#but jack & taylor have been pushing out the same shit since he started writing on her albums & virtually none of it is good | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bananaofswifts · 3 years

Link

Your guide to the singer-songwriter’s surprise follow-up to Folklore.

CARL WILSON

When everything’s clicking for Taylor Swift, the risk is that she’s going to push it too far and overtax the public appetite. On “Mirrorball” from Folklore, she sings, with admirable self-knowledge, “I’ve never been a natural/ All I do is try, try, try.” So when I woke up yesterday to the news that at midnight she was going to repeat the trick she pulled off with Folklore in July—surprise-releasing an album of moody pop-folk songs remote-recorded in quarantine with Aaron Dessner of the National as well as her longtime producer Jack Antonoff—I was apprehensive. Would she trip back into the pattern of overexposure and backlash that happened between 1989 and Reputation?

Listening to the new Evermore, though, that doesn’t feel like such a threat. A better parallel might be to the “Side B” albums that Carly Rae Jepsen put out after both Emotion and Dedicated, springing simply out of the artist’s and her fans’ mutual enthusiasm. Or, closer to Swift’s own impulses here, publishing an author’s book of short stories soon after a successful novel. Lockdown has been a huge challenge for musicians in general, but it liberated Swift from the near-perpetual touring and publicity grind she’s been on since she was a teen, and from her sense of obligation to turn out music that revs up stadium crowds and radio programmers. Swift has always seemed most herself as the precociously talented songwriter; the pop-star side is where her try-hard, A-student awkwardness surfaces most. Quarantine came as a stretch of time to focus mainly on her maturing craft (she turns 31 on Sunday), to workshop and to woodshed. When Evermore was announced, she said that she and her collaborators—clearly mostly Dessner, who co-writes and/or co-produces all but one of these 15 songs—simply didn’t want to stop writing after Folklore.

This record further emphasizes her leap away from autobiography into songs that are either pure fictions or else lyrically symbolic in ways that don’t act as romans à clef. On Folklore, that came with the thrill of a breakthrough. Here, she fine-tunes the approach, with the result that Evermore feels like an anthology, with less of an integrated emotional throughline. But that it doesn’t feel as significant as Folklore is also its virtue. Lowered stakes offer permission to play around, to joke, to give fewer fucks—and this album definitely has the best swearing in Swift’s entire oeuvre.

Because it’s nearly all Dessner overseeing production and arrangements, there isn’t the stylistic variety that Antonoff’s greater presence brought to Folklore. However, Swift and Dessner seem to have realized that the maximalist-minimalism that dominated Folklore, with layers upon layers of restrained instrumental lines for the sake of atmosphere, was too much of a good thing. There are more breaks in the ambience on Evermore, the way there was with Folklore’s “Betty,” the countryish song that was among many listener’s favorites. But there are still moments that hazard misty lugubriousness, and perhaps with reduced reward.

Overall, people who loved Folklore will at least like Evermore too, and the minority of Swift appreciators who disapproved may even warm up to more of the sounds here. I considered doing a track-by-track comparison between the two albums, but that seemed a smidgen pathological. Instead, here is a blatantly premature Day 1 rundown of the new songs as I hear them.

A pleasant yet forgettable starting place, “Willow” has mild “tropical house” accents that recall Ed Sheeran songs of yesteryear, as well as the prolix mixed metaphors Swift can be prone to when she’s not telling a linear story. But not too severely. I like the invitation to a prospective lover to “wreck my plans.” I’m less sure why “I come back stronger than a ’90s trend” belongs in this particular song, though it’s witty. “Willow” is more fun as a video (a direct sequel to Folklore’s “Cardigan” video) than as a lead track, but I’m not mad at it here either.

Written with “William Bowery”—the pseudonym of Swift’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn, as she’s recently confirmed—this is the first of the full story songs on Evermore, in this case a woman describing having walked away from her partner on the night he planned to propose. The music is a little floaty and non-propulsive, but the tale is well painted, with Swift’s protagonist willingly taking the blame for her beau’s heartbreak and shrugging off the fury of his family and friends—“she would have made such a lovely bride/ too bad she’s fucked in the head.” Swift sticks to her most habitual vocal cadences, but not much here goes to waste. Except, that is, for the title phrase, which doesn’t feel like it adds anything substantial. (Unless the protagonist was drunk?) I do love the little throwaway piano filigree Dessner plays as a tag on the end.

This is the sole track Antonoff co-wrote and produced, and it’s where a subdued take on the spirit of 1989-style pop resurges with necessary energy. Swift is singing about having a crush on someone who’s too attractive, too in-demand, and relishing the fantasy but also enjoying passing it up. It includes some prime Swiftian details, like, “With my Eagles t-shirt hanging from your door,” or, “At dinner parties I call you out on your contrarian shit.” The line about this thirst trap’s “hair falling into place like dominos” I find much harder to picture.

This is where I really snapped to attention. After a few earlier attempts, Swift has finally written her great Christmas song, one to stand alongside “New Year’s Day” in her holiday canon. And it’s especially a great one for 2020, full of things none of us ought to do this year—go home to visit our parents, hook up with an ex, spend the weekend in their bedroom and their truck, then break their hearts again when we leave. But it’s done with sincere yuletide affection to “the only soul who can tell which smiles I’m faking,” and “the warmest bed I’ve ever known.” All the better, we get to revisit these characters later on the album.

On first listen, I found this one of the draggiest Dressner compositions on the record. Swift locates a specific emotional state recognizably and poignantly in this song about a woman trapped (or, she wonders, maybe not trapped?) in a relationship with an emotionally withholding, unappreciative man. But the static keyboard chord patterns and the wandering melody that might be meant to evoke a sense of disappointment and numbness risk yielding numbing and disappointing music. Still, it’s growing on me.

Featuring two members of Haim—and featuring a character named after one of them, Este—“No Body, No Crime” is a straight-up contemporary country song, specifically a twist on and tribute to the wronged-woman vengeance songs that were so popular more than a decade ago, and even more specifically “Before He Cheats,” the 2006 smash by Carrie Underwood, of which it’s a near musical clone, just downshifted a few gears. Swift’s intricate variation on the model is that the singer of the song isn’t wreaking revenge on her own husband, but on her best friend’s husband, and framing the husband’s mistress for the murder. It’s delicious, except that Swift commits the capital offence of underusing the Haim sisters purely as background singers, aside from one spoken interjection from Danielle.

This one has some of the same issues as “Tolerate It,” in that it lags too much for too long, but I did find more to focus on musically here. Lyrically and vocally, it gets the mixed emotions of a relatively amicable divorce awfully damned right, if I may speak from painfully direct experience.

This is the song sung from the POV of the small-town lover that the ambitious L.A. actress from “Tis the Damn Season”—Dorothea, it turns out—has left behind in, it turns out, Tupelo. Probably some years past that Xmas tryst, when the old flame finally has made it. “A tiny screen’s the only place I see you now,” he sings, but adds that she’s welcome back anytime: “If you’re ever tired of being known/ For who you know/ You know that you’ll always know me.” It’s produced and arranged with a welcome lack of fuss. Swift hauls out her old high-school-romance-songs vocal tone to reminisce about “skipping the prom/ just to piss off your mom,” very much in the vein of Folklore’s teen-love-triangle trilogy.

A duet with Dessner’s baritone-voiced bandmate in the National, Matt Berninger, “Coney Island” suffers from the most convoluted lyrics on Evermore (which, I wonder unkindly, might be what brought Berninger to mind?). The refrain “I’m on a beach on Coney Island, wondering where did my baby go” is a terrific tribute to classic pop, but then Swift rhymes it with “the bright lights, the merry go,” as if that’s a serviceable shorthand for merry-go-round, and says “sorry for not making you my centerfold,” as if that’s somehow a desirable relationship outcome. The comparison of the bygone affair to “the mall before the internet/ It was the one place to be” is clever but not exactly moving, and Berninger’s lines are worse. Dessner’s droning arrangement does not come to the rescue.

This song is also overrun with metaphors but mostly in an enticing, thematically fitting way, full of good Swiftian dark-fairytale grist. It’s fun to puzzle out gradually the secret that all the images are concealing—an engaged woman being drawn into a clandestine affair. And there are several very good “goddamns.”

The lyrical conceit here is great, about two gold-digging con artists whose lives of scamming are undone by their falling in love. It reminded me of the 1931 pre-Code rom-com Blonde Crazy, in which James Cagney and Joan Blondell act out a very similar storyline. And I mostly like the song, but I can’t help thinking it would come alive more if the music sounded anything like what these self-declared “cowboys” and “villains” might sing. It’s massively melancholy for the story, and Swift needs a far more winningly roguish duet partner than the snoozy Marcus Mumford. It does draw a charge from a couple of fine guitar solos, which I think are played by Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver, who will return shortly).

The drum machine comes as a refreshing novelty at this point. And while this song is mostly standard Taylor Swift torrents of romantic-conflict wordplay (full of golden gates and pedestals and dropping her swords and breaking her high heel, etc.), the pleasure comes in hearing her look back at all that and shrugging, “Long story short, it was a bad ti-i-ime,” “long story short, it was the wrong guy-uy-uy,” and finally, “long story short, I survived.” She passes along some counsel I’m sure she wishes she’d had back in the days of Reputation: “I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things/ Your nemeses will defeat themselves.” It’s a fairly slight song but an earned valedictory address.

Swift fan lore has it that she always sequences the real emotional bombshell as Track 5, but here it is at 13, her lucky number. It’s sung to her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, who died when Swift was in her early teens, and it manages to be utterly personal—down to the sample of Marjorie singing opera on the outro—and simultaneously utterly evocative to anyone who’s been through such grief. The bridge, full of vivid memories and fierce regrets, is the clincher.

This electroacoustic kiss-off song, loaded up with at least a fistful of gecs if not a full 100 by Dessner and co-producers BJ Burton and James McAlister, seems to be, lyrically, one of Swift’s somewhat tedious public airings of some music-industry grudge (on which, in case you don’t get it, she does not want “closure”), but, sonically, it’s a real ear-cleaner at this point on Evermore. Why she seems to shift into a quasi-British accent for fragments of it is anyone’s guess. But I’m tickled by the line, “I’m fine with my spite and my tears and my beers and my candles.”

I’m torn about the vague imagery and vague music of the first few verses of the album’s final, title track. But when Vernon, in full multitracked upper-register Bon Iver mode, kicks in for the duet in the middle, there’s a jolt of urgency that lands the redemptive ending—whether it’s about a crisis in love or the collective crisis of the pandemic or perhaps a bit of both—and satisfyingly rounds off the album.

#taylor-swift #pop #rock #country-music

16 notes · View notes

letterboxd · 4 years

Photo

Making Waves.

“I live in Florida, my cat’s in the movie. It is incredibly personal.” Waves writer and director Trey Edward Shults opens up about his filmmaking process, reveals the movies that made him fall in love with cinema, and gushes about fellow A24 alum Robert Eggers.

Trey Edward Shults doesn’t want to spoil Waves. We don’t want to spoil Waves either. To even begin to describe its unconventional structure would be a spoiler. We’ve said too much already. Just know it’s a sweeping melodrama that solidifies Shults as one of the defining American voices of the decade.

The coming-of-age family drama centers on brother Tyler (Shults regular and breakout star Kelvin Harrison Jr., pictured above) and sister Emily (Taylor Russell), their relationships and struggles with each other, their parents (Sterling K. Brown and Renée Elise Goldsberry), and first loves (Alexa Demie and Lucas Hedges). This is Shults’ third collaboration with A24 after his DIY debut Krisha (set in the same family house as Waves, and similarly playful with its aspect ratio), and the polarizing horror It Came At Night.

While its structure hasn’t worked for everyone, Waves has captured the enthusiasm of many Letterboxd members in a profound way. “This is the coming-of-age movie to end coming-of-age,” writes ActionTomasello. “The less you know of it, the better it is going into this one.” It’s been added to the popular ‘You’re not the same person once the film has finished’ list, and the film’s soundtrack, collected into this Spotify playlist by Letterboxd member Ella, is one of the most-mentioned contributing factors to its success. Writes Nick: “A soundtrack that’s meant for a specific group of people that I’m a part of. It feels too perfect how someone made a film filled with songs from Kanye, Frank Ocean, Radiohead and many others. It feels like one long, sad, fucked-up music video.”

But no Letterboxd review currently beats Jack’s heartfelt letter to Shults: “Your film has moved me to better myself, to love, and to meet my emotions head on. Thank you.” (He also put it in his top five of all time.)

We caught up with Shults to learn how Waves was conceived and executed, and investigate which films have hit him the hardest.

Taylor Russel as Emily in ‘Waves’.

You often draw your films from your personal experiences and you’ve described Waves as autobiographical. Can you go into some detail about which life experiences fed into this film? Trey Edward Shults: Where to start? In broad strokes, I was a wrestler and tore my shoulder in the same way as Tyler. The relationships between Tyler and Alexis and also Emily and Luke are inspired by my girlfriend and [me] in the good moments, bad moments, and everything in between. Their parents are inspired by my parents. I live in Florida, my cat’s in the movie. It is incredibly personal, but I had a huge collaboration with Kelvin, and then as more actors came on it got more collaborative, so it really started from this personal place and grew out of that.

How do you reconcile your relationship to your own suffering with the fact it’s become your livelihood and commodity? It’s very strange. When we recreated events in Missouri I think that was the furthest I’ve ever gone. That shoot was an all-consuming dread and I broke down, it was very hard. I would question: “Is this healthy? Is this right?”, but I came out the other side happy I did it. It was cathartic. My mom and my step-dad are therapists and I would be a total mess without them, though I’m not in therapy right now. Working through these movies is a bit of therapy.

I’m trying to make personal things that I hope connect with other people, especially this movie. Going through life and getting to the other side of it and having perspective informed me a lot. Whether it’s just tonally or pacing-wise, I wanted the film to spiritually feel that way.

The film’s photography is remarkable, especially the first act, when you have your fullest frame. Can you take us inside how you executed some of those spinning 360-degree shots? For the car shots we took out the middle console of the truck and put a slider that went from the backseat to the front. Basically, the dolly grip and I were crammed down hiding behind the car seats and the grip pushed the camera from the back to the front. Drew [Daniels, the director of photography] was in the car behind us with a remote, so he’s operating the spinning and I have a monitor in the back. That way I could talk to the kids in the car and I also had a walkie so I could talk to Drew.

A lot of the dynamic camera stuff was a case-by-case scenario, sometimes it was just running behind our steadicam operator or just hiding and letting them go and play. We wanted the camera to be purely motivated by where our main character’s emotional state of mind was, so it’s all coming from them, but then we also wanted to figure out the technical shit and make it feel to the actors that the camera disappeared and we’re not even there. So it was an interesting balance getting there. It’s a second skin for us and we know exactly what we’re after visually, but let’s disappear and let the kids play and we’ll adapt to them.

Since our name is ‘Letterboxd’, I feel obligated to ask you an aspect-ratio question. Can you share with us how you built this intuition to change at will—did you have films you saw that you feel did this well? That’s a good question, because this one really felt like it was building off what I did with Krisha and pushing it further. I do remember The Grand Budapest Hotel came out right before I started Krisha and it had the three aspect ratios to separate [its] time periods, which was really cool to me. I think I got really excited about using aspect ratio to echo the character’s state of mind. That was the goal with that, especially for Tyler’s trajectory.

The soundtrack is getting some acclaim. Do you have any songs you wanted to fit in but couldn’t find the room, or couldn’t clear the rights for? I realized there were so many songs I wanted in it, but the movie told you what works. If you tried to force it on, it didn’t work. It started with the writing and it worked its way organically. The final soundtrack is pretty close to what was in the script though I think a few changed along the way. We got incredibly lucky that we got everything we wanted. I don’t know how we did it. It was a long process and our last song didn’t even clear until after Telluride and Toronto.

Trey Edward Shults and Sterling K. Brown on the set of ‘Waves’. / Photo: Monica Lek

There are shades of Chungking Express, Magnolia and Moonlight in the film’s DNA. What were some other films you watched or recommended to your cast and crew as preparation? Funny thing is we didn’t do a lot of movie-watching for preparation. Drew and I lived in the same house so we’d always have a movie on. We were watching The Story of Film a lot—the giant anthology series and study of the history of cinema, incredible. What we watched would totally range, it could be things like Ordinary People and Raging Bull, to The Tree of Life and I Am Cuba, to Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love. We would take inspiration from anything, even a film like Yi Yi. It’s a completely different cinematic approach.

Yi Yi might just be the best film about family, so it’s a good start (Lulu Wang also mentioned it in our recent chat with her about The Farewell). That’s the thing exactly: even though Waves is made in such a different way, I think spiritually they’re sprawling tales of family. That’s one of my favorite movies. For the cast, we didn’t actually talk about movies that much. It was more about Florida, music and the character dynamics and all that good stuff.

Which movie scene makes you cry the hardest? One that just popped in my head is Dancer in the Dark. When Björk escapes in her head doing these musical numbers and it leads to the end, to the most devastating thing possible, it broke me. That movie’s rough, man. That’s not one I could watch and have good cries or something. I can’t rewatch it because it’s utterly traumatizing. I was probably crying for hours after it, I felt dead.

Which film makes you laugh the hardest? The most recent film that made me laugh the hardest is What We Do in the Shadows. I saw it for the first time on an airplane sitting next to a stranger and I think they thought something was wrong with me. Then I got home to Florida and showed it to my girlfriend, and her brother came home and we watched it again. It never got old.

Who was the most relatable coming-of-age film character for you? It’s hard because when I was a teen I was obsessed with sports and then it was music. I’m trying to think who I related to the most. Man, I don’t know. Nothing is coming to mind. Shocking.

What film do you wish you made? I’ll go with There Will Be Blood. It’s the first film that popped in my head.

What mind-fuck movies changed you for life and why? There were three that I saw pretty close together at a young age: Boogie Nights, A Clockwork Orange and Raging Bull. I had a digital cable box in my room, so I would sneak and watch a lot of things that my parents didn’t know I was watching. They just rocked my world. Until that point it was all Aliens and Terminator and every big action movie, so then when I saw those films it was like “this is what movies can be! What the hell is this?”.

I remember with Raging Bull I didn’t actually enjoy it. I was like, “This isn’t Rocky but I can’t stop watching.” It’s like a trainwreck and I’m fascinated but I don’t know if I like it, then I was obsessed with it and it’s one of my favorite movies now. Boogie Nights and A Clockwork Orange felt like a bigger vision was at work. It wasn’t just something made out in the ether, it was a specific singular vision and I cannot stop looking at it.

Sterling K. Brown in ‘Waves’.

What’s the most overlooked movie from A24? Shoot, I wish I could look at the catalogue right now. I’m just gonna go with The Spectacular Now because I just watched it again on the airplane and I thought it was really beautiful. It’s a good one, man.

Lastly, it’s time for best-of-decade lists. What’s the greatest film of the 2010s? When we interviewed Robert Eggers, Waves was his first choice. Shut up, come on! Oh my god, Rob’s the best. I will say that The Lighthouse is my favorite film of the year, without a doubt. I’m obsessed with it. I could gush about him for hours. He’s not just one of the greatest young filmmakers, he’s one of the great filmmakers working now. Honestly though, for my decade number one I gotta go with The Tree of Life. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time so I would put that at number one, and then The Lighthouse is close to it.

‘Waves’ is distributed by A24 and is playing in select US cinemas now. Photos courtesy A24.

6 notes · View notes

madsrocketship · 5 years

Text

Whelp, none of you bitches wanted it but I DID it so here it is. I know most of you probably don’t give a shit about my thoughts on the new Taylor Swift album so my thoughts are below the cut.

1. I Forgot That You Existed-So kind of weird to write a song about how much you don’t care about someone you broke up with 3 years ago but hey, it’s what she do. Production is memorable which is more than I can say for the rest of the album but she does the sing speak/Tay Tay rap she’s done on her last 3 albums added with the sarcastic/eye roll while I do it delivery so you can imagine the level of obnoxious.

2. Cruel Summer-If you’re going to try to claim this song title from Bananaramma you best bring your A-game and not this mess. Seriously, trying to reclaim one of the most perfect pop songs of all time?!?! The song would MAYBE work if she focused in on the references to her being white girl wasted in the back of a car. If the drunkenness related more to the all over the placeness of the song but it doesn’t. Not sure why her fans think this would make the perfect single. Is this about summer ‘16 or ‘17?

3. Lover-The title track and the just released third single. It’s whatever. Nothing good nor bad about it really and only lyrically interesting if you’re invested in the Taylor trying to find her true love narrative. I will say her deliver of “lover” makes me laugh because all I can think of is Jackie on That 70′s Show calling Kelso it all the time which is EXACTLY the person I’ve always imagined Taylor to be like so I guess it works? Oh and also:

And as someone of almost the same age as Taylor she should know BOTH these cultural touchstones of the first half of the aughts.

4. The Man-Look, in theory I’m not inherently against Taylor tackling the double standards she faces as a woman. But....the song is both too specific and too generic. She wants it to be relatable for all women so there are platitudes she can’t pull off but then there are comparisons to her own reputation with Leonardo Di’Caprio which yeah the rest of us plebs don’t have to think about. But thanks for reminding me I think Leo has been overrated for years and sad at this point.

5. The Archer-I should really love this song. It should have been the Getaway Car of this album where despite my loathing of Taylor I admit I can’t help my affection for the song. Jack Antonoff who I have a very love/hate relationship with (I’m a Bleachers fan and of course Melodrama is a masterpiece) admitted they did this song in like a day and it shows. They really should have worked this song through a bit more and it could have been something. The production starts off great but then repeats instead of pushing forward and climaxing at the emotional crux of the song. The lyrics are also solid individually but don’t come together as organically as they should. Wasted opportunity.

6. I Think He Knows-I actually like the first verse of this song and then that sing speak/Tay Tay rap chorus kicks in, cranks the pitch up so only dogs can hear, and drops a “no one understands” that belonged on Swift’s first two albums and no further.

7. Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince-What the fuck is this song even doing on the album? You’re almost 30 Taylor! I don’t want to hear about homecoming queens and shit with cheers in the background.

8. Paper Rings-I genuinely like the lyrics on this one. Just makes it a bummer because the production during the verses is fun but the production on the chorus is too reminiscent of I’m Walking on Sunshine. But OK overall. And then...oh and then...she REPEATEDLY calls this man her baby boy. Please....I may throw up.

9. Cornelia Street-Another song that you’ll only care about if you’re invested in the personal life of Taylor Swift. Also sounds like the reheated leftover production from So It Goes on her last album.

10. Death by a Thousand Cuts-Another weird break up song on an album about love. Shrug but it’s actually good. I enjoy the piano on this one and if one song should be a single, it’s this one. The ”united we stand” lyric is weird though.

11. London Boy-IDRIS WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?!?! Another song where I liked the first verse and then wanted to shoot myself. This song definitely feels like it is for the teeny boppers because the way she describes loving an English man is every fucking cliche in the book and is just Taylor’s excuse to use British slang. Good for the 12 twee fantasies.

12. Soon You’ll Get Better-The only great song on the album. It’s old school Swift in every sense: it’s country, warm and unpolished (something she’s lacked since RED), and actually feels like something she wrote from emotion instead of the narrative she’s created or what she thinks will play well. It’s said to be about her mother’s cancer so I’m not going to dig in further but it’s her best writing in years. Shame she wasted the Dixie Chicks as simply background vocalists though.

13. False God-Taylor should never use a saxophone in her songs because all it does is remind me she has no soul in her music or herself in the slightest. Another reheated decision from Reputation, this time those embarrassing breathy vocals from Dress to cover up her vocal shortcomings.

14. You Need To Calm Down-Lyrics ain’t shit, she doesn’t know what shade means, and I liked the production at first but now that repetitive drop feels like Chinese water torture.

15. Afterglow-Yet another song only important if you care about the personal journey of the artist in question. I guess it’s the first time we’ve ever really heard her take responsibility for her actions and not blaming the guy (excluding Back to December). That’s something I guess if you don’t pay attention to all the other times she hasn’t taken responsibility.

16. ME!-We all know how we all feel about this rainbow turd. I just want to say I never thought I would feel the emotional equivalent of this

from one of Taylor’s lyrics ever again after hearing “This.Sick.Beat” on repeat in 2014. But “Hey Kids! Spelling is fun!” certainly did just that.

17. It’s Nice to Have a Friend-I don’t know what this is or why it’s on this album. Is it like Everything Has Changed’s sequel? Just cut it from this already bloated album.

18. Daylight-Congrats Taylor, I noticed you used the line from your Reputation poem in a song. Do I win a prize? Who cares at least this is all over now. Only possible reference to Tom when she says she’s been cruel to her nice exes and trusted the wicked ones. I Did Something Bad and Getaway Car could put Tom in either camp.

Overall, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d rather listen to Reputation. I tend to be of the mind that bad flavor is better than no flavor (why I’d rather watch the Star Wars prequels than The Force Awakens) and this is what we have in front of us. A car crash where she tried SOMETHING versus this album which is diet 1989. I think she’s run out of ideas trying to stay on top of pop trends that will keep her front and center. She hit the brick wall with her last album, there was nowhere else for her to go further into pop. The songs on this album could have been released at any point on her last three albums, there’s no forward progression but instead a backslide into the generic or retreads of old work. But this album/tour will make so much money so it’s not like she cares.

9 notes · View notes

kusheenmagazine-blog · 4 years

Text

BLM x EDM: A Moment to Appreciate Black Artists in Electronic Music

By Diana Lustig and Isiah Kurz, Kusheen Magazine

Only half-way in and 2020 is already turning out to be a mindfuck of a year. COVID-19 all but eliminated live music. The economy tanked all but a few essential industries. And systemic racism came to a head with the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others. Yeah, 2020 has been a shit year by all counts.

But despite all of this, I am working hard — desperately hard — to find some hope. Even with the coronavirus shuttering venues and festivals, thousands of incredible artists provide livestreams to keep our spirits up. Even though the economy took a nosedive, it was funny to note that booze and cannabis are deemed “essential.” And even in the face of tyranny and police brutality, we have seen an entire globe rise up in stern rebuke calling for justice and equality.

Yes, 2020 is a hellstorm. But as they say: the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a hell of heaven.

In that same spirit, Kusheen wants to take a moment to appreciate and celebrate a few of the black artists that have contributed to EDM culture, while acknowledging the rich history of gay and black culture that has brought the electronic music scene to where it is today.

Honey Dijon

Honey Dijon is a mixologist extraordinaire—and I’m not talking about cocktails. It takes an adept DJ to blend Detroit house, Chicago jack and Euro electro into something as sweet and savor as a Honey Dijon mix.

Born Honey Redmond, Honey Dijon grew up in the south side of Chicago where she was mentored by such influential names as Derrick Carter, Mark Farina and Greenskeepers. Honey Dijon has since moved out of Chicago to split her time between New York and Berlin, Germany — sharing the best beats across the Atlantic and back.

“For me, house music has never just been about DJing and fashion has never been about clothing,” she says. “It’s always been about the possibility of a more beautiful life.”

Beyond her career as a DJ/Producer and fashion icon, Honey Dijon is also an activist advocate for trans rights and awareness, speaking from her own experience as a black trans woman in the dance music scene.

“The DJ world is still a boy’s club in a lot of ways,” Honey Dijon told the New York Times in 2013. “I’ve always wanted my talent to speak for itself. I didn’t want ‘black’ or ‘trans’ or any of it to speak for me. Now I am beginning to realize the importance of it because there is really hardly any visibility for black trans women.”

Green Velvet

Curtis Jones has gone by many names over the years: Cajmere, Geo Vogt, Half Pint, Curan Stone, Gino Vittori — and of course, Green Velvet.

Green Velvet is one of my favorite go-to artists. His sound is perfect for a house party with friends, sweating at the gym or driving too fast. He’s also an electro heavyweight who has put his time into the scene.

Way back when, Jones left a master’s degree in chemical engineering to focus entirely on a career in music. And while I’m not sure about his chemical engineering, I do know he has a talent for engineering music with a unique sound; from the punk-inspired track “Whatever” to the jocular song “Flash,” Green Velvet is always pushing creative tunes with creative lyrics.

12th Planet

Straight out of Los Angeles, John Christopher Dadzie (aka 12th Planet and Infiltrata) is an American dubstep producer who has collaborated with some of the biggest names in EDM, including Skream, Russo, Kill the Noise, Diplo, Datsik, Doctor P, and Skrillex. 12th Planet is so influential that some music critics credit him as one of the first ambassadors of dubstep in the United States. Rolling Stone even named him the “Los Angeles dubstep god.” And that he is. Thriving in the underground scene of Los Angeles where he, along with his label SMOG Records, have brought the British dubstep movement stateside.

If you’ve been to a big ticket festival like Coachella, Lollapalooza, EDC, Hard or Ultra, you’ve almost certainly seen him on the lineup — if not at one of his sets.

Carl Cox

Carl Cox is a legend if there ever was one. This British house and techno producer got his start at 15 working as a mobile DJ. Within a short time he was already well known for his uncommon talent of three-deck mixing.

Even when the music scene shifted over the years, Cox retained his techno sound, continuing to refine it and revive it in his own way. "Techno drives home somewhere," Carl Cox says. "It takes you to an element of surprise, not knowing where you're going. It's scary but wonderful at the same time."

After spending almost 40 years in the scene, Cox is still at it with an Ibiza residency and his own record label.

DJ Sliink

DJ Sliink is well-known in the Jersey club scene, a style of electronic music he describes as “this unique club music that’s for the inner city. I would describe it as clever, with vocal chops with a half beat, breaks from Baltimore, and crazy kicks.” Through Jersey club, Sliink met Skrillex who he collaborated with, even joining Skrillex’s label, OWSLA. But the collabs don’t stop there, check out Sliink collabing with Flosstradamus, Wale, Fetty Wap and Alexandar Smash, soundtracking Paris runway shows and spinning in London, Paris, Milan and Oslo.

If his high-energy blend of trap and hip-hop wasn’t hyphy enough, DJ Sliink takes his position in the scene one step further by being vocal about the lack of representation in the electronic music scene, calling on Spotify’s curator, Austin Kramer, to add more black artists to curated playlists and speaking out about racial inequality this week with Billboard.

Lotic

Lotic (J’Kerian Morgan) is another producer shaking up the scene — but this time, in Berlin. The Texas-born electronic artist is known for such tracks as “Hunted,” “Buy a Print,” and “Heterocetera.”

Lotic admits never really vibing with American culture, so after completing a degree in electronic music production at University of Texas, they moved to Berlin to find like-minded artists. But, as is the case with most visionaries, Lotic started bucking the normal club sound to create something more personal, vulnerable and new; especially as it relates to their identity as trans and black.

“Anything I’m afraid of I’m putting it on the record,” Lotic said in an interview with The Fader. “I did a lot of crazy emotional work in the process of writing.”

Visibility Matters

We’ve undoubtedly missed some of your favorite artists and failed to mention a number of amazing producers. Which is why we encourage you to let us know your favorite artists via Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. We’ll add your recommendations to our Kusheen playlist.

Finally, remember that the fight for black rights and against police brutality is ongoing. Use whatever means are in your power to combat white supremacy including (but not limited to) protesting, social media, calling your local politicians, voting, donating, supporting black-owned businesses, educating yourself, and of course — using the power of music to change hearts and mind.

Black Lives Matter. Black Dreams Matter. Black Visibility Matters.

#edm #electronic #hip hop #music #musicians #black lives matter #blm

0 notes

bthenoise · 6 years

Text

Thrillchaser Is A Power-Pop Outfit Bursting With Talent You Need To Hear And Here’s Why

As much as you think it might be an easy task, it’s not always that simple to showcase new, up-and-coming artists. We mean, usually when it comes to these things if you aren’t familiar with the artist’s name, what’s going to make you click on our story versus The Top 10 Fat Loss Hacks Your Favorite Artists Use Everyday? Yeah, not always that simple.

However, putting all doubts aside, we’re going to do our best to start highlighting emerging bands we believe in. Bands that stand out against the tiring monotony of our music scene. You know, bands like Northeast power-pop trio Thrillchaser.

Putting together a synth-laced sound that rivals both PVRIS and Dreamers, Thrillchaser (formerly known as American Wolves) takes that alt-rock radio sound and bends it in a way that feels, well, natural. You know, not like those songs written by 40-somethings hoping to attract “hip” teens or a T-Mobile commercial. Thrillchaser instead writes from the heart and it shows on their stunning debut single “Emptiness.”

Now, doing our best to get to know Thrillchaser and discover what it is that got them started, we reached out to guitarist Nikki Zell and bassist/synths Rob Lundy. What we discovered is exactly what we thought, The 1975 and Bleachers are certainly a major influence on the band but members still have roots in pop-punk acts like Goldfinger, New Found Glory, and Blink-182.

To check out our chat and fall for the infectious pop-laced charm of Thrillchaser, see below. Afterwards, make sure to pre-order the band’s debut Taylor Larson-produced LP A Lot Like Love here.

Where did you grow up? And was there a music scene where you grew up?

NIkki: I proudly hail from outside of Philadelphia, PA. The Philly area has a vibrant, highly underrated music scene. There is an overwhelming amount of talent in the community, not to mention camaraderie. Artistry and opportunity abound - there are always fellow musicians to jam with, venues to play, songwriting sessions to attend, studios to record at and so much more. I wouldn't be the artist I am today without my area's music scene.

youtube

What were you and/or your bandmates doing before your band formed? Jobs? School?

Rob: Myself & Rod (lead vocals) have been playing in bands together since the time we first met at a 4th of July party when we were both 18. Thrillchaser is actually our third band together. For the first few years of our musical endeavors, we both made ends meet working long hours at various local coffee shops and grocery stores in Rhode Island. During that time period, Nikki had been earning herself a bit of a reputation in the Philadelphia music scene performing covers and original music anywhere she could to make a living - from festivals to theaters, wineries, and even more obscure venues, she always seemed to be performing somewhere. Rod and myself were first introduced to Nikki in July of 2015, during the time him and I were forming American Wolves and seeking members online. She drove over 6 hours from her parents' house in the middle of Amish Country to my house in Rhode Island to rehearse with us and the rest is history. Who or what influenced you to start playing music?

Nikki: Music has been a constant in my life since before I can remember. I grew up in a musical family, surrounded by my dad and aunts who played in bands together since the seventies as professional musicians. So my family was my first main influence. How do you feel about the digital age? Do you feel it’s helped or hurt musicians?

Rob: I feel the impact the internet has had on the music industry is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the internet provides you with multiple platforms to get your music heard by thousands of potential listeners. You can gain a following without ever even having to set foot on stage. On the other hand, there are just so many artists promoting and advertising themselves all across these same platforms that it’s become much harder to stay relevant in a sea of endless digital content. In my opinion though, streaming services such as Spotify have saved our business from being completely ruined by piracy.

youtube

If you could collaborate with any artist of your choice who would it be?

Nikki: This is the easiest answer ever. Jack Antonoff.

What’s the best live performance you’ve seen?

Rob: The best concert I’ve ever been to was also my first concert ever. The year was 2001, I was eight years old and my dad took me to go see Goldfinger and New Found Glory play an outdoor show in the middle of Providence. I was so small back then so he had to hoist me up onto his shoulders for most of the show so I could see. The best memory I have was when Goldfinger’s drummer dropped his pants on stage, had a twinkie partially inserted into his ass and some guy from the audience ran onto the stage, grabbed it and ate it mid-stage dive. Definitely left a lasting impression on me.

What have you learned since being in the music industry?

Rob: I’ve learned that you gotta have thick skin, nerves of steel and a little bit of naive optimism or this business will destroy you. You can’t let yourself get too jaded.

youtube

Are there any recent releases or performances that have inspired you?

Nikki: Bleachers, Lorde, and Carly Rae Jepsen recently performed a live song together. For me, that is the epitome of dying and going to heaven. If you could have one of your songs be on a TV show or movie of your choice what would it be?

Rob: Jersey Shore. I know that I’m like seven years late to the party but that show is so terrible yet hilarious. Plus I’m from the same town in Rhode Island as Pauly D!

What would you like to be remembered for? Musically or not. Rob: I think that I speak not only for myself but for my bandmates when I say that we just want to be remembered for being genuine people who made honest music and actually gave a shit about the fans. Best piece of advice anyone has given you?

Rob: My mom once told me quite simply; “Life isn’t fair and people don’t act right.”

If you could be a fly on the wall for any artist during their writing sessions who would it be? Rob: I’d have to say Dave Grohl just based on the fact that he has an insane amount of creative energy. He’s always pushing himself to work harder and gives 110% of a shit even down to the smallest most obscure details. I’d recommend to any musician that they watch Foo Fighters’ 2011 documentary Back and Forth, it’s super inspiring. Three bands or artists that would be your dream to tour with? Rob: John Mayer, The 1975 or Blink-182. Touring with any of them would be so fucking sweet. The best thing currently on YouTube is?

Rob: DragonBall Z Abridged, that will ALWAYS be the best thing on Youtube.

#Noiseworthy Artist #Thrillchaser

2 notes · View notes

roidespd-blog · 5 years

Text

Chapter Thirty : MY OWN STORY

This is the end of our journey. I could have ended it with a one-two punch Stonewall-Pride extravaganza but I’m going with a more personal coda, if you’ll indulge me.

A BOY’S OWN STORY

I haven’t always known I was Queer. I guess there were signs — how I would prefer to play with my sister’s barbies than with my own construction toys. How I could be extra sensitive with benign day-to-day details or the fact that by the age of five, I knew “Pour que tu m’aimes encore” by Céline Dion by heart. “So Alex, you’re a faggot, right ?”. That’s what a schoolmate said to me during recess. I said “No”. I was 10. I didn’t know. How did he know if I didn’t know ? Is sensitive a synonym for gay, even when you’re too young to even have pubic hair ?

I started masturbated at the age of 12 and it didn’t took long before my thoughts were directed towards the male body. I ignored it and pretended it was just my mind wandering in unexpected and irrelevant places. I would do my dirty business with La Redoute catalogues, looking at the male models in underwear then switch to their female counterparts at the very end when I knew I was close. Same thing with my imagination. Penelope Cruz was my go-to fantasy beard. I was ashamed of my sexual orientation. Worst, I was ashamed of it before I could understand it. That’s the tricky part : society doesn’t teach you how to be Queer but sure makes you aware that it’s not the norm.

I didn’t know what gay was. In movies, homosexuality was always depicted through huge clichés, what I called in my articles the “Cage aux Folles” dogma. I couldn’t identify. Or maybe I rejected the notion very quickly and swore never to approach this level of absurdity. Internalized homophobia before you even understand what internalized homophobia is.

I fell in love with my first boy when I was 14 years old. He was 2 years older, not that handsome (back then) and so unattainable. I’ve known that dude my whole life. For a long time, I said to myself that one-sided love wasn’t love. I do not believe that anymore. Feeling are valid whether they’re reciprocated or not. Of the five men I fell in love with in my life, only one didn’t love me back (and another is still TBD). But he’s the man I loved the most. The pain that followed was real and undeniable.

I didn’t act on my feelings towards boys until college. In high school, I told myself I wasn’t gonna do anything with anyone until I knew for sure what I was (laugh). I turned down a couple of great girls, one became one of my closest friend in this world. There was one incident involving a girl faking drunkenness in order to inspire pity and having her ways with me at a birthday party. I was… 15, I guess. I was not into it.

A shy boy, I socially bloomed in high school due to my involvement in drama classes and a new “fuck-the-world” attitude I cultivated through a longer hair cut and a collection of converses of every color imaginable.

The day I found out I graduated from high school, I went to town with a few friends. We (barely) drank and had our PG fun. There was this boy. I didn’t know him at all as he was a friend of a friend. I was very intrigued by him and made sure to present to him what I considered my best self (mute and mysterious, I guess). When it was time to go home, we all packed ourselves in my friend’s tiny car. There wasn’t enough space for all of us so the guy was lying on floor in the back, myself in the middle seat. I don’t know what got into me, but I started putting my fingers under his shirt and caressing his lower back. Gently, like an accident. When he didn’t react, I went further. That’s when I felt his fingers on my ankle. As I got to explore more of his back, he quickly went up my pants and caressed the entirety of my leg. So erotic, you have no idea. He was the first to go home. We didn’t exchange phone numbers but he sure helped me get IT. Once alone with my friends in the car, I said “I like boys”. That was it. The electricity I felt all around my body was unchallenging. No one was shocked. No one cared. Back to our regular scheduled programs.

HOW TO BE A GAY MAN IN FOUR LESSONS (OR MORE)

The first and only real mistake was trying to define myself through my sexuality.

My first boyfriend was… let’s call him Paul. Paul was the sweetest. A very short, very elfish (not healthy, ELFISH) little dude that tried his best to give me space in our relationship to explore myself. I said tried. I was willing to lose my virginity as a bottom but it wasn’t meant to be. I became a top. Oh, but it is a nice memory. It is so rare to be a gay man and lose one’s virginity in a good way. He introduced me to his friends who found me “too country” and “fat”. Do we have to talk to each other every day ? Are nicknames necessary ? Do I love you or do I prove constantly that I love you ? Coming from a broken father/son relationship, affection towards men wasn’t easy shit. Lust, yes (though a restrained version of what lust can be). Feelings were there but I found myself incapable of materializing them the way Paul wanted me too. I broke up with him. We got back together. He then broke up with me. Back together again. We called it quits soon after. Too many variables freaked me out. I was an 18 year-old who knew nothing, Jon Snow style.

I met a couple more guys, experimented with casual dating and hookups, bottomed (wasn’t my thing). Then I met Thomas — I’m not even going to invent a name. That bitch needs to be called out. I fell madly in love with Thomas. Five days in and we said “I love you” to each other. That relationship made me come out to my mom. I just didn’t realize that I was being manipulated into loving someone. He made an effort to be extra needy and to push my Superman complex to the max. After falling for him, he told me he visited several psychiatric facilities. He tried to hurt himself more times that I can honestly remember. By the time our relationship ended, I was more a nurse than a lover. I broke up with me after he cheated on me with someone else. But not just cheat. It went from a Friday night “I’m gonna see a friend for the weekend, it’s been a while since I saw him. It’s gonna do me some good” to a Monday morning phone call “Well, he wasn’t a friend. We slept together, now I love you both and I don’t know what to do”. I made it easy for him. By Monday night, pictures of him with the other boy was all over his Facebook page. Thomas broke me in pieces. And I’m not even gonna talk about me going to the police for harassment months later. Triste vie.

That’s when I became a whore.

Not immediately. It took a few weeks of crying to go in that direction but then I was full on. I quickly moved to another city and for the next three years or so, I slept with everything with a dick that moved. Short guys, tall guys, fat ones, skinny ones, effeminate dudes, masculine cunts, three ways, public, top, bottom, ALL. OF. IT. I was unable to feel anything for those guys (some were great and deserved a lot more) but damn, did I fuck them. All of them.

I learned a lot from that time period. First, I can be great at certain sexual things. Won’t tell you which ones. Second, it gave a lot of satisfaction mixed with a sense of true emptiness. I ignored the emptiness back then but I knew why I felt satisfaction. It wasn’t the orgasms. It was a feeling that I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do AKA being a gay guy having lots of sex. I saw it on TV. I saw it in porn. I knew it to be true. I was being the right kind of gay. 22 and still stupid enough to believe it.

When I moved to Paris, I fell in love twice. First with the city. Second with Pierre. In a way, he was the best of them all. Unfortunately, we met at the wrong time. Remember, I was a whore. Not that I cheated on him per say, but the need was there. Paris was giving me so much more land to cover. I met friends that partied hard. I started taking drugs. Lots of them. Festivities would last three days in a row. Sometimes four times a week. I lost 25 pounds just by being poor and high. Meanwhile, I was living a fantastic relationship with a somewhat adult man. I moved in with him for a couple of months. He was a painter and being with me helped him find inspirations. He bought me a note book and pushed me to start writing again, encouraged me to reach my full potential. But fuck my life, I had to make a choice : domesticity with this great guy (who had already been through what I was going through) or FPD (Friends/Party/Drugs). I broke his heart and entered a downward spiral. I went back to my whoring ways. I went all races, all ages, all sizes, just… all. I even was in a weird throuple for a few weeks. Drugs were taking a toll on my health and my friends weren’t supporting me the way I needed too. Six months after the break up, I reserved course. I cleaned my act, found a new job, moved into a new apartment by myself, cleared my phone from those friends’ numbers. This part of my life taught me two lessons : That I could be loved and valued for exactly who I was and that I could throw in all away for the sake of living that sweet Parisian Gay Life.

I met Jack at a time when my life was going really really well. I had been accepted at film school, I was making new friends from work, I had a perfectly stable life and newly-found good spirit. I do believe I inadvertently seduced him by singing Taylor Swift’s Blank Space at a party. I fell hard for that man. I viewed him as the perfect specimen, the epicenter of everyone I went through in the past seven years. I willingly gave him everything : a place to stay when he was looking for a new apartment, my time, my heart, my soul. I wasn’t able to keep anything for myself. It was all for him. Although I knew from the start that I was getting fucked, I didn’t care. He never loved me. Why ? That’s for another story and perhaps for him to tell you. He didn’t leave me heartbroken. He left me destroyed. To a point where I didn’t recognize myself. I’ll say it again : D.E.S.T.R.O.Y.E.D. That’s what happens when you give so much and receive so little in return. My friends had to pick up the pieces and didn’t know what to do with them. Neither did I. I went back to whoring for a short time but this time, it got dark, y’all. I fucked the wrong people. I put myself in the wrong situations. I took the wrong drugs. I kept on wrecking what was left of me.

LIFE IMITATES ART, ART IMITATES OTHER ART, ART IS ART, LIFE GOES WITH WITH FLOW.

For the following two years, all of that cured me of love and sex. I didn’t/couldn’t want either. I focused on my work.

I started writing and directing short films that talked about love between two men (a musical fantasy), how one can destroy oneself by not accepting who one is (a one-shot suicidal fantasy) and finally, a 16-minute movie about trying to figure out your place in the Queer world (my masterpiece, easy to say, right?).

In retrospect, what I couldn’t do in real life anymore (exploring and answering questions), I did it in fiction. In Faggot (and Other Semantics),there are themes of homophobia, internalized homophobia, clichés, dating apps, sex, violence and identity. I’m not saying it’s the greatest movie of all time, but it’s good. That’s why it’s so heartbreaking that I still haven’t finished it.

I used the excuse that I didn’t have enough money. Well, no I have some money put aside thanks to my friends. I though to myself that I was just lazy but fuck, I proved to myself this past month I wasn’t. So, I’m scared to finish it. Not just having to move on artistically (though it is a big part of the fear) but also, It’s kind of the end of a journey. Well, a big chapter anyway. The movie was made when I was the most wrecked version of myself. I touched subjects that are so personal to me and felt like I finally got some answers out of my questions. Finally…well, I don’t know. I went back to thinking I’m a lazy cunt.

Since then (two years), I did something every Queer person should do : I’ve explored our History. I started making research for Faggot back in 2016. I bought a couple of books, mainly “Faggots” written by Larry Kramer and “Le Rose et Le Noir” written by Frédéric Martel. The truth is, we don’t know our History. How can we ? History tried to erase us time and time again. And when real tragedy stroke, people who couldn’t have shared this History were let to die. Unlike all of the other communities, Queer people are not born into a Queer environment. Humans from all races and backgrounds are raised and can receive heritage from their peers. Some of that heritage are in books you get to read in school. What History book talks about Stonewall ? None. We, as Queer people, are cursed with the task of reinventing ourselves generation after generation. Is it so surprising then that we keep on losing ourselves along the way, trying to figure out our identity ? I had to go and search for information, nothing was giving to me openly. I’m so glad I did.

Learning our past taught me so much about how to live my present. That’s why I started to write these articles this June. I wanted to give my fellow Queers a metaphorical anchor to throw into this ocean we call Life so that they can take a closer look at the world that came before, the one that is being built right now and perhaps, what’s to come. It’s a small gift. The best I can do with my restricted reach but here we are.

Today, I told you about my own story. I came back to it with all that baggage from years of research into my Queer Heritage. I see things a bit more clearly now. In the hopes that maybe, if you deem it necessary, you will be able to do the same.

I’m signing off. Yours Truly,

The Queer King.

1 note · View note