Mixtapemotions

  • "Toxic" by Britney Spears, Wednesday, December 7, 2023

    Yesterday, we took a deep dive into where Kesha is as a musical artist by looking at a mature work in her discography. When Wikipedia introduces Kesha Rose Serbert, she is said to be an American Singer-Songwriter, a term that signals to significant factors: 1) the singer writes songs and thus has a greater opportunity to monetize the song and 2) the singer is actually an artist, which is more important for music snob conversations. It grafts the wheat from the tares, the Lady Gagas from the Britney Spears. But recently, I’ve been rethinking this argument, mainly because it doesn’t account for the sexism in the industry. Moreover, I’ve really started to think about how unfair my opinion has been formed about Britney Spears, particularly after watching the documentary Britney vs. Spears. 

    A TASTE OF YOUR POISON PARADISE. I happened to go through puberty around the time of Max Martin’s first era of teen pop. MTV was filled with the late ‘90s sounds of boy bands, pop rock, a few Spanish-language crossovers, and scantily-clad solo girl pop acts. My guitar lessons and rock band aspirations fueled a snobbery towards artists “who didn’t even play an instrument,” but conflicting with that was puberty and not identifying that I was gay, so of course I had to say that Britney Spears was hot, but “I couldn’t stand her music.” And for the most part that was true. I wasn’t a fan of the baby voice nor the later breathy songs like “I’m a Slave 4 U.” And of course there was the Christian purity culture aspect to my bias against Britney Spears. I was so quick to judge the singer for her provocative clothing because it made men “stumble” into lust, yet she didn’t make me stumble—I tried several times to stumble to her, but in the end it was Men’s Health magazines. 


    A GUY LIKE YOU SHOULD WEAR A WARNING. Britney Spears is only about five-and-a-half years older than me, but that seems like an eternity during adolescence. Everything that the singer did was big news, and of course the media covered the relationship and the break up with *NSYNC singer Justin Timberlake. Then the rumors started that Timberlake had taken Spears’ virginity. There was certainly an edgier look and sound to Spears post-breakup. Of course, now we know much more about this relationship as details have come out in Spears’ recently released memoir, The Woman in Me. Spoiler alert: Justin Timberlake does not look like a good guy. From the break up record, though, 2003’s In the Zone, Britney gave us her biggest hit, and I would say the only Britney Spears song that I listen to by choice, “Toxic.” My friends at school couldn’t stop talking about the body suit Spears wears in the music video. I couldn’t stop thinking about how brilliant the production was: a disco violin, a James Bond guitar, a tango rhythm that stops between the pre-chorus and the chorus, and Britney’s voice tickling the listener’s brain, permeating through the musical layers. I was addicted to the song, but I couldn’t admit it. The song is said to not be written about Timberlake, as Spears didn’t write the song, but fresh from the break up, she certainly channels a dualistic love and hate for the subject of the song. Twenty years after Spears released “Toxic,” I think about how unfair I was to the singer. She was a “good Southern Christian girl” who sang in church until her parents decided to make her a star. And once she became a star, she was forced into keeping the hits coming, not because it was something she wanted to. She was a young girl struggling with faith, fame, and purity culture. Was she ever liberated from those struggles even after the ending of her conservatorship? I’m very tired of hearing stories about women being exploited by a music industry that credits their male producers for everything that they do and even forces them to adopt an image and sing songs that are not theirs. But thanks to Spears speaking out in her memoir and Kesha suing Dr. Luke and countless other examples, women are starting to be taken much more seriously in the industry. But we as music snobs and listeners alike have a lot more work to do to undo these biases. 


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

     


  • “Eat the Acid” by Kesha, Friday, October 20, 2023

    Earlier this year, Kesha released her fifth studio album, Gag Order. The album was intentionally written and produced for a less commercial appeal compared to the mega hits from the singer’s early career. Gag Order was released a month before the out-of-court settlement to the 2014 case Kesha v. Dr. Luke; the counter lawsuit had paused the singer’s career for five years. Kesha claimed that the hit-maker Łukas’s Sebastian Gottwald, better known as Dr. Luke, had sexually and emotionally abused the singer as well as held her in an exploitative recording contract. Dr. Luke claimed that Kesha had violated her contract. The allegations against Dr. Luke have caused some polarization in pop music as many artists, particularly female artists, have refused to work with the writer/producer, while he continues work producing artists who either evade the questions, defend the producer, or even claim that they are unaware of the accusations.  


    LAST NIGHT I TALKED TO GOD. Kesha’s fifth album Gag Order fulfills her recording contract with Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe Records and RCA Records. The record is the first time Kesha has foregone electro-dance pop in favor of more experimental styles. The dark lyrical content of the album deals with the singer’s trauma and legal issues the singer has faced both before and during the proceedings. On a recent episode of Song Exploder, she also talked about how being alone with her thoughts during the pandemic caused the singer to change her writing tone on the album. For those of us who tuned out on the singer post 2010’s Animal or 2012’s Warrior,  today’s song “Eat the Acid” sounds like it comes from another artist. The Kesha of 2010 who used a dollar sign for the s in her name was all about hedonistic parties and numbing any pain with “a bottle of Jack.” Kesha’s epicurean lyrics and kitschy collaborations made fans and music critics to greatly underestimate the singer’s artistic vision and even her intelligence. Who knew the “TiK ToK” singer had a near-perfect SAT score? 

    HATE HAS NO PLACE IN THE DIVINE.  In the recent Song Exploder episode, Kesha reveals the lead single for Gag Order’s title “Eat the Acid” comes from advice that her mother gave her. Kesha was raised by a single mother, a Los Angeles turned Nashville songwriter Pebe Serbert, who came to fame after writing a song that was made famous by Dolly Parton. Kesha grew up going to church, though she could never accept messages of hate toward the LGBTQ+ community as she herself identified within the community. But with all of Kesha’s recreational uses of alcohol and drugs, her mom advised her, “Don’t never eat the acid.” Kesha’s mother talked about how she had taken it as a teen and “everything [she] saw then c[ould]n’t be unseen.” In other words, it was a bad trip. Kesha says that she has never done acid. But in today’s song, Kesha had a dream in the midst of some of her lockdown anxieties. The dream was so vivid and so bizarre that she felt that it was the acid trip her mother had warned her about. In the dream her fears were assuaged in a conversation with God or the universe. Today’s song is certainly not a theology unless Kesha forms a cult. Kesha’s answer feels like a Jungian reaction to the New Age Los Angeles and the evangelical Nashville  in which she was raised. But I don’t say that to reduce the validity of the answer she found in a dream. But it does show how sometimes dreams, sleep, and maybe sometimes substances, can give us answers to questions we can never find in a conscious state.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.



     

  • “Lo$er=Lo🩷er” by TOMORROW X TOGETHER, Thursday, October 19, 2023 + 추천한 K-POP Spotify Playlist Update

    TOMORROW X TOGETHER, or TXT called by their fans, were the first group from Korea to headline Lollapalooza. The group has been one of the biggest K-Pop boy bands since their debut in 2019. Signed to Big Hit Entertainment, home of BTS and the first boy band signed to the label since the Bangtan Boys, TXT debuted five years after their label mates. While the lyrics of today’s song, “Lo$er=Lo🩷er” touch on the bleak state of Millennials and Gen. Z, especially due to financial status, TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s music is born out of optimism. The band’s motto as it appears on their website is: “Come together  under one dream in hopes of building a better tomorrow.”



     

  • “Got Me Started” by Troye Sivan, Wednesday, October 18, 2023

    If I could describe the music of this year in one word, I would say that the music of 2023 has been derivative. To some extent, music is always derivative and we could argue that there has been nothing in music since [pick a date].  But a year of derivative music isn’t necessarily a bad year in music. The music from quarantine in 2020 until last year drew on familiarity and nostalgia. Maybe this year familiarity has peaked with the shameless credited interpolation.


    KINDA MISS USIN’ MY BODY. I discussed the shameless interpolations of David Guetta with “I’m Good” (Blue) and “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” and Jason Derulo’s “When Love Sucks” earlier this year. I talked about how both of those artists’ uses of the original material felt like they were forcing nostalgia onto their listeners rather than letting it happen organically. But today, we’re looking at Troye Sivan’s “Got Me Started,” the second single from last week’s Something to Give Each Other. The song borrows the hook from a 2009 song by Australian electro duo, Bag Raiders’ “Shooting Stars.” Sivan only uses the first part of the midi riff of the song which went viral in 2017 as a musical meme, but fills out the song throughout the track from adding additional instrumentation and ebullient vocals as the song builds. “Got Me Started” begins with listeners remembering the meme, but the song actually transcends the meme. What starts out as a kind of music joke builds into seriousness. The nostalgia wraps the track, but ultimately the song becomes something new so subtly that by the end of the track, the meme is forgotten.
     
    INCHIN’ TOWARD SUNRISE. With Troye Sivan’s Something to Give Each Other release earlier this month, listeners have a fuller view of the singer’s comeback to the album format. Both Paste and Pitchfork have reviewed the album favorably, the latter giving the record a score of 8/10. Paste, in particular, points out that Something to Give Each Other accomplishes what Bloom set out to be: Sivan’s sex album. Sam Rosenberg, the reviewer argues “Bloom as a whole felt too muted and restrained for what it was trying to accomplish.” Something to Give Each Other is a much more explicit journey into a certain queer experience. Personally, I’m not ready to give my opinions on Something to Give Each Other. So far the three singles, “Rush,” today’s song “Got Me Started” and the latest single “One of Your Girls,” a song about Sivan hooking up with a straight boy and the video featuring Sivan in drag, are pretty solid.  There is definitely a new push toward the explicit. I love it, but I also feel that the Troye of Blue Neighbourhood—the queer kid writing non-explicit love songs–is a genre of music that is desperately needed too. LGBTQ+ people need more diversity in representation. This is in no way saying that I wish that Troye or any artist would write inauthentically, and it’s certainly fun to live vicariously through these club songs. 

  • “Death with Dignity” (Live) by Sufjan Stevens, Tuesday, October 17, 2023 (updated repost)

    Sufjan Stevens‘ 2015 album Carrie & Lowell is a heartbreaking album in which the singer-songwriter deals with the death of his mother. The opening track, “Death with Dignity,” is the beginning of an album that chronicles Stevens’ grieving process and the real and imaginary conversations between Stevens and his estranged mother. Carrie & Lowell was a rare peak into the personal life of the elusive singer, and unfortunately, grief was necessary to make a personal project. 

    WHAT IS THAT SONG YOU SING FOR THE DEAD? Earlier this month, Sufjan Stevens revealed an album borne out of another tragedy. And while I have yet to dig into Javelin and grieve anew with Sufjan, this time for his late partner who died in April of this year, I feel that “Death with Dignity” would get me ready to digest this incredibly sad album. The song with its wispy plucked guitar in five chorus-less verses introduces folklore and Biblical imagery to memorialize his mother. While the song is specifically about Carrie, Sufjan’s schizophrenic, negligent mother, there’s enough universality to make the listener empathize and feel whatever grief is in their soul. Perhaps that’s why the song was selected for the emotional premiere of NBC‘s This Is Us.  The song both conveys joy and sorrow–the upbeat picking in a major scale pairs well with the cinematography of the show–Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) in the ’70s conceiving and their triplets on a sunny morning, the warm autumn morning sunbeams peaking in through the shutters. The sadness is also conveyed when the family doctor convinces Jack and Rebecca to say something about  “life handing you the sourest of lemons and using them to make something that resembles lemonade.” 

    AMETHYST AND FLOWERS ON THE TABLE. Forgiveness is somewhat of a dirty word. I grew up with a fear of not forgiving. The pastor said in a sermon that if there is anyone you’ve not forgiven, you can’t go to heaven with the bitterness in your heart. At that time, I wondered if we should forgive the person who is unremorsful? How do we make sure that we’re not taken advantage of again? Thinking back on that, I realize how many vulnerable people were in the congregation; people suffering from truly evil things done to them. Forgiveness is a process, and it can’t be forced. Carrie & Lowell is a beautiful portrayal of forgiveness as it naturally happens. Learning to forgive your parents for the mistakes they made when raising you is always a process, and when there are clear signs of abuse, forgiveness may be impossible. I’m in no position to say that a victim must confront his or her abuser with forgiveness. I think that anyone who forces forgiveness on a victim adds another layer to the abuse. Music, church, scripture, and poetry are no substitute for mental health professionals, and it’s criminal how pastors have assumed that role. However, just as an album like Carrie & Lowell helped Stevens deal with his grief, so can art and religion be a supplement to our healing.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Live version:

  • "How Do You Sleep?" by Sam Smith, Monday, October 16, 2023 + Can't Sleep Mix Apple Music Edition













    I’ve had more insomnia at the beginning of the week than at the end of the week. I hope that tonight’s not one of those nights. Insomnia at the beginning of the week sets me up for a hard week and a short temper with my students. With today’s song, Sam Smith, “How Do You Sleep?” I wanted to bring my songs of insomnia to my Apple Music playlist–the playlist I’m actually more likely to load while I’m lying in bed. Hopefully these songs will cradle you back to sleep.

  • “Monsters” by All Time Low ft. blackbear & Demi Lovato, Sunday, October 15, 2023 (repost)

    While the rock music was falling out of favor in the 2010s, All Time Low‘s career continued to gain momentum. Formed in 2003 and heavily influenced by NoFx and Blink -182 the band became a force in the emo phase of the Warped Tour scene. The band became famous for their jocular onstage banter and their mock-turned serious feud with Metro Station. And in that jocular nature, the skinny, nerdy bandmates clad in only their tighty-whities appeared on MySpace’s home page the week before their sophomore album So Wrong, It’s Right dropped in 2007.

    I DON’T MIND IF YOU FUCK UP (RUIN) MY LIFE. Fast forward thirteen years. I have deleted a lot of music I acquired in college if I didn’t like the songs. I enjoyed laughing at Blink- 182 videos in middle and high school just as much as any white boy, but joke pop-punk got old when emo bands dug into deeper subjects. It turns out that All Time Low was digging a bit deeper in the 2010s, flying under my radar of rock music. Moreover, lead singer and primary lyricist for the band Alex Gaskarth began writing for pop acts while performing in a more  commercially-viable version of All Time Low. In April of 2020, the band released their album Wake Up Sunshine, featuring a version of today’s song “Monsters.” The original version only had guest vocals by emo-rapper blackbear; however, a remixed version was later released as a single featuring Demi Lovato. I first heard this song when Rick Beato was complaining his way through the top ten songs on the iTunes store last year, and I couldn’t believe that All Time Low was still together and producing great music, even by Beato’s standards. Even without the hip-hop and pop diva elements that blackbear and Lovato bring to the track, it’s clear that the band has learned how to write a song in their 20+ years together. But the icing of Lovato’s powerful vocals in the second half of the track that helped to take the song to #1 on the Alternative Airplay chart. 

    WHY DO THE MONSTERS COME OUT AT NIGHT? Demi Lovato has been a pop friend to emo and punk music, even posting an “Emo Night Takeover” Spotify playlist with tracks from Acceptance, Fall Out Boy (Demi is also featured on one of the band’s tracks), Underoath, Dashboard Confessional, Flyleaf, Paramore and others. At first, “Monsters” seems like a childish ditty, reminding listeners of when they were kids, scared of what was under the bed or in the closet. On a closer listen, the lyrics of “Monsters” deals with toxic relationships. Everything seems fine in the daylight when friends are around, but at night true colors are shown and abuse turns a loved one into a monster. Rapper blackbear’s struggle with sobriety is the them of his verse. And while the singer didn’t contribute to the lyrics, Demi Lovato has had a well-documented struggle with addiction, mental health, and abuse which the singer talks about extensively on their 2021 record Dancing with the Devil…The Art of Starting Over. “Monsters” hits during lucid moments when the speaker starts to think, why do I stay in a bad situation? Beginning to acknowledge that it is a problem is a good first step. The trick is not to fall into the same pattern with a different person.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.



  • “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House, Saturday, October 14, 2023

    In 1986, Australian/New Zealand band Crowded House released their debut eponymous album. By April the next year, the band had a number 2 Hot 100 single, “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” The band is best known for this song, though they had several other hits in the U.S., the U.K., and their homelands of Australia and New Zealand. I knew the song from its 2003 cover by Sixpence None the Richer which was played both on Adult Contemporary radio and Christian stations, and didn’t know that it was a cover until my dad said it was originally by an ‘80s band. 


    TRY TO CATCH A DELUGE IN A PAPER CUP. Before my sister could call into TVU’s Most Wanted Countdown to yell her vote on the phone: “I’m calling to vote for Sixpence None the Richer because they’re smooth like me!”— which host David thought sounded like “rude like me” only to be corrected by the offscreen engineer who correctly heard “smooth like me”—before any of that could happen, the band had to be pressured for a hit from their 2002 album Divine Discontent. The band was pressured to include a cover of “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” which they did willingly because, according to an article published by CNN, the band was a fan of Crowded House’s lead singer, Neil Finn. The song was Sixpence None the Richer’s second single from their album Divine Discontent and their last trip to the Hot 100. After listening to both versions of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” recently, I have a stronger sense of nostalgia for the Sixpence version, but I feel like the Crowded House version has more interesting guitar tones that don’t even feel like they were recorded in 1986. 

    THERE’S A BATTLE AHEAD, MANY BATTLES ARE LOST. When my dad talked about “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” he referred to it as an anti-war song. Looking at the history of the band Crowded House, it makes sense, though, I couldn’t find anything about the band specifically talking about an anti-war message. Throughout their career, Crowded House had been involved with various causes from Save the Children to AIDS awareness. The song was released within a few years of the downfall of the Soviet Union. But at that time, the world still felt uncertain, at least I’m told. Then in 2003, The United States was in the middle of two wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. The fear of 9/11 was beginning to wear off on the American people, and even some Christians—maybe even Sixpence None the Richer, though I don’t want to speak on behalf of the band—were questioning the war. Crowded House talks more about the song being about having optimism even when the world and personal situations seem dire. So, thirty-seven years and twenty years after the two versions, there are new problems: an unrelenting war between Russia and Ukraine and a war between Israel and Palestine. It feels like the world is falling apart, but giving up isn’t an option. If we do, we let the world “build a wall between us” and we let the division win.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Crowded House version:

    Sixpence None the Richer version:

  • “Padam Padam” by Kylie Minogue, Friday, October 13, 2023

    Producer Reanna Cruz of the Switched On Pop podcast pointed out a song that was huge this summer in America, but only for a certain demographic. The song was a massive comeback by the fifty-five-year-old Australian singer Kylie Minogue who had hits in America in the late ‘80s and the early ‘00s. Last month, I covered the second single, “Hold on to Now,” from her sixteenth studio album Tension, but today it’s time to get a little campy and just focus on the beating of the heart and the effect music has on that heartbeat when dancing in the club as Kylie invites us in the lead single “Padam Padam.”  


    I HEAR IT AND I KNOW. After a disco era, Kylie Minogue tapped into current sounds with producer LOSTBOY to craft a perfect comeback record that harkens back to her biggest hit, “Can’t Get You Outta My Head.” “Padam Padam” is lyrically simple and straightforward. It’s a club anthem about trying to get lucky. It’s a song by a cis-gender, presumably straight woman with a hell of a lot of confidence, thus making it the perfect 2023 Pride Anthem.  According to Switched On Pop’s analysis, gay anthems since the 1920 German Cabaret song “Das Ilia Lied” or “The Lavender Song” have been simple, yet flamboyant songs that may or may not focus on the gay experience. Kylie Minogue takes her place in the pantheon of divas starting with Judy Garland too Carly Rae Jepsen yet again with the song that is onomatopoeia for the sound of a heartbeat.  

    WANNA SEE WHAT’S UNDERNEATH THAT T-SHIRT. So far, I’ve laid out other people’s reasons to justify the infectious beat of “Padam, Padam.” It’s not a song that I immediately connected with consuming music on Spotify as I graded papers and planned classes. In fact, I connected more with the lyrics of “Hold on to Now” than “Padam, Padam,” and it was in my research of that song last month that I found a new respect for Kylie Minogue. After listening to the BBC series Eras: Kylie Minogue, I felt more connected with Kylie as an artist and as a person, and that made me take another look at some of her more recent records. This year, I’ve listened to more dance music than I ever have. And now as a music blogger, I’ve attempted to write about the saccharine melodies and overly simplistic lyrics. Many of those posts have very little to add to a discussion because let’s face it, dance music isn’t meant to be dissected even if you know every synth on the track—which I don’t. “Padam, Padam,” though, seems different, and that’s because Kylie Minogue brings a story to the dance floor. It’s a story of a fifty-five-year-old woman who will not be stopped by age. It’s a music video with a dance that makes you move along with the rhythm of the song. The song’s Phrigyian mode gives Disney villain vibes that remind me that the “evil song” from every Disney movie was really the best song of the film, and it was the musical number I fantasized about performing when playing in the woods out of sight from everyone. But in 2023, “Padam, Padam” is also the song of feeling a little more loose and a little more hedonistic. It’s the song I want to hear when I get back to the gay bar. It’s the hope that even though I’m getting older, it’s not too late to feel the emotions of letting go. 


    Music video:

    Extended mix video:

    Live at BBC:

  • "Coffee" by Copeland, Thursday, October 12, 2023+ Coffee Playlist

     

    It was a rainy summer break during my Freshman year of college. I was still driving my ’91 Toyota Corolla, and that was the summer that I binged the first three Copeland albums. It started with 2003’s Beneath Medicine Tree, the indie/rock concept album about love and loss. About a month later I bought, 2005’s In Motion, which was a little more musically diverse. The next year’s Eat, Sleep, Repeat, was closer to musical theater than rock. Each Copeland album had its own unique mood. Today’s song, “Coffee,” comes from Beneath Medicine Tree, which is the most immature of the Copeland albums. Lyricist and singer Aaron Marsh was fine-tuning his craft at writing sappy love songs, and this album’s lyrics tended to be a little too over the top. The song “Coffee” appears as track 9, with a story as cliche as they get–two small-town kids falling in love while talking all night at the diner. The brief brush drum solo toward the end sounds just like coffee shop music. Today, I wanted to share my coffee playlist of mostly mellow tracks to sit with your daily grind.