Mixtapemotions

  • “Dark Paradise” by Lana Del Rey, Thursday, July 7, 2022

     

    This July, as many American have celebrated Independence Day, I think it’s important to look at different versions of the American Dream. Lana Del Rey‘s 2012 record Born to Die examines “the dark side of the American dream” at times. While America is starting look more like it’s Puritanical heritage with a little too much Flannery O’Connor and Homer Simpson pseudo-religiosity, the Northeastern secular world that Del Rey paints on her debut album seems like a world apart from a neo-conservatism. Del Rey’s America is the America of Hollywood. It’s New Yorkers who vacation Upstate in the summer and attend cocktail parties on the weekend. If they go to church, it’s infrequent and not an evangelical version of Christianity. It’s the America of the Jazz Age and the fifties.

    ALL MY FRIENDS TELL ME I SHOULD MOVE ON. But it’s also the America of Mad Men. Del Rey has been criticized for sometime avowing an opposition to feminism. In 2014, the singer said in an interview with Fader magazine, “For me the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept. I’m more interested in . . . SpaceX and Tesla.” The relationships portrayed in Born to Die are certainly problematic. But raising an issue with them is difficult because the details are often so over the top and outwardly problematic that they are hard to take literally. Lana Del Rey is clearly not a role model, but becomes one ironically. And all of this is filtered through another layer of irony: Lana Del Rey is a persona of the artist Elizabeth “Lizzie” Grant. And, while in persona of Lana is Grant, but it’s difficult to say whether or not Grant is Lana Del Rey under the makeup or if there is some cognitive distance between the two. Like with many artists, it’s difficult to crack the true meanings behind the songs. With Del Rey listeners have a layer of fiction often not imposed by other musicians. 

    I WISH I WAS DEAD. I’ve heard a theory that Born to Die hinges on the song “Dark Paradise,” the album’s seventh track. This is song is the chilly November rainstorm of an otherwise May to September record. The song alludes to the death of a former lover. However, with Del Rey, it’s hard to tell if this was literal or symbolic. The death of this lover, whether or not he were the same abusive lover sung about elsewhere on the record, propitiates the Del-Rey lifestyle elsewhere on the album. It’s the tragic backstory answering why Del Rey is the way she is. Today’s song doesn’t rely much on the golden age of Hollywood, the Beatniks, ’60s swingers, cocktail parties, the Jazz Age, or any other Del Rey trope on the record. Del Rey fastidiously studied the archetype of the heart of the trope–it’s the James Dean or Kurt Cobain figure who died too young, leaving the heartbroken lover behind to pick up the pieces of her life. Del Rey confesses that “I wish I was dead,” like him, but the ambiguity of being “scared that you won’t be waiting on the other side” brings her down to the ocean, like a siren, to sing the song for the dead. If this interpretation of the record is correct, then Del Rey does move on, but continues to live a life of self destruction continued into her next record Ultraviolence. Very simply, the song brings up the topics of grief, the possibility of life after death, and salvation vs. damnation. But in the context of the album that in ways sets out to be the next great American novel, it’s hard to separate this song from a larger context in that Del Rey is an American woman or that she is America itself in all of its idols and hypocrisy. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Demo 1: 

    Demo 2: 

  • "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind, Sunday, July 10, 2022 (Trigger Warning: Suicide)

    If you listen to Third Eye Blind‘s A Collection, the band’s greatest hits compilation, half of the songs on the compilation come from the band’s first self-titled record. The San-Francisco-formed rock band scored their biggest hits in the late ’90s, taking alternative rock stations by storm with their edgy lyrics and pop-rock that sometimes flirts with hip hop influences. The final single, “Jumper,” from an album full of songs about sex and drugs is the story about a friend of the band’s manager who committed suicide when he was in high school. In an interview with Songfacts lead singer Stephan Jenkins talks about how the song transformed from a lament to a song of empowerment.

    ICING OVER A SECRET PAIN.  In the Songfacts interview, Jenkins talks about how “Jumper” was originally “a noir about a guy who jumped off a bridge and killed himself because he was gay.” But the song doesn’t sound like a dark tune. Like most of the songs on the first Third Eye Blind album, catchy upbeat guitar hooks with Jenkins energetic lyrics masked the tragedy behind the song. The music video for the song further obscures the meaning behind the song. The band is playing at a house party. The video uses a contrast of bright and dark colors and is stylized with a speed-up/slow-down film speed. By the end of the video, Jenkins, at the house party, sings directly to one of the characters the video follows, seemingly offering him encouragement. Jenkins talks about how the song went from “darkness to levity.” The song about bullying transformed from a song about wishing you could say something more to convince a person not to take their life to an anthem of understanding that people care. 

    IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE ME AGAIN, I WOULD UNDERSTAND. Jenkins goes on to talk about how a new generation of fans coming to Third Eye Blind shows. “There are all kinds of races and LGBT couples” coming to the shows. But while Jenkins takes hope in the changing of attitudes that caused a young gay man to take his life when the band’s manager was growing up, Jenkins does admit in the 2015 interview that “there are a lot of backwards fuckers out there . . . including the entire Republican Party.” Which brings up the time that Third Eye Blind made national news for playing at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when the Republican National Convention was also in town. Many Republicans in town went to see the show of nostalgic ’90s rock, but were confronted by Jenkins’ preaching against major Republican platforms. For the song “Jumper,” Jenkins reportedly said, “We believe in tolerance and acceptance.” This was followed by booing from the crowd. Building a better tomorrow has certainly hit a snag over the last few years. While it’s not entirely fair to pin it all on a political party, it’s sad to think about the implications of what our eroding rights will mean for future generations. And with the regression in the education systems, I wonder if teachers will be allowed to tell the kid to “step back from that ledge.” Some Republicans have made it clear that it’s better to be dead than gay, and they use the Bible as justification.

     Read “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind on Genius.

    Official Music Video:
    Scene from Yes Man: 

  • “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God) by Kate Bush, Saturday, July 9, 2022


    At this point, you probably know a little about the story of how a song from 1985 became a number 1 hit in 2022 thanks to being featured in a key scene in the Netflix series Stranger Things. When one of the biggest shows on Netflix returned in May after nearly a three-year hiatus, a key scene featured the opening track to Kate Bush‘s fifth record Hounds of Love, “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). The song never topped the charts during its original promotion, peaking at number 3 in the UK in 1985, and was even banned in some European countries for mentioning God in the song. Today, you’ll hear countless covers of the song and hear it in TikTok and Instagram videos constantly.

    UNAWARE I’M TEARING YOU ASUNDER. Kate Bush is a name I should have been more aware of given how influential the singer-songwriter is on modern electronic dance music and modern pop. I think I first came across her name as influence when reading the music section of Attitude several years ago. Many British and LGBTQ+ musicians cite Bush as an influence. Debuting in 1978 with her first record The Kick Inside and her number 1 British singles hit “Wuthering Heights,” Bush was the first female musician to top the chart with a song of which the singer held sole writing credits. The singer’s path to fame, though, started when the young singer-songwriter met Pink Floyd‘s guitarist David Gilmour through a mutual friend. Gilmour produced Bush’s demo tape that helped her sign her first record deal. The two musicians became friends and even performed together 11 years after her debut at The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987 (see video below). In 2002, Bush sang with Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” at London’s Royal Festival Hall. But Kate Bush throughout her career didn’t care much for performing and preferred recording and producing her own music, only playing her hits a few times. There was recently a video published speculating how much money Bush is making from the renewed popularity of today’s song “Running Up That Hill,” and with Bush being the only songwriter on the track, the money looks good. Not bad for a musician who dropped out of sixth-form.

    LET’S EXCHANGE THE EXPERIENCE.  Like my aversion to New Order when I first heard them, I had a little bit of a hard time with Kate Bush when I first heard “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). But my issue with this song (and Kate Bush for that matter) is different. When I first listened to New Order, it was the old synthesizers that made me feel awkward.  The synthesizer on “Running Up That Hill” reminds me of that Yamaha keyboard in the garage that I talked about when I first talked about New Order. The synths on “Running Up That Hill” sound like something I would have played on the keyboard when I was 10, but that’s not my issue as I’ve learned to embrace that old sound. Kate Bush’s voice still needs to grow on my. I’ll admit it’s beautifully wispy, and on today’s song it so interestingly glides between the verse and the chorus. The transition between the verse and the chorus are so abrupt unlike anything I’ve ever heard before and if you close your eyes, you can almost picture Bush’s voice flying above the synth and bass, feet touching down for just a moment when her voice goes “Running up that” back up into the air for “hill.” I really want to fall in love with her other songs, but I think it’s going to take some ear adjustment. But that’s the fun thing about music: you don’t get it at once. It has to grow on you. 


    Music video:
    Cover by Placebo:
    Rick Beato talks about “Running Up That Hill”
    Live Performance by Bush and David Gilmour (1987):

  • “Chemical Love” by From the Airport, Friday, July 8, 2022

    Today we dive back into the Korean Indie wave with another song of From the Airport‘s. After releasing several singles and promoting themselves in the Hongdae club scene, the duo released several singles before their first EP, Chemical Love in 2014. The duo mixes rock and electronic sounds on this EP, mostly sticking to a formula of uplifting and sometimes inspiring melodies and lyrics. However, like on their prior singles “Everyone’s All Right” and its B-side “Raining” (which is also included on Chemical Love) and “Timelines” (also on Chemical Love), the cover art and some of the songs on Chemical Love evoke a dark side to the otherwise ebullient electro-pop rock duo.  

    FLOCKS OF BUTTERFLIES TRAVEL TO LOOK FOR ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS. Many of the tracks that finally made it onto the band’s debut record, You Could Imagine were the singles and the tracks from the band’s EP. Today’s song, “Chemical Love” is a discussion in metaphysics–what is real and what is perceived and how chemicals play in ideation, or how ideas are formed. It’s a pretty deep concept that comes from simple concrete lyrics that sound like, on a cursory listen, they were just a pat edition to an electronic jam session. While the lyrics of From the Airport may not be very strong, they always seem born out of the emotion of the song and that makes their lyrics sincere. On their second record, The Boy Who Jumped, the band experiments with writing in Korean and is able to express their emotions more fluently and poetically in their native language, the pure emotion that comes from somewhat “on the nose” writing actually emphasizes the instrumentals which seems to be what the band is really about.  

    THE STELLAR ROMANCE OF REACTION CHEMISTRY. Today a professor from a local university came to my school to talk to some students about the field of spreading Korean culture around the world. This sparked an interesting discussion in my office about if culture spreads intentionally or unintentionally. The professor’s presentation talked about hallyu (한류) or the Korean wave, which first spread to Asia and later to the West. This is a topic I’ve discussed before in my blog. I would argue that Korean culture has spread by paying excellent attention to detail of what has been successful with world trends in terms of production. For example, looking a film scenes and plots that were successful around the world, finding hooks and dances that were easily sung and imitated. But the comment in my office after the lecture was, “Did some rapper in New York say, ‘I want to start Hip Hop culture and spread it to the world’? or did some surfer dude in California say ‘I want to start surfer dude culture around the world’? No, but it spread unintentionally.” I don’t have any real takeaway from this discussion, and I don’t want to assert that one culture is more valuable than another. I find it interesting, though, as Korean culture continues to rise, spreading Korean language and an insight into a modern capitalistic, developed society. This is a country that loved English and spent a large percentage of their GDP to learn English, and now it seems that the country is reducing its focus on English. What I find fascinating is while the mainstream of K-culture explodes, Korean Indie groups are writing in English. How does culture spread? Authentically with a good product. Let’s start creating!

    Read the lyrics on Musixmatch 

  • "On My Mind" by Ellie Goulding, Thursday, July 7, 2022

     

    After her major breakthrough hit, “Lights” in 2010, Ellie Goulding became an international star. The UK singer has had a slew of hits following “Lights.” In her two singles with Calvin Harris, “I Need Your Love” and “Outside,” Goulding shows her radiance, singing bright EDM. While “Lights” remains her biggest Hot 100 hit, Goulding’s second biggest song was released prior to her third record Delirium. While that song appears as track 9 on the eclectic record, it was the film Fifty Shades of Grey that “Love Me Like You Do” is associated with, not Delirium. 

    WAIT, I COULD HAVE REALLY LIKED YOU.  In 2015, I thought Delirium was a great record, on par with Carly Rae Jepsen‘s Emotion. But in the years since its release, I certainly haven’t revisited Delirium as much as Emotion. Both records are long, but Emotion seems more cohesive and in retrospect. Delirium feels long listening to it in 2022. From the disorienting “Intro” leading into “Aftertaste,” listeners are introduced to an almost Middle Eastern sound that blends with synthesizers. This darker-sounding electronic music starts one theme of record. But then the third track “Something in the Way You Move” the album begins another musical theme of super-sweet, euphoric pop music. Goulding’s third record would benefit by trimming some of the redundant tracks and the ones that lyrically go no where. The problem with listening to the entire album is sometimes the sweetness is overbearing on tracks like “Around U” and the tracks start to blend into each other. 

    Photo of Ed Sheeran with arm tattoos. Photo by
    Eva Rinaldi. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

    YOU WANTED MY HEART, BUT I JUST LIKED YOUR TATTOOS. “On My Mind” was one of the bigger singles from the record, though nowhere a big as “Love Me Like You Do.” The song tells a story about a misunderstanding between two romantic partners, the speaker just wants something casual, and the listener falls for the speaker; however, by the chorus, though, the speaker starts to think about the listener romantically. Music critics have read “On My Mind” as a response to Ed Sheeran‘s 2014 song “Don’t.” Although neither Sheeran nor Goulding have confirmed that their songs are about each other, tabloids have shown a romantic link between the two stars and the details in “On My Mind” and “Don’t” seem to give more evidence to this relationship. Both songs paint the girl as cold and calculating, but “On My Mind” shows Goulding’s ambivalence. Furthermore, from the attitude presented in “On My Mind,” Goulding doesn’t sound like she was trying to fool the listener, but he misread the signals, expecting more. Of course we may never know the true story. But just a friendly reminder: make your intentions clear up front, and you might avoid being the subject of a break up song.

    Music video:

    Live on Jimmy Fallen: 

  • “Da Vinci Riot Police” by George Ezra, Wednesday, July 6, 2022

     

    Put on George Ezra‘s Wanted on Voyage, and you hear a modern folk-rock record with some pop appeal. Ezra immediately draws listeners in with “Blame It on Me.” Throughout the record, we hear sparse rock ‘n’roll electric guitars and rhythmic acoustics, but Ezra isn’t afraid to add keys or synthesizers for effect here and there. But while the instrumentation is good on the record, what stands out most is Ezra’s deep voice. Coming from a time in the ’00s when a high voice was everything for pop and rock music, George Ezra’s bass-baritone range reminds listeners of old-time music, sung by old-time singers who are either elderly or who have died long ago. 
    A statue of Paddington Bear at Paddington Station, London. From
    Flickr. Photo by Martin Pettitt.

    IN EVERY SONG YOUR FATHER SUNG. But then watch the music videos or catch a live performance from George Ezra’s first album cycle, Wanted on Voyage, and you see the source of that distinct, sexy, old-sounding voice coming from a baby-faced blond-haired, blue-eyed (and tall) kid. In 2014, when Ezra released Wanted he was just 20 years old. He began a year before, playing at Glastonbury Festival and releasing an EP, but Wanted on Voyage was his major breakthrough with the lead single, “Budapest” charting internationally, including in the United States. The title of the record comes from children’s book series Paddington Bear. Paddington has a sticker on his suitcase that says “Wanted on Voyage” when he turns up at Paddington Station in London. Like Paddington, Ezra’s album is inspired by his travels. For Ezra, his voyage included buying a European train pass that allowed him to wander all over the continent, exploring Berlin, “Barcelona,” Amsterdam, “Budapest,” and in today’s song Milan, where he witnessed something strange when looking at a statue of Leonardo da Vinci.  

    Statue of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan,
    Italy. “Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas”
    Source.

    EUROPEAN SONIC BOOM, ELECTRIC CHAPEL / BOOK A ROOM. George Ezra tells the story of the penultimate song from On Voyage, “Da Vinci Riot Police” while on tour in New Zealand to Vikki Anderson. Ezra recalls looking at the statue of da Vinci and suddenly a riotous parade started marching down the street with “flares and shouting.” The police showed up, and Ezra said that “da Vinci looked after me for a bit.” Besides being envious of how seemingly easy it was for UK citizens to hope on a train to Milan like New Yorkers can just drive to Florida to visit their grandparents, the story behind “Da Vinci Riot Police” reminds me of my non-European travels–particularly when I’m alone–and something weird happens. One minute you find yourself off the beaten path and the next you meet a stranger or you see a ritual that seems unreal. You struggle to think about how you would describe it. And after it happened, if you were alone, you wonder if it really happened or if it was a hallucination or even a dream implanted later? If you were with a friend, you recall it together, but when you tell the story, you can see the disbelief in the listener’s eyes. You’ve gotta be there to see it, I guess.   

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Crazy” by The Cinema, Tuesday, July 5, 2022

    The Cinema released two albums: 2011’s My Blood Is Full of Airplanes and 2014’s Talking In Your Sleep. The band formed when Indie rock group Lydia took a hiatus after their keyboardist and co-vocalist Mindy White decided to leave the band and form another project with Copeland‘s Bryan and Stephen Laurenson under the appellation States. Lydia’s lead vocalist, Leighton Antelman formed The Cinema with Lydia’s producer, Matt Malpass. 
     

    I WON’T TELL IF YOU DON’T ASK. On The Cinema’s second record, Talking In Your Sleep, the band features former Lydia bandmate Mindy White on the song “Punchline” and Copeland’s vocalist Aaron Marsh on the second track “Turn It On.” The Aaron Marsh feature is how I found this band when I was going through AppleMusic a few years ago looking for songs that featured Marsh or bands that were produced by him. On the audio commentary for Talking In Your Sleep, Matt Malpass explains that “Turn It On” is about how moments appear pristine in a photograph, but the real story isn’t quite as perfect as the moment is remembered. The music video for the song is strange, featuring what appears to be a lesbian relationship and its highly stylized, like an advertisement. At one point in the video, one of the women bites into a raw onion. When talking about track three and today’s song, “Crazy,” Leighton Antelmen said that most of the songs were written when the two band members were on “opposite sides of the country.” Malpass would write “over the top” pop hooks and Antelmen would try to ground the song in the band’s Indie Pop foundations. Antelmen also says that what sounds like it could be an effect on the chorus is actually three children singing on the record. 

    THAT CRAZY LOOK IN YOUR EYE / I’M JUST SAYING YOU GOT ME. Lydia’s hiatus was short lived, but the band didn’t return to being a full time band right away. Between 2010 and 2015, the band released some singles and deluxe editions of their previous albums, and toured occasionally. Since the promotion of Talking In Your Sleep in 2015 with release of the “Turn It On” music video and the Spotify audio commentary of the record, the band hasn’t released anything since. They did tweet a photo of demos from sessions labeled “LP3” in 2016, but perhaps Lydia obligations have caused the duo to go onto a hiatus about the same length as the Lydia hiatus. Today’s song is about what love looks like from the outside. It looks crazy. What others see as red flags, you see as red roses. In most cases “love is blind” wears off, and you start to see clearly what your friends and others see. But on the rare occasion, everyone else could be wrong. Either way, it’s always fun to play music journo when discovering an obscure band. Enjoy!

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "Lonely Nation" by Switchfoot, Monday, July 4, 2022 + American Dreams: Hope for a Better Future Playlist

    The Beautiful Letdown was the peak of Switchfoot‘s career. When lead singer Jon Foreman was reflecting on his career on The Load Out Music Podcast last year, he said that the band decided to follow up their most successful pop record with one that critiques the American Dream, a somewhat controversial topic with Christian listeners. The opening track, “Lonely Nation,” warns listeners about consumerism and how it just creates social fragmentation and a desire for more. “Lonely Nation” is the representative song for my Independence Day mix called American Dreams: Hope for a Better Future. This playlist is far from perfect. Certainly it needs more diversity in style and artists’ voices. But I hope that the songs on this playlist offer an alternative to blind patriotism. After all, patriotism shouldn’t be blind nationalism, but rather a peaceful discourse between conflicting ideals. In a world where everything seems to be falling apart, it’s so much easier to stand like the Danish King Canute who was said to stand by the shore, willing the tides to change. Maybe putting our hopes in music seems as futile as standing Canute-like along the shores, but we have to put our hopes somewhere! We can’t solve all the problems, so for now, please enjoy this playlist.

    1. “Lonely Nation” by Switchfoot.

    2. “Dead American” by Anberlin is another song that calls into question the idea of the American Dream. The idea about being a rock star and having a big house and all the toys is less not a reality, at least anymore. 
    3. “Cold Air” by Acceptance. A song about a community torn apart by prejudice, the song offers solace for all who “don’t belong here.”
    4. “Winning It All” by The Outfield. Although they are a British band, their influence from American sport makes them seem quite American. “Winning It All” is the kind of song that screams of American pretension, without actually being American!

    5. “exile” by Taylor Swift ft. Bon Ivor
    6. “Fourth of July” by Sufjan Stevens
    7. “Hero” by Family of the Year
    8. “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen
    9. “My Favorite Place” by Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers is a song about being content wherever you are because of who you are with. Kellogg is included on this list for his contribution to performing for the troops overseas. 
    10. “A Horse with No Name” by America
    11. “Looking for America” by Lana Del Rey

    12. “Merry Go ‘Round” by Kacey Musgraves. It’s a bit of an existential crisis for the young singer as she grapples with the meaning of life in a small town.

    13. “Firework” by Katy Perry
    14. “American Idiot” by Green Day
    15. “Cynical” by Propaganda ft. Aaron Marsh and Sho Baraka. It’s a song that looks at America’s past and gives a bleak look for its future, but it’s certainly not unmerited. 
    16. “Great Divide” by Lovedrug is a song about bridging the gap between two polar opposites. 

    17. “Futures” by Jimmy Eat World
    18. “Dead Man’s Dollar” by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness

    19. “Brother” by NEEDTOBREATHE is a song about reconciliation.
    20. “American Clouds” by Paper Route is from their electro-Americana EP Are We All Forgotten. Ending with a harmonica, the song gives the listener images of racing on a train or flying on a plane, looking at the vast clouds in the midwest. 



  • “Cool Out” by Imagine Dragons, Sunday, July 3, 2022

     

    The rise of Imagine Dragons‘ popularity coincides with my first musical famine–a time when I was so disinterested in music that I stopped keeping up with it. I can’t blame the ex-Mormon band for causing that musical famine because there was a lot going on in my life at that time. Like many college graduates entering the workforce, music gets demoted in terms of priorities. There are also shifts in musical tastes about every five years, and the music that was the soundtrack to some of the best years of your life isn’t relevant to the next half-generation. It’s how you go from a 23-year-old kid in your dorm room discovering progressive-shoegazer EDM with pop leanings to “everything sounds generic, and I think I hate music now.”


    I LIVE MY LIFE IN BLACK-AND-WHITE. Still, many crotchety music critics agree that there was a musical drought in the ’10s, and they cite Imagine Dragons’ status as the biggest rock band of that decade as proof. From the band’s first single “Radioactive,” they heralded a genre-less future of music. In the ’20s, we’ve had many examples of genre-bending to the point that many are calling genre a mood rather than a fixed style of music. I’ve highlighted many great examples of this from Thirty Second to Mars to Lana Del Rey to Gorrillaz to Anberlin‘s recent music. And for better or worse, we have to credit Imagine Dragons for the musical risk it took to be promiscuous with genre in the early ’00s. However, unlike the artists I’ve listed above, Imagine Dragons tends to support desultory listening. In 2012 and 2013 when I first listened to “Radioactive” and its parent album Night Visions, it certainly didn’t inspire me to go seek out what else I was missing out on in rock and pop rock but rather to listen to only the groups that I liked the most, and ironically, start listening to K-pop as I was acclimatizing to life in Korea.

    I DON’T THINK I’M THE ONE FOR YOU. I can’t write off Imagine Dragons completely, though. After college I started going through my hard drive deleting old files and albums I just could not get into. I do that from time to time with my AppleMusic collection too. Even though there are probably ten Imagine Dragons songs I can list by name because they are so annoying, think “Thunder,” “Demons,” and “Radioactive,” occasionally the band decides to forsake their bombastic, repetitive song structure and sound like, well, music. Today’s song, “Cool Out” is a love song about lead singer Dan Reynolds meeting his wife. Highlighting a more chill New Wave vibe, this isn’t the most standout track from the band. This song wasn’t a single from the record, and it’s the kind of song that shows why better third or fourth wave new wave bands like White Lies aren’t popular. So is today’s song the best song ever? Nope. It’s passable. And in Imagine Dragons’ discography it’s certainly one of their better tracks.

  • “Cold War Transmissions” by Anberlin, Saturday, July 2, 2022

    Anberlin starts to establish themselves as a potentially heavy band. The production on the track sounds reminiscent of the early-’00 sounds of Trapt or Trust Company, when having a hard rock song was the key to Alternative Rock success. Until Cities, Anberlin was on the path to becoming a harder and hard rock band, but with New Surrender and Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place started to embrace a more ambient sound, with some notable exceptions. However, with the band’s planned final album Lowborn and on their upcoming release Silverline on July 29th, Anberlin is back and heavier than ever!
    SIDE BY SIDE WE FACE EACH OTHER. Stephen Christian has talked about how feedback from Anberlin’s fans helped him to become a better lyricist. There is a significant improvement on the band’s next record, Never Take Friendship Personal as some of the lyrics on Blueprints for the Black Market feel vapid.  I’ve felt that about “Cold War Transmissions” in my experience of listening to Anberlin over the years. When the song first came out, in 2003, I was 16 years old. The Soviet Union had dissolved in 1991, when I was 4, so I had no memory of the it, but I remember seeing old maps and globes which included the Soviet Bloc rather than the modern countries. However, Stephen Christian, born in 1980, would have been more familiar with the Soviet Union, being 11 in ’91. Christian has talked about this song being inspired by his memory of playing Risk with his brother. Christian said that his brother would always try to conquer The United States, but Christian would try to defeat the Soviet Union. 

    YOUR SPIES COME CLEAN/ THEY TOLD ME EVERYTHING. Still, “Cold War Transmissions” feels like the rough draft of a song lyrically. Stephen Christian would go on to write “Someone Anyone,” a song inspired by the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. He studied and was involved with humanitarian aid in college and just before Anberlin signed to Tooth & Nail Records and even started a humanitarian organization while in Anberlin called Faceless International. But in 2003, nobody was talking about Russia like they are today. Former Soviet Union intelligence officer Vladimir Putin had been elected the second president after Boris Yeltsin served, who had transitioned Soviet Russia into a democratic state. But under Putin, it started to be apparent that Russia was only democratic in name only. Putin served eight years from 2000-2008, then Dmitry Medvedev took the presidency from 2008-2012. Putin, however, came back to power in 2012 and has served as president ever since. Russia under Putin made international news for the country’s oppression towards religious and sexual minorities, which continue today; however, when Putin commanded the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, it wasn’t hard to see history trying to repeat itself. However, while the annexation in 2014 was condemned internationally, that didn’t stop Russia from going to war with Ukraine earlier this year. And with Putin now teasing nuclear war action against Ukraine and those who don’t agree with Putin’s decisions, it feels like the Cold War never really ended.