Mixtapemotions

  • “Be Sweet” by Japanese Breakfast, Thursday, June 20, 2024

    Michelle Chongmi Zauner was busy in 2021 promoting her band Japanese Breakfast’s third album, Jubilee, and her memoir Crying in H Mart, a heartbreaking work chronicling the illness and death of her mother. The book is far more than a music memoir–readers need not be familiar with Zauner’s band to appreciate the writing or the story–the singer does talk about her musical background and how she happened upon a music career after her mother’s death when she had mostly given up on the prospect of being known for her music. Before Zauner formed Japanese Breakfast, she had been the lead singer of the Emo rock band Little Big League. The band formed in 2011, recorded two studio albums, and dissolved in 2014 following Michelle’s mother’s cancer diagnosis as Zauner left the band’s home base of Philadelphia to be with her family in Eugene, Oregon.


    PACIFY HER RAGE. Japanese Breakfast was Michelle Zauner’s side project that she started in 2013 when still in Little Big League. She says that she chose the name because she wanted to make Americans wonder what Japanese people eat for breakfast. In her 2021 memoir, Zauner talks about the tastes she had growing up as the child of two foodies. Crying in H Mart was released at a time when Korean food had started to become popular outside of Asia as the popularity of K-pop and Korean dramas entered Western pop culture. Zauner describes the delectable, though often unfamiliar, tastes she experienced especially from her mother’s Korean–not Japanese–heritage. After her mother died in October 2014, Michelle took a job in advertising in New York. She found the corporate world unfulfilling and continued to write music as a hobby under her Japanese Breakfast side project. The songs she wrote helped her remember her mother and reconnect with her past and her heritage. In 2016, Zauner released Psychopomp, a collection of songs about her mother and the country she had fallen in love with. After being rejected by several other labels, the album was released on a small indie label, Yellow K. On the And the Writer Is… Podcast,  Michelle talked about the small label and a publicist who believed in the album, which ultimately led to the album being released on a bigger label later in 2016 and a breakout national tour with Mitski which helped Japanese Breakfast become a full-time project. 

    TELL THE MEN I’M COMING. The two Michelle Zauner projects from 2021 feel quite different in tone. The memoir is similar in tone to Psychopomp, but on Japanese Breakfast’s third album, Jubilee, Zauner writes fictional tales like on the songs “Kokomo, IN” and “Savage Good Boy.” She writes bright songs like the opener “Paprika.” But the album’s clearest shot at a radio single, “Be Sweet,” is a funky disco-infused confectionary.  Zauner co-wrote the song with Jack Tatum of the band Wild Nothing. Zauner typically writes lyrics alone. The song could be interpreted as fiction, though Michelle is married to bandmate Peter Bradley who plays bass on the band’s recordings and tours with his wife. Bradley had been in a Little Big League with Zauner and married Michelle just before her mother died in 2014. Zauner wrote of Peter that he “was the first person [she] ever dated that [her] mother liked.” As a character in Zauner’s memoir, he plays the role of a supportive partner during a time that no couple ever wants to experience–the death of a parent. Peter often fades into the background until she brings him back out again. She proposed to him as she wanted her mother to be a part of the wedding. Michelle is a charismatic personality who knows her worth and demands it from a partner, both in the memoir and in “Be Sweet.” The music video for the song is pure fun: a stylized X-Files knock-off, star Zauner and the lead singer to a band Little Big League toured with, Mannequin Pussy. Michelle and Marisa “Missy” Dabice look amazing in ‘80s hair and shoulder-padded suits. 


     

  • "Cynical" by Propaganda ft. Aaron Marsh & Sho Baraka, Wednesday, June 19, 2024 (reworked post)

    Jason Emmanuel Petty, known as Propaganda, is a poet, pastor, and spoken-word rapper whose 2017 album Crooked made a definitive turn into the discussion of where politics and Christianity intersect.  In the constant Fox News cycle of 2024, it’s hard to remember everything that was happening in 2017, although the politicians and the American people have only become more shameless. Much of the lyrics on Crooked come from a personal and political disappointment, particularly in how Christianity is used to oppress people of color in America. The album’s third single, “Cynical” encapsulates this disappointment succinctly.

    WHY DO YOU LOVE YOUR GUNS MORE THAN OUR SONS? “Cynical” starts with a morose electric guitar which plays the same chords throughout the song. Several of the tracks on Crooked use electric guitar, but the melodies are kept to a minimum, keeping the focus on Propagada’s words. “Cynical,” though has a chorus–albeit a simple one–sung by Copeland’s Aaron Marsh. The lyrics don’t hold back on the cynicism Petty feels. It’s a similar feeling that progressive and so-called ex-vangelicals feel, but Propaganda is addressing the concerns of black Americans and immigrants who are most vulnerable to the political policies that mainstream Christians are leveraging in politics. Propaganda specifically calls out Christians who are “flying to Trump rallies” while people who don’t look like them are dying. He asks the Christians why they will not get involved with racial justice, and why instead they “love [their] guns more than our sons.” The series of questions Propaganda asks in the song are not new or original–many of us have been asking these questions at various stages of the Christian Right, but the willful blindness by the other side leads the speaker to feel more cynical than ever before.

    PRAY TO MY SAVIOR, AND MIDDLE FINGER TO MY NEIGHBOR. Seven years later, what has changed? The polarization Propaganda raps about in “Cynical” is more pronounced. Voters are once again forced into choosing between Trump and Biden. Both candidates are more interested in wielding political power than addressing the needs of the nation, though Trump has promised a frightening Project 2025 which should scare anyone interested in a state with free democratic elections. We’re in the middle of maybe the hottest year on record and in the middle of two wars. Personal freedoms are constantly under fire as a stacked Supreme Court decides a theocratic future. And while it’s bad for me, I can’t even imagine what this level of cynicism feels like for an immigrant, a refugee, a person of color in America, or a member of the trans community. Today is Juneteenth, a day when we celebrate the end of slavery, specifically the end of slavery in the Confederate states. Why didn’t it become a federal holiday until 2021? And why is it a point of political contention? Why does racism feel so much more mainstream and more overt than ever? 





  • “My Universe” by Coldplay ft. BTS (repost), Tuesday, June 18, 2024

    I’ve written a bit about how I’m a  Coldplay apologist. I believe that the London-based band is very good at what they do. Though so many artists accomplish their sound, both musically and lyrically, better, there’s something uplifting about a new Coldplay album. Two years ago, I talked about the band’s first single from their ninth studio record, Music of the Spheres, “Higher Power.” The album was released on October 15, 2021. Before the release of the record and after releasing “Higher Power,” the band released the promotional single, the 10:17 track “Coloratura,” which was praised by critics for its composition and production. Then they released the second radio single “My Universe,” featuring the South Korean boy band, BTS. The song shot straight to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the second Coldplay single to top the Hot 100, the first being “Viva la Vida.”

    I JUST WANT TO PUT YOU FIRST.  The reviews for Music of the Spheres were quite low. Metacritic, a database that averages the scores by major publications, scores the album as 55/100. Most critics agreed that Coldplay’s venture into Max Martin-produced pop music was shameless, even for a band that was instrumental for inventing the late ’00/’10 pop-rock sound. “My Universe” in particular is viewed as a “cash-grab.” Recently, due to BTS’s enormous ARMY of fans, every recent single the boy band has released has headed straight to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Music of the Spheres aimed to be a comeback album for the British pop-rockers. In 2017, Coldplay was a band with a large fan base. Only Linkin Park had more  YouTube  subscribers, and Coldplay was the most streamed “rock band.” However, being the top rock band, even if your definition is loose enough to call Coldplay a rock band, made Coldplay a “big fish in a little pond.” The pond of rock music continues to dry up, and the 100 Million+ selling band would be competing with streams and sales by pop and R&B acts like Drake and The Weeknd. A collaboration with one of the highest-selling groups of recent years would promote the now middle-aged rock band as cool and hip. Maybe the kids would dig back into their earlier discography and maybe Music of the Spheres would sell well.

    THAT BRIGHT INFINITY INSIDE YOUR EYES. Cynicism about the “cash-grab” aside, the Coldplay-BTS collaboration may have come from a place of sincerity. Originally, Coldplay wrote the song for BTS, as many non-Korean composers have written for K-pop. Coldplay performed in South Korea in 2017 during their A Head Full of Dreams Tour. The band has been evolving into a pop act steadily over the course of their career. Their 2011 Mylo Xyloto included a collaboration with Rihanna on “Princess of China,” and much less guitar focus. Head Full of Dreams included backing vocals by Beyoncé; however, “Hymn for the Weekend” wasn’t marketed as Coldplay ft. Beyoncé, thus the song ran on the momentum of Coldplay fans, not Beyoncé fans. The message of “My Universe” is that love transcends distance, language, and misunderstandings. Produced in and out of quarantine, Music of the Spheres aims to bridge fans around the world together. The band began touring again, after swearing off touring during the release of their 2019 record Everyday Life until they could find a way to tour more eco-friendly. Recently, the band has embarked on a carbon-neutral tour, which aims to revolutionize the music industry. The musical concept album Music of the Spheres may have been inspired by Star Wars in “a galaxy far, far away,” but the themes of connection, love, and the human experience are truly not out of this world.
     
    Lyric Video:

    Documentary:

  • “Youngblood” by 5 Seconds of Summer, Monday, June 17, 2024

    A big part of my blog is discovering music. Sometimes that’s new indie artists with very little written except for press releases. But what I’ve found more often is that I’ve been unearthing the long-lost civilization of the 2010s, a decade I scoffed at as the nadir of music. During the pandemic, though, I started listening to new music, finding the newer songs resonating with me in ways that the 2010s didn’t. But then I started going back, re-evaluating pop, rock, and alternative in the 2010s, listening with an open mind. I realized that music was changing and that loyalty to any genre was an illusion. Alternative playlists reminded me of what would pass for pop music in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Bedroom pop, dream pop, hip-hop, and neo-soul flooded the playlists. Now I see that as a strength rather than a weakness.


    SAY YOU WANT ME OUTTA YOUR LIFE. One of the tracks that showed up on an Apple Music Alternative Hits playlist was “Youngblood” by 5 Seconds of Summer, called 5SOS by fans. My musical diet in the 2010s was Christian, K-pop/K-hip hop, and queer pop, so I missed out on several alternative acts–the height of Paramore and Twenty One Pilots, though I was aware of them. But I thought that 5 Seconds of Summer was a boy band like One Direction or The Wanted. The Australian band did come to fame by opening for One Direction on their 2014 Take Me Home tour. The band’s name floated around in South Korean entertainment shows, but I didn’t realize that they were actually big in America–three number-one debuting Billboard 200 albums big. Their 2018 single, “Youngblood” was the band’s biggest single in America and Australia. In America, the song peaked at number 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The song’s inclusion on an Apple Music Alternative Hits playlist is interesting as boy band music in 2018–in America–was in a valley. One Direction had gone on hiatus in 2016, and Jonas Brothers wouldn’t come back until the next year, though BTS was breaking into America about this time. 


    LOVE ME ‘TILL THE DAY I DIE. The official music video for “Youngblood” was released in August 2019 while 5 Seconds of Summer was touring in Japan. In 2017, before they recorded their third record, 5SOS had been featured on a song by Japanese rock band One Ok Rock. The video for “Youngblood” starred a Japanese cast with 5SOS not appearing in the video. Director Frank Borin stylizes a nutro Japanese greaser/ rockabilly-stylized video with modern video stylizations. The plot of the video follows a Japanese elderly couple who take pills and recall their youth, presumably in the 1950s. The motion of the video and the apparent electronic glitches both set a modern anachronistic mood (as do modern shots of Tokyo) and make the music video open to interpretation. As a song, “Youngblood” is full of energy. The lyrics speak of a romantic entanglement that is not easily broken. It seems like a break-up song, but the speaker and his love seem to be pushing and pulling, leaving the speaker to feel “like a dead man walking.” Yet, the “Youngblood” makes the song sound like the speaker and his partner can overcome whatever it is that is in the way.  But maybe that’s the music video doing the interpretation. 








     

  • “Cosmos” by B.I., Sunday, June 16, 2024

     

    The authorities take drug allegations in South Korea very seriously and can have significant consequences for those involved. The country has a strict anti-drug policy, and drug offenses are punishable by severe penalties. Usage of substances such as cannabis that are legal or decriminalized in other countries can lead to jail time in South Korea.  But besides legal implications, there is a social stigma that comes with drug use. Allegations can ruin a career, which almost happened to the Korean rapper and leader of the idol group iKON, B.I (비아이). In 2019, Kim Han Bin (김한빈) was found guilty of attempting to purchase drugs. In 2019, Kim Han Bin (김한빈) was found guilty of drug possession and attempting to purchase drugs. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison for three counts of drug possession, including two counts of possessing marijuana and one count of possessing LSD.  


    DON’T FALL LIKE PETALS ON A FLOWER. Following the allegations, YG Entertainment terminated B.I’s contract and the singer departed iKON. The group recorded some of the songs the former band leader had written. But unlike many Korean stars who faced drug charges and allegations, B.I returned to music in 2021. He offered his fans an apology and returned as a solo artist, first featuring on a track by Epik High, on their tenth album. B.I’s solo return came with a charity three-track single, Midnight Blue. B.I pledged to donate all proceeds of the streams and physical release sales to World Vision, the Christian humanitarian aid organization. For his debut solo full-length album Waterfall, released in June, B.I also donated the proceeds to World Vision. Both projects specifically continue to fund the “Basic for Girls” project in Zambia, providing the funds to build women’s restrooms. Streaming and purchasing the albums will fund the project for sixty years after the rapper’s death, as is the statute of copyright law.


    SHE CAN BE A PAINTING LIKE A MUSEUM. The June 2021-released Waterfall was followed by November 2021’s EP, Cosmos. This EP would be the first part of his second full-length album. The title track, “Cosmos,” has a rock-styled introduction. The lyrics of the song play on the meaning of the word cosmos, meaning an astrological coincidence that the speaker and his lover are together, and with the fall release of the mini-album, the song also references the flowers that bloom in the autumn, just before the winter cold sets in. Not every fallen star in the cosmos can be reborn. B.I seems to be a charismatic rapper, well-connected with fans and the hip-hop side of K-pop. His apology also helped his career, but perhaps the best way for a star to be reborn is through charity. By donating proceeds to charity, hesitant fans feel less guarded about funding someone embroiled in a scandal. So by the time B.I released Cosmos, his fan base trusted him, and he could make money in music again.


  • "I Blame the World" by Sasha Alex Sloan, Saturday, June 15, 2024 (repost)

    The self-identified sad-girl Sasha Alex Sloan made a “mad record” in 2022. There was a podcast I listened to reacting to Sloan’s EP Self-Portrait. While the podcasters enjoyed the EP, they hoped that Sloan would never make a full-length record. She did release a full album in 2020. Only Child is a heart-breaking masterpiece, but it pulls back from the gut-wrenching, sometimes mean-spirited lyricism of her EPs. On 2022’s I Blame the World, Sloan is caustic as ever. The title track “I Blame the World” is probably the most catchy, but the other songs are worth a listen. Emo surely was alive in 2022.  

    WHY TALK TO GOD IF I AIN’T GOT PROOF HE’S EVEN THERE? When I counted down my favorite albums of last year, Sasha Alex Sloan’s I Blame the World was my seventh favorite record, which is code in my blog for I didn’t listen to it that much. I think that Sloan writes better when she’s more sad than angry. There are certainly enough things to be furious at in 2022. Sloan was born in 1995, and like all millennials, has watched the world get shittier and shittier since 2016. I Blame the World is the soundtrack of world leaders basically deciding to bring about the apocalypse, slowly. From Donald Trump’s presidency to the erosion of human rights around the globe to the threat of “Global Warming”  to the complete shit show in Sloan’s ancestral countries of Russia and Ukraine, I Blame the World feels like it should be the soundtrack to not only 2022 but for the foreseeable future. But there’s only so much anger the singer can express before sounding monotonous. “Live Laugh Love” takes the basic white girl motto and rejects the Instagram culture of “living your best life.” Sloan says, “Don’t wanna live my best life / Just wanna live my best life.”  Pandemic lingo also seeps into the record on “New Normal” being a life without the one she loves. I still think that Sloan is one of the best pop songwriters today, but I think that I Blame the World is overwrought with negativity, which makes the record start to rely on clichés and lose the listener’s willingness to invest.

    WHY GET HIGH WHEN EVERYONE EVENTUALLY COMES DOWN? “I Blame the World” as a song sounds halfway between an ’80s New Wave track and an angry girl rock ballad from the ’90s. Sasha Alex Sloan keeps her voice in a low register throughout the song, drawing similarities to Miley Cyrus, yet never belting out the chorus an octave higher, although I had a false memory of Sloan doing that until I listened to the song to analyze it. The video for the song also draws ’90s comparisons. It’s ultra-low budget with Sloan singing into a hairbrush and two members of her band playing air bass and air drumming to the song. The trio is dressed in awful outfits that look like bowling clothes, with tacky flames on the shirt and pants. The flame seems to be related to the video of the album’s lead single “WTF,” which features Sloan singing as her apartment catches fire. I Blame the World is a song cycle of problems as unsolvable as life in the 21st century. And after a long day that’s been longer than it should because everyone is working short-staffed with no significant raise, I wonder, what really is the cost of treating everyone with a little kindness? I want to blame the world for not being able to do anything. I want to blame Elon Musk for transitioning from technologies that could save the world from the impending climate crisis to delving into right-wing politics and crashing the 747 that is Twitter into the side of a mountain. I want to blame Bezos who made more money than ever during the pandemic, yet his company threatened to fire employees who tried to flee a distribution center when a tornado hit. I want to blame every boss who says that you can work 10% harder this year. I want to blame Sasha Alex Sloan’s booking agency for bringing her to Seoul on a Sunday night during the busiest time of the year for a worn-out teacher. I want to blame the world, but what comes of that? Tomorrow I’ll be more optimistic.

    Music video:

    Lyric video:

  • “Smart” by LE SSERAFIM, Friday, June 14, 2024

    Today it’s back to the world of the Hybe Corporation. In 2019, Hybe hired Min Hee-jin (민희진) as the company’s chief brand designer. She worked as the company began a transitional phase when BigHit Entertainment took on several subsidiary record labels. Min had worked for SM Entertainment, one of the big three K-pop labels in the ‘90s to early ‘10s, and had been the creative director behind some of the label’s biggest acts such as Exo, SHINee, (f)x, and Girls’ Generation. She then worked developing other K-pop acts on every label for Hybe except for BigHit because that label had its own specialized brand designer. But upon being hired at BigHit (later Hybe), Min demanded her own subsidiary, Ador, of which the brand designer became CEO. Ador was formed in 2021 and signed their first act in 2022.
     

    WANNA BE A WINNER. Min Hee-jin planned to release a girl group in 2022. Hybe Corporation was known for its boy bands and rappers. Still, with SM, YG, and JYP releasing successful fourth-generation K-pop girl groups like aespa and IVE, Hybe needed to capitalize on that demographic. Min hand-picked the girls of the group NewJeans, but before the group could debut with the song “Attention,” Source Music, another subsidiary of Hybe Entertainment, debuted their new girl group, Le Sserafim. The girl group followed the girl groups Glam and GFriend, the latter who had recently disbanded in 2021 leaving Source Music an empty roster only to Le Sserafim. Three of the group members were involved with the talent show Produce 48, which aired in 2018. Two of the members, former J-pop idol group member Sakura Miyawaki (宮脇咲良) and Kim Chae-won (김채원), won the competition and joined with ten other winners in the group Iz*One. Hybe and Source Music promoted their new group Le Sserafim, beginning to tease the group on March 14, 2022, and debuting the group’s EP Fearless on May 10th. 


    BUT LIVING LIKE A VILLAIN IS WHAT I NEED. Le Sserafim’s debut EP was commercially successful, becoming the best-selling debut of a girl-pop group. In contrast to Le Sserafim’s promotional hype, Min Hee-jin’s girl group NewJeans arrived with their debut single without much promotion from the label. Hybe claimed that Min’s demand for her own label delayed NewJeans’ debut and that Hybe couldn’t promote two new girl groups simultaneously. Still, NewJeans’ surprise debut turned into a number-one hit, and NewJeans has been one of the most successful girl groups since their debut. Le Sserafim has maintained a strong presence on the charts. They’ve released three EPs; their latest Easy was released on February 19th. The two singles “Easy” and “Smart” performed well on charts around the world. The songs range from experimental rock on “Good Bones” track to trap on the lead single “Easy” to tropical house on the second single “Smart.”  In April, they performed at Coachella. While many American music outlets praised the performance, many K-pop fans and netizens were disappointed with the group’s lack of live vocal talent. Listeners didn’t only point to the Coachella performance but noticed that the group’s vocals had always been inconsistent with their studio recordings. We’ll see if this affects the group’s next comeback. 


    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.

    Read the English version’s lyrics on Genius.

  • “Daylight” by Harry Styles + Harry House Track by Track, Thursday, June 13, 2024 (repost)

    It’s been over two years since Harry Styles released his third album, Harry’s House. The album combines Styles’ love of classic rock and modern pop. I’ve listened to this album a lot–or at least started listening to it a lot–in hopes that it will make me fall in love with it similar to how I fell in love with Fine Line. While I have started to pick up on the musical nuance in this record, I still think that Fine Line is superior. But here’s a house for the tracks that I talk about on this record. I’ll furnish the house with more information as it is later!

    1. “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” kicks the album off in the best way possible. I’ve heard so many music snobs slam this song as a soundtrack to shopping at Target, and that’s partially true. It’s “music for whatever you want.” The somewhat shallow lyrics about the speaker’s oral fixations set a tone for the album’s lyrical depth. Things don’t go very deep on Harry’s House. There are a few points of lyrical devastation. It’s sex, drugs, and food.

    2. “Late Night Talking.” By track two, I started noting a difference between Harry Styles’ second and third records. Fine Line was generally a brighter record. Even the slower, melancholy moments lead back to warmth and bright acoustic tones. Harry’s House feels colder. There are moments of musical extraversion, starting with “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” but the album’s second track is half-bummer, half-banger. The musical production feels a little bit like a head cold, but the lyrics evoke the feeling of being up all night talking during the start of a new relationship. Perhaps it’s nostalgia for a better time and the production is the contrast of the shitty time that is in the present. That’s purely my interpretation, though.

    3. “Grapejuice” feels a bit like a kid wanting his sippy cup. Harry starts to go deep on this track. The musical production sounds half ’70s folk with the keys and the acoustic guitar, and half indie-rock with the driving beat. The vibe I have from “Late Night Talking” lyrically is thematic in “Grapejuice”: reminiscing about the old days is fun, but it makes me depressed about what’s going on now–and this could be a pandemic depression song.


    4. “As It Was” is another pandemic depression song. When Harry Styles released the song, the upbeat A-ha-styled synth line distracted listeners from the fact that it’s a song about being paralyzed by the past. 

    5. “Daylight” is today’s song. Its calm start contrasts with “As It Was,” taking listeners back to the ’70s. “Daylight” is a prime example of how the concrete images Styles uses to paint a picture can either make the meaning of the song obtuse or crystal clear. The image of the bluebird flying to see his love turns to “sticking like honey to you.” His love is on a plane, he’s on the roof.

    6. “Little Freak.” We’re well into the album’s second act. The lyrics on “Little Freak” and “Matilda” are the most melancholy the record gets. It’s a relationship that has ended. Some have called the song offensive with the opening line: “Little freak, Jezebel.”  


    7. “Matilda” is a slow acoustic ballad that seems very personal to Harry Styles. When talking with Zane Lowe, he didn’t elaborate much on the story behind the song in order to protect the identity of the subject. The song deals with the theme of chosen family and draws a parallel between the subject of the song and Roald Dahl’s protagonist from the novel of the same name as both the subject and the protagonist are neglected by their families.

    8. “Cinema” brings the energy of the album back up to its second peak. It’s a jarring contrast between the emotional “Matilda” and the disco “Cinema,” but the summertime vibes and the buttery, fizzy imagery make the mistake a pleasant one. Many speculate that “Cinema” is a song referring to Harry Styles’ and director Olivia Wilde’s relationship at the time of recording Harry’s House. Harry Styles met her on the set of Don’t Worry Darling. 


    9. “Daydreaming” picks up the groove where “Cinema” left off. It’s dreamier, though. Another one of Taylor Swift’s exes plays on this track–John Mayer. 

    10. “Keep Driving” takes the energy of the album down again. According to his interview with Zane Lowe, Styles said that he wrote the song about an experience driving from the UK to Italy in 2020 when some of the travel restrictions began to ease. 

    11. “Satellite” is Harry’s latest single.  The song’s central metaphor is comparing watching an ex being like a satellite, watching from afar.

    11. “Boyfriends” is an acoustic track about toxicity in relationships. Styles admitted to Zane Lowe that the song is “both acknowledging my own behavior [and] it’s looking at behavior [Styles] has witnessed.”
    12. “Love of My Life” ends Harry’s House in a similar way that Fine Line ends—anticlimacticly.  It’s Styles as a singer-songwriter, but with the hype that the album sets up, I wish that there was something more dynamic to end with. And who is the love of Harry’s life? England, his home country.


    Read the lyrics on Genius. 

  • "Hero" by Family of the Year, Wednesday, June 12, 2024 (repost)

    The 2014 film Boyhood was a highly acclaimed film that has an incredible Rotten Tomatoes score, yet nobody talks about it anymore. The film was shot over 12 years from 2001 to 2013 using the same actors and feels like a piece of turn-of-the-century Americana, a kind of early 2000s rendering of a Norman Rockwell painting of the imperfect white, working-class American family. The film not only explores boyhood and coming of age, but also parenthood and the complications of raising a family while trying to better oneself as well as the struggles of co-parenting through a divorce. The events and pop culture throughout the years are woven into human themes. The soundtrack for the film is a combination of famed indie artists of the early ’00s and popular music of the time. Seamlessly joining the soundtrack was virtually unknown folk-rock band Family of the Year, with their song “Hero.”

    I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR HERO. “Hero” appears in the movie toward the end when Mason, Jr., played by Ellar Coltrane, drives his old pickup down the Texas highway. He is now 18 years old, graduated, and become himself. This comes after a scene with his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette). She wonders, “What was it all for?” when she reflects on the hardships of parenthood. She had raised her kids and wonders what’s next for her. She tells her son, “The next big event is my fucking funeral.” She had kept her family a paycheck away from eviction at some points but ultimately raised a successful family, yet she wonders what it was all for. Family of the Year’s “Hero” serves as a reflection on the themes of the movie. The song talks about the conflict between wanting stability and something greater than you have right now. You long to be allowed to leave, but you still hold down a job to keep the girl around. 

    I’M A KID LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Watching Mason’s family struggle in the 2000s reminded me of growing up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck in the ’90s to ’06 when I graduated high school. I remember church pantry handouts and hand-me-downs from cousins. Clinton-era social programs let us go to the doctor when we needed to, and our moldy old house had me sick quite a bit as a kid. My dad worked as a logger in New York until the payment was so bad that he decided to go to truck driving school. When my dad became an over-the-road truck driver we started making more money, but we didn’t have health insurance. We prayed we didn’t get sick or injured, and thank God nothing bad happened. My mom would eventually go to nursing school and go to work when I was in high school. I’m very proud of what my family did, but I remember talks with my dad that echoed what Olivia said in Boyhood. What is it all for? The existential question that haunts us with every passing year. What is it all for? “Hero,” tells us “Everyone deserves a chance to walk with everyone else” but what does that mean? Boyhood, life, marriage, divorce, the economic depression–rituals of the American Dream. Everyone deserves it, but isn’t it all just vanity and vexation of the spirit?

    Trailer for Boyhood: 


    Music Video (original cut):

     Music Video (Boyhood cut): 

  • “Plot Twist” (첫 만남은 계획대로 되지 않아) by TWS, Tuesday, June 11, 2024

    TWS (pronounced two-us or in hangeul 투어스)  debuted earlier this year on Pledis Entertainment, an independently-operated sub-label of Hybe Corporation. Today all successful K-pop group members promote their group on social media, but the concept of Pledis’s latest boy band was to release “boyhood pop,” or pop music that “captures the daily stories of boys.” Furthering this concept, the group uses the tagline: “twenty-four seven with us.” The group is well-marketed as the cool boyfriends of voyeuristic K-pop fans. With members ranging from 16 to 20, TWS serves as a fifth (or fifth?)-generation K-pop group, marketed to middle school and high school students, which can be seen in their highly-stylized music video “Plot Twist.” The video features the group living in dormitory-style quarters and attending a co-educational high school.

    FIRST ENCOUNTERS ARE ALWAYS HARD.  Lyrically, “Plot Twist” by TWS is about the awkwardness and nervousness of first encounters. The lyrics describe the feelings of stiffness and self-consciousness that people often experience when meeting someone new. The song also conveys the idea that despite the social discomfort, there is potential for a deeper connection and relationship to develop. The song utilizes both old and new musical styles. Using synth programming, the song sounds fresh; however, the guitar and synchronized hopeful vocal delivery sound akin to early ‘90s boy bands.  The music video for “Plot Twist” reinforces the themes of awkwardness and nervousness of first encounters. The video shows this in a high school as the group members interact with each other and with female students. The video is stylized, focusing on shades of blue–a color the group has adopted in their singles and EPs since their debut earlier this year. There is also a motif of water, signifying the freshness of the group’s sound. It’s no wonder that the Korean soft drink Lotte Chilsung Milkis had TWS as part of their 2024 ad campaign for the refreshing yogurt soda. 

    WE MAY ACT A LITTLE STIFF.  In their dance performance videos, TWS shows a blocky style of dancing. The moves are exaggerated, almost as if the members are making themselves look bigger as if doing taekwondo or confronting a bear. However, each member adds subtlety to the movements, whether it’s a wink or a snap of the fingers, adding a level of cuteness to the big movements. The dancing along with their baggy clothes–when they aren’t dressed in school uniform for the music video of “Plot Twist”–, the group seems to be a harbinger of a ‘90s revival in K-pop. K-pop and general musical trends were set in the ‘80s, but the early ‘90s seem to be reemerging, despite the stars who are bringing the trends back being born in this century. While TWS may not be a “Plot Twist” to K-pop, their refreshing sound makes them an interesting group to watch with their second EP, Summer Beat! coming out on June 24th. I’m certainly not going to be waiting for the “daily stories of [these] boys,” though.  

     

    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.

    Read the English lyrics on Genius.