Between cleaning up at the 2015 Grammy Awards for In the Lonely Hourand 2020’s Love Goes, Sam Smith‘s music lost momentum with listeners. Of course, a lot has happened to the singer since then. In 2015, Smith was an openly gay Grammy-winning artist. In 2019, the singer came out as non-binary, telling the BBC, “I do think like a woman sometimes, in my head. Sometimes I’ve questioned, ‘Do I want a sex change?’” Since coming out as non-binary, the singer has embraced both the masculine and the feminine in their videos, concerts, and album promotions. Not only did the singer’s sexuality evolve, but also their musical versatility, from a gospel-inspired second record (The Thrill of It All), a Bond theme (“Writing’s on the Wall“), featured in a Calvin Harris track (“Promises“), a dance-pop record in 2020–nothing seemed beyond the scope of the singer, though never they quite matching the success of In the Lonely Hour.
MUMMY DON’T KNOW DADDY’S GETTING HOT AT THE BODY SHOP. “Unholy” was the lead single from Sam Smith’s fourth record, Gloria. It’s a shocking song and video that made our friends over at PluggedIncall it “next-level vile.” Writing about the song before the context of the music video, and taking the lyrics of the song quite literally as a “celebratory tone used to praise a man for lying to his wife, ignoring his children and visiting a prostitute whenever he so pleases,” the critic Kristin Smith lambastes the song. And even though Smith correctly points out the literal message of the song, it seems that there’s something else going on. But because our dear friends at Focus on the Family didn’t have the video at the time of the review, let’s start there. The video (see below) is truly an avant-garde statement complete with an introduction, elaborate costumes, and a Cabaret–styled dancesequence. The Body Shop scenes–a dinner-theater-styled sex club–aren’t too graphic to be censored on YouTube, but the viewers certainly get the idea about what is happening at this club, which is MC’ed by Smith. Famed Italian-Canadian music video and film director Floria Sigismondi directed “Unholy.” She has directed videos for Marylin Manson, The White Stripes, Katy Perry, and other artists as well as directing episodes of TheHandmaiden’s Taleand American Gods.
DIRTY, DIRTY BOY.The experience for the viewerentering “The Body Shop” is not unlike watching two newlyweds whose car has broken down in front of a Victorian mansion in the 1973 cult classic musicalThe Rocky Horror Picture Show.Tim Curry as the “Sweet Transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania” beckons Brad and Janet: “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure.” WhileThe Rocky Horror Picture Show is still shocking today to the Focus on the Family types and even caused my parents to mutter aboutTim Currywhen my sisters and I watchedMuppet Treasure Islandand later Clue.But even some conservative types can see the artistic merit of doing the “Time Warp.” Fast forward to 2022 and 2023 when Smith and Kim Petras performed the song at the Grammy’s, we can ask the question about the artistic merit of “Unholy” and whether or not it meets its goals to promote a conversation. I can think of several merits, though I’m not sure that these are intentional statements. Both statements have to deal with sexuality and sexual/gender identity. In some ways, the video is styled like a sexy hip-hop video–singerKim Petrasacting as the featured singer. Smith is not rapping, but the lines feel like rapping. The video subverts the homo- and transphobia in hip-hop’s past. The video features dancers who are trans, non-binary, and sis-gendered, showing the spectrum that gender can display. And that’s the first point I think the video is making: that gender fluidity is shocking to many these days, but it’s ultimately something we have to come to understand. Drag and alternative gender expressions were once kept in very specific spaces–“The Body Shop,” for example, where people go to have a good time whether or not they are hiding their true identity from the world or even their spouses. Now alternative gender expressions are hitting mainstream culture–even among straight-cis-identifying men likeTimothée Chalametwearing a red dressto the film premiere ofBones and All andHarry Styleswearing a blouse. Trans and non-binary people are becoming more visible, and it’s creating a backlash among the vocal Evangelical few. The second point I make is the right to exist. In a democratic society, why should the rights of one religion be valued above the rights of other religions and non-religious folks? Pride parades were designed to shock onlookers, to show everyone that the LGBTQ+ community exists and that in a free society, people shouldn’t have to apologize for their existence. When I first wrote about this song, I pointed out that the possibly intended point that the song makes is the hypocrisy of a man having an affair at a sex club and how many repressed conservative Evangelicals and politicians fall into this trap. However, no matter how the so-called “Gay Agenda” is packaged, even if it is as innocuous as a monogamous, churchgoing lesbian couple in a small town on a primetime show, Evangelicals are hell-bound to push their agenda for a closeted to a conversion camp existence for anyone outside of the bounds of a monogamous opposite-sexed marriage. Many in the LGBTQ+ community grew up around this religion. They were told that if they embraced themselves fully, they would go to hell. This has scared many for generations into the closet, into unfulfilling lives. What’s the other choice, but to be “Unholy”?
Taylor Swift is in the gossip columns again, but this time it feels less invasive. On April 8th, the story broke that Swift and six-year partner, English actor Joe Alwyn split. The once media-deemed serial dater held her longest relationship with Alwyn, and there had been rumors that the two had held a private wedding. Swift and Alwyn began dating around the time when the singer went into semi-seclusion following the critical backlash from her 2017 record, reputation.
I’VE BEEN HAVING A HARD TIME ADJUSTING. Unlike previous relationships, Taylor Swift worked especially hard to keep the details of her romance with Joe Alwyn out the public. Two years after reputation, Swift released Lover, a mature record that dealt with the joys of being in a relationship on many of the tracks. Love empowered Swift to return to her fans with a stadium tour, but the pandemic canceled those plans. And Swifties and general music fans have the pandemic to thank for the songwriting and production of Swift’s eighth and ninth studio records, folkloreand evermore. And on folklore, Swift collaborated with Alwyn who contributed to the songwriting on several of the tracks, including today’s track, “this is me trying.” Like many of the songs on folklore, the song seems to have some autobiographical details, but ultimately feels like Swift is writing about a character who she merely relates to, though not fully. The Jack Antonoff-produced track starts off melancholy but the refrain. The listener is bogged down with the troubles the speaker lists, and it convinces the listener that the speaker indeed has struggles, whether it is of addiction, fear of failure, or isolation in a relationship. And the refrain “This is me trying” seems like enough.
AT LEAST I’M TRYING. When folklore was released, Joe Alwyn used the pseudonym William Bowery to hide his identity from the press and fans. When Swift dated Calvin Harris in 2015, she also used a pseudonym to throw off the press when she co-wrote the hit “This Is What You Came For.” Harris, however, leaked the secret. Swift learned from her mistakes and media missteps, so it seemed that Alwyn was “the 1.” The specific details of the break up haven’t yet been confirmed. However, as highlighted by the recent Eras Tour, Swift is an artist whose career changes in cycles. A teenager whose star kept rising culminated in her mid-twenties with pop stardom, a laidback alternative singer-songwriter in her early thirties, and back to pop stardom by her mid-thirties, Swift can do anything. But she needs a man who can keep up with her, who can adapt to different phases in her career. Love takes effort from both parties. The pandemic made many of us question our life decisions. We hunkered down, maybe with someone we love. Maybe we got out of shape for the rest of the world. But at some time it was time to get out of that rut. The question is, is the person that you were with when the world felt like it was ending the person you want to be with when the world feels like it’s starting again? Maybe you tried and tried to make it work, and you made it through the transition. That’s great. However, others put in just as much effort and found that the relationship was lacking. If you put in your whole effort into the relationship and it still didn’t work out, at least you tried and you know something about yourself.
In 2011, San Antonio-based Christian Rock band Abandon released their third record, Control. This was the band’s second release on ForeFront Records, a label that had been forefront in the Christian music scene in the ’90s, releasing albums by dc talk, Audio Adrenaline, and Rebecca St. James. But after the label’s success with Stacie Orrico, it seemed that the success of other Christian labels like Tooth & Nail Records was eclipsing the once legendary record label.
I’M LIKE EVERYONE LIVING IN A QUICK-FIX NATION. BeforeForeFront Records was absorbed completely by its parent label, Capitol Christian Music Group, the label had a few last-ditch efforts to produce rock in the ’00s. The early ’00s gave them the “two-album wonder” The Benjamin Gate and a few head-scratching hip-hop projects. In 2007, the label released the debut record from This Beautiful Republic, a band that seemed to be the label’s answer to Anberlin and the success Christian bands were finding in the Warped Tour scene. But This Beautiful Republic lost their energetic lead singer Ben Olin when stepped down from his role after recording their second record. The band broke up shortly after Perspectives‘ release in 2008. Meanwhile, Abandon seemed like the label’s next big thing, particularly because they could be marketed to Christian Hit Radio and Christian Rock radio in a similar way that the label’s bread-and-butter act TobyMac was marketed. In early 2011, several hits were released on Air1 and RadioU. The mellower singles were played on Christian Hit Radio and the alternative and rock singles were played on RadioU.
YOU’RE DESPERATE TO BE NEAR ME. A major difference between a Tooth & Nail band and any other label’s Christian Rock band is that Tooth & Nail’s sounds more general market than, say ForeFront or Flicker Records’. Abandon fit the niche of the pop-rock band, so a Tooth & Nail comparison might be Capital Lights. Christian versions of Imagine Dragons/ OneRepublic bands didn’t do as well in the late ’00s and early ’10s, and Capital Lights quit after two records. But listening to Capital Lights and Abandon back to back, you realize that the formal is completely different when it comes to lyrics. With Capital Lights, only one song on the album will mention God or something spiritual, whereas on an Abandon record, you’ll have multiple nods to God in most of the tracks. The songs aren’t exactly worship, but there is little ambiguity about the topic, and non-Christians find it harder to relate to the songs. In 2011, Christian music was starting to sound stale. Worship music was engulfing bands, and my tolerance for the lack of originality pushed me to listen to less overtly Christian music. Abandon’s Control was in my CD player for about a month, April 2011, before the tornado, back when it seemed that my Christian world view I had constructed with the help of my fundamentalist university felt so solid. And yet, I really couldn’t admit that it was the handsome men on the cover of the album was the real reason I wasted $18 on the CD.
One memorable scene in Dante’s Infernodepicts two lovers tormented in the second layer of hell. The lovers in the second layer have been sent to hell for their lust, and as a punishment, they must blow in an unrelenting wind, possibly symbolizing their lust on earth and their lack of commitment to one partner. Two lovers, though, continuously blow past each other, touching for a second at a time before they blow in opposite directions.
BREATHING IS SO HARD IT HURTS. No, the title track from Acceptance‘s sophomore record, Colliding by Design, is not about eternal conscious torment, but there is something hellish about unrequited love. The production sounds show us what we could have expected to hear on the radio if the band had been afforded the opportunity to stay in the pop/rock culture in the late ’00s and early ’10s. The early 2017 release of Colliding by Design came like a spring breeze, bringing accessible pop melodies highlighting lead singer Jason Vena‘s vocals, as crisp and clean as we remembered them twelve years earlier on Phantoms. The title track, though, is a perfect love song about the uncertainty of an early relationship. Punctuated by a guitar riff that sounds like it was borrowed from a New Wave band like A Flock of Seagulls, the lyrics take center stage. Imagery of a breezy spring evening with the night coming to a natural close and the decision: kiss or blow away with the night. The speaker is direct in making this suggestion, and he believes that the feelings are reciprocated.
THERE’S A LOOK IN YOUR EYES; YOU WANNA STAY. “Colliding by Design” immediately brought me back to college and the two times that I made things weird between me and a female friend. I didn’t date in college. I was one of the few male English majors, and I made a lot of friends. I usually felt comfortable just being friends, but sometimes I felt pressure when my roommates or male friends went on dates. I thought I should want this too. And I did. I didn’t want to be alone for my life. And I thought I was attracted to some of my female friends. Nothing ever felt sexual, but I thought somehow with God’s blessing it would one day. Both times that I made things weird were in the spring–two different years. I replayed the rejections from those conversations time after time. What wasn’t I seeing? Was I too ugly? Was there something stamped on me that said “friend zone only”? Did I walk around with a bugger in my nose that I couldn’t see in the mirror? Over ten years later, I see it a lot more clearly that I was completely uncomfortable with myself. I tried to be someone that I thought that others wanted and denied myself. It’s not an attractive quality. And I think that when I confessed admiration, I hadn’t left enough hints before that because I didn’t actually like those girls the way that the drama in my mind played out. Years later, I gained confidence and had no problem asking out boys. It was natural for me, like a missing puzzle piece I had spent years hiding under the sofa and had tried to force a puzzle piece from another puzzle into the spot.
After incredible success after releasing their comeback single last fall, “This Is Why” which would be the title track to the album the band released in February, Paramore released their second single, “The News.” Both singles prepared the listener for a Paramore album unlike anything that the band had recorded before. “This Is Why” featured the self-defeating lyrics fans have come to expect from lead singer Haley Williams and the song had a certain Paramore catchiness, but the funky bass and classic rock guitar explored musical territory the band had not yet shared with their listeners.
A WAR RIGHT BEHIND MY EYES. “The News,” however, was a hard rock socially-conscious track, darker than most of the band’s prior songs. The same day that Paramore released the single, they also released a video for the song. The video (see below) features Haley Williams hypnotized by a television, which becomes a catatonic state in the video. As the second single and the second track on This Is Why, “The News” works in tandem with the rest of the songs to answer the question posed by the album’s title. While the line is “This is why I don’t leave the house” critics and fans have interpreted the real question posed by This Is Why is the reason the band got back together. During the pandemic, fans wondered if Williams’ solo work could fill the hole left in music without Paramore. After all, there does seem to be a lyrical progression from After Laughterto Petals for Armor, and This Is Why seems to be an update on Williams’ mental health. But while Williams is a very capable solo artist, the new Paramore tracks, full of passion, “spite and sweet revenge” seem to show that the three bandmates left in the messy band after two decades of in-fighting are happiest when they make music about their frustrations.
A WAR ON THE FAR SIDE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET. “The News” talks about the unhealthy relationship many of us have with the news. This Is Why is the most overt political statement Paramore has ever made in their music, but that political statement comes from Haley Williams refusing to silence her opinions. Of course, Williams’ statements on faith on the band’s third record Brand New Eyes, particularly “Ignorance,” was notably the first fracture when Williams declared “The truth never set me free” contradicting the Bible verse John 8:32, which states “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (NIV). The backlash and support from this line emboldened Williams to speak out about other things, including supporting the band’s LGBTQ+ fans in 2020. Williams has also supported Black Lives Matter and recently spoke out against the anti-drag laws proposed in her home state of Tennessee. But constantly dealing with the backlash of speaking out against what Christianity stands for in the 2020s gets exhausting. Since Paramore has been away, so much has happened. The Christian values the band was raised are on trial, and the Trump years and all that the news shows us is that those values may have caused the issues that we face today. It would be one thing if the gloom and doom of the pandemic finished and the villainous politicians went to jail and the world was a little less eventful. Instead, the news keeps flooding in and it’s overwhelming. Why do I check the news when I take a break at work or even when I’m blogging? It’s not like there’s going to be something amazing that’s going to give me energy to get back to work. But is cutting it out completely healthy? “Turn on turn off the news!”
Last week, I listened to a podcast introducing artists who sound similar to another artist in order to help expand lesser-known artists expand their fan bases just to hear some takes that the commentators had to say about another artist I was preparing to post about. I didn’t actually end up writing about that artist, but I inadvertently discovered a few new artists to add to my AppleMusic library, one of which was Filipina-British singer-songwriter Beatrice Kristi Ilejay Laus, better known by her stage name beabadoobee.
BUILDINGS AND RUST. With nearly 15 million monthly listeners on Spotify, it seems that the bedroom pop singer beabadoobee is blowing up in popularity these days. Could it be her opening on the current leg of Taylor Swift‘s Eras tour? Born in Iloilo City in 2000 and relocating to London with her family at the age of three, Laus was influenced by indie rock from an early age. At the age of seventeen, she learned guitar from YouTube tutorials after having played violin since the age of ten. In September 2017, she released two songs on YouTube, a cover of Karen O‘s “Moon Song” and an original titled “Coffee.” With 300,000 views on YouTube, Bea signed to Dirty Hit Records. The UK-based label housed acts like The 1975, The Japanese House, Wolf Alice, and Rina Sawayama. After signing to Dirty Hit Records, beabadoobee released several EP and started garnering critical acclaim. Supporting tours with Clairo, labelmates The 1975, and Halsey and admiration by Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, and Khalid for her artistry, beabadoobee has become a kind of artist’s artist.
LAST NIGHT’S EMERGENCY. Last year, beabadoobee released her second full-length record Beatopia. The album shows Laus’s blends indie rock with acoustic singer-songwriter tendencies. The under-refined elements of the album make the album delightful, from the cover art that looks like it was designed by a child to opening track “Beatopia Cultsong.” Most of the album is more at home in a coffee shop than on the radio, but there are certainly some catchy hooks hidden within the album. Deep within the record is today’s song “Pictures of Us.” The song’s lyrics are vague. The short verses deal with a conflict between the speaker and an unnamed female. Musically, the song reminds me of a ’90s soft rock forgotten gem. The song was originally written by The 1975’s frontman Matthew Healy about his childhood friend, by Bea rewrote the track about a friend she had when she was a teenager. Of the iconic line in the chorus: “She reminded me that God starts with a capital, but I don’t think I can do it” Laus told Apple Music: “It’s so open to interpretation. To me personally, it means someone that you truly, truly admire, but not being able to be on the same page. But you’re trying to be.”
Two years ago, I taught a lesson on Irish music to my students. I played examples of Celtic instrumental music. I showed videos of River Dance. I played sad songs like “The Parting Glass” and “Danny Boy.” Then I played some famous Irish artists like Enya, U2, and The Cranberries. Then I played Kodaline‘s “High Hopes.” When I asked my students which they liked the best, they said Kodaline. But that was kind of a stupid question for a music lover. There are times when I want to listen to Celtic bagpipes and jigs. There are times I want to go out and have fun in an Irish pub and hear Celtic punk rock. There are times I want to listen to U2, and it’s certainly not the same day I want to listen to Enya, but those days happen too. But like my students, I think Kodaline’s first album fits more into my everyday listening habits.
BROKEN BOTTLES IN THE HOTEL LOBBY. While In A Perfect World is a great everyday listen, you have to be careful watching the music video for “High Hopes.” It’s a beautiful love story between an older man and a somewhat younger woman. The couple meets when she runs away from her wedding and she saves him from trying to kill himself in his car. They begin their relationship when he takes her to his meager cottage. The two build their relationship, but the tone of the video changes when they are lying in bed and he notices the scars on her back. Then, as the guitar solo starts, the couple is shot by a man carrying a shotgun. The two are in a pool of blood. The man wakes up in the hospital and sees her bed is empty. At the end of the video, she hugs him from behind. Lead singerSteve Garriganwrote “High Hopes” after a bad breakup. I think the graphic nature of this video is meant to be metaphorical. The woman saves the older man from his destructive ways. They fall in love but when he discovers her scars, the relationship reaches levels of problems that lead to another person/outside factor “shooting” both partners. The end of the video could either mean she left him and he’s remembering her, and the embrace is just holding on to memories, or it could be that she left for a while but comes back to him. Either way, the video is a bit shocking, so I didn’t play it for my students.
I KNOW IT’S CRAZY TO BELIEVE IN STUPID THINGS. In 2021, Garrigan released his memoir, titled High Hopes: Making Music, Losing My Way, Learning to Live, in which the singer talks about his shyness and became the lead singer of the immensely popular Irish band. Sure, Kodaline doesn’t have the 17 million monthly listeners that U2 has, but 8 million a month certainly isn’t bad. I’m curious to read the book, to see what Garrigan has to say about the song that was birthed out of a break-up years ago, and why he used this song as a springboard to write about his career as a rock star. For me today, though, “High Hopes” got me thinking about how futile it seems to get ahead. It seems that I’ll always be plugging along at the same type of job, even if I get more education. Every year the resources dry up just a little bit more, and you’re left feeling as if you should be grateful for your job in the ever-growing “hard economic times.” Still, why are more duties added to the contract and no extra pay? Will the situation convalesce back to what it was? I think back to my hopeful outlook after just graduating from university and how oblivious I was to how the world actually works. And yet, the world keeps spinning around the sun.
Few songs are as recognizable from their piano introduction as Journey‘s 1981 hit, “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Television in the 2000s may have played a role in why the song is still so iconic. From appearing as the emotion ending sequence to the critically-acclaimed HBO series, The Sopranosto the phenomenal performance by the teens at McKinley High back when Gleewas still novel, “Don’t Stop Believin’” is probably the first song that comes to mind when you think of Journey.
JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL. Well, of course I have to play my hipster card for a minute. In the age of Limewire and from the rare occasions that my mom would listen to classic rock stations, I fell in love with two of Journey’s rockers: “Separate Ways” (Worlds Apart) and “Wheel in the Sky.” And then there was when my music teacher had me playing “Open Arms” when I played wedding music. But twenty years after that, Journey’s number 9 Hot 100 hit has far more streams than their rockers or their other ballads, even if “Open Arms” reached number 2 in 1982 and even “Separate Ways” reached a spot higher on the Hot 100 at number 8. Recently, I’ve been constructing an anti-hipster argument arguing that the classics are remembered for a reason. In one of my classes I have been teaching a fairy tales book filled with many obscure fairy tales that certainly have merit, but ultimately lack the punchiness of the ones that we grew up listening to by Hans Christian Anderson or collected by The Brothers Grimm. Years ago, I filled my Kindle with complete works by Ray Bradbury, Daphne du Maurier, Pearl S. Buck, and several other authors, and read as much of their works as I enjoyed. I certainly found some gems, but I started to realize that their most popular books usually showed their writing craft in the most refined way. In other words, there was little filler and characters and plots were digestible in ways that felt satisfying.
JUST A CITY BOY, BORN AND RAISED IN SOUTH DETROIT. While I haven’t listened to Journey’s entire discography, I think “Don’t Stop Believin’” is the band’s most lyrically refined song. The song follows an odd structure, particularly for a 21st century audience that screams “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” But in other ways, “Don’t Stop Believin’” utilizes multiple hooks, taking the listener on a journey to the end of the song where the chorus finally is realized as a guitar solo 3:06 into the song and finally sung at 3:22. Of course, the chorus has been bread-crumbed to the listener after each verse, but it’s the exuberant chorus at end of the song that listeners wait for, like the climax of a book or a movie. But while the musical journey of the song may be what brought listeners in initially, I think it’s the lyrics that bring me back to this wistful ballad. The imagery of two lovers meeting for the first time in a “smokey room,” “a midnight train going anywhere” gives us a sense of time stopping when you meet someone special. We smell the wine and cheap perfume and it’s a little nauseating, but enduring because it’s the milieu of youth–it’s the sweat at the club or a concert, which is gross if you’re not part of it. And somehow, these feelings of young love, horniness, and pure musical emotion seem to be mixed up with faith for those of us who have it. “Don’t Stop Believin’” is a song that leaves you feeling like you just went to church if all you hear is the chorus and the music. So many worship songs borrow the chords and try to capture that feeling that Journey gives us in their most-streamed song. It’s a kind of siren song to faith in something even if the over all message is not about that. It’s a feeling rather than an articulated thought. And you never want that feeling to stop.
Spring is a time of youth and renewed life. Flowers are blooming and pollen is swimming in the breeze. We have seen this happen year in and year out, perhaps never really thinking about how Mother Earth is regenerating herself. Indeed sex is all around us as the bees inseminate the flowers in the garden. The vibrancy of springtime in a garden is an appropriate cloak for today’s song as Troye Sivan wraps the metaphor of young horniness in the beauty of the natural world in the title track to his second record Bloom. While Sivan’s track is undeniably queer, the journey into the garden feels universal–a trip that all will take when leaving youth behind.
TAKE A TRIP INTO MY GARDEN.Troye Sivan’s sophomore record, Bloom, takes the singer-songwriter into more adult themes. The singer’s previous work Blue Neighbourhood intentionally steered away from overtly sexual topics. When Sivan made the music video trilogy “Wild,” “Fools,” and “Talk You Down,” Sivan created a space for exploring same-sex attraction during youth without overly sexualizing love. He toldAdvocate“I feel like gay relationships are sexualized in the media and I just wanted to show a romantic, adorable, puppy love situation between two little boys because that’s something we never ever see.” And while some of the tracks on Blue Neighbourhood are explicit due to language, most of the songs deal with love and acceptance for one’s sexuality. But Sivan’s 2018 record has been described by Out as the singer’s “sex record.” At the age of 23, Sivan told stories about losing his virginity at the age of “Seventeen” to an older man. The video to the album’s lead single “My, My My!” takes a cue from Christina Aguilera‘s “Dirrty” video, with Sivan dancing provocatively, and the Saturday Night Live performance of the song left Sivan dripping wet.
I’VE BEEN SAVING THIS FOR YOU. Troye Sivan revealed to Dazed that “Bloom” was about “being the receptive partner losing his virginity.” The gay community calls the receptive partner the bottom and performing this role as bottoming. There are not many songs about gay sex, and much fewer about bottoming. Sivan is opening a curtain to the queer community to a much more sexually fluid and open generation of younger millennials and Gen-Z. The video for “Bloom” feels like a New Wave video from the ’80s blurring the line between masculine and feminine. While the album Bloom may have not been a runaway success in the general market, Sivan leaves a positive influence on the gay community, particularly the members who shame “fems,” or men who are on the more feminine side. Of course, one celebrity doesn’t completely change the number of men with 20 miles who are only “masc4masc” but Sivan as a pop star gives queer folks a role model for what can be on the feminine side, authentic, and sexy.
Park Jinyoung is a 28-year-old singer/actor who shares a name with one of the most famous entertainment mavens–a singer and founder of the record company JYP, which also happens to be the label that the singer of today’s song is also signed to. Jinyoung started his entertainment career as an actor in 2011 and quickly began sharing his vocal talents by contributing to the soundtrack of the drama Dream High 2, which the singer also stared in.
FEEL SO HIGH LIKE THE SKY. Jinyoungwas born in Jinhae-gu, Changwon, South Korea, which coincidentally is home to one of the most famous cherry blossom festivals in Korea. The singer had dreams of appearing on television since elementary school. He auditioned for SM Entertainment while he was in sixth grade, only with the promise to his mother that if he failed the audition his parents wouldn’t support him. Jinyoung didn’t win the competition, but made it to the third round, winning an award for his popularity in the competition. Because of this accomplishment, Jinyoung’s parents allowed him to study dance in Busan during middle school. Today, Jinyoung is probably best known as a member of the idol boy band GOT7, though he was a member of the duet JJ Project prior to GOT7’s debut in 2014. The duet has made music during GOT7’s career; however, their most recent release was in 2017. As a solo artist, Jinyoung started releasing music in 2021, and earlier this year he released Chapter 0: With. Unlike many idol singers, Jinyoung is credited with writing much of his music for all three projects he’s been involved with including his 2023 EP. The lead single, “Cotton Candy,” though, hasn’t charted like GOT7’s music.
IT FEELS LIKE I AM FLYING IN THE SKY. Cotton candy tastes really good for a few bites. It’s served in a loom that is always too big for however many people are sharing it. It’s all fluff and no substance, and if ingested too much and with other fatty, sugary carnival foods, a good day can turn sour in the stomach. But that’s just adult me griping. Today, I need a saccharine ballad. But really, that’s not the reason why I chose the song today. A few days ago, I realized that the cherry blossom trees in the mountains looked like cotton candy. The hue of light pink to a pinkish white reminded me of the trees from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. And then I realized that today is arbor day. Yes, it’s all a very loose connection. The cherry blossoms will all be gone tomorrow morning after the rain stops. Spring is in full swing and the world is looking more and more colorful. The world is greening and purpling and becoming more and more vivid. And while my mood has been hampered by allergies and annoyances in work and life, I can’t help but feel life coming back to me and that renewed energy coming back with the spring.
Mixtapemotions 