Mixtapemotions

  • “Is It Just Me?” by Sasha Alex Sloan ft. Charlie Puth, Saturday, November 5, 2022

    Regaling her listeners with a series of hot takes, Sasha Alex Sloan shows her relatable song writing on the third promotional single from her debut LP, Only Child, “Is It Just Me?” Sloan’s songwriting is never precipitous, so any backlash from a hater is calculated. In fact the premise of this song is to start a conversation. Some of Sloan’s opinions resonate with your own. Some may not. After releasing Only Child in October of 2020, Sloan released a remix of the song featuring singer-songwriter Charlie Puth. Puth said of the collaboration on Instagram: “I only sing on songs I didn’t write when I wish I wrote them. And this is a song I really wish I wrote. Excited about this one.”

    THE SHOW FRIENDS IS OVERRATED. My Seinfeld fans Facebook group would agree with this statement. Of all the tangents I could break off and address from this song, I feel it’s time to address the great ‘90s NBC TV debate. There has been contention between the fans of both shows. Seinfeld came before Friends and arguably Friends’ success is indebted to Seinfeld’s pushing the boundaries of the situation comedy. Friends is a more refined comedy with a clear plot direction and an embodiment of the American dream in the ‘90s and ‘00s: go to college, graduate, live in New York City, meet up in coffee shops. Seinfeld was far less glamorous. Jerry, George, and Kramer had nowhere near the sex appeal of Joey, Chandler, and (gulp) Ross. Writers Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld insisted that the characters not advance or even develop in a significant way—no serious relationships, no dramatic moments that would bring tears to the eyes of the viewers. Even when George gets a job working for the New York Yankees, it’s a fluke and viewers are just waiting to see when and how he’ll mess it up as he messed up with his engagement to Susan Ross. And spoiler alert, he does. Friends, however, is a show where we watch and want good things to happen to the six. Not that we don’t want the best for the Seinfeld party of four, we watch Friends and envision ourselves in our mid-twenties, graduated from college without student loans living our best lives in a spacious New York City apartment. But didn’t How I Met Your Mother do the same thing only better? Didn’t Will and Grace? Didn’t every sitcom after Friends do that? Listening to “Is It Just Me?” makes me feel not alone in my opinion that maybe others think that Friends is overrated.

    AM I JUST HIGH, OR AM I KINDA RIGHT?  Ever been with a group of people who seemed like the exact opposite of you just from the things that they love? They are talking about how great The English Patient and you fell asleep twenty minutes into the film?  In “Is It Just Me?” Sasha Alex Sloan attempts to cut through the bullshit and state her opinion. She wonders if other people feel the same way as she does or if she is aberrant in her thinking. So in the spirit of Sloan, I decided for the rest of this post to share some things that I might be alone in my thinking about, but I think they’re worth discussion:

    1. I’m Scared to admit that I don’t know a lot about the world, like what are gooseberries? You read about them in old stories. 
    2. I’m also embarrassed about when I should know something that everyone else probably knows. For example, in high school I wondered if oxen had gone extinct. Eventually I learned that there is a broad range of cattle, and there’s something about castration that makes and ox an ox.
    3. Parliament is more effective than congress because the recriminations both sides make in congress waste time rather than legislating for the people.
    4.  Congress subsidizes the lives the wealthy making the poor work for the rich, while the rich’s money works in an bank account in the Cayman Islands. 
    5. Circuit parties sound exhausting. 
    6. I’ve certainly have consciously tried to be less genteel for being perceived as effete. 
    7. I feel like my vocabulary is stunted so I try to make up for it by reading and looking up words and using them in my writing. And I realize it might seem unnatural, but it’s better to practice before I actively try to promote my blog. Maybe I’m just weird. 
    Read the lyrics on Genius.
    Charlie Puth remix:

    Official video:

     

  • “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift, Friday, November 4, 2022

    Remember what I said about Taylor Swift steering away from narcissism in folklore and evermore? Well that version of Taylor can’t come to the phone right now, at least not at Midnights, particularly the album’s lead single “Anti-Hero.” Two weeks ago Taylor Swift released her tenth studio album, Midnights to unprecedented chart and sales success. And this week, tracks from Midnights populate every spot on Billboard’s Top 10 of the Hot 100.  


    I’M THE PROBLEM, IT’S ME. I still have yet to spend a meaningful amount of time with Midnights. The little time I have spent with it made me feel a little underwhelmed after spending so much time with the lush instrumentation and lyrics on folklore. Midnights is a return to form for Taylor Swift the pop star, but as I read more about the record and spend a little more time with it, it seems to be a return to form with a new richness absent of pre-folklore  Swift. I think my initial impression is wrong, but I haven’t been listening to music enough these days to make an informed critique of Midnights. Switched on Pop’s episode on the record helped to give me a new perspective on the record, examining Taylor’s songwriting craft. Swift has talked about writing songs with different pens: a fountain pen, a quill, and a glitter gel pen. Each pen represents a different mood in which Swift writes. She says fountain pen songs are “modern, personal stories written like poetry about those moments you remember all too well where you can see, hear, and feel everything in screaming detail” and examples include “exile” and “All Too Well.” Her “quill pen songs are songs with lyrics that make you feel old fashioned,” and include songs like “my tears ricochet” and “Red.” Finally, Swift’s glitter gel pen songs “remind you not to take yourself too seriously, which is something we all need to hear these days.” Some examples include “You Belong with Me” and “You Need to Calm Down.”

    IT MUST BE EXHAUSTING ALWAYS ROOTING FOR THE ANTI-HERO. The hosts of Switched on Pop explore the idea that Swift mixes her pens on Midnights, which is a theory I’ll explore more when I get more time with music and Midnights. I can see some glitter when I listen to “Anti-Hero.” Whereas songs on folklore and evermore called on various narrators, the “Anti-Hero” in the song is Taylor Swift, being hard on herself, asking “did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism / Like some kind of politician?” Swift demonstrates self-awareness in this song that is about her celebrity status. The indulgent music video, directed by Swift, portrays the singer as both the victim in a horror film and a “monster on the hill” terrorizing all the “sexy bab[ies].” It seems that Taylor Swift is back to her old self with a bit more profanity. She’s back to Jack Antonoff ‘80s-sounding production. It’s a return to form, but I wonder what’s next for Swift. I’m going to spend a little more time with Midnights and get back to my readers.


    Music video:


    Lyric video:



     

  • “Godspeed” by Anberlin, Thursday, November 3, 2022

    Brace yourself for today’s song. On Anberlin‘s legendary third record, Cities, listeners are eased into one of Anberlin’s fastest guitar-riff heavy tracks with an atmosphere-building track (Début). The instrumental track feels like Jerry Martin‘s epic Sim City 4 score, using guitars and sampled recordings to paint a dingy, urban landscape. What Anberlin creates with their third record is a portrait of wandering anonymously through bustling but lonely metropolises. In contrast to the “thousand names” lead singer Stephen Christian talks about in “Hello Alone,” the singer talks about the theme of the album as “Man vs. Self,” and those introspective lyrics can be heard throughout the record.

    THEY LIED WHEN THEY SAID THE GOOD DIE YOUNG. But “Godspeed” isn’t so much an introverted emo track as it is a hard rock cautionary tale about rock stars who die too young, leaving their fans wrecked by the wasted potential celebrities leave behind. Stephen Christian, in particular is addressing the 27 Club, a phenomenon about artists, often of different genres, who died of drug overdoses or suicide at the age of 27. Lyrically, Christian weaves Rock ‘n’ Roll lure in every line of the first single released from Cities. The first line references “Neverland,” which could both evoke Peter Pan’s world or it could be a veiled reference to Michael Jackson‘s Neverland Ranch. Christian calls “white lines (cocaine), black tar (heroin), the matches.” The chorus is a play on Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.” Elsewhere in the song we get fleeting references to Sid and Nancy, the death of the original Rolling Stones frontman Brian Jones, whose autopsy report read “death by misadventure.” The song also makes a reference to The Velvet Underground‘s “Lexington,” a song that describes a heroin dealer, and gives us the image of the Chelsea hotel, a notorious New York City landmark where many celebrities did drugs and hooked up. While the song can come across as a little preachy, Christian has talked about struggles he had on the road in the early days of touring, and how every substance and opportunity was available to emerging rock stars and many bands would get destroyed by drugs. Whether it’s curiosity to try new things or a weak assent because of pressure to fit in, bands would get involved with drugs and often wouldn’t last a long time. 

    BAD TURNS TO WORSE AND THE WORST TURN INTO HELL. “Godspeed” is perhaps guitarist Joseph Milligan‘s finest guitar work for Anberlin. The Deluxe Edition of Cities includes a DVD “Making of” documentary, which details the band’s writing and recording process with producer Aaron Sprinkle and engineer Randy Torres. While the documentary portrays Stephen Christian as the band’s poet, almost like emo’s answer to U2‘s Bono, Milligan is portrayed as the band’s serious composer, responsible for all of the music on the record. Cities is the band’s fullest potential as a band sticking mostly to its home instruments of guitar, bass, and drums, though keys, synths, strings, and an elaborate choir do heighten these elements in various plays on the record. After Cities, Anberlin embraced more sparse instrumentation and more synths and pop recording technology, and with sparser guitar arrangements on later records, one may forget the shredding genius of “Godspeed.” Drummer Aaron Lunsford of the band As Cities Burn hosted an episode of It’s All Over Podcast about a Tooth & Nail   songwriters fantasy draft. Joined with Emery‘s Matt Carter and Devin Shelton, Carter talks about how Milligan is an underrated musical genius in the Tooth & Nail scene, calling him a “student of every Tooth & Nail era,” meaning that he can play most of the guitar riffs from every Tooth & Nail band. “Godspeed” hopes to put Anberlin in the lineage of great rock bands. Unfortunately, rock plummeted in popularity right after Anberlin scored a number one for “Feel Good Drag.” It wasn’t drugs that killed their chances, just poor timing with the record industry.



     Read the lyrics on Genius.


    Live on Craig Ferguson:

    Music video:

    Cities promo:


  • “Heading Up High" by Armin van Buuren ft. Kensington, Wednesday, November 2, 2022 (partial repost)

    Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren‘s sixth studio album Embrace was released in 2015. The album topped the Dutch charts and reached number 4 on the Billboard US Dance/ Electronica charts. “Heading Up High” was released as a single in February 2016. The song featured Dutch rock band Kensington. The band had formed in 2005 and had modest success in the Netherlands and Belgium. Like groups like A-ha, Scorpions, and Blindside, Kensington prefers to record songs in English rather than their native tongue. “Heading Up High” reached number 40 on the Dutch charts. It’s a pop song, but it also has clear rock origins. These days, EDM has mostly ignores rock, yet ‘rock bands’ such as Imagine Dragons and Coldplay have incorporated more and more electronic elements to stay relevant. The smokey, rock-vocal style of Eloi Youssef  makes for an interesting dance track along with the the synthetic sounding electric guitar. 

    WHEN YOU’RE HOLDING ONTO ALL THAT YOU CAN’T BE. “Heading Up High” was one of the songs they played at the gym I went to back in 2016. I was stressed and my body was stressed. I had turned 29 in June and by the fall, I started experiencing neck pain frequently, and I think a lot of it was from sitting much longer in the office with poor posture and stress from the worst coworker in all of my teaching years. On top of that, my boyfriend had started his military service, and I was unsure when he would have time to call or meet. After trying to manage the pain with a combination of ibuprofen and alcohol and a Thai massage by sleeping in a nice hotel for the night, I decided to give the gym a try. I went to several gyms in town, but Van Buuren Gym was the closest and the trainers were the friendliest. The membership fee seemed high, but that only caused me to be more committed to the gym. I started going three nights a week, but gradually increased to every day the gym was open. They were always closed on Sundays, which was frustrating. As I was becoming a gym bro, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was pretty scared of the machines–killing myself or throwing out my back for the rest of my life, so I played it safe. Then one of the trainers, Adam, approached me one day. 

    IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN. Adam stood in front of me in all of his muscular glory and asked me in a round-about way how I was enjoying the gym and what my goals were. I coyly mentioned health and wanting to feel better before stating that I wanted to have a good body. Then came the sales pitch: “I can help you with your goals. We have a special program at our gym where we monitor your progress and design a program for you.” It turns out that many gyms have a similar program, but it’s never advertised because personal training sessions are much more expensive and the trainer makes tons of money. YouTube videos couldn’t give me the muscle memory I needed, so I signed up and devoted even more of my paycheck to the gym. So I started spending more time at the gym. I memorized the limited playlist: Korean Hip-Hop, forgettable American pop songs, and a few rock songs like today’s song. Set after rep after set. I was fully embracing gym life and my body was looking better, and my taste in music suffered.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups, Tuesday, November 1, 2022

    Silversun Pickups came at the end of the Indie Rock revolution of the early ’00s. The bromine-colored album jacketed Swoon was a smash hit on Alternative and Active Rock stations, even gaining the band entry into the Hot 100 on the first and third singles, “Panic Switch” and “The Royal We.”  Swoon is a more refined version of the band’s debut, Carnavas, though there was a time when Silversun Pickups seemed to be a desired sound with tracks on Guitar Hero and Rock Band from both Swoon and Carnavas and a Grammy nomination for best new artist. Today, though, the band is relatively obscure, despite continuing to release music, most recently late August’s Physical Thrills. 


    HOW MANY WAYS DO YOU WANT TO DIE? Swoon starts off with the fast-tempo track “There’s No Secrets This Year” easily recalling the garage rock shoegaze of Silversun Pickups’ first record Carnavas. The track is energetic, and while the lyrics feel a little pointed, the song doesn’t have a very angry tone. The 5:33 track turns full jam session at the end of the song with a few bars of “wall of sound” until the song ends, drums and bass stopping and guitar fading out. Yet, the track isn’t over. After the guitar fades, a pad lays down a chord while the electric guitar returns, gentler. Singer Brian Aubert returns to the track, this time with almost threatening lyrics: “You better make sure you’re looking closely.” An organ synth plays before Aubert clarifies, “Before you fall into your swoon.” This outro for “There’s No Secrets This Year” links the following track, “The Royal We,” creating cohesion. “The Royal We” takes Silversun Pickups out of the garage and add a level of urgency by adding a 16-piece orchestra. The strings punctuate Aubert’s lyrics, heightening the themes of the song and making it sound, for lack of a better word, royal.  

    TO FEEL SAFE AGAIN, LOOK OVER YOUR SHOULDER. “We are not amused,” Queen Victoria famously said. Pluralis majestatis, or the royal ‘we’ has been in use since the 12th century, meaning God and I, and used as a justification for divine right of kings. But who is we in this song? The verses are told in the first person plural: “We are armed up to the teeth” and “We can laugh about it now.” And by the end of the song, a death note is signed “Love, the Royal We.” There are several interpretations floating around the internet about this song. Perhaps it’s about a fascist politician coming to the fore. Maybe, like “Panic Switch” it’s about Fight Club–esque hallucinations telling you it’s time to cut down on the coffee. Many commenters see drug addiction references, particularly heroin. But whatever Aubert is singing about, the song has a paranoid tone. It’s clear that the speaker of the chorus (and possibly the one that is part of the royal we) is not a stable narrator. “The Royal We” is perhaps about a bad trip in which all the kings horse and all the king men come to make war with their political enemies. Drugs often cause paranoia, which can fuel the conspiracy theorists. I think about what my coworker’s adages, “Paranoia is just the ability to make connections.” Whether those connections are coincidental or planned is another conversation all together. But until then avoid conversations with the courtiers. 

    Artist commentary:


    Music video: 


     

  • "If U Love Me Now" by MUNA, Monday, October 31, 2022 (updated repost) Trigger Warning: Suicide

     

    Muna‘s 2017 record About U takes listeners on a rollercoaster of emotion. Unlike their 2019 Saves the World record, About U focuses on the positive and negative of being in love and breaking up. About U doesn’t enjoy the near-universal acclaim that their follow-up has, but the album helped to establish the three-piece band of queer musicians on the scene of Alternative dark synth-pop. Today the sadness, desperation, and loneliness of “If U Love Me Now” resonated with the sadness felt by the nation of South Korea after the tragic events of Saturday night in which at least 153 people lost their lives, crushed in a stampede during Halloween festivities. While today’s song doesn’t deal with the topic of tragedy, it is a very sad song, so I think it reflects my feelings about an otherwise beautiful Halloween day.


    IT’S JUST A HYPOTHESIS I TEST. “If U Love Me Now” explores the theme of mental illness and suicide. The singer explores options before telling someone that that person should “just let [her] leave.” A large proportion of the LGBTQ+ community struggles with thoughts of suicide. When singer Katie Gavin sings on this melancholy track, her voice sounds weak and wounded, as if the singer of this song has resigned after her last hope has been dashed. The feeling in this song isn’t exclusive to queer life and certainly could be cried over by anyone of any sexuality; however, there’s a special level of connection this song can have with queer angst. Many have grown up around religions that condemn our sexualities, and this causes us to feel alienated from our loved ones and, more scarily, from God. Others grow up in supporting families but struggle with society’s acceptance of us. Sometimes societal pressure causes queer people to feel that they need to hit the same milestones at the same time as straights in society. Other times, queer people struggle to get on the same page with other queer people who are also struggling with religious or societal expectations and one partner’s struggle drags the other into it. We all want to be the subject of a single-layered love song, but in reality, we don’t want to listen to that kind of song. 

    I COULD BIDE MY TIME HOPING I FIX IT. Yesterday President Yoon Suk-yeol (윤석열) declared a national mourning period for South Korea until November 5th. Still, many of the details about what started the stampede are unknown. But judging from the pictures from Saturday night when ten times the expected cliental showed up, music blared in the alleyway, and people became trapped in the maze-like old buildings blocking in partiers, I wonder why this hasn’t happened before as Itaewon has been a party hub for a while. But with thousands of people descending upon the street, the smallest movement which would be anodyne on a normal day could cause panic in the streets when others are so close that you are practically wearing them as clothes. Just a senseless tragedy that killed mostly younger people–teens and twenties–and yet it makes many of us feel a deep grief as Itaewon is a place many Koreans and foreign nationals feel as a safe place. Okay, many will say that there’s a lot of drunken incidents in Itaewon, and it’s where foreign nationals often misbehave in Korea–the media is littered with examples of this. But Itaewon is a place where, at least during the day, everyone plays nice. And at night it’s one of the few places where the LGBTQ+ community can meet up in Korea. As an American who knows that you have to put your guard up in big cities, Itaewon always felt just a little dangerous, like you could get into trouble, but only if you were seeking it out. You can mostly avoid the sleazy parts or the loud drunken parts and gravitate toward your scene, whether that was International Food Street, Homo or Hooker Hill. I feel bad for all those who came to celebrate Halloween thinking that they had a safe place to enjoy a night out after Covid restrictions had kept everyone at home for so long. I wish their families peace as they grieve.

    Read “If U Love Me Now” by MUNA on Genius.

  • “First Time Caller” by White Lies, Sunday, October 30, 2022

    Big TV is White Lie’s first concept record. Every song on the record is part of a story in which a woman in the U.K. decides that her current relationship is not fulfilling, so she decides to wander around Europe in order to find herself. The fourth track, after the instrumental “Space i,” helps to begin this journey. Whereas “Big TV” was the story’s status quo, “There Goes Our Love Again” was the rising action in which the female protagonist wanders away from stability into something more adventurous, leaving her stable partner, and finding a life of her own.

    WE GO LIVE IN A HEARTBEAT. I remember radio call in shows. If you were the 20th caller or something like that, if you could answer the trivia question, you could win tickets to a concert, go on an all-expense-paid trip to Disney world, or $1000. The pop radio station out of Charlotte was giving away money as they always did, but suddenly my mom tuned in and started trying to call. It was like bizarro world. One of the church members was a frequent listener to the KISS radio station and I guess she had told my mom about the contest. So she enlisted us to listen and call in. While waiting for the call-in opportunities, my mom complained about the worldly music—the hip-hop, the muddled lyrics, the sexual lyrics if she happened to catch the lyrics. Of course we didn’t win. We didn’t even get ahold of the station, just a busy signal. It turns out that people buy special phone dialing computers to jump in front of all the rest of us who have to physically press buttons. So I’ve never won a radio contest and never dedicated a love song to someone while listening to Delilah, but my sister did get her voice message on TVU’s Ten Most Wanted.

    I WANT YOU TO LOVE ME MORE THAN I LOVE YOU. How much the music world has changed since I grew up stuck in the car with the staticky light rock radio stations playing either John Tesh or Delilah. In between ‘80s soft rock, Tesh read knowledge now easily found in a Buzzfeed article or Delilah would feature callers confessing their love with a cheesy song. When I first heard these radio shows, I thought Delilah was a local DJ. She even announced at the top of the hour, “You’re listening to Light 10x.x Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson.” But when we traveled to another part of the country, Delilah was also dreamily reading her script. I imagine her either enjoying a bottle of wine or a joint, which keeps her chiller than chill. The station fades out and we plead with mom to change the station. She acquiesces only to find another station playing the same songs with a different DJ.

  • “I am not a woman, I’m a god” by Halsey, Saturday, October 29, 2022

     

    Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, or Halsey, released If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power in 2021, recording with Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The production leans into Nine Inch Nails’ industrial sound, making Halsey both a rocker and a dark pop artist on her latest album. The emotions are high in the singer’s latest record; Halsey called the album “a concept record about the horrors of pregnancy and childbirth.” 

    EVERY MORNING GOT A HOLLOW WHERE MY HEART GOES. The album’s cover features Halsey sitting on a throne with a bare breast exposed and holding a baby, inspired by various artistic depictions of the Madonna and Child, Mary and the Christ child, a kind of crèche scene, though the focus seems completely on the “god” herself, not the child. Some of the themes on the record deal with the singer’s bisexuality and non-binary gender identity. As of last March, Halsey claims both “she/her” and “they/them” pronouns. Wrapped into the fabric of Halsey’s music is also the singer’s struggles with being bipolar. “I am not a woman, I’m a god” is a song that explores several thematic dichotomies: love from others vs. love from self, love vs. vengeance, self-doubt vs. arrogance, and of course, humanity vs. divinity. The album’s first single makes a claim of arrogance, but quickly undermines its message, at least in a Judeo-Christian understanding of a god. Instead, we’re left with a flawed matriarchal goddess with prolactin hormones pulsing through her body and who will not accept anything less than pure worship. If she doesn’t receive it, that person is dead to her.
    SO KEEP YOUR HEART ‘CAUSE I ALREADY GOT ONE. The almost hip-hop claim to be “a god,” in truth, troubles me because of my Christian upbringing. One of the first things we learned in Sabbath School was memorizing the Ten Commandments, and you don’t have to get very far to realize the claims of this song. As I read the Old Testament, I always wondered why the Israelites always wound up worshiping other gods. Did they actually see results from their religious infidelity? I didn’t even know that there were people who weren’t Christian when I was really young, so I thought that worshipping something else other than an all-knowing, all-present god was kind of dumb. But then later we were taught about how worship is really just devotion to something and that’s why we shouldn’t get too attached to worldly things. I’m sure there were a few jabs at American Idol, though I can’t remember. I do remember talking about idols like loving your car too much or why we shouldn’t get too much into a certain Christian Rock band because those things can become your idols. Years later, I was disturbed (and a little intrigued) to find out that there were sexual fetishes like “foot worship” and “muscle worship.” In an episode of Song Exploder Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons says that he “worships” his now ex-wife. I guess I have more of an issue with “worship” as a Christian humanist, in which I believe all people are equal, and if there is a God he (she, they, it, etc.) is above us. But I know that this is a weak argument.

  • “Boston" by Augustana, Friday, October 28, 2022 (repost)

    In Season One of The Big Bang Theory,  Leonard is moping after his love interest, Penny, starts seeing another man. He comes into the apartment singing Augustana‘s  “Boston,” quite horribly. “Boston” is Augustana’s biggest hit. It placed on the Billboard Hot 100, it was a Top 40 hit, and a top 10 Adult (light rock) hit. The band formed at Greenville University, a conservative Christian college where Jars of Clay formed before them and Paper Route after them. While the two other bands were comfortable with the Christian circuit, Augustana’s lead singer, Dan Layus, talks about breaking free from the strict rules of Christian college and choosing not to be a Christian band. 

    BOSTON, WHERE NO ONE KNOWS MY NAME. “Boston” is not only a breakup with a lover, but a place too. If you’ve never moved to a city where no one knows you, it’s freeing. You possess the ability to rebuild your reputation and become whomever you want to be. I’ve done this several times in my life, sometimes by choice and sometimes out of circumstance. When my family moved to North Carolina in 1998, my parents only knew one family there. They ended up moving a year later. My mom was tired of the New York weather and she wanted to be closer to her family in Florida. So we moved between the two sides of my family. Then there was high school. My parents wanted my sister and I to go to a Christian school, but they chose one outside of our denomination because it was much cheaper. Then it was time for college. I decided to go to a Seventh-day Adventist university in Tennessee where I only had a few acquaintances. And then there was Korea. But in all of this moving to a city where no one knows my name, I was still stuck in the rut of the person I thought I should be.

    I’LL GET OUT OF CALIFORNIA, I’M TIRED OF THE WEATHER. This line struck me today. No one moves to the Northeast for the weather. My family moved away from it. In music and literature, California often symbolizes the land of Canaan for humanity. Going to California means you’ve made it or are closer to making it. You have shed off the Puritan ways of the East Coast. Yet this song shows and interesting regression, as if to says, I’ve had all of the new and it’s left me empty. I’m going back to enjoy the tradition of a city that used bricks and cobblestone rather than asphalt. This image is especially strong today because, as the new school year has started, new students always ask where I’m from. I have to educate them about American geography. Before I tell my students where I am from, I ask if any students have been to America and where they visited. From there, I’m able to compare what places look like. Certainly the feeling of Boston is a stark contrast from California. LA feels different from San Francisco. Florida is different from North Carolina. Place matters, and if you have a choice, it’s important to find the right city for you.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

     


  • "Through Glass" by Stone Sour, Thursday, October 27, 2022

    Heavy metal music is quite scary to many people even without the visuals. But add the visuals and the backstory along with titles like “Raining Blood,” you’ve got a genre of music that’s pretty great for Halloween. But then you add the macabre images of  classic acts like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne or Nu Metal giants like Rammstein or Rob Zombie, metal is horrifying. Stone Sour isn’t a shock metal group, but cofounder and lead singer Corey Taylor left the band in 1997 to replace Slipknot‘s original frontman, and became known for an outrageous, downright brutal stage image. 

    DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH TIME HAS PAST. In 2000, Stone Sour reunited, and Corey Taylor fronted both Stone Sour and Slipknot concurrently. While Slipknot released some of their heaviest music, Stone Sour had radio rock singles. The band released their debut self-titled album in 2002 with the single “Bother,” which was on the Spider-Man soundtrack, though Corey Taylor was the credited artist on the soundtrack. In 2006, Stone Sour released their sophomore record, Come What(ever) May.  Like the band’s first record, Come What(ever) May was a hard rock/ alternative metal album, featuring baleful bass-lines, gravel vocals, and angry explicit lyrics. But there were some quieter, albeit moody moments on the band’s sophomore record. “Sillyworld” is a sardonic acoustic-driven, politically-motivated track that earned the band a number 2 hit on the Rock charts. The final track, “Zzyzx Rd.” is a love song to Taylor’s wife and mentions overcoming addiction and getting out of a place of depression. But track 8, “Through Glass,” is Stone Sour’s biggest hit, reaching number 1 on the rock charts. The acoustic rock track is unlike anything else on the record, and because of this song that I had heard on the radio, I checked out the brutal rest of the record. 


    IT’S THE STARS THAT LIE TO YOU. Corey Taylor wrote “Through Glass” when he was in Sweden. More specifically, he wrote the song about his thoughts when he experienced an inability to change the European MTV station because he was suffering from food poisoning. Taylor told The Gauntlet:

            I was sitting in a European hotel room watching a music video channel, seeing act
            after act after act of this insane, innocuous, plastic music. They were plastic,
            bubbly, gossamer-thin groups where it was really more about the clothes they
            wore and the length of their cheekbones than it was about the content of the song
            they were singing. It really made me mad. I was like, “Is this it? Have we just gone
            full circle? Did the singer/songwriter revolution never happen? Is it just the same
            drivel from the same replicate over and over again?
    The video also takes a jab at big music production, showing how artificial modern music has become. Taylor suggests that the music industry has just become cameras and props, all of which disappear after reporters leave. I doubt that Taylor would have positive things to say about the state of pop music in 2022, but thanks to streaming platforms, music is more individualized to the listener’s particular tastes today. There are many artists who are taking back the reins, though the music industry has cut costs as new music doesn’t make much money. But does artists driving their own sound make music more authentic? Or are artists just chasing algorithms?