptuous “yeah can I snag some rum too, bruh” in the jail, I’m like solidly on board with show!Bonnet.

Jamie tried to save Hayes, but you see Hayes straight up killed a guy. Sure it was in self-defense, but, y’know, ye olde times and he did kill the dude. Sooo...

I want to feel for Lesley, I really do, but I’ve never actually given a shit or been given a good reason to give a shit about Rupert and Angus 3.0 so, sorry for your loss?

Unpopular opinion alert (should be the standard disclaimer on all of my #hottakes) but I really don’t care for the new theme music. Every time they change it, I find myself wanting the OG season one music back with just the images updated.

The bald eagle for the title card just gives me such mixed feelings that have nothing to do with the show. Like here’s a symbol of my country and it *should* invoke good feelings, but *gestures at the current political climate* every national symbol at the moment feels tainted by the growing white nationalist movement that’s being spurred on by the current administration.

Time for some post hanging brewskis. We are here to mourn Gavin Hayes. Who died only so the new villain could be introduced. Let us bow our heads.

Marsali and Fergus win the prize for least subtle “can we be excused to go bang” ever. Rock on, Fersali.

I fucking LOVE that they changed the tavern scene so everyone sings with them like they know what’s going on rather than how in the book it was like them making fun of the red coats as part of Gavin’s song and then Fergus passed around a hat for coins. But by having everyone in the tavern in on what’s going down and earnestly participating, it establishes that 20+ years after the failed Rising, after the Clearances, after everything the Scots went through at the hands of the English, they were not truly defeated. They may have moved across an ocean, but they are still Scottish and they still practice their traditions and dammit I’m having feelings about those resilient motherfuckers.

The scene with Jamie and Ian is very well done and I’m SO glad they included it because they did in fact include his rape last year, but fuck the show for including that rape in the first place. A very similar version of this scene could have been done without the rape, there’s enough trauma involved in being kidnapped, taken across the ocean, held hostage by a batshit lady and knowing that everyone else she kidnapped ended up dead for one 16 year old kid. With Jamie’s rape we got two episodes of trauma and four of recovery. With Mary, Fergus and Ian, we get three child rapes that could have all been avoided (especially Ian’s, but the plot points that come from Mary’s and Fergus’ could have definitely come about without them actually being raped), and they all just got one brief scene to express their trauma and then everything’s hunky dory again. (We know they’re going to include Bree’s rape, also fuck them very much for that, it’s completely unnecessary, and I’m guessing we’ll spend some time with her on her recovery. But that’s a rant for when we get there...)

For real though, Jamie parroting Claire as he comforts Ian is super sweet, but it makes me skeptically nervous for how he’ll react to Bree’s. Since in the book, it’s...not great.

Stephen Bonnet is so delightfully smarmy. Also, how fucking naive is our main squad now all of a sudden that they don’t realize from the jump what a sociopath he is? C’mon, y’all. Like I know Jamie came close to being hanged or whatever, but literally everything about this dude screams that he’s bad news. He is not subtle in his I’m a straight up unapologetic and charismatic good guy criminal. And like, he’s a friend of Gavin? Come the fuck on, squad. HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THAT HE IS FULL OF SHIT. *gets Det. JJ Bittenbinder on the horn*

For real though, dodgy accent aside, I fucking love Ed Speleers in this role. Why the fuck do they have to include the rape. Can’t he just be a bastard without being a rapist? Why must you make me rage, show. I just want to enjoy a decent villain.

Jamie and Claire are doing their best Jean Ralphio and Mona Lisa Saperstein trying to talk their way through this checkpoint.

“You’ve never parted with the ring from the first?” Yeah, I don’t get it either, Bonnet my dude. I don’t get it either. #FuckFrank

Bonnet talking about circles fascinating him makes me think he’d do well in a group of stoners having what they think are philosophical conversations at 3:00 a.m. “But like guys, have you ever like thought about...the rhombus?”

For real though, him being real with Claire about this drowning stuff makes him an infinitely more interesting villain than Black Jack ever was. Black Jack was kind of a crap villain tbh. He was horrible and did horrible things, yes, but like that was it. He was just horrible. Bonnet’s like oh I’ll charm you, be real with you and then fuck you up in the course of one episode and not give any of it a second thought because I have not a single fuck to give about anyone but me. I’m just out here living my best life, sorry not sorry. *puts on shades, drops mic, walks away*

For real though, his “be wary of thieves and outlaws” line might as well have been “it’s me, I’m talking about me.” And these dorks don’t even pick up on it. GUYS YOU ARE KILLING ME, YOU DIDN’T USED TO BE THIS SHITTY AT JUDGING SOMEONE’S CHARACTER.

I’m guessing this is the official christening-their-new-continent-bang because it’s too cold to do River Sex™ in Scotland. But I’m looking forward to getting the rest of Ch. 16 once they get to the Ridge. (We all saw those strawberries in the promo...)

The book lines still feel shoehorned in rather than organic to the show, but not as much as 95% of A. Malcolm felt. So I guess I need to just accept that the writers are going to keep doing this and I just need to stop expecting them to actually do their jobs and adapt for the adaptation...

For real though, I know Spotify doesn’t exist yet but jfc Jamie and Claire’s secksi time playlist literally just has this one song and guys, there’s a whole world of songs for smushing out there. My man Doug Judy would be glad to broaden your horizons.

Claire’s I just had sex smile as she looks out over the valley made me literalol.

Cool that we get woke!Jamie saying that the American Dream is a nightmare for the Native Americans after Claire’s Americana 101 speech, but this is a woman who lived in wicked racist 1960s Boston. She knows that things aren’t nice and rosy in America in the 18th *or* 20th centuries. Her speech makes me hate S3 a little more for focusing on Frank’s manpain instead of Claire and her and Joe’s time in the hospital, where the show could have explored gender and race in the 20th century to set up a contrast for how things will be this season in the 18th. Claire went through enough shit last time she was in the past, and so far this time, to know that the past isn’t idyllic. She knows enough about US history and 20th century America to know this mythical origin story she’s spouting is nothing but a fairy tale. I get why she might cling to that ideal, this is the first time in her life she might get to settle down and build a home with the person she actually wants to build a home with, but her whitewashing history like this strikes me as a way too naive for her.

The green screen as they stare out at that very much not actually there valley is killinggg me.

Ok for real though, this cut from them in the Uncanny Valley to the room getting ready for dinner is the most jarring of the episode. Like, I’ve come to terms with the fact that this is just a series of independent scenes rather than an actual, cohesive whole, but jfc. Who actually is Lillington, how do you know him? Nope? No info? Not important? Just need to get it out there that you have jewels so the last scene in the episode can happen so the ring can be taken so the rape can occur? Cool. Cool cool cool.

Ok so show!Claire makes me sad with being insecure/self-depreciating about her appearance. Like with saying brown is a dull color when Jamie calls her mo nighean donn the first time and when she asks Joe if she’s sexually attractive and when she dyes her hair before going back through the stones and now with the mutton dressed as lamb thing. (Claire, girl, how are you that up on Colonial fashion that you know what’s “age appropriate” already? Wouldn’t think there was much fashion gossip along the road from Georgia to North Carolina, but whatevs.) I know three of these four things are straight from the book, but in the show it hits me differently. Book!Claire is kind of a bitch when it comes to looks. Her parting words in her letter to Bree were “try not to get fat.” She like judged the crap out of that rando lady in Edinburgh before she went to the print shop just to make sure she didn’t look too old. So when she has these aforementioned moments, they land differently. Now I’m not saying I want show!Claire to be like book!Claire, quite the opposite. I’m glad they cut that other stuff. But now whenever show!Claire has a moment of self-consciousness, all I want to do is be like woman, you are a fucking smokeshow. Fuck the patriarchy for making you feel like you aren’t stunning exactly as you are. #LadyBonerForBeauchamp

Oh Governor Exposition. How nice of you to join our merry band of randos for dinner!

Man, I’d love to be so rich that I can pull a Baron and casually just happen to have 100 pounds on hand to buy a giant ruby at a random dinner party.

John Grey, who was shunted from shit post to shit post, totes is special enough to get Scotland’s Valjean to England’s Javert cleared. I mean, obvi.

Oh hey, Jamie remembers he has a daughter! Showed more emotion in that scene about how America would become her country than in the scene with the photos. Fuck Sam et al. for the disaster of a performance choice in ep. 306, don’t @ me.

OH HAI ROLLO I LOVE YOU YOU ARE SUCH A GOOD DOGGO I WANT TO SNUGGLE YOU WHO’S A GOOD BOY YOU ARE

“I dinna ken. But she’ll be saying it in Scotland, won’t she?” I do love Young Ian a lot. I know that’s in the book. But dammit I love John Bell in this part a crapton.

Casually lol’ing that they crossed the ocean because Ian was taken and now that they have him, they’re just going to send him alone off to sea again.

The first time I saw the episode, when Lesley gave his “my place is at your side” speech I was like crap, we’re going to be stuck with this guy aren’t we. BUT WE’RE NOT! (I am a terrible person.)

Fergus and Marsali are totes going to be the new Jenny and Ian, aren’t they? The characters who just show up once or twice a season when the core squad needs something and that’s it? Because they get tossed aside in the books like that. That makes me super sad (and I hope I’m wrong) because of how they changed show!Fergus and show!Claire’s relationship from the book that we won’t get to see more of them together. Le sigh. I hope they at least let Bree have a scene where she meets Fergus and learns she has a brother. Especially if she’s not going to go to Lallybroch to meet the Murray squad because Jenny isn’t in this season. Part of what I loved about the Lallybroch part in the book was Bree realizing that she wasn’t just gaining a father but a whole extended family. I hope they kind of transfer that over to her meeting Fergus and Young Ian in the place of [insert Murray kids who let’s be honest we really don’t care about here].

Hey remember that time Jamie was wicked opposed to Fergus and Marsali getting married for literally no reason? That was fun. But yay for Germain!

Holy motherfucking green screen, Batman. Please can we get to the woods soon? Or some other location where it’s not this fucking jarring?

Claire America-is-the-land-of-milk-and-honey Fraser suddenly is overly-on-the-nose indignant about slavery. Cool. Cool cool cool. Again, you know what would have been cool? Seeing her with her best and only friend in the 1960s more last season because he was a Black man. If they had let Joe be a fully formed character, navigating racist af Boston as a doctor, rather than just being Claire’s sounding board and martini maker, we could have seen how Claire being exposed to his reality shaped her views on race in America. But nope, that would have taken air time away from Frank’s manpain. (Seriously, my recent re-watch only highlighted just how much they screwed over Claire’s character last season.)

I’ve always loved that Jamie gives Claire the medical box. It’s just such a simple way to demonstrate that he *gets* Claire. (*side-eyes a certain other husband who patently did not*)

Jamie’s bangs are an affront to anyone with hair. Someone please give that man his hat back!

“This ring is all I need.” Aaand that’s when we all knew that Jamie’s ring would be the one stolen.

“Not for a single day.” Uh, *casually points at the episode in season three when she retcons her entire life in Boston to be not as bad as it was because Jamie’s been such an asshat to her*.

Ok. Holy shit this final scene. I love everything about this final scene. Except the song. This show is not subtle. It’s never been subtle. But holy shit, playing the iconic Ray Charles version of America the Beautiful at the end of an episode called America the Beautiful to be like welcome to ‘Murrica, fuckos, is like even less subtle than they usually go. I 1000% LOVE the choice to cut the audio from the end of the fight scene and just have the visuals, it just would have worked much better if they’d scored with with a regular instrumental piece.

Gah, Bonnet is such a smarmy motherfucker! The nose wipe before he coldcocks Jamie is just perf.

Claire’s face in this entire scene, holy fucking shit. *throws all the awards at Balfe*

And then Lesley dies and I’m a terrible person because I’m happy we don’t need to be stuck with him all season. But holy shit Bonnet when he pauses right before he cuts his throat and then kills him, I love show!Bonnet so much more than I ever gave a shit about book!Bonnet.

And honestly, Claire’s face when he’s killed right in front of her. *throws more awards at Balfe*

GUYS I FEEL MORE EMOTION ABOUT CLAIRE TAKING OFF JAMIE’S RING THAN I DID ABOUT CLAIRE LEAVING BREE BEHIND TO GO BACK THROUGH THE STONES HOW IS BALFE SO GOOD AT MAKING ME FEEL FEELINGS

I’m so fucking glad they changed which ring gets taken. There was an interview where they were like “oh we did it because it has to be visually distinct so Bree can get raped!” and I’m like a) fuck you for including that and b) right decision, wrong reason. This is the right reason for the change.

But even as I say that they made the right call in which ring to have stolen, it’s still a fact that they fucking chose to have one stolen at all. The writers and production team decided that Brianna needed to be raped so a ring must be stolen. Because Diana never wrote a character she didn’t want raped and the Outlander producers never read a rape scene they didn’t want to include. Fuck them all very much for that.

Fuck Them Very Much for That, the title of my memoir.

Oh god her face right at the end when she sees that it’s fucking Fred’s ring she’s left with and not Jamie’s fucking murders me.

*THROWS AN ENTIRE TROPHY STORE AT BALFE*

#*#drunj!der yells about outlander #outlander starz #outlander 4x01

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writingpromptswithkate · 5 years ago

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Taylor Swift’s “Lover” - A First Impressions Review

Let's face it: Taylor Swift is one of the biggest music stars in the English-speaking world. That trend is not showing signs of reversing any time soon, so we might as well get used to the idea that it's her world and we're all here just living in it.

So let's talk about Lover, the much anticipated and much-much marketed new album following her musically and socially divisive last entry, reputation. Lover contains the usual Taylor Swift album fare: that is to say a bunch of love songs and a few jabs at her various haters. Let's start with the jabs, because the album does and what's good enough for the ol' T-swizzle is good enough for me.

We open with “I Forgot That You Existed”. This one is definitely directed at a specific person, but you could just about toss a coin with Kanye West written on one side and Calvin Harris on the other. Lyrical cues are just vague enough that either would do. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter though; this track is not that much worth thinking about. She forgot that they existed, except for writing and recording a whole song about it, and I've now forgotten that this song existed, except to bitch about it for a minute on the internet.

Further entries in the hater-jab category include “The Man” and “You Need To Calm Down”, which are directed at The Patriarchy and Haters On Twitter, respectively. Of the two, “The Man” is more to my music aesthetic taste, even if it rings a bit hollow lyrically. Would her race to the top of the music industry have been easier if she was a man? Likely. Would the media make less of a thing out of her personal relationships if she was a man? Definitely (but if I learned anything at all from Hiddleswift it's that at a certain fanbase size being a man is no defense against sharks in a blood frenzy). But it all leaves a bad taste in my mouth because, well... Did I really come here to listen to one of the most successful women in the world sing about how she's not privileged enough? It's not that she doesn't have a point; it's that about 99% of people listening to this song are dealing with the same or worse problems in their own industries, only we don't have half her wealth or status to carry us. So forgive us if all the POC, women, LGBTQ+, disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and/or poor folks out here think maybe she needs to calm down.

I want to move on to the love songs now, because much like spelling, those are more fun.

Something I have come to appreciate about Swift is how, beginning with Red, many of her love songs have taken on a personal edge. Some details are straight-up autobiographical. Things don't have to be 'real' to be good, but in music, it sure helps.

So: “Cornelia Street”. It's such a specific detail, right there in the title. There's a line about throwing open a window and feeling the autumn air, and it sounds real. In “Afterglow”, when she sings about being wrong and picking fights, that feels real. When she sings about loving America but also loving a “London Boy”, well, that one seems like the free space on the Real Taylor Swift bingo card. Many artists pull real details from their lives to fuel their music, but not all artists can make those details sound real on record. This is a line Taylor Swift has walked beautifully, both in this album and in its predecessor reputation.

Many of the love songs on this album, regardless of their 'realness' score, also have an undercurrent of anxiety not present in reputation.”Death By A Thousand Cuts”, the aforementioned “Afterglow” and “Cornelia Street”, “Cruel Summer”, and the deeply moody “The Archer” all deal to varying degrees with heartbreak, not as a present trial but as a dreaded future possibility. With lines like 'saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts', 'hope I never lose you, hope it never ends', and 'help me hold on to you', Taylor Swift has never sounded more like she has something to lose.

The most real and most anxious song on the album, though, isn't an overtly romantic love song. In fact, it might be a song of a non-romantic love entirely. “Soon You'll Get Better” feels so real that I got goosebumps and cried, and then fought the urge to Google 'is Taylor Swift's mom okay?' *note: at no point does she mention her mom, it's just that she sounds completely lost without whomever the song is about, in a way that reminds me of people who have lost a parent.* The minimal backing instruments only add to the hopelessness. It's about frailty and mortality, and if you ever needed a reminder that Swift came up in country music, well here's, as the poets say, your sign.

Switching gears here: special mention now to “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”, which is just a fun piece of music, as well as definitely the name of an anime[citation needed]. Is it a little bit ridiculous that a grown woman likens her relationship to some petty high school drama? Well, yes, obviously, that's why it's fun, and also why it needs to be an anime title. I don't have anything to justify this guilty-pleasure feeling except that sometimes a song hits you in just the right spot, somewhere at the intersection of car karaoke jam and big mood, with a dash of silly.

It feels weird not to mention “ME! (feat. Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco)”, which is a song title I wanted to type just once in full so I could use two exclamation points. I don't have much to say about “ME! (etc)” that was not already said by someone when the single came out. I've heard it called “Blank Space in reverse”, as in 'darling I'm a [daydream] dressed like a [nightmare]', and that's the aptest description I could offer. One thing about it I can say now that I couldn't before is that it feels out of place in the context of the album. It's placed between two much mellower tracks, so album listening feels disjointed and unbalanced. It definitely feels like a 'missing link' track designed to prepare the reputation listeners for Lover without actually being a proper fit with the rest of the album.

Lover ends on a hopeful note with a track called “Daylight”. Personally, I think it's delightful that we're ending with this, and meanwhile, reputation ends with “New Years Day”. Both songs carry the theme of entering into or rediscovering something new, in which the past informs but does not bind. Does it draw a parallel between the two albums? Yes, of course. Is that parallel justified? Also yes. Her jab songs on Lover are still directly related to her reputation, after all, and all the love songs with any intended autobiography are written about the same person. reputation is a harsher album: the angry songs are angrier and the love songs are more intense and direct; Lover's jabs are more dismissive and its love songs more pleading and vulnerable. It's a bit like getting HATE tattooed on one set of knuckles and now here comes LOVE on the other hand to balance it out. For maximum effect you really have to take the two as a set.

#review #taylor swift #lover #music review #reputation

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concerthopperblog · 4 years ago

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Review: Lake Street Dive Casts a Wide Genre Net on 'Obviously'

Being the guy who is always promoting this “Americana” thing that no one has ever heard of, I am always looking for a good “gateway drug” to the genre. Someone as accessible as The Lumineers, but with more weight. Someone as strong as The Avett Brothers, but with a little more range to truly capture just how broad the Americana umbrella is without having to create a 4 hour Spotify playlist. More often than not the band I land on is Lake Street Dive. Their new album Obviously, out now, is further proof that they're perfect for that role.

“Hard to put into a genre category” is so synonymous with Americana that if it's mentioned about a band, it's extremely pronounced. That's always been the case with Lake Street Dive and is even more so on Obviously. There's definite elements of alt-country in everything they do, but also a healthy dose of soul, a little funk, and a near obsessive fascination with '70s and '80s AOR rock (or “Yacht Rock” if you prefer the term, which I don't).

If they weren't already eclectic (that's the nice way people say weird but fun) enough, for Obviously, the band worked with producer Mike Elizondo, better known for his work with Dr. Dre, Eminem, and Fiona Apple than Americana acts. The result doesn't have the band coming “Straight Outta Compton”, but it does double down on the soul side of their work.

Another huge boost for the band on Obviously is making touring keyboardist Akie Bermiss a permanent member of the band, as well as a second lead vocalist on album standout “Same Old News.” Bermiss and primary vocalist Rachael Price meld together beautifully on a song that sounds a bit like Michael McDonald wrote a song for Luther Vandross and Patty Griffin to duet. If you secretly embedded it into an '80s gentle soul duets compilation, very few people would think it wasn't a hit from the era that they'd missed.

Unfortunately, that's Bermiss' only chance at leads, but fortunately it is not Price's. Every member of Lake Street Dive is brilliant at what they do, but the power of the band is in Price's ability to flow from genre to genre without ever missing a beat. On “Nobody's Stopping You Now”, she sings the most “country” of the album's songs over a gentle piano background. It's as gentle a song of female empowerment as you'll ever hear, but it's only made more powerful by being understated.

“Know That I Know” is a pop ditty utilizing the familiar trope of comparing a relationship to things that naturally go together. In other hands it would be a tired retread, but it's saved by Price's absolute full-sell of the concept and the lengths they go to find original comparisons. How many other love songs contain “you're the Kirk to my Spock?”

But there is also an edge of social consciousness on the album. “Being a Woman” not so gently reminds that “when we protest, we're called an angry mob. While some lone gunman loads up his shot.” “Making Do” is an apology to the next generation for the mess we've made of the environment for them to clean up. “Hush Money” expresses envy for political and corporate operatives who fail up into multi-million dollar golden parachutes.

While it might not satisfy the purists, Obviously is an album that is absolutely worth the listen for people knew to the Americana term or those who just like an album of smart songs with infectious hooks and a few important messages sewed in.

#Lake Street Dive #americana #2021 #Concerthopper #review #album review #music #new music

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sinceileftyoublog · 4 years ago

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Boulevards Interview: Funky Gut Punches

Photo by Jordan Rickard

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“I wish I could Men In Black erase my shit so I could listen to it with fresh ears,” Jamil Rashad tells me over the phone from Raleigh, North Carolina. The garage funk artist who records as Boulevards is about to release Brother!, a four-track EP (with an accompanying 2-track single) via Normaltown Records, an imprint of New West. But the restless singer-songwriter’s coming back from recording even newer music, for a potential LP, and has to get in the mindset that in a couple weeks, he’s dropping something he recorded a while back, especially because it’s his most assured (recorded) music to date, all the while exploring new aesthetic and thematic territory.

Rashad finished writing the songs on Brother! early on during the pandemic and messaged various artists he admired to see whether they’d produce the record. Blake Rhein, of Durand Jones & The Indications, bit. Rashad had long admired them. “Durand Jones & The Indications was one of the first soul revival groups in the game,” he said. “They kind of paved the way for Black Pumas and the other cats on Colemine [Records].” It turned out to be the perfect fit for what Rashad was trying to do. “I wanted to do some soul shit but still stay focused to the garage-funk element of Boulevards,” he said, something immediately apparent from the warbling psychedelia of the guitars and strut of the drums from the opening and title track. “I’ve always been chasing my predecessors,” he continued, referring to not only the contemporaries that paved the way for him but classics he grew up listening to with his father, a radio DJ: George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic, Curtis Mayfield, and Rick James. Rashad’s always been an avid indie rock and punk listener too, citing The Strokes’ Is This It and early Black Keys albums as just as formative.

You can hear Boulevards’ journey to this genre-averse point from listening to his discography. He released his debut LP on Brooklyn post-punk label Captured Tracks, bouncing around different labels and different styles (earlier this year, he released a collaborative track with “Bulletproof” synth popper La Roux) before finding a home on Normaltown. “I had to make those records in the past to make it to this point,” he said, citing New West’s increasing levels of genre diversity, from Caroline Rose’s pop-rock jamfest LONER to their recent Pylon box set, as a reason why he kept asking them to release his EP. When they said yes, he felt like they got it. “If you’re friends with [Normaltown co-founder] George [Fontaine, Jr.] on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll see how eclectic his tastes are. If anybody could get what I was trying to do, George gets it. It’s not like the Thundercats, the Leon Bridges, the Gary Clark Jr.s of the world,” he said. “This is Carolina soul shit.” As a bonus, Rashad was already friends with a couple New West signees: singer-songwriter Jaime Wyatt and American Aquarium’s BJ Barham, the latter of whom helped Rashad get sober from alcohol.

It’s certainly not lost on Rashad that, in his music community, he’s a Black singer-songwriter surrounded by many white ones, many of whom are his friends but don’t have to face the differences inherent in being Black in America. Some of these differences, he sings about, like on “Shook”, a song about being afraid of the police in Raleigh. But it’s the disparities in the music world that he hopes to directly reduce with Brother! “You have indie rock and the soul revival stuff and the psychedelic stuff, but you don’t have the straight garage funk records unless you see an old record on a Spotify playlist,” he laments, citing the dearth of existence and/or influence of old school, “Black small rare funk bands” as a reason for wanting to bring funk to the forefront. In a post-George Floyd protest world of white American racial reckoning, influencing everything from opinions on law enforcement to music listening habits, Rashad wants to tell his story, share his thoughts on the world, and dance while doing it.

Read the rest of my interview with Rashad below, and check out his live stream from the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro via NPR tomorrow night at 7 PM CST.

Since I Left You: It’s hard to point to a short EP as a turning point for many artists like this is for you. Why did you want to do just these four songs as opposed to a bigger project?

Jamil Rashad: I mean, I wanted to do a bigger project. That’s why we’re writing an LP right now. But for me, the writing never stops. I’m always writing. At first, I wasn’t even gonna do an EP here. I was gonna do singles and see how my fan base reacted. I wasn’t even gonna have a label. Every record, I always feel like it’s gonna be a turning point. You never know. I was thinking about this the other day. It’s almost like I’m starting fresh. These are songs I’ve been wanting to write--it’s just taken me time as an artist to get to this point to be able to zone in on the sound that I wanted. A 4-song EP is a little bit of the past and what’s to come with Boulevards, which I’m really stoked about.

SILY: You can tell that immediately from the title track, the first track on the EP. It’s got that psychedelic, garage element to the guitars, but it’s also really funky.

JR: I was tested a lot on this record, learning how the voice interacts with the microphone. Blake was pushing me to do it, which no producer has never done before. It’s turned out really dope. The goal was always to be the face of garage funk. Back in the day, my parents and your parents had the George Clinton records, Isaac Hayes, [Curtis Mayfield], they had all these different artists that were bringing the wave of funk. James Brown. You don’t really have that now. You have soul acts, R&B acts, indie rock acts, country acts, Americana acts, but you don’t have anyone that [brings] the funk shit. That’s what Boulevards is all about.

SILY: More than ever for you, these songs are political. Did you want the EP to be both a thematic and aesthetic turning point, or was that just a coincidence?

JR: It was both. Being 36 at this age, and looking at what’s going on in America, there are things you can’t ignore. I’m not a political expert, but maybe I should post what I’m feeling, what I’m seeing from white friends and Black friends and what’s going on with my community, and put it into these songs. I don’t think if a lot of this stuff didn’t happen with George Floyd, the pandemic, small businesses struggling, and people struggling, I would have been able to write these songs. I’m still gonna stay true to love and heartbreak, and self-growth, and trying to overcome obstacles and things of that nature. Those things I’m always gonna write about. But what was going on in the world definitely inspired and influenced those lines and crafting those songs. I’m not one to preach--you have a lot of these artists who have political records and preach. I wanted to make something about what I’ve experienced that people can still vibe and groove too.

SILY: Only “Shook” seems to be outwardly political. The rest of the songs are about Black life, but they’re really about your Black life.

JR: Of course. Me being a Black man and my struggles and things I’ve been through and seen other people go through. “Shook” is a song about being afraid of police. Being a Black man, every time I leave my house, I have to calculate every move that I make. It’s not like that for a lot of my white friends. That’s fine--that’s what America is. Well, actually, it’s not fine, it’s where America’s at. If I see Raleigh PD and am walking in a predominantly white neighborhood, are they gonna stop me? I live in this neighborhood I worked my ass off to be in. Are they gonna stop me because I don’t look the part and look like I’m up to something? So that’s what inspired “Shook”. Elijah McClain, just doing his thing, cops killing the brother. I didn’t want to do it in an overly preachy way, but at the same time, as America, we have to have uncomfortable conversations with each other. White on white America needs to show awareness with each other for things to actually change.

“Brother!” is mostly about working. Working your ass off for somebody and nothing changes. [laughs] You’re putting in the hours and the time, you’re making money for somebody else who doesn’t give a shit about you. You’re trying to get the promotions, you’re putting on a face. I worked at Best Buy, you can imagine being a touring artist and then having to put on a blue shirt and dealing with customers over some TV or kitchen appliance shit. I’m obviously doing my job, but I’m not gonna get a promotion there or get an advancement there. It’s about being a Black man in the work force and making somebody else money. At the time, I wasn’t sober, too, so the bar was my only release. It was the only way I could cope with that. [At the same time,] being in the Black community and being in Raleigh, and seeing my father interact with other Black men and even white men, saying, “Brother so and so” [inspired the song.] That’s how we greet each other sometimes. It’s also talking to myself talking to a man out there.

SILY: Whether these songs are about your personal experiences growing up or problems you’re facing now, as serious as they are, you can dance to them.

JR: Curtis Mayfield was good for that. Funkadelic, even Marvin Gaye. That’s what I wanted to be able to accomplish. Funk hits people in the gut. You can still politically come from a serious perspective.

SILY: Tell me about the video for “Luv n Pain”.

JR: It’s a simple, fun video. [Director] Patrick [Lincoln] pitched the idea. He wanted to have a day of Boulevards alone in his home, reflecting on being alone, reflecting on the things that have caused me personal heartbreak, without a partner. Getting ready in the morning, drinking coffee, wanting to share it with somebody but not having anybody to share it with.

Every video I’ve done up till this point, I’m always dancing. He wanted to slow things down, but still have it be Boulevards, stay true to me, have me dance in certain scenes but also have me reflecting, looking at the fire, up at the ceiling, things we do in our own homes. We [also] wanted to make something visually appealing and fun with bright colors. We didn’t really try to overthink it. Something simple that reflected Boulevards. When I’m at home, I’m always dancing.

SILY: You reference Gil Scott-Heron on “Shook” (“The revolution is now being televised.”) When was the first time you were aware of him?

JR: When I was a kid. My dad used to pick me and my sister up from track practice, and he worked at the radio station and was always getting these records. Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, “Whitey on the Moon”, all these songs. He’s a poet. I started out as a poet before I became a rapper, MC, or funk artist. Every time I do spoken word on a record, it’s never written. The verses and hooks are, but here, I said to the engineer, play these couple bars and just let me talk. It just came out. It also came from watching peoples’ stories and thinking, “The revolution is being televised now.” We’re seeing the anger, the pain, people expressing their frustration with the system of racial inequality in America. Not just Black people, but white people and Latino too. [Before,] they didn’t want people to see what was going on in America. Now, people are seeing it and are looking and are more aware of it now.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

JR: Sly Stone and Funkadelic, predecessors I grew up loving. That was influenced by a Sly Stone record. 60′s/70′s swag. I worked with a photographer in Raleigh named Jordan [Rickard]. I wanted to do something simple. I did it in my crib at my front porch. When I’m working on a record, I always have these vision boards. I always think about the colors, being a Black man, what’s gonna look good. I reached out to a stylist in L.A. who’s a good friend. I’ve always wanted to do a burnt orange background, and the sky blue represents Carolina blue because I’m a big Tar Heels fan. That color coordination blue and orange looks good together.

SILY: Why are you also putting out a two-track single in addition to the 4-track EP?

JR: That was more the label, how we wanted to go about the campaign. Initially, “Luv n Pain” was the first single I wanted to release regardless. “Shook” would be too predictable. There were so many artists releasing protest songs. “Luv n Pain” is more the past and present of Boulevards. When we finished it in the studio, [I knew.]

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joementa · 4 years ago

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Highlights From The Fall Collection.

I’m probably in the minority here, but I’m bummed that the summer is over. For me, I celebrate summer all through September, regardless of the weather and regardless of all of my neighbors who put up pumpkins the Tuesday after Labor Day. It’s too soon for me. I need my summer sun. No season comes remotely close to the summer for me. I think it has to do with spending all of my summers at the beach for 3 months straight. That’s not an exaggeration either. I spent my first 21 summers on this planet living at the beach for 3 months straight, often never even coming back to Philly even for one day during that time. I don’t remember ever once wanting to back. For awhile I considered the beach home, and the place I was at for the other 9 months of the year just a “place to stay”. I’ve always been truly happier on the beach than perhaps anywhere else. And when the cold winds come in, the sunny days vanish, the bikinis get put into storage, the smell of suntan lotion is nowhere to be found, the nights get quieter…it gets me a little scared. And lonely.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the fall. And I certainly don’t hate girls in leggings and boots (okay, I care more about the leggings but I do like the boots). But I don’t get this whole romanticism about the fall that seems to be so prevalent everywhere. I do like PSLs though.

When it comes to music, I’ve said this before, but I vary what I listen to by the season. Now that I have officially entered fall (with hopefully still some nice beach days sprinkled in in October), it’s time to switch up my music. For this week’s playlist, I put together just a small sample of the albums that I listen to in the fall (and some them creep into winter, but definitely not in the summer!). The key words here are “small sample”. I actually keep a list of all the albums I listen to in each season. I have over 150 albums that I specifically listen to in the fall, so there’s no way I could fit all of them in a playlist. I like to keep these things at 20!

All of the albums on the playlist are great fall albums front-to-back. I could talk about all of these for awhile, but a few things to note:

Some Devil has to be one of the best cold-weather albums ever.

Magic is a very underrated album and might be my favorite Bruce album straight-through in the reunited ESB era. A fantastic album straight-through. Even a song like “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” has a fall vibe to me. Driving around my favorite beach town (hands down Brigantine, NJ, no town is even a close second!) while listening to this album is one of my favorite annual fall rituals.

Exile On Main Street is obviously a classic, but I’d HIGHLY recommend listening to this one while you’re driving on a warm sunny fall day. That album was made for that.

Be sure to check out anything by Gillian Welch. You will not regret it at all. Sadly only a couple of her albums are available on vinyl but definitely seek them out if you can find them. They’re all pressed fully analog and can be found here: https://store.aconyrecords.com/collections/gillian-welch/vinyl.

The Civil Wars. Both of their albums are great fall albums and this week I’ve decided to highlight their second album, which was self-titled. I think Barton Hollow is probably better, but not by much. Do yourself a favor and on one of those chilly, rainy fall days, put on a pot of coffee and listen to Barton Hollow. Amazing!

Pearl Jam. I can’t be positive, but I think you may have heard of this band before. For some reason they’re a fall band for me.

Neil Young. Every song by him is a song for fall. Some of the great fall albums of his include (but are NOT limited to!) Harvest, Harvest Moon, Live Rust, Rust Never Sleeps, A Treasure, Dreamin’ Man Live ‘92, Prairie Wind, Comes A Time, American Stars ‘N Bars, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After The Gold Rush, Le Noise, Zuma and Americana. In fact, he’s so good for the fall that in 2018 I made not one, not two, but THREE different Neil Young playlists for the fall. Check ‘em out here:

Neil Young: Rock

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3rb8JskjLvTElQDABqlv1i?si=Eg9OKA-ESo2JRW5RCN1iRg

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/neil-young-rock/pl.u-kv9lbRaTX46JEq

Neil Young: Country

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/67KB1bYyIMqfP8cFnAHfq1?si=zWSSARDvTc2T6224XkK26Q

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/neil-young-country/pl.u-kv9lbVLsX46JEq

Neil Young: Acoustic

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/67KB1bYyIMqfP8cFnAHfq1?si=zWSSARDvTc2T6224XkK26Q

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/neil-young-acoustic/pl.u-2aoqXPbUVkeGyB

John Moreland. I love all of his music but make sure you check out High On Tulsa Heat. So unbelievably good.

Francis Albert. I thought about maybe starting with “The September Of My Years” but I realized it would be incredibly unfair for all 19 musicians to follow Frank.

Obviously I couldn’t fit every single album/song from my fall collection into this playlist. Some music that I left off that are great for fall include Sisters Of Mercy, Ryan Adams, Emmylou Harris, The Band, American Aquarium, Lucero, Uncle Tupelo, Kurt Vile, Hozier, Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, Kraftwerk, The Avett Brothers, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter by Margo Price, Neko Case and Boxers by Matthew Ryan. Bands like Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Metallica, The Cramps, The Misfits, Ozzy solo, Lita Ford, etc., are all great fall music that just didn’t fit well this week. Although they do tend to pop up around Halloween 😉.

Hopefully you enjoy this playlist and discover some new music too. I think these songs go perfectly with the sound of dry, crunchy leaves blowing in the wind and the smell of cool, non-humid air on a sunny day. Plus, how many people put Kings Of Leon and Gillian Welch back-to-back on a playlist?!?

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/highlights-from-the-fall-collection/pl.u-NpXmYqpTvL74WM

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NmlEBU797k73Vwz77gum1?si=fpQXZIwpQW2tlEKuVV_zDw

Dave Matthews – “Dodo” (Some Devil)

The Head And The Heart – “Coeur d’Alene” (The Head And The Heart)

Conor Oberst – “Zigzagging Toward The Light” (Upside Down Mountain)

Bruce Springsteen – “Livin’ In The Future” (Magic)

The Rolling Stones – “Torn And Frayed” (Exile On Main Street)

Kings Of Leon – “Back Down South” (Come Around Sundown)

Gillian Welch – “Six White Horses” (The Harrow And The Harvest)

The Civil Wars – “Oh Henry” (The Civil Wars)

Ruston Kelly – “Blackout” (Dying Star)

The Tallest Man On Earth – “The Wild Hunt” (The Wild Hunt)

The Cure – “Kyoto Song” (The Head On The Door)

Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Substance)

Brand New – “Jesus Christ” (The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me)

The Horrible Crowes – “Ladykiller” (Elsie)

Pearl Jam – “Corduroy” (Vitalogy)

Neil Young – “Human Highway” (Comes A Time)

Lori McKenna – “People Get Old” (The Tree)

John Moreland – “American Flags In Black And White” (High On Tulsa Heat)

The National – “Hard To Find” (Trouble Will Find Me)

Frank Sinatra – “The September Of My Years” (The September Of My Years)

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Gun violence, high school football and what coaches are doing to keep players safe

Gun violence, high school football and what coaches are doing to keep their players safe

If you ask Raekwon Robinson, a running back at Malcolm X Shabazz High School and Jaheem Burks’ best friend, what happened was ultimately their fault. It was Jaheem who wanted to go to Jersey City on that freezing January night in 2018 so their group of friends could go to a basketball game and then a party. Afterward, it was Raekwon who had insisted he was so hungry that they had to go to the store, even though it was after midnight.

“When I see [Jaheem] not doing what he used to be able to do, I choose to think about it, to see what could I have done differently,” Raekwon says, standing outside the Shabazz fieldhouse on a bright, blustery fall afternoon in Newark, New Jersey as he describes the regular flashbacks he still has. It’s just cold enough that he has a long sleeve shirt on under his pads, and clear enough that if you squint, you can see the New York City skyline from the field.

“I don’t want to blame it on myself, but I forced all of us to go to the store,” he says. “And because we went to the store, that happened.”

Jaheem, Raekwon and their friends were walking back from the corner store with juice tucked into their sweatshirt pockets. The closest chicken shack had already closed for the night, so as they walked back to the friend’s house where they were staying, Raekwon started putting in an order for Domino’s on his phone. It died because of the cold, and he looked up to find five men he’d never seen before in hoodies and ski masks staring at them from inside a car and on a nearby porch. It was odd, but none of them said anything so the group just kept walking — discussing pizza toppings, Raekwon remembers, smiling in disbelief.

A few seconds later, they heard gunfire erupt behind them. Raekwon and the rest of their friends took off running. “I was laughing because it caught me so off guard,” he says. “I was just like, wow, I might have a really crazy story.” Then a bullet flew by his head and hit an ambulance window. “I didn’t see it, I heard it,” Raekwon says. “That’s when I got scared.”

After the gunfire stopped, he heard Jaheem yelling. He’d been shot six times from his butt down to his calf, piercing his femoral artery. “I tried to get back up and run, but I got shot again so I stayed down on the ground,” says Jaheem, stoic and seemingly unperturbed by being asked to discuss the incident before practice, sharing his experience in measured, precise sentences just nine months after it happened. “First I was thinking about my life, to make sure I would make it,” he continues. “Control my breathing, stay calm. I just wanted the pain to go away.”

Raekwon found his friend sitting in a terrifyingly large pool of his own blood. The police, on high alert because of another shooting a few hours prior, had gotten there first, but Raekwon says they were simply documenting the wounds instead of tending to them.

“It was too cold to cry,” Raekwon says. “I was already shaking because it was so, so cold, and then I didn’t know what was going on. I knew he was going to be OK because it didn’t look like he was in pain, but the cops were yelling at everyone to back up and moving his body around all crazy — I’m like, stop moving him! That’s a puddle of blood that could probably fill up one of those whole boxes! [He points to a box of football gear.] The whole time they were moving him, more blood was coming out. There were no bullets inside him because they went straight through.”

He didn’t cry until the next day, when Jaheem’s aunt called and told him that Jaheem had been shot six times. “That broke me down,” Raekwon says. “I don’t believe Jaheem thinks about it — he still hasn’t cried about it, ever. I’m surprised.”

Jaheem had two surgeries; in one, they had to replace his artery. He spent two weeks at the Jersey City Medical Center before moving to a rehab facility in West Orange. At first, he would try to walk with a walker; every time he stood up, though, he got lightheaded because he’d lost so much blood. But once he got to rehab, he slowly learned how to walk again, going from a wheelchair, to crutches, to a cane, to just a limp that’s now all but disappeared.

“There was no way I thought he was suiting up this year,” Shabazz coach Darnell Grant, 47, says. “I’m like, ‘Listen man, you can take stats. I’ll put you in the booth, or you can help me coach.’ He looked me dead in the eyes: ‘Coach, I’m playing. You’ll see.’”

Natalie Weiner

Jaheem Burks (left) and Raekwon Robinson (right)

It’s a little slice of Americana right in the middle of Newark. The Friday night lights show two teams of teenage boys hopped up on Gatorade and bravado, butting heads on a brisk late October night. A healthy crowd of family, friends and neighbors cheer them on, many clutching lukewarm cups of ramen noodles or cocoa to fight the chill.

When the starting quarterback for the home team, Shabazz, is taken off the field after a hard hit, a new one steps in — a development that garners little fanfare from those in the stands, mostly content with the goose egg their opponents are laying.

But it should. The back-up QB is Jaheem Burks.

As he leads the team down the field, ultimately setting them up to score a touchdown, fans don’t know his name. They haven’t heard anything about a football player being shot. There’s no ceremony, no comment from the stadium announcer. Jaheem is just playing his game, exactly the way he wants; he’s already made the local news for his recovery, but there are plenty of people on the local news who hadn’t been so lucky. His own tragic accident (at Shabazz, they take care to call it an accident — “It wasn’t meant for him,” Grant explains) and return to football is barely a blip.

“We don’t play the pity party,” Grant says from his office the following week.

About an hour before practice starts, Grant sits behind his desk, hands folded, facing a few stacks of the academic progress reports he insists his players fill out each day. There’s a long table in the middle of the room where he meets with students, and sometimes monitors them during detention. When he’s not coaching the team, he’s the school’s dean of discipline, arriving at 7:50 a.m. to ensure kids are where they’re supposed to be, doing what they’re supposed to be doing. The last thing he has time to do is feed a redemption story that’s plenty remarkable on its own, for a community where honoring every victim of gun violence could easily become an all-consuming project.

“Don’t feel sorry for us,” he says. “These guys are champions.”

Grant is speaking literally: the team is defending its state title. Figuratively, they’re quite close to another, less tangible sort of triumph — this time, though, over much more brutal odds.

During his nine years coaching at Shabazz, Grant has lost four players to gun violence and had 10 players get shot, some on their way home from practice. One player was shot 14 times and survived. The day before our conversation, someone was wounded by gunfire near the school’s athletic field; the football team had been inside watching film, but a soccer game in progress had to be halted.

Last January, when Grant got the call that Jaheem had been shot, his reaction was one of relief. “I was just so happy he was alive,” he says. “That I didn’t have to go to another funeral.”

Grant is one of hundreds of high school football coaches across the country grappling with how to mitigate the effects of a problem they’re far from having the resources to solve: gun violence in America. Obviously, given that so far in 2019 over 10,000 Americans have died from a non-self-inflicted gunshot wound, it impacts almost everyone. But plenty of kids — especially those growing up in places like Newark, where such violence is numbingly ubiquitous — look to football to grant them a degree of immunity.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the sport offers an “escape” from under-resourced communities suffering from the effects of systemic neglect. If you work hard enough and make the right choices — playing football being one of the most accessible and appealing ways for boys, at least, to do that — you should be safe. A litany of cliches exist to describe the alternative: “Becoming a statistic.” “Dead or in jail.”

Grant knows most of his players have had someone in their lives for whom those cliches apply. “That’s why we have so many kids — we get the guys who don’t want that,” he says. His no-cut roster runs between 80 and 90 players from both Shabazz and smaller neighboring schools without football programs, depending on how many helmets he has. “They want to be something different.”

He also knows that concerns about concussions have cut into youth football participation nationally; in suburban Plainfield, New Jersey, where Grant has raised his six children, there’s no Pop Warner team for his twin seven-year-old boys. They have to drive to the next town over.

Shabazz, though, hasn’t experienced any decline. “It doesn’t affect us,” he says. “Football is going to come down to the people who have an option. My guys don’t have an option. They gotta play. They need to play. We don’t have lacrosse here. We don’t have established soccer here. Football, basketball, track. That’s the thing.”

Natalie Weiner

Coach Darnell Grant

But what Grant and his peers have found out the hard way is that even as it offers them structure and incentive, football alone is not enough to protect their charges. At least 67 boys and men 25 years old and under identified as current or former football players have been shot and killed in 2019 so far. Of those, 32 were under 18; the youngest, Washington, D.C.’s Karon Brown, was 11.

“What’s changed that now these kids growing up in the same neighborhood as I did gotta worry about life and death?” Grant remembers wondering in 2004 — the first time he lost a player, at a previous coaching job. He stood next to a high schooler who had been shot twice in the head, lying dead on the sidewalk a month after he’d gotten a scholarship offer from N.C. State. “I was so infuriated by the adults. What did we do differently? What didn’t we do for them that was done for us? Why is it no longer safe?”

It’s a detail that almost always makes the headline, whether the victim was 14 or 34: football player. Sometimes there’s a quote from the coach, or the school. Maybe the only photo in the local news files is one of the kid making a play. Maybe the yards he ran last season are somewhere toward the bottom. Very rarely do these stories get national coverage, with the 2015 murder of Zaevion Dobson — who was heralded posthumously as a hero — as one notable exception. But for many local outlets, the story is a depressingly familiar variation on the kinds of gun violence-related deaths that too often don’t get covered at all.

Its subtext is clear: this is not just another kid, this is a football player. A kid who tried; a kid who worked; a kid who was doing all the Right Things to avoid a fate as inevitable in America as fireworks on the Fourth of July. A football player died, and we should mourn more than we would otherwise but not that much, because another football player will die next week and next year, and we will pretend like it is exceptional when, in fact, it is the rule that children and young adults and old adults die preventable deaths every day because of the confluence of entrenched systemic discrimination and widely available lethal weapons.

We should mourn because he knew the odds were stacked against him and worked to overcome them anyway, as though his fate was ever fully in his own hands to begin with.

“You hear about kids that were the best that never was getting brutally murdered, and the story will be good until you bury them — about two weeks,” says Niketa Battle, 46, who lost a player each of his first two years as the head coach at Mays High School in Atlanta. He’s in year four. “But if a kid goes and plays in a DI program and gets in trouble, you’ll hear all about it. I always tell my kids, ‘Nobody cares if you get killed. Not at Mays. That’s what they expect, because of the area you live in.’ That’s the harsh reality.”

Somewhere deep down, maybe, we understand that each death signifies a greater failure. But it’s one that we tacitly accept with each “Football Star Shot and Killed” headline that passes by. An unfortunate one-off. How sad, we think. How terrible, as though a young person dying who didn’t play football is more tolerable. It’s a way to predigest tragedy, to filter an American epidemic into words we can understand: a football player died.

A little more than once a week, somewhere in America, a story like this runs.

Tyson Whiting

Football has been a lifelong love affair for Jaheem, who was born and raised in Newark. He watched Jerome Bettis run over people for the Steelers when he was five and has been a Pittsburgh fan ever since. That same year, his mother died of breast cancer (his dad is not in the picture), so Jaheem and his two older siblings went to live with his aunt and cousins. At nine, he started playing organized football; in middle school, he met Raekwon, his compatriot on and off the field. So when he was shot, his motivation to recover fully was clear.

“I couldn’t have that mindset like, just lay down and be lazy all day,” Jaheem says. Grant says he would have been a starter at receiver and defensive back his senior year had it not been for the shooting; he was back in the weight room at Shabazz before he was even officially back at school. “Obviously when I first got back, I wasn’t really running how I am right now. But I had to get up and work on my legs and try to get back on the field because I love football. That’s what I love to do.”

As for Raekwon, when he returned to school the Monday after the shooting, he dropped from honor roll to failing within a matter of weeks. “Before, I saw him every day,” he says of Jaheem. “I still see him every day. But just him not being around me, and I really couldn’t call him to speak to him... it was hurting me. I came to school just to come; I didn’t do nothing.”

It wasn’t the first time gun violence had impacted his life — when asked if he’d ever known anyone who was shot and killed, Raekwon holds up one hand to count and quickly runs out of fingers before giving up — but it was the first time he had witnessed it. Coincidentally he had signed up for an in-school leadership and healing program called the Bulldog Brotherhood, where he was referred to a counselor who helped him get makeup work to bring his grades back up. He says he learned about trauma from the program as he was experiencing it, which helped him.

“Being from where I’m at, I figured it would happen,” Raekwon says of the shooting. “I didn’t expect it, but I expected it. Not that we were doing anything wrong, I just — I don’t know. Around here, there’s no telling what happens.”

Data supports Raekwon’s grim hunch. Though gun violence statistics are notoriously hard to pin down, gun homicides tend to be concentrated where people are, in cities; small ones with disproportionate degrees of poverty, like Newark, tend to have higher rates. Fifty-two percent of gun homicide victims are Black men, according to the most recent available CDC data. Their reports also conclude that gun violence is the leading cause of death among Black children, who are 10 times more likely than their white counterparts to be shot and killed — a statistic that came perilously close to representing Jaheem and Raekwon.

That is not to say the experience of gun homicide victims — even those in a narrow category like current and former football players 25 and under — is homogenous. There have been at least 190 victims matching that description since 2017, according to the inevitably incomplete data collected by SB Nation. They lived in 38 states and Washington, D.C., in small towns and big cities alike. Some were white, some were Hispanic, most were Black. Some were shot in cases of mistaken identity, like Jaheem, or just caught in the crossfire; some were in disagreements that got heated. Some were victims of intentional murder, or of a stick-up gone wrong. Some — like Jordan Edwards, Isaiah Christian Green, Archer Amorosi, Leo Brooks Jr., D’Ettrick Griffin, O’Shae Terry and De’Von Bailey — were killed by police.

No matter the circumstance, most just wind up described as “in the wrong place at the wrong time”; a cliche that fails to account for the fact that they were exactly where they were supposed to be — walking to school or sitting at home or at a cookout to celebrate their graduation — and it didn’t make a difference.

“Nobody wakes up and says, ‘You know what, today I’m gonna plan on getting murdered,’” says Camden, New Jersey coach Preston Brown, 34, who leads the Woodrow Wilson High School team. He’s lost two players within the past year. “But there’s no margin for error. What might, in communities with more of a safety net, seem like harmless teenage shenanigans — seeing your friends, going to parties, getting a slice of pizza — become life-threatening.”

The way communities and media respond to these deaths tends to reflect how often they’ve seen them. Coach James Williams, who runs the team at Houston’s Fort Bend Marshall High School, lost his first player last December after seven seasons as the school’s head coach and 19 years in football. “It caught me completely off guard — it’s never something you think about or imagine would happen,” the 44-year-old coach says. He’d had players shot before, but never seriously injured or killed.

Williams’ Buffaloes had just closed an undefeated season and were preparing for a playoff run when 17-year-old Drew Conley, who had just transferred to Marshall that summer, was shot and killed by his uncle. “Definitely had a great personality — nothing but positives with that young man,” says Williams. “He made a big impact in a short time.”

The team, cheerleaders and band wore decals with his number — 3 — and hung up his jersey in a locker at their semifinal game four days later. “Remember 3” became both a rallying cry for the team and a hashtag, as Conley’s friends and teammates grieved and shared memories on social media. Conley’s funeral was two days before the team’s state championship game at Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium; five of his teammates were pallbearers. They wound up losing, a minor tragedy by comparison, but still heartbreaking given the shadow already cast over what should have been a pinnacle of Conley and his teammates’ high school experiences.

“Of course you want to win, but it was an accomplishment just to be there — especially under the circumstances they were in,” Williams says. “Losing a player two weeks before the state championship is such an emotional rollercoaster. The guys had to overcome so much, but they knew it was important to Drew, and that he wanted it badly for everyone.

“[Gun violence] is not prevalent where we are — it was just an unfortunate incident,” he continues. “Some areas have less crime than others, but there’s no safe area. At the end of the day, this can happen anywhere.”

For many other coaches — like Newark’s Darnell Grant — the first time they found out they’d outlived one of their players has long since past. Sometimes it’s too painful for both coaches and players to remember all those they’ve lost.

“It’s scary because the kids are kind of numb to it, to the point where every year you know it’s going to happen,” Brown says. Last fall, a recent graduate of his Camden program named Diquese Young, who had been accepted to college but deferred for a semester to help his mom, was shot and killed at 19. Six months later, Young’s good friend and former teammate Sincere Howard, 17, was also shot and killed. Brown recalls a recent shooting behind their field while the team was practicing; they paused to make sure it was safe and then went back to work.

“We kind of keep things among ourselves, and try not to focus on it so much,” he says. “The more you bring it up … there’s a whole tie-in of emotions, not only from the young people’s standpoint but for all of us, adults included.”

“I’m not going to say that my kids are insensitive to death, but they see it so often that it might be something that they’ve just grown to accept.”

“I’m just going to be honest with you: if I was in suburban Atlanta, [players dying] probably would have been more of a shock,” Battle says. “I’m not going to say that my kids are insensitive to death, but they see it so often that it might be something that they’ve just grown to accept. I hope I don’t come off as very numb. But here, if you don’t have some sort of a tough skin about where you’re working, it will eat you alive.”

Battle, who has lost two players in the past three years, estimates six Mays High School students were killed in that same period. Mays student D’Ettrick Griffin, who had played recreational football, was shot and killed by Atlanta police earlier this year. In August, two boys aged 12 and 16 were shot outside a Mays football game; the 12-year-old may not walk again.

“I ask myself, why do I watch the news all the time? I know it’s nothing but negativity about what’s going on within the community,” says the 46-year-old coach, who also teaches physical education. “But I have to turn it on because I’m worried about my kids.”

He sometimes finds himself sitting at his desk in despair — the same desk he speaks to me from, the same desk that’s his base from 7 a.m. to 8:30 or 9 at night during football season, the same desk that’s the destination of his 45-minute commute. “Half of me is questioning, like, ‘Why are you putting yourself through so much stress?’” Battle says. “When I got this head coaching position, I had no gray hair. I’m graying so fast now, it’s crazy. I don’t know when I can just go home and rest — I literally have to get in the house and turn my ringer off.”

Battle grew up in Tifton, Georgia, stayed in-state to play football at Savannah State and Georgia Southern, and entered the corporate world before beginning his career as a coach. “It just wasn’t fulfilling, knowing that was going to be my life for the next 25 to 30 years,” he says. So he quit, and started coaching in suburban Atlanta. Nineteen years later, his longest tenure has been at Mays — which has also been his most challenging position.

“In the suburbs, my worst fear was a kid going to jail,” he says, adding that his peers working in suburban schools are most concerned about keeping kids from vaping. “Now my worst fear is waking up to one of my kids having been killed.”

Battle lost his first players in 2011 while working as the head coach at Morrow High School. He remembers talking with them before summer started, wishing them well and offering some counsel.

“I told them, make sure you love on everybody because it’s not guaranteed that we’ll be around next year,” he recalls. “But I just meant that people might move with graduation. Two of the kids would end up being killed.” One died in a high-speed car chase, the other was shot. Recently he found out another former player from that same year had been shot and killed.

“When you were a part of those kids’ lives and then tragically, whether it’s one year later or 10 years later, they end up getting killed…” Battle trails off.

“You have kids that are very edgy, and think bad things might happen to them,” he concludes. “But it also happens to the good kids, the ones that don’t participate in any form of street violence. Some kids will wake up and try to live a different life, but just can’t escape it. But football is their outlet to try.”

***

It’s the same outlet that Battle, Grant and Brown found first themselves. All played football in high school and earned athletic scholarships to help pay for their degrees. What they ultimately decided to do with those degrees, though, was to return to places near where they grew up, eschewing any idea about “escape” as advancement. They chose to help more young men find the kinds of opportunities that are too often much harder to come by as Black students in underfunded schools; as sons whose families might be working long hours just to get by.

“If my coaches had just coached us, and didn’t take hold of us the way they did — be fathers to us, monitoring every aspect of our lives — most of us would not have made it,” says Brown, who graduated from Woodrow Wilson himself. Brown’s younger brother was shot and killed in 2011, at age 20. “When I became a coach, I could do no different than what was done for me. You have to do everything in your power to protect them.”

The first step is to keep players as busy as possible. Creating programming that compels them to be at school as long as they can stand — study halls, practices, weight training, film study, meetings, team meals — all year round, six days a week, takes precedence over designing plays or coming up with game plans. Often, the funding for such supplementary programming at already-strapped public schools comes out of their own pockets.

“Like I tell the kids, from 3:30 to 9:30, I’m with you,” Battle says. “Those are football hours. That’s the same time that kids are going to give to the streets. You’re not playing against an opponent, you’re playing against the streets. And the streets are going to win every time. But if I have them in football practice until 9:30 and they get home at 10, there’s nothing they can really do but go to sleep, come back and do it again.”

The streets, to Battle, mean gangs. In Atlanta the number of gangs has nearly doubled in the past decade, spurring Battle to speak with his players ever more regularly about why they should avoid them. During one such talk, a player asked to say something; when Battle told him to go ahead, he raised his shirt to show a bullet hole in his chest, telling the rest of his team, “Y’all don’t want to end up like me.”

“The thing is, if you don’t take an interest in the kids, who’s going to?”

“He comes out and works harder than almost all the kids on this team, and he’s sitting there with a bullet hole in his chest,” Battle recalls, still incredulous.

He believes his team can offer some of what the local gangs might seem to: a sense of belonging in the midst of an environment that he characterizes as “a war zone.”

“The thing is, if you don’t take an interest in the kids, who’s going to?” he asks. “A lot of kids will feel more like they’re worth something [as a gang member], because somebody’s telling them they’re doing well even though they’re doing wrong.”

In Chicago, coach D’Angelo Dereef has gone one step further in keeping his players physically away from their too-often violent Garfield Park neighborhood. He hosted a weeklong lock-in during training camp at Al Raby High School for the sixth season in a row this summer, a reaction to what he sees as a spike in gun violence.

“Every week is a violent week in Chicago — this is one week where their parents can be relieved,” he explains. Dereef, 46, initially came up with the idea not long after he moved to the city from South Carolina; tragically, he lost a student to gun violence almost immediately. “I was a 30-year-old man coming home crying to my auntie and uncle’s house,” Dereef remembers.

So he thought of doing a lock-in, which would at least be a temporary refuge. After facing initial resistance because of the cost, he finally got approval by assuring that he and the other coaches would collectively provide food and solicit donations from local businesses. It’s mostly subsidized by Dereef himself.

First, he takes their phones for the entire week. Instead, they focus on football and what might ultimately — and unfairly — be survival skills: conflict resolution and how to talk to police. Most important, though, is to “show them brotherhood, and make them one: one team, one family,” Dereef says.

His job isn’t over after the lockout, though; when we talk, he’s on his way to try to find out why a particularly promising kid has stopped coming to practice. Dereef gets frustrated when he sees people underestimate his players, or assume they’re unmanageable. “They’re not getting into their brains to figure out why,” he says. “It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a big cut — that’s not going to stop the bleeding. Why is this kid scared to come to practice? We need this kid here because this could save his life.”

A few weeks prior, he’d been negotiating with a freshman player’s parole officer to let him come to practice — the player had been found with an illegal gun and was under house arrest. “I told him, you’re 250 to 300 pounds — you’re a big ol’ target,” Dereef says. “People are going to hide behind you when they start shooting, and you can’t hide behind nobody. You’re a bulletproof vest for everybody out there. Don’t be a crash dummy, be with us.”

Tyson Whiting

No coach can be with their players all the time, though. “It’s the away time,” Grant says of the moments he worries the most. “It’s when they leave us. Right now we try to run a six-day-a-week program, 12 months out of the year. But that last day and a half, we don’t have them.”

“I just worry about what’s going on from Friday night after you get home from the game to Sunday afternoon,” says Battle. “As long as I can put my hands on them, I know they’re good. But once they leave, they’re going back to the same areas that they’re trying to fight so hard to get away from.”

The technology-enabled cure for that worry is lots of group-texting, and communication with teachers and parents; sometimes they’re just checking in to make sure players have made it home safely. On snow days, Grant has his players send him videos of themselves working out to keep them occupied.

All the coaches stay in touch with their alums, texting and calling to make sure they’re still pushing forward and staying safe. Dereef calls his former players every Sunday: “How’s school?” “Are you leaving the girls alone?” “Are you leaving the weed and drinking alone?” After all, their lives are only slightly less precarious once they get to school: 2019 Giants draft pick Corey Ballantine was shot while celebrating making it to the league, and his friend and Washburn University teammate Dwane Simmons was killed in the same incident.

“I never talk about football,” Dereef insists. “I got them prepared for football.”

“It’s about trying to build a surrogate family around the game of football, just to give them all the resources and access that everyone has every place else.”

Pushing students academically can be as simple as letting the players know that someone is watching, that someone cares. “Some kids, you grow up talking about the day at school at the dinner table every night,” Grant says. “My guys don’t always get that — and because it’s not a big priority in the house, it’s not their priority. It’s about trying to build a surrogate family around the game of football, just to give them all the resources and access that everyone has every place else.”

Grades are typically the coaches’ biggest concern: all aim to have 100 percent college acceptance rates for their players, even if they’re not going to play at the next level.

“My thing is to at least have the choice,” Grant says. When we meet, a scout is in the next room talking to some seniors on the team. “If I don’t give you an option, why wouldn’t I expect you to fall into the same traps as everybody else? I gotta give you something different.”

“All my kids aren’t going to be 3.0, 4.0 kids,” Battle says. “But if I can get a kid from an F to a C, just to be able to say, ‘I told you you could pass, you just gotta put your mind to it’ — that’s the little incentive they need to keep going, because they found someone that can believe in them.”

The hardest part of the job, the coaches say, is the feeling that it might be impossible to give the players enough. Feeding them once is something, but what if there’s no food at home? Finding a tutor might help their grades, but if they go home and the electricity is turned off, how can they do their homework? And of course the worst case scenario, the one that all of these coaches have already confronted: what if they do everything they can, and a player does everything he can — and still winds up dead before his time?

Like Diquese Young, the Woodrow Wilson player killed in 2018 who had deferred college to help his mom. “When he was in school, he was the perfect guy,” Brown says. “He did all his work, he did track and football, he was always on time, he was a leader. If there was beef among other people in school, he would be the dude that could mediate it without an adult being present. He had that kind of presence.”

Young was accepted to over a dozen schools. “It was a bad idea; he should have been away at college,” Brown says. “The hood doesn’t have any feelings.”

Or his friend and teammate Sincere Howard. Or Coach Battle’s players, Carlos Davis II and Marquez Montgomery, neither of whom will ever be older than 15. Or any of the other boys and men whose names make up the far-too-long list at the bottom of this story.

The worst has happened, but each coach has picked up the pieces and kept going. After all, there are too many good stories to let the tragedies drag them down.

“Just seeing the kids that wake up and have hope,” says Battle of what inspires him to keep coaching kids both on the field and through the many risks they face each day. “They light up, because they’ve probably been told for so long that this is your life, and this is what your life is always going to be — and then they get exposed to something else.” In 2018, he had 20 players sign National Letters of Intent out of a 39-player graduating class.

“There’s nothing you can do about what happened in the past,” Grant says. “The only thing you can do is try to make it not repeat itself — that’s the motivation to work harder.”

***

Jaheem and Raekwon are now roommates at William Paterson University — Jaheem wants to study computer engineering, and Raekwon wants to study math.

Grant helped see them off this spring, working with them to sort out their college prospects and, more importantly, taking Jaheem get shoes for the prom. Everything is almost back to normal, but might never be completely the same.

“He was such a goofy, silly, jovial kid,” Grant says. “Now you see a seriousness about him that you didn’t before. I look at him sometimes, like man, they took his childhood away from him. They made him become a man too fast.”

Raekwon says since the shooting, he’s stopped walking around his neighborhood. Unless he has a ride, he tries to stay in the house. “I was careful before, but now it’s just like...I don’t do much,” he says. “You won’t see me going to the store or anything like that.” This year, another player on the Bulldogs was shot and survived, as was another Shabazz student.

After nearly a decade at Shabazz, Grant is starting a new position coaching at West Orange High School. There’s no doubt he’ll still be mentoring his players off the field, but he acknowledges that working at a more diverse school — where his non-football hours will be spent on academics instead of discipline — will be different.

“At Shabazz, sometimes it was just about the bare necessities — things that are supposed to come from home and for whatever reason they’re unable to provide,” he says. “In West Orange, there are two parents in the house but maybe they’re both working in the city. Kids are kids — they face a lot of the same struggles.”

Coaches around the country will continue the thankless work that Grant did for years, the work of trying to protect players even after they’ve learned firsthand that their best efforts may not be enough.

“Man, I’ve got to make sure these kids know that I care about them,” Battle says. “I just don’t know if I, Lord forbid it, might lose another one this year. I hope the cycle is broken — I pray to God it is. But in the event that it’s not, this is the job that I signed up for.”

The problem is insurmountable, the violence inescapable. But every year, coaches like Battle will open their teams to all, padding their no-cut rosters with any kids who want a place to show up and be seen — regardless of how good they are at football. There are always more kids with more possibilities, and to these coaches, their lives are worth protecting with everything they have.

This piece is dedicated to all gun violence victims and survivors, and those who love them. Below are 190 football players 25 and under shot and killed between 2017 and November 2019.

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chasecampen · 6 years ago

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Grove builder Rick Caruso reimagines Miramar resort with splashes of seaside splendor

LA Times, by Roger Vincent, March 3, 2019

In a quiet garden at the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort in Montecito is a white marble statue of the Buddha, laughing while four small children clamber up his side.

The latter is a clue this is not your typical religious shrine.

The Buddha had only one child, according to texts, but resort owner Rick Caruso has four — and so the playful stone statue has a bigger brood.

It’s just one of the subtle references to the Caruso family that can be found at the new resort, which may be the most intensely personal — and upscale — project yet for the Los Angeles real estate magnate.

Caruso, who started his development career with a modest mall on La Cienega Boulevard, went on to build successively grander shopping venues including the landmark Grove, the Fairfax District “lifestyle center” that pioneered a wave of outdoor malls that meld shopping with food and entertainment.

Last year, he completed a $200-million village center for tony Pacific Palisades with small shops and restaurants evocative of East Hampton’s main street.

Now, the 60-year-old has reached higher still, completing his first venture into the hotel business with a splash that he hopes will earn the Miramar prestigious five-star and five-diamond ratings.

And it has prices to match, with rooms that cost more than $800 a night on the low end and reach $5,575 for a grand suite. Rooms over the sand begin at $1,075 a night.

Its nearest competitors are the four-star Four Seasons Resort the Biltmore Santa Barbara and the four-diamond Ritz-Carlton Bacara, Santa Barbara.

And though it is operated by Rosewood Hotel Group, a Hong Kong-based chain with luxury hotels across the globe, it is very much a Caruso property.

Among other family references are his children’s initials capping the directional arrows on a weather vane and the Caruso family crest mounted discreetly amid a leaded glass window overlooking the Pacific.

Then, point blank, there is Caruso’s, the resort’s swank Italian restaurant.

Patrons can dine a few feet above the sand, viewing the surf from high-backed booths intentionally reminiscent of Perino’s, a midcentury Los Angeles restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard that catered to the city’s business and entertainment industry elite for decades.

Caruso hopes the Miramar won’t change hands again for a long time, which is one of the reasons he added so many personal references during its creation.

“I build them with the hope and dream they will stay in the family until the end of time,” he said. “It’s just a fun thing to create a link between generations.”

On a recent chilly afternoon, Caruso cut a rakish figure strolling through the hotel’s Manor House in a snug gray double-breasted suit, wearing dark glasses and trailing behind his leashed dog Dodge — very much carrying himself like the man Forbes said is worth $4 billion. The docile golden retriever is his constant companion and later fell asleep at Caruso’s feet as he sat in the Miramar’s main restaurant, Malibu Farm, which serves farm-to-table fare.

Caruso appeared a bit weary himself, understandably. After buying the property for $50 million in 2007, he spent more than a decade working with the neighbors and navigating a complicated approval process that required applications to state, county and local agencies. In recent months, it was a race to get the resort ready for its March 1 official opening date, with nearly 1,300 laborers a day working double shifts.

And he’s had other duties in addition to running his existing properties and building in Pacific Palisades. As chairman of the USC Board of Trustees, he has faced tumult in recent months including the removal of Marshall School of Business Dean James Ellis and a $215-million settlement for former patients of disgraced campus doctor George Tyndall in a sexual abuse scandal.

Amid the tumult, he’s kept focused on his ambitious goals for the Miramar, which he proclaims are nothing less than “to reinvent hotels” — with a nod to the customs of yesterday’s leisure class. “The grand old hotels of Europe were more like residences.”

Caruso has a reputation as a big-spending developer who packs expensive details into his projects to help give them the kind of visual punch that led the Wall Street Journal to call him “the Walt Disney of retail” last year.

The Grove and the Americana at Brand mall in Glendale reflect his bent for extravagance and his personal tastes, such as jaunty Frank Sinatra tunes piped outdoors and, at the Americana, an 18-foot-tall gold-plated statue called “Spirit of American Youth” rising in the middle of a dancing fountain.

At the Miramar, however, Caruso has gotten a chance to indulge the tastes developed first through his childhood in Beverly Hills and later through accumulation of the fortune that has made him one of the wealthiest businessmen in Los Angeles.

The resort takes some broad design cues from the Beverly Hills Hotel, which took its famous form during a 1940s makeover created by Paul Williams, a revered Los Angeles architect whose influence now pervades the Miramar.

Perino’s signature booths were designed by Williams, who died in 1980. The hotel is meant to have the look and feel of a grand 1930s home designed by Williams, starting at the black lacquered front door with a brass mail slot.

Inside, guests find themselves in a soaring mansion-style foyer flanked by a curving staircase made using Williams’ blueprints for a legendary home completed in Beverly Hills in 1933 for auto titan E.L. Cord.

Caruso explains that Williams’ granddaughter is a friend and shared Williams’ hand-drawn plans for the Southern Colonial-style Cord estate, which Caruso framed and mounted discreetly near the foyer.

The residential sensibility prevails throughout the hotel designed by a team led by architect Dave Williams (no relation to Paul Williams), Caruso’s executive vice president of architecture. From the front door, visitors can see straight through what looks like a casually elegant living room and veranda, past a wide lawn and finally to the ocean.

Most of the 16-acre site — almost as big as the Grove but with a feel much larger since little acreage is taken up by parking — is landscaped open space, which Caruso hopes will help put guests in vacation mode. “It’s to lower everyone’s blood pressure,” he said.

In addition to the Manor House, which includes a spa, there are bungalow-like guest room buildings spread along meandering paths. There are two swimming pools and seven eateries, including a poolside shop that serves hamburgers and local ice cream.

He declines to talk about how much the Miramar cost, but Bacara reportedly cost $222 million to build in 2000.

Pricey design flourishes and materials can be seen in all directions at the Miramar including a Brazilian walnut deck at the seaside bar, hand-painted wallpaper and custom-designed Baccarat crystal chandeliers in the ballroom.

Original artworks abound, including a 1937 Norman Rockwell painting called “Scout of Many Trails” in an event space called the Study and a whimsical Fernando Botero painting titled “Two Drunks” in the Manor Bar.

The sundry shop is a Goop store, founder Gwyneth Paltrow’s first outlet in a hotel.

Caruso builds in a way many other developers would consider extravagant because he can. “I don’t have investors,” he said. “I get the freedom to make decisions I think are best.”

But Caruso is ever watchful of his bottom line.

The 161-room resort already has 25 weddings booked, and he has other ideas for programming that Caruso has honed in his retail centers, along with advertising sponsorships and promotions such as “date night” and “Mommy and me” events.

He pictures people wandering up to the hotel bar after a barbecue “burger bash on the beach” and smiles as he contemplates the promise held by the resort’s two bocce courts — a bowling game that has become hip but is ancient and hints at Caruso’s Italian heritage.

“I bet the bocce ball league will bring in $1 million a year alone,” he said.

And Christmas, sometimes a slow period for seaside resorts, will be celebrated fancifully with decorations including trees for each room that guests can decorate themselves with provided ornaments or let the hotel staff do the job.

“When you allow people to have fun, you make money,” he said. “They become loyal, and they come back.”

Donald Wise, a hotel investment banker at Turnbull Capital Group, estimates that it will take five years to get the Miramar financially stabilized, but Caruso is in position to make it to that point.

Caruso “is obviously very well capitalized, unlike a lot of developers who have to put things together with mirrors.”

Indeed, the Americana at Brand opened in 2008 amid the financial crisis, but Caruso weathered that storm.

The Miramar is one of only a handful of hotels in Southern California that is directly on the beach, which gives it a competitive advantage, said Wise, who was not involved in its sale or development.

Rosewood, which operates luxury properties across the U.S. and some two dozen countries, could help deliver the top-level five-star and five-diamond industry ratings Caruso seeks, Wise said. If that happens, the Miramar would probably be the only five-star hotel in the world with an active railroad running through it.

Ten freight trains and two passenger trains roll through each day on tracks that cleave the edge of the property between the main Manor House complex and the waterfront suites, bar and Caruso’s restaurant.

To diminish its impact, Caruso raised the level of the hotel grounds. “The train loomed over you before,” he said. “We put a cool bar by it, and now it’s part of the experience” of being at the Miramar. The nearby beach guest rooms also are on base isolators to contain vibrations from the trains.

For many years guests arrived at Miramar by train, starting in the 19th century when the Miramar became a favored destination of the well-to-do including snowbirds from the East who would spend winter there.

The inn’s history dates to the 1880s, when landowners Josiah and Emmeline Doulton turned part of their farm into a hotel, said Michael Redmon, director of research at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum.

The Doultons soon named it Miramar, or “Behold, the sea” in Spanish. By 1902, The Times was reporting on arrivals of the well-to-do, such as the widow of a railroad magnate who arrived from Boston for the season with her maid and chauffeur in tow.

The Miramar is remembered perhaps best among the living as an unassuming seaside getaway where families with kids and dogs could afford to spend a relaxing weekend nestled between the peaceful Pacific and dull roar of Highway 101.

The Doulton family sold the Miramar in 1939 to Paul Gawzner, who revamped the property and added a swimming pool. By the late 20th century, the resort was known to some for its air of “Catskill kitsch” — with its shuffleboard courts and waiters who once tooled around the grounds on bicycles, trays from the kitchen mounted on their baskets.

Gawzner sold the Miramar in 1998 to night club and hotel impresario Ian Schrager, who closed the inn in 2000 to make renovations. Work stopped as the economy soured and the partly demolished hotel became a local eyesore.

Toy manufacturer Ty Warner, who became a billionaire through his Beanie Baby plush toy line, bought the Miramar in 2005 with plans to renovate the property but ended up selling it to Caruso less than two years later.

Caruso razed almost the entire site, saving only the original owner’s wooden residence, which stands just off the hotel grounds. It’s being restored, but no use for it has been planned yet.

For now, Caruso is just enjoying his accomplishment of getting the Miramar up and running — a satisfaction he is sharing with his family.

The Carusos, including Rick’s wife of 31 years, Tina, have their own residence in the Manor House.

Gigi Caruso, Rick’s youngest child at 18, said she and her siblings are taking particular pleasure in the family references her father slipped into the development, including quotes from their favorite literary figures painstakingly inlaid into stones on the veranda.

“It’s so fun seeing all our personal family references around the property,” she said. “It means so much to us that he involved us in the process.”

The developer’s next planned venture is residential. He built an ultra-deluxe 87-unit apartment building on the eastern edge of Beverly Hills in 2012 and now plans to erect a bigger one nearby on the site of his first development on La Cienega Boulevard that housed a Loehmann’s department store.

But that wasn’t really on his mind as he watched some of his first patrons enjoy the food at Malibu Farm. Instead, he’s just settling in at the Miramar.

“It was years of work,” he said.

#chaserealestate #losangelesrealestate #rickcaruso #miramar #rosewoodmiramar #montecito

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national-theatre-scotland-blog · 8 years ago

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The Box Office photography project.

by Megan McEachern (Communications Officer)

It all began with neon, and a significant, symbolic lack of walls.

Neon, since its brazen introduction to 20th century signage, represents the bold, the confident, the modern; an un-shying, rebellious tribute to the limelight.

A lack of walls means free movement, an unhindered journey without any sort of constraints or containment. Nothing hidden, nothing kept out or kept in.

Bringing these two aspects together in artistic fusion was the main focus of the National Theatre of Scotland’s new advertising campaign.

Since its inception, the National Theatre of Scotland has created bold, ground breaking theatre, defying the norm and inspiring audiences both nationally and internationally. This ‘theatre without walls’ model has enabled the National Theatre of Scotland to take its work wherever there is an audience to enjoy it.

It was with all of this in mind that we embarked on our country wide tour to create the new artwork that would convey this ethos. During my research, it was Americana neon signage that had really resonated with the theatrical imagery we were trying to create. The fact that so much of it was portrayed as if by accident in wide open wildernesses, near beaches, on rooftops, under bridges, or on stretching, lonely roads really linked with the theatre without walls philosophy. The free standing signs looked strange, surreal, and out of place, not confined to one building facade. Likewise, the National Theatre of Scotland has no venue, no permanent stage, breaking all preconceptions of what a theatre production should look like or where it should be performed. The National Theatre of Scotland is as likely to be found in a traditional Scottish theatre venue as it is to be found performing at the National Theatre of Korea, a forest in Mid Argyll, barns, schools and village halls across Scotland or from America to London’s West End.

A Scottish National company however, we wanted to cover as much of the country as we could in the imagery. Scottish photographer, John G Moore was commissioned to take the photography and our adventure around Scotland with the neon sign saying ‘BOX OFFICE’ was a microcosm of the tours the National Theatre of Scotland takes around the world.

Central Belt – Kelvinhall Subway Station

Iconically Glasgow, the SPT underground felt like the perfectly unexpected space in the central belt to exhibit the neon sign. Drama and theatricality played a large part in the campaign aesthetic and sticking a neon sign in the middle of a generally packed platform provided the ideally juxtapositional element I wanted to achieve. I had originally wanted to put the sign on the train tracks inside the tunnels, however the generality of this defeated the point of conveying the subway as a Glasgwegian landmark. I also wanted a passing train in the shot and the long exposure and slow shutter speed provided the end result.

The Scottish Borders – Lochcarron Textile Factory

We wanted to portray Scottish industry in the images and this happened to fall across the lap of the Borders shoot, resulting in our visit to Lochcarron textile factory in Selkirk. I was bowled over by the sheer scale of the factory and the amount of different tartans they produce – and how quickly the looms worked. The metal structure of the sign ties in well with the machinery in the background and the shot was produced from the top of a ladder. I really wanted to get tartan in the shot but this proved difficult given the space restrictions within the factory. However, with a little bit of thinking outside the box, and using what we had at our disposal, John made it work brilliantly.

Argyll and the West – Achaleven Primary School, Connel

I can’t describe this shoot with any other words other than delightful. The beautiful weather that day certainly helped matters, and arriving at a destination where the temperature was actually above freezing added to our spirits for the shoot. We needn’t have worried about any lifted moods however as the warm welcome and great setup at the school provided a smooth and easy morning of photography. The colours in the room were perfect and the changing light streaming through the windows was nostalgic of my own primary school days. John had brought along his assistant, Ricky, so while they rigged up I interrupted a gaelic lesson to bring in the tiny number of 12 children enrolled in school to have a peek at the shoot. They seemed slightly bewildered by our presence but enjoyed relaying and translating some of the gaelic phrases of the day for us.

Islands – Rum/Eigg/Skye shot from Camusdaruch Beach, Mallaig

I couldn’t get over the raw, stunning beauty of the West Coast as we drove from Connel towards Mallaig. Never in my life has my breath come out in such successive raptures of astonishment, and I have travelled the world far and wide! Sadly, it seemed like every other passing vehicle was mesmerised by the scenery as I had to at one point literally drive into the side of the road to avoid death as a lorry came pelting straight for me. Dying was not on my list of things to do that day however, so I simply shook an angry fist and carried on north.

As we arrived at the beach at Camusdarach, it was evident that the weather at that point was no longer in our favour. We climbed the dunes and stared out across the sea to Skye and the Cullins where John advised me it was currently snowing. Hurrah. The clouds were coming straight for us at that point, but we waited it out, and while we got slightly wet and cold as it passed over us, perseverance was the name of the game and the calm, clear sunset you see in the image below is a result of sheer stubbornness to admit defeat, and a little bit of luck.

It’s impossible to make out due to the long exposure but the sea was actually rather choppy at the time of the shot, and yes, we did actually put the sign in the water. It was utterly freezing, but the resulting shot was well worth the frost bite. This truly is the diamond in the crown of the campaign.

The Highlands - Inverness

Two of the most iconically Invernesian landmarks are the castle and the River Ness so we wanted these to be captured in the shot. While there are a number of far more picturesque scenes within the Highlands, we also wanted to produce an image in the campaign of a Scottish city scape. The neon obviously works best in dim light so we waited until sunset hit and headed down to the promenade next to the river. There were a lot of inquisitive passers by which the long exposure cuts out, however the long white streak on the left hand side is actually a cyclist. The rush hour traffic on the other side of the river can also be attributed to the long, red lines underneath the castle.

The East - Fraserburgh Harbour

I really enjoyed this shoot. Again, like all the other locations, the manager couldn’t have been any more helpful. He drove us around the harbour so that we could find the perfect spot for the shoot, and we landed on this pontoon below. I had originally wanted to put the sign on a fishing boat but because of the slanting decking on the vessels we wouldn’t have been able to make this work. The pontoon therefore became the perfect compromise.

The lighting of the day was such that the neon looked completely see through so we had to wait for greater cloud cover to achieve a suitable amount of bright light. The gulls were swooping and screeching across the sky throughout and a number of seals popped up to see what was going on while we were working. The friendly fishermen and staff at the harbour really made the shoot so simple and this really was the perfect end to our adventure across Scotland.

With special thanks to Andrea Thompson, SPT; David Riddell, Locharron Textile Factory; Ellie Cooper and Sharon Burt, Achaleven Primary School; Caris Pittendreigh, The Highland Council; Thomas Boyle, Fraserburgh Harbour Commissioners and Louise Harris, Creative Scotland.

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savetopnow · 7 years ago

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2018-03-11 16 MUSIC now

MUSIC

Brooklyn Vegan

What's going on Sunday?

Jarvis Cocker is teasing something

Soul Glo pulled over on tour, member in custody, raising money for bail

33 artists we're excited to see at SXSW 2018

What's going on Saturday?

Consquence of Sound

Black Panther writer questions whether Iron Man would be as successful if released today

Pearl Jam unleash surprise new single “Can’t Deny Me”: Stream

SXSW Film Review: Eighth Grade Empathizes With the Confused Priorities of Middle School

The Big Lebowski Perfected the Art of the Stoner Noir

SXSW Film Review: Unfriended 2: Dark Web Proves the Internet is Omniscient with a Bleak Punch to the Gut

Fact Magazine

Ableton Live 10’s most useful hidden feature is its themed sound packs

Watch a short film exploring Shibuya’s dance music history

Regis releases Play Neutral mixtape on Hospital Productions

Trippie Redd – Confessions

Grouper announces new album Grid Of Points

Fluxblog

Hopes Or Holidays

An Emotional Sexual Bender

Straight To Your Face

The Last Year Has Been Kinda Rough

Radion Beams Casting Vibrant Views

Idolator

The Drop: Your Guide To New Music Friday Featuring Liv Dawson & Wet

Maluma Goes On A Sexy Crime Spree In His “El Préstamo” Video

Lily Allen Announces ‘No Shame’ Release Date; Shares Two New Promo Tracks

FLETCHER’s “I Believe You” Is Timely And Anthemic

Pentatonix Mash Up “New Rules” & “Are You That Somebody” In A Hot Cover

Listen to This

Ivan Wyschnegradsky -- 24 preludes in Quarter-Tones [Experimental/World]

whatever the horror - away [Alternative / Synthpop / Chiptune / Lofi]

LSD And The Search For God - Starting Over [Rock/Shoegaze] (2007)

Rorey Carroll -- Baltimore Jack [Folk/Americana]

Tweens - Be Mean [Lo-Fi Garage Rock] (2014)

Popjustice

New Music Friday: Vera Blue’s Lady Powers are still strong

New Music Friday: When it’s time to put Andrew WK at the top of the playlist it’s time to put Andrew WK at the top of the playlist hard

Important service announcement for anybody intending to travel on today’s M-Train

So obviously the latest CHVRCHES track is fairly incredible

Troye Sivan interview: “I feel more fully-realised as a person”

Reddit Music

Paul Hofreiter - Even If You’re Gone [indie folk] a song I wrote for my dad this week on the 10th anniversary of his death

Tool have (finally) officially entered the studio to begin recording a new album.

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry - Hank Williams [Country]

Cat Stevens - Wild World [Song with Lyrics] (1970)

Ghost - Ritual [Doom Metal]

Rolling Stone

Pearl Jam Unveil New Protest Song 'Can't Deny Me'

Neil Young Album Cover Artist Gary Burden Dead at 84

Hear Jason Derulo's 2018 FIFA World Cup Anthem 'Colors'

See David Byrne Perform 'Everybody's Coming to My House' With Stephen Colbert

Estate-Approved Whitney Houston Doc Boasts Unreleased Recordings

Slipped Disc

Do you give the first lesson for free?

A medical emergency at the Houston Symphony

Mourning for a classical record chief

Barenboim and Ashkenazy: Feel the tension

Jurowski to step down at London Philharmonic

Spotify Blog

Spotify Kicks off Women’s History Month with the Launch of ‘Amplify,’ a New Hub Spotlighting Causes & Community Voices

Spotify’s Electrifying Concert Series “RapCaviar Live” Returns with a New Tour Lineup featuring Migos, 2 Chainz, Tory Lanez, DJ Mustard, Lil Pump, and more

When It Comes to Sex, The Weeknd Delivers as Spotify’s Sexiest Artist This Valentine’s Day

Spotify Launches New Songwriter Credits Feature

Spotify Launches Good As Hell Podcast in Partnership with Refinery29, Hosted by Lizzo

We Are the Music Makers

Is a physical metronome worth it?

Help--how do I advance a show?

Real hihat loop packs?

Noob help?

Behringer U-Phoria UMC22 static/white noise issues?

#music

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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‘Miss Americana’ Review: Taylor Swift, Scathingly Alone

“Miss Americana” is 85 minutes of translucence with Taylor Swift. There’s more in it — and more to it — than you usually get with these pop superstar portraits. I, at least, don’t recall loneliness being such a predominant condition for Swift’s peers as it is, here, for her. Not long after the movie doles out a deluxe rise-to-the-top montage, we hear Swift ask no one in particular, “Shouldn’t I have someone to call right now?” This from a woman who’s famous — notorious, actually — for her squad of besties. Otherwise, it’s lonely up there. Even the man she says she’s seeing is a figment in this movie, cropped from images, a hand-holding blur, a ghost.

On Grammy nomination day in the winter of 2018, a camera watches from a low angle as Swift sits in sweats alone on a sofa and hears from her publicist that her perturbed sixth album, “Reputation,” has been omitted from three of the big categories. She’s stoic. She’s almost palpably hurt. But Swift’s songwriting treats hurt as an elastic instrument, and she resolves in that moment of snubbing, “I just need to make a better record.” And the movie watches as she writes and records “Lover,” another album eventually rejected by the string-pullers at the Grammys.

Along the way, Swift does a lot of ruminating and recounting, a lot of arguing and apologizing on her own behalf. She’s rueful about sitting out the 2016 presidential election and failing to mobilize her millions of fans and followers against Donald Trump’s candidacy. So “Miss Americana” is also about an apolitical star waking up to herself as a woman and a citizen. She wants to spend her “good girl” credit to decry the scorched-earth-conservative Senate campaign that Marsha Blackburn was running in Tennessee, Swift’s adopted home. Her management team deems this unwise. The team, at that symbolic point, is two slouchy, old white men who counter their client’s raging passion with financial and prehistoric umbrage. Bob Hope and Bing wouldn’t let their politics dent ticket sales 50 percent. It’s part of strong stretch of the movie that argues that Swift’s own experience with a handsy (and consequently litigious) radio personality helped push her off the fence — a passage that culminates with the most stressful sending of an Instagram post you’re likely to see from a star.

Swift’s success rate as an activist is nominal; Blackburn is currently enduring impeachment arguments with 99 other senators. But what’s bracing about this film, which Lana Wilson directed, is the way it weds Swift’s loneliness and her arrival at empowerment. That’s at least how I’m receiving her support last summer of pro-gay legislation that culminated in the video for her hit “You Need to Calm Down.” It teemed with famous queer people, and watching its partial making in this movie made me understand that she was campaigning not just for gay rights, but possibly for new friends.

Swift is revealed as being surrounded by men of different generations. Some co-create her music. Some oversee her career. Only with the producer Jack Antonoff do we catch a spark of collaborative lightning. The few meaningful connections with women involve her mother and a visiting childhood friend (Abigail, the wronged protagonist of the Swift classic “Fifteen”) — and Wilson.

Her movie proceeds in a kind of vérité approach. It opens with an adult Swift awash in the declarations of her girlhood diaries and rarely departs from seeing the world as Swift does, and I left it with a new sympathy for a woman who polarizes people. The urge that notoriously overcame Kanye West, in 2009, to hijack her acceptance speech at the Video Music Awards stands in for a national vexation. And all she did that night was win. It’s the winning, of course, that vexes. But the movie conjures up that moment and her response to the press immediately after, and you feel like you’re watching a foundational trauma. Swift was 19.

At the other extreme is a different trauma, normal only for the famous: Folks who camp outside of Swift’s Manhattan apartment building and shriek as she exits; who, upon seeing her backstage, tearfully come apart; who so adore her that they need her as an unwitting accessory to their surprise marriage proposal. We’re supposed to call these people fans. But the ones who turn up here tend toward the most disturbing adulation. She tells the singer Brendon Urie that a man broke into her apartment and slept in her bed.

So a movie about Swift — a movie worth watching, anyway — that’s seeking to provide a little intimacy should proceed aware that not everybody wants to be close. Swift has incorporated rejection and disdain into her way of being. “Miss Americana” suggests a tenuous connection between Swift’s wading into her politics and the Dixie Chicks’ being drowned because of theirs, although Wilson’s movie doesn’t have the force or clarifying intent (or material) of “Shut Up and Sing,” Barbara Koppel’s very good documentary about what befell the Dixies.

Yet, the most absorbing parts of “Miss Americana” involve Swift’s reckoning with the disillusionment of dislike — not simply other people’s but her own. When she’s watching footage of herself on a video set and says “I have a really slappable face,” it’s a throwaway self-deprecation. But it’s also a shocking symptom of the toll of her strange public life.

Her departure that day from her fan-barnacled building leads her to ruminate, minutes later, about the toll that level of attention has taken on her psyche. Swift confesses that, for some while, she couldn’t stand to see pictures of herself because she’d scrutinize rather than simply look; the scrutiny spurred an eating disorder. Here’s Swift personalizing the diseased nature of fame, a condition she’s considered with envy and rue in her songwriting, namely on “The Lucky One” from “Red,” a masterpiece album from 2012 that navigates stadium, dance floor and diary. (Swift philosophizes, at some late point, that stars are stuck at the age they became famous.)

A handful of scenes capture Swift rigorously refining songs for “Lover.” Occasionally, she senses she’s hit the jackpot, even when the result is a piece of pyrite like the album’s first single, “Me!,” a duet with Urie. Her elation over that song left me sad to have missed the moment she perfected gems like “You Belong With Me,” “22,” “Blank Space” and “Delicate.” We don’t see her working on the “Lover” track that gives the movie its title, “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” a midtempo number about romantic and national disillusionment.

Now, the title stands alongside her, like a guileless declaration. But it’s one capacious enough to appreciate the meaning of her music’s sometimes gnarled migration from straight country to the structural and sonic priorities of R&B to “Lover,” which is, mostly, a stable, serious, pleasurable synthesis of all of these sounds, proof that the synthesis contains traces of American music histories. Basically, Americana.

This documentary isn’t as coherent as “Truth or Dare,” the Olympic standard for pop-star portraiture. But Madonna had found a coherent persona by the time of that movie. Swift is still eking hers out. Along with her music, she’s evolving.

That’s a part of the documentary’s assertion — her creative and personal maturity come with a cost, obviously. But its most exhilarating disclosure is that Swift finds herself determined to pay it. Some of the new music means to amplify her politics — “The Man” achieves that with hooky, witty, pleasingly obvious pique. You can see a woman who, despite having once recorded an album called “Speak Now,” never felt it was her place to say anything. Wilson has captured Swift at a convincing turning point, ready, perhaps, to say a lot more.

Taylor Swift: Miss Americana

Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/miss-americana-review-taylor-swift-scathingly-alone/

#Entertainment

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blusocket · 5 years ago

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Late to the party but I have strong opinions and the vulture article is so WRONG

Me! - very straight, Brendon Urie is bi and there are lots of rainbows but unfortunately the lyrics completely outweigh this

London Boy - aggressively heterosexual, Joe Alwyn *was* in The Favorite and theres a subtle thread of camp but Vulture gives that way too much weight

You Need to Calm Down - this is an Ally Song. The video is cute but the song itself has the queer energy of like, the Human Rights Campaign, very assimilation-y

The Man - has fun gender play altho its image of masculinity is p normative, Jill G's summary as "written by the Woke White Women of Instagram" rings v true

Afterglow - I love this song but there's not much here in the way of queer energy, very ~universal~

I Think He Knows - look I know TEXTUALLY it's super hetero but "that boyish look I like in a man" plus "like I'm seventeen and no one understands" is soooo queer to me

Cruel Summer - one of my favorite songs on the album but only slight queer vibes in "I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you"

Soon You'll Get Better - the concept of trying to cope with a loved one battling a chronic, potentially lethal illness is, uh, definitely suuuper resonant with a queer experience, but this about Swift's mother fighting cancer and it feels almost disrespectful to read against the grain of that?? idk feel free to argue with me abt it

Daylight - coming out song, duhhhh

A Thousand Cuts - u-hauling ("a love...for the ages") and then rapidly falling apart, seeing your ex everywhere after a breakup, "our songs, our films...our country guess it was a lawless land" is peak wlw angst

Paper Rings - cat and mouse always feels very hetero to me but I wanna honor the potential for a butch/femme courtship dynamic there

The Archer - "I never grew up/it's getting so old/help me hold onto you" plus the whole song is obviously about struggling to nourish a love in the face of community trauma / queer hypervigilance

Cornelia St - lesbian drama, references to the West Village, delightful

It's Nice to Have a Friend - this one starts sooooo gay but loses some points for including a church wedding :/

Lover - lesbian anthem tbh

Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince - a) a "prince" w no gendered pronouns b) a fractured american dream closing in around a couple who has to run away together to protect their love. Plus Halsey (whomst is bi) has already claimed the role of the heartbreak prince for herself! Loses points for the narrator's "pageant smile" and being...not a fantastic song, but indisputably queer yall

False God - blasphemy! Cunnilingus! The West Village! Saxophones! This song is incredibly queer

#gaylor swift

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hemcountry · 7 years ago

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INTERVIEW: WHY 2018 SHOULD BE MEGAN'S YEAR

How best to describe Megan O’ Neill? Well, if you haven’t heard of Megan yet, the very first thing you need to do – maybe even before you read any further – is look her up and check out her music. And start with the Kildare native’s latest release, ‘Why I Need You’. What you’ll realise straight away is that you’ve been missing out on enjoying the work of an extremely talented songwriter, and a truly beautiful singer. Megan has perhaps been flying a little bit under the radar in Ireland, but as one of the artists on the bill for Harvest Fest this summer, she was rewarded with some well-deserved time in the spotlight.

In London and Nashville, however, where Megan has been spending most of her time working on her career over the last few years, she has steadily been establishing herself as an artist to keep a close eye on. You don’t end up performing at the famous Bluebird Cafe, or with a song featured on one of the biggest tv shows in the world right now, or working with someone of Guy Fletcher’s calibre, unless there’s something pretty special about who you are and what you can do. And Megan is definitely that: an artist who is pretty special. And I, for one, wouldn’t be in the least little bit surprised if 2018 turns out to be a milestone year in her career.

Megan’s latest single ‘Why I Need You’

Her latest single, ‘Why I Need You’, is simply as a beautiful a song as you’re ever likely to hear. It already sounds like it’s a classic, a tune that’s been around for decades. When I had the pleasure of chatting with her recently, I began by asking Megan to tell me a little bit about how she came to write ‘Why I Need You’…

“First of all, thank you very much, that’s amazing to hear. I was out in Nashville in May, on a writing trip. I lived there before I lived in London, so I kinda try to go back out there as often as I can and work with the same people. So I was out there this time working with a Welsh songwriter called Zac Lloyd. It’s actually funny, cos’ we’d been writing a real pop song that day, cos’ I write for other artists as well, I don’t just write for me. So we’d been working on this pop, dancey track, and I was leavin’, on my way out the door. But he has this beautiful grand piano in his living room, right by the door. And we were chit-chatting, as you do before you say goodbye, and he started playin’ these chords on the piano. I was just like, ‘Wait, what is that?’, and he was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m just messin’ around.’ But I said, no…we have to write that! [laughs]. So we literally wrote the song in like…fifteen minutes, maybe? It was just one of those times where it all flowed out. I was on the clock, but still had ten minutes to spare so we said right, let’s go back upstairs and lay down a demo before I go. We just thought we’d lay it down so we’d have it there [to work more on]. Anyway, when it came around to recording the album, three or four months later, we expected that we’d re-record everything. But we didn’t. We just left it as we had recorded it on that day. So yeah, that’s how that happened!”

Picture from Megan’s video for ‘Why I Need You’. Click here to watch the video.

The video for ‘Why I Need You’ matches the track itself in terms of class. And one of the things that really struck me was the emotion in Megan’s facial expressions in some parts, it’s almost like acting. How does she channel so much emotion into a performance?

“In ninety-nine per-cent of what I write, I’m telling a story. Do you know what I mean? I’m telling a story about an experience I’ve had. So this song, ‘Why I Need You’, is about my partner, and about partners generally. It’s not specific to my life, obviously. It’s about the love that you find in someone else and why you need them. And for me, every time I sing a song that I’ve written, I try to express that particular story through how I perform it. Because I think that’s really important, ya know. After you write the song, you’re kind of just the messenger. You have to find a way of putting that message out there. I think that’s more than just [about] the lyrics, that’s about the performance.”

Megan on stage at Harvest Fest

Would Megan begin a writing session with the objective of writing either strictly for herself then, or for another specific artist?

“My focus in writing sessions is just on writing a good song. I just approach it that way. I’m not gonna try and write for….say, Taylor Swift, not that she needs it [laughs]. I try and just write a good song and go from there. At the end of the day then, if I walk out of a session and I absolutely love, love, love a track, I’ll probably use it myself. But I used to, when I first started songwriting – I think I was fifteen or sixteen, although I probably wasn’t in any way decent until I was twenty-one, because it takes a long time – but I used to be really precious about my songs. Like, they were my babies! [laughs]. And I didn’t want anybody else to have them. But now if I write a great track, I’m happy if anyone can get that out there. I’m not precious about keeping it for myself anymore.”

Having been a student of psychology, I wondered if that knowledge and awareness plays any part in Megan’s songwriting?

“I haven’t really thought about that. I mean, I love people. And I love life! And I love recording the situations around me. If I’m out for dinner with a friend and they’re telling me a story about something that happened with them, or at work, or something that’s on the news or whatever, you get inspiration from those things. I’m not sure it’s necessarily tapping into psychology skills, cos’ I don’t even know if I have any left! [laughs]. I think it might just come down to reading people and situations, the way you kinda do if you’re an artist. Like the way a painter would read a scene they want to paint, ya know?”

Megan with fellow Irish singer/songwriters Donna Taggart (Left) and Niamh Lynn (Centre)

Going back to Megan’s latest single, ‘Why I Need You’, I wondered why she decided on it as the new single? And when she picks songs to be singles, how much thought goes into a factor like how radio-friendly a song might be?

“The last record I released [‘Stories To Tell’] which was in February of this year, I did with my band, The Common Threads, and it was something I was super proud of. We did it with Guy Fletcher [Dire Straits]. We were very specific about which song we were gonna pick for the single, and exactly because it was the most radio friendly. But at the end of the day, you can’t actually judge that [what is radio friendly], because sometimes a producer will be working on…let’s just say BBC Radio 2, and they’ll come across a song on the album and be like, I really want to play this one. Even though it might not necessarily be the single, or the most radio-friendly. So with that last record, as I said, we were really specific with what was going to be radio-friendly and we picked accordingly. And it got great air-time and everything, and I think any of them kind of would have if we pushed them the way we pushed the one we released.

With ‘Why I Need You’, my thinking behind it is that, first of all, I’m not with the band for this album,so I only have myself to rely on for the decisions. So I’m kinda going off my own instincts with this one. This album is different to anything else I’ve ever done before. It’s probably a bit more in the Americana vein than in the country vein in some ways, but it still has a good bit of country going on. Elements of folk, too. That First-Aid Kit feel. So yeah, my thinking in releasing ‘Why I Need You’ first is that it would break the mold for me. I thought if I release this track, which is really raw, that’s really stripped back, ya know, nobody would really be expecting it. That was my thinking. But also, I just adore this song! [laughs]. Yeah, those two things coupled together, let’s go with that [laughs].”

Megan outside the Grand Ole Oprys artist entrance in Nashville

For any songwriter, especially one involved in the country music side of things, the Bluebird Cafe is one of those venues everybody wants to perform at. And Megan has done just that, and more than once already. I asked her what those experiences were like…

“Absolutely….out….of….this….world! It’s the most amazing feeling, as a performer, to play there because you know how historic it is, and magical, too. It’s so small, but it’s always sold-out with people who really want to listen. You get people in who are really appreciative. Sometimes you’ll be playing a gig in London and people are too busy ordering their pints to pay any attention to what you’re singing or saying [laughs]. Which is fine, that’s a different market. But that’s also part of the reason why the Bluebird is so special. Yeah, I’m very, very fortunate with the people I get to work with when I’m over in Nashville. Some of the songwriters I work with are mega-successful and amazing people, too. So every time I go out there they always invite me along to play. But I remember going to the Bluebird, like, my first week that I lived there, and I remember seeing Emily Shackleton [‘Love Like Mine’, from the ‘Nashville’ tv show] and Tony Arata [‘The Dance’, by Garth Brooks], amazing songwriters. I looked at them and I thought it’s gonna be about fifteen or twenty years before I’m good enough to play here [laughs]. Or successful enough, ya know, to have loads of hits. So to find myself there three years later…dreams do come true!”

Megan’s Facebook picture proudly showing her name on the Bluebird set list

The ‘Nashville’ tv show has also become a massive platform for country music worldwide, and Megan has also achieved the distinction of having one of her songs, ‘Don’t You’, featured on the show.

“Yeah, it was amazing for me, but also to do that without having a record label or a publishing company was huge because a lot of times those are the very people who get you those opportunities.I just submitted ‘Don’t You’ to a pool of songs being put forward to the show. It was chosen by one of the editors, then approved by the creator of the show, Callie Khouri. So yeah…it just kind of happened. I don’t think I really believed it [that it was going to happen]. I mean, a lot of things can be like that in the music industry. When you start out, every time somebody says something to you, you think it’s gonna happen. You’ll meet this record exec, and he’ll tell you he’s gonna pass your music on and you think, ‘That’s it, I’m definitely gonna get a record deal here!’ [laughs]. But as the years go on, you’re more like, screw this [laughs]. There’s so many highs and lows, I’m just gonna stay in the middle and I’,m not gonna get excited about anything. So I think I just didn’t believe it until I heard it on the show. And then I was like, ‘Oh…wow! That IS actually me!’ [laughs].”

Click on the picture to get Megan & The Common Threads EP ‘Stories To Tell’

Moving away from country music for a moment, anyone who checks out Megan’s social media will hear some of the gorgeous covers she’s recorded, including tracks by Pink, Picture This, and even Avicii. So who does she listen to when it’s purely and simply to ‘enjoy’ music, and is she listening to anyone right now who she just can’t get enough of?

“I listen to a bit of everything. The only thing I don’t really listen to is heavy metal. I like to be able to listen to the lyrics, and I like beats and melodies. But I’m a runner, so I love going out running with dance music in my ears! And I love up-and-coming artists, cos’ that’s who a lot of my friends are. So I tend to listen what they’re doing and draw inspiration from them. The biggest inspiration for me at the moment, especially in the time of recording this album, was probably Ryan Adams. I’ve been completely obsessed, for like the last two or three years. I just can’t get enough of him! [laughs]. I’d been a fan for probably seven or eight years, but his most recent album [‘Prisoner’], I’ve been just listening to it on repeat since it came out, just all the time. I think he’s a phenomenal songwriter, an amazing storyteller. His use of words is incredible. So yeah, him, and Brandi Carlile, who’s also amazing and an inspiration to me. And First-Aid Kit as well. But I guess none of them are really country. I definitely think all of them have elements of country, but maybe a lot more Americana.”

Like myself, Megan comes from a really small little Irish town [shout out to Lusmagh, in County Offaly for me!], Ballymore Eustace, in Kildare. What was it like for her to go from there, to working with someone like Guy Fletcher, for example, of Dire Straits fame?

“Yeah, it’s always weird. I think you always have this expectation of people who are very successful and who you look up to, that they’re going to be larger than life. But first of all, I think I owe my family a lot, because my parents brought me up to believe that I could do anything I wanted to do, and be anyone I wanted to be. So I never felt restricted, and I felt just as good as anybody else. There’s always gonna be people who are better than you, and always people who are not as good as you, too. But, if you work really hard, there’s no reason why you can’t get there [succeed]. So I always had that mentality. But two years ago, right, I performed during Oscars week in L.A., I was invited out by J.J. Abrams and it was right before the ‘Star Wars’ release. So, you had all of the ‘Star Wars’ cast, and tons of celebrities, and it was absolutely mental! And I remember being there, on the red carpet, beside Stephen Fry, and thinking to myself, ‘What is my like LIKE?!’ This IS so weird!’ [laughs]. All of these people were probably looking at me and thinking, ‘Who’s she?’ [laughs]. But you know what, when you talk to a lot of these people [who are successful], and Guy Fletcher is the perfect example, they’re so down to earth and so lovely. They’ve been so successful because they’re really great to work with.”

Megan’s Harvest Fest poster.

Megan was home in Ireland this summer to perform at the first ever Harvest Country Music Festival.

“Yeah, and I loved it! It was my first time working in that manner with Aiken Promotions and I just thought they were incredible, so professional, so organised. Everything just ran so smoothly. And I thought it was a great festival. I was so happy that I was able to be on stage twice a day with Victoria Shaw and Don Mescall, that was a dream. I can’t wait to see Harvest Fest grow over the next few years and become as big as any of the festivals goin’ on in Ireland.”

Jumping away from music for a moment once again, something a lot of people might not know about Megan is that she’s also a marathon runner!

“I am, yeah. I did my first marathon in Madrid and I remember running along, and I’d lost my friend, because she had no time-limit in her own mind. But I was like I’m getting this in under four hours! But I didn’t realise Madrid had hills! [laughs]. And the last six miles were pretty much all uphill! I was raging by the end of it! I ended up running along with these two sixty-five year old men who were both in training for a 100km race. I was like, ah come on, you’re showing me up here, training for a 100km race and I’m struggling for 42! [laughs]. But yeah, I managed it, somehow, to get in in under four. Then I did London last year. Running for me is just a massive stress relief, which a lot of people find in different ways. But for me, it’s running. It’s my ‘me’ time! [laughs].”

Megan enjoying life and ready for 2018

So, last question time, and we ended with one that would, hypothetically at least, put Megan in control of the music business! If it was in her hands to make any one change to the music industry, with immediate and everlasting effect, that she thinks would be of most benefit to songwriters and performers….what one change would she make?

“Wow. I think…I think it would probably be – and I think it is going this way, and I’m thankful for that – I think it would be that payments are made equally through streaming. Like Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music. I have a lot of friends who are just songwriters, who are struggling to pay their rent even when they’ve had a massive hit with an artist. The artist has different ways to make money. We can go touring, sell merch, be brand ambassadors, whatever. We can do a lot of things. But songwriters rely on artists to get their music out there, to pay them. But if it’s going out on these online platforms, then they’re making pennies and not pounds per listen. So they’re struggling. That’s probably what I would like to see change in the future.”

* Megan’s latest single, ‘Why I Need You’, is OUT NOW.

Amendment notice: Please note this article was originally published on 22 Nov 2017 @ 03:38, the article feature image was updated on 23 Nov 2017 @ 01:15 with no other amendments made.

INTERVIEW: WHY 2018 SHOULD BE MEGAN’S YEAR was originally published on HEM COUNTRY

#Interview #Megan O'Neill #On The Right TRAX #OTRT #countrymusic #countrynews. IrishCountry #UKCountry

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