Mixtapemotions

  • “The Wire” by HAIM, Thursday, November 14, 2024

    I noticed a shift in my listening habits this year. My Spotify Wrapped will undoubtedly reveal that I listened to more female-identifying artists this year than male-identifying artists. It’s been a particularly strong year in pop, but women dominate the music industry in other genres. Singers, producers, rappers, songwriters, and, yes, frontwomen to rock bands are a few examples of women in music in 2024. In the 2020s, some of the most critically acclaimed albums in many genres were made by female artists. Yet, there was a time when many listeners and critics didn’t take women very seriously in any genre. Male listeners often didn’t buy music made by women. And gender is often used to qualify music. “It’s good music for a girl band” or “ I really don’t relate to rock bands with female lead singers” were statements I heard when talking about music. I don’t know if things are different now among male listeners, but in the 2010s critics seem to be starting to take women in music much more seriously.

    YOU KNOW I’M BAD AT COMMUNICATION. In 2013, HAIM released their first album, Days Are Gone. The group is composed of the three Haim sisters: Este, Danielle, and Alana. The sisters’ careers started as musicians in a family band that featured their father Mordechai “Morti” Haim on the drums and their mother Donna on guitar. Rockinhaim wasn’t a serious act— a cover band that exposed the girls to public performances, weddings and charity events. In 2005, Este and Danielle joined a girl band called Valli Girls signed to Columbia Records. After appearing on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants soundtrack, the HAIM sisters left the group. The three sisters together formed a band in 2007 briefly before Danielle started touring as a backing musician for other groups. Este, meanwhile, pursued a degree in ethnomusicology at UCLA. After being accepted into Scarlet Fever, Cee-Lo Green’s all-girl backup band, Danielle decided to start playing her original music rather than playing for other groups, which brought the HAIM sisters back together. 

    YOU KNOW THERE’S NO RHYME OR REASON. In 2020, HAIM released their Grammy-nominated album Women in Music, Part III. The title of the album pays tribute to the veteran female singer-songwriters from the folk era to the present. HAIM is a feminist symbol and the group is involved in feminist causes and explores feminist themes in their lyrics. The band rejects the title “girl band.” Alana said that she considers the label “an insult.” After all, why must we qualify good music? HAIM’s career coincides with the shift away from rock-based alternative music, but it’s clear that the band is influenced by rock. While you could easily classify. While you could easily label HAIM as a soft rock or pop rock group, their R&B influence is something that makes them stand out from other similar-sounding groups. HAIM has interesting musical arrangements–saxophones, three-part harmonies, twangy country guitars–but it’s the rhythms and Este’s bass playing that drive what would be ordinary songs into a frenetic energy. What would be background music for a commute or in a grocery store takes your full attention. It’s distracting in the best way possible. 


     

  • “Heavy” by Linkin Park ft. Kiiara, Wednesday, November 13, 2024 (trigger warning: suicide, depression, mental health discussion)

     Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory was a musical philosophy the band has followed throughout their career. Hip-hop, hard rock, nu-metal, Alternative, folk, and electronic— all found their way onto Linkin Park albums. A band known for their cross-genre collaborations and for scoring Top 40 Pop hits, Linkin Park has always aimed to be music-forward. In 2017, the band released their most polarizing album, One More Light. The album more than any of the band’s previous efforts integrated current-sounding pop, a genre that Linkin Park had avoided even when their rock songs became pop hits. Critics and listeners didn’t know what to think of the latest from the band that defined the new millennium in rock music. It was a collection of songs that seemed lyrically honest but musically dishonest like much of the pop music of the late ‘10s.  

    I DON’T LIKE MY MIND RIGHT NOW. Starting the album cycle for One More Light was “Heavy,” the lead single, released in February 2017. Working with the songwriting team of Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, Linkin Park crafted their version of what they thought pop music sounded like in the late ‘10s. Joesph Hahn, the band’s DJ and programmer suggested that “Heavy” would sound good as a duet with a female singer opposite of lead singer Chester Bennington. Illinois-based singer-songwriter Kiiara Saulters talked about Linkin Park’s influence on her career with New Zealand radio host Zane Lowe after she had a big hit in 2015 called “Gold.” Through Lowe, Linkin Park connected with the singer who then recorded the song’s second verse. When the song was released, the band and Kierra performed it on several late-night shows to promote their new single. Critics mostly called the song an imitation of both Twenty One Pilots and The Chainsmokers and Halsey’s “Closer.” Lyrically, the song was similar to the themes Linkin Park wrote about before. The song is about feeling unable to handle all of the hardships the world gives us.

    I’M PRETTY SURE THE WORLD IS OUT TO GET ME. On May 19, 2017, Linkin Park released One More Light, and like the lead single “Heavy,” reviews were pretty negative. These made lead singer Chester Bennington so angry that he lashed out online. The band believed in their new sound and were trying to express their message in a new way. The band was, however, still in its prime and one of the biggest rock bands at a time when the genre seemed to be disappearing. Then on July 25, Bennington took his life. The singer had struggled with depression and substance abuse throughout his life, but he had seemingly come out of a dark time, surviving an attempt in 2016. Earlier in 2017, Bennington lost a dear friend and godfather to his children to suicide, Soundgarden and Audioslave’s Chris Cornell. Bennington sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at Cornell’s funeral and expressed his deep sorrow for the loss. The Last Days Podcast looked into the details surrounding Bennington’s death, focusing on the parallels between Cornell and the Linkin Park frontman as well as the statements Bennington made about his mental health. Bennington told Rolling Stone in 2017: “I find myself getting into these patterns of behavior or thought – especially when I’m stuck up here [in my head]; I like to say that ‘this is like a bad neighborhood, and I should not go walking alone.” Bennington hung himself in a hotel room where he was staying briefly when shooting a commercial. Perhaps the intrusive thoughts were too much. Perhaps it was the memory of Cornell. Bennington died on what would have been his fifty-third birthday. Whatever Bennington’s reasons, the 41-year-old was taken too soon. Chester had so much more to give the rock world or whatever genre he wanted to work in.
     

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “The Last Great American Dynasty” by Taylor Swift, Tuesday, November 12, 2024


    On folklore, Taylor Swift’s essential fall album, the singer delves into the craft of storytelling. While many of Swift’s songs tell stories, until her eighth studio album, most of those stories were about herself. Tales about “betty,” James, and Augustine could be a metaphor for the singer but it was quite refreshing to hear about other people in towns created by the singer. With Swift returning to making anthemic pop hits, the lowkey double album cycle has come and gone.  “The Last American Dynasty” is a song on folklore in which Swift tells the story about the previous owner of her house. The song tells the story of the wealthy widow to the heir of the Standard Oil fortune, Rebecca “Betty” Harkness. It’s a kind of country song, romanticizing its subject and drawing parallels between Harkness and Swift, setting them up as outsiders unable to fit into the social classes they happened to belong to. 


    THERE GOES THE MADDEST WOMAN THIS TOWN HAS EVER SEEN. Taylor Swift has become a feminist icon–a self-made woman. The men Swift dates are below her income bracket, subverting archaic yet all too present expectations of women. In 2013, Swift bought Holiday House in Rhode Island. The realtor told Swift about the estate’s previous owner. When talking about the song with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Desner on the Disney+ special Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Swift said that hearing about Harkness she “wanted to know everything about her.” For years, Swift wanted to craft Harkness’s story into a song, finally releasing “The Last Great American Dynasty” in 2020. Swift writes about Harkness’s eccentric, decadent practices in a way that endears the heiress, though she only focuses on the positive aspects. Swift sees Harkness as a feminist icon. The socialite certainly had some admirable qualities, disrupting the upper class as a wealthy woman enjoying the fruits of her inheritance. But notably absent from the song are the objectionably damning details of Harkness’s character, including how she treated her children and grandchild. One of the reasons she built her “saltbox house” into the 11,000-square-foot mansion with eight kitchens and 21 bathrooms it became was to have accommodations for governesses to take care of the children completely out of her sight.


    HOLIDAY HOUSE SAT QUIETLY ON THAT BEACH. The way Taylor Swift tells Rebecca Harkness sets the socialite up as a likable antihero but her legacy is more complicated than merely being a badass. Swift’s omissions and revisions, such as changing the cat that she dyed “key lime green” to a dog, show just how much Swift is trying to relate with this probably horrible person. The criticisms of Swift used to be about her dating life and her celebrity feuds. But perhaps a more valid criticism is about her carbon emissions generated by her private planes or that she has been repeatedly blocking other female artists from achieving their potential by churning out repackaging of her old records to feed a capitalist society that in turn exacerbates climate change. The true story about Harkness reminds us that legacies are mixed. Americans love a Great Gatsby story even when they are incurring The Grapes of Wrath. The myth of the self-made billionaire makes us think that we too can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. It’s in the post-Industrial revolution psyche and reinforced by Reaganomics that make the American electorate believe that hands-off conservative leadership will somehow make the businesses pay their workers well. These conservative ideas that come out and songs like today’s song are ones that I feel like I’ve overlooked when the shock of last week hit me. It almost makes me want to start another blog series. We’ll see. How could the American people fall for completely on sound economical math? How could a wealthy man serving them food at McDonald’s for one shift prove that he was just like them? Why did it take so long for Taylor Swift to finally endorse Harris? In my own bubble podcasts and newspapers, I thought Trump was fringe. I thought really the American people didn’t feel this way. And it turns out that 49% of the voting population didn’t feel that way. Swift writes that Harkness is part of the last great American Dynasty, but it turns out that probably many listeners felt similarly about Trump. Even if Trump really does “hate Taylor Swift” as he tweeted after using an AI generated meme of Swift supporting him prompting Swift to endorse Harris.


    Read the lyrics on Genius.
     

  • “Armistice” by MUTEMATH, Monday, November 11, 2024

    Armistice Day commemorates the end of World War I, marking the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany that took effect on November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, All [was] Quiet on the Western Front. The day is observed in many countries to honor those who served and died in the war. It evolved into Veterans Day in the United States, expanding to honor all veterans, not just those from World War I. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, still observe November 11 as a day of remembrance for fallen soldiers, often called Remembrance Day. The word armistice means an agreement made between opposing sides in a war to stop fighting temporarily, typically as a precursor to a more formal peace treaty. Unlike a full peace agreement, an armistice is not necessarily a permanent end to hostilities but rather a truce that suspends military action. It can be a crucial first step toward negotiating peace or establishing a ceasefire to allow for humanitarian efforts, discussions, or troop withdrawals.

    YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY IT I KNOW, IT’S ALL MY FAULT. Mutemath named their second album Armistice after settling the conflicts between band members. Working with producer Dennis Herring, the band made peace and focused on producing the best music. The album’s title track reflects the reconciliation needed to run a successful band. In the lyrics, the speaker talks about how he wants to move forward and work towards “progress.” Musically, Mutemath calls on their New Orleans jazz roots, incorporating horns and their electronic sound. As a bonus track for listeners who had preordered Armistice, the band released a remixed version of the song featuring the Rebirth Jazz Band. The song is a unique piece of music and an excellent soundtrack for “laying down your weapons” and finding common ground.

  • “Interstate Love Song” by Stone Temple Pilots, Sunday, November 10, 2024

    When Stone Temple Pilots debuted in 1992 with their debut album Core some critics wrote that the band was an imitation of the Seattle grunge scene which lacked an authentic sound. Core with its three singles earned the band heavy radio play. The band released their second album Purple in 1994 which was also a radio-hit success, but critics started warming to the band, recognizing that they were not a photocopy of Pearl Jam but a band that flavored their brand of the Seattle sound with elements of psychedelic rock, blues, and country. The first two singles “The Big Empty” and “Vasoline” continued the band’s established grunge sound. The third single, though, “Interstate Love Song,” was a turning point for the critics who thought that the band had nothing new to say.

    LEAVING ON A SOUTHERN TRAIN. When Stone Temple Pilots recorded Core, they worked with producer Brendan O’Brien, a producer who had a lot of experience as an engineer and mixer but only had a few producer credits. After Core, O’Brien’s production career exploded with Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, King’s X, and eventually in Nu Metal with Korn and Papa Roach. O’Brien’s production is partly responsible for the grunge sound that was heard on the radio in the early to mid-‘90s and Stone Temple Pilots were a kind of testing ground for that sound with their first two records. “Interstate Love Song” was a massive hit when it was released to radio. The song’s structure with its acoustic intro to power-chord verse and its singable chorus made it the perfect fit for rock radio. The lyrics of the song dealt with lead singer Scott Weiland’s heroin addiction and the strain that addiction caused on his marriage.


    FEELIN’ LIKE A HAND IN RUSTED SHAME. Heroin was Kurt Cobain and Tom Petty’s drug of choice in the ‘90s. Stone Temple Pilots’ lead singer Scott Weiland joins the scores of rock stars who rode the horse. Weiland used drugs throughout his career, eventually dying of an overdose. In September 1994, Weiland married Janina Castaneda. While writing the lyrics for Purple and recording the album, Weiland called his future wife. He had promised her that he had given up heroin. “Interstate Love Song” is Weiland writing from Janina’s perspective, imagining his girlfriend’s disappointment when she found out that he lied about backsliding into addiction. It’s a song about being dishonest with loved ones and it’s a bleak look at the demons of addiction. I chose this song today because I’m building a dark theme in November. “Interstate Love Song” is dark, but I also fondly remember the song. It’s the first rock song that I remember. When I was young rock music was never in the house, but my dad always listened to it in the garage. I couldn’t tell the difference between Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam growing up. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I knew that Stone Temple Pilots sang “Interstate Love Song.” The other hits from the album “The Big Empty” and “Vasoline” were also familiar to me. But “Interstate Love Song” is particularly nostalgic. The soundtrack of “waiting on Sunday afternoon” in the greyest late autumn or winter day in upstate New York. It’s about “rusted shame” the truck my dad would be working on, bidding six more months until its trip to the junkyard for scrap metal and getting another rustbucket to repeat the cycle. It’s a song about waiting for something more interesting to happen and then finally the lies that I told my parents to cover up my identity. 

     

  • “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron, Saturday, November 9, 2024

    “The Night We Met” ends Los Angelos-based Folk Rock band Lord Huron’s second album Strange Trails. It’s a song about love and loss with a spooky musical ambiance. The song appeared in the first season of 13 Reasons Why. The song became popular after the inclusion in the drama. The band later released a remixed version of the song as a duet with singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers. As the fall gets bleaker, this song fits nicely into my playlist for the darker season. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.



     

  • “Over My Head” (Cable Car) by The Fray, Friday, November 8, 2024


     































    Working with family can be difficult. Starting a band is like starting a business. You need to have the right people to work with to do the best at their jobs. Chemistry, mastery of an instrument, and stage presence is also important for band members. Family members as bandmates makes sense for young bands. Tim and Jonathan Foreman in Switchfoot are an example of a brotherhood creating a lasting band. There are other bands like Kings of Leon and NEEDTOBREATHE in which family is a source of strife. There are many examples of when family members don’t work out in the band, sometimes it’s clear from the early days like when the Hype’s second guitarist Dik Evans—brother of David “The Edge” Evans—was dropped by the group that became U2 and the bass player of The Fray, Caleb “Cable Car” Slade—brother of former lead singer Isaac Slade—was kicked out of the band.


    I NEVER KNEW THAT EVERYTHING WAS FALLING THROUGH. The Fray’s debut single, “Over My Head” (Cable Car), gained radio play after their song “How to Save a Life” appeared in the second season of Grey’s Anatomy. “Cable Car,” as the song was originally titled before the record label insisted on giving the song a repeated line from the chorus, peaked at number 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Lead singer Isaac Slade wrote the song about his soured relationship with his brother Caleb after the band felt that he wasn’t a good fit for the lineup. Isaac’s songwriting turned a specific situation about band and family conflict into a hit song that could apply to anyone’s situation. With musical vestiges of the ‘90s piano ballads and singer, songwriter storytelling songs, the song weaves together elements of Slade’s personal life and the geography of the band’s hometown of Denver, Colorado, into a song about division between family members. Isaac writes of his brother, “I wish you were a stranger I could disengage / To say that we agree and then never change.” While a song like “Over My Head” would have a hard time charting in 2024 due to the song’s musical structure, the theme of reconciliation after a time of division is as relevant as ever.


    EVERYONE KNOWS I’M OVER MY HEAD. The Fray released three albums after their debut, How to Save a Life, before going on hiatus in 2019 after their 2016 album Helios. The band’s second self-titled album initially sold well and produced the hit “You Found Me,” which was the band’s last top 10 Billboard Hot 100 single. Style changes in the 2010s made The Fray’s sound not commercially viable. In 2022, the band’s lead singer, Isaac Slade announced that he had left the band. On July 25th this year, the band released The Fray Is Back, an EP featuring guitarist Joe King on lead vocals. While The Fray may have not fared well in the 2010s, the band has songwriting credit on one of the biggest hits of 2016. Call it nostalgic or derivative, The Chainsmokers duet with Halsey “Closer” had an immediate familiarity. Whether it was the storytelling, the sense of place of Tuscan, Arizona, and Boulder, Colorado, or the mention of an unnamed “blink-182 song,” the simple song was about vibes and feelings in the mid-‘10s. But there was actually something else about the song that felt familiar. The Chainsmokers took inspiration from the emo band Taking Back Sunday and blink-182’s “I Miss You.” Listeners and critics noticed that “Closer” sounded like The Fray’s 2006 hit “Over My Head” (Cable Car). Rather than denying the song’s similarity, The Chainsmokers added Isaac Slade and Joe King to the songwriters. The part in question has to do with the chorus of “Closer” which is followed by an instrumental break musically identical to the chorus. The EDM hit and the piano-rock ballad share a similar sound, perhaps spiritual cousins. Whether or not “Closer” was a knock off of “Over My Head,” The Chainsmokers’ song was able to bring a ten-year-old song back into the spotlight. Time will tell when the next moment will be The Fray’s whether it’s because of their new music or a new interpolation. 


    Read the lyrics on Genius.


    Check out this episode of the Over My Head: A Look Back At Pop’s Past Podcast for a break down of the song.










  • “Lucky” by Halsey, Thursday, November 7, 2024

    In July, Halsey released the first single from her fifth studio album, The Great Impersonator, “Lucky.” The album explores the two years after the singer’s fourth album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power after Halsey the birth of her son and her diagnosis of lupus and a T-Cell disorder. With the serious health problems facing Halsey, she wanted to record what could be her last album. That album’s concept deals with the disembodiment she felt after the diagnoses and treatments. Pulling from the musical landscapes of the 1970s to the early 2000s, Halsey becomes an “impersonator” of style on her latest album. The first single, an interpolation of Britney Spears’ 2000 single by the same name, parallels the well-documented struggles of Spears with Halsey’s experience.  

    EVERYBODY GET IN LINE TO MEET THE GIRL WHO FLEW TOO HIGH. Ashley Frangipane was born in 1994, making her six years old when Brintey Spears released her second album, Oops… I Did It Again. Spears’ career has been scrutinized and criticized, often unfairly. In many ways, the singer became a template of “how to be” or “how not to be” a pop star in the new millennium. In many ways, Spears held a mirror to pop culture. In her early career, she was both the muse of aspiring youth who wanted to be the star of the show and a sex kitten for men, many of whom wanted to exploit the singer.  She was both the virginal role model with her Southern Baptist upbringing and the “Whore of Babylon” corrupting the abstinence-only sex-educated youth. In her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears writes of the pressure the public scrutiny gave her. She writes: “If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. What is that game? You’re allowed to be pretty, and cute, and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion.” Spears was talking about the downside of fame from her 2000 song “Lucky,” in which she tells the story of a girl, named Lucky, who seems to have a perfect life but feels empty when alone. 

    I SHAVED MY HEAD FOUR TIMES BECAUSE I WANTED TO. Halsey’s “Lucky” works chronologically, documenting her career struggles. She also sets up a parallel between herself and Britney Spears as many of the details could be about either pop star. Both singers struggled with negative discourse in the Internet age. Both struggled with mental and physical health in the public eye as well as body image. One of the stand-out lines in the song talks about Halsey shaving her head. The conversation about women’s hair length and color has been contentious. Recently, Garbage’s Instagram account posted a reprimand to a male fan, who stated that he “missed lead singer [Shirley Manson’s] red hair.” Manson was recovering from cancer treatment and her hair had begun to regrow naturally gray. Iconic female singers from Sinéad O’Connor to Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics have supported short haircuts, often making a statement with the style. In  Halsey’s  “Lucky,” Ashley Frangipane draws a parallel between the five times when she shaved her hair and the infamous incident when Britney Spears shaved her head in 2007. Spears’s shaved head drew conversation about the singer’s mental health. In pop cultural retrospect, media voices haven’t aged well and Spears has shared more about the stress she was under–manipulated and controlled by her father, with a threat of her children being taken away. Online comments about Halsey’s weight and her hair as a potential mental breakdown or drug addiction the singer as she was dealing with a health scare. “Lucky” there’s really a song about the meta-narrative of pop music today. To me, it seems the pop music is more conceptual today than in the past. Pop music seems to be more of a conversation now than before songs are connected to events comments the overall story of who a pop star is. But while there is conversation around songs, it’s still important for us the commentators to be respectful we have to realize that the singers are not gods they are people and they have feelings. We think that because pop stars are lucky to have fame they are not hurt by the words that we would be hurt by. I’m writing to myself right now. I have written many negative posts in the three years that I have been blogging, and I would like to treat my subjects with more respect so if I hurt any artists, I apologize and I would like to be more mindful with my words as I grow as a writer.

  • “Disease” by Lady Gaga, Wednesday, November 6, 2024

    Lady Gaga has been hyping her seventh album starting this summer with a promise that it will be “nothing like Chromatica.” After releasing the Bruno Mars duet “Die with a Smile,” L7 seemed to pick up where Joanne and A Star Is Born left off–a stripped-back organic singer-songwriter songbook. But “Die with a Smile” was a stand-alone single. To make matters even more confusing, Gaga released what she called album 6.5, called Harlequin, on September 27. The album of jazz standards was produced after Lady Gaga finished filming Joker: Folie à Deux. While critics mostly panned the jukebox musical approach to the Batman villain’s sequel, the persona of Harley Quinn impressed Gaga so much that she said after filming that she “wasn’t done with the character” of Quinn. While it’s a Lady Gaga album, it is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta’s persona Lady Gaga taking on another persona–Harley Quinn. Harlequin was not the album that Gaga’s fans were waiting for. Its quick release with limited promotion makes Harlequin a solid novelty in Lady Gaga’s discography that critics praised even when the album’s associated parent film was mostly hated.

    THERE ARE NO MORE TEARS LEFT TO CRY. While the wave of Lady Gaga’s comeback album slated for next February, began with the acoustic “Die with a Smile” and took a jazz detour, it seems that Lady Gaga’s next project is more conventional for the singer. At least from the October single that she released, “Disease.” If the song is representative of the anti-Chromatica that Gaga has promised us, we might be able to expect a dark pop club album similar to Born This Way and ARTPOP. Whereas Chromatica was a euphoric, sometimes escapist pop record, the lead single from her upcoming album is anything but escapism. While “Disease” instantly feels like a classic that could appear in Gaga’s early discography, Gaga brings a confessional nature from her singer-songwriter era. When Gaga did dark before, there was more of a social commentary. Songs like “Judas,” “Government Hooker,” and “Heavy Metal Lover” on Born This Way touched on the macabre that “Disease” evokes. Still, listeners can’t help but project the subjects on society rather than Gaga’s inner demons. The horror film/Tarintino-style music video that accompanies “Disease” feels like a companion to the video for “911,” a song on Chromatica that was possibly the most personal to Gaga as it was a reference to a “disease” that the singer suffers from. 

    I COULD BE YOUR ANTIDOTE TONIGHT. In the promotion for Chromatica’s “911,” Lady Gaga revealed her struggles with psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder. The confessional nature of Gaga’s songwriting comes after Gaga changed directions following the critically polarizing ARTPOP. In 2015, Lady Gaga released “Til It Happens to You.” The song stripped away the persona of Gaga and allowed Stefani to tell the story of her sexual abuse and rape by a music producer when she was still a teenager. The next year, she released Joanne, an album named after her aunt that also deals with family struggles. The post-album single “The Cure,” was a song about healing after Gaga delved into the heavy subject matter on her personal album. However, any mental health professional will tell you that there is no easy “cure” for past trauma and Stefani continues to deal with these themes in her music in 2024’s “Disease.” Similarly to the speaker in “The Cure,” the speaker in “Disease” offers a cure for the disease. However, unlike the 2017 single, “Disease,” is anything but optimistic. It’s dark and dirty. The music video depicts Lady Gaga as several characters tormented by other, scary versions of herself. All along, the speaker is offering the cure for the disease. It feels like a metaphor for addiction or the mental traps of depression. While, it felt like a status quo Gaga club song, on more listens, it’s more of a gothic metal song set in the trappings of a dark pop song. We’ll have to wait until February to know what the vision of L7 will be.

     

  • “Dead American” by Anberlin, Tuesday, November 5, 2024

    Some listeners have criticized Anberlin albums for sounding the same. Many of the band’s albums, especially earlier releases, follow a formula. This formula is usually a hard rock opener, a radio-friendly chorus-driven song, back to hard rock, a mellow middle album, some rockers in the center, and a lengthy closing track. While the vestiges of the formula remain throughout their discography, they began to experiment more in their later career. Anberlin’s 2012 record Vital was an update on the band’s mostly guitar-based sound as many of the songs were synth-driven. The band experimented more with Vital’s repacked album, Devotion, delving deeper into hard rock and electronic pop.

    HIDE THE DEMONS THERE UNDER YOUR DRESS. Stephen Christian said on the Your Favorite Band Podcast that Anberlin repackaged Vital as Devotion, taking the commercial failure from Universal Republic Records to Big3 Records, hoping to push the opening track, “Self-Starter” to the radio. Devotion, unlike many repackagings, could hardly be called a cash grab given the extra content the standard version of the album included, seven songs total: four b-side tracks released to iTunes (“Unstable”), Best Buy (“Said Too Much” and “No Love to Speak”), and a track only released in Australia (“Safe Here”), as well as tracks recorded for Devotion (“City Electric,” “IJSW” and today’s song, “Dead American”). The seven additional tracks heighten the extremes of Vital’s genre-bending. “Dead American,” “Said Too Much,” and “Safe Here” push a hard rock sound reminiscent of the band’s early career, the two latter with a synthesized twist, while the former is a pissed-off political song about late-form capitalism. But more interestingly in the era of Vital and Devotion is Anberlin’s shameless venture into pop music. 

    SAVED YOUR BODY BUT YOU’RE LOSING YOUR SOUL. “Dead American” was a Christian Rock radio single and the song was accompanied by a music video, though it has been uploaded through a fan account and was taken down from the band’s YouTube at some point. It’s a bit of a disturbing music video that depicts the band members fighting and killing one of the members carrying him in a rolled-up carpet to the trunk of a ‘90s Oldsmobile, Pontiac, or other General Motors clone. It’s hard to say which one was killed because all members appear in different shots in the car. Later they put on masks as if they are going to rob a bank. The video ends with the car in flames. Anberlin fans have interpreted this video as the symbolic end of the band, even a teaser for the announcement the band would make the following January. “Someone Anyone,” Vital’s lead single, failed to chart. The footage for the music video was scrapped and used for the B-side “Unstable,” making a very confusing plotline.  Marketing “Self-Starter” was cursed by the anti-rock trend on Alternative radio. For the band’s final single, they decided to do whatever they wanted to for the music video. These rough, Florida redneck music videos would be the style the band would use in their post-break-up music on videos like “Two Graves,” “Walk Alone,” and “High Stakes.” “Dead American” is a song about dreams going unrealized. It’s particularly pointed at the “dead American dream,” exported to almost every country. It’s a point when Anberlin wanted to call it quits. It seems impossible to break away from the want of money. We need it for everything and every year we need more. But at what point do we have enough? How hard should it be just to get by?