In March of 2015, Sufjan Stevens released Carrie & Lowell, and the album was praisedby indie music journals and NPR. In May of that year, a study concluded that most of the number one hits from 2005-2014 were written on the reading level of a fifth grader. Maybe that’s the reason I don’t spend too much time wrestling with finding the meaning of the text in most song lyrics. However, whenever I choose a Sufjan Stevens song, I spend quite a bit of time reading the Genius annotations, discovering hidden metaphors and symbolism that don’t appear until quite a few listens. “Should Have Known Better” is the second track on the album, following his invocation of the muse in “Death with Dignity.” Stevens recalls more specific, particularly the jarring details about whenhis mother “left [him and his brother] at that video store” when he was three or four.
THE PAST IS STILL THE PAST, THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE. As Stevens gets more specific on Carrie & Lowell, he still is painting a beautiful scene of Oregon, wrapped with geographical references. He’s painting the scenery he remembers when he went to visit his mother when she was married to Lowell Brams. Sifting through the memories, Stevens feels a guilt for not reaching out to his mother in her later life. He feels like he “should have [written] a letter” to her to reach out to her, but traumatized by his experiences with her, he tries to live his adult life well-adjusted by forgetting his painful memories. However, it was only through Lowell Brams that Sufjan had a chance to know his mother, as she reached out after abandoning Stevens at the age of one. Sufjan visited his mother and Lowell for three summers, but Carrie later succumbed to substance abuse and bi-polar/schizophrenic episodes and left Lowell. Years later, Stevens met Brams again and they formed a musical partnership, Brams owning the record label that would release all of Stevens’ music.
MY BROTHER HAD A DAUGHTER. THE BEAUTY THAT SHE BRINGS, ILLUMINATION. As the song picks up, keeps dropping metaphors and symbolism into his grief, but the major key change and the introduction of the synthesizer gives the song some resolve. After all, what do you do with the fact you should have, but you didn’t, and now it’s too late, but if I did I would have been too traumatized to move on? Stevens then throws the information, like talking to his mother’s grave, telling her that his brother had a daughter, and she’s beautiful. He’s telling his mother that even though things could have been better and despite all of the grief, new life is possible because his mother gave them life. Of course, as grief is a process of tricking yourself until it’s time to let the next part of it go, the song doesn’t end on a major note. Like “Death with Dignity,” “Should Have Known Better” ends funereally on minor sustained chords. The black shroud is laid back over his mother, and the listener is given a minute to grieve before the next track begins.
When Jonezetta released their 2006 debut record, Popularity, they dedicated the album to their recently deceased fifth member. Keyboardist Timothy Jordan II took his life in 2015. Jordan had been a promising young musician from Arkansas, which had a small but notable musical scene since acts like Living Sacrifice, The Juliana Theory, Evanescence, As Cities Burn, and others got their starts in the area. Jordan became a touring member of The All-American Rejects just as their career started blowing up with TV performances and bigger tours. However, just before releasing TAR released Move Along, Jordan announced his departure and joined an up-and-coming band on Tooth & Nail Records–Jonezetta. Popularity is a very dancy, upbeat album and featuring Jordan on the keys. Jonezetta never memorialized Jordan in their two albums. However, The All-American Rejects wrote the song “Believe” about him, and fans also say that “Move Along” pays tribute to Jordan, as the song is an anti-suicide song. The best tribute, though, is As Cities Burn‘s album closer “Timothy” from their 2007 album, Come Now Sleep.
THESE HANDS ARE MEANT TO HOLD. A few weeks ago for my after school ESL music listening class, we listened to Jack’s Mannequin‘s “Swim,” a song I covered last month. I called the song a per aspera ad astra song, a Latin phrase translated “through hardships to the stars.” The meaning of this phrase is that by enduring difficulties, we will overcome and become great. “Move Along” is a great pep talk of a song, particularly for a hard day. The video depicts the band going through a variety of hard, uncomfortable, or seemingly hopeless situations. However, the song begs the listener “keep . . .strong, like I know ya can.” Often pushing through the difficulty can make it bearable. Moving on to the next thing can distract us from the failures we can’t fix. But in the moment, that failure is glaring. Relationships end, car accidents happen, tickets are issued, fights occur–“days when you’ve lost yourself completely” are painful to reflect on at night. Certainly you want to redeem yourself or escape the misery. But holding on and reaching out makes us realize that we’ve all been there. Sometimes I’ve said, “I’d rather die than face what tomorrow holds” only to have something happen, like almost stepping in front of a bus, and I find myself instinctually fighting for my life. No, I guess I’d rather face tomorrow.
WHEN YOU FALL, EVERYONE STANDS. I won’t doubt that this song has saved lives and helped many people through hard times. However, I do worry about “moving along” as a blanket prescribed solution. The saying “Fake it until you make it” has some merit, but at some point you have to be able to say, “I’m not happy. I need to talk with someone about why I’m unhappy.” Sometimes we “move along” too quickly. Just like you shouldn’t put off other emergencies, dealing with our mental health should be top priority. For my mental health, I found that my close friends have gotten me through my darkest times. However, there are times when a friend is not enough. And that’s when it’s time to stop and seek help from a professional.
Sam Smith’s music is a musical cry for love. Influenced by Amy Winehouse and Adelle, Smith made a gut-wrenchingly melancholy pop-R&B debut album in 2014’s In the Lonely Hour, and followed it up with an even sadder, gospel-inspired sophomore record in 2017’s The Thrill of It All. However, in a turn of events, during the album cycle, the British singer began dating 13 Reasons Why actor Brandon Flynn and the two seemed happy in interviews and in social media posts. The two dated for nine months, during which, Smith came out as genderqueer, stating that they identified as equally male and female. In “Too Good At Goodbyes,” Smith tackles their psychological and emotional barrier they bring to a relationship. But as Smith points out these barriers, anyone with emotional baggage (or everyone) can probably relate to the song on some level. It’s damn hard to know when to open up to someone or when to conceal in fear that that person will use it against you in the future. “Too Good At Goodbyes” leaves the listener in a bit of a relationship limbo.
I’M JUST PROTECTING MY INNOCENCE. I talked about Troye Sivan on Friday, and while their musical styles are quite different, there are some remarkable parallels between both artists. First, both artists came out relatively early in their careers. Unlike famous LGBT+ musicians from past generations who often tried to cover up tabloid speculation, Smith and Sivan publicly announced their sexuality and even relationship statuses by their first full length album. Second, both singers proudly portray LGBT+ relationships in the music videos and even sing about their relationships. The music industry discouraged open discussion of non-heterosexual relationships, unless it was somehow fetishized by artists who could “pass” as straight (i.e. Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”). This is not to say that queer themes didn’t exist in music. Artists like U2, R.E.M., Franz Ferdinand, Third Eye Blind and Christina Aguilera showed or talked about same-sex relationships. Growing up same-sex relationships were pretty censored from my world. I think I was 13 before I was allowed to watch Three’s Company because the premise that Jack has to pretend to be gay in order to live in a house with two beautiful roommates. I was taught a kind of homophobia that made homosexual depictions on TV or in music seem dirty. There was the video played on MTV by the Russian lesbian group t.A.T.u. There was the “I Am Beautiful” video by Christina Aguilera featuring two men kissing. As for ’90s rock, my dad always changed the station when Third Eye Blind came on because he said the lead singer was gay. This was not true. Their song “Jumper” was about a gay man who was trying to take his life. However, he would listen to U2’s “One” and R.E.M. despite him acknowledging their connections to queer culture.
I’M JUST PROTECTING MY SOUL. A lot has changed since my Christian teenage upbringing. Growing up and becoming a teacher at a Christian school as I continue to process my own faith and sexuality, I try to reconcile what my parents taught me with what I’ve read, studied, and lived on my own. In 2017, my third grade middle school students (HS1, American age) started talking about 13 Reasons Why, a controversial Netflix drama about the suicide of a high school student. The actor from the series, Brandon Flynn, was dating Sam Smith, who was well-known in Korea at that time. My student asked me about the Flynn-Smith relationship, “Do you agree with their love?” I had to choose my words carefully as of the legal thin ice teachers can get into in South Korea for condoning same-sex relationships. I’ve been thinking about that question since my student asked it. The U.S. had just legalized same-sex marriage in every state, but many other countries, including Korea, wouldn’t recognize two people of the same gender assigned at birth being married. But this isn’t a legal question at the grassroots level. Do you agree or do you disagree? My answer is that I don’t know either person, so I couldn’t say if they were right for each other. Isn’t that the heart of the issue? Romeo and Juliet’s parents didn’t agree with their love, and that was a straight relationship. Moreover, a loving parent may think she is no good for my son, so those parents don’t agree with their love. However, those two still have the power and legal right when they are of age to defy their parents. Sometimes often parents come around. But when it comes to same-sex relationships, do you agree with their love? And if you do or don’t, who are you anyway?
Back in 2010 we learned that yes, a pickle can get more likes than Nickelback, a band that had become the most hated “butt rock” band in the mid-’00s. In fact, the conclusions of the social media study found that a pickle had more likes than Oprah Winfrey or other beloved figures. It turns out that internet users’ hate outweighs Internet love, or the terrible outweighs the good. In 2014, the most hated rock band would become U2 after their release of Songs of Innocencewas forced into every iTunes users’ library. People tried everything to scrub the songs from their shuffle. Today, people have mostly forgotten about Nickelback, and Apple Music no longer comes standard with that U2 album, so people have other musical axes to grind. Justin Bieber has grown up and is no longer blaring in our cultural continuousness. So who is the most hated band these days? After the 2019 Super Bowl it was Maroon 5, for taking to the stage when the NFL was in the middle of racial controversy around Colin Kaepernick’s taking a knee during the National Anthem and many other musical acts refused to play that year. Or is it the “rock groups” who take the name of rock ‘n’ roll in vein? Imagine Dragons (we’ll talk about them later) or Coldplay, who has garnered a lot of hate due to their pop sound and supposed generic sound?
THIS JOY IS ELECTRIC. “There’s not much to hate about Coldplay. But every time I hear one of their songs I kind of don’t realize I’m listening to anything,” my coworker once said. Many listeners have also come to this conclusion. In the video “Where Coldplay Went Wrong,”critic Frank Furtado, of the YouTube channel Middle 8, argues that Coldplay is the commercialized version of more talented, authentic bands more hidden in the scene. He also argues that lead vocalist’s Chris Martian’s avoidance of personal details in his lyrics make their songs mediocre at best. Finally, he argues that sing Viva La Vida, Or Death and All His Friends, the band has been virtually producing the same record over and over again, watering down their lyrical and musical depth in the process with the exception of 2019’s Everyday Life. One thing Furtado doesn’t talk about, though, is the danger of working with the same producers album after album. Perhaps Coldplay’s relationship with producers Brian Eno and Rik Simpson is to blame. Essentially, Coldplay is using the same ingredients and mixing them differently.
GOT ME SINGIN’ EVERY SECOND, DANCIN’ EVERY HOUR. Still, I admire Coldplay for their use of the recording studio as a musical instrument. Bigger than Coldplay is the production of Brian Eno, the producer that created three of U2’s most iconic albums The Joshua Tree,Achtung Baby, and All That You Can’t Leave Behind, worked with Genesis, Devo, Toto, and David Bowie, and scored The Lovely Bones–the soundtrack making the movie watchable. But for their latest single, Coldplay turns to a producer with a “Higher Power,” Max Martin, the producer with the second most Hot 100 number 1 hits under his belt, second to The Beatles’ producer George Martin. Starting with Ace of Base in the early ’90s and then writing and producing for the Backstreet Boys, Martin would score his first number one hit with Britney Spears in 1998 and then again with “It’s Gonna Be May,” I meant, “It’s Gonna Be Me” for *NSync He cultivated Katy Perry to become a hit producers, then took P!nk to the top of the charts. He replaced the banjos for EDM with Taylor Swift taking her from the top of the country charts to the top of the pop charts. He introduced the pop charts to dark R&B singer The Weeknd. The question is, what can he do with Coldplay? And if he takes them back to the top of the charts, is the concept behind their new album–an alien language developed since Viva La Vida complete with its own planet–enough to revitalize their career?
Austra-South African YouTuber-turned pop star and actor Troye Sivan creates a kind of infectious electro-pop that brilliantly celebrates love, acceptance, and sexuality. From my vantage point in South Korea, I saw the rise of Sivan’s career. With his debut album, Blue Neighbourhoods, Sivan could be heard everywhere in 2016 and not only was his music making an impact, him and fellow LGBT+ singer Sam Smith were starting conversations around sexual orientation that would have been considered taboo even five years before. My middle school students, in their free time at school, would often play Sivan’s music videos. “Wild,” “Fools,” and “Youth” depict a teenage secret relationship between two boys. Being a teacher at a Christian school and working in a conservative country where it was illegal for teachers to talk about LGBT+ issues at the time, undoubtedly these middle school students were trying to press some buttons. Still, with some of Korea’s own K-pop groups coming out in support of LGBT+ youth, it is certainly a different experience from my middle school days. Thank God for that.
MY BOY, LIKE A QUEEN. In Sivan’s sophomore album, he continues to write about love, but this time making his music less ambiguously gay and singing about specific experiences. Songs like “Seventeen” and “Bloom” and this song, Sivan proudly uses masculine pronouns and says “boy.” This was rarely seen in pop music in past eras. In the past, musicians who had come out either wrote ambiguously or changed pronouns in hopes of greater market reception. But on Bloom, Sivan bent the pop charts to him rather than editing for mainstream approval. And while some of the songs on Bloom tell explicit tales of gay love just as many straight artists get explicit with tales of straight or bi-curious sex, “Lucky Strike” is a subtle love song that talks about a pretty innocent crush. You could play it in a coffee shop.
A HIT OF DOPAMINE. In Kindergarten I had my first girlfriend. Somehow I had this idea that when you are school age you are supposed to find your future life partner. Of course it was just cutesy stuff, and by first grade I started to feel embarrassed by the whole ordeal. Then by second grade I had my first kiss with the neighbor girl. But with all of these early experiences, I was actually not on the way to a promiscuous adolescence. Other than a “telephone” middle school relationship—when you call your girlfriend after school for a few minutes at night before mom kicks you off the phone, my dating life was obsolete. I had crushes but was always too scared to take the jump. By 2014, 27 years old, I started looking over my close encounters with dating and tried to put together the pieces why I was still alone. I started looking honestly this time.
Yesterday was Children’s Day in South Korea, so I had a nice day off of work. Today, it was back to work, but a song I listened to this morning took me back to a few earlier points in my life–not quite back to childhood. I wrote about “All These Things I’ve Done,” back in February, talking about the conflict in Brandon Flowers’ lyrics–the desire to keep the straight and narrow path of his faith and the temptations of the real world. And unlike the bands on Tooth & Nail who seem to have everything sorted out (granted, there is a spectrum of Christianity rather than one rather rigid denomination–Mormonism), The Killers’ music is never resolved. “When You Were Young” examines the contrast between what you fantasize love would be when you were young with the reality of it. The person you fall in love with may not be the man who looks “like Jesus.” He may not share the faith and ritual you grew up with. “But he talks like a gentleman.”
WAITING ON SOME BEAUTIFUL BOY TO SAVE YOU FROM YOUR OLD WAYS. I mostly skipped over The Killers’ sophomore release, Sam’s Town. Critics and fans, too were mixed on the album. The band who had named themselves after a fictional band from a 2001 New Order music video and whose lead singer channeled The Cure’s Robert Smith, The Killers’ first album, Hot Fusswas steeped in New Wave, ’80s Brit-pop influences. However, their follow up was more influenced by Southwest Americana, Bruce Springsteen and U2 than New Wave acts. In college I revisited Hot Fuss and their B-Sides, Sawdust and I listened to their newly released third record, Day & Age, but Sam’s Town was too “Mr. Brightside” and not enough “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.” The exceptions are “For Reasons Unknown” and this song. However, I kind of forgot about this song until I heard a Joy Electric cover of it the other day. Joy Electric is Ronnie Martian, brother of Starflyer 59’s Jason Martian, and one of the Tooth & Nail old school bands. Hearing Joy Electric’s cover was kind of fun and a little bit strange, and ultimately I longed for the original.
2YOU SIT THERE IN YOUR HEARTACHE. 2014 was a pivotal year. When I came to Korea, I threw myself into being a Christian teacher. I came to Korea to shine the light of the gospel. However, the longer I worked for an institution owned by the church, I started to realize little by little that my piety was being used mostly to promote the institution. And more and more sacrifice was required “to keep the lights on.” The church connected to the private institute I worked for was dying. There was talk of the glory days in the early 2000s when students would enter the academy and get baptized and join the church. Now (2014) students only came to learn English. My team had had some success with the religious programs, attracting students, but when we got tired and didn’t promote the snot out of the programs and students didn’t come, the church members would call into question our faithfulness. The extra programs were on top of a 30-40 hours week of insane 7am-10pm hours, by the way. What was the final straw for me was when I had a disagreement with the director who kept admitting students throughout the term and expecting us to pass the students who had only attended for 2 days when it was clearly against corporate policy. I realized that it didn’t matter how much I sacrificed for the messed up church-company, it would never be enough. I became disillusioned with the religion I had devoted to myself when I was young. I had thrown myself into my job and my religion, and I never felt more used. I resolved to invest in myself from that point on.
Released in 2008, Florence + the Machine’s Lungsis a testament to a change in direction in what is classified as Alternative music. Alternative radio started favoring groups like Fleet Foxes, Arcade Fire, MGMT, and of course, Mumford & Sons, and more solid rock acts that had been become staples of Alternative Rock like Foo Fighters, Incubus, and Kings of Leon started fading in relevance. On iTunes everyone from Lana Del Rey to Rise Against get grouped in that category. My working definition has been, Alternative music is when bands or artists that stretch the genre of Rock music beyond the realm of complete reliance on the electric guitar. A secondary definition is a rock act that flirts heavily with another style of music. Linkin Park is an excellent example of both definitions. The band’s hybrid musical theory married hip hop and rock while using electronica often to overshadow the guitars. However, moving into the future, let’s drop Rock from Alternative. Some of the groups/bands/artists that define the Alternative genre today are not influenced by Rock music; however, they usually use instruments base their songs on other instruments than electric guitars and they also blend more than one genre. Case in point: Florence + the Machine, a band, who if they had appeared ten years earlier may have been revolutionary in the Folk scene. Lungs bases most of the songs around a harp and Florence Welch‘s soaring vocals.
A TOURIST IN THE WAKING WORLD, NEVER QUITE AWAKE. I will definitely come back to the shift in the alternative sound as the year goes by, but I’d like to tell a rather embarrassing story about how Florence + the Machine and a bunch of other Indie Rock/new Alternative acts came into my music collection. It was the spring of 2011, and I was finishing up my senior year. I would be student teaching in the Fall and graduating in December. But before I could graduate, I had to take a newly introduced English Capstone course which was a review of all great literature from the dawn of time to about 1960. We would take the literature section of the GRE, and since we were the test pilot, we didn’t have to receive a passing score. However, in order to study for the test, I joined a study group with a bunch of other Lit major girls. I had a crush on one girl, but didn’t want to ruin the dynamics of the group, so I didn’t say anything. This study group took place at two of the members’ off campus house, and they shared the place with two other girls. One of the housemates asked about me. We had taken some classes together. She was a history major; I was a history minor. One day she gave me a mix CD containing indie rock groups like Death Cab for Cutie, The Shins, Noah & the Whale, Mama Ray, Mumford and Sons, and Florence + the Machine. I loved that mix and added all of the songs to my iTunes library. I made her a mix of some songs that I had been listening to, Copeland, Jonezetta, The Starting Line, etc. that had comparable sounds.
NO MORE CALLING LIKE A CROW FOR A BOY, FOR A BODY IN THE GARDEN. Well, this mixtape exchange got the girl that I had developed feelings for in the study group a little jealous. She made me a mixed CD–all songs about rain. Most of the artists were pretty old. When we talked about music, me and her had never quite the same vibe in music. I responded with a mixtape (CD) of songs about sun. “Solar Powered Life” by The Classic Crime, “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, “Gimme Sympathy,” “Sun” by Mae, were all a few of the songs that I chose. I thought the mixtape was some of my best work; however, she didn’t seem to like it. Things got kind of weird between us; however, it was like the current hit by Katy Perry, it was hot and then cold. Maybe I was hot and then cold. Maybe she was. Anyway, one Friday night when the flowers were in full bloom on campus–this was mid-April, 2021–I asked her out. I don’t think I asked with confidence, though. I was still wanting to keep the friendship and keep everything as it was with the friend group. She responded that she thought of me as more a friend. And that’s how the friendship ended. I’d like to write a song about this whole ordeal and call it “Mixtape Emotions.” I was at the end of my Christian college experience. I saw my best friends finding love, and it seemed like something that wasn’t meant for me. And it wasn’t, yet.
In February I talked about my history with this album, how I first heard the song “Permanent” on RadioU then I heard “This Conversation Is Over” sung in Simlish in The Sims 2: University. I bought this album in hopes of hearing the English version of “This Conversation,” and did this album deliver. Last year, “This Conversation” was a go-to song for the hard days of dealing with supervisors who hadn’t a clue about teaching during a pandemic, but took it upon themselves to distribute more work to justify our teaching positions. In 2021, the worst of it may be over, but the occasional skirmish where manipulation and a power trip leave me speechless for a bit, making me choose my next words carefully. At which time, I usually say, “I’m not agreeing to that. Thank you for calling. Goodbye,” and hang up the inter-office phone. I have to fight back the innumerable words that could get me fired. It’s best to end to conversation, reflect, and try again after the ambush.
I’LL GRANT YOU ONE WISH THAT WON’T COME TRUE. Rather than talking about my crappy day and my enraging conversation, I’d rather talk about The Sims. I grew up only playing educational computer games. And for the most part, most of my childhood television was PBS until we finally got cable when we moved to North Carolina when I was eleven. There were a couple of games that I was allowed to play that weren’t educational. We had a game on our Sony called Chip’s Challenge, a game with hundreds of very difficult levels. We had a game called 3-D Movie Maker which you could make a 3-D movie with preset scenes and actors. Then there was the Maxis Sim Library. I started playing Sim City 2000 after we moved to NC and some of the other discount bin Sim games, but some of my friends had The Sims, a game that was not focused on building (and destroying) a city, but rather micromanaging an avatar’s life. But more fun than that was building and decorating your dream mansion. Then The Sims 2 came out with better colors and in 3-D. However, I started playing the game less and less and focused on practicing guitar. Building and curating a life on the computer started to seem like a waste of time.
I NEVER GOT A SINGLE THING THAT I WANTED. Even though I quit playing The Sims 2 before getting proficient at the gameplay, I am still fascinated with the virtual dollhouse you can create on your computer screen. I thought about how you could film your characters in the game and that gave me the idea to revisit the game to create a web drama with an original story using the game’s animation similar to what Red Vs. Bluedid with Halo. But what really fascinates me is Simlish, the made-up language recorded by voice actors based purely on their emotions. The creators of the game chose to use a made-up language to make the characters both indecipherable yet completely relatable as you see the situations unfold with your beloved avatars. The Sims 2 took Simlish even further as real bands and artists recorded Simlish versions of their songs. In different expansion packs of the game you could hear Rise Against’s “Savior” and Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night.” Playing The Sims reminds you that at its core, language is just emotion. Sure, you may not understand the nuisance, but if you listen to “This Conversation Is Over” in Simlish, you may come to realize that the song is about a breakup just through the context of the music. And while it’s important to eventually arrive at the right words, sometimes the basic message of “No, I don’t agree to that. Thank you for calling. This conversation is over,” is needed to buy you some time.
In 2006, Family Force 5 debuted with their brand of ‘crunk,’ rap-rock punk that was comical, dancey, awkward, and overall unique. You’d be hard-pressed to find much Christian Rock on Business Up Front/Party in the Back. Most of the songs are about dancing in the club and falling in love. While pretty innocent, it was one of the first times a Christian Rock band invited its listeners to the club. Known for their outrageous live shows and touring with the likes of Cobra Starship, 30h!3, Cash Cash, Breathe Carolina, and The Secret Handshake, the band took a stylistic left turn when they released their sophomore record on Tooth & Nail Records in 2008. Dance or Diehas much less crunk, more singing, and fewer joke songs. The band started taking themselves seriously on this record, but looking back, I wonder who it was for?
THEY TRY TO TAKE OUR LIVES, BUT WE WILL SURVIVE. Family Force 5 is a rock band, but in their live shows they functioned as a boyband. In 2006-2010, boy band music was pretty scarce from the American music scene. There was the Jonas Brothers, but they were more like Hanson than Backstreet Boys. Meanwhile in the UK, there was Westlife, and South Korea never stopped generating boy (and girl) bands. The sounds of Westlife and South Korean bands evolved beyond the late ’90s teen pop sound. The boyband evolution in the UK and South Korea, though, probably didn’t have much influence on the five “Kountry Gentlemen” from Atlanta, GA. The band members of FF5 had stage names and personas, nerdy music videos, and hip hop influences. However, the hip-hop would be temporarily dropped for their ’80s dance pop follow up, Dance or Die. Functioning as a boy band on their second record, Dance or Die was a somewhat more serious album. Songs like “Dance or Die,” “Rip it Up” and “How in the World” offered little comedy [with the exception of “Rip it Up” (The Pragmatic Remix) from Dance or Die with a Vengeance] and songs like “Get Your Back Off the Wall,” “Party Foul,” “D-I-E 4 Y-O-U” and “Fever” only containing exaggerated lyrics.
TRANSMISSION RADIO, RESPOND IF YOU’RE ALIVE. Ultimately, Dance or Die, a straight-up dance record, would not be the direction the band would keep. The band’s IIIalbum returned to the silliness of their debut, but lost a lot of fans with the lyrics. Then lead singer Solomon “Soul Glow Activatur” Olds left the band and the band just before the band’s leaving Tooth & Nail. The band’s fourth album, 2014’s Time Stands Still, flirted more with EDM. Eventually, all but two of the original members were left, causing the now duo to change their name officially to FF5, their long-used acronym. So who is Dance or Die for? It’s certainly not sexy music. The mullet wearing Family boys aren’t winding up on any middle school girl’s bedroom wall. The voices of Olds and company are more serious, but still sound pretty jokey. And yet, the amount of collaborators who came together for Dance or Die with a Vengeance is impressive. There are remixes by 30h!3, Cobra Starship, David Crowder, Jasen Rauch (Red/Breaking Benjamin), and guest appearances by Matt Theissen and The Secret Handshake. Who is this album for? Your girlfriend will probably hate it. It’s guilty pleasure bro rock, and it’s getting more and more obscure with age. Still, it’s kind of fun to listen to awkward dance music sometimes. Just as long as it doesn’t remind you of a sixth grade dance.
How is it May 2nd and this is the first time that Relient K has entered this playlist? I think Relient K is one of the most interesting bands in Christian Rock for several reasons. First, they’ve been around forever. Starting with their hit “My Girlfriend,” which played the morality police on a girlfriend who became consumed by Satan via the music of Marylin Manson to the youth group anthem “Sadie Hawkins Dance,” the band was a soundtrack to the I Kissed Dating Goodbyechastity and sexism of growing up Christian in the early ’00s. Then there was the band’s second act: toning down the tongue-in-cheek lyrics and heading to Top 40 radio, joining the likes of Switchfoot, Stacie Orrico, and other Christian acts being in, but certainly not of the scene. But just like Anberlin as we talked about yesterday, Relient K lost favor in the charts, and to a lesser extent, with the Christian scene, with the release of Forget and Not Slow Down, a record swelling with rumors of the lead singer’s unfaithfulness to his fiance, radio host Shannon Murphy.FANSD was the most serious Relient K album, and ultimately changed the band, and they were never able to go back to the glory days of youth group pop-punk days that started their career.
I PLAN TO TAKE THE RIGHTEOUS PATH. Lead singer Matt Thiessen has neither confirmed nor denied the story his ex-fiancé told on her radio show. However, the details that she gave were eerily similar to the details in the lyrics of the album. What did happen was we got a much more secular Relient K following FANSD. Whether it was writing credit on his ex-girlfriend Katy Perry‘s Teenage Dream rerelease to Relient K releasing the follow-up to FANSD as a series of covers to the questionable lyrics on Collapsible Lung, Relient K was hoping to continue their career in the spotlight. But the critics and listeners HATED Collapsible Lung. The album was musically incoherent, sounding like the album was a compilation of songs written throughout the band’s career. Lyrically there was just enough spirituality to seem condescending to non-believers and phony or tacked on to the Christian market. Song talked about casual relationships, which was alienating too much of their core fanbase.
DON’T BLINK OR IT’S GONE. “Don’t Blink” is by far the best song on the album. It was released as a single, so many fans thought that the band was returning to their FANSD sound. However, “Don’t Blink” would have done better as a b-side to the band’s previous original full-length. However, “Don’t Blink” deals with a theme that Matt Thiessen explores in their much better follow-up Air for Free–aging. Happiness seems to be located somewhere in the past. Is this a lament for a lost love, maybe Shannon Murphy or Katie Perry? Is it a longing for the success of their previous work? Is it realizing that you are no longer the punk rock kid singing songs about wishing that girls would just wear mood rings so they would show their emotions? The early 2000s had passed in a blink, and the band was now a completely different group of dudes recording in Nashville, TN on a major label. But it wouldn’t last. The nerdy-cool Weezer-listening older brother image of Relient K had become no longer relevant to the 2010s. And that’s the fear and the loathing that makes you think about how quickly life passes, in a blink.
Mixtapemotions 