Mixtapemotions

  • “The Boys of Summer” by The Ataris, Saturday, August 31, 2024 (reworked repost)

    In the summer of 2003, a rock station in LA started playing an inside cut from The Ataris‘ So Long, Astoria, an album built on the late ’70s and early ’80s nostalgia. The band’s first single, “In This Diary” reached number 11 on the Modern Rock chart. They were set to release the second single, “My Reply,” but the accidental hit “The Boys of Summer” overshadowed anything the band would produce in their twenty-five-year career. A cover of Don Henley‘s 1984 number 1 hit, The Ataris’ punk-rock reworking took the single to number 20 on the Hot 100 and number 2 on the Modern Rock chart, unable to beat Linkin Park‘s “Faint.” Eighteen or thirty-seven summers later, “The Boys of Summer” remains a melancholy reminder that summer is over and that we all are getting older.    

    I SAW A BLACK FLAG STICKER ON A CADILLAC. Written by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers‘ guitarist, Mike Campbell, “The Boys of Summer” was intended for a Tom Petty album, but Petty felt it didn’t match their current sound. Former Eagles singer/guitarist Don Henley was recording his second album, working with Campbell, who offered him “Boys.” Henley took the music and crafted words that painted a vivid picture of the end of summer and that clearly symbolized getting older and longing for the past. In the third verse, Henley gives an interesting juxtaposition. The original line, “a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” was inspired by something Henley had actually seen. He says: “I was driving down the San Diego Freeway and got passed by a $21,000 Cadillac Seville, the status symbol of the Right-wing upper-middle-class American bourgeoisie – all the guys with the blue blazers with the crests and the grey pants – and there was this Grateful Dead ‘Deadhead’ bumper sticker on it!” Henley is the hypocrisy of the Baby Boomer generation, who went from hippies who protested the corporate-structured life to those who participated in it and later propitiated it. The Ataris’ Kris Roe updated this reference–“a Blackflag sticker on a Cadillac.” Black Flag is a punk rock band that, like the Grateful Dead, protested materialism. The punk rock of the ’80s, in some ways, was a resurgence of Hippy culture, and a new generation’s “Boys of Summer” gets an updated band to remind listeners that rock ‘n’ roll–despite rockstars like Creed‘s video budget–is really not all about money. The biggest mystery of the song, though, is who are the “boys of summer”? In the context of the song, they could be the other boys who love the listener for a time. The song borrows the title of Roger Kahn’s book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, which borrowed the title from the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas’s poem “I See the Boys of Summer.” Thomas’s poem, too, captures the death of summer, although this poem is much frostier than the subtle change in summer to fall captured by Henley.  

    AFTER THE BOYS OF SUMMER HAVE GONE. With the summer of 2024 wrapping up, 40 years after Don Henley’s hit and 21 years after The Ataris’ remake, the song still captures a nostalgia for youth. The summer freshness we kicked off with TWS’s “Hey! Hey!” has ripened into maturity. This summer may have been the first year someone drank alcohol, smoked a cigarette, had sex, or gotten into other mischief. It’s horrifying for parents to think about their kids. But when we hear songs like “The Boys of Summer,” we’re instantly brought back to the hot days of our own youth and think about what was on our minds back then. In particular, I think about the homoerotic Men’s Health magazines and other men’s fitness magazines that littered racks in the supermarkets. I remember finally working up the courage to buy the magazine and trying to hide it until I got home or made up a half-lie about wanting to start exercising. The magazines weren’t The Advocate, DNA, Attitude, Freshmen, or the other magazines behind the plastic in Barnes & Noble. Nothing was overtly sexual, but occasionally there were gay advertisers for fantasy jock hotlines and there was a curious video series called The Boys of Summer, which featured 20-something models. All the while, “The Boys of Summer” was a hit on the radio and I was really confused about what was happening to me post-puberty.


    The Ataris’ cover:


  • (It Goes Like) "Nanana" by Peggy Gou, Friday, August 30, 2024

    Waking up and doom-scrolling rarely starts the day off right; however, sometimes an article so shocking will shake you to your core. “Oh my god,” my spine tingled at the color in my partner’s voice. As a member of the elder gay community (35+), I  had gone to bed early on Saturday, October 29, and my partner was playing phone games in bed. At about two on Sunday morning, I woke up and lazily checked Instagram. There were cute Halloween costumes, recipes, and seasonal lures online, and the world was set to enjoy a post-pandemic holiday of gathering together. For South Koreans, that celebration was happening as we were in bed in Itaewon, Seoul’s international district where young people in their teens and 20s gathered to listen to music and party. However, by 2 a.m., the party ground to a halt.
     

    I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT. The Seoul Halloween crowd crush of 2022 killed 159 people and injured 196. About 100,000 people inundated Itaewon’s alleyways that evening. The hilly terrain and the packed, slippery sidewalks and streets made the neighborhood a deathtrap. Many systems failed for a disaster of such a magnitude, and the failure of Seoul’s police force was possibly what guaranteed that failure. Only 137 police officers were on duty in Itaewon. Instead, Seoul sent 6,500 officers to monitor a protest in another district. Starting at around 6:30 p.m., concerned attendants began calling 112, Korea’s police phone number, complaining of overcrowding and potential danger; however, at around 10:30, the chaos ensued. Many blame the administration of the city of Seoul as well as the current ROK president for ignoring and failing to protect youth culture. The disaster caused many in Korea to forego the remaining Halloween season. Halloween had only begun to gain popularity as a celebration in the 2010s due to English education and globalization. The neighborhood of Itaewon had a somber mood for a long time after the stampede that could be felt in the absence of people normally crowding the Hooker or Homo Hill–hills named for the neighborhood’s Red Light District and the LGBTQ+ nightlife the neighborhood had come to be known for. People were leery of crowds elsewhere in the country.

    IT’S SOMETHING ON MY MIND. Last month, the City of Seoul narrowly missed another crowd crush. Korea-born, London-educated, and Berlin-based DJ Peggy Gou was about to play her 1 a.m. DJ set only to have Seoul’s fire department shut down the event. Gou has been a rising star in Europe and her return to Seoul with her Boiler Room World Tour was a highly anticipated event. With currently 11 million monthly Spotify listeners and a major hit on European and American Dance tracks from her debut album, I Hear You, the lead single (It Goes Like) “Nanana,” the rising star has been amassing an avid fanbase. In Seoul, though, the local promoter had sold nearly 5,000 tickets for the venue with a maximum capacity of 2,000 attendees. Gou posted on social media an explanation and said, “It breaks my heart and I’m so sad. I cannot believe this happened. I flew in from Japan without sleeping because I was really looking forward to this.” Unfortunately, it often takes a breach of safety in South Korea for authorities to take the next event seriously. However, globally, crowded venues face terrorist attacks as the Eras Tour was a target in Vienna, and threats of mass shootings in America. Yet, something about music and the human experience makes us crave connection. Hopefully, if 5,000 people want to experience Peggy Gou’s music in Seoul, they find a venue suited for her. Until next time, Seoul.

  • “Wendy Darling” by Tyson Motsenbocker, Thursday, August 29, 2024 (repost)

    As the Christian Rock releases from Tooth & Nail have been ebbing in the current music market, the new Tyson Montsonbocker record is no exception. Motsenbocker explained on the Black Sheep Podcast that his third record, Milk Teeth, moves away from spiritual subjects but the songs are more rooted in stories about people he knows and about growing up and realizing that life isn’t exactly what his parents and teacher told him life would be. 

    LEARNED THE BACKSEAT LESSONS IN A WHITE CHURCH VAN. But steering away from Christian and spiritual themes Tyson Motsenbocker doesn’t necessarily divorce Milk Teeth from his Christian upbringing. Instead, Milk Teeth sounds something like Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, or certain Buzzfeed writers who write wistfully about episodes from evangelical pasts. For Motsenbocker on Milk Teeth, that evangelical past isn’t particularly devout. Today’s song, “Wendy Darling,” has a backdrop of a youth group in the third verse, but even with that backdrop the speaker and Wendy had snuck off to make out or have sex in the “white church van.” The chorus alludes to high school parties that involve driving “like Magnum’s Ferarri” and “throwing up [Wendy’s] mom’s locked Bacardi,” which is actually a brand of rum, not vodka. But this isn’t a PluggedIn review. I think it’s fascinating that these kinds of stories can be told now on a Christian record label, showing a frankness not shown until recently. Tooth & Nail has always been the most progressive of Christian labels, but even until recently records were censored in the writing in the writing process.

    THERE’S NOT MUCH TO DO IN A WHEAT FIELD TOWN WITH YOUR PARENTS AROUND. Tyson Motsenbocker named “Wendy Darling” after Wendy in Peter Pan, stating that Wendy is the character who grows up as opposed to Peter Pan who remains in boyhood. The speaker in the song has lost touch with Wendy until he “got up the nerve to call” her. After she went off to college, who she was is preserved in the speaker’s memory as the girl who played Nintendo with him, the one who went swimming in the cold Idaho/ Montana rivers in the summer, who went to house parties with him. But the second track on Milk Teeth listeners with a warning: “The old men say the decades don’t pass slow.” Time is the main theme and even the villain of Milk Teeth, an album that takes its title from another name for baby teeth that we lose before the age of ten. The album ends with the existential “Time Is a One Way Mirror,” but that is certainly a discussion for another day. For today let’s remember someone whom we lost to time. How has that person changed? How have you changed?


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Broken” by Seether ft. Amy Lee, Wednesday, August 28, 2024 (repost)

    In 1999, Seether formed in Pretoria, South Africa, under the name Saron Gas. After a successful independent first album in their home country, American label Wind-Up Records became interested in the band, signing them. The band changed their name to avoid the association with sarin gas, a toxic chemical Nazis used in chemical warfare. The band chose Seether because of the 1994 song of the same name by Veruca Salt. Seether’s breakthrough in the United States came with the release of their album Disclaimer and their Active Rock single “Fine Again.” Disclaimer also featured an acoustic version of “Broken,” which would become the band’s biggest pop hit. 


    I WANTED YOU TO KNOW, I LOVE THE WAY YOU LAUGH. In 1997, Alan and Diana Meltzer founded Wind-Up Records. The label’s first successful act was Creed with their 1997 record, My Own Prison. The label became a trendy label, churning out Hard and Active Rock hitmakers, including Finger Eleven, Seether, and Drowning Pool. The label’s second-most successful act was Evanescence, whose lead singer, Amy Lee, is featured on a re-recording of “Broken.” Following the success of Creed, especially with a number of Christians buying the band’s records, the label started releasing Christian bands. Creed, due to their lead singer’s colorful antics, wasn’t played on Christian radio, but the label released 12 Stones and Big Dismal (and for a time, mistakenly, Evanescence) in the Christian Rock format. While Big Dismal only lasted for one album and had little crossover appeal, 12 Stones had a few minor Active Rock hits. Albums on Wind-Up Records often featured a singer from another band on their albums. For instance, Evanescence’s biggest hit, “Bring Me to Life” features 12 Stones’ Paul McCoy. Big Dismal’s “Missing You” features vocals by Amy Lee. Today’s song, “Broken” also features Amy Lee.


    THE WORST IS OVER NOW, AND I CAN BREATHE AGAIN. A history of Wind-Up Entertainment would be remiss without mentioning the film soundtracks the label produced. In 2003, Wind-Up released the soundtrack for Daredevil. Not every band on Daredevil: The Album, or any of the follow-up soundtracks Wind-Up released, was a Wind-Up band. However, the label heavily promoted their own bands. “Bring Me to Life” became a huge hit thanks to its placement on the soundtrack and placement in the film. While the film received mixed reviews and the 2005 sequel Elektra was panned, Wind-Up’s soundtrack to the film was perhaps the biggest hit. The next year, Wind-Up produced another pre-Disney Marvel soundtrack, this time the edgy R-rated action film The Punisher. Unlike Daredevil, the filmmakers chose not to blast music throughout the entire film. Wind-Up made a soundtrack of music that Frank Castle might listen to when he was punishing his enemies. The exception was “Broken” by Seether, which appears in the film several times. The song reached number 20 on Billboard’s Hot 100, modest compared to “Bring Me to Life” with its peak at number 5. At the time of the duet, Amy Lee and Seether’s Shaun Morgan were dating. “Broken” is a break-up song, and in the context of a movie in which the protagonist’s family is slaughtered in front of him, is pretty dark. Eventually Wind-Up’s empire of soundtracks, too, was broken. Their 2005 Elektra soundtrack didn’t produce another Evanescence, especially because the film wasn’t a hit. And while Fantastic Four was a bigger hit than Elektra, the soundtrack was in no way comparable to Daredevil’s. Wind-Up also produced the pop-punk and Emo soundtrack for Josh Tucker Must Die. The label also produced the soundtracks for Scream 3 and Walk the Line. Wind-Up Records was dissolved in 2016 after being shuffled around by several distributors. 

     

  • “Ice Cream” by Jeon So Mi (전소미), Tuesday, August 27, 2024

    Ennik Somi Douma, known professionally by her Korean name, Jeon Somi (저소미), was born in Canada to a German-Dutch Canadian and a Korean mother. Somi’s parents moved back to Korea when she was a toddler. Her father had met her mother while he was studying taekwondo in Seoul. The two married and moved to Canada until her mother experienced homesickness for her home country. Life in a mostly homogeneous country wasn’t easy for Somi, though. Like her father, she began studying taekwondo. She decided to study in an elementary school that allowed her to study the martial art. Being of mixed ethnicity, Somi experienced bullying and discrimination. Her dream of becoming a singer began after watching Rihanna’s music video for “Don’t Stop the Music.” When she was nine, she got into Korean pop, particularly admiring Park Bom of 2NE1.


    YEAH, I’M SWEET AS SHIT. Jeon Somi had early exposure to appearing on television and performing. She made her first television appearance when she was four. KBS interviewed her father who had helped clear the neighborhood after a snowstorm. Local viewers, however, loved seeing his little helper, four-year-old Somi. Jeon had many opportunities to perform in school, from student music videos to taekwondo performances. She and her sister even appeared in the 2014 drama, Ode to My Father, as the role called for biracial children. In 2015, Somi was accepted into JYP Entertainment’s trainee program. Later that year, she was part of the Mnet talent survival show Sixteen, competing for a spot in Twice, finishing tenth, two spots below the cut-off point. The next year, though, she participated in another survival competition, Produce 101, where she placed number 1, securing a spot in the girl group I.O.I. The group was active until January 2017, and Somi signed a solo contract with JYP; however, she left the label under a mutual agreement the next year.


    IF YOU BITE ME, BRAIN FREEZE. Since 2018, Jeon Somi has been releasing music on The Black Label, a sublabel of YG Entertainment. The label was founded by Teddy Park (박홍준), writer/ producer of some of YG’s biggest acts from BIGBANG to BLACKPINK. Teddy is perhaps best known for bringing American-style R&B and pop-accessible hip-hop into K-pop. Park spent his formative years in New York City before returning to Seoul to form the hip-hop group 1TYM. The group was active between 1998 and 2006, but when they went on hiatus, Teddy stepped behind the soundboards and eventually became the in-house producer at YG Entertainment. In 2016, he founded The Black Label. The label functions mostly symbiotically with its parent label, focusing more on solo artists than groups. Zion.T, BLACKPINK’s Rosé, Taeyang, and Jeon Somi, are some of the biggest acts that the label has managed. Somi hasn’t released a lot of music, but with Teddy’s production, she achieved her greatest level of solo success. Her latest single, “Ice Cream,” is a sweltering doo-wop track punctuated with New Orleans, Dixieland Jazz, and a modern beat. Lyrically, the provocative nature of ice cream seems similar to a 2020 song also produced by Teddy and also called “Ice Cream.” BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez’s track musically sounds very different from Somi’s 2024 track, but the lyrical tropes of comparing ice cream to love or sex feel less than original. But let’s stop complaining. After all, there’s never too much ice cream.
     

  • “Somebody’s Watching” by TobyMac, Monday, August 26, 2024 (repost)

    In 2000, DC Talk announced their intermission, a hiatus that has outlasted their 15-year existence. According to Toby McKeehan, better known by the stage name TobyMac, Michael Tait and Kevin Max wanted to record solo projects and McKeehan wanted to pursue DC Talk. But then McKeehan was approached about recording the theme song for a film called Extreme Days. McKeehan crafted his debut solo record with that single, the genre-bending Momentum. The album was filled with hip-hop, rap-core, soul, and funk. Eventually gold-certified, Momentum started the career of the reluctant solo artist in DC Talk who became the most commercially successful of the trio.


    SOMETIMES I FEEL GOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. In 1984, Rockwell released his number 2 Billboard Hot 100 single “Somebody’s Watching Me.”  Rockwell, born Kennedy Gordy, wrote the track when his father, founder and CEO of Motown Records Berry Gordy, challenged him to write a chart-topping hit. The one-hit-wonder has often been misattributed to the artist who sang the chorus, Michael Jackson, a childhood friend of Kennedy’s. Rockwell’s hit talks about not being able to have a private life, and the video visualizes the lyrics with unnerving point-of-view camera angles. The song has entered novelty status thanks to the funny lyrics about being “in the shower . . . afraid to wash [his] hair.” It’s even become a staple on Halloween playlists. In 2001, TobyMac interloped the chorus of Rockwell’s hit on Momentum for the Christian Hit Radio single “Somebody’s Watching.” Rather than focusing on the creepy feeling of being watched by a stranger, McKeehan focuses the song on the watchful protection of God, contrasted to the “haters” who are focused on McKeehan’s failure. 

    I’M FEELING DADDY IN THE AIR TONIGHT. Rather than Michael Jackson singing the chorus, Joanna Valencia sings on TobyMac’s “Somebody’s Watching” as well as several other tracks on Momentum. Her vocals create a kind of tonal consistency on the frenetic mashup of genres on McKeehan’s debut. The album was a major hit on Christian radio, with six singles spread between Christian Hit Radio and Christian Rock radio. “Somebody’s Watching” appeared on DC Talk’s Solo EP before the band released their solo projects to preview the new musical directions the band members were taking and was also included on  Wow Hits 2002. “Somebody’s Watching” began the vocal “TobyMac” introduction tag that appeared on many of the artist’s solo works and guest appearances. The tag was to the Christian market what the “Jason Derulo” vocal tag was to the pop market in the late ‘00s. TobyMac is a charismatic personality who continued a musical empire built by DC Talk. It’s a fine line between appropriate confidence and arrogance. On the one hand, he’s a truly talented artist–from the live energy to musical crafting in multiple genres. A lifelong proponent of racial reconciliation, his music envisions the kingdom of heaven through the eyes of all ethnicities. But it’s not only the ego that feels problematic in a relisten. “Somebody’s Watching” feels like a spiritual flex–no, make that a spiritual webcam exhibition. “Watch baby, watch baby” McKeehan raps. “See, I’m down with the king, so I got it like that” he adds to Valencia’s chorus. This is quite different from Maxwell’s “I have no privacy.” Many like me when I was growing up found the way that McKeehan sings about God watching him a bit terrifying. Certainly, we weren’t saying to God, “Watch baby, watch baby.” But with all the problematic lyrics, I found myself unironically enjoying TobyMac’s Momentum. But I’m a little ashamed of that. Please don’t watch me closely.

    Rockwell’s version: 

    TobyMac: 

  • “Infinite” by House of Heroes, Sunday, August 25, 2024

    After releasing Ten Months in 2001, a punk album under the name No Tagbacks, House of Heroes signed to Vanishing Point Records and rebranded to the name House of Heroes with the release of their first album, What You Want Is Now in 2003 under the new moniker. They signed with Gotee Records and released House of Heroes in 2005. The band recorded three more albums with Gotee and its rock imprint Mono Vs. Stereo became one of the biggest bands in Christian Rock with their 2008 record The End Is Not the End. In 2014, the band released their first independent release since 2003, the EP Smoke. Then in 2016, the band released Colors on BadChristian Music.

    WHEN I TURN MY EAT TO AUGUST WIND, I CAN STILL HEAR THE MAGIC. The lead singer of House of Heroes, Tim Skipper,  has described their association with Christian Rock as a kind of “straddling the line” between the Christian industry and the general market. Christian rock critics such as Jesusfreakhideout.com, highly regarded the band with most of their albums receiving high scores and often making best of the year lists and most anticipated album of the coming year lists. The only band that seems comparable at the time for these critics is Anberlin, though House of Heroes never enjoyed the crossover success of Anberlin. The Christian rock critics loved both of these bands for their subtlety in their Christian messaging. But House of Heroes’ 2016 album Colors was controversial due to the album’s lyrical shift away from spiritual themes and even near some close calls with profanity. Skipper said on the BadChristian Podcast when promoting Colors that not all of the members of the band identified as Christian and that they wanted their listeners to interpret their lyrics however they wanted to.

    EVERY LITTLE SOUND ON A DUBBED CASSETTE HIT YOU IN THE HEART LIKE AN ARROW. House of Heroes’ 2014 EP Smoke is a kind of wrapping up of their old sound and a looking forward to their new lyrical style on their 2016 album Colors. Many of House of Heroes’ songs throughout their career tell stories. Colors is an album of interconnected stories. Today’s song, “Infinite,” is the last song on their Smoke EP. The lyrics tell a story about a love interest that took place years ago. Describing the “summer just melting away riding in your brother’s Camero” with tapedecks, cigarettes, and a house “buried under a mall” the lyrics evoke a sense of longing for the past. The lyrics sound similar to a line in the 1999 novel and 2012 film The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The chorus of the song declares: “Yeah, we are infinite!” In the novel, the scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower describes Charlie with his friends Patrick and Sam as they drive through a tunnel, windows down listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” In the epistolary novel, Charlie writes about the feeling of being infinite several times as he discovers a new world of music, film, and the arts.  The film, however,  depicts the scene at the end, just before the credits, playing the song “Heroes” by David Bowie. Perhaps the resemblance between a popular two-year-old movie and an indie rock song is purely coincidental. Maybe the film’s message seemed too contradictory to the band’s fan base. Maybe it was the plausible deniability needed to steer clear of a lawsuit. Maybe it was a band getting caught liking something too popular. Whatever it was, “Infinite” can stand on its own, creating its own world in the same way that the book and the movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, capitalize on the feeling that in a single moment, youth can last forever.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "Clear" by NEEDTOBREATHE, Saturday, August 24, 2024 (updated repost)

    Brothers “Bear” and “Bo” Rineheart were born in Possum Kingdom, South Carolina, and raised in a church camp that their father, a pastor, managed. Forming 

    NEEDTOBREATHE  with friends Seth Bolt and Joe Stillwell, the band signed to Atlantic Records and released their sophomore record in 2007.  Opening for Taylor Swift on her Speak Now Tour in 2011, winning many Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards, and receiving a Grammy nomination, NEEEDTOBREATHE  has gained acclaim both in the Christian Rock and secular markets. The band’s 2016 record, H A R D  L O V E, debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart list and is the band’s bestselling record. The folksy lyrics of NEEDTOBREATHE speak of faith, love, and family.


    YOU’RE THE CATALYST OF HIGH HOPES. The theme of the band’s 2016 record comes from a long-seeded rivalry between brothers Bear and Bo, which escalated in 2014 into a fistfight that ended with a trip to the hospital. The brothers reconciled and apologized to fans, saying their music was more important than their personal differences. The song for which the album is named talks about the ones who are the hardest to love and produce the best relationships. Bo left the band in 2020 and was replaced by Tyler Burkum, the guitarist from Audio Adrenaline and Leagues. “Clear”   H A R D L O V E’s  6:51 closer. Composed with a warm tone of acoustic guitar and finishing touches of what sounds like a piano in a wooden room, “Clear” is a beautiful romantic ballad. However, the critics don’t agree on if “Clear” is the best way to finish the record. While the album holds very high reviews, “Clear” has been called a boring song or one that overstays its welcome. The reviewers at Jesusfreakshideout.com say that the track seems out of place behind the band’s worshipful track “Testify.” One reviewer states that “Clear” sounds too much like a worship track, almost ambiguous about whether “the reason for what I’m doing” is God or his spouse. The reviewers also say that the track “idolizes [sic] romantic love.”  

    YOUR BODY’S DANCING UNDER THE MOON. Bear Rineheart is married to Mary Reams Rineheart and the couple has three sons: Wilder, Woods, and Waters. “Clear” was written by Bear and producer Ed Cash, a producer who is behind mostly produced CCM acts like Chris Tomlin, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Dave Barnes. The song was played at bassist Seth Bolt’s wedding shortly after the album’s release. I didn’t listen to NEEDTOBREATHE much until 2020. When I first heard of them, there were so many crossover Christian bands and in their mid-career, I wasn’t listening to much Christian music. Now, “Clear” is a song I frequently hear on Starbucks’ corporate playlist. I am drawn to this song especially when I’m torn between my love for my family back home and my partner in Korea. I miss so many milestones in my family members’ and friends’ lives because of working on the other side of the world- weddings, births, and deaths. Phone calls and presents don’t assuage my guilt, but somehow I keep it up. I only hope that someday I can be more present for the ones that I love. Love is complicated when it is torn, but it also becomes clear when you find the right person what you have to do.

    Read “CLEAR” by NEEDTOBREATHE on Genius

  • “Nothing Left to Lose” by May Kearney, Friday, August 23, 2024

     In 2001, Mat Kearney and his friend Robert Marvin arrived in Nashville, Tennessee. Since college, Kearney wanted to pursue a musical career as a singer-songwriter. Marvin’s dream was to become a music producer and Nashville was the place to be. Kearney and Marvin had worked on music before they arrived in Nashville. Marvin got right to work in the Christian music industry, producing and working on albums by ZOEgirl, Stacie Orrico, TobyMac, and Newsboys. In 2004, Kearney released his debut album Bullet on the Christian label Inpop Records. Several of the songs on Bullet were reworkings of Kearney’s hip-hop EP West in November, which he had released independently in 2003. The co-writing team of Kearney and Marvin and Marvin’s production introduced Christian music to the genre-bending artistry of Mat Kearney.

    I CAN STILL SMELL THE POMEGRANATES GROW. Today, Bullet is not available on streaming services. Mat Kearney was a success with Christian Hit Radio and Christian Rock Radio. His coffee shop acoustic guitar music with his spoken word, and hip-hop lyrical delivery paved the way for Jason Mraz and Ed Sheeran who popularized the style later in the ‘00s and ‘10s. Kearney’s success wouldn’t be confined to CCM. Reworking some of his tracks from Bullet, Kearney released his sophomore record Nothing Left to Lose, but rather than releasing it on a small Christian label, he released it on Columbia Records. The album featured several Billboard Hot 100 singles, including the title track, today’s song, which peaked at #41. Many of the songs from the album were also featured in television shows, including Grey’s Anatomy, a show that popularized many artists. Solidifying Kearney’s popularity, though, was strategic touring. Opening for John Mayer, Sheryl Crow, and Train aligned Kearney with the adult alternative singer-songwriter sound. Kearney successfully created an edgier Nashville sound and then became closer to the styles in Nashville, as subsequent releases started to feature less hip-hop influence.


    TO A KID FROM OREGON BY WAY OF CALIFORNIA. Mat Kearney was raised in Eugene, Oregon, but attended the California State University, Chico, majoring in literature. Many of Kearney’s songs tell stories, including the title track from his major label debut, Nothing Left to Lose. The song was newly penned and the first single for Kearney’s new career. “Nothing Left to Lose” tells the story of when Mat “packed [his] bags and headed East.” The song recalls the moments of struggle and joy with sensory details, such as smelling the pomegranates and hearing the trains in Nashville. While often associated with Christian music, few of Kearney’s lyrics are overtly religious. Nothing Left to Lose has a few ambiguous second-person pronouns, including the title track. Is it God, friendship, or a romantic interest? The lyrics of the album are youthful in their optimism and the mood is heightened by expert instrumentation. Kearney in his late 20s when his musical career came to full fruition sings songs about when times were uncertain. It’s not a very interesting story, but the poetry of the lyrics is engaging, and it’s ultimately a relatable story. While Kearney didn’t have a big radio career, he has carved out a success story with devoted listeners. That’s Mat’s story, what are our excuses?



  • “These Are the Days” by Lauren Daigle, Thursday, August 22, 2024 (repost)

    Last year, Lauren Daigle returned with her first record since 2018’s blockbuster sophomore record, Look Up Child. Daigle’s music has been featured in movies and television shows from Blade Runner 2049 to Grey’s Anatomy, which makes the singer stand out from other artists in her genre, Contemporary Christian Music, a genre she dominated with the number-one Christian song for sixty weeks for the crossover hit, “You Say.” 

    WE KNOW THE FUTURE’S BURNIN’ BRIGHT. Maybe like me, you spent a part of the ‘10s backsliding from your evangelical upbringing. Don’t worry, I’m not here to tell on you. You probably stopped listening to DC Talk and Michael W. Smith, and maybe became a “Bad Christian” with Emery, followed Michael Gungor’s journey, or went full-out atheist like Underoath. Somewhere along the way, what was playing on Christian Radio sounded like a bad version of what was popular two years ago on the pop station, only mellower. Somewhere along the way, Hillsong and Bethel Music started dominating Christian radio with worship music that sounded like Imagine Dragons‘ knock-offs. Meanwhile, we listened to Lana Del Rey and Sufjan Stevens and sometimes mainstream pop radio, only to hear a truly talented singer from Louisiana singing Christian music. But it didn’t take too long to pick up on Daigle’s affinity for sounding so much like Adele that the songs feel stale after a few listens.

    THIS IS WHAT HE CAME FOR. Another comparison between Lauren Daigle and Adele is the gaps between their albums. Fans had to wait six years between 25 and 30. Adele’s third and latest album was released two years before Lauren Daigle’s third and eponymous album. So what has she been up to since 2018? While the singer has toed the line in a radically divided America, in 2020 Daigle reportedly was riding her bicycle in her hometown where polarizing worship leader Sean Feucht was holding his “Let Us Worship Tour”—controversial for protesting COVID lockdown measures. Daigle claims that she was asked to participate in the show, though she wasn’t officially billed. This appearance, though, caused Daigle to lose bigger musical appearances such as New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. That appearance was in November 2020. A year and a half and an Adele album later, Daigle is back on the top of Spotify singles with “These Are the Days.” It’s a feel-good song, but I can’t help but feel a little ominous about what she’s singing about. It’s very subtle, but it’s really a prosperity gospel—Christ died to make your life easier on earth. However, my Seventh-Day Adventist reading of the Bible said that things were supposed to turn into a shit-show in the end days. Instead, Christians are forming these coalitions to take away the rights of non-Christians. It will be interesting to see how Lauren Daigle’s latest offering stacks against Look Up Child.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.