Mixtapemotions

  • “Not Strong Enough” by boygenius, Friday, May 31, 2024

    In 2016, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus opened for singer-songwriter Julien Baker on separate dates. It turned out that the three queer-identifying indie-folk songwriters mutually appreciated each other’s music. In 2018, the three musicians decided to have a co-headlining tour. To celebrate the tour, they decided to join forces and record a six-song EP titled boygenius. Tired of the misogyny in the music industry that compared women to women while pinning female artists against female artists, Dacus stated: “I hope people see the three of us and know there isn’t competition. You don’t have to compete with your contemporaries. You can make something good with people you admire.” And in that statement lies the genius on which the collaborative supergroup is founded.


    BLACK HOLE OPENED IN MY KITCHEN. The debut self-titled EP by boygenius was made almost entirely by female musicians. The band’s name is ironic. Julien Baker told Newsweek that the name refers “to the archetype of the tortured genius, [a] specifically male artist who has been told since birth that their every thought is not only worthwhile but brilliant.” After the tour and the EP, boygenius went on hiatus as the three artists went on to record their solo projects, though each member of the trio appeared as backing vocals on the solo records recorded after the eponymous boygenius EP. Working with Hayley Williams on her Petals for Armor II in 2020 and on each others’ projects lead to a renewed interest in their collaborative work. That year, the group started selling demos on Bandcamp for various charities. As the trio dug into their shared Google Drive, inspiration for 2023’s The Record hit Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker.


    ALWAYS AN ANGEL, NEVER A GOD. Phoebe Bridgers is arguably the most commercially successful artist of boygenius, but each member brings a unique characteristic to the collective. Bridgers brings her large fan base and often honest and often dark songwriting. Unlike Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, Bridgers had a secular California upbringing. Baker and Dacus grew up in the religious South, and they reflect on themes of faith, doubt, and sexuality in their music. Dacus’s writing is witty and sometimes raw. She examines when faith becomes traumatic, though rarely becoming caustic. Baker’s lyrics deal with similar material as Dacus with a gloomier take on the subject. Baker’s early influences include Underoath and mewithoutYou and other groups from the Christian screamo era. Baker brings a hard rock element into boygenius. Today’s song, “Not Strong Enough,” is the biggest song of the band or any of its members. Musically and lyrically it’s a great representation of boygenius at their best. Bridgers and Baker take the two verses, while Dacus adds the bridge. The Grammy-winning, Adult Alternative #1 song examines feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and the compulsion to control one’s life. The smooth heartland rock sound of the track is simple on first listen, but guitar and synth textures come alive with repeated listens. And repeated listening is what you need if you enter the boygenius universe as the lyrical crafting and the vocal harmonies give listeners a deeper understanding of the artists’ message.

     Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Bad Idea, Right?” by Olivia Rodrigo, Thursday, May 30, 2024

    When I scored my top songs last year, the second single, “Bad Idea, Right?” from Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album GUTS ranked at #8 in my top 25 of 2024 list. I didn’t write about this song last year, though. Instead, I wrote about Rodrigo’s lead single, “Vampire.” The lead single is a moody rock fantasia. “Bad Idea, Right,” though, is a valley-girl punk rock song in the style of The Waitresses with its sing-talking. While GUTS didn’t quite match the success of Rodrigo’s debut SOUR, the singles and the album develop Rodrigo’s sound as a pop artist who is fluent in rock music, building on the previous album and second single “good 4 u,” a single that brought rock back into upper reaches of Billboard’s Hot 100, unseen since the ‘00s. And while “Bad Idea, Right?” didn’t top the pop chart like “good 4 u,” the song did top the Modern and Alternative Rock Chart.
     

    CAN’T HEAR MY THOUGHTS. In 2021, Olivia Rodrigo scored an unexpected number-one hit with “driver’s license,” leaving Rodrigo and producer Dan Nigro scrambling to follow up the song with what would become SOUR, Rodrigo’s debut full-length album. SOUR had two main sounds: sad-girl pop like Rodrigo’s first hit and bitter heartbreak rock, like “good 4 u.” The story came out that the singer’s inspiration for the “brutal” album and its singles was a breakup with her High School Musical: The Musical — The Series costar Joshua Bassett. In 2023, Rodrigo returned with Nigro producing, this time spilling her GUTS about more pains of growing up, particularly the transition between adolescence and young adulthood. Rodrigo said of the time between the albums: “I feel like I grew 10 years between the ages of 18 and 20.” After recording SOUR, Rodrigo took six months off from songwriting to “live a life to be able to write about it.” The album is more rock-influenced than the previous one and doesn’t seem to be themed on a particular relationship or point in her decade-in-two-year development. 


    FUCK IT, IT’S FINE. The GUTS lead single “vampire” seems to be about a real relationship Rodrigo was in with someone who took advantage of her in some capacity. Fans have pointed to Olivia’s relationship with Adam Faze as the potential vampire. Some listeners theorized that Rodrigo spoke about the same relationship in “Bad Idea, Right?” but the song seems more likely to be satire. The character that Rodrigo plays in “Bad Idea” is insufferable. She’s the friend making bad decisions, justifying them to herself and to those who would hold her accountable. It’s easy to call out the speaker of the song when it’s a friend or an acquaintance, but yet somehow I found that I’ve made those same stupid decisions that I have judged others for and I had my own set of rationalizations for those decisions. It’s like my heart pulled me in the opposite direction of where my head told me to go. Why does toxic love burn hotter when you’re in your own quarters, away from the voice of reason? Rodrigo captures those lies we tell to ourselves when we make bad decisions, and Dan Nigro gives us a Tom Morello-styled guitar solo to celebrate those bad ideas. Are bad decisions inevitable? Or does listening to songs like today’s song make it easier to make them or less likely because we hear about how ridiculous we sound when we rationalize them?

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "Without You" by Lana Del Rey, Wednesday, May 29, 2024 (repost) (Trigger Warning: Discussion of Domestic Abuse)

     In Lana Del Rey‘s first interview with Zane Lowe, she talked about her inspiration for the 2012 record, Born to Die. She talks about the collaboration between her, hip-hop producer Emile Haynie, and string arranger Larry Gold to create an album that sounds classic and fresh. Although Del Rey has moved away from the Brooklyn-style hip-hop beats in albums after Born to Die, the album still feels relevant ten years later. In fact, when Pitchfork re-examined the record last year, the review bumped the score from 5.5 to 7.8. While pop cynics may argue that music has gotten worse rather than being misunderstood at the time, the young adult escapism, the post-modern life she sings about makes more sense among the younger artists Del Rey influenced such as Lorde and Billie Eilish. 

    I EVEN THINK I FOUND GOD. “Without You” appears as the thirteenth track on the Target Bonus Tracks edition of Born to Die. The album’s standard edition ends with “This Is What Makes Us Girls,” a semi-autobiographical song about when Del Rey was sent off to boarding school to straighten up. Will all of the songs of Born to Die would eventually find a home on streaming services, Del Rey’s fandom started at the tail end of physical releases. Del Rey’s 2012 pop star persona was just gimmicky enough to thrust the singer into a cult level of fandom. While the indie scene obsesses over authenticity, Del Rey offers a carefully cultivated, manufactured image. Appearing on the scene like a highly-vetted industry plant, as people said of pop stars like Britney Spears, and Lana Del Rey in 2012 was a satire of what a pop star is. But this satire is more in the vein that some critics call The Great Gatsby a satire of the roaring ’20s. Del Rey’s use of satire is contemporary and often over-the-top. In this satirical world, she shows us that alcohol, drugs, sex, and a search for a deeper meaning link us to our grandparents’ time. 

    LIVED ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM. Today’s song, “Without You,” is a B-side from Born to Die, and if it were cut, most of the themes and motifs exist in the album without this additional chapter. But Born to Die is far from a cohesive concept record or a rock opera. What “Without You” does after “This Is What Makes Us Girls” reflects on the themes presented in Born to Die. Del Rey has spent the whole album talking about the “bad man” she falls in love with. He’s a type of unhealthy, often sexist, sometimes violent, virile man who makes a girl like Del Rey weak in the knees. This is one major point of contention with the singer-songwriter as many have called her music anti-feminist, glamorizing abusive relationships. The singer also has a slew of controversial statements from social media and interviews. In “Without You,” Del Rey also sings about being fragile “like a china doll.” She finds her worth through him and by being so beautiful that she is adored by “the lights of the camera” where she even thinks she “found God.” The speaker has become part of the old-time glitterati. The line that sticks out the most to me, though, is the commentary about “the dark side of the American Dream.” Del Rey was clearly influenced by American literature when novelists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald set out to write the definitive American novel and ultimately solidified American literature. What the American novel strives for is to define what the American Dream is. Fitzgerald shows that even with all of the wealth that Jay Gatsby acquires, he can’t have the one thing that he wants. And while not all Americans want a brutish hunk, as listeners may think that’s all that Del Rey wants, I can’t help but think that the superficial glamour of Del Rey’s lyrics which harken back to A Street Car Named Desire’s toxic masculinity and strict ’50s-gender roles is a Stepford Wives or Twilight Zone level of satire. But I could be wrong.

  • “Get a Guitar” by RIIZE, Tuesday, May 28, 2024

     

    Last year, RIIZE debuted on SM Entertainment with the single album Get a Guitar, which contained two songs, “Memories” and the title track. The group was the first new boyband to debut on SM in seven years, following NCT’s debut in 2016. The concept of the fifth-generation K-pop group is “emotional pop” akin to the millennium boyband sound–first and second-generation K-pop.  RIIZE is a portmanteau of the words rise and realize, and the group’s motto is “a team that rises together and realizes dreams.” RIIZE was created with Sungchan (정성찬) and Japanese singer Shotaro Osaki, members of the massive now 26-member supergroup NCT, combined with five other members to form RIIZE. Get a Guitar sold more than one million copies in its first week. The success nearly matched H.O.T, whose debut album slightly outsold RIIZE’s debut.

    DRAWING SUNSHINE IN THE RHYTHM. Last month, Slate’s Hit Parade podcast delved into the history of boybands. Host Chris Molanphy first guided listeners through the murky definition of a boy band–simply male members in a band who happen to play music aimed at a younger audience of mostly young women. The debate about artistic merit of boyband music is debated among critics along with whether or not one of the most critically acclaimed bands, The Beatles–at any point in their career–, qualifies as a boyband. One of the points that I took from that episode which I will apply to my musical criticism henceforth is the logical fallacy that critics dismiss boybands simply on the idea that rock is artistic and pop is merely a fleeting trend. It was an idea I had when I was young cruising the radio dial. There were classic rock stations but classic pop was either adult contemporary or oldies. Disco didn’t have a cool place on the dial. I thought that the ‘00s boybands and solo artists would fade into obscurity, becoming the new disco and the people who listened to it would be the most uncool moms in the grocery store. Maybe that’s true in kids’ eyes today, but with Korean boybands entering international markets, it feels like the Y2K pop sound has never been more relevant. 

    FINGERS SNAPPING LIKE ONE, TWO, FIVE. In eighth grade, I joined my friend Nick’s band. We played in his basement. He was the coolest kid among his peers, which was not a hard feat in our small Adventist community. His mom was often at work and pretty much hands-off, involved mostly in her own life, which left Nick to his own teenage devices, and the rumors about him with a $200 phone bill on German porn made him a legend. While I was forming my musical taste, for a while I got into everything he listened to. It was the Backstreet Boys in seventh grade, but by eighth grade, that was “gay music.” As rhythm guitarists playing chords found online, he determined that the only music worth listening to was by artists who played their own instruments or at least played an instrument. We kept adding to the rules of what we thought was a true artistic expression and amending the rules as we thought of exceptions. I wasn’t a particular fan of Cèline Dion, but I thought of her voice as an instrument, so a true musician must play an instrument unless that musician’s instrument was their voice. I fell out of touch with Nick in high school, and my musical tastes expanded, but somehow I still feel like I need to justify pop music as artistic–maybe that’s the thesis of my blog. Of course, pop musicians are talented. South Korean Idols, for example, train for years before debuting. Many of the stars play instruments or learned them in their youth, though the industry doesn’t often display this in their pop concepts. Likewise, the musicians eighth grade me shrugged off turned out to be brilliant in music production or songwriting. And looking at K-pop, for example, the art may not lie in the music itself, but in the franchising and the conceptual art. And isn’t dance an art, too? I’m not sure if I’d classify RIIZE as artistic, but is the argument even relevant? I like dissecting culture, but I’m done with the hipster arguments of my youth. And if anyone objects, you can get a guitar!

    Read the English version on Genius.

    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.

  • “Lunch” by Billie Eilish, Monday, May 27, 2024

    Last December, Billie Eilish began to lose a number of fans from an article in which she simply told her truth. She told Variety in November of last year, “I have deep connections with women in my life, the friends in my life, the family in my life. I’m physically attracted to them. But I’m also so intimidated by them and their beauty and their presence.” In December, Eilish confirmed that statement was, in fact, a coming out. In December she confirmed with Variety,  asking, “‘Wasn’t it obvious’? I didn’t realize people didn’t know.” Following the confirmation of her queer identity, Eilish began to lose Instagram and X followers.


    CLOTHES ON THE COUNTER FOR YOU. Two weeks ago, Billie Eilish released her third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, following up 2021’s Happier Than Ever. Even after cutting ties with a minority of homophobic followers, her meteoric star power had the album predicted to debut at #1 on Billboard’s 200 Album Charts, but the reigning queen atop the charts, Taylor Swift, wielded her merchandizing power, releasing three digital editions of The Tortured Poets Department the same day as Eilish released her critically-acclaimed third record. Swift and Eilish are rumored to be feuding after Eilish made comments on excessive merchandizing and the toll it takes on the environment, though later went on to clarify that she wasn’t targeting one artist in particular. Eilish’s simple 10-song masterpiece, which condenses the artist’s message into a manageable listen, stands in contrast to Drake-length anthology playlists released as albums, which gives fans the repetition of ideas. I’m more biased toward short albums unless the artist has a poignant, coherent message that cannot be expressed in a short album. Even if the lyrics stay fresh, the music becomes stale on a longer album.


    IT’S A CRAVING, NOT A CRUSH.  Since her coming out to Variety last year, Billie Eilish has talked candidly about her bisexuality. Talking to Rolling Stone on the launch of Hit Me Hard and Soft, Eilish revealed that she was “never planning on talking about [her] sexuality ever. However, since coming out, she decided to explore her sexuality in her music as well. Eilish has had relationships with both men and women and Hit Me Hard and Soft explores the singer’s sexuality in a personalized narrative context absent from Billie’s music thus far. Fans and critics have tried to pinpoint specific relationships referenced in Eilish’s latest offering; the specifics are unimportant to the listener. Generation Z is the most statistically queer generation and most statistically open generation, and Eilish has been called the voice of her generation. It makes sense that Eilish assumed her fans knew, but by bringing her sexuality to light, she can share even more honest songs. Today’s song, “Lunch” is one of the most standout tracks on the latest album. Mature listeners will connect what Eilish may have overshared in her Rolling Stone article, when she said, “Until last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” “Lunch,” though, is not graphic and could be well suited for pop radio. I think we’ll be hearing more of it this summer.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Touch” by Shura, Sunday, May 26, 2024 (repost)

     Two years before her debut album   Nothing’s Real was released, Shura‘s debut single, “Touch,” began generating acclaim across the Internet. Working with guitarist and vocalist of the indie rock band Athlete,  Joel Pott, Shura began co-producing her album. Shura played the keyboards and synthesizers on the record and co-directed the music video for “Touch,” which features her twin brother, Nicholas. The single was re-released along with a remix of the track in 2016 before the release of Nothing’s Real. Today, “Touch” is Shura’s most streamed song on Spotify.

    I ONLY NEED YOU TO BE FRENCH WITH ME. Born to an English father and a Russian mother, Aleksandra Lilah Yakunina-Denton and her brother Nicholas Denton were raised in Manchester, UK. Aleksandra, better known by her stage name, Shura, started playing guitar at the age of 13. By 26, she was gaining popularity in the UK. The video for “Touch,” which features lots of kissing between people of different genders and sexualities, prompted a Manchester journalist to ask the singer to define her sexuality. The singer told Vice, although the headline read “Shura comes out before Manchester” [concert], she says, “I didn’t come out! [The journalist] just asked me if I was gay and I said yes.” While Shura identifies as a lesbian, she told Mancunian Matters that there is a “massive spectrum for everyone” and that “there are many kinds of love.” She goes on to say that the video “didn’t feel like a political statement at the time” because she was simply filming the sexuality as she experienced from being part of the LGBTQ+ community. On a small budget with only some actors and a video camera, Shura’s music video tells the complication of love and break ups as a human experience. And that human experience helped to spread the video around the Internet, especially among the LGBTQ+ community.

    THERE’S A LOVE BETWEEN US STILL. While Nothing’s Real holds a high Meta-critic score of 79 percent, Joe Levy’s Rolling Stone  review knocks the album for the ambiguity of gender in the songs, calling it “a map to a treasure that’s never there.” It seems that homophobia was a big factor in this album not fully becoming the “Madonna for millennials” that Vice praised her as, as far as her success in America. Shura’s UK popularity didn’t spread to the US other than the Dance chart. Her UK fame, though, sparked the attention of Mumford & Sons, who covered Shura’s track “2Shy.” “Touch” appears in the second season of Sex Education in a make-out scene between Otis and Ola. Just as the song’s music video shows how fluid sexuality is, the Netflix original series explores the complex sexualities of British teenagers. Sex, attraction, and relationships can be as complicated as this song’s subject–trying to be friends with an ex. Shura’s music reflects that complication, mostly avoiding pronouns–with the exception of “Indecision,” talking about a boy. All we need is for her to come out with a catchy third album. She’s due at any time to follow up her 2019 forevher.

  • “The News” by Paramore (updated repost), Saturday, May 25, 2024

     After incredible success after releasing their comeback single last fall, “This Is Why” which was the title track to the album the band released in February last year, Paramore released their second single, “The News.” Both singles prepared the listener for a Paramore album unlike anything that the band had recorded before. “This Is Why” featured the self-defeating lyrics fans have come to expect from lead singer Haley Williams and the song had a certain Paramore catchiness, but the funky bass and classic rock guitar explored musical territory the band had not yet shared with their listeners. 

    A WAR RIGHT BEHIND MY EYES. “The News,” however, is a hard rock socially-conscious track, darker than most of the band’s prior songs. The same day that Paramore released the single, they also released a video for the song. The video (see below) features Haley Williams hypnotized by a television, which becomes a catatonic state in the video. As the second single and the second track on This Is Why, “The News” works in tandem with the rest of the songs to answer the question posed by the album’s title. While the line is “This is why I don’t leave the house” critics and fans have interpreted the real question posed by This Is Why is the reason the band got back together. During the pandemic, fans wondered if Williams’ solo work could fill the hole left in music without Paramore. After all, there does seem to be a lyrical progression from After Laughter to Petals for Armor, and This Is Why seems to be an update on Williams’ mental health. But while Paramore’s front-woman is a very capable solo artist, the new Paramore tracks, full of passion, “spite and sweet revenge” seem to show that the three bandmates left in the messy band after two decades of in-fighting are happiest when they make music about their frustrations. 


    A WAR ON THE FAR SIDE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET. “The News” talks about the unhealthy relationship many of us have with the news. This Is Why is the most overt political statement Paramore has ever made in their music, but that political statement comes from Haley Williams refusing to silence her opinions. Of course, Williams’ statements on faith on the band’s third record Brand New Eyes, particularly “Ignorance,” was notably the first fracture when Williams declared “The truth never set me free” contradicting the Bible verse John 8:32, which states “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (NIV). The backlash and support from this line emboldened Williams to speak out about other things, including supporting the band’s LGBTQ+ fans in 2020. Williams has also supported Black Lives Matter and recently spoke out against the anti-drag laws proposed in her home state of Tennessee. But constantly dealing with the backlash of speaking out against what Christianity stands for in the 2020s gets exhausting. Since Paramore has been away, so much has happened. The Christian values the band was raised are on trial, and the Trump years and all that the news shows us is that those values may have caused the issues that we face today. It would be one thing if the gloom and doom of the pandemic finished and the villainous politicians went to jail and the world was a little less eventful. Instead, the news keeps flooding in and it’s overwhelming. Why do I check the news when I take a break at work or even when I’m blogging? It’s not like there’s going to be something amazing that’s going to give me energy to get back to work. But is cutting it out completely healthy? “Turn on turn off the news!”  
     

  • “Uncanny” by Anberlin, Friday, May 24, 2024

    In another life, we would have a light, optimistic Anberlin. This version of the band would have followed up their bright-eyed debut Blueprints for the Black Market with an upbeat pop-rock album about the gender divide, high school crushes, and traveling the world. But the band chose to go in a hard rock sound for their sophomore album, Never Take Friendship Personal, in part because of some of the conflicts the band had with guitarist Joey Bruce, whom they kicked out before the record. The hard rock album with grittier lyrics didn’t completely kill Anberlin’s pop-punk sentiments with songs like “A Lay Late” and “Time and Confusion” becoming fan favorites.
     

    OH, THEY LOVE THESE AMERICAN BOYS. Anberlin’s third album, Cities, took an even darker tone than their sophomore record. The intense album had the pop-rock moments of “Adelaide” and “Dismantle.Repair.” But the serious tone of the album as a whole left no room for the carefree moments on the previous albums. Lead singer and lyricist Stephen Christian stated that he viewed the first three albums as a series, Blueprints as “Man versus the world,” Friendship as “Man versus man,” and Cities as “Man versus himself.” From the hectic schedule of Anberlin’s touring and from what Stephen talked about on the Songs and Stories Podcast, he was dealing with a lot when he wrote the lyrics for Cities. The band had at least 4 B-sides, 3 of which were released on a Deluxe Edition, appearing after the 12th track, “(*Fin).” Directly after the emotionally charged album closer, the band used what could have been Cities’ most optimistic song to open the three-song bonus suite. “Uncanny” is a strong ‘90s-influenced pop-rock track that would work if Cities were a light-hearted album. While the lyrics appear to be about a romantic interest, Christian has talked about how the song is about traveling the world with the band. 

    ASK ANYTHING, WE’LL WATCH THE WORLD GO BY.  I don’t know why Anberlin named an unspooky track “Uncanny.” Perhaps the band’s biggest B-side of all time is “The Haunting,” which they cut from Cities as it didn’t fit the tone of the album. I was embarrassingly too old to admit that I didn’t know that the meaning of uncanny implied something creepy, as I tended to only think about the meaning as being coincidental. That was before I learned about the uncanny valley, which is truly creepy. Maybe Stephen Christian found it strange to think of himself in the role of a successful world-traveling rock band. A music career has opportunities like Copeland inviting Anberlin to play in Tokyo. Those moments come quickly with plane tickets, packing, and passports, but it’s only when you catch the reflection of five boys and their unwashed long hair as the JR Narita Express takes the tunnel on the way to your hotel that you will try to sleep off the 16-hour flight and the 13 hour time difference you start to think about your life in the greater scheme of the universe. Yes, of course, I’m speculating what may have gone through Stephen Christian’s head as well as projecting how I might feel if I were in his position as an up-and-coming rock band. Without the feeling of fame, it’s how I feel every time I board a plane to America or come back to Korea. The world feels big, and when you see your position in it, it’s uncanny.

  • “Trust” by Eric James & the New Century, Thursday, May 23, 2024

    The late June humidity was just beginning to set on Bushnell, Illinois. We had spent the night in a hotel because we didn’t want to set up camp in the dark. We had missed Tooth & Nail Day, the preliminary day when the label would showcase some of their artists who wouldn’t play during the main festival, because of car troubles. But we had made it to the first official day of 2007 the 2007 Cornerstone Festival, on Wednesday, June 27. We arrived early in the morning to pitch tents before the swelter and the bugs made life miserable. After breakfast, it was time to wander over to The Gallery Stage which doubled as JEPUSA’s coffee house. For $35 you could buy the limited supply of that year’s coffee cup and get refills for 25 cents throughout the festival. Sitting down to the dark roast with our pamphlets out, my friends and I were about to start comparing which shows we were going to see later that day when a blue-eyed, shaggy-haired 20-something took the stage, introducing himself as Eric James.
     

    I’VE GIVEN YOU THREE YEARS AND I’M A FAKE. I saw so many shows in the three years that I was at Cornerstone and have forgotten many of them. I don’t actually remember any songs that Eric James sang at the Gallery Stage on the opening day, but he left an impression on me which was solidified when I downed the 2007 Cornerstone Sampler in the hotel room on the journey back to North Carolina. There were a few of the headliners who contributed a song to the sampler, but it was mostly indie acts as a way to lure attendants to their shows. Eric James & the New Century contributed their song “Trust,” though James performed without his band that day. I’ve followed many of the groups that I discovered at Cornerstone, but I was never able to track down whatever happened to Eric James & the New Century until this week. In 2007, I followed the band on MySpace and checked out their 2006 EP The City Lights. The six songs sounded well-produced and ready for adult alternative radio bearing James’ stated influences of Pete Yorn and Death Cab for Cutie. But when I switched completely to Facebook and left for college, I lost touch with the band. And every time I checked to see if new music was coming, it was the same press releases like they were frozen in 2006.

    STAY A LITTLE WHILE LONGER. Other than the MySpace page, you can find a web presence for Eric James & the New Century and stream The City Lights. But with a name like Eric James, it seemed impossible to find out if the singer-songwriter had more music. But I think I found him by following a few leads in the sparse press releases. Today, the Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter Eric James is a member of the duo The Last Royals with drummer Mason Ingram. The band released their eponymous, sometimes called the “Tee Pee” EP, in 2010. The band’s latest release was last year’s Truly.Modern.Love.  The Last Royals isn’t a huge band, but they have received national attention from publications such as Paste, American Songwriter, and Daytrotter. While there is a definite stylistic change between the New Century band and The Last Royals, James’ vocals are consistent between both projects. But still, I’m not entirely sure that this is the same Eric James.

  • “Playback ‘99” (Burn the Cassette Deck) by The Juliana Theory (reworked repost), Wednesday, May 22, 2024

    In 2020, The Juliana Theory signed to Equal Vision Records. After releasing the singles “Can’t Go Home” and “Better Now” and a collection of rerecorded classics from their Tooth & Nail and Epic Records discography, the band released  Still the Same Kids, Pt. 1 in May 2022. According to the band’s page on Equal Vision’s website, Still the Same Kids is a three-EP project, though we have yet to see parts 2 and 3. We’ve been waiting for a while; however, it seems that Brett Detar and crew never rush the band’s music. Long-term fans of The Juliana Theory have suggested that the band’s post-2005 Deadbeat Sweetheartbeat music doesn’t fit with the band’s direction, and while many fans like it, they suggest that The Juliana Theory isn’t still the same band. But that argument could be made for any band that stuck together consistently, updating their sound into the ’20s music landscape.

    SHIT, I GET NOSTALGIC. I’ve heard that the Germans consider nostalgia as a kind of illness. If that’s the case, the film, television, music, and fashion industries are sick. The pandemic reunited lots of bands to play reunion shows. Extra time at home had us revisiting the music of our past. Even teenagers felt homesick for a time they never had as they discovered classic rock albums for the first time. While Brett Dettar had been writing film scores and country music, The Juliana Theory was on hiatus. Today’s song is blatantly nostalgic for late ’90s culture, namedropping technology and Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” and talking about things the speaker did in high school. When the speaker says, “I’m just living on borrowed time,” he suggests that we think of our own prime. Usually, a band’s listeners will be younger than the band members, for Dettar and The Juliana Theory, the bandmates came of age in the early ’90s and formed in the late ’90s with their peak arguably 2000’s Emotion Is Dead, when emo started going mainstream. While The Juliana Theory may not be first in the conversation of mainstream emo bands, hipsters both admire The Juliana Theory for their contribution and call them a sell-out for turning to a pop rock/alternative sound, as a recent video on emo the YouTube channel Trash Theory suggests. 

    DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER. DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER. The music video for “Playback ‘99” (Burn the Cassette Deck) imagines a post-apocalyptic world in 2033 after the world presumably ended at Y2K. A lone survivor in a hazmat suit searches for relics of the past, and in the basement level of what appears to be a nightclub in the basement of a mall, he finds a VHS of a Y2K-themed Juliana Theory concert. The video gets dark at the end, depicting the death of all concertgoers in the band, signaling the alternative universe of if Y2K had ended humanity. Going back to the line, “I’m living on borrowed time,” reminds the millennials and Generation X of the absurdity of living in the early decades of the twenty-first century. We think about the bands we were listening to as teenagers when the world felt so uncertain after 9/11. The evangelical kids may even have been told that they wouldn’t make it to 2020 because of the rapture or the New World Order. The music video metaphorically connects the Y2K generation with the COVID-19 lockdown generation. Time feels precocious as it slips away adding years to our faces. We can’t rewind it like a cassette tape, we just have to watch it play.