Mixtapemotions

  • “Miracle” by Jonas Brothers, Saturday, July 27, 2024 (repost)

     I was talking with my Gen X coworker last year about music, and somehow Jonas Brothers came up. He asked me, as a defender of pop, if the band of brothers had ever made a good album. I thought about the question. Of course, I can’t consider the teeny-bopper music from the band’s early days. But I could say that Nick Jonas’ latest record Spaceman was a masterfully produced album by Greg Kurstin blending ‘80s and ‘90s R&B with contemporary electronic pop. I thought that the DNCE record was fun. I thought that “Sucker” was a great Ryan Tedder production and showed potential for where the Jonas Brothers could go, although Happiness Begins was a bit of a disappointment. But no, I couldn’t say that I liked any Jonas Brothers album.


    ROCK FOR ME TO STAND ON. But that all changed when Jonas Brothers released The Album last May. But being able to call this album great comes with years of breaking down some of my musical biases and hang-ups. The first is a discussion about when does a bubble gum act get the right to grow up? Nowadays many music critics will tell you that every song The Beatles ever put out is miles above any other act, but I wonder if that’s because we have Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and what came after it? In the ‘00s “teeny boppers” had to do something drastically sexual to distance themselves from their innocent pasts and earn critical success. When teen heartthrob Justin Timberlake promised to “have you naked by the end of this song” or Britney Spears went full-blown “Toxic” critics started giving those acts more respect. It was a string of two singles that changed my opinion on Justin Bieber: “Sorry” and “Love Yourself”  before the singer’s Hillsong douchebaggary came to light. Miley Cyrus rode the wrecking ball and Harry Styles walked the Fine Line somewhat distancing themselves from their respective Disney and boy band careers. The redemptive arc of Jonas Brothers would be Nick and Joe’s solo efforts. But the second caveat has to deal with the musical trend of embracing what is—no—what was the opposite of cool: soft rock, more specifically the sounds of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s nicknamed in the early days of  “Yacht Rock.”

    WINTER WITH THE A.C. The latest offering from Jonas Brothers opens with the smooth-to-bombastic “Miracle.” On a recent episode of the podcast Switched on Pop, Charlie Harding talks with Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas about the musical influences that made them decide to make music together once again. Nick told Charlie, “[The Album] was about putting something together that sounded like what coming to one of our shows is like. We’re a band, and it’s band music.” The implications of this question my ‘00s understanding of what a band is, though. If I turned on MTV and saw blink-182 running around naked, I knew that their live shows, each member of the three-piece were playing instruments. But most small bands hire back up musicians who aren’t permanent members. So are Jonas Brothers a band? One topic the brothers talked about in the Switched on Pop interview is other musicians diminishing Jonas Brothers’ musicianship. Rather than focusing on what is not music, the brothers refocused the conversation on their musical influences that went into The Album. They fondly recalled the records they listened to with their dad—Bee Gees, America, Paul McCartney, and Stevie Wonder—and hearing that makes a lot of sense in the context of The Album. And today’s song seriously takes some Stevie Wonder influence. The smooth sounds of the latest Jonas Brothers album arrived just in time for a scorching hot summer. And even if we’re going to feel awkward about this release in ten years, in the summer of ‘23 the once uncool is now seriously cool.


  • “I! Only! Wanna! Live! Forever!” by Fleurie, Friday, July 26, 2024 (repost)

     Fleurie is just shy of 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s majority of listeners, though, come from outside the United States from India, Turkey, Brazil, and Germany to be precise. Two years ago I talked about her cover of Sufjan Steven‘s   “To Be Alone with You,” which appears in the Looking for Alaska mini-series. While Fleurie has released many covers including a haunting version Linkin Park‘s “In the End” and Gary Jules‘ arrangement of Tears for Fears‘ “Mad World,” the singer also writes original songs and released her fourth LP earlier this year titled Supertropicali. 

    CALIFORNIA GIRLS DON’T LOOK LIKE ME. How to describe Fleurie’s latest album, Supertropicali? Fleurie describes it on her Spotify page as “a world, an era, a story unfolding, all stitched together in ’90s nostalgia, romance, youthful hope, and belonging.” Taking inspiration from Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, and Marie Antoinette, Supertropicali transplants a Michigan girl via Nashville into Los Angeles. Listeners who have followed Fleurie before this album will probably notice the difference in tone, noting how upbeat this record is. Still taking elements of sad-girl, hip hop, and occasional trap lyricism (note the chorus on today’s song “I! Only! Wanna! Live! Forever!) make Supertropicali a smooth summertime listen. The rhythmic nature of the songs perhaps can be at least partially credited to co-writer and producer JT Daly, formerly of the band Paper Route. Recall that he was instrumental in changing Pvris‘ new sound.  Listening to Supertropicali and Prvis’ Use Me and the singles from the upcoming album with JT Daly collaborations there are certainly sonic parallels to be found in these recordings, namely in electronics and rhythms. 

    SURF ROCK, I LOVE YOU WITH A FIRE. While there are sonic similarities between Fleurie and Pvris, there is certainly a difference between the artists. Whereas Pvris has moved from alternative to dark pop, Fluerie has moved from singer-songwriter to indie pop. The dark, atheistic and sometimes witchy lyrics of Lyndsey Gunnulfsen are very different from the clean-cut former CCM singer Lauren Strahm. But while Strahm’s lyrics are very clean, I’d bet money that Supertropicali was influenced by tracks on Lana Del Rey‘s Born to Die. In fact, the lyrics of tracks like “Millennial  Angel” and “I! Only! Wanna! Live! Forever!” are all about the California dreams and not about the dark realities or the bad boys that color and sometimes poison Del Rey’s songs. Lana may have offered us “Diet Mt. Dew,” but Fleurie feels like Diet Lana Del Rey, and honestly sometimes we need that diet. Like Del Rey, there’s a touch of the dramatic in Fleurie’s aesthetic, though rather than a girl who gets kicked out of private school for drinking in the dorm room, Fleurie maintains a kind of grown-up church girl aesthetic. The video for today’s song has a melodramatic monologue about a “dark winter of the soul” before Fleurie begins singing the song. There’s a little cringe in it, but that melodrama is part of the nostalgia. Maybe the two albums serve as a kind of
    Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. You may have a preference, but in Fleurie’s defense, it’s     comforting to think about the world in terms of how we saw it when we were young: full of potential. 



     

  • “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God) by Kate Bush, Thursday, July 25, 2024 (repost)

     At this point, you probably know a little about the story of how a song from 1985 became a number 1 hit in 2022 thanks to being featured in a key scene in the Netflix series Stranger Things. When one of the biggest shows on Netflix returned in May after nearly a three-year hiatus, a key scene featured the opening track to Kate Bush‘s fifth record Hounds of Love, “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). The song never topped the charts during its original promotion, peaking at number 3 in the UK in 1985, and was even banned in some European countries for mentioning God in the song. Today, you’ll hear countless covers of the song and hear it in TikTok and Instagram videos constantly.


    UNAWARE I’M TEARING YOU ASUNDER. Kate Bush is a name I should have been more aware of given how influential the singer-songwriter is on modern electronic dance music and modern pop. I think I first came across her name as influence when reading the music section of Attitude several years ago. Many British and LGBTQ+ musicians cite Bush as an influence. Debuting in 1978 with her first record The Kick Inside and her number 1 British singles hit “Wuthering Heights,” Bush was the first female musician to top the chart with a song of which the singer held sole writing credits. The singer’s path to fame, though, started when the young singer-songwriter met Pink Floyd‘s guitarist David Gilmour through a mutual friend. Gilmour produced Bush’s demo tape that helped her sign her first record deal. The two musicians became friends and even performed together 11 years after her debut at The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987 (see video below). In 2002, Bush sang with Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” at London’s Royal Festival Hall. But Kate Bush throughout her career didn’t care much for performing and preferred recording and producing her own music, only playing her hits a few times. There was recently a video published speculating how much money Bush is making from the renewed popularity of today’s song “Running Up That Hill,” and with Bush being the only songwriter on the track, the money looks good. Not bad for a musician who dropped out of sixth-form.

    LET’S EXCHANGE THE EXPERIENCE.  Like my aversion to New Order when I first heard them, I had a little bit of a hard time with Kate Bush when I first heard “Running Up That Hill” (A Deal with God). But my issue with this song (and Kate Bush for that matter) is different. When I first listened to New Order, it was the old synthesizers that made me feel awkward.  The synthesizer on “Running Up That Hill” reminds me of that Yamaha keyboard in the garage that I talked about when I first talked about New Order. The synths on “Running Up That Hill” sound like something I would have played on the keyboard when I was 10, but that’s not my issue as I’ve learned to embrace that old sound. Kate Bush’s voice still needs to grow on my. I’ll admit it’s beautifully wispy, and on today’s song it so interestingly glides between the verse and the chorus. The transition between the verse and the chorus are so abrupt unlike anything I’ve ever heard before and if you close your eyes, you can almost picture Bush’s voice flying above the synth and bass, feet touching down for just a moment when her voice goes “Running up that” back up into the air for “hill.” I really want to fall in love with her other songs, but I think it’s going to take some ear adjustment. But that’s the fun thing about music: you don’t get it at once. It has to grow on you. 


    Music video:
    Cover by Placebo:
    Rick Beato talks about “Running Up That Hill”
    Live Performance by Bush and David Gilmour (1987):


  • “Shivers” by Ed Sheeran (repost), Wednesday, July 24, 2024 (repost)

    Opening with a the late ’90s pop-rock-sounding “Tides,” Ed Sheeran‘s fourth record = seems to change genres with every track. Back in October of 2021, I asked the question about whether or not Ed Sheeran could successfully integrate all the musical styles he’s done in the past and make a cohesive album that would appeal both broadly to all music fans and more specifically to die-hard fans. What I found today was that most of the songs individually are good. But as an album the songs don’t play together save for the common themes of falling in love with his wife Cherry, the death of family members, isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, recovery from addiction, and the birth of his daughter Lyra.  


    I WANNA DRINK THAT SMILE. The eclectic mix of singles Sheeran released before the album dropped–“Bad Habits” and “Shivers” sounding similar to ÷‘s singles and “Visiting Hours” recalling the more sentimental moods of X (see my post on “Photograph”)-– along with the post-release radio singles “Overpass Graffiti” and the remix of “The Joker and the Queen,” a duet with Taylor Swift, are starting to seem more like a musical flex for Sheeran. Yes, we get it, Ed, you can do anything musically that you want to. Of course, the musical community questions whether it’s pure talent or whether it’s money or famous friends that creates the Ed Sheeran albums of today. Earlier this week, I had a conversation about Sheeran at work. My coworker, about 15 years older than me, said that he finds Ed Sheeran “derivative and boring” and then asked if there were any songs of Ed’s that I liked. I told him that Sheeran had lots of much better songs than “Shape of You,” such as “Photograph,” “Castle on the Hill,” and songs from =. My coworker only knew “Shape of You.” That conversation made me think about Sheeran’s music post-“Shape.” I think that I really like “Shivers” and “Bad Habits,” but I wonder if I would like them if I heard them every time I went past a phone store and heard them blaring? And to be fair, because of the pandemic, I’ve gone to town only a handful of times, so I have no idea what the phone stores are blaring now. Do I like the two new Ed Sheeran dance tracks because they aren’t “Shape of You”?

    YOU WANNA DANCE ‘TILL THE SUNLIGHT CRACKS. When I first heard “Shivers” on AppleMusic’s autoplay after listening to Jax Jones‘s Snacks record back in early October of last year, I immediately thought, “Ed just wrote a tango.” The pizzicato strings, the 1-2 beat lends itself to living room dancing. However, apparently Sheeran claims he didn’t realize that the song was a tango until he saw EastEnders star Rose Ayling-Ellis and Giovanni Pernice choreograph a tango for a Halloween-themed episode of Strictly Come Dancing 2021, the British version of Dancing with the Stars. The dance clip from the British television show went viral, continuing to boost Sheeran’s second single around the world. Nothing is subtle about “Shivers.” The music video features big-budget effects rarely seen these days outside of K-pop (check out the version with Sunmi and Jessi). Sheeran channels action heroes, boy band members, and yes, Elton John in the ridiculous situations in the music video. Lyrically, the song examines the early stages of love, the magnetism two people with chemistry feel when they can’t get enough of each other. Feeling that spark when you like someone and they like you back, waiting for them to text you back, the early stages when everything is a production–that’s what this song is all about. The question is if we’re going to hear anymore of these adolescent songs from Sheeran, or are we just going to have Nick Jonas Spaceman-style records from here on out?

    Official Lyric Video:

  • “Una Noche sin Pensar” by Sebastián Yatras, Tuesday, July 23, 2024

     

    Sebastián Yatra was born in Columbia and raised in Miami, Florida, before returning to Columbia to begin his musical career. From an early age, Sebastián took an interest in music, learning piano, guitar, and voice. At the age of 12, he saw fellow Colombian singer Juanes in concert. That year, Yatra also starred in the lead role of Troy Bolton in his school’s production of High School Musical. At the age of 20, Yatra dropped out of college and returned to Columbia to pursue music. Today, Yatra is a very popular singer worldwide. All of his solo work is in Spanish. He is a voracious collaborator, teaming up with other musicians in the Latin pop world, singing a Spanish verse with an English—or in the case of Monsta X, in Korean—, or occasionally, an English verse. His discography varies from reggaeton to rock and many other genre experimentations.

    IT SEEMS THAT YOU STILL LOVE ME. Many of Sebastián Yatra’s songs are ballads, a tradition in Latin music that has fallen out of favor with many contemporary artists. The song structure of the ballad remains a popular mode in pop, rock, country, and many other genres around the world, and Yatra has voiced a commitment to innovating the sound in Latin pop. He told Vibe magazine in 2018: 

    I think younger artists are scared. There’s been an error in associating ballads with boring and slow and old. A lot of the time, artists who’ve sang ballads early in their careers have gone urban or gone into reggaeton and that’s awesome, it’s importantisimo, do all these types of music and genres and progress musically. 


    Today’s song, “Una Noche sin Pensar,” is a kind of uptempo ballad. The rhythm of the song partially distracts from the pensive lyrics in Spanish. Listeners who don’t speak or have a limited understanding of Spanish may think that the song is not a break-up song. 

    YOU CAN BLOCK ME, YOU CAN HATE ME, OR YOU CAN LOOK FOR MY KISSES IN SOMEONE ELSE. The song “Una Noche sin Pensar” is ultimately a song about fostering one’s own delusions. Many happy-sad songs do this. For example, Miley Cyrus’ “Rose Colored Lenses” paints a scene of a sexy trip to the beach. “Una Noche sin Pensar” doesn’t build up the memories of the past relationship in quite that way. Instead, it’s more like Paramore’s “Rose-colored Boy” in that it talks about the issues as they are real. But the song imagines a scene in which the ex-lovers “forgive each other naked in the sea.” Cyrus pleads for the lovers to “stay like this forever” as they “play pretend wearing rose colored lenses.” In today’s song, there are no rose-colored glasses bathing the world in an artificial hue, but there seems to be alcohol and sorrow. Whether or not the speaker’s love really wants him back or if that is part of the delusion, we may never know. But we all need a few nights of not overthinking everything. So cheers to that!




    Read the English translation on Genius.


    Read the lyrics on Genius


  • "Last Hope" by Paramore, Monday, July 22, 2024 (repost)

    Fleetwood Mac might be the most turbulent rock band in terms of member changes, feuds, and internal relationships going awry because of infidelity. The conflict, lawyers, and affidavits surrounding   Paramore feel akin to the ‘70s rock band. In his series Deep Discog Dives, YouTuber Nick Canovas summarized the controversies surrounding Paramore. Perhaps the biggest rift in the band is between former lead guitarist Josh Farro and lead singer Haley Williams. After the band’s third record, Brand New Eyes, Farro publicly expressed his opposition to the lyrical direction Williams was taking the band.

    I DON’T EVEN KNOW MYSELF AT ALL. Like many bands in the pop-punk scene in the ‘00s, Paramore began their career with ties to the Christian Rock scene. Most of the bandmates grew up Christian, and it seemed natural to integrate their beliefs into the band’s lyrics. But by the band’s breakthrough record, their sophomore Riot!, the lyrics shifted away from Christian themes. The band justified the lyrics on their biggest hit, prior to “Ain’t It Fun,” “Misery Business”: “God, doesn’t it feel so good” on top of an already risqué track about early adult sexuality with hints of sexism. With the success of “Misery Business” came a furor with Christian audiences. Christian audiences appreciated the publicity Paramore gave other Christian bands. The band brought Christian bands on tour with them. Williams contributed vocals to Christian Rock bands like The Chariot and mewithoutYou. But the lyric on Brand New Eyes, “The truth never set me free” in the song “Ignorance” caused guitarist Josh Farro and his brother, drummer Zac Farro to quit the band, though Zac eventually rejoined. Upon quitting Paramore, Josh posted a blog post stating of Paramore’s members: “We fought her about how [Hayley’s] lyrics misrepresented our band and what we stood for, but in the end, she got her way.” He also proliferated the rumor that Williams’ direction was due to manipulation by the band’s manager and the label.

    GOTTA LET IT HAPPEN. The “salt in the wound” from losing the band’s guitarist has been the subject of many Paramore songs. “Last Hope” is probably partly about Josh, but also about keeping faith when everything seems so transitory. In 2010, Williams wrote in the band’s live journal about what keeps her grounded. She writes
            [S]ometimes you get run down. sometimes life throws dirt in your eyes and it stings
            and you can’t see for a few minutes. even after you get it out your eyes are all red and
            your vision is shitty… but eventually, whether through tears or maybe just time…  you
            start to see even clearer than before. life is not always good. which is why music exists.
            why [I] believe God exists. and why there’s always a pint of coconut milk ice cream in
            my freezer. 
    It’s nearly impossible to agree on a vision. And with Williams and Paramore’s current guitarist Taylor York starting a relationship, it’s hard to say that the next Paramore episode will be drama-free. “Last Hope” reminds us to keep an eye out for any spark of hope when it feels like we’ve lost our way. In the end, it will be okay.


    Live performance:

    Official Audio:











     

  • “Cut to the Feeling” by Carly Rae Jepsen, Sunday, July 21, 2024

    Carly Rae Jepsen became an overnight success with “Call Me Maybe.” Nobody expected the juvenile Kiss to be followed up by E-MO-TION, a pop album praised by critics and fans alike. The standard edition of E-MO-TION has twelve songs, but there were many other songs on deluxe editions of the album. Jepsen wrote over 250 songs in three years while working on E-MO-TION. She released eight extra songs Emotion Side B a year after releasing her third album. In Japan, Jepsen released Emotion Side B+, including “Cut to the Feeling,” a song she gave to the American version of a French/ Canadian film called Ballerina (Leap! in the United States) Jepsen also starred as one of the main voice actors in the film. The anthemic one-off single bridged Carly’s 2015 critical darling with her more experimental 2019 album, Dedicated. 


    I HAD A DREAM, OR WAS IT REAL? Carly Rae Jepsen’s last Billboard Hot 100 entry was the lead single from E-MO-TION, “I Really Like You.” Competition for the chart positions was fierce in an oversaturated market. Manager Scooter Braun pushed Jepsen to include the hook-filled (but often memeified at the time) “I Really Like You” on E-MO-TION; however, no other single from the album charted, despite the album’s stellar reviews and cult following. Jepsen took control of her own career which didn’t translate to the massive success of her breakthrough hit in the streaming era; however, despite not being a mega superstar, Jepsen became one of the biggest indie pop stars, a sort of B-list of pop stars who may not have the commercial recognition but who are fervently supported by their fans. And Jepsen’s fans are quite diverse, spanning from pop lovers to hipsters to the LGBTQ+ community. In any other era of pop music, “Cut to the Feeling” would have had at least a top 40 hit. Jepsen cut the song from her third album because it sounded “too cinematic and theatrical.” I wonder what the song would have done as a proper single on E-MO-TION, but Jepsen’s fidelity to her musical vision has made her the outstanding artist that she is. 

    NO MORE IN-BETWEEN, NOW GIVE YOUR EVERYTHING TO ME. In December 2016, Ballerina was released in France and the U.K. The French-language film was released in Quebec in February and the rest of Canada in March of 2017. The Weinstein Company acquired the rights to distribute the film in America. The company edited the film and rewrote the script in English, casting Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, and Carly Rae Jepsen in the main roles, and Mel Brooks and Kate McKinnon also voicing roles in the film. The French version of the film was praised by critics for its animation and storytelling, but the American version was mostly panned because the story failed to stick out among many other all-ages animated films. Leap! was an example of Hollywood ruining films just because Americans are too lazy to read subtitles or learn a second language, or in the case of the American IT Crowd, listen to non-American accents. The film did feature three original songs including Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Cut to the Feeling.” Two of the songs Sia’s “Suitcase” and another song Jepsen contributed to the film “Runaways” are not available on Spotify or Apple Music, but can be found on YouTube. “Cut to the Feeling” is a celebratory song and a staple in Jepsen’s catalog. She still performs it with an inflatable sword, which many fans also wield during the performance. The song is bigger than the animated film in which Jepsen voice-acted and released the song. But thanks to Leap! we got one more of the 250+ songs from E-MO-TION’s writing sessions. 


     Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “I Love You Always Forever” by Donna Lewis, Saturday, July 20, 2024 (repost)

    In 1996, Welsh singer-songwriter   Donna Lewis released her debut single “I Love You Always Forever.” The understated, delicate pop song became an international hit. In the United States, it hit number 2 on the   Billboard Hot 100, unable to take the top spot because of multiple versions that counted as Los Del Rio‘s version of  “Macarena,” the dance track that plagued ’96. Lewis never matched the success of her debut single.


    SECRET MOMENTS SHUT IN THE HEAT OF THE AFTERNOON. Donna Lewis wrote the song “I Love You Always Forever” basing it on a 1953 novel, Love for Lydia by Herbert Ernest Bates. The lines from the chorus “I love you always forever, near and far closer together” appear in the novel, and Lewis’ original title for the song was “Lydia.” While Lewis had a few other minor hits, such as “At the Beginning,” a duet with Richard Marx on the 1997 song for the Anastasia original soundtrack, “I Love You Always Forever” is the singer’s signature song.  The lush imagery in “I Love You Forever and Always” transports the listener to a “cloud of heavenly scent,” to a “windless summer night” to “the heat of the afternoon” or simply to look into “the most unbelievable eyes [you’ve] ever seen.” The success of the sentimental ballad shows that music despite whatever musical trends do, soft rock ballads with sappy lyrics can always pierce through the hipster trends. And because of musical trends, “I Love You Always Forever” has been covered several times in recent years. Today, I’ll talk about two covers from artists I have written about several times: Mike Mains and the Branches and Betty Who.

    YOU’VE GOT THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE BLUE EYES I’VE EVER SEEN. Mike Mains & the Branches released their cover last year and is their most recent single. After an emotionally taxing record, When We Were in Love in 2019, “I Love You Always Forever” is a nice check-in with the couple whose marriage was tested by events mentioned in the record. Betty Who’s version was released as a single between her debut record, Take Me When You Go, and her sophomore record, The Valley. The single was so successful, though, that Who decided to promote the song as the lead single from The Valley and include it as the fourteenth track of the record. Who’s version topped Australia’s airplay chart, reached the Top 4o in New Zealand, and topped Billboard‘s US Dance Club Songs. Who told Spin about why she chose to record the song. She said, “It’s one of those songs that you don’t know, and when you hear it you go, ‘Ah I know this song.’” She went on to say in Vogue that she remembers the song being “everywhere” when she was 5 years old in ’96.  Mike Mains’ version adds masculinity to the track, but Who’s version adds sensuality absent from the other two versions. The harmonized a cappella starts with soft, yet sharp vocals piercing the song combined with the music video in which Who is part of a throuple adds a bit of naughty with the nostalgia. Not there’s anything wrong with that. However, if you prefer to spend your always and forever, with Lewis, Mains, or Who, you’re bound to have this song stuck in your head and only pleasant thoughts of summer afternoons flooding your thoughts.

    Donna Lewis version:

    Betty Who version:



    Dance version from To All the Boys I Loved: 
    Mike Mains & Branches version: 



     

    Read “I Love You Always Forever” by Donna Lewis on Genius 

  • “True Faith” by New Order, Friday, July 19, 2024 (repost)

     

    I thought I’d share a repost today, a dusty memory about New Order, more specifically a keyboard from the ’90s that listening to New Order today makes me think about. Buried under twenty years of dust in my parents’ garage lies an old Yamaha keyboard. It was my dad’s Christmas present to my mom in the mid-90s. This model came with 100 recorded instruments, 100 styles of drum beats, everything from foxtrot to metal, and 25 or so recorded songs. It was a pretty typical family keyboard, but it kept me entertained for years. Although I started playing guitar at the age of 12, I had spent a long time messing around on that keyboard trying to make music. I loved playing the keyboard but hated how fake the instruments sounded. Strings, brass, woodwinds–all sounded like the vegetarian version served at camp meetings. Still, that keyboard played such a crucial role in music in my life.   


    WHEN I WAS A VERY SMALL BOY. I got my first taste of synthesizers from my keyboard. I learned about the Orchestra Hit. It was the sound used in the hits by Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and *NSync. Other synths were used in hits like Eiffel 65‘s “Blue” or Darude‘s “Sandstorm.” And of course, all the computer games I was playing had similar synth music. But as the 2000s took full swing, I started to feel frustrated with the family keyboard. My friend’s family had a newer model, and their instruments sounded 2% more real. This didn’t stop me from playing it or using it to create weird songs with my sister on a tape player. I fully loved keyboard synthesizers without appreciating their origin story. My mom told me one day that I was going to start guitar lessons. I just said okay, but part of me was screaming out that I wanted to learn piano first. Why? Michael W. Smith was so cool back in the ’90s. I wanted to learn how to record trippy music like on Delirious’s Mezzamorphis album. And there were Skillet‘s Invincible and Alien Youth albums. And Linkin Park was getting popular. And Earthsuit‘s  Kaleidoscope Superior had me wondering how could Paul Meany rap so fast when playing the keyboard. I took the guitar and loved it, but rock without keys is kinda boring.

    MY MORNING SUN IS THE DRUG THAT LEADS ME NEAR TO THE CHILDHOOD I LOST. I talked about my history with New Order in January two years ago and about my initial disdain for the ’80s sound in February of last year. Anberlin was certainly my gateway drug to New Order’s discography, as they released a cover of this song as the third single from their New Surrender album cycle, rereleasing their album with a bunch of B-Sides. A college professor I worked for loved this song, so I started getting into New Order. I don’t remember when I first heard this song, but I steered away from it for years because of the old synthesizer sounds. I thought it sounded like something I could have recorded on my mom’s keyboard. But years down the road, I see that’s the charm of these old synth classics. The song opens with larger-than-life electronic drums. The keyboard keeps a dark atmosphere throughout most of the song until the end, shifting into a major key. New Order is the real deal. Pop and rock musicians look to their synth-pop songs for inspiration. 

    Music Video:

    Anberlin cover

    My Calvins commercial featuring “True Faith”:

    Parody with James Corden: 



  • “Please” by Turn Off the Stars, Thursday, July 18, 2024

     

    Turn Off the Stars’ self-titled album is one that I listen to every year. The band only released one album in 2006, which contained several reworked songs from their 2004 EP Everything Is OK. The Brit-pop-inspired Toronto-based band’s lyrics are simple. Their minor hit “Please” only has two verses and what could be better described as a pre-chorus and a drop if the song were EDM. The song is a guitar-driven track and, of course, is not electronic dance music. The band creates a wall of sound with the guitars that reach a climax after each pre-chorus. Like bands like The War on Drugs and The Amazing, “Please” creates tension with two chords–E minor and C– for most of the song. The song adds D and A minor to pay off the tension. While the guitar is the star of the song (no pun intended), lead singer Michael Walker’s vocals, particularly his falsetto on the pre-chorus contribute to the emotional payoff of the song.

    WAIT, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY. “Please” is my favorite song on Turn Off the Stars’ album, but the melancholy tune has been the soundtrack for many worries. I’m a recovering catastrophizer. Earlier this month when I watched Inside Out 2 (spoiler alert) and saw Anxiety taking the controls, I thought about how many times I let Anxity take the wheel. I always thought that if I worry about it, it will either not happen or not be as devastating when it does happen. Then I thought about how the new characters in Inside Out 2 seemed to be introduced a little late in the lifespan. Most of my anxiety came as I was a kid. It wasn’t really social anxiety until I was a teenager, but I deeply understood the character of Anxiety making plans “if this, then this”; always worst-case scenarios.  To alleviate my anxieties, or so I thought, I prayed about everything that could happen: “God don’t let the house burn down. Don’t let it explode. Don’t let it collapse under the weight of the snow. Don’t let there be a power surge that fries us when we use the microwave. Don’t let there be faulty electrical wiring in the house.” And so on. 

      

    I KNOW THAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. When I was about 10 or 11, I began to have anxieties that I wasn’t worthy when Jesus came back again. I said my prayers every night, often falling asleep to them, but I also thought about the bad thoughts I had throughout the day and the times that I disobeyed my parents. And as I got older, there were strange, sexual thoughts. It didn’t help that Sabbath School lessons talked about never knowing if you are saved and things you do keeping you out of heaven. But there was one friend I had that seemed to be calm in his faith. He seemed to just believe and not worry about anything. One night I prayed the sinner’s prayer as outlined by the Baptist theology I was exposed to from my dad’s side of the family and the evangelical media that we had in the house. And that was the point where I began to trust God. This happened around when I was about 12. Of course. For many years, I looked at this as my salvation story. But of course, my readers will know that there is a lot more to this story, and I interpret this grace from my anxiety in a different way today. When we’re kids, we don’t have a lot of control over our circumstances. When we’re adults we have choices that can keep us up late at night wondering what’s the differences between what’s behind doors number 1, 2, or 3. “Please” is a song about those late-night decisions. It’s about that late-night grief that lasts until the morning. In the end, we all need to draw our own conclusions to get past it, and ultimately we need faith in something even if that’s just yourself.