Mixtapemotions

  • “Faint” by Linkin Park, Thursday, April 20, 2023

     

    Twenty years ago, Linkin Park released their sophomore record, Meteora. Throughout the band’s career, their sound would shift to various styles of rock music, but Meteora is not much of a departure from the band’s debut Hybrid Theory. The album did, however, embrace Asian musical instruments on several tracks. At the time of its release, Meteora not only debuted at number 1 on Billboard’s 200 Album charts but also set the record for the most units sold in a week beating Celine Dion‘s One Heart. In 2003, Nu Metal was the ruling dynasty and Linkin Park was the king of the music.


    I CAN’T FEEL THE WAY I DID BEFORE. Speaking of deluxe editions, you can stream Linkin Park’s 20th anniversary edition of Meteora–95 tracks of live performances, B-sides, and demos; some of which have been released like their Live in Texas record and some remastered tracks which had never left the vault. Personally, I don’t have fond memories of this record. I thought of it as a letdown. Hybrid Theory softened Nu Metal, making it more palatable with melody. The electronic elements, hip-hop, and aggression tested my stereo in ways music had never tested before. But the follow-up felt like B-sides of Hybrid Theory. I wasn’t a fan of the lead single “Somewhere I Belong,” which sounded like an exhausted fever dream of Theory, rehashing old themes without resolve and only getting more frustrated. The instrumentals on the record felt incidental rather than serving a purpose on the theme. “Breaking the Habit” and “Numb” were pop songs, with the former hardly reaching a climax and the latter feeling like the formula of “In the End.” I don’t completely agree with my initial reactions to this record, but at the time, I felt betrayed by the band I thought was the most innovative in music, a guiding light to where music was heading. In the end, I turned to Christian Linkin Park imitators like Falling Up and Red to give me aggressive melodic music.

    I WON’T BE IGNORED.  But then there was “Faint,” Meteora‘s third single. Beginning as a guitar track written by Linkin Park’s guitarist Brad Delson at less than a walking pace of  70-beat-per minute, the band’s rapper and co-vocalist Mike Shinoda sped the tempo up to 135 bpm and created one of the band’s most iconic concert tracks. While the lyrics deal with the common, early Linkin Park themes of anger, angst, and getting the courage to say exactly what is on your mind to whoever is causing your suffering, it’s the high-speed delivery–the hip hop and hard rock, the programmed beats, the feeling it makes you want to jump around your house if you’ve even had just one cup of coffee, and Chester Bennington’s growling vocals on the bridge–that make this one of Linkin Park’s best tracks. It’s songs like that that make it feasible to believe that a band, on their first studio album continuing was able to tour their own music festival, Projekt Revolution, bridging the gap between rock and hip hop and continuing the festival from 2002 to 2008 and 2011 in Europe. Today’s song is hopefully the energy you need to get through the week. There’s a time when it feels like you just can’t take anymore and then a rage anthem comes on. Sure, it might make some violent, but I think that the music serves as a release. Others feel that the world is as messed up as you and Linkin Park can commiserate. Maybe they can give you the courage to say what you need to say to the person making your life miserable. 
     





  • “Killer” by Key, Wednesday, April 19, 2023

     

    In high school I spent a good deal of my lawn mowing money on CDs, like many of kids of my generation and before. A brand new CD cost anywhere between $10 and $25, often depending on where you bought it, but also some retailers would sell lesser-known albums at a discount. On a few occasions, a band would issue a re-release and/or a repackaging of an album. This could happen for remastering with new technology not available when the record was first released, anniversary editions of popular records, or most frustrating were deluxe editions not available during the album’s initial release. These deluxe editions held bonus tracks, often a new radio single that didn’t make the original album.


    PROMISE YOU WON’T  REGRET. First, it is important to distinguish between bonus editions exclusive to a store. Artists have released exclusive b-sides on these annoying marketing gimmick, selling one edition at particular store, leaving devote fans to buy every edition of the record. While I think that this practice is predatory, I think that when an album is released with multiple editions from the beginning, listeners can choose which version or versions they want to buy based on the bonus content. For example if you have to choose between a live concert recording, an exclusive new track, or remixes, you can guess which one based on your experience with that artists.  Rereleases, though, trap listeners into purchasing mostly what they have bought before and don’t allow the listener the full story as to whether or not the record was complete in the first place. The first album that I remember getting a repackaging was Skillet‘s Collide. The 2003 record broke Skillet to Active Rock radio and with their signing to Lava Records, the band released a new version of Collide with different colored packaging and a new track, “Open Wounds,” which would be the band’s follow up single to “Savior.” At the time, I thought that the band’s decision to re-release Collide was the right thing to do in order for the band to get the attention I felt they deserved. But then they did that with their next album, Comatose, with the track “Live Free or Let Me Die,” but to be fair, Skillet did give fans a live DVD and several acoustic tracks for the cost of buying the album again. In 2009, Anberlin used this tactic unsuccessfully to push a cover of New Order‘s “True Faith” to the radio by releasing Blue…I mean New Surrender (Deluxe Edition). 

    THE ASHES OF DEAD EMOTIONS ALL COME BACK TO LIFE. In the streaming era, when music is subscription-based, deluxe editions are welcomed to our listening routines. Take for example how Taylor Swift wasn’t happy with how folklore ended with “hoax,” so she added the song “The Lakes,” or that Acceptance’s Wild, Free features three new excellent songs that rival the original ten tracks on the record. But K-pop takes the concept of the deluxe repackaging to its capitalist conclusion, selling full-album merchandise as if the original record had never been released. Today’s song, “Killer” by Key happens to come from one of those repackagings. Last summer, Key released his second record, Gasoline. The visual direction of the record followed the “retro futurism” introduced in Key’s 2021 EP, Bad Love. The album pushed two singles, starting with “Gasoline” and “Another Life,” with “Gasoline” being the only track to chart. Then in February of this year, Key rereleased Gasoline with three new tracks rather than saving them for his next EP or record. The new version of the record updates the artwork. Rather than the Stranger Things–looking album cover for Gasoline, Killer features AI-generated artwork–an animated Key riding a motorbike in what looks like the packaging of a video game. The new lead single, “Killer,” in my opinion, is a lot catchier than “Gasoline.” “Killer” seems to take influence from The Weeknd and ’80s synth pop and lyrically it seems to be influenced by several Michael Jackson songs. The performances Key gives in the music video and on music programs also seem to reference the “Smooth Criminal.” While there’s nothing deep here, it’s certainly killer production. 

    Music video:

    Dance performance:

    Dance practice:

    Comeback stage:




  • “Grapefruit” by Tove Lo, Tuesday, April 18, 2023 (Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders)

    I was first introduced to Tove Lo when the Swedish singer appeared on Coldplay‘s colorful, ebullient record, A Headful of Dreams. Track five’s duet, “Fun,” is one of the more subdued tracks on the record. Given that my mom and even my grand-mother love A Headful of Dreams,  I assumed that Tove Lo was also a “safe for mom” artist. It turns out that Tove Lo is a pretty sexual artist, known for flashing her breasts in concert, which to be fair, isn’t as big of a deal for her European audiences.


    WILL MY OBSESSION PLEASE DIE.  Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson, better known as Tove Lo, released her fifth record, Dirt Femme,  last year. Unlike her previous records, Lo released Dirt Femme independently on her own label, Pretty Swede Records. The album deals with the singer’s growth over the years and her marriage to Charlie Twaddle. But the liberated singer lays down some ground rules for her marriage in the second track, “Suburbia,” in which she Lo says, “No fake grass, no fake friends . . . . I don’t want suburbia . . . I can’t be no Stepford wife.” Tove Lo has been vocal about her views on marriage, and now a non-traditional view on marriage–Lo spoke with Zach Sang about how she and her husband choose to share a house with friends, living communally rather than isolated from her husband. One subject, though, Tove has never discussed in her music is an eating disorder she had as a teen when she dealt with bulimia. The memories of her eating disorder were triggered when the singer took a role in a Swedish film and had to lose a few kilos for that role.  The singer told AppleMusic: “I went on a diet for the first time in 10 years and it triggered so many memories—the obsession, the anxiety, being hungry all the time.” She wondered, “Can I do this without falling back into old patterns”? She goes on to say, “In the end, I did it and it was fine. To me, it felt like validation that I’d healed.”

    BODY POSITIVITY. The fun retro sounds of “Grapefruit” are certainly a bonus to this song about a serious issue. While, Tove Lo wrote the song claiming victory, even though the song doesn’t resolve the issue, many people still struggle with issues of body image. Of course, this problem isn’t new, with many famous examples of people who struggle with eating disorders. Singer Karen Carpenter died of anorexia nervosa in 1983 during the height of her career. According to The Bulimia Project, 1 in 5 deaths from anorexia nervosa are suicide. Mental health is a big factor in eating disorders, and that may be a reason for body dysmorphia. Today’s song mentions body positivity, which is a term that, according to BodyPositve.org, the term began in the mid-90s to stand in solidarity with those suffering from HIV. The term is linked to the Fat Rights Movement in the 1960s and its two following waves in the 1990s and the 2010s to the present. Now we hear terms like body shaming and fat shaming in online and offline discourse. I think it’s great that we’re giving ourselves language to be okay with our bodies in their natural state. Fat shaming was severe in the ’90s when I was growing up. But now even in fitness communities, we’re starting to realize that one person’s measurements don’t fit another. But even though we have language of acceptance, we still see hot bodies on TV and many of us want to look better. So we join the gym and count calories. But competing with the gym is the latest from Nabisco, in a new limited edition flavor. With some Easter candy left over and that new frap from Starbucks, it gets impossible to lose weight. So we get into this back and forth between our tongue and our abs.

  • “California” by Lana Del Rey, Monday, April 17, 2023 (update repost)

    Lana Del Rey‘s magnum opus, Norman Fucking Rockwell! was released in September of 2018 and earned the singer-songwriters the acclaim she had been laying the foundation for since 2012’s Born to Die. A year after her lackluster album/ collection of good songs Lust for Life, she released the first single from NFR, “The Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and quickly followed it with another single, the 9:38 song “Venice Bitch.” She began building hype for the record, a cohesive record using the Americana formula Del Rey uses best, a year before its release. The singer awkwardly promoted the album in October of 2018, 11 months before its release, at an Apple Keynote event. The singer wasn’t allowed to say the name of the her upcoming album or its single, which she played censored, “Venice Bitch,” as Jack Antonoff played the piano.

    Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post
    Cover,     Public Domain

    YOU DON’T EVER HAVE TO GO FASTER THAN YOUR FASTEST PACE. I remember a coffee table book we had, a warn spiral-bound collection of Norman Rockwell’s most popular Saturday Evening Post covers. The paintings are uniquely American, often slightly uncouth, compared to what would have been considered proper art of the day. Born in 1894 and dying in 1978, Rockwell set out to capture Americans as they were, sometimes overweight, showing full expression to a surprising moment, and in the common working-to-middle class settings of the day. He captured American life in the way that The Simpsons  or  Rosanne captured the American family when the pretense of the cameras in Leave It to Beaver  or The Brady Bunch had packed up and the family was left to untuck their shirts or have an argument. One painting I remember the clearest is No Swimming, a paining in which three boys are running with, trying to put their clothes back on. I stared at that paining taken by the lifelike use of motion and detail of the moving bodies. Viewers don’t know exactly what the boys are running from, but anyone who was once a kid knows exactly what they are running from.  Looking at this painting when I was about seven or eight years old, it made me feel a fascination I had never felt before. 


    I’LL PICK YOU UP. “California” is a song that made me think about going back home “to America.” I think about what my mom says when I’m back home: “We’ll do whatever you want to do. It’s all about you.” That’s exactly what a ten year old wants to hear a couple days of the year, but as a 30-something I think it’s rather sad. I feel bad that when I come home to America it’s such a big deal. I’d much rather just blend into everyone’s daily life, have a few lunches together, and be able to be “back home” a couple times a year so it’s not so special. I’ve thought about getting a job that would let me get home twice a year. However, now with the pandemic and air travel being what it is, it seems being away is inevitable. So as we come closer to the holidays, although most of the references in “California” don’t really apply to me, the song makes me feel homesick. It makes me miss my Lana Del Rey-fan sisters. It makes me miss my friends who show me around into the recently-transformed micro-brewery city full of hipster/redneck nightlife. It makes me miss my parents who make all my favorite foods. If I come back to America, I’ll hit you all up.

    Read “California” by Lana Del Rey on Genius. 

  • “Sun (Acoustic)” by Mae, Sunday, April 16, 2023 (updated repost)

    Between their debut album Destination: Beautiful and their fan-favorite sophomore record The Everglow, Mae released  Destination: B-Sides, which includes live and acoustic renderings of some of the standout tracks, songs that didn’t make it to the record, and demos that would make it onto The Everglow. The chorus of “Sun” contains the the lyrics  “Destination Beautiful,” making “Sun” like the title track of the album, and one of the the most memorable tracks in the middle of the album, and it has one of the finest melodies on the album after “Embers and Envelops” and “All Deliberate Speed.”

    IF YOU’RE WILLING, LET IT GO. In a 2018 two-part episode of Labeled (now available only to Patreon subscribers), Mae’s lead singer Dave Elkins talked about the inspiration for the songs on Destination: Beautiful. Many of the tracks had to do with a disagreement between Elkins and members at his church. Elkins wrote many of the songs, including the first track “Embers and Envelops” in hopes to repair the broken relationship. “Sun” also talks about this misunderstanding. The lyrics on the band’s debut album are vague and arguably immature compared to the subject matter in their more recent efforts, sticking to lines like “something happened.” No one is incriminated, and the song can be applied to the listeners’ own lives and is problems. Mae would eventually reject Christian marketing, and their recent efforts deal with band members’ deconstruction journeys and explorations into art, science, and hallucinogens.  The songs on Destination: Beautiful remind me of a time when my whole world relied on the opinion of someone at church. And listening back to the album, it seems that’s where the frustrations lie. And then listening to how far beyond that Mae has come, reminds me of how we all grow in self-acceptance as we get older. That search for approval seems trivial now, even though at the time, it meant the world to us.

    WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO STOP. “Sun” is the soundtrack to the moody weather of April showers, when days start out clear, only to cloud up and surprise us with showers, or a cloudy morning that clears for a windy afternoon before a weekend of rain, it’s a month of transitions. When life and the weather are in flux, it’s tempting to think of the time as a waiting period—waiting for things to settle down, “waiting for the rain to stop.” You’re waiting for “Destination beautiful.” But you go through enough of these waiting periods and you start to realize that this is your life. What’s the ultimate destination of the weather? Unless climate change obliterates seasons all together, weather is a cycle that will repeat throughout our lives, creating a kind of liturgy of rituals and practices. Yes, we may be working toward something, but becoming that someone doesn’t mean that you were never that person all along. It’s best to just try to enjoy whatever it brings. What’s the ultimate destination of a life but the grave? Best to make the moments count and enjoy the rainy weekend around the corner. 
    Studio Acoustic:
    Live Acoustic:
    Destination Beautiful original version:

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "(*Fin)" by Anberlin, Saturday, April 15, 2023 (updated repost)

    February 20, 2007, Anberlin released the album that defined their career. Most fans don’t remember the release dates of their favorite albums. As for me, I only remember two album releases off the top of my head. The first is P.O.D.‘s Satellite because it was released on September 11, 2001. The other album release I know by heart, as do the fans of Anberlin, is Cities. Anberlin fans call February 20th “Cities Day,” still to this day. In the five years that I’ve been doing this playlist project, I’ve celebrated Cities with a different track. In 2019, it was “A Whisper & A Clamour.” In 2020, it was “Hello Alone,” as I dealt with the depression of what looked like Armageddon. I wrote about “Godspeed” in November of 2022–that year I wrote about “Dismantle.Repair.” and this year I used “Godspeed” as a jumping off point for discussing the entire album. In 2021, I wrote about the album’s closer, “(*Fin).” The themes of spiritual abuse in the song are, unfortunately, as relevant as when it was released. This is what I wrote about it back in 2021:


    WE’RE NOT QUESTIONING GOD, JUST THOSE HE CHOSE TO CARRY HIS CROSS. Everyone remembers 2015 when #MeToo swept the world. Victims of sexual abuse used this platform to call out not only those who wronged them, but also the systems in place that both allowed and enabled sexual abuse to happen. Shortly after #MeToo’s popularity, #ChurchToo and #SilenceIsNotSpiritual appeared as a platform for people of faith both currently practicing and no longer practicing to call out spiritual leaders who had abused their power. Little by little society has become more educated about abuse, and not only sexual abuse. I’m not a survivor of sexual abuse, but I think it’s time to start taking spiritual abuse quite seriously. WebMD defines spiritual abuse as “Any attempt to exert power and control over someone using religion, faith, or beliefs.” Last year when I started listening to the You Have Permission podcast, I was able to put a name to the trauma I experienced in the name of religion. 
    THE UNHOLY GHOST DOESN’T TELL MARY AND WILLIAM EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR. Like white supremacy and misogyny, spiritual abuse is embedded in the church so much so that people can fairly call the whole system abuse. Readers of the Bible are not without textual evidence that the clergy have used for almost 2,000 years to extort money or manipulate followers to do things that they would otherwise not do and threatening hell to those who don’t believe or do. It’s a tale as old as Western culture itself of the child molesting preacher or the “do as I say, not as I do” cult leader who manipulates believers into bed. But it’s deeper than that. It’s the belief that’s taught that your church is the only correct one, and all who stop attending are lost. My church taught that non-believers weren’t going to burn for an eternity in hell, but if they left they were talked about in such a judgmental way that I was always scared to leave the system. “Jesus gave it all for you, don’t you think you should give or do _______,” was the final persuasion point of sermons. I mean, how can a child say no to doing that for Jesus. Finally, there may have not been eternal hell, but there was certainly the end times to keep you up at night. And as a further manipulation tactic, we were taught that no one knows who will be saved until the very end. So you better watch out, you better not pout, you better not cry, I’m telling you why…Jesus is coming, and you’ll only have to endure being hunted down and watch your family members be killed in front of you and if you love something or someone too much, you’ll be too attached to the world in order to be saved, they you can’t be resurrected and live forever with God. “

    TAKE WHAT YOU WILL, WHAT YOU WILL “(*Fin)” is a song for processing these feelings. Lead singer Stephen Christian has sorted out his beliefs, and now serves as a pastor in central Florida. But not everyone has or will. The cliche is that Christians can write songs in minor keys, but they must end on a major chord. This song ends Anberlin’s darkest album on a major chord, but I’m not sure if the question is really answered. I’ve gone through several iterations of my own faith, and still, I feel that the question isn’t answered. Stephen Christian is now a pastor in Florida when he’s not signing in Anberlin or Anchor & Braille. His own father was a pastor, the stories in (*Fin) have to do with his constant moving around as a child and the strange teachings he heard in church. So is this a story of continuing the system of abuse or dismantling and repairing it. I hope that it’s the latter.





  • "Unholy" by Sam Smith ft. Kim Petras, Friday, April 14, 2023 (updated repost)

     

    Between cleaning up at the 2015 Grammy Awards for In the Lonely Hour and 2020’s Love Goes, Sam Smith‘s music lost momentum with listeners. Of course, a lot has happened to the singer since then. In 2015, Smith was an openly gay Grammy-winning artist. In 2019, the singer came out as non-binary, telling the BBC, “I do think like a woman sometimes, in my head. Sometimes I’ve questioned, ‘Do I want a sex change?’” Since coming out as non-binary, the singer has embraced both the masculine and the feminine in their videos, concerts, and album promotions. Not only did the singer’s sexuality evolve, but also their musical versatility, from a gospel-inspired second record (The Thrill of It All), a Bond theme (“Writing’s on the Wall“), featured in a Calvin Harris track (“Promises“), a dance-pop record in 2020–nothing seemed beyond the scope of the singer, though never they quite matching the success of In the Lonely Hour.

    MUMMY DON’T KNOW DADDY’S GETTING HOT AT THE BODY SHOP. “Unholy” was the lead single from Sam Smith’s fourth record, Gloria. It’s a shocking song and video that made our friends over at PluggedIn call it “next-level vile.” Writing about the song before the context of the music video, and taking the lyrics of the song quite literally as a “celebratory tone used to praise a man for lying to his wife, ignoring his children and visiting a prostitute whenever he so pleases,” the critic Kristin Smith lambastes the song. And even though Smith correctly points out the literal message of the song, it seems that there’s something else going on. But because our dear friends at Focus on the Family didn’t have the video at the time of the review, let’s start there. The video (see below) is truly an avant-garde statement complete with an introduction, elaborate costumes, and a Cabaret–styled dance sequence. The Body Shop scenes–a dinner-theater-styled sex club–aren’t too graphic to be censored on YouTube, but the viewers certainly get the idea about what is happening at this club, which is MC’ed by Smith. Famed Italian-Canadian music video and film director Floria Sigismondi directed “Unholy.” She has directed videos for Marylin Manson, The White Stripes, Katy Perry, and other artists as well as directing episodes of The Handmaiden’s Tale and American Gods. 

    DIRTY, DIRTY BOY. The experience for the viewer entering “The Body Shop” is not unlike watching two newlyweds whose car has broken down in front of a Victorian mansion in the 1973 cult classic musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Tim Curry as the “Sweet Transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania” beckons Brad and Janet: “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure.” While The Rocky Horror Picture Show is still shocking today to the Focus on the Family types and even caused my parents to mutter about Tim Curry when my sisters and I watched Muppet Treasure Island and later  Clue. But even some conservative types can see the artistic merit of doing the “Time Warp.” Fast forward to 2022 and 2023 when Smith and Kim Petras performed the song at the Grammy’s, we can ask the question about the artistic merit of “Unholy” and whether or not it meets its goals to promote a conversation. I can think of several merits, though I’m not sure that these are intentional statements. Both statements have to deal with sexuality and sexual/gender identity. In some ways, the video is styled like a sexy hip-hop video–singer Kim Petras acting as the featured singer. Smith is not rapping, but the lines feel like rapping. The video subverts the homo- and transphobia in hip-hop’s past. The video features dancers who are trans, non-binary, and sis-gendered, showing the spectrum that gender can display. And that’s the first point I think the video is making: that gender fluidity is shocking to many these days, but it’s ultimately something we have to come to understand. Drag and alternative gender expressions were once kept in very specific spaces–“The Body Shop,” for example, where people go to have a good time whether or not they are hiding their true identity from the world or even their spouses. Now alternative gender expressions are hitting mainstream culture–even among straight-cis-identifying men like Timothée Chalamet wearing a red dress to the film premiere of Bones and All and Harry Styles wearing a blouse.  Trans and non-binary people are becoming more visible, and it’s creating a backlash among the vocal Evangelical few. The second point I make is the right to exist. In a democratic society, why should the rights of one religion be valued above the rights of other religions and non-religious folks? Pride parades were designed to shock onlookers, to show everyone that the LGBTQ+ community exists and that in a free society, people shouldn’t have to apologize for their existence. When I first wrote about this song, I pointed out that the possibly intended point that the song makes is the hypocrisy of a man having an affair at a sex club and how many repressed conservative Evangelicals and politicians fall into this trap. However, no matter how the so-called “Gay Agenda” is packaged, even if it is as innocuous as a monogamous, churchgoing lesbian couple in a small town on a primetime show, Evangelicals are hell-bound to push their agenda for a closeted to a conversion camp existence for anyone outside of the bounds of a monogamous opposite-sexed marriage. Many in the LGBTQ+ community grew up around this religion. They were told that if they embraced themselves fully, they would go to hell. This has scared many for generations into the closet, into unfulfilling lives. What’s the other choice, but to be “Unholy”?


    lyric video:

    music video: 

    Read “Unholy” by Sam Smith & Kim Petras on Genius.

  • “this is me trying” by Taylor Swift, Thursday, April 13, 2023

     

    Taylor Swift is in the gossip columns again, but this time it feels less invasive. On April 8th, the story broke that Swift and six-year partner, English actor Joe Alwyn split. The once media-deemed serial dater held her longest relationship with Alwyn, and there had been rumors that the two had held a private wedding. Swift and Alwyn began dating around the time when the singer went into semi-seclusion following the critical backlash from her 2017 record, reputation. 

    I’VE BEEN HAVING A HARD TIME ADJUSTING. Unlike previous relationships, Taylor Swift worked especially hard to keep the details of her romance with Joe Alwyn out the public. Two years after reputation, Swift released Lover, a mature record that dealt with the joys of being in a relationship on many of the tracks. Love empowered Swift to return to her fans with a stadium tour, but the pandemic canceled those plans. And Swifties and general music fans have the pandemic to thank for the songwriting and production of Swift’s eighth and ninth studio records, folklore and evermore. And on folklore, Swift collaborated with Alwyn who contributed to the songwriting on several of the tracks, including today’s track, “this is me trying.” Like many of the songs on folklore, the song seems to have some autobiographical details, but ultimately feels like Swift is writing about a character who she merely relates to, though not fully. The Jack Antonoff-produced track starts off melancholy but the refrain. The listener is bogged down with the troubles the speaker lists, and it convinces the listener that the speaker indeed has struggles, whether it is of addiction, fear of failure, or isolation in a relationship. And the refrain “This is me trying” seems like enough.

    AT LEAST I’M TRYING. When folklore was released, Joe Alwyn used the pseudonym William Bowery to hide his identity from the press and fans. When Swift dated Calvin Harris in 2015, she also used a pseudonym to throw off the press when she co-wrote the hit “This Is What You Came For.” Harris, however, leaked the secret. Swift learned from her mistakes and media missteps, so it seemed that Alwyn was “the 1.” The specific details of the break up haven’t yet been confirmed. However, as highlighted by the recent Eras Tour, Swift is an artist whose career changes in cycles. A teenager whose star kept rising culminated in her mid-twenties with pop stardom, a laidback alternative singer-songwriter in her early thirties, and back to pop stardom by her mid-thirties, Swift can do anything. But she needs a man who can keep up with her, who can adapt to different phases in her career. Love takes effort from both parties. The pandemic made many of us question our life decisions. We hunkered down, maybe with someone we love. Maybe we got out of shape for the rest of the world. But at some time it was time to get out of that rut. The question is, is the person that you were with when the world felt like it was ending the person you want to be with when the world feels like it’s starting again? Maybe you tried and tried to make it work, and you made it through the transition. That’s great. However, others put in just as much effort and found that the relationship was lacking. If you put in your whole effort into the relationship and it still didn’t work out, at least you tried and you know something about yourself.





  • “Your Love Goes On” by Abandon, Wednesday, April 12, 2023

    In 2011, San Antonio-based Christian Rock band Abandon released their third record, Control. This was the band’s second release on ForeFront Records, a label that had been forefront in the Christian music scene in the ’90s, releasing albums by dc talk, Audio Adrenaline, and Rebecca St. James. But after the label’s success with Stacie Orrico, it seemed that the success of other Christian labels like Tooth & Nail Records was eclipsing the once legendary record label.


    I’M LIKE EVERYONE LIVING IN A QUICK-FIX NATION. Before ForeFront Records was absorbed completely by its parent label, Capitol Christian Music Group, the label had a few last-ditch efforts to produce rock in the ’00s. The early ’00s gave them the “two-album wonder” The Benjamin Gate and a few head-scratching hip-hop projects. In 2007, the label released the debut record from This Beautiful Republic, a band that seemed to be the label’s answer to Anberlin and the success Christian bands were finding in the Warped Tour scene. But This Beautiful Republic lost their energetic lead singer Ben Olin when stepped down from his role after recording their second record. The band broke up shortly after Perspectives‘ release in 2008. Meanwhile, Abandon seemed like the label’s next big thing, particularly because they could be marketed to Christian Hit Radio and Christian Rock radio in a similar way that the label’s bread-and-butter act TobyMac was marketed. In early 2011, several hits were released on Air1 and RadioU. The mellower singles were played on Christian Hit Radio and the alternative and rock singles were played on RadioU.

    YOU’RE DESPERATE TO BE NEAR ME. A major difference between a Tooth & Nail band and any other label’s Christian Rock band is that Tooth & Nail’s sounds more general market than, say ForeFront or Flicker Records’.  Abandon fit the niche of the pop-rock band, so a Tooth & Nail comparison might be Capital Lights. Christian versions of Imagine Dragons/ OneRepublic bands didn’t do as well in the late ’00s and early ’10s, and Capital Lights quit after two records. But listening to Capital Lights and Abandon back to back, you realize that the formal is completely different when it comes to lyrics. With Capital Lights, only one song on the album will mention God or something spiritual, whereas on an Abandon record, you’ll have multiple nods to God in most of the tracks. The songs aren’t exactly worship, but there is little ambiguity about the topic, and non-Christians find it harder to relate to the songs. In 2011, Christian music was starting to sound stale. Worship music was engulfing bands, and my tolerance for the lack of originality pushed me to listen to less overtly Christian music. Abandon’s Control was in my CD player for about a month, April 2011, before the tornado, back when it seemed that my Christian world view I had constructed with the help of my fundamentalist university felt so solid. And yet, I really couldn’t admit that it was the handsome men on the cover of the album was the real reason I wasted $18 on the CD.

  • “Colliding by Design" by Acceptance, Tuesday, April 11, 2023

     

    One memorable scene in Dante’s Inferno depicts two lovers tormented in the second layer of hell. The lovers in the second layer have been sent to hell for their lust, and as a punishment, they must blow in an unrelenting wind, possibly symbolizing their lust on earth and their lack of commitment to one partner. Two lovers, though, continuously blow past each other, touching for a second at a time before they blow in opposite directions.  

    BREATHING IS SO HARD IT HURTS. No, the title track from Acceptance‘s sophomore record, Colliding by Design, is not about eternal conscious torment, but there is something hellish about unrequited love. The production sounds show us what we could have expected to hear on the radio if the band had been afforded the opportunity to stay in the pop/rock culture in the late ’00s and early ’10s.  The early 2017 release of Colliding by Design came like a spring breeze, bringing accessible pop melodies highlighting lead singer Jason Vena‘s vocals, as crisp and clean as we remembered them twelve years earlier on Phantoms. The title track, though, is a perfect love song about the uncertainty of an early relationship. Punctuated by a guitar riff that sounds like it was borrowed from a New Wave band like A Flock of Seagulls, the lyrics take center stage. Imagery of a breezy spring evening with the night coming to a natural close and the decision: kiss or blow away with the night. The speaker is direct in making this suggestion, and he believes that the feelings are reciprocated. 

    THERE’S A LOOK IN YOUR EYES; YOU WANNA STAY. “Colliding by Design” immediately brought me back to college and the two times that I made things weird between me and a female friend. I didn’t date in college. I was one of the few male English majors, and I made a lot of friends. I usually felt comfortable just being friends, but sometimes I felt pressure when my roommates or male friends went on dates. I thought I should want this too. And I did. I didn’t want to be alone for my life. And I thought I was attracted to some of my female friends. Nothing ever felt sexual, but I thought somehow with God’s blessing it would one day. Both times that I made things weird were in the spring–two different years. I replayed the rejections from those conversations time after time. What wasn’t I seeing? Was I too ugly? Was there something stamped on me that said “friend zone only”? Did I walk around with a bugger in my nose that I couldn’t see in the mirror? Over ten years later, I see it a lot more clearly that I was completely uncomfortable with myself. I tried to be someone that I thought that others wanted and denied myself. It’s not an attractive quality. And I think that when I confessed admiration, I hadn’t left enough hints before that because I didn’t actually like those girls the way that the drama in my mind played out. Years later, I gained confidence and had no problem asking out boys. It was natural for me, like a missing puzzle piece I had spent years hiding under the sofa and had tried to force a puzzle piece from another puzzle into the spot.