Mixtapemotions

  • "Skywriter" by Copeland ft. Young Summer, Monday, May 9, 2022

    On Valentine’s Day 2019 Copeland dropped their latest record, Blushing. Following up 2014’s Ixora and 2015’s Ixora Twin record the band built anticipation from their small but powerful fanbase over their 4+ year absence. Like Copeland’s albums since You Are My Sunshine, Blushing was released on Tooth & Nail Records and received the promotions of a major Tooth & Nail release including podcast appearances by lead singer Aaron Marsh on the Tooth & Nail podcast Labeled:The Stories, Rumors, & Legends of Tooth & Nail Records and ads on the BadChristian Podcast, where the host said that Copeland’s music was like “ear candy.”

    BRIGHT WHITE PUFFS ON THE BLUEST PAGES. But Blushing was an entirely different Copeland experience, at least for me. Today is probably the fourth or fifth attempt I’ve made to listen to and just enjoy this record. In the Labeled episode, Marsh talks about how he had a some mental health issues between Ixora and Blushing that he deals with in the lyrics of Blushing. The lead single, “Pope,” is a love song from the perspective of a mentally ill man–Marsh clarifies that this man is not the lead singer of Copeland but a fictitious character–who falls in love with a girl and begs her to stay with him until he “can prove that the world is not real.” Other songs are drenched in sadness and sorrow, painting a hopeless picture for love. Compared to the emotionally stable tracks on Ixora and You Are My Sunshine, Blushing was not what listeners were expecting, especially on a Valentine’s Day. The morose tone of the album compete’s with 2006’s Eat, Sleep, Repeat but lacks the uplifting Burt Bacharach-styled middled tracks to lighten the mood. Besides “Pope,” Blushing’s singles offered a ray of hope of classic-Copeland love songs. “Lay Here” pleads for a lover to stay in bed, forgetting the world outside, and “Night Figures” without the context of the album sounds playful and imaginative, but songs like “Colorless,” “On Your Worst Day,” “Strange Flower,” and today’s song “Skywriter” give Blushing a weight heavier than any other Copeland record. And I must say, it’s not an easy listen.
    DO I COME OFF CRAZY? “Skywriter” is a rare Copeland song to feature a credited guest, in this case Young Summer. Like Fleurie, Young Summer is a Nashville-based Indie Pop Singer-Songwriter also featured singing a cover (Franz Ferdinand‘s “Take Me Out“) on the Looking for Alaska soundtrack. Today’s song talks about a man who flies an airplane to write in the sky how he feels about the girl he loves. If you ever saw an airplane writing a message in the sky, it looks effortless; however, the song talks about how difficult the task is. It may seem effortless to those on the ground, but the pilot is struggling to write his message. He’s calculated the locations to release the exhaust. But the metaphor of the song is existential. The message disappears, fading into the sky. The artist’s work is temporary, lasting only in videos, photographs, or the memories of those who experienced the wonder up above. Weather conditions must be perfect and the sky must be clear in order for him to spread his message. But to all of this, Marsh echoes the book of Ecclesiastes, asking “what’s the point” if it all just fades away? “What’s the point of searching if I just end up lost?” Blushing isn’t a casual listen. You have to commit to it. I’m still waiting for it to strike me.

    Live performances:

  • “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve, Sunday, May 8, 2022

    The synth intro to A-ha’s “Take on Me” is probably more encompassing of a decade than the intro of today’s song, but The Verve’s “Bittersweet Sympathy” also has one of the most iconic intros of the ‘90s. But it’s that symphonic riff on the band’s signature song arguably created more trouble than it was worth for the band. The band formed in 1990, experimented with drugs and musical styles before their breakthrough 1997 release of Urban Hymns.

    I’VE NEVER PRAYED, BUT TONIGHT I’M ON MY KNEES. The YouTube channel Middle 8 (see below) tells the story about the musical plagiarism scandal behind The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony.” The highlights of the scandal include sampling a few bars from an orchestral arrangement of The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time”(see below), The Stones’ litigious manager Allen Klein suing for him to get the entirety of the royalties from “Bittersweet,” despite the fact that The Stone had no part in the composition of the orchestral cover, and finally Mick Jagger and Keith Richards settling with The Verve’s lead singer, Richard Ashcroft, granting him royalties starting in 2019. Sampling in music happens all the time and there are constantly lawsuits alleging musical plagiarism, recently Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran have been in court. Led Zeppelin just won a lawsuit that had been ongoing for decades regarding the originality of the guitar on “Stairway to Heaven.” But any Rick Beato on YouTube could tell you the bands with the best lawyers, as many of his videos have been blocked for using samples of  famous sounds for educational purposes. While I do believe in copyright and that the right people should get paid, the case of The Verve makes me question if I’m doing everything in my power to follow the law? Furthermore, what if I monetized my blog? Would I need to hire a lawyer? Reviewing requires source material, pictures, etc.

    I’M A MILLION DIFFERENT PEOPLE FROM ONE DAY TO THE NEXT. “Bittersweet Symphony” was a massive hit just before I started listening to the radio. I heard the song on the fuzzy Adult Alternative station or during non-peak hours on the pop stations. As I’ve talked about with my early relationship with Rock music,  especially secular music, I had to listen in my room with the door closed. At first I had to hide the music I liked from my mom, but she grew more tolerance towards my sister and I listening to music as long as she didn’t have to hear it. But as I got older, my mom started listening to Coldplay and then discover The Verve on Pandora. I came back from college and Urban Hymns was constantly on in the car. I remember when I was about thirteen asking my friend’s mom why moms stop listening to new music. My mom’s friend said that after pregnancy and raising a baby, there’s no time for new music. And by the time the kids are grown up, the music sounds so different. While The Verve certainly isn’t new music, their sound was just familiar enough for my mom when the kids were all grown up. And while I don’t have anything separating me from the music is fun “kids these days,” I’m still miss and think that the music I listened to growing up was better than most of what’s popular today. In a round about way, today’s post is a big thank you to my mom and all moms who have put their own musical tastes on hold to listen to Sesame Street songs. I wasn’t appreciative at the time, but thank you.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.



    “Did The Verve Steal ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’” by Middle 8:


  • “Wildest Dreams” (Taylor’s Version), Saturday, May 7, 2022


    Last summer, Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” started trending on TikTok. Of course this was in the middle of Swift’s massive project to release re-recordings of her studio records due to her inability to buy the rights to her original recordings. In the spring of last year, she released a massive re-recording of Fearless, the album that propelled the then teen singer to being one of the biggest internationally-recognized music stars. Responding to the TikTok trend, Swift posted her own take on it with the re-recorded version, despite the fact that the singer had stated that she would release her version of Red, 1989’s predecessor and the album that transitioned the singer’s style from Country to Pop, before any of her versions of songs from 1989 would be released. Fans hoped that Taylor’s version of 1989 was on the way, but in November of last year, Swift released a 31-track version of Red. Fans certainly weren’t disappointed as Taylor’s 10-minute Version of “All Too Well” went straight to number one on the Billboard charts, breaking the record for the longest number one song, a record originally held by Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Of the records that Swift still has to release, 1989 is certainly the most anticipated. Taylor Swift’s year so far has been quiet. But the year is still young.


    SAY YOU’LL REMEMBER ME. But yesterday Swift raised hope for all of her fans of her 2014 record. She released a new version of the non-single track “This Love,” releasing it as a single single with last year’s version of “Wildest Dreams” as a B-side. Could we be getting Taylor’s Version of 1989 next? I have an unpopular opinion: I think that Swift will release 1989 last. I think this for the reason that 1) 1989 is a fan and non-fan favorite and 2) she is strategically bread-crumbing fans and casual listeners through a new string of hits. These hits are not the hits from the album but inner tracks, remixes, B-sides and songs that have been sealed in Taylor’s vault. Of the albums that we still have to hear, I think it will be interesting to see how Swift will reinterpret the immature songs on her eponymous debut and on Speak Now. What wisdom will early 30s Swift give her teenage and early-twenties self? I’m also interested to see how she interprets what many call her worst album, Reputation. Will she musically reinterpret the gimmicky EDM songs? How will she deal with the time that she was so self-absorbed, a time that the singer talks about hating in her documentary Miss Americana.

    HIS CLOTHES ARE IN MY ROOM. “Wildest Dreams” wasn’t immediately a standout track from 1989, particularly on a Max Martin/Shellback-produced album calculated for the maximum amount of bangers. But just as a good perfume has three notes—top, middle, and base—Taylor Swift’s 2014 record has immediate catchiness and a lingering effect. More specifically, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been humming both songs “Wildest Dreams” and “This Love” for years without actually identifying them as Taylor Swift songs. You know when you’re walking and you get an ear worm from out of nowhere and you might even thing it’s an original melody? That’s what some Taylor Swift songs do. Another thing that makes “Wildest Dreams” familiar is that it sounds similar to Lana Del Rey’s 2012 song “Without You” from Born to Die.  Songs like “Wildest Dreams” introduce more sexual innuendo than her previous work, and 1989 and Reputation seem to have some similar influences with Lana Del Rey’s earlier work.   I’m interested in reading more about Kutter Callaway’s theory about Taylor Swift’s music’s influence on evangelicals and non-evangelicals in America. In a way, 1989 is the album that Taylor Swift declared that she was an adult and that she was more in charge of her destiny. I just wonder what effect this newly grown-up Taylor had on her  fans who were raised more conservatively? Personally being two and a half years older than Swift and raised in a conservative context, it was just prior to 1989’s release that I started taking charge of my destiny outside of my conservative context. My wildest dreams were no longer so far off.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.
    Original video:

    Taylor’s version:

     

  • “Take on Me” by A-ha, Friday, April 6, 2022

    The music, the legend, the meme. Today we take on A-ha’s 1985 summer classic, “Take on Me.”A-ha is a Norwegian band. Their dream was to get famous in the UK before sweeping the world. To do this, like other European bands and musicians, the band decided to record all of their songs in English. However, getting a massive hit like “Take on Me” took persistent marketing. The song went to #3 in Norway before the band re-recorded it and released the single internationally. But the band’s iconic music video is the reason the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and went to #1 in 12 other countries.


    TODAY’S ANOTHER DAY TO FIND YOU. The guitar riff on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is perhaps a close second to the synth and drum opening of “Take on Me” for emerging the listener in the ‘80s. What I didn’t realize today when I was enjoying this song is how young the band was. I often think of bands that existed before my time as being forever old. And with today’s song’s heyday two years before my birth, I had some idea that the boys in A-ha were just a bunch of proper Europeans who played music to be enjoyed in the grocery store and influenced The Weeknd. “Take on Me,” though, was the band’s first hit, whereas I had assumed that the band had tried to make it years before in Norway. The original hit lacks the production that producer Alan Tarney brought to the single that would become the international hit. The original music video could be described as a typical cheesy ‘80s video, the band giving off a youthful, subtle sexuality with lead singer Morten Harket in ripped jeans and a ripped shirt. So many of the ‘80s classics have a “so bad, it’s good” music video. However, the band’s re-shot music video, directed by Steve Barron, sets A-ha apart from the cringy days of MTV and puts them on the same level s Michael Jackson.

    I’LL BE STUMBLING AWAY. Years ago, I was surprised to find out that A-ha had a large discography. On an episode of Hit Parade, host Chris Molanphy explained the debate as to whether or not A-ha can be classified as a one-hit-wonder. The band had other singles released in the US, but few remember them and they don’t receive much radio play on Classic Rock or Oldies stations. But in their large discography, besides the first track on their debut record Hunting High and Low, was their 2005 record Analogue. I was impressed with how the band could continue to reinvent themselves and make music that sounded modern and relevant without being gimmicky. Back in 1985, though, I realized today that “Take on Me” is practically teen pop. The synth-wave in 1985 was cool when everyone was doing it, whether New Wave-post punkers to Wham! Even Bruce Springsteen’s music started to incorporate synths. But A-ha certainly fits in with teen pop. A-ha certainly had their 15 minutes of fame, and the trio seems to appreciate that their music got as far as it did. There’s a three-part video series I watched on YouTube to get much of the information for this post. I was impressed by how young the band still looks considering that this song was released thirty-eight years ago. Maybe because the band wasn’t huge for a long time preserved the members from a prolonged rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Maybe it’s those good Norwegian genes. But either way, don’t let “Take on Me” be the only A-ha song stuck in your head. It’s an excellent song, but they have others!

    Read “Take on Me” on Genius.

  • "Waiting for the End" by Linkin Park + AAPI Heritage Month Playlist, Thursday, May 5, 2022

    Linkin Park‘s fourth studio album, A Thousand Suns underperformed compared to the band’s massive first three albums. The album produced two singles, “The Catalyst” and today’s song, “Waiting for the End,” but ultimately listeners didn’t like the album as most of the songs were not catchy. I always want to dig deeper into this album and its themes, but today, I wanted to introduce my AAPI Heritage Playlist, so I chose the most pop-oriented song on A Thousand Suns. If you want more information on the music theory behind this album, I’ll link to The Discographers, an excellent podcast that explores the discography of Linkin Park in one of their seasons. 


    MY MOUTH KEPT MOVING AND MY MIND WENT DEAD.  May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the United States, and I wanted to make a playlist that recognized some of the amazing talent by AAPI musicians. As with my other lists, I realize that making lists like this can be problematic. How do you determine what fits and what doesn’t? All I can offer is a humble apology if this list offends, and I’m here to listen to the debate. I’ve gone through several iterations of this list and may continue to edit it throughout the month. I cut the list at 31 songs with (technically) one song per artist. I gave preference to songs I blogged about; however, I wanted to highlight American artists because it’s an American observance. I also decided to highlight bands that feature musicians of Asian heritage rather than every member having to be of Asian decent. Here’s the playlist:
    1. “Waiting for the End” by Linkin Park. Today’s song features co-lead vocalist Mike Shinoda and DJ Joe Hahn who also directed the music video for “Waiting for the End.” Shinoda is half-Japanese and Hahn is a second generation Korean American. Linkin Park helped to create a vision of what diversity could look like in rock music.
    2. “Cake by the Ocean” by DNCE. The band features Korean-born guitarist JinJoo Lee who was also the touring guitarist for Jordin Sparks.

    3. “Awakening” by Switchfoot. Since The Beautiful Letdown, former Fold Zandura and Mortal frontman Jerome Fontamillas has been an integral part of the band. 

    4. “Blinding Lights” by Kurt Hugo Schneider ft. Sam Tsui. Tsui is featured three times on this playlist, once as the leading artist and twice as a featured artist. The singer-songwriter was born to a Cantonese father from Hong Kong and a white mother.
    5. “Rocketeer” by Far East Movement ft. Ryan Tedder. Far East Movement was the first Asian American group to top the Billboard Hot 100 with the song “Like a G6.”


    6. “Butter” by BTS. Not American, but this song topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
    7. “Cherry Blossom Ending” by Busker Busker. American drummer Brad Moore joined this band.
    8. “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo. Rodrigo is half Filipina.  
    9. “Rings & Roses” by Dabin ft. Conor Bryne. Dabin is an Asian Canadian DJ who now resides in Colorado.
    10. “Honestly” by Eric Nam
    11. ” My Universe” by Coldplay ft. BTS
    12. ” Impatience” by Sam Tsui

    13. “Into the New World” by Girls’ Generation. Sunny and Tiffany are Korean Americans who joined the massive girl group.

    14. “On Giant’s Shoulders” by Future of Forestry

    15. “Me to You” by Tim Be Told
    16. “So Sick” by Max ft. Sam Tsui (Producer: Kurt Hugo Schneider)
    17. “Put Me Back Together” by Ivory Circle ft. Aaron Marsh. Lead singer Connie Hong has such a powerful voice. I really want to hear more from this band.

    18. “Type Three” by Anberlin (Live in Williamsburg) ft. Daniel Chae from Monsters Calling Home/ Run River North. In 2012, Anberlin embarked on their first summer acoustic tour with Korean-American Folk band Monsters Calling Home (later Run River North) opening. Daniel performs violin on this incredible live version of “Type Three.”
    19. “Way Back Home” by Shaun ft. Conor Maynard. 

    21. “My Bad” Advanced ft. Julie Bergan, Shaun
    22. “Git it Up!” by H.O.T.
    23. “Bike” by ADOY
    24. “View” by SHINee
    25. “Addict” by Sik-K
    27. “1979” by The Smashing Pumpkins. It may be hard for some to get past lead singer Billy Corgan‘s voice, but second generation Japanese American James Iha helped to make the band one of the staples in ’90s shoegazer music. 

    28. “Black Honey” by Thrice. Founded by Dustin Kensrue and Teppei Teranishi, Thrice has undergone several line up changes, but the two have worked together since the beginning. This song begins a set of political songs.
    29. “Hourglass” by A Perfect Circle. This supergroup features Tool’s Maynard James and The Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha.
    30. “B.Y.O.B.” by System of a Down
    31. “Racist, Sexist Boy” by The Linda Lindas.



    Live Performance: 

  • "Lightsaber" by EXO, Wednesday, May 4, 2022 (Re-post celebrating International Star Wars Day)

    As a promotion for the first Star Wars film in ten years, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Disney collaborated with South Korean boy band EXO to record a track called “Lightsaber” in three languages, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. The multi-national boy band, signed to South Korea’s biggest record label, had become a worldwide phenomenon in the 2010s, thanks to strategic marketing in South Korea and China. In 2015, at the time of the song’s release, EXO was the biggest K-pop group. “Lightsaber” was released as a bonus track on the group’s fourth EP, Sing for Me, recorded in both Korean and Mandarin. The EP was their fastest selling record at the time.

    I WANDERED HERE TO YOUR OUTREACHED HAND. I have an unpopular opinion. I don’t care for Star Wars. Perhaps it’s due to my religious upbringing. There was a book in my house when I was growing up about all the ways that the New Age and occult were imposing their way into the American family. Some examples were movies my family had watched—E.T., Back to the Future—but the examples from Star Wars were particularly damning: Jedis using the force and all the customs of the people living “long, long ago in a galaxy far away.” By the time I was old enough to watch the series at a sleep over just after Episode 1 came to DVD,  the magic was kind of lost on me. And there is another fact I haven’t revealed up until this point. What I had been allowed to watch, just because my childhood best friend was obsessed with it, was Star Trek: The Next Generation. I ran around in the woods pretending to be on an away mission, pressing a pin on my chest, waiting for Jordy to beam us back. The boxy family Chevy Astro became a shuttle, firing photon torpedos at Cardassians. Somehow young Anakin and Jar Jar Binks in my preteens didn’t make me want to watch the originals. And when I did, it was kind of like when Stella watched it on How I Met Your Mother. I’m definitely not being fair to what some call the crowning gem in all of cinema, but just like some listeners will never understand the merits of South Korean boy bands, I will probably never become a Star Wars fan.

    FOLLOW THE BRIGHT LIGHT STRETCHING FAR AHEAD. After Disney bought Lucas Films, the company threw money into the George Lucas’s created universe. The company also vamped up production on films and television faster than the speed of a meticulous director. No longer did theatergoers have to wait three years between Star Wars installments, Disney promised something Star Wars by Christmas, yearly. And with Star Wars films, merchandise was bound to make the franchise even more lucrative. The Korean pop group EXO was an excellent choice not only for their mass appeal, but thematically, the group has explored space in their music. The group is even called EXO, which is short for Exoplanet. The hyped up production, vocal work of the group’s 10 vocalists and that fast rap part, are infectious. Like many K-pop songs, it may start as a guilty pleasure and with repeated listening it may attach to the listener’s experience with Star Wars. But for me, as a non-fan of Star Wars and a K-pop listener just because it’s what you hear in Korea, I must say that K-pop can grow on you. Maybe Star Wars can too?
    Korean M/V:

    Chinese M/V:

    Japanese M/V:

    Live Performance: 

     

  • “All I Have” by Until June, Tuesday, May 3, 2022 (partial repost)

    The falsetto sounds of vocalist Josh Ballard‘s voice may not be to everyone’s liking. But back in 2007 when Until June released their debut album, singing high was the way to make it in the indie scene. Until June’s self-titled debut is full of soaring melodies both on the guitar and in Ballard’s vocals. The band’s name makes me listen to them mostly in late spring to early fall. Though hailing from Arizona, this album makes me think of an early summer trips I took up to Michigan back in 2008. The cool and breezy guitars remind me of the cool nights when walking around the lakes and ponds in a northern early summer.

    SO I TRIED. The last of my high school friends graduated high school in 2008, two years after I graduated. After the ceremony we met at the only coffee house in Mern. Sasha, who had just graduated, said, “I’ve got this wild idea. Let’s drive all night and crash Shannon’s graduation party tomorrow afternoon.” Shannon and her family had moved to Michigan two years ago, and Shannon and Sasha had been best friends since elementary school. It was about 7 p.m. Friday night. Being young and no work commitments until Monday morning, I was in for the adventure. We started asking other friends and got together a motley crew who helped to pitch in for gas, which was no small fee, as gas soared to the highest it had ever been that Memorial Day Weekend, $4+ a gallon with the price being higher up north. The trip to Southern Michigan would take about 12 hours. After getting practically drunk on espresso (5 shots, I think), by 10 p.m. we were on the road. It was Sasha and her father, who slept in the back of the SUV for most of the trip; my sister’s boyfriend Casey who came along for some reason, playing Saliva and Cold albums; me; and we picked up Shannon’s cousin who lived along the way. I was in the mix to drive all night. We listened to the new Thousand Foot Krutch album. The driving was not bad when everyone was awake. We told jokes, listened to lots of rock music, and refueled on coffee. But when the sun was coming up in Ohio, and I was driving, everyone had fallen asleep. That was the hardest part of the trip.
    I KNOW IT FEELS LIKE SUMMER. When we made it to the graduation party, Shannon and her family were surprise to see us.  We were all falling asleep on the lawn, and Sasha’s dad joked that we must have looked like a bunch of drunks, which was funny because Shannon’s family were extreme conservative Christians. The Michigan early summer was warm in the afternoon and cool in the evening. We under-packed for the journey, thinking about North Carolina late-May, but the Michiganders weren’t even cold. They lent us their windbreakers, and we headed out for soft-serve custard. Early Michigan summer reminded me of growing up in New York, but there were far more lakes and ponds in Michigan. I don’t remember much else about that trip. It was a blur. In and out in less than 48 hours. It was a rite of passage for young adults to coordinate road trips and drive through the night on an irresponsible amount of sleep. It’s certainly not an interesting story, but just imagine today’s song being a soundtrack to that mundane trip as we drove around the lakes in Michigan. After getting some sleep on Saturday night, we started driving early Sunday morning back to North Carolina. 

      

  • "Thoughts" by Sasha Alex Sloan, Monday, May 2, 2022

    Alexandra Atourovna Yatchenko, better known to her 9.6 million monthly Spotify listeners by her stage name Sasha Alex Sloan, bears the introvert soul often missing these days in pop music. The singer-songwriter grew up religious to Russian/Ukrainian immigrant parents and attended a semester at Berklee College of Music before dropping out to write songs for other artists. Before releasing her debut EP Sad Girl in 2018, the singer-songwriter wrote songs for Charli XCX, Kygo, and   Lecrae, among others. She continues to write music for herself and for other artists working in Nashville. 

    SOMETIMES I CAN’T CONTROL MY THOUGHTS. “Thoughts” is the opening track on Sasha Alex Sloan’s second EP, Self Portrait. Listening to Sloan is an intimate experience. Her poignant writing is specific enough to make listeners feel like they know her personally. But the writing is also vague enough for listeners to appropriate her lyrics to their own lives. For example, the second track on Self Portrait, “Thank God,” establishes Sloan as an imperfect person. She lists, in what could be embarrassingly specific ways, that she has fallen short of her Christian upbringing. But the chorus she says, “Thank God for making a hell . . . a place for greedy-ass liars . . . . a place where I can smoke / and tell fucked-up jokes.” Her full-length debut in 2020 Only Child also had many heart-stopping ballads, in which she talks about divorce, loss, and falling in love. Songs like “Until It Happens to You” will break your heart as you reach for the limits of empathy. I’m pretty sure that song will make an appearance later on my playlist. Her songwriting isn’t her only strong point. The melodies and songs make her stand out among her “sad girl” contemporaries. The religious themes in her work align the singer with the members of boygenius: Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus. There’s certainly a hint of Kacey Musgraves and a sliver of Lana Del Rey, too. 


    I SWEAR TO GOD I’M TRYING.  Today’s song makes me not feel so different from other people, at least from the 9.6 million people who listen to Sasha Alex Sloan. I’m a worrier, and I’ve been a worrier since I was a kid. I remember being terrified after school safety demonstrations and praying every night that I wouldn’t get kidnapped or that our house wouldn’t burn down or there wouldn’t be a gasoline explosion. I thought that I had to pray through every gruesome scenario because I thought the devil was very active and praying specifically would give me protection. I don’t know when exactly my prayer list shorted to just “general protection for me and the people I love,” but I’m still plagued with worry for the future. We all know this will end, right? It’s not like everyone stays alive forever. Furthermore, what can go wrong at work and socially keeps me up at night more than it should. Sometimes, my mind goes to the worst-case scenario. What would I do? How would I survive that level of alienation? Somehow, thinking of the worst-case scenario lessens the blow of otherwise a snag in my plan. I guess I think my success is kind of doomed anyway. Any success along the way is just bonus, right? Seriously, I need to get out of these thoughts.
     

    Acoustic video:

    Lyric video:

    Source:

  • “Mine’s Not a High Horse” by The Shins, Sunday, May 1, 2022

    You could say that The Shins were served their fame on a silver platter. The Albuquerque, New Mexico-based band released their first album, Oh Inverted World, in 2001 on a label that was shifting from producing Grunge to lo-fi-styled Indie Rock, Sub Pop Records, a label that was famous for bringing the world Nirvana. The Shins’ first record sold modestly, and in 2003, they released their follow up, Chutes Too Narrow. However, a year later, the band blew up when their music was featured in Garden State, an indie film that instantly became a cult classic. When Sam (played by Natalie Portman) tells Andrew (Zach Braff), “You got gotta hear this one song [by The Shins]. It will change your life,” The Shins’ career was off to a great start. 
    THEY OUGHT TO DROWN HIM IN HOLY WATER. This explosion in success split the band’s promotion for their sophomore album as many new fans came to the band because of the two songs from Oh Inverted World featured in Garden State. Unlike the band’s first record that mostly featured songs written and preformed by the band’s frontman and founder James Mercer, Chutes Too Narrow features a full band, though still highly managed by Mercer. The driving acoustic guitar followed by the brush-sticked drums and an often pounding bass line with a stray electric guitar flavoring the mix helped to become a rubric for Indie Rock in the early 2000s. The band’s first three albums helped to pave their status as legendary in the Indie Rock scene. Wincing At Midnight was their highest charting album, peaking at Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 200. However, after Wincing, Mercer dropped the band line up as an “aesthetic decision,” releasing several albums afterwards. With many songs on Chutes Too Narrow about relationships there’s speculation that Mercer isn’t easy to get along with.

    ONE FINGER PARALLEL TO THE SKY. Even though Chutes Too Narrow was released in 2003, I didn’t start listening to the band until junior year of college, the year I had one of my biggest shifts in musical styles. The Shins was the cool band during an explosion of Indie and Alternative. The acoustic rock focus of the band was both familiar and novel. Mercer’s vocals were high like the popular rock/emo bands of the time. But his voice was common enough and the band was simple enough to make hipster college students feel like they could create a band that could tour with them. Mercer’s “whining into the microphone” sounded like the guys singing in the dorm showers. I think what really sealed the deal for this album for me, though, was that simple style of rhythmic music with Mercer’s sarcastic lyrics strung throughout the album. Using clichés throughout the songs but inverting them slightly, “When your high horse died” and evoking religious imagery “drown him in Holy Water” without taking the song, to what I thought, to a blasphemous level. To summarize my feelings about the mood this album gave me I would say “I’m right. You’re wrong. I’m more eloquent than you, but rather than getting into a conflict with you, I’d rather complain about you to my friends.” Oh yeah, and at least I don’t need a high horse to compensate for something.

     Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Hallelujah” by Underoath, Saturday, April 28, 2022

    Musically, Underoath’s most recent record Voyeurist pays homage to different points in their 25-year career. On the band’s breakthrough album, They’re Only Chasing Safety, Underoath experimented with elements not always heard in Metal. One example was including a church choir on the song “It’s Dangerous Business Walking out Your Front Door.” According to Tim McTague on the episode of Labeled Deep Dives about today’s song “Hallelujah,” the Underoath guitarist said he made up a story about how the 2004 single had religious significance in order to record a youth choir in a church basement. Eighteen years later, the second song on Voyeurist prominently features a choir, this time in the chorus. But unlike “Dangerous,” Underoath had distanced themselves from the Christian music scene.  In an interview with Loudwire, Tim says that “Hallelujah” is about “struggles with everything – faith, life and so on.”  The presence of a choir on “Hallelujah” and the track’s title serve as a kind of musical and lyrical contrast. The lyrics offer title hope, except for the line superimposed on the song: “Hallelujah.” The song is an interesting approach to songwriting; interpolating religious themes from the band’s past and re-contextualizing them.

    WE’RE NOT DREAMING, THIS IS HELL. Hallelujah is a Hebrew word taken from the scriptures. The word’s most frequent occurrence is in the book of Psalms, the book of poetry that was often sung. Throughout the ages, countless songs have used this word or its Greek variant alleluia, usually in a religious context. From the Gregorian Chant of the Middle Ages to the Christian hymns of the 19th century to the most moving part of George Frideric Handel’s The Messiah, the word Hallelujah alludes to worshiping the Judeo-Christian God. But in 1984, when singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen released his single “Hallelujah,” which has been covered by countless artists, the singer reappropriated the word into a secular setting. The song was a new standard that both people of faith and people of doubt could resonate with. The first two verses of the song tell a story from the Hebrew Bible (or the Old Testament), about David and Samson, two men who have been judged for moral failure by readers and theologians. The third verse of the song addresses the speaker’s doubt, saying “Maybe there’s a God above.” Of course, Cohen’s “Hallelujah” doesn’t take the word completely out of its religious context. And neither does Underoath, a band who will be writing about their deconversion story until they break up. Lyrically, Underoath’s “Hallelujah” deals with the feeling of alienation after deconstruction. There’s bitterness due to the rules that the Christian music industry imposed on artists like Underoath. There’s anger toward the industry that covered up frontman Spenser Chamberlain’s drug addiction in order to continue making money on the band’s financial success. And there’s disappointment in a church that fosters an environment that says it wants honesty, but ultimately the honest get screwed. 
    THIS MADNESS MAY BE IN MY HEAD. Underoath isn’t alone in their deconstruction movement. Many former Christian bands and musicians end up in a place of doubt and recontextualization. In the past, the mainstream of Christianity dismissed this deviation as heresy. Denominations and cults started or individuals rejected religion or merely embraced an individualized spirituality. But never did the aggregate have to acknowledge the reasons why someone left the mainstream if they could just call that person a heretic. Today entire communities are forming around talking about religious trauma. There are deconstruction and ex-vangelical communities almost in the same way that there are denominations. There are probably as many reasons why people deconstruct their faith as there are deconstructionists. Common themes these days revolve around political Christianity, race, gender, and sexuality. Underoath’s “Hallelujah” makes me think of several stories in my own faith journey, but today I’m fixated on the contradiction I felt from reading William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Experience in my Christian university. The poem critiques the Industrial Revolution for its human toll on the poor, in the case of the poem, the children of the poor who had to work sweeping the chimneys. Many of the children died in accidents or contracted lung cancer. Rather than focusing on the need for social justice and the fact that this horrendous exploitation happened in a Christian country and that Blake appealed to the Christian compassion of his readers, the professor teaching the class merely scoffed at the literature and focused on Blake’s unorthodox, heretical religion. Eventually, the human suffering would be alleviated through ungodly socialism, we would learn in the course. The ungodly part wasn’t in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, but the instructor’s take on it. The words of Blake, though, reminded me of the Christianity that I wanted to be a part of, preached by Stephen Christian, Bono, and Underoath at the time. But it seems more and more that my professor’s downplaying human suffering is where Christianity has headed. No wonder more people are turning out like William Blake.
    Music visualizer:

    Digital Ghost performance:

    Lyric video

    The version featuring Charlotte Sands:

    Read the lyrics on Genius.