Mixtapemotions

  • “Soap” by Stand Atlantic, Tuesday, May 21, 2024

    Stand Atlantic formed in 2012 in Sydney, Australia. After gaining a following in the Australian music scene and releasing two demo EPs,  they released their first single “Coffee at Midnight” on international indie label Rude Records in 2017 and then signed with California-based indie label Hopeless Records in 2018. The band formed as a four-piece under the name What It’s Worth with lead vocals by Bonny Fraser, Arthur Ng on lead guitar, David Potter on bass, and Jordan Jansons on drums. Playing the local scenes, the band started touring Australia with American bands, such as State Champs, Cute Is What We Aim For, and New Found Glory.

     

    I THINK I LIKE THAT SWEET CINNAMON. Since signing with Hopeless Records, Stand Atlantic has released four albums. The band captures an infectious sound with their brand of pop-punk.  Their second album Pink Elephant was released in 2020 and recorded with Stevie Knight. In later releases, the band experiments with hard rock, but the songs on Pink Elephant follow mostly a pop song structure with hard rock guitars. The band’s influences include classic pop-punk blink-182, Australian rockers Silverchair, ‘00s Emo band The Story So Far, The 1975, and pop star Justin Bieber. The band also covered Ariana Grande in their career. Pink Elephant sounds like this music synthesis: the structure of pop, the wittiness of pop-punk, and the aggression of hard rock. Songs like “Jurrasic Park” and the accompanying video highlight the band’s wit. The second track on the album, “Ssh!” is the heaviest. The song “Blurry” is an excellent example of the Knight’s modern-sounding production. It also features Fraser’s raw, gritty lyricism. 

    DRAGGING MYSELF TO HELL. “Soap” is the penultimate song on Pink Elephant. Sonically, the song feels like one of the best representative songs on the album, averaging out the dynamics of the album. However, the guitar in the song sounds like a lost ‘90s song. Lead singer Bonny Fraser has said that the song is about vices that people use to fill the void in their lives. Lyrically, though, the metaphor of soap seems to have both positive and negative connotations. On the one hand, “it cleans the wounds” but on the other hand it “Soap in [the speaker’s] mouth . . . filter[s her] our ‘til [she] just feels [her]self just fade away.” The song reminds me of the classic “wash your mouth out with soap” when children say a bad word or are disrespectful to adults. In this case, the speaker talks about filtering her language but takes the metaphor further. Soap ultimately erases her as soap washes away dirt. Then that makes me think about being a teacher and raising children. We certainly don’t want to wash away their personalities, just the bad manners and dirty habits. But we have to be careful not to erase the child. 


  • “Hello” by Adele, Monday, May 20, 2024 (partial repost)

    Both Taylor Swift and Adele love the album format. This love for the format made both artists resistant to streaming platforms in the mid-’10s. In 2014, Swift removed her music from Spotify to protest the platform’s payment of artists. She didn’t add her music to Apple Music until 2015 and resubmitted her music to Spotify in 2017. Adele fought Spotify to turn off the default setting of albums to be on “shuffle.” She wrote on Twitter (now X) “This was the only request I had in our ever[-]changing industry! We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended.”

    IT’S NO SECRET THAT THE BOTH OF US ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.  In 2015, Adele was arguably one of the biggest artists. After struggling with writers’ block to follow up her 2011 breakthrough sophomore album 21, the singer released 25. The album was only released in stores and only the album’s singles were available on streaming platforms until seven months after the album’s physical release. Today, Taylor Swift is the biggest artist, but even as recent as 2021, Swift avoided crossing release dates Queen Adele, a courtesy Swift didn’t extend to Carly Rae Jepsen nor Billie Eilish whom she even released two additional versions of The Tortured Poets Department when Eilish released Hit Me Hard and Soft. Adele’s Grammy-winning 25 brought Adele back to the center of pop culture in what would become longer-than-average album cycles. She wouldn’t be back until 2021 with 30. Maybe Adele hasn’t hit a prolific period like Swift or perhaps she is more discerning about the music she releases. But like Swift and several other pop stars, Adele proves that the album is still alive. 

    I MUST’VE CALLED A THOUSAND TIMES. Adele’s albums are curated collections of songs loosely based on themes she deals with at particular ages in her life. She is not the only artist who has made “age” albums, but she is certainly the biggest to have done so. When she released 25, she claimed that it was the last of her age albums, making 19, 21, and 25 a trilogy; however, she also released 30. Unlike 21, which had 3 major singles– “Rolling in the Deep,” “Set Fire to the Rain,” “Someone Like You” — out of the 5 released, 25 was mostly overshadowed by the lead single, “Hello.” Today’s song needs very little introduction. Most of the time I pick pretty obscure music for my playlists, sometimes even having to add the lyrics or even create the artist’s Genius page. However, 2015’s “Hello” is a song that everyone’s mom and grandmother knows. Furthermore, Adele is pretty much one of the least controversial figures in pop music, as shown masterfully in an SNL sketch. “Hello” is definitely meme-worthy. Nine years after its release, the emotion of the song has long since felt cliche; however, some days a cliche is really the best thing to describe your feelings.


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Down Bad” by Taylor Swift, Sunday, May 19, 2024

    It starts with a single and maybe a B-side, then an EP of 4-6 songs. This is often followed by more singles and more EPs. Finally, we get the full-length studio record which may be reworked versions of the early singles and songs from the EP. These artists often struggle to fill a full concert set because they don’t have enough material. They often resort to playing covers of songs that influenced their early career. However, somewhere along the way, an artist, should they last, becomes prolific. The frequency of singles, EPs, and full albums increases. In the past when this happened, the artist had passed their radio prime. But today, we have artists like Drake and Taylor Swift in their prolific period and in their commercial prime. Sometimes artists get big enough to release whatever they want, and that’s what has seemed to happen with the latest from Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department, released last month to record-breaking streaming numbers.

     

    FUCK IT IF I CAN’T HAVE HIM. I remember saying something in one of my classes about how I didn’t care very much for many of EXO’s songs. I don’t remember the context, whether I was relating to a story or if I was just talking to students, but I do remember the response: “Be careful, Teacher. Don’t say that online.” K-pop fan groups are formidable forces as are the Beehive and the Swifties. This can even make honest reviews of their most recent works harrowing tasks for critics and music publications, let alone humble bloggers who want to offer nuanced criticism. Taylor Swift is the biggest artist in the world and she’s dealing with both celebrity billionaire problems and issues of love and breakups. Much of Swift’s latest offering, The Tortured Poets Department deals with the latter, making the album relatable to a greater percentage of listeners. But there is certainly a lot of celebrity intrigue packed within the lines of each song. Is this song about Joe Alwyn or Matty Healy? Then so many of the songs sound fictionalized with exotic places like Florida!!! and metaphors of murder going to “the slammer.” Critics asked last year if listeners were growing fatigued with Taylor Swift,  but when the album broke listener streaming records and littered a record number of Billboard’s Hot 100 spots, that criticism seems invalided for both diehards and casual listeners. But casually listening to the album for about a month, I feel like the album is more of a first draft that had the potential of being a poetic masterpiece.

  • “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan, Saturday, May 18, 2024

    “What on earth is this?”I stumbled on today’s song, “Good Luck, Babe!”  about a month ago when I was browsing Spotify’s top viral songs. No Chappell Roan’s music isn’t earth-shattering, but something about her ‘80s queer-pop aesthetic feels completely new. And although Chappell Roan is the stage name of the “Midwest Princess” Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, this persona feels oddly authentic. Roan is currently enjoying a viral moment after opening for Olivia Rodrigo on the Guts World Tour and performing at Coachella. Spotify reported that Roan had seen a 500% increase in listenership between February and April.

    I DON’T WANNA CALL IT OFF, BUT YOU DON’T WANNA CALL IT LOVE. Chappell Roan is not a new artist; she’s been self-releasing music since 2014, first through YouTube under her real name. Amstutz’s love for music began with the piano before adolescence. Growing up in a conservative Christian home in Missouri, church and Christian youth camps were a part of the singer’s youth. But growing up in the Internet age gave the young artist a chance at exposure and a broader world than her small town. Although she didn’t make the cut to be on America’s Got Talent, Atlantic Records signed her at 17 on the promise of her YouTube covers and following. It was then that Amstutz adopted the stage name, Chappell Roan, which she describes as both her stage name and her drag persona. Taking her late grandfather’s last name Dennis K. Chappell and Roan from his favorite song, “The Strawberry Roan” by Curley Fletcher. Roan released her first EP School Nights in 2017. In 2020, Roan began working with collaborator Dan Nigro, the former lead singer and guitarist of As Tall as Lions. Rather than the dark pop sounds of School Nights, Roan’s new sound was inspired by gay clubs and living in Los Angeles. 

    YOU’RE NOTHING MORE THAN HIS WIFE. After releasing three singles in her new sound, Atlantic Records dropped Chappell Roan, stating that her music wasn’t profitable for the major label. Roan was only beginning her rebrand, but her favorite collaborator, Dan Nigro, had created a runaway success with Olivia Rodrigo’s “driver’s license” and had to finish SOUR, leaving without a label and a producer. This would be the typical ending of most indie pop performers. But when Roan moved back to Missouri, she was determined that her musical career was not over. While she was in Missouri, the critics were just digesting Roan’s work, especially her single “Pink Pony Club,”  which USA Today ranked as the third best song of 2020 and Vulture called “The Song of the Summer” in 2021. Roan amassed a bigger following from opening on Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR tour, generating positive reviews from NPR. Working as an independent artist and with some further collaborations with Nigro, Roan released her 2023 debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, a collection of her previous singles and new songs. Now, Roan is entering a new era with the single “Good Luck, Babe!” I hope that things remain on the up and up for this hard-working indie pop star. With queer artists perpetually catching fleeting moments, I hope that Roan can be our gay Madonna.

     

  • “When I Grow Up” by The Pussycat Dolls (reworked repost), Friday, May 17, 2024

     

    Today’s song comes from the Los Angeles burlesque-turned-mainstream pop act  The Pussycat Dolls. Founded by choreographer   Robin Antin in 1995, and performing at The Viper Room on Thursday nights in the ’90s, the group’s lineup fluctuated before Antin decided to take her group to the radio. Former Dolls included Christina Applegate,  Christina Aguilera, and Carmen Electra. The original concept was simple: beautiful women singing standards from the ’50s and ’60s in lingerie. Playboy reported on the burlesque act in 1999, and several dancers posed semi-nude for that feature. But as a pop group, choreographer and manager Antin settled on a six-girl lineup and released their first single, “Sway,” for the 2005 film Shall We Dance?  The group released their full-length debut PCD the following year, which featured hits like “Don’t Cha” and “Stickwitu.” In 2008, The Dolls released their second album, Doll Domination,  which features today’s song “When I Grow Up,” a song about being young and craving fame. 

    BOYS CALL YOU SEXY. Fun, pretentious, novelty, inauthentic. Call it what you want, but Fearless Records‘ Punk Goes… series has been around for a while. Punk purists will point out that the compilations comprise mid-tier Emo, Pop-Punk, and Post-Hardcore bands, rather than real punk bands. While music people may debate what is really punk, Fearless Records helped to solidify a punk-rock-inspired scene starting with their first release Punk Goes Metal in 2000. Punk Goes Pop followed in 2002. After releasing several other compilations, Punk Goes Pop 2 was released in 2009. 

    WE ALL WANNA BE FAMOUS. Mayday Parade is a band from Tallahassee, Florida, founded in 2005. Today they are a staple in the Pop-Punk/Emo scene, cutting their teeth on Warped Tour and touring with the who’s who of that scene. With their mellower, at times piano-driven pop punk, the band is a frequent contributor to the Punk Goes… series. And while music critics pan the Punk Goes… series it’s certainly fun hipster music. It’s fun to hear how Alternative rockers interpret good and not-s0- good source material. Is there screaming on a Britney Spears song? Is there a gender-bender? Is there an interesting guitar or instrument? Or is it just a whacky way to interpret a pop song? I must say that The Pussycat Dolls were totally off my radar, and I didn’t even know the original version of this song until I heard Mayday Parade’s cover. Along with Weird Al‘s inclusion of “Don’t Cha” in his 2006 “Polkarama!” medley, Mayday Parade’s version of “When I Grow Up” gets stuck in my head from time to time. But unlike Weird Al’s bizarre take on “Don’t Cha,” Mayday Parade’s song can make sense–Motley Crüe level of rockstar decadence. Of course, Mayday Parade with its 2 million monthly listeners is far from being household names. Maybe the age of rock star rock stars is over, but this song is a fun reminder that if we wish it, it could come true. So be careful.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Original version:

    Cover: 

  • “Conrad” by Ben Howard, Thursday, May 16, 2024

     

    Ben Howard hails from the Southwestern town of Richmond in London, though he is an avid Liverpool football fan. He grew up playing several instruments before showing ultimate devotion to playing guitar. Six months before graduating with a Journalism degree, Howard decided to pursue music full-time. Howard’s dark folk music was influenced by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Simon & Garfunkel, and his unique guitar playing is a key feature of his music. He plays a left-handed guitar and sometimes a right-handed guitar upside down. He uses alternate tunings and often plays his acoustic guitar percussively.


    YOU WERE THE BOAT THAT BREACHED. Ben Howard released an independent EP in 2008 and signed to Island Records in 2011. Later that year, he released his Mercury- Prize-nominated debut album, Every Kingdom. Howard’s sound evolved on subsequent releases from acoustic folk to indie rock on his sophomore album, I Forget Where We Were, to experimental electronic music on his latest release, 2023’s Is It? Today’s song, “Conrad,” comes from Howard’s sophomore record. I Forget Where We Were, released in 2014, received generally favorable reviews, though Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s review on AllMusic stated in his review of the album: “Howard expects you to meet him on his own terms and provides just enough aural enticement to give him not just one listen but a second, which is when I Forget Where We Were really begins to sink in its hooks.” In a music industry that demands hooks even of its folk singers, the balancing act of artistic vision and listener gratification is delicate. Personally, I find that albums that don’t give me everything I want in favor of the artist’s vision tend to be what makes me go for repeat listens. In the CD age, when music was an investment, established artists could take bigger risks. CDs were expensive and fans listened as part of a musical investment. But in the streaming era, a band releases something uncatchy, listeners think it’s a bad album and move on.


    WE WILL NEVER BE THE CHANGE IN THE WIND AND THE SEA. “Conrad” is perhaps the catchiest song on I Forget Where We Were. I first heard it in the fall of 2015 at Starbucks. The track is unassuming until the chorus and the post- chorus. The song begins with a plucked electric guitar that sounds. The verse contrasts with Ben Howard’s unique higher-than-usual folk voice and slurred articulation when the song begins. I picture the guitar sometimes in the verses being a bit of a stray strand of hair that won’t cooperate in the morning. The chorus has a two-chord War-on-Drugs effect. Howard allows the song to breathe in these two chords, eventually fading out with a guitar solo. The lyrics of the song are sparse, and Howard’s singing is hard to understand at first. “Conrad” refers to the 1917 short story “The Tale” by Joseph Conrad. The fogginess of Howard’s lyrics matches with Conrad’s ambiguous tale of suspected war profiteering. It’s a tale of otherworldly loneliness and the guilt from possible war crimes. With some focused listening to “the tale of” Howard’s I only hear the theme of loneliness. The reflective outro seems to be a meditation on the loneliness felt when being alone at sea. We are left realizing that “We will never be the change to the weather and the sea.”

    Live

  • “In a Dream” by Troye Sivan + Dreaming Playlist, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

     

    In a Dream is Troye Sivan’s 2020 break-up EP. We’ve looked at Sivan’s breakup with model Jacob Bixenman in our discussion of the song “Easy.” Rather than giving his audience a full heartbreaking album, Sivan condenses what could be an album of material into 4 of the 7 tracks on the deluxe edition of the extended play. Sivan was certainly due in 2020 for a full album, but with the pandemic and the anxiety listeners already had, four songs might have been a mercy on his listenership. Singles between In a Dream and his 2023 third album Something to Give Each Other, explored the heartbreak a little more but moved on to party mode on last year’s album. Today, we’re going to explore the world of the subconscious as I update my Dreaming playlist. The song “In a Dream” is about a dream Troye had of his ex. He told NME that the intense dream woke the singer up crying. Today, we’ll listen to other dreamy songs–hopefully nothing of nightmares.


  • “A Voice in the Violence” by Wolves at the Gate, Tuesday, May 14, 2024

    On April 8th, people from around the world crowded the path of a rare total solar eclipse that spanned from central Mexico to Newfoundland. The celestial event lasted at most 4 minutes and 28 seconds. In the eclipse’s direct path, businesses charged excessive rates for tourists to stay, dine, and enjoy themselves before and after the short main event. Many recall the 2017 total eclipse when then-President Trump looked directly at the sun without protective glasses, leaving experts aghast. As the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses were less than seven years apart, why the hype and international travel? While the two solar eclipses happened only seven years apart, the last total eclipse before 2017 in the contiguous fifty states was on March 7, 1970, and the next total solar eclipse after 2024 is not until 2044, but only be visible in the north-midwestern states around sunset.


    I SEE THE NIGHT SLIPPING OVER. The cosmic phenomenon of the sun being blocked by the sun’s light being blocked by the moon is now a predictable event. Even still, eclipses are eerie to us in modern days. In ancient times, an eclipse might be seen as a warning of an impending evil or misfortune. The April 8th solar eclipse followed a rare 4.8 magnitude earthquake in New York City on April 6th, which prompted Georgia House of Representatives member Marjorie Taylor Greene to post on X, “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come.” The appeal to “turn to God” when natural phenomena present themselves is a confirmation bias Christians have had since the writing of the apocalyptic book of Revelation was canonized. And with climate change amplifying every year, we’re in danger as a human race to fall victim to a nihilistic Christian interpretation that wants the end of the world “to come quickly.”

    YOU’RE FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE SILENCE. IT’S TELLING YOU ALL YOU WANT TO HEAR. Back in 2019, Wolves at the Gate released their fourth album on Solid State Records. The album was called Eclipse and several of the songs were informed by the political situation in America. On the Labeled Podcast, lead singer Stephen Cobucci says that “when people stop and introspectively look at themselves and what the issue is and [understand that] there probably is a better solution than a political affiliation.” Light and darkness are motifs on Eclipse and in the redux follow-up EP Dawn. The band is unapologetically ministry-oriented, which Cobucci talks about on Labeled as a deterring factor in the band’s success compared to less evangelistic bands. The biggest single from Eclipse, “A Voice in the Violence,” is a song about a dark night of the soul, or about the negative voices we hear when we are alone. Some of those voices are confirmation biases, solidifying our doomed thoughts about ourselves or others. The album feels absent of political bias compared to Watashi Wa’s 2022 People Like People. There’s Christianity subtly implied by the lyrics. But what feels most relevant even today is the band’s intense delivery. These are intense times, and the escapist pop and folk protest songs either avoid current issues or preach to us directly. Eclipse from 2019 to today is an album that expresses the anger and disappointment in what’s turned out to be a dystopian world, but the lyrics don’t tell us what to think about it.


     Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Justify” by Rosie Darling + 21st Century Singer Songwriters Playlist, Monday, May 13, 2024

     

    Today, we’re going to explore 21st-century singer-songwriters. Beyond the Taylor Swifts, Ed Sheerans, and Phoebe Bridgers and my favorites like Tyson Motsenbocker and Sasha Alex Sloan, I also include some up-incomers I’ve found more recently but haven’t delved into their music as much. For example, LA-based artist Rosie Darling released her debut full-length album, Lanterns, last year. Her debut EP, 2021’s Coping, and its follow-up 2022’s Golden Age were more indie pop than Lanterns uses more acoustic guitars. I’m not considering either style for my playlist as more worthy of the title of singer-songwriter, though the acoustic guitar does seem to satisfy the stereotype better. I hope you enjoy the playlist and discover some new music.



  • “Support Group” by Sawyer (Repost), Sunday, May 12, 2024 + Heartbreak Mix

     Sawyer is an Indie Pop duet of singers Kel Taylor and Emma Harvey. Based in Nashville, the duo has music on Spotify from 2015. The group’s most-streamed song, 2019’s “Emotional Girls,” is at 2.6 million, and the group only has around 83,000 monthly listeners. Their second most streamed song is a cover of the Temper Trap’s “Sweet Disposition.” In June, Sawyer released a four-song EP containing three previously released songs and one new song, the title track of Big Deal. Today’s song “Support Group” has been featured on several Spotify discover music playlists. The song employs memorable songwriting. The metaphor in the first verse is quite funny, almost country-style songwriting. The mental image of “gassing up” the listener’s ego, then lighting a fire, standing by the fire “keeping [the speaker’s] hands warm” even “makin’ a damn s’more.” The song imagines starting a support group composed of former lovers of the man the group is singing about, Josh Tucker Must Die style. Today I’m compiling a collection of heartbreak songs.