Damn you Covid-19! Sir Elton John simply wanted to tour the world and retire. The 75-year-old legend has been making music and touring since 1962. After saying goodbye to touring, he planned to settle down with his husband David Furnish and their two children and lead a quiet, un-Elton John life—out of the spotlight. But instead of stadiums full of fans across generations singing along to John’s most famous hits from the ’70s to ’90s, we got an album of collaborations called The Lockdown Sessions, seventeen tracks featuring a few fellow legacy acts like Stevie Wonder, Stevie Nicks, and Eddie Vader. But mostly the album contained tracks with newer artists–pop, rock, hip-hop, and country acts.
IT’S A HUMAN SIGN. In some ways, I feel that this month’s playlist is an April Fool’s joke on my younger self. I’ve included mostly catchy pop songs, and my younger self would have refused to see the talent of the pop artists like Joe Jonas, Olivia Rodrigo, or Ed Sheeran. Heck, even including Elton John on my list 15 years ago would have made me wonder if I were sick after the blasted music on road trips made me never want to hear Elton again. My criteria for picking a song each day doesn’t mean I necessarily pick the best song I listened to that day or that the song is even good. It’s the most catchy song or the most blog-worthy song, and this morning hearing “Cold Heart” (PNAU Remix) on Rick Beato’s latest video of him reacting to the iTunes purchased songs chart certainly made a huge impression on me. Beato praises the tune “Cold Heart”‘s chorus is built on: “Rocket Man,” but lambastes the 2021 hit “Cold Heart.” Beato’s cursory reaction to the song; however, fails to appreciate how mediocre the song really is. Beato focuses mostly on Dua Lipa‘s chorus, but touches on the problematic autotune on Elton’s lines. The chorus makes us long for Elton John singing “Rocket Man.” But beyond the problem with the chorus is that the song is a mash-up of four Elton John hits that have been Frankensteined together to make absolutely no sense. The other songs that contributes most of the lyrics and melody is “Sacrifice,” and neither of these two songs go together much less the strange vocals and instrumentation in other parts of the song.
SOME THINGS LOOK BETTER, BABY, JUST PASSING THROUGH. I’m still scarred by Elton John from my childhood, but I can tell that most of the songs on The Lockdown Sessions pale in comparison to Elton’s greats. That’s not to say that there weren’t a few stand out tracks. “Chosen Family,” a duet with Rina Sawayama is beautiful ballad about friendship, especially in the midst of polarizing times. Elton did a version of “It’s a Sin” with Years & Years, whose Olly Alexander had starred in a the HBO Max miniseries by the same name about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s from the perspective of gay men and the nightlife they enjoyed. But the most impressive track doesn’t feature Elton on vocals. Instead, Miley Cyrus sings to a band of all stars including Elton John on keys, Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ drummer Chad Smith, Yo-Yo Ma on cello, and Robert Trujillo on bass playing his band Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” Out of all of the quarantine projects by established and up-and-coming acts, The Lockdown Sessions is pretty low on the list. Certainly Elton John’s feature on Lady Gaga‘s “Sine from Above” was much better than most of the tracks on Lockdown. All in all, Lockdown is a lesson in what not to do as a veteran artist. Elton John certainly inspired generations of artists from singer-songwriters to piano-rockers to the proudly flamboyant. But trying so hard to stay relevant doesn’t look so good. I hope he tries again, though. There could be something interesting to refine from this.
Official Music Video:
David Bennett Piano talking about this song’s 4 tracks that make up this song:
The Jonas Brothers decided to break up in 2013. It was the end of a squeaky-clean Disney pop era when the brothers started forging solo careers. For Nick Jonas, the youngest of the brothers, success came easy: acting, modeling, and hit singles all in his own right. The oldest Jonas (Kevin, Jr.) mostly worked on business ventures outside of music. But today, we’re focusing on the middle child, Joe Jonas, who, unlike Nick, couldn’t ride the fame of the Jonas name to instant stardom.
TALK TO ME BABY. What did work for Joe was forming a new band, DNCE in 2015. Joe Jonas formed the group with his roommate at the time, drummer Jack Lawless. The band added the lead guitarist from Jordan Sparks‘ touring band, JinJoo Lee. She had known the Jonas Brothers since Sparks had opened for them. The final member, Cole Whittle came from the glam-rock band Semi Precious Weapon, and joined DNCE because of Jonas’s connection with Semi Precious Weapon’s lead singer Justin Tranter who helped write DNCE songs with Jonas. With a band together, the group worked with songwriters honing in on the band’s direction. DNCE would be a funky disco pop-rock sound, and their debut single, “Cake by the Ocean,” would reach #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Whereas Joe Jonas’s solo post-Jonas Brothers album had stalled on the pop charts, DNCE was an instant hit. The single was everywhere. The band released their debut EP, Swaay, which contained “Cake” and the single “Toothbrush.” The band then released their full-length eponymous record. But nothing DNCE did after “Cake by the Ocean” matched the debut single’s success. After releasing a single in 2018, the band went on hiatus. The Jonas Brothers reformed in 2019, and the DNCE musicians went on to other musical projects; however, all but Whittle reunited earlier this year for a new Kygo single, “Dancing Feet,” which features DNCE.
SEE YOU LICKIN’ FROSTIN’ FROM YOUR OWN HAND. Even from the radio edit version of “Cake by the Ocean,” listeners can tell that the song is not as sweet as it is nasty. Innocently enough, though, the idea for the song came when the band was working with Swedish songwriting duo Mattman & Robin, who, according to Joe Jonas, kept incorrectly ordering the drink Sex on the Beach, calling it Cake by the Ocean. Literally, having sex on the beach is a logistical nightmare as is eating cake by the ocean–too much sand everywhere. When this song came out, I wasn’t a fan of it. I thought the profanity was unnecessary to drive the message of the song. I thought subtly in a sexy songs makes them sexier. But more than five years after “Cake by the Ocean” was released, it doesn’t seem as shocking. Maybe my ears, too, have been more conditioned to a gradual disco take over of the radio waves that seems to be growing. Maybe I thought “Cake by the Ocean” was too in your face, which is not great for a song about sex. But now this funky sound seems to be appearing elsewhere as the musical cycles seem to recycle themselves.
Sometime after 21, birthdays start to feel anticlimactic. The vestiges of childhood have disappeared now that you can drink, smoke, watch any movie, and drive. Besides renting a car and a senior citizen’s discount, whatever you look forward to as an adult isn’t tied to your birthday. And while laws vary state to state, sixteen is the symbolic age when teenagers gain their greatest independence: their driver’s licenses. The anticipation for this rite of passage plays out to the point of being cliché in teen movies, but remembering the day one received that laminated card connects every generation of Americans. Perhaps that’s why Olivia Rodrigo’s breakthrough single was such a massive hit last year. The first single from her debut record SOUR, starts the Disney Channel actress’s in slow, sad-girl territory, similar to the slower tunes of Lorde and Billie Eilish. But even on a slow track like today’s song, we still get a driving rock beat. And while releasing one of the slowest songs from a rock-oriented record hasn’t historically worked well for an artist, “driver’s license” seems to be an exception. But we’re living in a time when music doesn’t play by the rules.
RED LIGHTS, STOP SIGNS. Of the many things that you could do that could negatively impact your life as a teenager involving a car, breaking up with someone is pretty benign, even if it involves some blonde. This is in no way to belittle Rodrigo’s pain. Just like Taylor Swift’s Fearless record, Rodrigo makes us feel the heartbreak of being a teenager, starting in “drivers license.” But thirty-something-year-old me remembers what forever felt like, so I listen intently and roll my eyes when I think about it. Then I think of the reasons why this song is even up for conversation because of the critics that I listen to — David Bennett Piano and Rick Beato— who have praised Rodrigo’s songwriting and arrangements. But it’s really the ascending minor chord to the major chord in the pre-chorus (see the lyric card above) that makes the song stick all day. We hear Rodrigo ascending from sadness to power in her heartbeat in this line. Then, as we listen to the song in the context of the album, we realize that Rodrigo has littered images in each song. These images are snapshots of her relationship or the breakup, and the internet has taken to deciphering them.
YOU SAID FOREVER, NOW I DRIVE PAST YOUR STREET. In 2019, the first season of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series was released on Disney Channel. The series starred Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett as the leading stars, and according to the rumors, the two dates, and Bassett broke Rodrigo’s heart by cheating on her with fellow Disney actress Sabrina Carpenter. Bassett neither confirmed or denied these rumors in interviews, instead focusing the attention on his own solo career, his emerging LGBTQ+ identity, and his mental health, the latter Rodrigo makes a jab at in “good 4 u,” should the song in fact be about him. Does the gossip make the story more interesting than it actually is? Does this teenager scorned story make Rodrigo the next Taylor Swift? Is Joshua Bassett the musical equivalent to Colton Underwood? Will these questions even be relevant next time I write about Rodrigo?
Today, we’ll revisit high school in a playlist The Angsty Aughts. This playlist will compile and celebrate the Emo songs I’ve blogged about. For this list, I’ve decided to focus on scene music from 2003-2009. I’m sure that a second generation of Emo featuring Olivia Rodrigo and Goody Grace will be a post in the future. For this playlist, I’ve decided to stick to a high school theme because that’s what Emo does best, so I listed the song as “Class of” based on the year that the song was introduced. Enjoy!
The first single and second song from their third record“There Goes Our Love Again” sets White Lies firmly in synth-based post-punk. The Manchester-based band released Big TVin August of 2013. The lead single only charted in Belgium, where the album was produced, and the album’s cover art was acclaimed by Pitchfork, which rated it as one of the best of 2013. But, if there’s any consistent theme in my blog, I try to champion the underrated, and in my opinion, Big TV is truly one of the most underrated rock albums of the 2010s, and “There Goes Our Love Again” one of the most underrated pop-rock songs.
HOME IS A DESPERATE END. In The Guardian‘s review of Big TV, the critic talks about the concept of the album. The story tells of a young woman who has left her unfaithful boyfriend (“There Goes Our Love Again”) to find happiness in running around in Europe. In a track-by-track audio commentary of the album in which the band talks about their inspiration for the tracks, one band member says that the song is “frantic in its energy and athletic in its demands live.” The chorus builds each time, adding a layer of desperation as singer Harry McVeigh sings a little bit higher, but stays mostly within his baritone range, the synths flying high above McVeigh’s vocals. The synths and guitar add to that “frantic energy” at the end of the song when McVeigh’s vocals plead “But he said. . .” This vocal style reminded me of a tweet from @Manditorypal I saw earlier this week distinguishing the genres.
I remember seeing Anberlin live at Cornerstone and realizing that depending on where I stood at the concert determined my experience because of how the sound was mixed. Stephen Christian sings in a higher range, which sometimes competes with the guitars, which are also in the upper registers. McVeigh, though, is firmly a post-punk rocker, his vocals always somewhere above the bass and below the guitars and far below the synths.
‘CAUSE I’M BROKEN AND BLIND. The final version for “There Goes Our Love Again” changed significantly from its demo version. The verses in the demo version vaguely follow the melody of the final version, but the lyrics changed significantly–the final version succinctly conveying the emotion of a relationship which has ended. In the album commentary, the band member talks about how the song was lyrically inspired by R.E.M.‘s “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite,” in that the lyrics of “There Goes Our Love Again” repeats as a “lyrical arrangement of words” rather than a traditional poetic approach. While the song is born out of the sadness and pain of a relationship that is built on a lie, the energy of the instrumentation leaves the listener with hope. The synth pulls us back in reflecting on the past, but the beat pulls us forward. The two elements in the song compete, shall we mourn the past or push forward? Whether it’s a relationship or a past decision, that nostalgia vs. moving forward is what music is about and what life is about. It’s that Charlie Brown/Never Take Friendship Personalthing that life is probably more downs than ups, but the ups kind of make it worth it. And the downs are mostly things that just kinda suck. Life is like the story I heard today on The Bad Christian Podcast:enduring a lengthy divorce process, being abused by the attorneys, but being able to stick it at them (spoiler alert: paying $5,000 in legal fees in cash–$1 increments to be exact). But that’s enough ranting about life for one day. Seriously, though, check out this album if you haven’t. And certainly listen to Daniel Dopp’s divorce story.
In 2016, Tyson Motsenbocker signed to Tooth & Nail Records and released his debut LP, Letters to Lost Loves. Motsenbocker had been deeply affected by the loss of his mother and decided to go on a walk between San Diego and San Francisco to process his grief. Some of those reflections could be heard on Letters. Although Motsenbocker didn’t follow up Letters with a full length until 2020, Someday I’ll Make It All Up to You, he released two EPs in 2017, Almiraand A Kind Invitation.
I KISSED YOU AFTER MIDNIGHT. Almira is a beautiful EP with 5 songs, including “Rust” (see post) and “Coeur d’Alene,” and A Kind Invitation includes “Talk All Night for Nothing,” (see post) which Motsenbocker would go on to perform with Switchfoot‘s Jon Foreman and release as a single, the eponymous storytelling, spoken word track; and today’s song “Something in the Way,” which deals revisits relationship material as “Talk All Night” does, rather than the existential material of the other songs. “Something in the Way” is built on a ’90s keyboard riff, which wins the softest spot of in my heart. Though certainly not the most lyrically profound of Motsenbocker’s work, the song is relatable in that sometimes in romance, friends have a keener eye when it comes to red flags. Coupled with the second track on the EP, “Talk All Night” and “Something in the Way” sound similar to what John Mayer would release in 2021, his Sob Rock album. Sad-core Tyson Motsenbocker is not quite a Sufjan Stevens to Tooth & Nail Records, though Stevens himself has ties to the label via other artists. But sometimes you need a song about lamenting the red flags you overlooked.
I SWORE I READ YOUR MIND. It’s partly the weather that has me down the past couple of days. It was sunny and unseasonably hot two days ago, but yesterday it got cloudy, threatened rain, and got chilly. But it’s really a full understanding that last year is dead and buried, and the stability that I once counted on in my working life is disrupted. I remember reading a definition of grief in some ESL lesson years ago that highlighted that grief didn’t have only be sorry about a death, but it can also be sorrow for any loss, including finding out a truth that is uncomfortable. It can be a change for the worse. It can be an expectation not coming to fruition. We can grieve the ending of a friendship or the ending of a job. And we shouldn’t be expected to shrug it off and move on. We need time. But what about the grief of having to make a decision? How do you deal with your mourning and make decisions? What if it’s cancer? Is it terminal? “Should we beat this or celebrate it?” To be clear, I’m not worried about my physical health at this time anymore than a hypochondriac does. It’s just that I’m grieving missing the red flags in my career path, just as Motsenbocker is grieving missing the red flags in this particular releationship.
Before the pandemic, everything seemed to be on an upward trajectory for singer-songwriter/rapper/producer Branson Gudmundson, known by his stage name Goody Grace. The 24-year-old Manitoban musician started in his teens covering pop music. He began producing his own music on a laptop, as he tells podcaster Mike Gunz, out of necessity as there weren’t any major studios in his hometown of Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada. His earlier songs mix auto-tuned vocals, trap beats, drum samples, and love guitars to create blend of Emo Rap. When Goody Grace moved to Los Angelos, his career started to gain traction.
I WANT OUT, BABY TRUCE. Whether it was writing songs for Machine Gun Kelly or filling in guest spots in his singles and EP tracks with the likes of Juicy J, Cigarettes After Sex, or even blink-182, the young artist has built an impressive resume up to this point. He and blink-182 performed his single “Scumbag” before the pandemic on Jimmy Kimmel. In 2021, Goody Grace released his full-length debut record in February, and at the end of September, he released the EP Nostalgia Kills. Heavily influenced by ’80s post-punk, the five songs takes Gudmundson into a cohesive sound that is both modern and timeless. The subtle guitar on today’s song “Sinner Dressed in Saint Laurent” calls back to a new wave band, but Gudmundson’s vocals and the beats keep the song anchored in 2021. Back in 2018, a 21-year-old Gudmundson released a single titled “Nostalgia Is a Lie,” in which the singer says that “nostalgia lied to [him] . . . making [him] believe / That everything that happened back then, was all so easy.” In “Nostalgia Kills” Gudmundson says, “If our broken hearts don’t kill us / The nostalgia will.” In the last two years, there has been a lot of music released as artists have been busier than ever writing and recording music without having to hit the road to tour their back catalogue. But rather than listening to new music, many people are listening to older music–what they listened to in high school. Perhaps is everyone on a fatal date with nostalgia?
ROCKSTAR LIFE, SHE SO FAR FROM AVERAGE. “Sinner Dressed in Saint Laurent” is a short, repetitive track. Goody Grace may have the new TikTok flash-and-forget song structure down, but I’m hoping to hear longer tracks and more developed verses in the singer’s future. Criticism aside, though, “Sinner” is quite catchy. We get this imagery of late nights with the band, only for young Goody to be tempted by a sexy fashionista whose love and passion ultimately turn sour. Saint Laurent is a French high fashion line founded by Yves Saint Laurent in 1962. The song plays on the contrast between “Saints and sinners,” setting up a false premise that only good people would wear a fashion line that uses the word saint in it. Of course, none of us are actually fooled by this simple word play, but we are still left with the image of a ruthless well-dressed woman. If the devil wears Prada, then why can’t a sinner wear Saint Laurent? The late-night imagery of this song reminds me of the lines in Anberlin‘s “Dance, Dance, Christa Päffgan,” simply for the story surrounding the German singer Nico and the muse that she gave the ’80s post-punk scene before her untimely death in 1988. Nico continues to be an Emo/punk rock muse today, and she has over 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Maybe the well-dressed woman in today’s song is a Nico of the new Emo generation.
Adam Young was inescapable in 2008 with his dreamy #1 hit “Fireflies,” released under the moniker Owl City. Although Owl City went on to produce more records since 2008, other than being a featured artist on Carly Rae Jepsen‘s “Good Time,” Owl City or Adam Young weren’t on many listener’s radar after “Fireflies.” But one year prior to Owl City’s breakthrough record, Ocean Eyes, Adam Young teamed up with his friend Austin Tofte to form the side project Swimming with Dolphins, releasing their debut EP Ambient Blueand a B-side cover of Tracy Chapman‘s “Fast Car.”
I’M LIVING HERE WITHOUT YOU. In 2011 Swimming with Dolphins released their debut record, Water Colours, produced by several producers including Tofte and Aaron Sprinkle, and the album was released on Tooth & Nail Records. The band added backing vocalist Breanne Düren on this record, creating a musical conversation on tracks like today’s song “Sleep to Dream.” I first learned of this band from a three-part sampler Tooth & Nail, Solid State, and BEC Records put out in the summer of 2011. Today, I’ll recreated the Tooth & Nail portion of the playlist because I’m becoming less and less of a fan of heavy music (Solid State) and overtly Christian music (BEC). So let’s go back in our time machine, 11 years ago, when Emery was still on Tooth & Nail, when Underoath was about to break up. When Tooth & Nail was trying every gimmick to make the music industry work, signing pop acts and electronic head scratchers. Personally, this was the summer before the hell of my student disaster happened. We were all anxiously waiting for the Mayan end of the world, and in some ways, 2011 for me–college graduation and then moving abroad–was the end of an era. So let’s go back to 2011 Tooth & Nail:
In 2021, Dave Elkins and Zach Gehring of Mae talked with The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazineabout the Mae’s career and the future of the band. The interview took place nearly three years after Mae’s technically second self-titled album Multisensory Aesthetic Experiencewas released. Elkins and Gehring give insight into the making of Mae’s latest project on the podcast, and it’s certainly worth a listen for anyone who has any fondness for Mae. And, I realize that this is two Mae songs in a row, though by a technicality I’m not breaking the rules. Dave Elkins was the chief artist yesterday, although he was singing one of Mae’s most famous songs.
SO OPEN UP UNTIL YOU KNOW THERE’S MORE THAN EITHER/OR. One of the podcasters admitted that it took several listens for him to appreciate Multisensory as an album, and the podcaster claimed that, perhaps even compared to all the musical experimentations in the band’s discography and 7+ minute songs on their (m)(a)(e)EP series, Multisensory was the most experimental record the band has produced. The band did, after all, produce a music video visualizer film for the entire album and go on tour recommending that the audience wear VR sets. The music on this record isn’t jarring and a lot of the melodies are catchy. Lyrically, there are a few good lines. The space imagery aims and the colors seem to play into a sort of synesthesia. But just as the album sat hard with the reviewers, Elkins, too, said the album was difficult to make and not a pleasant process. In the interview, Elkins talks about deconstructing his Christian faith, coming to realize the traditional teachings of the church were both comforting and damaging to him. He says that he wanted “to use Mae as a sounding board for [his] own faith deconstruction” essentially trying to gather the elements of his past and make sense of the direction his life was heading.
I THINK WE BOTH WANT HARMONY NOW. Gehring also talks about the difficulty producing Multisensory. He talks about working several jobs and having a newborn during the recording of the record, which limited his time in the studio. The band recorded the album at different times, which made it difficult to collaborate on ideas. Today’s song, “Sing,” seems to attest to this frustration. The speaker longs to “create harmony” with the other person, but he cannot find the key that the other person is singing in. It’s an interesting metaphor for life, whether talking about a friendship or a relationship. Whereas Gehring didn’t have the opportunity to work closely with the band for extended periods of time, Elkins talks about how the moments in the recording studio lead to conversations that clarified his new set of beliefs and “unclogging a pipe of creativity” so that the band can produce even better work in the future, whenever Covid and distance across states will bring them back together to record the follow up.
The members of Emery work hard both on their side hustles and their main gig, and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between their side hustles and their main gig. Lead singer Toby Morrell and guitarist Matt Carter started a blog with their friend Joey Svendsen, which later became The BadChristian Podcast. They started a record label, BadChristian Music and released Emery records and other artists–mostly Tooth & Nail associated bands–who shared a vision of Christian music that pushes the envelope. And while Emery only has about 172,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, the band has actually migrated their most loyal fans to their own Patreon-style music subscription service. This service used to be under the name Emeryland, but recently the band has merged its production of BadChristian Podcast and Emery’s music and their work with the Labeled Podcastto one subscription-based plan under the moniker Knuckle Breakers.
MAYBE NOT TO AGREE, BUT TO PROCLAIM LOVE. I’m more of a fan of Emery’s business model and their non-Emery projects. I’m a fan of the universe of music they create around them. The reason I started listening to The BadChristian Podcast was their early days of interviewing their friends in bands, hearing Christian Rock bands have honest, often profanity-including conversations about their beliefs, doubts, and the dirtiness of music industry. Matt, Toby, and Joey kept inviting more and more diverse voices to the conversation about Christianity–liberal, conservative, and everything in between–exploring the questions about what is really Christian and who has the right to judge what is and what isn’t. Over the years, the podcast became less about music and less about faith, but those early band associations and the band members that kept coming back on the show kept me interested. In 2020 and 2021, Emery hosted several Sunday Night musical live streams as part of their Emeryland membership. Matt and Toby cross-promoted their Twitch Are You Listening? A Sunday Night Streamo Show on the BadChristian Podcast, playing today’s song as the intro music for one of the BadChristian episodes. Are You Listening? would often have a musical guest jamming along on Emery songs, and Emery would often play one of the guest’s band’s songs as well.
THERE’LL BE ROOM FOR CHANGE, BUT GRADUALLY. Emery produces a lot of music these days and not all of it ends up on streaming platforms. Today’s song, a synth-based cover of Mae‘s “Embers and Envelops” featuring Mae’s singer Dave Elkins is available on YouTube in a playlist of collaborations the band has done for their Are You Listening? show. So that made me think about the songs that I’ve chosen as my featured song of the day that were only publicly available through YouTube, and I decided to make a playlist on my new YouTube channel: NewYearsDayProject. Here it is along with the link to the original post:
1. “Embers and Envelops” by Dave Elkins of Mae ft. Emery. Today’s song.
7. “Part of It/Outro” by Relient K. The band’s 2009 record is now on Spotify. It’s not on AppleMusic. The album version splits “Part of It” and “Outro” into two tracks, but they should be heard together, like in this YouTube video.
Mixtapemotions 