Mixtapemotions

  • “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” by Taylor Swift (repost), Tuesday, August 6, 2024

    If “midnights become [Taylor Swift‘s] afternoons,” then the 3 a. m. edition of Swift’s latest album Midnights are the hours the singer starts winding down for the morning. Today’s song, “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” comes from the Aaron Dessner-produced fan edition of   Midnights, which tonally brings the singer back to her evermore era. In the promotion for Midnights, Taylor released a statement regarding the album’s concept. She wrote in an Instagram post: “Midnights, the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life, will be out October 21.”


    BUT, LORD, YOU MADE ME FEEL IMPORTANT.  Last year, Taylor Swift scheduled three nights in Nashville for this run of the Eras Tour. Playing in stadiums, Swift’s shows have had to be delayed or canceled due to weather; however, the last night of her Nashville show was delayed for four hours when a lightning storm hit the Nashville area, and a shelter-in-place warning was issued. Rather than canceling or shortening her set, Swift took to the stage at 10 p.m. and performed her epic 45-song set, though opening acts Gracie Abrams‘ and Phoebe Bridgers‘ sets were cut. The final Nashville show ended well after Midnight at 1:30 a.m. The reviews of the show applauded Swift for soldiering through the costume changes, choreography, and guitar-picking in the rain, which the singer refused to use as an excuse for lessening the production value of her live shows. One of the features that makes the Eras tour special is the fact that Swift plays songs from every album she has released, and every show contains a few songs she rarely plays in concert. Each show contains a few exclusive songs only performed at that show. One of the songs performed on the final night in Nashville called Aaron Dessner to the stage for a rock-style performance of “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve.”

    AND I’M DAMNED SURE NEVER WOULD’VE DANCED WITH THE DEVIL AT NINETEEN.
    The sleepless night that “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” takes Taylor Swift back to seems to be around 2010 when the 19-year-old star broke up with the much older singer-songwriter and guitarist John Mayer. Swift dealt with this break up on her third studio record, Speak Now, which not-so-coincidently Swift announced on Instagram  just before her mini-Nashville residency as the next in her series of “Taylor’s Version” releases. Meyer has been criticized for his relationship with the much younger singer. While Swift initially defended Meyer during the relationship, the song “Dear John” on Speak Now was pretty damning. “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” is a mature look back at a time when the singer thought she knew better than the critics, but now she sees that the relationship was an imbalance of power. And while John Mayer has never been explicitly named in Taylor’s work, fans wonder if there’s going to be more “red scarf” moments in her “From the Vault” bonus tracks when the album is released on July 6th. 


  • “Please, Please, Please” by Sabrina Carpenter, Monday, August 5, 2024

    If you listen to Spotify, you probably heard Sabrina Carpenter’s first Billboard Hot 100 number 1 hit, even if you weren’t seeking out pop music. Complaints flooded the Swedish-based streaming service about the song “Please, Please, Please” showing up in the middle of rock and hip-hop autoplay algorithms. Users on X shared their experiences about the seemingly random places the song showed up. The former Disney star has been recording music since 2015 but didn’t enjoy commercial viability until 2019 on Billboard’s Dance charts. The singer’s popularity continued to increase with the song “Skin” in 2021, her first entry on Billboard’s Hot 100. Last year besides a spot on a remix of FIFTY FIFTY’s “Cupid,” Carpenter scored a top-40 hit with the light pop track “Feather.”


    I KNOW I HAVE GOOD JUDGMENT. I KNOW I HAVE GOOD TASTE. Last year, Taylor Swift invited Sabrina Carpenter to open select dates on her Eras Tour. This undoubtedly boosted Carpenter’s popularity and played into a Swift trend that Taylor has been using throughout the Eras tour: elevate female artists but only those whose star power doesn’t threaten the main attraction. From the rumors that Swift has been repeatedly wielding her popularity as a weapon against other prominent artists to keep their albums below her spot atop Billboard’s 200 Album Chart with her own Tortured Poets Department, Swift’s Eras Tour roster included mostly indie pop acts. The release of the first single “Espresso” from her upcoming album Short n’ Sweet proved to be a major success. Critics perhaps overhyped the single, predicting it to be crowned “Song of the Summer,” a song that spans a considerable number of weeks at number one on Billboard’s Hot 100. The song peaked at number 3 and the much less Summer-y Post Malone/ Morgan Wallen track “I Had Some Help” is set to be the coveted, yet increasingly less relevant title given volatility in tracking music consumption. Carpenter’s second single “Please, Please, Please” did top the charts for one week, perhaps thanks to the boost in Spotify plays, but the song’s popularity hardly qualifies it for “Song of the Summer.”


    I BEG YOU DON’T EMBARRASS ME, MOTHERFUCKER. Spotify’s personnel had a point boosting “Please, Please, Please.” The Olivia Newton John-styled disco country sound of the track fits on many playlists and is kind of a genre chameleon. The Jack Antonoff production gives crossover appeal to the track. That’s not to say that it fits within a Reggaeton or Gangsta Rap playlist. The lyrics of the song are somewhat autobiographical. Carpenter is reportedly dating her music video costar Irish actor Barry Keoghan, who was once arrested for public intoxication in Dublin. In “Please, Please, Please” the speaker pleads with her lover not to embarrass her. It’s a song about not only doubting a partner but doubting oneself. Rather than saying “don’t prove ‘em right” about her boyfriend’s foibles, she says “don’t prove I’m right.” She’s so embarrassed by the partner’s antics that she even suggests not going out and being seen together. If the song is autobiographical, it’s an odd choice to have the subject in the music video. There’s a certain celebrated ditziness in Carpenter’s music that we haven’t heard much of since Kesha spelt her name with a $. Perhaps the song is a broader commentary on the status of big name female pop stars and their love interests who either slink into the corner at a party or leave the worst asshole impression. Whatever the truth is, I hope that none of my readers, or Carpenter for that matter, will sing this song a wedding. 



    Read the lyrics on Genius.


     

  • “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” by Shania Twain, Sunday, August 4, 2024

    Shania Twain’s third album Come On Over holds a Guinness World Record for the biggest-selling studio album by a solo female artist with over 40 million copies sold. Unless physical media makes a massive comeback, even Taylor Swift will probably not beat that record. With a staggering 12 singles released from the record to country and pop radio, the album has been inescapable since its release in  1997. Twain’s first album failed to chart a top 40 country single but caught the attention of legendary hard rock producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange who helped to popularize AC/DC and introduced the world to the imperial period of Def Leppard. Lange produced Twain’s second album The Woman in Me which was a huge success on Country radio with 4 number 1- singles. The album pales in comparison to Come on Over with 3 singles reaching number 1 on the country charts and 3 singles reaching the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100. 


    LET’S GO GIRLS! Crediting Mutt Lange to Shania Twain’s massive success has unfortunately been much of mansplained music commentary on the topic. Twain’s success certainly needed an extra push from a famous producer to bring her music to the masses, but at the core were ideas Shania brought through her own experience as a songwriter. InTwain was born Eilleen Regina Edwards in Ontario, Canada where she grew up. Her parents divorced when she was two and her mother remarried Jerry Twain, who adopted Shania and changed her surname. The family was poor. At eight, Shania began singing in bars between midnight and 1 a.m. for customers finishing their drinks after the bar stopped serving. The $20 she earned each night she gave to her family to pay the bills. While she hated playing for drunk patrons, this was the start of her musical career. She began singing with a local band Longshot until she graduated from high school in 1982 and the band dissolved. She then joined a cover band and toured Ontario. In 1987, Shania’s mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident. She moved back to her parents’ house to take care of her younger siblings and began singing at a nearby resort. 

    MEN’S SHIRTS, SHORT SKIRTS. While working as a singer at Deerheart Resort in Ontario as she was taking care of her siblings, Shania Twain was inspired by a drag performance. Years later, Mutt Lange played a riff on his guitar which Twain added a line that she coined at the drag performance, “Man! I feel like a woman!” While other tracks on Come on Over charted higher than today’s song, the iconic pro-feminist anthem with its iconic inverted Robert Palmer-inspired music video is probably Twain’s best-remembered track. It’s the ‘90s version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” but with some implied gender-bending. Perhaps the song has always been controversial with a conservative country-music audience for its pro-feminist themes. Twain’s song doesn’t feel like an inauthentic political stance but a celebration of who she is. Twain still makes music today. Her fame began to wane after Come on Over, though the follow-up still produced hits and sold well. After several hiatuses due to vocal trouble in the ‘00s and ‘10s, Twain has released albums with the latest, Queen of Me, being released last year. Today “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” celebrates self-acceptance.

     

  • “The Architect” by Kacey Musgraves, Saturday, August 3, 2024

    Deeper Well is an anthesis to the career trajectory Kacey Musgraves should be on if it follows the progression of her former two albums, Golden Hour and star-crossed. Her latest album is beautiful, dedicated to the path the singer is currently on, which is quite different from her former record. Unlike the previous album, Musgraves opts for stripped-back production and acoustic instrumentation. A hint of her Golden, Texas twang only barely qualifies the singer to remain in the Country genre, rather than moving fully into Folk. On a first listen, the album lacks the hooks of her prior albums, but on a deeper listen, the lyrics fill in what seemed like a musical void. When the listener is reconditioned to the new Musgraves sound, the album takes on its own logic and we realize it’s the same Kacey we’ve come to love, even if there are some fundamental differences. 


    COULD I PRAY IT AWAY? AM I SHAPABLE CLAY? With her more liberal views than her genre of Country music particularly on gender and LGBTQ+ inclusion, Kacey Musgraves’s radio singles often fail to gain Country radio airplay, except her duet with Zach Bryan, last year’s “I Remember Everything,” which is Musgraves’s only number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Kacey doesn’t disappoint fans by aligning with the Bible Belt values on Deeper Well. Songs that deal with non/extra-Biblical spiritualism and astrology pepper the lyrics on the album. It seems that Musgraves is the most confident on Deeper Well in her spiritual experimentation. There is one key difference in Kacey’s path she talks about in the title track, “Deeper Well.” The singer talks about giving up marijuana, the drug she had been outspoken about throughout her career, even famously smoking with country legend and fellow marijuana advocate Willie Nelson. She told People magazine that she’s moved on to psilocybin, which is a “spiritual” drug for her, but as for marijuana she says in “Deeper Well”: “So I’m gettin’ rid of the habits that I feel are real good at wastin’ my time.”

     

    IS THERE AN ARCHITECT? Kacey Musgraves in a (more) sober state tackles several topics on Deeper Well from death and heaven on “Dinner with Friends” to the healing force she feels from the earth and its minerals on “Green Jade” to the death of a friend possibly sending signals from the grave on “Cardinal.” In today’s song, “The Architect,” Kacey ponders the existence of God. The song starts with the wonder of simple wonders of the world, “Even something as small as an apple / It’s simple and somehow complex /Sweet and divine, the perfect design.” She then asks if she can “speak with the architect.” She wonders if the marvelous Grand Canyon got “there because of a flood?” The second verse looks at the speaker of the song. She wonders what is wrong with her, asking “Could I pray it away? Am I shapable clay?” The speaker is asking two fundamental questions, the first of which is asked by the LGBTQ+ community. The speaker is asking if she could pray away her faults or the shortcomings prescribed by a religious order. In the second question, she is asking if it is possible to be malleable to a higher power’s will. The chorus ends the song after a third verse in which the speaker reveals: “I was in a weird place, then I saw the right face / And the stars and the planets lined up.” Musgraves is entering into a discussion of epistemology and by asking about “an architect,” she is harkening back to pre-Second Great Revival times when notions of God were less personal and more theoretical. Musgraves’ song leaves the listeners with an agnostic to mystical answer, unlike the evangelical reactionaries to the Deists of the early 19th century. But a wistful ballad questioning the presence of a creator cannot control followers. There’s no risk of hellfire and no common enemy. That’s why the counter-argument: “I know there’s an architect, and he told me that I’m living wrong and so are you” is so popular today. It’s about controlling others rather than contemplative practices. 


     

  • “Do It Like That” by Tomorrow x Together & Jonas Brothers, Thursday, August 2, 2024

    It seems like after BTS topped Billboard’s Hot 100 with their solo tracks and their features, K-pop has become an unstoppable force in America and Europe. Of course, BTS didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. With over three decades in the making, Korean idol pop music has slowly made strides first in Asia and then to Western audiences. One of the ways that K-pop was able to take hold in America was through collaborations with American recording artists. Singer BoA collaborated with English boyband Westlife in 2003 on the song “Flying Without Wings.” Artists such as Omarion, Lil’ Kim, Snoop Dogg, and Missy Elliott were just a few examples of Western artists collaborating with K-pop idols in the ‘00s and ‘10s. When a Western artist collabor-ated with a Korean artist, the massive K-pop fanbase fell in love with the non-Korean artist, but only a few of the Western artist’s fans became a fan of the Korean artist due to limited marketing outside of Korea.


    MAKIN’ EVERYONE JEALOUS LIKE SEVENTEEN. Something changed in the late ‘10s. Many K-pop collaborations of the past were with artists who had passed the peak of their careers, making K-pop collaborations commercially unsuccessful in their home countries. K-pop idols started collaborating with up-and-coming pop stars. While critically panned, Psy’s 2014 collaboration with Snoop Dogg, “Hangover,” may have reset the popularity of K-pop collaborations. Indie pop singers like Troye Sivan and Lauv, DJs like Steve Akoi and R3HAB, and established musicians like John Legend, Lady Gaga, and Jason Derulo began to collaborate with K-pop stars, boosting K-pop’s momentum in the West. In 2018, BTS featured Nicki Minaj on a version of their song “IDOL,” which peaked at number 11 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Little by little, it was no longer K-pop begging for Western attention, being featured on a K-pop song became a status symbol for Western pop musicians. It’s becoming increasingly harder to find a pop star who hasn’t worked with a K-pop idol group–Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Eminem, and Adele come to mind, though it wouldn’t be surprising to see a K-pop collaboration from any of these artists or to see them as the lone abstainers from the trend.  


    GOT PEOPLE DANCIN’ ON TOP OF THEIR CARS. Last year was the year of Tomorrow x Together (TxT) in many ways. The Hybe Group in many ways filled the void their big brother group BTS left when they went on hiatus to fulfill their military service. As a stop on their second world tour, the band was invited to headline Lollapalooza, the first time a K-pop album ever headlined one of America’s biggest concerts. They also released their third LP, The Name Chapter: Freefall. Before releasing the album, the group released the single “Do It Like That” featuring Jonas Brothers and produced by OneRepublic’s frontman Ryan Tedder. This wasn’t Tedder’s first encounter with K-pop as he had composed songs for JYP’s girl groups Twice and BLACKPINK. Tedder also had recorded the Jonas Brothers’ comeback single, “Sucker.” “Do It Like That” was released last July and was a big digital single. It didn’t impact Billboard’s Hot 100, but the song represents two groups enjoying the peak of their success. For TXT, it’s commercial success and for the Jonas Brothers, the song feels like a celebration that the boyband can do whatever they want–yacht rock to K-pop.


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

     

  • “Waffle House” by Jonas Brothers, Thursday, August 1, 2024 (repost)

    Let’s revisit last month’s discussion  about The Album, the latest record from Jonas Brothers. Referring back to the interview with Charlie Harding on the podcast Switched on Pop, Nick Jonas explained that the brothers wanted to put “something together that sounded like what coming to one of our shows is like.” Achieving this sound has the band leaning into the past rather than electronic elements or studio sound effects. 

    IT’S GON’ GET FIGURED OUT. Charlie Harding referred to the Jonas Brothers’ The Album’s sound as “album-oriented, band-driven music,” which refers to the music of the ‘60s- ‘80s when many listeners preferred listening to albums over singles. My guess is that the experience of a Jonas Brothers show in the late ‘00s probably wouldn’t be focused on the musicality of the band, but rather the euphoric dopamine rush (for a certain demographic) of seeing the brothers performing. However, with only Kevin strumming a guitar in the band’s recent videos, the “band sound” of a live Jonas experience—in 2008 or 2023–requires many touring musicians who are not Kevin, Joe, or Nick. There seems to be something about fidelity to music that can be played live rather than sample-based music at the core of who Kevin, Joe, and Nick are as musicians, at least for their Jonas Brothers projects, which could literally sound like anything made in a studio. They could have produced an entire album with DJs like Marshmello, and probably fans may not have noticed the difference.

    YOU KNOW IT’S ONLY LOVE. In 2020, the Jonas Brothers performed in the Netflix holiday series Dash & Lily. The band performed some of their new songs after breaking their hiatus in 2019. And while the performance was filmed for a drama, I realized that the demographic of a Jonas Brothers’ show now looked very different. The brothers weren’t just performing for tween girls anymore. It was still pretty clean-cut, but it was pretty much for everyone. Last April, the Jonas Brothers performed on Saturday Night Live, performing the closing track of The Album, “Walls” with their producer Jon Bellion and a special appearance by Gospel artist Kirk Franklin. The band also performed their bombastic single “Waffle House,” a song that lyrically digs into the brothers’ family structure as they were growing up with their parents managing their musical success. From both performances, the band’s music utilized a small choir. The band released the single a day prior to their SNL performance, and just as Nick said in the Switched on Pop interview, the sound of both the single and the live performance is quite similar. But what sells “Waffle House” is the nostalgia for a time when millennials were old enough to drive but not old enough to drink, legally. It is the feeling of wanting to be older and following your dreams, but looking back on that time and realizing that those “late-night conversations” were the dream. And with any Waffle House, there’s always the threat of danger. It’s the place where meth-heads mentally unstable people and racist idiots with guns might show up. But that’s a rare occasion, and when you see the warm glow of the yellow lights, you tend to forget about that incident you saw on the news in another city six months ago. So, pour another cup of coffee; order your hash browns smothered, covered, topped, diced, or however; and slab on some butter and fake maple syrup because this night is gonna get interesting.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Lyric video:

    Music video:

    SNL performance:

    Unrelated sketch from earlier this season on SNL: 






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

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


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

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

     

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

     

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


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

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




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

      

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

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

    Lyric Video:


    Saturday Night Live Performance:

    Chill version:

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

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


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



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

    Read the English translation on Genius.

    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.