Mixtapemotions

  • “Grapefruit” by Tove Lo, Wednesday, July 31, 2024 (repost) (Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders)

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


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

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

     

  • “Easier Said than Done” by Shakatak, Tuesday, July 30, 2024

     

    Shakatak formed in 1980 in London. The jazz-funk has consisted of several changing members in their over forty-year career, but three of the key members—Jill Saward, Bill Sharpe, and Roger Odel—have remained in the band throughout its run, and bassist George Anderson joined the band in their first year. After a few minor hits in 1980, the band scored their first major hit in the U.K., “Easier Said than Done,” which featured the band singing in unison with an easy instrumental line. The single also helped the group achieve international success in Australia and Europe. Subsequent releases would bring the band success in Japan and the United States as well. 


    YOU CAN TAKE YOUR LOVE AWAY. “Easier Said than Done” is a very simple song with a repeating verse throughout the song. After each verse there is an instrumental break featuring a funky bass and piano improvisation. It’s a song that I could imagine being played at a grocery store back when I was young and grocery stores played elevator Muzak. This is not to disparage the English jazz band. The jazz improvisations are more interesting than generic grocery store music of the late 20th century, but lyrically, the song feels like it was just a way to make jazz relevant again in the ‘80s. I’m sure that if I heard this song in a hotel lobby while I was sipping an Old Fashioned, I’d be looking at the players’ virtuosity rather than listening to the singer’s vocal delivery. Today’s song is a perfect mid-summer vacation tune that keeps the summer fresh, but it also makes me think about the gradual decline of jazz in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when my generation grew up automatically thinking about Muzak and not music. 

    I CAN’T SHOUT OUT WHEN YOU WON. I didn’t know today’s song until Sunday when I learned about the lawsuit Shakatak filed against K-pop group NewJeans. The English jazz group claims that the K-pop group plagiarized the melody on “Bubble Gum” from their song “Easier Said than Done.” Listening to the songs back to back, the beginning of the chorus of “Bubble Gum” sounds like it follows the same note pattern of the vocal line of “Easier Said than Done.” I’m not sure if it constitutes a plagiarism lawsuit, especially with as much music that seems to be ripped off these days. Many artists credit samples like Gotye with “Somebody That I Used to Know,” Foster the People with “Pumped Up Kicks,” and The Weeknd with “Out of Time.” It seems impossible that a melody actually comes from thin air and it is impossible for me to give proper attribution to a melody that has been in your head since you were a child before we all had Shazam installed on our phones. Will Shakatak’s members get songwriting credit on the song like Hayley Williams and Josh Farro did on Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4 u”? The melody of “Bubble Gum” sounds more similar to “Easier Said than Done” than “good 4 u” sounds to “Misery Business.” When a song samples another, there is clear intent of use; however, when a melody is subconscious and therefore harder to credit in many cases. Shakatak has sent “Bubble Gum” to musical experts for analysis. But I think that when disputes like this come up, if the songwriters of the accused song do not automatically offer songwriting credit or admit to the musical influence, there should be a musical questioning process in which all of the songwriters of the song accused of plagiarism are subpoenaed to musical court, questioned about their influences and all of their interviews should be used as evidence as well. Perhaps also their streaming records should be subpoenaed to see if the writers were even aware of the song. Of course, influence and listening to a song doesn’t guarantee that they didn’t hear the song in, say a grocery store. And if they heard the song subconsciously, I think that it’s very hard to prove that there was intent of plagiarism. I’m definitely not a legal expert, but I think that it’s possible that the writers of NewJeans’ “Bubble Gum” could have stumbled on the melody coincidentally and they shouldn’t be held at fault if that happened because note and chord combinations can happen accidentally with two groups never knowing that the other exists. 




  • “This Is Heaven” by Nick Jonas, Monday, July 29, 2024 (repost)

      

    In 2018 Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra Jonas married in two ceremonies. The ceremonies took place in India and represented the religious backgrounds of both the Bollywood-turned-Hollywood actress and the singer/actor. The first ceremony was Christian, taking place on December 1, and the second was Hindu on December 2. In 2019, Nick and the two other Jonas Brothers released their first album in ten years. Nick’s solo career had heated up after the Jonas hiatus, but a reunited Jonas Brothers was even more commercially exciting. In 2021, Nick Jonas was back with a solo record, this time dealing with the themes of isolation due to the pandemic, but mostly about his love for his bride.

    I’M ON MY KNEES AND I CAN’T STOP NOW. From the moment I heard Nick Jonas’s second single from Spaceman, “This Is Heaven,” on his Saturday Night Live performance, I started making connections to what I knew about the Jonas Brothers’ religious upbringing, particularly the story told by the 2019 documentary film Chasing Happiness. The film discusses the hard years in between the Jonas fame and Kevin Jonas, Sr. losing his job as the pastor of a church in Wyckoff, New Jersey. Reflecting on that moment, Nick, Joe, and Kevin’s own faith was shaped by that disappointment in the church. Still, as teenagers, the Jonas Brothers were squeaky-clean Disney Channel role models to evangelical teens. They were even played on Christian radio stations and once shared the stage with Michael W. Smith singing “Place in This World.” But little by little, the evangelical Jonas Brother image unravelled. I certainly can’t speak to what the Brothers believe now, but it’s interesting how the brand has changed. Nick embraced his role as a gay icon to the point that some in the LGBTQ+ community accused him of “queer bating.” There are many other aspects that the morality police of my past  (the Christian music industry, etc.) could say about the Jonas Brothers/Nick Jonas career arch, but they would just rather forget that they were a part of it, albeit a very small part. 
    YOUR BODY, MY MOTIVATION.  I was thinking about something Dan Reynolds said in the episode of Song Exploder about “Follow You.” He said, “I worship [my wife]. This is my religion because religion hasn’t worked for me.” Similarly to “Follow You,” “This Is Heaven” speaks of Nick Jonas essentially worshiping his wife. One thing I remember when I went to church was the talk about why men stopped going to church. The solution was usually about “butching up the church”; however, it seems that the actuality of the need for this solution may not be the truth of the matter, at least from the two singers mentioned before. I think about my own Sabbath school Bible studies that persistently warned us not to be “unequally yoked.” This meant for Seventh-day Adventists to marry other Seventh-day Adventists. Then I think about when I threw all of that out the window in frustration when I realized I couldn’t fit into who the church said I was supposed to be. At one point, though, I did try to do the “gay version” of my upbringing, trying to find a Christian way to be gay, trying to date only gay Christians. But having been in a longterm relationship with someone who wasn’t raised Christian, I’m always interested to see how differently he sees the world. “This Is Heaven” doesn’t send him back to Bible studies past, and I think that’s a good thing. 

    Lyric Video:


    Saturday Night Live Performance:

    Chill version:

  • “How Sweet” by NewJeans, Sunday, July 28, 2024

    It shouldn’t work. But it does. We seem to be in a maximalist era of pop music. Big club sounds drowned out the folky acoustic songs that we were listening to during lockdown. I can’t explain it. But somehow the producers behind a K-pop group NewJeans has made simple ‘90s-styled adult contemporary extremely catchy. Relying on subdued instrumentation but never skimping on the beat, the group also offers solid vocal performances but never do the singers belt above loudly above the song’s instrumentation. The group has followed a kind of chill disco since their inception in 2022 over the course of some 20+ songs. This year, the Ador girl group has released two singles and two B-sides and are said to be releasing an album later this year, though whether it is an LP or an EP, we have yet to find out. 


     IT’S LIKE BITING AN APPLE. Of course, we’ve discussed how the squeaky-clean “Bubble Gum” pop singers NewJeans are not without controversy. Not only are the girls the center of a corporate scandal with their manager and sub-label head Min Hee-jin who allegedly tried to buy out her stake in Hybe Corporation and take her label Ador independent, English jazz-funk group Shakatak accused the songwriters of plagiarizing the song “Bubble Gum,” which was released as a b-side of today’s song “How Sweet.” The group claims that the song sounds too similar to their 1981 song “Easier Said Than Done.” The most disturbing issue that has come about this year is when gamers began harassing the members of NewJeans when customizing content that Ador released as a collaboration with the game Battlegrounds. Some gamers used the NewJeans characters to create sexually explicit content. Of these three issues surrounding NewJeans, the individual members don’t seem to be at fault, but rather their fame seems to be drawing bad actors into a seedier area in the K-pop industry.  



    ALL I KNOW IS NOW. “How Sweet” was NewJeans’ comeback from March of this year. After releasing several OST (original soundtrack) songs for dramas and remixes, the group began a fresh cycle, which is possibly leading up to an album release later this year. “How Sweet” is a break up song. The line about biting into an apple is apropos—rather than being completely sweet or sour, the experience is tart. It tastes sweet to be without that person but there is a sour and bitterness that could also leave one’s lips quivering. Of the eight songwriters on the track, only one of them is a NewJeans performer, band leader Danielle Marsh (모지혜). The song may be about an actual break up, but with so many songwriters on the team, it’s often hard to know whose experience a song mirrors. Could the song be a planned break up for when manager Min Hee-jin receives her independence from Hybe? Could it be a song that NewJeans could sing if they ever should want to walk away from being a corporate pawn? Could it be a song to tell off all the trolls who use NewJeans for their own purposes? One thing’s for sure, it’s a perfect song to say goodbye to the toxic school year. It tastes sweet being without ya’ll. See you again in two weeks.

    Read the English translation on Genius.

    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.

  • “Miracle” by Jonas Brothers, Saturday, July 27, 2024 (repost)

     I was talking with my Gen X coworker last year about music, and somehow Jonas Brothers came up. He asked me, as a defender of pop, if the band of brothers had ever made a good album. I thought about the question. Of course, I can’t consider the teeny-bopper music from the band’s early days. But I could say that Nick Jonas’ latest record Spaceman was a masterfully produced album by Greg Kurstin blending ‘80s and ‘90s R&B with contemporary electronic pop. I thought that the DNCE record was fun. I thought that “Sucker” was a great Ryan Tedder production and showed potential for where the Jonas Brothers could go, although Happiness Begins was a bit of a disappointment. But no, I couldn’t say that I liked any Jonas Brothers album.


    ROCK FOR ME TO STAND ON. But that all changed when Jonas Brothers released The Album last May. But being able to call this album great comes with years of breaking down some of my musical biases and hang-ups. The first is a discussion about when does a bubble gum act get the right to grow up? Nowadays many music critics will tell you that every song The Beatles ever put out is miles above any other act, but I wonder if that’s because we have Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and what came after it? In the ‘00s “teeny boppers” had to do something drastically sexual to distance themselves from their innocent pasts and earn critical success. When teen heartthrob Justin Timberlake promised to “have you naked by the end of this song” or Britney Spears went full-blown “Toxic” critics started giving those acts more respect. It was a string of two singles that changed my opinion on Justin Bieber: “Sorry” and “Love Yourself”  before the singer’s Hillsong douchebaggary came to light. Miley Cyrus rode the wrecking ball and Harry Styles walked the Fine Line somewhat distancing themselves from their respective Disney and boy band careers. The redemptive arc of Jonas Brothers would be Nick and Joe’s solo efforts. But the second caveat has to deal with the musical trend of embracing what is—no—what was the opposite of cool: soft rock, more specifically the sounds of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s nicknamed in the early days of  “Yacht Rock.”

    WINTER WITH THE A.C. The latest offering from Jonas Brothers opens with the smooth-to-bombastic “Miracle.” On a recent episode of the podcast Switched on Pop, Charlie Harding talks with Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas about the musical influences that made them decide to make music together once again. Nick told Charlie, “[The Album] was about putting something together that sounded like what coming to one of our shows is like. We’re a band, and it’s band music.” The implications of this question my ‘00s understanding of what a band is, though. If I turned on MTV and saw blink-182 running around naked, I knew that their live shows, each member of the three-piece were playing instruments. But most small bands hire back up musicians who aren’t permanent members. So are Jonas Brothers a band? One topic the brothers talked about in the Switched on Pop interview is other musicians diminishing Jonas Brothers’ musicianship. Rather than focusing on what is not music, the brothers refocused the conversation on their musical influences that went into The Album. They fondly recalled the records they listened to with their dad—Bee Gees, America, Paul McCartney, and Stevie Wonder—and hearing that makes a lot of sense in the context of The Album. And today’s song seriously takes some Stevie Wonder influence. The smooth sounds of the latest Jonas Brothers album arrived just in time for a scorching hot summer. And even if we’re going to feel awkward about this release in ten years, in the summer of ‘23 the once uncool is now seriously cool.


  • “I! Only! Wanna! Live! Forever!” by Fleurie, Friday, July 26, 2024 (repost)

     Fleurie is just shy of 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s majority of listeners, though, come from outside the United States from India, Turkey, Brazil, and Germany to be precise. Two years ago I talked about her cover of Sufjan Steven‘s   “To Be Alone with You,” which appears in the Looking for Alaska mini-series. While Fleurie has released many covers including a haunting version Linkin Park‘s “In the End” and Gary Jules‘ arrangement of Tears for Fears‘ “Mad World,” the singer also writes original songs and released her fourth LP earlier this year titled Supertropicali. 

    CALIFORNIA GIRLS DON’T LOOK LIKE ME. How to describe Fleurie’s latest album, Supertropicali? Fleurie describes it on her Spotify page as “a world, an era, a story unfolding, all stitched together in ’90s nostalgia, romance, youthful hope, and belonging.” Taking inspiration from Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, and Marie Antoinette, Supertropicali transplants a Michigan girl via Nashville into Los Angeles. Listeners who have followed Fleurie before this album will probably notice the difference in tone, noting how upbeat this record is. Still taking elements of sad-girl, hip hop, and occasional trap lyricism (note the chorus on today’s song “I! Only! Wanna! Live! Forever!) make Supertropicali a smooth summertime listen. The rhythmic nature of the songs perhaps can be at least partially credited to co-writer and producer JT Daly, formerly of the band Paper Route. Recall that he was instrumental in changing Pvris‘ new sound.  Listening to Supertropicali and Prvis’ Use Me and the singles from the upcoming album with JT Daly collaborations there are certainly sonic parallels to be found in these recordings, namely in electronics and rhythms. 

    SURF ROCK, I LOVE YOU WITH A FIRE. While there are sonic similarities between Fleurie and Pvris, there is certainly a difference between the artists. Whereas Pvris has moved from alternative to dark pop, Fluerie has moved from singer-songwriter to indie pop. The dark, atheistic and sometimes witchy lyrics of Lyndsey Gunnulfsen are very different from the clean-cut former CCM singer Lauren Strahm. But while Strahm’s lyrics are very clean, I’d bet money that Supertropicali was influenced by tracks on Lana Del Rey‘s Born to Die. In fact, the lyrics of tracks like “Millennial  Angel” and “I! Only! Wanna! Live! Forever!” are all about the California dreams and not about the dark realities or the bad boys that color and sometimes poison Del Rey’s songs. Lana may have offered us “Diet Mt. Dew,” but Fleurie feels like Diet Lana Del Rey, and honestly sometimes we need that diet. Like Del Rey, there’s a touch of the dramatic in Fleurie’s aesthetic, though rather than a girl who gets kicked out of private school for drinking in the dorm room, Fleurie maintains a kind of grown-up church girl aesthetic. The video for today’s song has a melodramatic monologue about a “dark winter of the soul” before Fleurie begins singing the song. There’s a little cringe in it, but that melodrama is part of the nostalgia. Maybe the two albums serve as a kind of
    Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. You may have a preference, but in Fleurie’s defense, it’s     comforting to think about the world in terms of how we saw it when we were young: full of potential. 



     

  • “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God) by Kate Bush, Thursday, July 25, 2024 (repost)

     At this point, you probably know a little about the story of how a song from 1985 became a number 1 hit in 2022 thanks to being featured in a key scene in the Netflix series Stranger Things. When one of the biggest shows on Netflix returned in May after nearly a three-year hiatus, a key scene featured the opening track to Kate Bush‘s fifth record Hounds of Love, “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). The song never topped the charts during its original promotion, peaking at number 3 in the UK in 1985, and was even banned in some European countries for mentioning God in the song. Today, you’ll hear countless covers of the song and hear it in TikTok and Instagram videos constantly.


    UNAWARE I’M TEARING YOU ASUNDER. Kate Bush is a name I should have been more aware of given how influential the singer-songwriter is on modern electronic dance music and modern pop. I think I first came across her name as influence when reading the music section of Attitude several years ago. Many British and LGBTQ+ musicians cite Bush as an influence. Debuting in 1978 with her first record The Kick Inside and her number 1 British singles hit “Wuthering Heights,” Bush was the first female musician to top the chart with a song of which the singer held sole writing credits. The singer’s path to fame, though, started when the young singer-songwriter met Pink Floyd‘s guitarist David Gilmour through a mutual friend. Gilmour produced Bush’s demo tape that helped her sign her first record deal. The two musicians became friends and even performed together 11 years after her debut at The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987 (see video below). In 2002, Bush sang with Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” at London’s Royal Festival Hall. But Kate Bush throughout her career didn’t care much for performing and preferred recording and producing her own music, only playing her hits a few times. There was recently a video published speculating how much money Bush is making from the renewed popularity of today’s song “Running Up That Hill,” and with Bush being the only songwriter on the track, the money looks good. Not bad for a musician who dropped out of sixth-form.

    LET’S EXCHANGE THE EXPERIENCE.  Like my aversion to New Order when I first heard them, I had a little bit of a hard time with Kate Bush when I first heard “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). But my issue with this song (and Kate Bush for that matter) is different. When I first listened to New Order, it was the old synthesizers that made me feel awkward.  The synthesizer on “Running Up That Hill” reminds me of that Yamaha keyboard in the garage that I talked about when I first talked about New Order. The synths on “Running Up That Hill” sound like something I would have played on the keyboard when I was 10, but that’s not my issue as I’ve learned to embrace that old sound. Kate Bush’s voice still needs to grow on my. I’ll admit it’s beautifully wispy, and on today’s song it so interestingly glides between the verse and the chorus. The transition between the verse and the chorus are so abrupt unlike anything I’ve ever heard before and if you close your eyes, you can almost picture Bush’s voice flying above the synth and bass, feet touching down for just a moment when her voice goes “Running up that” back up into the air for “hill.” I really want to fall in love with her other songs, but I think it’s going to take some ear adjustment. But that’s the fun thing about music: you don’t get it at once. It has to grow on you. 


    Music video:
    Cover by Placebo:
    Rick Beato talks about “Running Up That Hill”
    Live Performance by Bush and David Gilmour (1987):


  • “Shivers” by Ed Sheeran (repost), Wednesday, July 24, 2024 (repost)

    Opening with a the late ’90s pop-rock-sounding “Tides,” Ed Sheeran‘s fourth record = seems to change genres with every track. Back in October of 2021, I asked the question about whether or not Ed Sheeran could successfully integrate all the musical styles he’s done in the past and make a cohesive album that would appeal both broadly to all music fans and more specifically to die-hard fans. What I found today was that most of the songs individually are good. But as an album the songs don’t play together save for the common themes of falling in love with his wife Cherry, the death of family members, isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, recovery from addiction, and the birth of his daughter Lyra.  


    I WANNA DRINK THAT SMILE. The eclectic mix of singles Sheeran released before the album dropped–“Bad Habits” and “Shivers” sounding similar to ÷‘s singles and “Visiting Hours” recalling the more sentimental moods of X (see my post on “Photograph”)-– along with the post-release radio singles “Overpass Graffiti” and the remix of “The Joker and the Queen,” a duet with Taylor Swift, are starting to seem more like a musical flex for Sheeran. Yes, we get it, Ed, you can do anything musically that you want to. Of course, the musical community questions whether it’s pure talent or whether it’s money or famous friends that creates the Ed Sheeran albums of today. Earlier this week, I had a conversation about Sheeran at work. My coworker, about 15 years older than me, said that he finds Ed Sheeran “derivative and boring” and then asked if there were any songs of Ed’s that I liked. I told him that Sheeran had lots of much better songs than “Shape of You,” such as “Photograph,” “Castle on the Hill,” and songs from =. My coworker only knew “Shape of You.” That conversation made me think about Sheeran’s music post-“Shape.” I think that I really like “Shivers” and “Bad Habits,” but I wonder if I would like them if I heard them every time I went past a phone store and heard them blaring? And to be fair, because of the pandemic, I’ve gone to town only a handful of times, so I have no idea what the phone stores are blaring now. Do I like the two new Ed Sheeran dance tracks because they aren’t “Shape of You”?

    YOU WANNA DANCE ‘TILL THE SUNLIGHT CRACKS. When I first heard “Shivers” on AppleMusic’s autoplay after listening to Jax Jones‘s Snacks record back in early October of last year, I immediately thought, “Ed just wrote a tango.” The pizzicato strings, the 1-2 beat lends itself to living room dancing. However, apparently Sheeran claims he didn’t realize that the song was a tango until he saw EastEnders star Rose Ayling-Ellis and Giovanni Pernice choreograph a tango for a Halloween-themed episode of Strictly Come Dancing 2021, the British version of Dancing with the Stars. The dance clip from the British television show went viral, continuing to boost Sheeran’s second single around the world. Nothing is subtle about “Shivers.” The music video features big-budget effects rarely seen these days outside of K-pop (check out the version with Sunmi and Jessi). Sheeran channels action heroes, boy band members, and yes, Elton John in the ridiculous situations in the music video. Lyrically, the song examines the early stages of love, the magnetism two people with chemistry feel when they can’t get enough of each other. Feeling that spark when you like someone and they like you back, waiting for them to text you back, the early stages when everything is a production–that’s what this song is all about. The question is if we’re going to hear anymore of these adolescent songs from Sheeran, or are we just going to have Nick Jonas Spaceman-style records from here on out?

    Official Lyric Video:

  • “Una Noche sin Pensar” by Sebastián Yatras, Tuesday, July 23, 2024

     

    Sebastián Yatra was born in Columbia and raised in Miami, Florida, before returning to Columbia to begin his musical career. From an early age, Sebastián took an interest in music, learning piano, guitar, and voice. At the age of 12, he saw fellow Colombian singer Juanes in concert. That year, Yatra also starred in the lead role of Troy Bolton in his school’s production of High School Musical. At the age of 20, Yatra dropped out of college and returned to Columbia to pursue music. Today, Yatra is a very popular singer worldwide. All of his solo work is in Spanish. He is a voracious collaborator, teaming up with other musicians in the Latin pop world, singing a Spanish verse with an English—or in the case of Monsta X, in Korean—, or occasionally, an English verse. His discography varies from reggaeton to rock and many other genre experimentations.

    IT SEEMS THAT YOU STILL LOVE ME. Many of Sebastián Yatra’s songs are ballads, a tradition in Latin music that has fallen out of favor with many contemporary artists. The song structure of the ballad remains a popular mode in pop, rock, country, and many other genres around the world, and Yatra has voiced a commitment to innovating the sound in Latin pop. He told Vibe magazine in 2018: 

    I think younger artists are scared. There’s been an error in associating ballads with boring and slow and old. A lot of the time, artists who’ve sang ballads early in their careers have gone urban or gone into reggaeton and that’s awesome, it’s importantisimo, do all these types of music and genres and progress musically. 


    Today’s song, “Una Noche sin Pensar,” is a kind of uptempo ballad. The rhythm of the song partially distracts from the pensive lyrics in Spanish. Listeners who don’t speak or have a limited understanding of Spanish may think that the song is not a break-up song. 

    YOU CAN BLOCK ME, YOU CAN HATE ME, OR YOU CAN LOOK FOR MY KISSES IN SOMEONE ELSE. The song “Una Noche sin Pensar” is ultimately a song about fostering one’s own delusions. Many happy-sad songs do this. For example, Miley Cyrus’ “Rose Colored Lenses” paints a scene of a sexy trip to the beach. “Una Noche sin Pensar” doesn’t build up the memories of the past relationship in quite that way. Instead, it’s more like Paramore’s “Rose-colored Boy” in that it talks about the issues as they are real. But the song imagines a scene in which the ex-lovers “forgive each other naked in the sea.” Cyrus pleads for the lovers to “stay like this forever” as they “play pretend wearing rose colored lenses.” In today’s song, there are no rose-colored glasses bathing the world in an artificial hue, but there seems to be alcohol and sorrow. Whether or not the speaker’s love really wants him back or if that is part of the delusion, we may never know. But we all need a few nights of not overthinking everything. So cheers to that!




    Read the English translation on Genius.


    Read the lyrics on Genius


  • "Last Hope" by Paramore, Monday, July 22, 2024 (repost)

    Fleetwood Mac might be the most turbulent rock band in terms of member changes, feuds, and internal relationships going awry because of infidelity. The conflict, lawyers, and affidavits surrounding   Paramore feel akin to the ‘70s rock band. In his series Deep Discog Dives, YouTuber Nick Canovas summarized the controversies surrounding Paramore. Perhaps the biggest rift in the band is between former lead guitarist Josh Farro and lead singer Haley Williams. After the band’s third record, Brand New Eyes, Farro publicly expressed his opposition to the lyrical direction Williams was taking the band.

    I DON’T EVEN KNOW MYSELF AT ALL. Like many bands in the pop-punk scene in the ‘00s, Paramore began their career with ties to the Christian Rock scene. Most of the bandmates grew up Christian, and it seemed natural to integrate their beliefs into the band’s lyrics. But by the band’s breakthrough record, their sophomore Riot!, the lyrics shifted away from Christian themes. The band justified the lyrics on their biggest hit, prior to “Ain’t It Fun,” “Misery Business”: “God, doesn’t it feel so good” on top of an already risqué track about early adult sexuality with hints of sexism. With the success of “Misery Business” came a furor with Christian audiences. Christian audiences appreciated the publicity Paramore gave other Christian bands. The band brought Christian bands on tour with them. Williams contributed vocals to Christian Rock bands like The Chariot and mewithoutYou. But the lyric on Brand New Eyes, “The truth never set me free” in the song “Ignorance” caused guitarist Josh Farro and his brother, drummer Zac Farro to quit the band, though Zac eventually rejoined. Upon quitting Paramore, Josh posted a blog post stating of Paramore’s members: “We fought her about how [Hayley’s] lyrics misrepresented our band and what we stood for, but in the end, she got her way.” He also proliferated the rumor that Williams’ direction was due to manipulation by the band’s manager and the label.

    GOTTA LET IT HAPPEN. The “salt in the wound” from losing the band’s guitarist has been the subject of many Paramore songs. “Last Hope” is probably partly about Josh, but also about keeping faith when everything seems so transitory. In 2010, Williams wrote in the band’s live journal about what keeps her grounded. She writes
            [S]ometimes you get run down. sometimes life throws dirt in your eyes and it stings
            and you can’t see for a few minutes. even after you get it out your eyes are all red and
            your vision is shitty… but eventually, whether through tears or maybe just time…  you
            start to see even clearer than before. life is not always good. which is why music exists.
            why [I] believe God exists. and why there’s always a pint of coconut milk ice cream in
            my freezer. 
    It’s nearly impossible to agree on a vision. And with Williams and Paramore’s current guitarist Taylor York starting a relationship, it’s hard to say that the next Paramore episode will be drama-free. “Last Hope” reminds us to keep an eye out for any spark of hope when it feels like we’ve lost our way. In the end, it will be okay.


    Live performance:

    Official Audio: