Mixtapemotions

In 2022, Julian Lennon returned to music after an eleven-year hiatus with the album Jude. The album’s title references the nickname Paul McCarthy gave him after his father John Lennon and mother Cynthia divorced in 1968. Originally, McCarthy wrote the song “Hey Jules” to use the boy’s actual nickname, but McCarthy said that “Hey Jude” sounded better in the song. Julian began his musical career playing drums on his father’s album, Walls and Bridges on the song “Ya-Ya.” Following his father’s murder in 1980, Julian released his first album in 1984, titled Valotte, to critical acclaim and commercial success. Subsequent releases were not as well received, but Julian has been an active artist in music, photography, writing, and filmmaking. He has also done a lot of philanthropic work in Australia, Africa, and America for Indigenous groups and humanitarian aid.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO FEEL ALONE? Julian Lennon, the first-born son of John Lennon didn’t have an easy life. John had an affair with the Japanese multi-media artist Yoko Ono and divorced his wife Cynthia. After the divorce, Julian was estranged from his father until John briefly separated from Yoko and started dating his publicist May Peng. Julian has spoken openly about the emotional distance he felt from his father and the pain of growing up without much involvement from him. He described John as someone who was inconsistent—alternating between being loving and supportive during rare moments and cold or unavailable most of the time. John’s public image as a peace-loving figure sometimes contrasted with the reality of his private relationship with Julian, which caused Julian confusion and hurt. He has mentioned feeling overshadowed by John’s later focus on his second son, Sean Lennon, who John had with Yoko Ono. Despite the difficult relationship, Julian has expressed understanding of his father’s struggles with fame, personal identity, and fatherhood. Over the years, Julian has also said that he’s come to terms with the complex legacy of being John Lennon’s son. While the two never fully reconciled before John died in 1980, Julian has continued to honor his father’s memory, even though their relationship remained unresolved.

OPEN YOUR HEART AND YOU’LL GO FAR. When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, Julian gave an interview with Playboy talking about how distant he was from his father. Julian was part of his father’s post-divorce life because his girlfriend May Peng asked to see the boy. Julian even used Peng’s photograph of him at age 11 as the cover of his latest album Jude. Julian remained close to Paul McCartney. He told The Washington Post in 2015  “Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit … more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad.” McCartney’s mentorship helped Julian throughout his life, except for an accidental snub at Paul’s wedding to Nancy Shevell in 2015. While Julian has critcized his father for his hypocrisy–preaching love and peace but not acting on it, Julian’s public life has been, in some ways, a fullfilment of his father’s ideals put into practice with philanthropy and even reconciliation with his father’s widow Yoko Ono after Julian sued for a more equitable part of John’s estate. Although Julian had a complicated relationship with his father, he not only shares genetics with the late prophet of rock music but his legacy as well.

Read the lyrics on Genius.

Hollywood entered a golden age starting in the 1930s. The silent film era was coming to a close and films like The Wizard of Oz were including technicolor. As part of the multi-sensory experience of going to the theater, filmmakers, harkening to film’s cousin, the live theater, opted not for realism but for artistic takes on the material adapted for the screen. One popular storytelling motif was the inclusion of original songs, often sung by the stars portraying the main characters on the screen. Because songs often didn’t push the film’s plot forward, their inclusion made short films the classic 80-minute (or longer) movie length to excruciatingly long.

Between cleaning up at the 2015 Grammy Awards for In the Lonely Hour and 2020’s Love Goes, Sam Smith‘s music lost momentum with listeners. Of course, a lot has happened to the singer since then. In 2015, Smith was an openly gay Grammy-winning artist. In 2019, the singer came out as non-binary, telling the BBC, “I do think like a woman sometimes, in my head. Sometimes I’ve questioned, ‘Do I want a sex change?’” Since coming out as non-binary, the singer has embraced both the masculine and the feminine in their videos, concerts, and album promotions. Not only did the singer’s sexuality evolve, but also their musical versatility, from a gospel-inspired second record (The Thrill of It All), a Bond theme (“Writing’s on the Wall“), featured in a Calvin Harris track (“Promises“), a dance-pop record in 2020–nothing seemed beyond the scope of the singer, though never they quite matching the success of In the Lonely Hour.

MUMMY DON’T KNOW DADDY’S GETTING HOT AT THE BODY SHOP. “Unholy” was the lead single from Sam Smith’s fourth record, Gloria. It’s a shocking song and video that made our friends over at PluggedIn call it “next-level vile.” Writing about the song before the context of the music video, and taking the lyrics of the song quite literally as a “celebratory tone used to praise a man for lying to his wife, ignoring his children and visiting a prostitute whenever he so pleases,” the critic Kristin Smith lambastes the song. And even though Smith correctly points out the literal message of the song, it seems that there’s something else going on. But because our dear friends at Focus on the Family didn’t have the video at the time of the review, let’s start there. The video (see below) is truly an avant-garde statement complete with an introduction, elaborate costumes, and a Cabaret–styled dance sequence. The Body Shop scenes–a dinner-theater-styled sex club–aren’t too graphic to be censored on YouTube, but the viewers certainly get the idea about what is happening at this club, which is MC’ed by Smith. Famed Italian-Canadian music video and film director Floria Sigismondi directed “Unholy.” She has directed videos for Marylin Manson, The White Stripes, Katy Perry, and other artists as well as directing episodes of The Handmaiden’s Tale and American Gods. 

 For some musical acts, it takes a while for their audience to take them seriously. Take for example Relient K. After three records of lyrics about Marylin Manson eating girlfriends, manipulating emotional girls to wear mood rings, and fantasizing about showing up to an ’80s-themed prom in a pink tux listening to Tears for Fears, the band scored two mainstream pop hits from their not-quite-as-cheeky Mmhmm album. 

TOO OLD TO BE GROWING UP.  Relient K’s latest effort Air for Free was released in 2016 and the band continues to tour with the record. While the band gets playful with songs like “Local Construction,” “Cat,” “Mrs. Hippopotamuses‘” and “Elephant Parade,” there are serious moments on the record. One of the most serious songs is “Man,” the fifth track. Relient K’s early music was almost exclusively punk rock–electric guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. But little by little, Relient K began introducing other instruments–acoustic guitars, piano/ keys–and production elements. Now the band freely incorporates piano without fears of not being punk rock. Today’s song is both lyrically and musically masterful. Starting out at a laid-back pace, “Man” gradually gains tempo. In a 2016 interview, lead singer Matt Thiessen stated that “Man” is a follow-up to the band’s album-closing tracks for Forget and Not Slow Down, “This Is the End” and “(If You Want It).” To signify the growing urgency in the song, the tempo continuously speeds up until the final chorus which presents the lyrics as a swirling round. 

I SPENT THE LAST SIX YEARS LIKE HOFFMAN IN THE SWIMMING POOL.“Man” is, coincidentally, the third track this month that references Peter Pan following Tyson Motsenbocker‘s “Wendy Darling” and Anberlin‘s “Godspeed.” Peter Pan is often used in songs and literature as a symbol of the struggle between staying young and growing up. The beginning of the song references Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, spending his summer in the pool, eyes locked on Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), waiting to see where life will take the young man. The song also subtly references one of the band’s covers, the Veggie Tales silly song “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.” In “Man” the speaker feels the gravity of waiting around for life to happen. As time is slipping away, the speaker has many impulses: hide from it, try to delay it, die prematurely, but ultimately he realizes he has to face it. There also seems to be some regret for the singer’s careless attitude in the past alluded to in the song’s lines. With millennials and Zoomers demanding accountability for misogamy and homophobia in Christian and secular media, many songs and artists have suffered losses in streams and have become irrelevant. Just this year, Matt Thiessen apologized for the problematic lyrics in “Mood Rings” after a TikToker went viral with a message about how the song stereotyped young women as emotionally turbulent forces in a young man’s life. While much of Relient K’s most remembered tracks may be muddied by some of their past statements, it seems that the band is waking up and seeing the role they played in it and taking accountability. 

Read the lyrics on Genius.