Mixtapemotions

  • “Running Out of Time” by Paramore, Thursday, September 5, 2024

    Last year, when promoting Re: This Is Why, the remix album of Paramore’s sixth studio album This Is Why, lead singer Hayley Williams talked to Jimmy Fallon about her teenage friendship with Taylor Swift. Williams describes the friendship as coming from a time when Swift and she were pursuing music while growing up in Nashville. According to Williams, Taylor Swift’s mother was looking for a friend for Taylor, particularly someone else in music. At this point, neither Taylor nor Paramore were household names, but even as teenagers both Williams and Swift were focused on their goals, which allowed for little time for normal teenage things, especially socializing. The singers’ friendships and careers have intersected several times before Paramore’s opening slot on the Eras Tour. On their latest album, Swift inspired a lyric from an impression she left on Williams.


    THERE WAS A FIRE (METAPHORICALLY). After releasing three pre-release singles for This Is Why, Paramore released the album and promoted the single “Running Out of Time.” Musically, the song is consistent with the guitar-driven sound Taylor York had composed for the singles before the album’s release. Some listeners were shocked by the band’s shift in musical direction. The once pop-punk band had shifted to pop rock on 2027’s After Laughter, but last year’s This Is Why trades pop hooks for guitar licks, jazz chords, and frenetic drumming. “Running Out of Time,” is one of Paramore’s most unique songs.  When she introduced the song in a concert in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hayley Williams expressed how she was surprised about how the song turned out. In only three minutes and 11 seconds, the song accomplishes what a similarly styled 70s psychedelic acid rock tune would receive a radio edit of four minutes, cutting down a seven-minute or longer album track. This is not to say that Paramore is better than a ’70s psychedelic acid rock band, but in the 2020s, being economical with time is a must. The song’s bridge offers a bit more freestyle to the already loose song. The song serves as a bridge between the album’s hits and the more experimental album cuts like “Liar” and “Crave.” The song also makes the remix on Re: This Is Why “Big Man, Little Dignity” with its hot Jazzstep keyboard finish feel like it isn’t coming out of nowhere.  


    I HIT THE SNOOZE ON MY ALARM TWENTY TIMES. Hayley Williams told the audience in Tulsa that the lyrics to “Running Out of Time” “aren’t that deep.” She explained the lyrics in a video for Genius. Rather than concealing Easter eggs, Williams gives anecdotal examples with each line, from a neighbor that she tried to do something nice for to the watch she wears “for only decoration.” She elaborated on the lyrics when talking with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, specifically about the song’s inspiration coming from William’s friendship with Taylor Swift. Williams talks about a 19-year-old Swift with a closet full of gifts that she collected to give whenever the moment called for it. Williams contrasted herself with Swift’s togetherness. Hayley said, “There are still Christmas cards or gifts at my house that I have not sent to my friends.” She also said that her “idealized self” is the person who had some extra time, “so I bought my friends some flowers.” In the song, Williams complains that her bad time management skills make her seem like a “selfish prick.” Perhaps those that have their shit together may feel that way, but I think many of us can sympathize with Williams–if not empathize. I, too, admire people who have a clear focus and get things done. I would be one of those people, except I love to be distracted. It’s the distractions that inspire me. But I guess we have to deal with the consequences.


     

  • “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, Wednesday, September 4, 2024 (repost)

    While Jimmy Eat World purists cite Clarity as their favorite and their true breakthrough album, most of us humble music listeners would have never heard of one of the defining bands in the pop-punk/ emo scene if it wasn’t for their 2001 record Bleed American. It was specifically their second single from the record, “The Middle” which is the band’s most well-known hit. When you’re talking about hits from your childhood and bands you like, many people won’t recognize the name of the band but they know the song. Jimmy Eat World had released two albums on Capitol Records when the first wave of emo sparked by bands like Sunny Day Real Estate became popular. Jimmy Eat World, though, underperformed and was dropped by Capitol. The band then recorded Bleed American independently but signed to DreamWorks before releasing the record. 


    DON’T WRITE YOURSELF OFF YET.  First Jimmy Eat World released the title track “Bleed American” to rock radio before releasing “The Middle.” The second single reached #5 on Billboard’s Hot 100, an unheard-of success for the emo genre at the time. Steering away from controversy Jimmy Eat World changed the title of their fourth record Bleed American to Jimmy Eat World following the September 11 attacks, but changed it back in 2008. The band never duplicated their success, though continued to gain rock radio airplay. The band continues to play, but seems to be more of a “band’s band”—more of an influence on the scene than one that is listened to regularly. Still, the Jim Adkins-fronted band will forever be remembered in the fall of 2001 for their radio single, which was certainly boosted by the song’s popularity. The video shows the band performing at a house party where all of the attendees are in their underwear except for one guy. Toward the end of the video, the young man is about to give in to the peer pressure and strip down to his boxers, but he sees a girl who is also uncomfortable with the peer pressure.


    IT JUST TAKES SOME TIME. I remember an interview with MTV or another music channel that Jimmy Eat World said that they actually played for house parties like the video early in their career. The video has sometimes been called “The Underwear Song” or “The Underwear Band” because of the video. Another cool effect that viewers liked was that during the guitar solo, an actor jumps into the pool, and the solo sounds blocked like hearing it from underwater. Besides the popularity of the video, the song resonated with teenagers and those going through a transition in life. Being “in the middle of the ride” can be a frustrating time. We feel that angst especially during and after puberty, but there are definitely periods in our lives where we also feel trapped on the ride. We tell ourselves just a little further; that we can endure anything as long as it’s temporary. However, I’ve started to worry about the end of the ride. Someday, the ride will be over, but doesn’t that mean death? I think it’s time to start enjoying the middle. Heck, let’s enjoy it all because once it’s over it’s done. And someday, we’ll be too old to be going to underwear parties!


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

     

  • “Walking in My Shoes” by Depeche Mode, Tuesday, September 3, 2024 (repost)

    In 1985, Depeche Mode called their sound industrial pop. The group had similar pop aspirations as synth-pop groups that littered the ’80s music scene, but there is certainly a difference between the band’s early and later discography. This is partly due to the departure of keyboardist Vince Clark who left the band after their first album to form the electronic group Erasure. When the band from  Basildon, England, debuted in 1980, they started in the new wave scene that was breaking worldwide, including in America. Their earlier albums are often classified as synth-pop and garnered modest hits in Britain and America. 


    FORBIDDEN FRUITS FOR ME TO EAT. The dark sounds of later Depeche Mode gave the band their biggest hits. The band’s minor hit career in America started with 1984’s “People Are People,” the band’s first entry to Billboard’s Hot 100. The song became an anti-war Soviet-era anthem as well as an LGBTQ+ pride song. The band got darker on a single later in 1985 with “Master and Servant,” a song alluding to a BDSM relationship. After “People Are People” until 1990, Depeche Mode’s singles fared better on Billboard’s newly introduced Modern Rock chart, later renamed Alternative Airplay. It was the dark sound in the band’s music and lyrics that pushed them to stand out from contemporaries in synth-pop like Pet Shop Boys and Duran Duran. Depeche Mode took their place in a pantheon of mostly British bands that dominated the Modern Rock sound of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s before grunge and post-grunge took over in the early to mid-90s.


    I’M NOT LOOKING FOR ABSOLUTION. Depeche Mode’s peak was in 1990 with the release of their seventh album, Violator, which brought the band back to the Top 40 with the album’s lead single “Personal Jesus,” released several months before the album’s release. The band then beat their peak of 13 for “People Are People” with the 1990 number 8 hit, “Enjoy the Silence.” The band’s next album, Songs of Faith and Devotion, released in 1993, also produced hits with the lead single “I Feel You” topped Alternative Airplay for three weeks, and today’s song “Walking in My Shoes” topped the chart for a week. The band’s impact on the Top 40 had started to wane with “Walking in My Shoes” only reaching number 69 and the lead singles from subsequent albums reaching only the lower rungs of the Top 40.  Depeche Mode’s lyrics have been called blasphemous as the band often takes religious imagery to repurpose it for social and political messaging. But listening back to Depeche Mode, especially after hearing Anberlin’s cover of “Enjoy the Silence,” it seems that the tension between the religious and the secular is a major part of Anberlin’s lyrics. Whereas U2 may be called the band that brought faith mainstream, I think that Depeche Mode’s lyrics introduce a nuance that has us challenging our deep-seated biases.






     


    Read the lyrics on Genius. 

      

  • “Maniac” by Conan Gray, Monday, September 2, 2024

    With the release of Found Heaven, Conan Gray has been embracing a glam rock era. Listening to his two previous studio albums, there are hints at the future Max Martin-produced third album, but the singer seems to be more comfortable with the slower lyric-driven real instrument songs. But much like the other Dan Nigro-produced artists, such as Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan, the genre only appears to be a tool to help artists present themselves in their most authentic ways. It’s not a new concept in pop music and it’s becoming more and more common. Some call it the death of genre. For Conan Gray, one of those moments is on his first album Kid Krow, on the song that has been called a “bedroom pop banger,” “Maniac.”


    TELL THEM YOU HATE ME AND DATED ME JUST FOR LAUGHS. “Maniac” was Conan Gray’s third single from Kid Krow. The genre seems to follow the subject matter of the song. The lyrics of the songs suggest that the speaker’s ex has been partying all night, so underneath the poppier-than-usual Gray song, is a club beat. The song masterfully builds a story about a crazy lover who has turned on the speaker. This person has turned to their “rat pack” to defame the speaker, saying he “is trash.” What makes the subject of the song so dangerous, though, is their ability to claim that the speaker is actually the “psychopath” by calling him a “stalker and a watcher.” Gray has said that the song is actually based on one of the singer’s exes. He told Apple Music that he wrote the song in the shower after receiving a text message from someone he hadn’t talked to for “months.” The other person accused him, saying,  “You’re so manipulative and crazy and you’ve been telling all my friends this and you’ve been saying this and this and that.” Gray released the song around Halloween in 2019 along with the music video, which was themed after a zombie movie and co-starred The End of the F***ing World’s Jessica Barden as a girl whose ex-boyfriends have come to attack the two who are movie theater workers just before midnight on October 30th. 


    THAT I’M SUCH A STALKER, A WATCHER, A PSYCHOPATH. The term “gaslighting” has been around since the mid-20th century, but it became an everyday word in more recent years, especially in the 2010s and 2020s. The word “gaslighting” comes from the 1938 play Gas Light and its subsequent 1944 film adaptation Gaslight. In the story, a husband manipulates his wife into doubting her own sanity by making small changes to their environment (like dimming the gas lights) and insisting that she is imagining things. The term “gaslighting” began to be used metaphorically to describe psychological manipulation where a person makes someone question their reality. The word was mostly used academically until the 2010s when it started trending on social media. The word was further popularized when journalists confronted President Donald Trump with an obvious lie. Today, the word feels overused, but that is actually a victory for the victims of gaslighters. Because of the word’s popularity, even if it is overused, victims can more easily identify the behavior. Furthermore, social movements, such as #MeToo have given light to patterns of gaslighters. The power of having a word to define an experience gives the victim more power. And while people will continue to gaslight and fall for gaslighting, the chances of identifying the practice are raised with public awareness of the practice. Hopefully, in 2024, we’ll be better at telling those toxic maniacs goodbye.


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears, Sunday, September 1, 2024 (repost)

    I’ve talked about “Shout” and “Head over Heels,” but neither of those massive hits is the most remembered song from the post-punk band Tears for Fears. You’re unlikely to hear a track from their follow-up to Songs from the Big Chair in the grocery store, not the album’s title track that is subtly about ejaculation, “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” Nor would you hear the later Gary Jules–covered “Mad World” for the film Donnie Darko and featured on every nighttime drama from Tears for Fears’ first album. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is Tears for Fears’ biggest song, yet the lyrics seem to contradict the easy melody of the song, making it slightly misunderstood. 
     

    ONE HEADLINE, WHY BELIEVE IT?  The syncopated guitar riff, the airy keys, and the somewhat chill vocals of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” act as a siren song, distracting listeners from the truly sinister theme of the song. Lyrics that sound like they could have been lifted from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four wrap around the repeated title hook: “Everybody wants to rule the world.” But if you are my age or younger, the doomsday theme of the song failed to sink in as we were listening to the song while choosing a coffee in aisle 13. I loved maps and the globe when I was growing up, but in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the boundaries changed significantly. The Soviet Union was no more. Germany was reunited. Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo. Czechoslovakia split. Communism was crushed by American democracy and all was peaceful and right with the world. Until 9/11. But those ten years between the end of the Soviet Union and 9/11 gave my generation ten years of a childhood free of the fear of nuclear war–something my parents’ generation and grandparents’ generation lived with. Nuclear war seemed theoretical, but it seems that generations before me saw it as a real threat. 

    THERE’S A ROOM A ROOM WHERE THE LIGHT WON’T FIND YOU. But today, nuclear war seems more and more likely with Russia’s revived interest in getting the old gang back together. But perhaps this fear of nuclear war comes from more provocative world leaders playing to the voyeuristic urges of the public that views news as entertainment. Who hasn’t written about the antigens in the blood of democracy after shocking election outcomes in the mid-’10s? But the heart of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is just that everyone thinks that they could do a better job. Everybody thinks that they will be the leader who gets a different outcome. And today, in America and other countries, elected officials have shed the belief in self-governance by the people. Instead, there should be a list of rules to micromanage the public. Maybe you see this at work, too. If you have a work ethic and know your job fairly well–fully trained–you can find something to do and maybe do it well. A supervisor can share a vision, take feedback from well-trained constituents, and hold meetings to discuss the progress of the product. But sometimes, the supervisor has another agenda and would rather tell you exactly what to do, step by step. The product you are creating is being dictated to you and you are in no way part of that product, just a machine in its assembly. Which situation breeds better workers? The supervisor who holds the information uses it as a weapon against the workers. And that’s how you get a work environment where you say, “I could do her job, only better!” Indeed everybody wants to rule. 

     

  • “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.