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somekindofsentience · 2 months

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reframing Omori, or are the endings really black and white?

MAJOR OMORI SPOILERS FOR EVERY SINGLE ENDING PLEASE PLAY THIS GAME I SWEAR ITS SUPER GOOD PLAY ALL THE ENDINGS (OR AT LEAST KNOW ABOUT THEM IF YOU'RE TOO SCARED TO PLAY THE NEUTRAL ENDING BECAUSE GOD KNOWS I WAS TOO)

TW: SUICIDE, GRIEF, LOSS, DEPRESSION, MENTAL ILLNESS, GAME-TYPICAL CONTENT

THIS IS ALSO REALLY LONG BECAUSE I'M INSANE. SORRY.

Right. This will be a big write-up of multiple interpretations of the different Omori endings. I feel like the game is quite black-and-white with how the endings should be interpreted, the achievements literally state what is good and bad for the player (and "other", which is also referred to as the neutral ending). But I don't think things are as good or as bad or as neutral as they seem.

Let's be explicit here - you're meant to get the good ending. The game does everything it can to ensure you get the good ending - even scrapping a daytime Hellmari jumpscare to ensure the player would keep opening the door for Kel. You're meant to save Basil. You're meant to defeat Omori. You're meant to uncover the Truth. You're meant to sit there and cry when Sunny and Mari play that Final Duet. And also, we like a story where there's the possibility for a happier ending! Don't you want these little babies you've follow around for 20 or 80 hours to get some closure and peace?

For these reasons, the good ending is usually considered canon, and I personally think the secret ending is also canon. I'll also be considering both canon for the sake of this post, although that isn't really relevant, since I'm going through all endings.

With this in mind, let's consider each ending.

THE "GOOD" AND SECRET ENDING.

This one is by far the easiest to flip the switch on. Since it's left ambiguous as to whether or not Sunny is forgiven by his friends, it could easily lead to a far worse ending where Hero throws Sunny down the stairs, or he is never forgiven, or other horrible events occur. Arguably, the point of the game is Sunny's personal acceptance, so whether or not his friends forgive him is so irrelevant that it's up for player speculation.

But that's all so simple, and all personal interpretation. I think considering the actual canon is far more interesting, particularly how it may affect Basil.

You could consider the secret ending to be an objective "good" ending - Sunny and Basil are smiling, and the Somethings fade away. But take a look where each Something goes.

Sunny's fades away entirely behind him, because his character arc surrounds finding and accepting the truth, and this means admitting to his friends what he has done. In this way, he also somewhat frees Basil from needing to obsessively hide the truth from the others, which is part of Basil's character arc, and quite crucial for the specific event that traumatised them both. This is healing specifically from Mari's death and the coverup.

But Basil's Something seems to... hide itself. It doesn't fade. It is still there.

Furthermore, the credits. Despite everything, Sunny does move from Faraway, the credits of a car rolling by definitely suggest this. I also don't think this fight would deter Sunny's Mom from wanting to start a new life - in fact, she'd probably want to do so more.

Basil's abandonment issues are unanswered.

I believe these issues have occurred for longer than the day of the recital - Basil takes photos of things he is "afraid to lose", we know Basil's parents are absent - and therefore they are a separate problem Basil needs to heal from. (omocat make an Omori 2 about basil pls it would be so good i swear i swear)

Basil means a lot to Sunny. We can see this in the numerous Basil-related things that appear in Headspace - all the little flower facts, the photo album's integrity to the group, Headspace's insistence they are best friends - and we juxtapose this to Basil's absolute state of panic over potential further abandonment, which is heartbreaking to witness, ending with his psychotic meltdown, furiously begging Sunny to stop leaving him. The abandonment of Basil had a massive affect on Sunny's mindscape, where his friend is constantly missing and tormented in Black Space, a forever reminder of the truth and the world he shut away. And from the way their Follow-Up Moves work, a hurt Basil is also hurt Sunny.

This comes to my final point - the Good ending is not objectively "Good" because of the implications it has for Basil, who has the ability to influence Sunny. Basil is missing a massive part of his healing, which is often why he is mischaracterised by the fandom as an insane yandere. Sure, the ending has the potential for future healing, but this ending also has the potential for further mental decline, and even points to the latter.

The ending is better than the others, yes. But it is far from a "good" ending.

Whether or not Sunny is aware of all this is up to you, which could be altered by whether or not you believe the two share dreams.

THE "BAD" ENDING.

Obviously the bad ending is bad. I am absolutely not encouraging the events of that ending, and I genuinely thought it was the worst possible ending - you did all that work to seek the truth and mend friendships and it leads to... that? - up until I watched this one amazing animation by _ysther. Please watch it for context.

Rolling Girl is about suicide, or severe mental illness, at least. Many people believe that the 'rolling' within the song is a metaphor for self-harm, but you may also consider that it is a metaphor for some half-baked existence - this feeling of being barely alive, surviving off the next hit of a potential future.

This animation frames the ending in a slightly different way, at least in my interpretation - that Sunny is exhaustedly trudging through Headspace, trying to see if there is something there for him, and there isn't. Omori and Sunny's hug at the end of the animation is notable - Sunny is in his hospital gown, and the headspace background fades through the air... this is implicit of the Bad Ending. This animation ends with the bad ending, and in the context of the song, Omori accepts Sunny's exhaustion, and sets him free.

Ultimately, the Truth is overwhelming. That's why Sunny repressed it for four years - it is so horrific that he cannot function in daily life without dissociation, and even with it, he's still a barely functional shut-in. He creates Omori and White/Black/Red Space, and daydreams to cope with his loneliness. At the end of the game, he faces Omori, who convinces him that death is the only option left in a seemingly sadistic way.

But Omori's purpose - just as any mind with suicidal intentions - is not to kill Sunny. His purpose is not only to repress the Truth, but to protect and support him. This is shown in Omori's final hug. When things get overwhelming, Omori convinces Sunny into suicide for their own freedom from suffering. It is a selfish act, which is why Omori spends time deeming Sunny worthy of committing it, but it is also a freeing act.

Furthermore, we know Headspace repeats over, and this repetitive cycle is innate to Sunny's (and many other people's) trauma. Repress, uncover, repress, uncover. Sunny's final fight with Omori was probably not the first, and if Sunny had survived the bad ending, it probably wouldn't have been the last. Omori is the absolute last line of defense, protecting Sunny and his friends from the Truth. This suggests that Sunny wasn't ready for healing, which lead to the bad ending.

The "bad" ending isn't explicitly bad - it is some twisted form of freedom. By killing him, Omori is freeing Sunny from the guilt and pain that has been destroying him for years. This suicide is the ultimate form of self-protection, Omori's final love note to Sunny.

But it is also a symbol of immaturity, though not necessarily a negative one. The bad ending is the implication that Headspace should have repeated, and the Truth needed further repression before Sunny could accept it. Sunny fell into Omori's trap because he simply wasn't ready, and this led to his death.

People always consider this ending in the context of what is best for the group and everyone outside of Sunny's mind, but they don't consider that, to himself and Omori, Sunny is a selfish person who is worthy of one final selfish act for peace.

THE "NEUTRAL" ENDINGS.

While the other segments were focused on greying out the black and white, demonstrating the more subtle implications of the endings, this will be proving that the word "neutral" should never be associated with these endings ever again.

Please note that I am only talking about the neutral endings that occur when you choose not to save Basil on the final night - we will discuss the implications of the Hikikomori route and its endings later.

The neutral endings are, hands down, the worst possible route you can take during the game. One of them is the only ending where three people explicitly die during the game. If you won't take this from a Basil lover, I'm going to prove objectively that this is the worst route for all members of the group, including Sunny.

Firstly, we have to talk about the dialogue that Aubrey, Kel and Hero say when Basil commit suicide.

Aubrey thinks it is her fault, for everything she did to Basil. Aubrey will forever blame herself for Basil's suicide, and this quote implies that. Looking at her expression, she's completely despondent. She isn't crying, she is feeling horrific guilt - not unlike the guilt Sunny feels for the truth. She might even slip into his habits of isolation and repression, or perhaps lash out further to cope.

Kel, on the other hand, is crying - which is incredibly notable for him, because his whole thing is ignorance and smiles - but he isn't blaming himself or the group or even Aubrey, but comparing this death to Mari's. Kel is such a complex character that I have difficulty analysing this particular line, but I personally think Kel is holding some of that childlike confusion, something similar to when he interacted with the depressed Hero. Why does this keep happening? Kel holds his own cycle of ignorance, and here it's broken. Perhaps he's questioning his own ability to "be happy" just as much as he is questioning the deaths.

idk. i'd love to here people's takes on this.

Hero's use of the second font is particularly notable. This font is associated with truth, and in particular, distortion. The most notable characters who use this distorted font are Basil during a breakdown and Omori - both characters associated with severe trauma and repression, trying to hide something. To me, this suggests that Hero is next.

Hero feels like he is the caretaker of the group - and he's failed, again. He thinks he hasn't been doing enough to protect everyone. He may experience another depressive episode, or that same repression followed by obsessively behaviour, trying to keep everyone alive safe. Whatever it may be, Hero is completely broken, as is the rest of the group. This is the end of any remaining functionality that they worked so hard to build up.

After this, viewing Basil's body leads to his door disappearing, as Sunny slips further into his repression. Something is yet again behind Sunny in the mirror, reminding him of the Truth.

I want to now draw your attention to something stated by the disembodied voice in the Map of Truth.

'They' is referring to both Basil and Mari, and at this point, Basil and Mari are dead. Sunny is the only person still alive who knows the Truth.

There is no way he can live with this, which is why the Knife Ending is readily accessible - but only if you explicitly seek it out. Within the knife ending, a dial-up rings forever for a call that will never be answered, as Sunny bleeds out on his bed. Sunny's Mom has lost both her children, and Kel, Aubrey and Hero have lost three of their friends, close enough to be family. This is in no way a "neutral" ending, this is the worst case scenario.

But even the Abandon Ending is unbearable. Sunny is the only one left who knows the truth of Mari's death. Implicitly, he has also killed Basil by the player's choice not to save him - which you could take as suggesting he somehow knew Basil was going to die.

The game shows to us that complete repression of the Truth is not possible. Even in the Hikikomori route, cracks of the Truth show in abstract ways - including Black Space 2 and the simulated Mari fight are good examples, as well as the horrific repeated jumpscares prevalent on the night in the real world before moving day. Even if Sunny moves away from the two ghosts he left behind, he will never be able to repress the Truth forever.

These endings are in no way neutral, and I think that's obvious to everyone. These are the worst endings you can receive, even the biggest Basil hater couldn't stomach all of this. I think.

THE HIKKIOMORI ROUTE.

If the good ending has elements of bad, and the bad ending has elements of good, and the neutral endings...

Well. Then the Hikikomori route is the perfect combination of both good and bad. It captures perfect game mechanics, and the peak of repression, but in some ways, it is the worst route you could consider taking.

On one hand, it's the perfect route for die-hard players. Peak exploration, unique information, the chance to level up and buff your characters, free access to the photo album, boss rush, and so much more. I personally love it, and I carefully plan out every aspect of what I'll do on that One Day Left. For Sunny, it is also a symbol that Omori has achieved his goal of "repression", or the façade of it, and will now sleep forever in peace. Dreamworld Basil is no longer a threat to Omori's perfect world (of which the meeting of the two literally felt like a wedding) and defeating the three Somethings achieves repression. Everything is okay, in Sunny's head.

On the other hand... it's the guiltiest route. The player is making an active decision to reject Kel and reality, which makes you feel guilty. It is incredibly difficult to take this route by pure accident, unless you were paralysed by the Hellmari jumpscare the night before. Unlike the other endings, Sunny never sees the truth in this route, only distorted fragments in Black Space and Black Space 2. Sunny never experiences the Something boss fight, but does still experience a Stranger fight, Headspace's final prayer to accept the truth, before Omori takes over forever.

And I don't know about you. But watching that piano fade away in the Lost Library... I felt shameful. It makes you want to apologise for the world you left behind.

It's quite easy to forget all this in the blur of Headspace, but Basil and Mari at the picnic blanket are a constant reminder. The blanket represents safety and protection, both for the party, but also the two left behind in it. Perhaps the fact he is present in the picnic blanket specifically suggests that Sunny is somewhat aware that Basil has committed suicide.

This route's endings are no more notable than the neutral endings, except Basil doesn't explicitly die in them, but it can be inferred he does from the results of the neutral endings. But the fact that we cannot confirm this just brings back that regret - Sunny has abandoned Basil and his old friends forever, for unrealistic Headspace reflections that Sunny made up. As I stated before, there is no way the Truth can be repressed forever, but it's pure speculation as to what happens after you abandon the group on the Hikikomori route.

thanks for reading, lol. i don't know how to conclusion. let me know your thoughts! this almost felt like stating the obvious half the time but i dunno, it felt cathartic to write.

i may write something about my journey with omori and i may not. this is a place for me to, idk, ruminate on things. i hope i don't become obsessed.

#spoilers #omori spoilers #omori analysis #omori #omori endings #ive been thinking about this for ages #bc it kinda annoyed me how black and white everything is #when the whole game is about how you shouldn't think black and white (at least morally)#but i digress #omori game #omori sunny #omori basil #tw: suicide #tw: death #tw: self harm #tw: omori-typical content #can you tell i ship sunflower #this is so fucking rambly #sentience's stuff

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firefirevampire · 1 year

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Okay so this is all just speculation and my own thoughts/theories and also idk wtf I'm talking about SO

please keep in mind I'm super new to Ghost so I may misunderstand or miss some crucial lore and don't hesitate to correct me if i do!! I am also sleepy so this is not well explained 😅 under the cut for length

Basically I think they're going to kill Copia to resurrect Terzo. Here's why:

1. Very obvious hints in the chapters that Copia is going to die - namely the coffin

2. Lyrical connections between Meliora and Prequelle/Impera

Cirice: "can you hear the thunder that's calling?"

Respite on the Spitalfields:"did no one hear the distant thunder?"

Absolution: "Ever since you were born you've been dyingEvery day a little more you've been dying" (This could also be alluding to the idea that Copia has been slowly dying ever since we were introduced to him)

Pro Memoria:don't you forget about dying, don't you forget about your friend death

Themes: anti- corruption/greed (Square Hammer and Mummy Dust, Twenties)

More lyrics from Respite on the Spitalfields (I know this song is about Jack the Ripper but analyzing it in a purely lore sense here):

One day he will come back / From the bowels of hell / He appeared to ascend / So we all stood there in awe / Now we have to pretend / We didn't see what we saw / When the curtain unveiled / To the sound of applause / That the king that we hailed / Was the Wizard of Oz / We will break away together / I'll be the shadow / You'll be the light / Nothing ever lasts forever / We will go softly / Into the night

Terzo, after being killed, was sent to hell and will now ascend. The Clergy had to sort of ignore his death when Copia took over. Copia was the "wizard of Oz" because he was almost like a puppet for Sister Imperator.

Nothing ever lasts forever, self explanatory.

Theologically speaking, you could argue that to be the anti-Christ, you have to die and be resurrected just as how Christ was, but the Clergy doesn't do things in an explicitly Christian way. Catholic papacy is not lineage based but the Ghost papacy is, so there's room for different interpretation here. You could definitely argue that Copia, not Terzo, is going to die and be resurrected, but I think what makes me believe more that it's Terzo are all the thematic/lyrical connections between his and Copia's albums.

I think either way it's inevitable that Copia will die, especially with the lyric changes in the cover, but whether he or Terzo will be resurrected, we'll just have to wait and see. I'm very doubtful on a whole new Papa being introduced though.

#Someone has probably said this in a much more eloquent and understandable way but #Yeah #The band ghost #I'm sleepy #But that cover was fire #Ghost bc

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roo-bastmoon · 2 years

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I think some of you have a hard time accepting that JK changed and matured and isn’t the impulsive kid he used to be.. It’s normal, I feel like the early twenties are a crucial time in our lives, you grow up a lot then and also considering that JK was under the spotlights at such a young age it’s not so surprising to me that he suddenly changed a lot. He knows what people say about him, it may have consciously or not push him to change his behavior, including his behavior towards Jimin. It may be less than before but he still reaches out to him and there’s plenty of recent moments that show how Jimin still affects him.

Also sorry if that sounds mean but sometimes when I read asks around here I feel like it comes from people who haven’t been in a long term relationship or have Disney level expectations about it… I’ve been with my partner for 7 years, we started dating at 20, we grew up a lot in the meantime and we don’t behave the same now at 27. It’s normal. The intensity of the first years doesn’t last for ever, after a while you learn to detach yourself from your lover. This is what I see in JK and Jimin’s relationship personally. I’ve been in the fandom for almost 3 years and my thoughts about them haven’t changed much. I actually have more 'certainty' about them being together (so to speak, I’m aware I could be wrong, there’s always doubt and it’s okay). They seem more than fine to me, just more discreet. And to me JK has always looked like the one who would be the more eager to reveal their relationship. I mean GCF in Tokyo and Saipan and his ring finger tattoo said it all for me, and I don’t think it has changed, he may have just understood that he had to tone it down for various reasons and it’s usual for couples to throw their love down everybody’s throats in the beginning ^^

I understand that some people have doubts about them or are on the fence and sometimes believe they’re a thing and then sometimes not. No problem with that, no one knows the truth anyway. And that’s the problem for some of us in jikook places, some have a hard time accepting that we will never know, or at least not in the near future. I won’t pretend that it doesn’t bother me sometimes, I’m very curious myself. But we should be careful -myself included- to not draw conclusions or built up a whole drama scenario just from a few seconds of interactions here and there. Sometimes from just a few bits of them people conclude they’re married, or they broke up, and then write a whole fanfic about how they live together and are engaged, or on the contrary about how they used to hook up but not anymore. Honestly, most of the times, it seems farfetched either way.. I’d rather go with what makes more sense to me and so far the pendulum still swings towards the ´they’re à couple' side of things but that’s it, I don’t know much more. Hopefully one day will know the truth. I know a lot of jikookers think it will never happens but I’m not so sure about that, I could see them wanted to tell us in the future, when things would have calmed down, their career a bit less hectic, their military obligations done. And if I don’t like when people interpret everything JK or Jimin do in relation to each other, I think it would make sense that they would hint at their relationship in their upcoming albums as this time it’s a complete personal project where each members are planning to put a lot of themselves into. We still shouldn’t over analyze every lyrics but I think that if they want to give us a glimpse of their relationship it would be there. Wait and see I guess! Sorry for the rant that was awfully long

I’m so grateful for your thoughts and these are really deep and honest and well packaged. I pretty much agree with everything you said and when I’m discussing things on here I always try to add the caveat that it could just be their relationship is maturing after a decade together. I think people get hung up on the fact that JK it’s still extremely playful and silly and physically affectionate with all the other members. Sometimes he is with Jimin too (Vegas was off the charts). Other times it’s so stiff and blank and awkward, like he’s trying to sit on his own hands (Grammy behind the scenes was all business, zero warmth). So I’m not expecting any grand gestures or over the top puppy love. Just little touches, gentle tones, hints at insider info, and a casual comfort in each other — that stuff always makes me happy. Standing close to one another. Being out and about off schedule together. Looking at each other in a soft way. I miss that stuff a bit, where it’s clear they are choosing each other, but I get there are plenty of reasons to be low-key right now! In the end I reached your exact same conclusion: we have to wait and see.

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breezybeej · 11 days

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Just practicing my lyrical analysis to prepare myself for a project. Do not mind me

There are a lot of parallels between poetry and song lyrics but there are some crucial differences as well.

One is obviously the presence of music. Some poems work wonderfully when you throw a beat behind them but many do not. The deeper you go into poetry the more you start to realize that it is a visual medium as well as a verbal one. song lyrics cannot very well play with their typography to convey ideas because it is an auditory format.

Another is delivery. Some poetry is structured so that it can only be delivered with a certain meter which influences the interpretation but you are left without vocal tone to indicate anything. Some examples in songs might be Chappell Roan's vocal 'cracks' in Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl as she constantly shifts between her head voice and her chest voice to create these desperate sounding yells to convey her intense yearning. Or the way Thom Yorke opens the song 15 Step with a severe mumble and almost a whimper and at the end of the song he delivers the final line crisply and firmly. We have a sense of change in the narrator of the song, our subject becoming resolute.

Now as this relates to lyricism, let's talk about what we mean. Songs do not have a lot of time to get their meaning across so we use things like vocal tone, instrumentation, and reference to speed up the process for the listener and also provide color to your canvas. I'm going to break down two examples.

Chevelle is a hard rock band known for their cynical lyrics. One of my absolute favorite songs by them is Hats Off to the Bull. Before we even listen to the song, what does that bring to mind?

"Hats off" is a phrase typically used to signify that you are showing respect to someone, often when they had no chance but tried their best. In what situations would this apply to a bull? We have two major sports that fit: Bullfighting and Rodeos. Either one works here so I'll go with fighting.

We already have the thesis of the song. The bull can never truly win. It is trapped by the spectacle of the sport. Even if he defeats the matador, he faces more fights and ultimately slaughter (for the record, I am speaking to the common layman conception of bullfighting, there are many traditions and nuance). A "hats off" to the bull is acknowledgement that he fought as hard as he could despite having no hope for success. Winning the battles, losing the war etc etc.

And if we listen to the song, yeah that's the feeling they explore. And the delivery of the line is harsh, strained, it's *angry*. It makes you feel like the singer is watching this Injustice and cannot do anything about it aside from salute the bull for trying its best despite its hopelessness.

That is a single line as the title of the song and the first line of the chorus. it carries so much meaning and emotion while being five single syllable words. it carries that meaning by referencing an activity many are at least generally aware of and the common gesture of removing your hat in respect. it is not a difficult set of dots to connect but it is very well crafted so that you can connect those dots and also save some words for the lyricist.

Next up is the song Submarine by L'imperatrice.

If we try the same analysis, we look at the word submarine and think pressurized vessel deep underwater. Doesn't really tell us much because it's just one word. But wait, what is the album? Tako Tsubo, which is a stylizing of the term Takotsubo's cardiomyopathy or broken heart disease. Combined, maybe we are dealing with what happens when a pressurized vessel ruptures?

Pretty close. They don't talk about the actual rupture, just the idea of having this pressurized shell that the world sees without knowing what's going on inside.

So we have a song about the social pressure to not express yourself whenever you are sad (or any other non-happy emotion) and also the pressure that builds up inside you as a result of that. We are looking at a situation where people are turning themselves into pressure vessels that could erupt catastrophically. That last part is never said directly in the song but keep that submarine terminology in mind because nowhere in the song is the word submarine said.

Rather, every line of the chorus *rhymes* with submarine which primes you to think about the title in relation to the lyrics, it primes you to make that imagery yourself. The song also does not talk about the consequences of too much pressure building up, you have to know that is a risk with submarines.

Building on that, most of the verses are sung in a reserved kind of low-key tone. these are the lyrics that discuss vulnerabilities and feelings. When we get to the chorus, there is a shift to what almost sounds like the singer is straightening her back and projecting confidence as she sings about having this strong outer shell that's not revealing any emotions. The doubling of her vocals is also more prominent here which makes it sound like multiple people are expressing the same idea. After all, she says at the beginning of the song that everyone shares that same view, they only show what they want to. This projected confidence in the chorus with the vocals layered on top of themselves conveys that same idea. Everyone is saying this to themselves.

Another aspect of the submarine is that it is a lonely vessel. Once you are underwater and inside this capsule, you can't very well invite someone else in. The inherent loneliness of how society handles sadness is present here. Am I the only one who was born to be blue? it feels like that because everyone else is hiding their sadness so you feel like you are the only sad person.

My favorite part of the song plays directly into all of these feelings together when the chorus ends. That projected confidence comes through with the line "I don't need to say goodbye" and it instantly collapses when she asks the genuine heartfelt question with a waver in her voice "do I?"

Once again, we have very straightforward concepts and they are very easy to interpret because the lyricist and the musicians structured their song very well to deliver them and make them digestible to the listener. You don't have to try hard to pull these concepts out because they did a good job writing them. They are also able to impart nuance to this theme by leaning on reference and tone. not only can you grasp the song but you can also do deep readings and still pull information out. it is simple and complex.

Both of these examples could work as poetry but it is the instrumentation and delivery that gives them deeper color in the same way that many poems could not just be translated to songs specifically because you would have to come up with your own tone and instrumentation which would recolor what is on the page.

With this in mind, I'm curious to see if any of these things are explored in the tor/tur/ed po/ets depar/tme/nt. since people hail TAS as a great lyricist, I anticipate being able to tease out some of these differences in her upcoming work. I suppose we'll see. yeah, it's probably unfair to go into an album with predetermined expectations, I'm not demanding that this album work in this space but I do expect to be able to perform a similar level of analysis on it.

#mine #this is a mistake by the way. I've already seen some of the leaked lyrics and buddy #I believe I'm going to drive myself insane sifting through the dirt here #chevelle #L'imperatrice #hats off to the bull #tako tsubo

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venusinwalls · 3 years

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LT2 THEORY: about walls era, meaning of 369 changes in the smiley face, inspiration and references to "2001: a space Odyssey" all are things that went unnoticed, and all with quite a bit of spoilers;

I am going to explain what the film is and why Louis and Charlie were very inspired by it as they said and it serves a lot to understand the changes in everything else

- The first thing is to see the references and for that it is important to return to "walls video" and what perhaps seemed insignificant to us but has many parallels what we see today, so here the spoilers begin. The film addresses topics such as human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence and extraterrestrial life, it is characterized by the surreal and psychedelic as well as being a precursor in its branch and which has a lot of backgrounds with a philosophical touch something iconic for the time.

— escene one: "The dawn of man": the film begins in the desert where a group of animals begin the process of evolution and adaptation when they find a Euler brick or orthohedral block (monolith) that leads to portals and ok but it is quite significant not?

— Escene 2 : rumors of an epidemic make a group of scientists meet and embark on a journey under the surface of the Moon, to 5 astronauts where they find another "monolith" identical to the 1st, the problem here is that it is a suicide mission and none survive match two.

I can't believe how Louis made that reference and we didn't see it ok let's continue, the cause of death of the 5 are the sounds emitted by the monolith and their non-alignment with the elements and here there are references to Nietzsche and the "super man "

— Escene 3: "Mission to Jupiter" where there are 6 crew members: 3 in hibernation 1 artificial intelligence machine and 2 the protagonists: David and Frank and here comes the 3 parallelism of Louis on the dance floor with the movie ship.

In this new mission, both protagonists are not informed about what they are going to and their life on the ship is monotonous, even between the two they become friends and from loneliness they begin to talk with the artificial machine (HAL) all right until they both suspect that something bad is going to happen.

david and frank decide to talk secretly about HAL (the machine) which, in addition to being an artificial machine, fulfills the function of panopticon and well ... This is the crucial part and the link to the whole story because here it begins a before and after in the movie and oh coincidence panoptic parallelism 👁️

HAL always controls them although they think that it is only a machine as I said, it is a panopticon (it sees everything) the machine upon learning of the secret of both decides to take revenge and in the most cruel way, what it does is decompose the machine with connection to the land what generates the pilots have to go to the outside. Frank is the one who offers himself and leaves David in charge of the arrangement inside and that is when Hal (the machine) kills Frank and even though David tries to rescue him it is too late and not only HAL killed Frank but the other 3 hibernating crew.

What leaves David alone on the ship and instead of crying what he seeks is revenge and this is where HAL continues to torment him to the point of distorting the memories in his mind (which is a wink to this part of the walls mv).

From the center of the ship while the machine looks for mercy and asks him to think who the real enemy is, David still disconnects him but hal leaves a video where one of the scientists of the 1st suicide mission is the same one who sent him to this to investigate the "monolith".

— Escene 4: "Júpiter and beyond infinity": with that ending comes the last chapter of the movie where, months later, David arrives at Jupiter finding the "monolith" that, as he approaches, takes the appearance of a door that opens more psychedelic spaces than Louis and Charlie used in "The live london".

The psychedelic scenario changes and everything continues to be seen from the point of the panoptic eye where David is now in mirrors that appear copies and copies of David younger to older and the monolith again in its older version (wink wink or coincidence to coacoac) You know 🌝

The ending of the movie is super complex, like the movie itself, because there are many references, but suddenly, David takes the form / copy of a fetus inside a transparent sphere, then floating in outer space above the Earth, which implies evolution of your copies.

How do you know coacoac is difficult to pigeonhole into "walls album" because in turn it seems that it belongs but no, for me it represents the transition between the old and the new Louis. Coacoac is an autobiographical description of his life and his experiences the power that others can identify with him.

Because if coacoac is the walls transition in the desert, it represents his life before becoming an artist, that is why he chose this film and his inspiration in oasis and within the video he enters other dimensions through the gates of the monolith that, as in the film, are different versions Of his past.

Then he goes to his stage in 1D what is related to the part of the moon in the movie and how all that ended, then the part of David and Frank is his solo era, all the obstacles and losses he had and how just like David did not he gave up and that's where coacoac enters the transition to lt2

Because for me the panopticon represents all those entanglements that he had / has with his record company, that is why now he is even using them in the merch and photos since the panoptics are always symbols of a power that it is difficult to finish it and expose it also Louis has an incredible mind and he is a fan of references and that everything always has a framework like all the videos on walls that do not have an easy order to say because he broke with that and goes from back to front because they are also different spheres and it depends on how you look at it. interpretation, so...

The importance of the film lies in the power to reinvent itself and as we constantly live experiences that seem from other worlds, that is why the smiley face has 6 transitions that are not actually erasing it, it is rebuilding it as it did with its mv and its nods to the movie.

to finish this analysis I put more references first from the beginning of walls louis use merch of the film and its director and in his merch the relationship to 369 with the film and if you look at the number of protagonists are always 3, 6 and 9 in addition to the kinetic art and the various monoliths in the 369 merch:

All this theory is available in Spanish on my Twitter profile @/wallshypersonic.

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 years

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I think Fight Song by Rachel Platten really suits Marella. I've seen a lot of people using it for Sophie but it just makes sense for Marella. Is it just me?

Well, Fight Song is in her Wildfire album so we're already off to a great start there! Also it is not just you; I agree that the lyrics fit with Marella's character and arc well. I think it could be used for both characters, but in slightly different ways.

There's this sort of hidden strength to Marella's character, where she's such a key player with seemingly something so innocuous. And I think that's captured in the lines, "I might only have one match / But I can make an explosion." Compared to the rest of her friends who have been in this fight a lot longer than she has, there's not a lot she can do that's new. She's playing catch up, but that doesn't make her any less important or less vital. Her main contribution to the group is being a pyrokinetic. That's why she's there, why she's important. If she wasn't a pyrokinetic odds are she'd never get involved--evidenced by her reaction in Lodestar when she saw how eager everyone was to follow the starstone's light. But even if that's her only contribution, it's still crucial. She can do a lot with it, and everyone knows it. Regardless of the tools given to her, she can be dangerous and threatening and empowering and turn the tide in a battle. She can do a lot with what, compared to everything else, is only a little.

Additionally, there's the matter of her home life and how she's so...unknown? i think that might be the best world for it. Her life is a mystery and people know things from her but not about her, which matches with the lines, "And all those things I didn't say / Wrecking balls inside my brain / I will scream them loud tonight." For the first parts of the series we learned almost nothing about her. Only snippets here and there about her and her family. She didn't say anything about them herself, but she was living with them and living with the stigma and the struggles. She loves her mom, but that doesn't mean it isn't hard sometimes. And she kept that all to herself. In a slightly different interpretation of the words, I don't think that her screaming them loud tonight is akin to her talking about her home life more or expressing that part of herself she's kept private, but rather it relates to her emotions. She kept both the knowledge and the reactions it inspired in her private, but now she can use everything it sparks in her and scream the emotions loud, letting them all out. It's an expression of herself without crossing that personal boundary she's set up when it comes to her home life.

This is more about a crucial part of her development than her as a whole, but "My power's turned on / Starting right now I'll be strong" relates well to the transformation she underwent once she manifested. Once her ability was triggered, her power turned on, everything shifted for her and she was forced into this fight. And she had to rise to the occasion or be swept under. She doesn't have the same choice everyone else does, and now she has to be strong. She has to master herself and her power and stand up for herself because the other alternative is to let her world crush her into submission, and that's never been her kind of thing. It's also relates to the line "take back my life song / prove I'm alright song," as her being strong and mastering herself is her way of proving to the world that she deserves a place, that they can't take it away. Her pyrokinesis has the chance to ruin her life given it being forbidden and feared, but by using it she can prove to everyone and to herself that it's a part of her and it should be respected, taking back that part of her life that was ruined by it. And it's starting to work! She was going to have to register as talentless, but given her strength she's proven the prejudice people have may not be accurate and so the world knows about it and it hasn't ruined her. She's even allowed to practice with Fintan.

All of that to say that yes! the song does fit Marella well you're right! it's got the fortitude, persistence, and determination her character starts to exhibit more and more as the series progresses. She's incredibly strong, and the song captured that! Thank you for the suggestion, as it's a wonderful way to look at her character

#she's so interesting I love her #like the complexity and the wariness and distrust #she's not just a snarky boy-obsessed gossip #she's critical and analytical and skilled in conversation because she needs to deflect attention from her #while also making people think they know her #later people do come to know her more #but at the beginning? she had sophie convinced she knew her when she had actually kept a lot of her life secret #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #quil's queries #nonsie #kotlc song analysis #marella redek

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shefanispeculator · 3 years

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I'm slightly disappointed to log onto Zoom and find Gwen Stefani in Los Angeles. I wanted to see the ranch. Stefani spent most of the pandemic in Oklahoma with her fiancé and fellow The Voice coach Blake Shelton, with whom she has recently collaborated on a string of country radio hits, alongside a kitsch Christmas song. For a ska-pop superstar, it's a pivot, but Stefani and Shelton are cute together — picture-perfect in their opposite attraction.

Country Gwen exists, her urban counterpart assures me, but on this particular MacBook she's nowhere to be seen. I'm not sure what crude regional stereotypes I was expecting (Stefani spitting sunflower seeds? Shelton line dancing in the background?) but I get Californian sunshine instead, illuminating a version of Stefani more familiar from my teenage years, when Love. Angel. Music. Baby and its follow-up The Sweet Escape spawned millions of fans, haters and imitators. She's platinum blonde, red lipsticked and wearing a black-and-white outfit that matches the decor. The checkerboard pattern can be traced back to an even earlier era, when Stefani and her No Doubt bandmates were '80s teenagers obsessed with two-tone acts like Madness and The Specials.

Cowboy boots wouldn't fit this picture, and nor would Stefani's glitzy showgirl outfits from The Voice, where she just wrapped another season as a celebrity coach. As she prepares to release her fourth solo record, and enters the fifth decade of an extraordinarily successful music career, Gwen Stefani is re-re-branding as... Gwen Stefani.

Top: Local Boogeyman, Pants: GCDS, Shoes: Valentino, Earrings, bracelets and rings: Dena Kemp (The Residency Experience), Necklaces: Gwen's own, Engagement ring: Gwen's own

"But what is that?" Stefani asks with seriousness, as we consider the possibility of some essential, inherent Gwen. "Everyone's interpretation of what I am and how I sing, I mean, that's what this era is about for me."

Said era kicked off late last year, with the music video for "Let Me Reintroduce Myself." It saw Stefani playfully revisit the wardrobes of album cycles past, from the ab-bearing tomboy tank tops of "Hollaback Girl" to the club kid blue hair mascara of '90s No Doubt. Her Harajuku Girls also make a return. The entire visual is a huge flex, not only for the sheer volume of iconic career moments recreated in dutiful detail, but the fact Stefani can still fit into the clothes originally worn during all of them. She looks eerily the same, frighteningly good, ageing in reverse at the same pace as her frequent collaborator Pharrell.

"It's really a blessing to be able to have such a long career, where there really is nothing to prove anymore."

Pop stars are expected to be young forever, in looks but also in their capacity to innovate new trends. Which makes the nostalgic music video a curious choice. Doesn't Stefani know by now that the cardinal rule of pop is to avoid repeating yourself? That even the hottest artists in the world are basically required by law to create completely new eras from scratch every six months in order to appease fans and maintain maximum TikTok-ready relevance?

Of course she does, but that doesn't mean she has to participate. Stefani isn't trying to chase down her contemporaries, despite clearly possessing the physical fitness required. "It's really a blessing to be able to have such a long career, where there really is nothing to prove anymore," she says. "It's a different energy. You know, it's really just about doing it to do it, as opposed to trying to make a statement or make a mark."

Corset: Ronald van der Kemp, Bracelets: Dena Kemp (The Residency Experience), Earrings: Lana Jewelry (The Residency Experience), Engagement ring: Gwen's own

Even the Saweetie remix of her latest single "Slow Clap" happened on a whim, after the younger artist happened to post a video of herself vibing to Stefani's 2004 single "Luxurious" on Instagram Stories. They knocked out the song and accompanying video in a day. Neither seems bothered by the Old Navy meme. "It was just this little video that we did on the fly," Stefani says. "It just happened. It just feels good to put new stuff out there."

Stefani completed a two-year Vegas greatest hits residency in 2019, which gave her a sense of perspective on her own legacy. "You make a new record because that's what is exciting for you," she says. "But people really just want to hear the records after a while that were the backdrop to their lives, a 'Don't Speak' or a 'Just a Girl' or a 'Hollaback Girl,' or whatever it was for them. So, you know, it's hard — you can only be new when you're new, and that's just the truth, and I know that."

She says she was pleasantly surprised that "Let Me Reintroduce Myself" charted at all, and that she only found out it did when Shelton walked into the kitchen to show her the iTunes numbers. "I burst out crying with joy, because it was like, 'Whoa, really?' I think I'd set myself up to be quite realistic about where I'm at."

Stefani, endlessly polite and self-deprecating in conversation, which on her end mostly consists of endearingly earnest run-on monologues, says she still has "tons" of insecurities. I get the impression she has been trying harder to give herself credit lately. She recalls recently hearing Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" on the car radio and finding herself in awe of the song's timeless catchiness.

Suit: Balmain, Earrings and choker: Lana Jewelry (The Residency Experience), Necklaces: Gwen's own

"But then I started thinking," she says, in a goofy Cher Horowitz tone. "Like, I have a few of those myself." She talks of this realization as a genuine breakthrough, which is a little worrying for a woman who has sold 40 million records. No shit, she has a "few of those." More of them than Lauper, actually.

More new music is coming along slowly, but I've caught Stefani on a day when the horizon looks closer than usual, and while things haven't quite fallen into place yet, she's feeling more confident that they eventually will. "I'm at the end," she declares. "The idea of going for a session and not being with my kids or the idea of taking time away from Blake doesn't fuel my fire like it did two months ago. I need to decide, wrap it up, put out the project."

Crucially, there's no rush. The album will simply arrive sometime this year, tracklist and title currently undecided.

"You're talking to me at a weird transitional time," Stefani says repeatedly throughout our conversation, which sometimes takes on the cathartic tone of therapy. But having time in the first place is a new feeling.

Bracelet and choker: Dana Kemp (The Residency Experience), Obsession necklace: Lidow Archive, Gold necklaces: Gwen's own, Clothing: Blumarine, Boots: Philipp Plein

NO DOUBT WERE A BAND for nine years before getting on the radio. Enough time for Stefani and bassist Tony Kanal to be in a long term relationship then break up and write a whole hit album about it. All of the Fleetwood Mac drama was resolved pre-fame, which enabled the group to capitalize on the surprise success of Tragic Kingdom singles like "Don't Speak" and "Just a Girl" with a world tour that lasted almost three years. Three more albums followed, and Stefani has reinforced her household name status in every decade since, launching a solo career and multiple fashion lines while never totally cutting the cord from her original musical project.

In other words, record executives have been dictating Stefani's schedule since the mid-'90s. She even sings about it on Love. Angel. Music. Baby opener "What You Waiting For," in which her biological clock ticks like a metronome. Interscope Co-Founder Jimmy Iovine, who discovered No Doubt and continued to work with Stefani on her solo output, was quick to point out that his client's prime childbearing years were also her last opportunity to cross over into pop stardom. And after her first record went number one, it only made sense to lay down some new tracks straight away.

"Whether or not I get the response that I would hope to get — because that's what I'm used to, because I'm so damn spoiled and I've tasted the blood of success — I still got to do the creative journey."

"I had the baby, the first one, and it was only like eight weeks after I had him, that Jimmy was calling me saying, you've got to go in the studio with Akon," Stefani recalls cheerfully. "Like, Akon wants to work with you. Like, no, I'm nursing my baby. But then I couldn't say no." And then? "We wrote 'Sweet Escape.'" And then? "I went on a world tour." And then? "In the month that I got home from that one hundred and whatever shows it was, I got pregnant with Zuma. So then that was that." (It wasn't. Admittedly: "Then it was like, No Doubt, let's do another record.")

Things are different now: "You can just drop singles and you don't have to put a record out. But if you want to put a record out, you can work on it slowly." But even as she talks of slowing down, speculating that she might not even go on tour after the pandemic ends, in the next sentence Stefani's back to admitting that there's more work to be done, that she wants to write a couple more songs for her new record, "just to make sure."

Earrings: Lana Jewelry (The Residency Experience) Choker: Chanel, Necklaces: Gwen's own, Gloves: Laurel DeWitt, Top: Local Boogeyman

"The creation is the thing that fuels me so much," she says. "Whether or not I get the response that I would hope to get — because that's what I'm used to, because I'm so damn spoiled and I've tasted the blood of success — I still got to do the creative journey."

Like any good lyricist, she reaches out to her listener, hoping to convey a more universal point. "It's just probably the same for you as a writer," she guesses. "You know, it's the anticipation. You're in it now. You're getting the information. This is what you live for. You're doing the interview and then you're going to write it. And that's going to be the challenge."

GWEN STEFANI WAS PUTTING out diary entry pop when Olivia Rodrigo was still in diapers and Taylor Swift was but a humble Pennsylvania Christmas tree heiress. She struggles to pen lyrics that aren't confessional ("I'm not a creative writer when it comes to like, 'Oh, let's just write a sad song about something that didn't happen to me'"), and occasionally re-traumatizes herself when performing old hits. Return of Saturn deep cut "Dark Blue" triggers "crazy, just horrible" recollections of a past relationship. Even "Don't Speak" felt emotional onstage in Vegas.

But after releasing an excruciating divorce album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, in 2016, Stefani is back to writing happy songs only. She's getting married, after all. She won't be releasing any of her trademark breakup anthems anytime soon. "Girl," she laughs, "I think I've had my fair share."

Bow: Laurel DeWitt, Earrings: Lana Jewelry (The Residency Experience), Bracelets: Dena Kemp (The Residency Experience), Shirt: Vintage Archive, Dress: Erdem, Tights: Capezio, Shoes: Marc Jacobs (Lidow Archive)

Stefani and Shelton's relationship has puzzled some fans. Shelton, a country radio phenomenon, never endorsed Trump in the 2016 election, but he did come close. Earlier this year, he was criticized for releasing a song called "Minimum Wage," about finding small joys during periods of economic struggle, at the peak of a recession.

Is Gwen Stefani a Republican now? She's not offended by the question, or really anything I have to ask. She has been famous for so long that she expects and even embraces scrutiny. "If you're going to be a star, that's what you get," she says. "You know what I mean? You get what you get, and you don't get upset, at all."

As for her politics, it's read-between-the-lines."I can see how people would be curious, but I think it's pretty obvious who I am," she says. "I've been around forever. I started my band because we were really influenced by ska, which was a movement that happened in the late '70s, and it was really all about people coming together. The first song I ever wrote was a song called 'Different People,' which was on the Obama playlist, you know, a song about everyone being different and being the same and loving each other. The very first song I wrote."

One of very few multi-racial bands playing stadium shows for hoardes of American teenangers in the 1990s, No Doubt did very literally embody those second-wave ska principles of inclusion. Stefani even wore bindis and saris on stage as a symbol of cultural exchange with Kanal, who is Indian-American, briefly kickstarting a white girl facial jewelry trend that it's safe to say would not fly in 2021.

Rings (left): Dena Kemp (The Residency Experience)

"The Specials and The Selecter and all those groups, and what they were doing in the late '70s was this whole kind of anti-racism, we come together, Black and white ska movement," Stefani elaborates on the band's founding principles. "And we were sort of echoing that in the '80s when we did it, we were like the third generation of ska."

Ska she's always happy to discuss, but Stefani was brought up to keep her electoral preferences personal, and that rule has held for her entire career. "The whole point of voting, is you have this personal space to feel how you feel," she explains. "I use my platform to share my life story and to engage with people and to exchange whatever gift I was giving. I'm not a political science major. I am not that person. Everyone knows that. So why would I even talk about it?"

"I don't need to go on Instagram and say 'girl power.' I just need to live and be a good person and leave a trail of greatness behind me."

It never has been. Looking back, it's weird that "Just a Girl" is so integral to Gwen Stefani's brand. She's never written anything else with remotely the same message, and or publicly identified as a feminist. To Stefani, it's just a song about growing up, and "all of a sudden you realize your gender." It wasn't meant as a protest or anthem: in fact, being her breakout hit, she didn't think anyone other than her bandmates and some local fans would ever hear it.

"I don't even know if I knew what feminist at that time was," she says. "I was very sheltered growing up with my family. I wasn't political. I wasn't angry." Even now: "I don't need to go on Instagram and say 'girl power.' I just need to live and be a good person and leave a trail of greatness behind me. Stop talking about it and stop trying to bully everybody about it. Just do it. And that's how I feel like I've lived my life."

WHEN STEFANI WAS GROWING up in 1970s Anaheim, her father got a job doing market research for Yamaha, which required frequent business trips to Japan. He'd bring home Sanrio toys, as well as anecdotes about the Tokyo district of Harajuku, where teenagers were dressing like Elvis, and "taking all these American things and making them Japanese." His daughter was entranced. "He would be telling me these things my whole life, like my whole life. I had a deep fascination."

So when No Doubt played Japan in 1996, Stefani describes, "It was a pretty big deal for me." The tour was the first time she'd traveled outside of the United states, save one trip to Italy when she was 21. "I just was inspired," she recalls. "It's a world away. And at that time it was even further, because you couldn't see it on the internet. I don't think a younger generation can even imagine what it's like to not have access to the world."

From then on, Japan became one of Stefani's biggest career motivations, especially when it came to her solo albums. If she could just write more hits, she'd get to tour there again, see the street style, visit the vintage stores. "If you read the actual lyrics [in 'What You Waiting For?'], it talks about being a fan of Japan and how if I do good, I get to go back there," she says.

In the meantime, she decided she'd bring Japan to Los Angeles. "I never got to have dancers with No Doubt. I never got to change costumes. I never got to do all of those fun girl things that I always love to do. So I had this idea that I would have a posse of girls — because I never got to hang with girls — and they would be Japanese, Harajuku girls, because those are the girls that I love. Those are my homies. That's where I would be if I had my dream come true, I could go live there and I could go hang out in Harajuku."

Earrings, bracelets and rings: Dena Kemp (The Residency Experience, Gold Necklaces: Gwen's own, Top: Local Boogeyman, Pants: GCDS, Shoes: Valentino

Dancers Maya Chino ("Love"), Jennifer Kita ("Angel"), Rino Nakasone ("Music") and Mayuko Kitayama ("Baby") would go on to accompany Stefani for her next two album cycles, dancing on stage and in her videos while also making silent, but very well-dressed, awards show appearances. Kita, who'd grown up in LA, visited Japan for the first time on Stefani's tour.

In a 2006 interview with Blender magazine, comedian Margaret Cho compared the Harajuku Girls to a minstrel show. The backlash against them has been consistent ever since. Stefani, to this day, disagrees.

"If we didn't buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn't have so much beauty, you know?" she says. "We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other. And all these rules are just dividing us more and more."

Hello Kitty merch was harder to come by when she was a kid, but in other ways, life felt easier. "I think that we grew up in a time where we didn't have so many rules. We didn't have to follow a narrative that was being edited for us through social media, we just had so much more freedom."

Earrings, bracelets and rings: Dena Kemp (The Residency Experience), Necklaces: Gwen's own, Dress: GCDS, Shirt: Faith Connexion, Tights: Capezio, Shoes: Marc Jacobs (Lidow Archive)

Stefani's penchant for rule breaking has always been apparent in her music as much as her aesthetic. Genre-wise, she's a randomista. The chart success of No Doubt's bouncing ska beats felt like an accidental post-grunge-era glitch in the matrix, and it's insane to this day that one of Stefani's biggest solo hits samples "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof, by way of '90s British dancehall duo Louchie Lou & Michie One. That another, "Wind It Up," features earnest Sound of Music yodeling.

"I just make up whatever comes out," Stefani says of her songwriting process. "I don't even know where it comes from. I feel like it just comes from the source. It's not trained, and it's not perfect, it's just real."

She looks back on the Love.Angel.Music.Baby era as unusually experimental and artistically fulfilling. "It was just a really incredible time, and a very creative time. I feel like it was just a really creative project."

STEFANI VIEWS HER CAREER success as mostly a matter of luck. Pop stardom is God-given and mysterious."Because the fact I made it, it doesn't make any sense," she reflects. "It's written in the stars. You know what I'm saying? I'm not the most talented. I'm not the most pretty. I'm not the most smart. None of those things. But I made it, right?"

Clothing: Blumarine, Bracelet and choker: Dena Kemp (The Residency Experience), Obsession necklace: Lidow Archive, Gold necklaces: Gwen's Own

Every week on The Voice she watches objectively gifted musicians fail at becoming artists. "I watched people that went through that without seeing their faces, without knowing what color they are. And I chose the ones that pulled my heartstrings. And even though they were so talented, none of them have had careers. It's made me look at myself and even feel even more amazed by the fact that anyone cared or cares."

If all of this is actually so out of her control, then Stefani feels safe stepping back a little bit. "I don't have that fuel in me like I used to, because I already won," she says. And now she has other victories in mind. "Being a good human, a good mother. I want to have a good marriage. I want to be a good wife. I want to win at finding peace. I want to win at finding other hobbies that I'm good at."

But at the same time? "If I'm inspired, I'm going to try to do something with that inspiration." That's the most fun part: whatever else comes after has always been an amazing bonus.

The "Let Me Reintroduce Myself" era, whatever form it may eventually take, isn't a desperate grab at former glory. It's Stefani refusing to evolve for the sake of it. She's poking fun at the whole idea of having to compete with past personas alongside current ones, while acknowledging the fact she's grateful to still be in the game at all.

"You don't know what you're doing," she says, somehow both confident and resigned. "You're a cartoon of yourself at this point, and you don't know what people are thinking. They're wondering, what? Why are you still here? And I'm like, I don't know. They said I could be here. So I'm here!"

Photography: Jamie Nelson Styling: Nicola Formichetti Hair: Sami Knight Makeup: Michael Anthony Nails: Carolyn Orellana Wardrobe director: Marta Del Rio Production: Katrina Kudlick Digitatech: Sean MacGillivray Logo design: Luca Devinu Story: Kat Gillespie

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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strangledeggs · 3 years

Text

Strange Nostalgia For The Future – or: Death By A Thousand Taylor Swifts – or: This Is Pop?

Holy shit, when did this article get to be over 8 pages? Sorry everyone, Tumblr isn’t letting me do a cut, so this is just going to clog your feed for a while.

This began as a long-form review of Dua Lipa’s album “Future Nostalgia” with comparisons to the styles of a variety of other pop artists, but has since turned into something much broader and more nebulous. Call it my (incredibly subjective) attempt at defining a current “state of pop music” as it stands in the year 2020.

I’ll admit, I have a bias here, so I’ll lay that on the table: I didn’t particularly care for Dua Lipa prior to the release of “Future Nostalgia”. Actually, if I’m being completely honest, she didn’t really register on my radar until the album’s release, and so I didn’t hear any of her earlier songs until I spent a few minutes on Youtube scrambling to remember who she was and why this release was supposed to be such a big deal. I came up relatively empty-handed, with “New Rules” having more interesting production than anything in the way of a vocal hook and “Be The One” sounding blandly forgettable.

But music journalists were spinning this narrative that “Future Nostalgia” was Dua Lipa’s big moment, her “disco” album, her album full of “bangers” (yes, I know, that’s an archaism at this point, but what am I going to do, call them “vibes”?). We’ve seen hype like this before (at least I have), so we should always take some time when an album arrives with this much fanfare to ask that crucial question: is it justified? Does it live up to expectations?

I’m going to answer that question, but before I do, I want to take a step back and place that music journalism narrative within a broader music journalism meta-narrative that has been slowly gaining traction over the last decade. About 7 years ago (so around 2013), I wrote a guest article for the (what I assume is now defunct) blog Hitsville UK on another meta-narrative called “rockism”, by which older listeners and journalists tended to use to justify their dismissal modern pop music through the glorification of (and comparison to) the canon of rock music. This was not a unique article – many music journalists were writing about this same phenomenon that year; it will likely mark some sort of watershed moment in music journalism. Frequently contrasted with the meta-narrative of “rockism” (not so much in my own article, but definitely in others’) was a countering meta-narrative named as “poptimism”. It’s basically what it sounds like: an optimism that current pop music could be just as good as music of the past, or even better. This was, of course, already known in a lot of mainstream music journalism circles, but it did cause a bit of a stir in independent music journalism, especially since it seemed awfully hard to deny; then-recent examples of indie stars like The Weeknd and Frank Ocean* aspiring to make genuinely great pop music seemed like they were making a pretty good case for the poptimist outlook. Plus, as a new generation of music journalists raised on hip-hop began to cover the genre more seriously, it soon became clear that, given the crossover-laden history of rap, they would have to take pop music seriously too.

Needless to say, poptimism gained a lot of traction as a new paradigm, until it became the default outlook of music journalism by the middle of the decade. It has, as far as I can see, yet to relinquish its grip, and that’s not such a bad thing; arguably, a lot more women, queer people and people of colour have had their music taken more seriously since the shift. Before we get back to “Future Nostalgia”, however, there’s one more piece of this puzzle I want to put in place: coinciding with those early years of poptimism, pop itself hit a bit of a turning point in the year 2014. This was, of course, the release of Taylor Swift’s album “1989”.

What was so special about “1989”? It’s still a bit hard to answer that completely coherently, but it clearly changed the pop music landscape in meaningful ways. For one, it demonstrated that the overcoding of global pop music made at the hands of big-name producers was not just an approach reserved for the “born pop star” figures of Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. Taylor Swift, formerly a country singer with pop leanings, now went headlong into Max Martin-penned chart-topping smashes, and just like that, she had become deterritorialized. It was a huge success, and, interestingly, one of the first albums that got a lot of independent music journalists (and me) to take her seriously despite being her most overtly commercially-driven. I think this speaks to the power of poptimism in 2014 from two angles: for the journalists, the lesson seemed to be that if someone is already doing something near-enough to mainstream pop and then breaks through with a mass-appeal hit, why not see this as a kind of fulfillment of artistic intent? And for Swift, if you’re already doing something near-enough to what’s playing on pop radio, why not go all the way with it and sacrifice your country “credibility” for the ability to have hits beyond the genre-specific? “1989” marked a turning point at which pop music, formerly seen as something people “sell out” to make, became something you “sell into”, erasing a specific, localized identity that could be exposed as a construction anyway and replacing it with the ambition to conquer the ears of the masses.

I should clarify here, however: there are two possible conclusions one can draw from poptimism. The one I just documented, that pop music as a global/commercial phenomenon can be great and should taken seriously by music journalism, is the more frequently-taken interpretation, but it’s not my preferred one. I would rather the alternative view, which is that most music that people have tended to hear the last several decades, whether marked by the seal of “pop” or not, has been pop music. Rock is a form of pop. So is country, so is hip-hop, so is jazz, folk, metal, etc. We can distinguish between, say, the commercial radio pop – which I’ll from this point on designate as “Pop” with a capital “P” – and the pop tradition, but everything descends from pop tradition in the end, and Pop is just one more subgenre among many, albeit by definition the most popular at its given moment. Seeing that this is pretty indisputably true (and if you don’t believe me, you a) haven’t been reading my blog for long enough and b) have some serious research to do), we might as well take Pop as seriously as any other form of pop and subject it to the same criticisms, while simultaneously adjusting our criticisms of other pop subgenres in relation to our new appreciation of Pop. Who created the texture of this Pop song? Does this metal song have a hook? Is the phrasing in this hip-hop song conducive to its overall rhythmic feel? And so on, and so on.

I prefer this approach because it doesn’t necessarily assume a supremacy of one genre so much as level the playing field to allow for a more robust and less prejudiced criticism. It also doesn’t let listeners off the hook, as many (non-critics/journalists, most likely), given the opportunity raised by the previously-detailed interpretation of poptimism, would lazily slip back into listening to Top 40 radio without attempting to seek things beyond the charts; this alternative interpretation challenges us to try and hear the similarities between Led Zeppelin, Rihanna, Young Thug and The Clash while recognizing what each do uniquely. Unfortunately, it seems like the former interpretation has won out, at least for most audiences, and we now have a listener-base that, instead of keeping their ears peeled for next-big-thing indie groups like Arcade Fire as they might have circa 2008-2012, is content to wait for an already-famous star to drop the next “1989” crossover smash**.

This brings us back to “Future Nostalgia”, the latest in a line of Pop albums that seem primed to vy for that coveted position. There is, however, a bit of a gulf between “1989” and “Future Nostalgia”, and it’s not just because the moment of “1989” and poptimism has already happened. It’s also not because Dua Lipa isn’t “crossing over” from any outsider genre like Swift did with her move away from country – if anything, Dua Lipa is doubling down on her Pop ambitions here by putting them up-front and trying to make this album as blockbuster-signalling as possible. The biggest gulf is the musical one: compared to “1989” (and, I should add, a slew of other blockbuster Pop albums from the last decade, which I’ll get to discussing soon enough), “Future Nostalgia”’s songs are oddly lackluster.

Let’s start with the good, though. On my first listen to the album, I wasn’t completely baffled that critics were hearing something momentous in it. There are absolutely (again, sorry) bangers on this. Ironically, the two that stood out to me immediately were two that I later learned weren’t even released as singles, which might speak to the marketing team’s inability to judge the quality of the music they were handling here. “Cool”, easily the best thing on “Future Nostalgia”, rides a sort of bouncy warping of the riff from Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” as Dua Lipa gushes about how she just can’t control herself in front of her lover; it’s sweet, both lyrically and musically. “Love Again” (no relation to the Run The Jewels song) is perhaps the album’s most explicitly “disco” song with swelling strings and everything, and expresses a similar sentiment to “Cool”, though perhaps from a more reluctant angle: “God damn,” Dua Lipa sighs in the chorus, sounding simultaneously annoyed and amused, “you got me in love again”.

The songwriting on “Cool” and “Love Again” also happens to be some of the most basic on “Future Nostalgia”; the beat loops, albeit with some nice flourishes and rhythmic quirks, and Dua Lipa cycles through a few simple melodies, the catchiest always winding up in the chorus. “Love Again” is practically a blues song with its AAAB-repeat phrasing. I highlight the virtues of this simplicity because it throws much of the rest of the album into a stark contrast and exposes its greatest weakness: many of the other songs on “Future Nostalgia” feel fussed-over and patched together out of pieces that don’t always fit, as if the several writers*** involved in these songs weren’t in the same room when the track was finally put together. The album seems to be a case study in throwing everything at the wall and not bothering to consider whether it will stick. And yet it seems to have a small army of critics defending it, even going so far as to call it the pop (or at least Pop) “album of the year” – which has me wondering exactly what all the hype is about.

“1989” has something that a lot of other blockbuster Pop albums since its release do not: a personal touch. Taylor Swift worked hard prior to that album at building her brand as a confessional singer-songwriter, and even with the big-name productions and radio-primed hits, she maintains that image: one of her biggest “1989” hits, “Blank Space”, explicitly addresses her (supposed) romantic history and relationship to the media. Elsewhere, she does some fantasizing about classic movie archetypes and the impulse to drop everything and run away from it all, strongly reminiscent of her past work. It’s not as easy as it might sound to pull off this kind of thing, and I think Swift deserves credit not just for the excellent musicality of the songs she put her voice to, but the consistency of the strong personality she built across her career (with misstep “Reputation” sticking out as the glaring crack in the portrait).

So I won’t compare “Future Nostalgia” to “1989” beyond the initial poptimism narrative it bolsters. No, “Future Nostalgia” isn’t particularly personal – its mode seems to be more in line with what Robyn was already doing a few years before Swift, anticipating a poptimism that would effectively result in her deification over the course of the 2010s. Similar to Robyn in her “Body Talk” series, Dua Lipa seems to approach “Future Nostalgia” with a kind of assumed confidence as a dancefloor queen – more celebratory than confessional.

The celebration, however, proves to be pre-emptive; “Future Nostalgia” lacks two crucial things that “Body Talk” had in spades. The first is a general willingness to experiment. Robyn’s albums were packed with silly throwaways, but some of them stuck, and the best are featured on the collected version of the album, from the Snoop Dogg collaboration “You Should Know Better” to the cybernetic-pop-anticipating “Fembots” to the sassy “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”. The title track of Dua Lipa’s album demonstrates a little bit of adventurousness, but it unfortunately flops, arriving in the form of awkward half-rapped verses that aren’t fun enough to leave a lasting impression. The only other potential outliers are the aforementioned “Cool” (which just happens to sound less disco than the rest but is otherwise a fairly standard, if well-written, pop song) and the album’s absolute nadirs, “Good In Bed” and the closing ballad “Boys Will Be Boys” (we’ll get to that in a bit). Otherwise, the album carries its aesthetic pretty consistently between tracks, giving little impression of any desire to experiment.

The second missing element is the consistency of the songs themselves. When Robyn’s songwriters toss her, say, a pseudo-dancehall song, they commit to it, making sure there are no weird melodic/harmonic/rhythmic hiccups and that the pieces fit together. And unfortunately, the majority of “Future Nostalgia”’s songs are full of exactly those kinds of hiccups and disjointed structural assemblages that leave me scratching my head. A lot of it’s subtle to the point that I can almost understand other critics missing these details, but I pick up on this stuff fast, and once I hear it, I can’t unhear it.

A lot of it’s in the phrasing; too often, Dua Lipa will go for a quick succession of staccato notes in a chorus when a simpler, slower phrase, or maybe just silence would have worked better (see “Break My Heart”, or the post-chorus of “Future Nostalgia”, in which she sings the 100% non-credible line “I know you ain’t used to a female alpha” – side note, has she even listened to top 40 radio in the last decade?). “Physical” is almost fun until you realize that the phrasing, melody and harmonic structure of the chorus would fit perfectly into any godawful Nickelback song.

Actually, “almost fun” is one of the phrases that I feel best describes so many songs on this album. Too many of the tracks set up something great only to follow through with some baffling songwriting choices. The second track in, “Don’t Start Now”, disrupts an excellently-phrased verse and infectious bassline with a chorus awkwardly parachuted in from what sounds like a 90s house song. The more in-character post-chorus that follows can’t help the song recover once you realize that it’s nowhere near as endearing as the original verse melody. That half-assed rapping makes a re-appearance in the bridge of “Levitating”, which is otherwise perfectly acceptable. If not for that moment, “Levitating” would come close to being the third pick of my favourite songs here, although you can’t fool me, Dua Lipa: I know that chorus is just a sped-up re-hash of the Jacksons’ “Blame It On The Boogie”. “Pretty Please” is also fine, funky and subtle, displaying some restraint on part of the songwriters and producers for once – though there’s also nothing about it that jumps out and grabs me. Besides the two standouts, is that the best I can hope for on this album, a song where nothing goes horribly wrong? At any rate, it’s better than the bland, shameless Lily Allen rip “Good In Bed”, which also features an utterly confounding “pop” sound effect in the chorus replacing one of the mind-numbingly repeated words.

There are some exceptions with regard to singers that can make use of this kind of disjointedness. Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener” walks a thin line, but it often pays off. See, Grande is a singer’s singer, at least by Pop standards; she’s known for crooning, for belting, for singing her lungs out. But she also wants to be a Pop icon to young people right now, and that means staying up-to-date in her production and songwriting. The trouble is, one of the most popular genres with the kids these days happens to be trap, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to Grande’s showboating vocals, favouring short, choppy phrasings and half-mumbled half-singing mixed almost low enough to blend with the music. So she compromises: some of the songs on “Sweetener”, such as the title track, have verses and choruses that feel as though they’re pulling in opposite directions, with Grande getting an opportunity to flaunt the long high notes in a percussionless section before dropping into those staccato bursts that suit the heavy 808s of trap. Despite it being more drum’n’bass/R&B throwback than trap, a similar dynamic is at play in Grande’s biggest hit from that album, “No Tears Left To Cry”. Unlike Dua Lipa’s lurching song structures, Grande’s feel intentional and thematic; the songs aren’t always bulletproof, but I feel like I learn something about her by hearing the tension of styles she’s struggling to stretch herself between. All I feel like I learn about Dua Lipa from the messiness of her songs is that either her, her songwriting team, or both are very confused about what goes into an effective pop song.

Of course, Ariana Grande is also operating in a slightly different mode than Dua Lipa in the first place: whereas Dua Lipa is engaging Pop radio in the recent tradition of satisfying formulaic hits like those of “1989”, Grande has one foot (or maybe even one and a half?) in the parallel tradition of R&B. While the two traditions frequently mix and crossover on the radio, they represent very different approaches to music whose distinction might provide some insight into why some of what Dua Lipa is trying to do isn’t working.

To put it simply, the basic unit of what we’ll call traditional pop is the song, and the performer of the song is meant to convey the essence of that song as a relatively unwavering whole – the performer is effectively the conduit for the song, which reaches the listener through the medium of the performer. The singer has some room to “interpret”, but once a given interpretation is found to be effective in its “hook” potential, it’s typically kept as part of the formalized song, written in stone, more or less.

R&B, true to its roots in “rhythm and blues” and, before that, jazz, essentially reverses this. Songs are present in R&B and not necessarily unimportant, but they typically become conduits for the performer’s own expressiveness. In this setting, the performer’s “interpretation” is actually the most important ingredient, as the performer’s style is effectively the product, the listener’s focus. This places greater emphasis on experimentation with phrasing, melody and other aspects of a song, as well as the potential differences between multiple recordings and performances of that song.

These two paradigms have consequential implications for singers of songs operating in a given mode. A traditional pop singer, for example, is going to be more likely to defer to the song as-written in their performance of it for a recording. An R&B singer, by contrast, is more likely to improvise, often delving into explorations of how to make their voice a more expressive instrument – in many cases, actually, it can be a matter of making their voice more like an instrument, full stop. The notes aren’t sung to express words so much as they are sung to express pure sound. Vocals can vary wildly in rhythm, giving off phrasings that might normally be considered unnatural, but, if placed artfully enough, can re-shape our expectations of pop music in the first place. These aren’t ironclad rules, by the way – the genres cross over frequently and the lines are often ambiguous. But I think defining the differences here can at least help us understand the split in the approaches of, say, Taylor Swift vs. Janet Jackson.

Arguably, the biggest R&B star in the world at the time of writing this remains Beyonce, and with fairly good reason: her powerful voice brings a lot to what are often already well-written songs. Take note here: something like “Formation” (which I have previously written about in my article on hip-hop’s inheritance of the post-punk legacy) or even “Drunk In Love” probably wouldn’t fly in the realm of Pop. Tracks like these are mainly embellished not necessarily with flashy songwriting or production flourishes (although they can have those too), but with Beyonce’s vocal interpretations of them, sometimes approaching something more like rapping than singing****. Note also: vocalizations in this context are given a certain freedom, a license to be weird within a certain range of acceptability. Need I remind you of “surfboard, surfboard, / Grainin’ on that wood”?

My point here is that R&B singers are playing by different rules than Dua Lipa. This isn’t just me arbitrarily deciding that what she’s doing isn’t “R&B enough” – you can here it in her approach. My criticism of her awkward phrasing is based largely on the fact that it doesn’t sound like she’s doing it to “experiment” with the songs she’s given. She repeats these phrases exactly the same way each time, as in the chorus of “Break My Heart”, just so you know it’s intentional. If she is, in fact, improvising, the songs aren’t very suited to it and her attempts are mostly unsuccessful; they become hooks that highlight their own weaknesses rather than bold forays into new rhythmic territory.

The most interesting part of “Future Nostalgia” is, by far, the backing music. Even when Dua Lipa’s singing and hooks fail, the production shines through (even here, though, there’s a caveat with regard to the last two tracks). Consider the sublimely gauzy vocal(?) loop at the beginning of “Levitating”; the sweeping disco violins of “Love Again”; the finger-popping funk bassline of “Don’t Start Now”; even the Justice-lite bass synths in the chorus of the otherwise by-the-numbers “Hallucinate”. “Physical”’s best aspect is, in fact, a small countermelody running in the background of the obnoxiously bland chorus.

This is where I can most understand what got music critics hyped up on this album in the first place: superficially, at least, it sounds pretty damn good. But I suspect the willingness to overlook its other obvious faults stems from a tendency among “poptimistic” critics to treat singers as interchangeable in a system they perceive to be dominated more by “sounds” than by music proper. In fact, the singer is a real make-or-break point in much of modern pop music (Pop or otherwise), likely due to the focal point they occupy; a great singer can occasionally salvage a terrible song, while a bad (or even just mediocre) singer can easily bring down the most well-constructed powerhouse hit.

A case against valuing “Future Nostalgia” solely on the basis of its production: the last Pop album I remember listening to where the production outshined the songwriting was Billie Eilish’s “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO?” Eilish’s songs aren’t bad, and are frequently even good – but I was surprised at how conventional, or even “traditional”, most of them were. “Bad Guy” and “All The Good Girls Go To Hell” are basically jazz songs. “Xanny” and “Wish You Were Gay” (the most lyrically immature, it must be acknowledged) are pretty standard singer-songwriter fare. Others tend to play to a type: either sleepy ballads (“When The Party’s Over”) or, the most interesting songs on the album, the hip-hop influenced minimalist pieces (“Bury A Friend”, “You Should See Me In A Crown”).

But of course almost all of these songs are transformed in part by some rather astonishing production. No one who’s heard “Bad Guy”’s synth-squiggle chorus would mistake it for jazz, and the chorus of “Xanny” squirms in a shroud of distorted bass that pull back when you least expect it – hardly typical sonic territory for most singer-songwriters. Even the already-powerful “Bury A Friend” hits harder than it might have without the surging crunches it’s afforded in the production.

My point, however, is not that the production is what makes this album – it doesn’t, at least not entirely. The production is roughly half of what’s interesting here. The other half is comprised by two things: the fact that most of the songs are fairly strong already (though I think Eilish could lose a few of the ballads and come out better from it), and the fact that Billie Eilish also happens to have a very distinct vocal style. Actually, that last part alone is probably the selling point for most people: Eilish’s eerie half-whispered delivery plays more of a role in constructing her album’s overall dark mood than the production. It has its limitations, and I wonder what her future will bring in terms of her ability to move beyond the role she’s effectively typecast herself in, but it has something on Dua Lipa: it has personality.

So vocal style is important, but that’s not all: as I mentioned, Eilish’s songs are also consistently stronger than Dua Lipa’s, even when both are at their lyrical worst. Sure, “Wish You Were Gay”’s self-absorbed whining about unrequited love and sexuality sounds exactly like what you’d expect to come from a undeveloped teenage singer. But the lyrics are the only thing wrong with that song; take those away, and the melodies and instrumentation sound pretty damn great. The same cannot be said for the overblown dollar-store balladry of Dua Lipa’s execrable “Boys Will Be Boys”, which, despite projecting an ostensibly more “progressive” outlook than “Wish You Were Gay”, falls flat on its face anyway. And I’ll take an Eilish ballad over “Good In Bed”, which sports an obnoxiously repetitive chorus – static, plastic, it sounds like a strained smile looks, desperately trying to convince you that this is fun, right?

“But wait,” you might say, “pop music is supposed to be fun! And isn’t that what most of ‘Future Nostalgia’ aspires to? Shouldn’t we forgive Dua Lipa for some of her mediocre songwriting if her goal in making us dance is at least a defensible one?”

And the answer is no, because Pop is already full of music more fun than this. The way I see it, there are several ways in which one could make music more fun than “Future Nostalgia” (better songwriting being one I’ve already discussed to death here), but I’ll wager that a fairly reliable method is that frequently employed by Lady Gaga: do something musically outlandish and downright weird.

“Bad Romance” is the obvious lodestar here, but Gaga’s career is full of the absurd: just take pretty much any song off of “Born This Way”. Even the “normal” songs like “Yoü and I” (at least pre-“Joanne”) come across as weird by virtue of being placed next to something like “Electric Chapel”. And all this is done in the service not only of raising eyebrows, but in the name of fun. Even some of Gaga’s weaker efforts like “Venus” (or many others on “Artpop”) have a winking slyness to them that lets you laugh along with her. It rarely feels like she’s “serious” when she’s singing about love, sex, or dancing all night, but she gets you dancing anyway.

“Future Nostalgia”, by contrast, has few attempts at any kind of weirdness, and those it does have fall flat. I’ve already mentioned the cringe-y pseudo-rapping, but the spoken-sung pre-chorus of “Physical” is just as embarrassing, bringing the song’s momentum (its second-greatest virtue) to a screeching halt with an awkward phrase that feels totally unnecessary. And then there’s that sound effect on “Good In Bed”. These moments detract from the album because they feel half-assed, like Dua Lipa never bothered to commit to the bit she tacked on. And aside from this, “Future Nostalgia” remains pretty conventional Pop – she’s not exactly reinventing disco here, just emulating it for a new generation with mixed results. If only she could pull a “Heartbeat” or “Love Hangover” out of her bag, but the album is so radio-oriented that the songs rarely reach the 4-minute mark even when they find a groove worth hanging on to. It’s as if she mistook the law M.I.A. ironically lays down at the end of her biggest hit for sage advice: “Remember: no funny business!”

There is one more aspect of the poptimism that helped propel this album in the eyes of critics I have yet to discuss: the paradigm’s coinciding with the recent wave (is it the fourth? I’ve lost count) of popular feminism. This was significant for Taylor Swift at the moment of “1989” because it allowed for interpretations of songs such as “Blank Space” to reach beyond a simple commentary on her stardom and discomfort with media coverage, branching out into a more expansive reading of the song as representative of the ways in which women in general are demonized for their past relationships. Feminism, as a cultural framing device, was crucial in shaping listener perceptions not just of “Blank Space”, but of many other songs on the album. It also helped to launch a whole wave of emerging and returning Pop artists’ albums and singles that traded in similar (vaguely) politically-charged lyrics.***** In the years that followed, a veritable opening of the floodgates would happen with regard to public feminist consciousness-raising, culminating in specific incidents such as the #metoo movement.

For the record, I think this was largely good. I’m under no illusion that “1989” is in any way a politically radical album, but I think the return of pop feminism has generally had a net positive influence in getting pop artists of all kinds of re-think their music’s relationship to gender politics. That being said, there are two things I resent about its lasting impact. The first is the kind of forced extrapolation of songs that bring up gender in any way into “feminist” anthems when they’re largely about relations that have little to do with the matter. One case in point might be Dua Lipa’s pre-”Future Nostalgia” hit “New Rules”; inexplicably, I often see fans trying to make the song’s lyrics out to be some kind of political diatribe about the cruelty of men to women or something like that, when in fact it sounds more like a typical “bad relationship” song, the kind that have been on the charts for decades by now.

But the other thing I’ve come to dread from pop-feminist Pop is the inevitable half-assed “message songs” that seem designed to cash in on using feminism as a signifier that an otherwise apolitical artist is still hip and knows what’s up. Whether through “New Rules” fan encouragement or her own hubris, Dua Lipa has regrettably chosen to end “Future Nostalgia” with such a song: “Boys Will Be Boys” (no relation to the significantly better-written song of the same name by Stella Donnelly). I don’t really want to write a lot about this song because part of the problem with it is that it’s bad in a lot of boring ways, but I do think it’s significant that it was singled out by several other critics (even those who liked the album) as the album’s worst song by miles. I’m hoping this shows a change in perspective here, as critics get harsher about flops like this one, and hopefully the eventual end result from this pushback is that Pop stars will stop trying to convince us they’re “real feminists” with empty songs like “Boys Will Be Boys” that are tacked on to the end of their “bangers” album as a kind of placating afterthought.

So a number of critics have indeed placed too much stock in this album: contrary to the feeling you may have gotten from my relentless criticisms here, “Future Nostalgia” isn’t necessarily bad, but I wouldn’t call it “good” either. It sits in a mid-tier of Pop albums over-enthusiastically pushed out during this era of high poptimism. It’s not the next “1989”, or “Lemonade”, or “Body Talk”, or “WHEN WE ALL ETC.” It’s just a mediocre album with a few great songs that were somehow never released as singles.

Is the inflation of “Future Nostalgia”’s reputation a sign of poptimism’s imminent bust? Are we entering a period of critical groupthink and gradual decay? These questions are too big to answer here, or perhaps at all for now (likely we’ll know the answer for sure in another decade). But I want to end this on a positive note by singling out a singer I haven’t mentioned yet as perhaps the greatest Pop artist of the last 20 years: in all these comparisons, I never got around to bringing up Rihanna.

On one hand, much of the poptimist revolution in criticism has involved taking the studio albums of Pop artists as seriously as their counterparts in other genres. On the other, Pop has never really stopped being a singles genre, and few have demonstrated this better than Rihanna. This is not to deny that she’s released some totally listenable, or even great, albums in her own right: “Talk That Talk” and especially “ANTI” stand as excellent records that came along relatively late in her career. But, well, raise your hand if you’ve actually listened to, say, “Good Girl Gone Bad”. Now raise your hand if you know “Shut Up And Drive”, “Don’t Stop The Music”, “Disturbia”, and, of course, “Umbrella”. See what I mean?

Perhaps I could blame “1989” again in part for this shift in focus from Pop singles to Pop albums. It’s pretty remarkable, after all, that the album is as consistent as it is, and I think that might have caught a lot of critics who were expecting otherwise off-guard. I think another problem, however, resides in the dominant mindset among critics in the first place, the idea that albums are the more valuable art form, the standard by which greatness is measured. Even I find myself incapable of breaking free of that format of evaluation – I’m much less likely to seek out more of an artist’s stuff based on a few great singles of theirs compared to if I hear an entire album from them that I like.

This might be slightly unfair of us critics, but there are workarounds to help correct this bias. One of those workarounds is the compilation. If an artist can make an album’s worth of great songs, but they happen to be spread across a number of their otherwise-mediocre albums, they can still win favour by collecting all (or most) of those gems in the same place, a “greatest hits” collection being the most common******. This seems like a pretty reasonable way of enjoying singles-oriented artists for those of us who are still stuck on the old album format.

But compilations have also never been as popular to review among critics as studio albums (I don’t know, maybe many feel like it’s cheating to collect the best stuff in one place?) and, as stated, it seems like poptimism’s paradigm shift has only reified the bias towards albums by putting more weight on Pop artists’ studio albums than before. Further, as compilations have started to die out (since anyone in the streaming age can assemble their own “greatest hits” playlist that will have all their own personal favourites on it), recent Pop artists often aren’t even given the chance to be evaluated at their best in a compilation format. I wonder if this is also a contributing factor in the hype surrounding “Future Nostalgia”; though it would probably be better remembered for its singles which could be collected on a later “Best Of Dua Lipa”, the fact that such a collection is unlikely to materialize pushes critics towards trying to sell listeners (and themselves) on this being Dua Lipa’s “definitive statement” and reason to take her seriously as an artist simply because it’s the most consistent thing she’s released so far.

Regardless, Rihanna is a model artist in terms of being a singles-oriented Pop singer deserving of a great compilation. If someone were to put it together, I’m fairly certain it could rival Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection”, the former (basically archetypal) gold standard for a Pop artist’s greatest hits. Imagine hearing “Umbrella”, “Work”, and “We Found Love” all in the same place, uninterrupted by the inevitable string of lesser artists’ hits you’d inevitably hear if that place was the radio or some poorly algorithmically-generated playlist. My concern is that with the death of the compilation and shift in the expectation for the Pop artist’s studio albums to be their defining moments, such an album will only ever exist in an unofficial capacity. Which is fine, I guess – if you hate pop canon. But I don’t, so I patiently await the return of a collective memory for singles that extends beyond the radio and the playlist.

*Interesting to see how these examples have aged.

**Don’t get me wrong, I like “1989”! But its potentially negative influence will be detailed further as I continue.

***This isn’t a criticism of songwriting teams in general – certainly great songs have come out of the modern collaborative approach to pop songwriting, and I’ll get to those soon.

****And of course there’s a whole other conversation to be had about the ways in which hip-hop and R&B, formerly more separate genres, have been in the process of merging for the last two decades as performers in each have realized how much their interpretive approaches have in common.

*****It should be noted that this trend started several years earlier in “underground” and “indie” scenes and only just made its way into the Pop mainstream around 2014, but that’s a discussion for another article.

******Actually, even if an artist has only one great song, multi-artist compilations can step in to help. But since I’m focusing mainly on the respective cults of personality of specific Pop artists here, I won’t get into those. I should also add that Pop is by no means the only genre in which this happens: there are definitely so-called “classic rock” artists who I wouldn’t bother listening to outside of a compilation of their best stuff (Queen, for example).

#Music #Music criticism #Pop music #Dua Lipa #Future Nostalgia #Rihanna #Billie Eilish #Beyonce #Taylor Swift #Robyn #Lady Gaga #Ariana Grande

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florasportfolio · 3 years

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Beyonce: Love Drought

"Reformation""Forgiveness"

Love Drought co-written by artist Ingrid, who was childhood friends with Beyonce. The song, in fact, is not about Jay Z, but about Ingrid’s professional relationships and how she was lied to by Beyonce’s label.

Ingid said: "I couldn't get out of my head the fact that they just lied to me," she said. “The only way that I could really get over it was like, 'She’s gonna sing the song I wrote about her label one day.'" However, we may believe that in the context of Lemonade, the song can be interpreted in the context of relationships.

The first lines of the song ““Ten times out of nine, I know you're lying / But nine times out of ten, I know you're trying / So I'm trying to be fair” “ express understanding and change. In the verses “I don't care about the lights or the beams / Spend my life in the dark for the sake of you and me” refer to Beyonce’s success and fame that she would still be willing to give up. The suggestion that she’d be just as happy without her fame is an expression of love and dedication to her lover.

“Cause you and me could move a mountain” is a reflection on the strength that a good relationship gave her. Beyonce dedicates the first half of the first album to seeking empowerment within, but here she’s vulnerable and open enough to admit that the relationship was also a source of power and energy for her. “We could make it rain now” is a metaphor referring to the song title - rain is necessary to cure a drought, just like love is needed to cure the “love drought”.

The verses “Tell me, what did I do wrong? / Oh, already asked that, my bad” suggest that “Love Drought” is a new chapter in which Beyonce starts to reflect and seek fault in her own actions and mistakes. It’s much different to the songs that this chapter is preceded about - for a change the lyrics don’t express anger or don’t suggest Beyonce will be better off without her partner, but shows how much she needs to understand why their relationship has not worked out.

“You and me will stop this love drought” is probably the crucial verse for this song and a promise of making an effort to cure the drought and thus, fix the relationship. The fact that the phrase used is “you and me” once again shows the strength that lies within being together.

The visuals for the song begin with Beyonce lying in an empty superdome, wearing a white lace dress. White is the color of purity and innocence, which creates great contrast to the first part of the album, where Beyonce’s costumography is strong and vivid. The white is also a juxtaposition to red that dominated the visuals for 6 inch - red is the color of power, danger, sex and sacrifice. The poem “Reformation”, followed with the change of visuals, show a change in Beyonce’s attitude.

We can also see this change through the fact that the wedding ring is back on Beyonce’s hand - its most probably a reversal of the gesture from “Don’t Hurt Yourself” where she throws the ring at the camera.

In the visuals, Beyonce leads a group of eight other women into the water. They are unified in dress, expression and motion, which is once again a possible allusion to female empowerment and the problems that connect all black women. Wading into the watter suggests a form of Baptism, which traces back to the concept of being reborn, reforming and changing the perspective.

Final clip is Beyonce affirmed with makeup similar to the art of Ori used in Apathy, which is probably another allusion to spirituality and seeking God within, which directly connects to the idea of Baptism and purification expressed in the visuals. The shot rotates, which may suggest a journey that has come full circle.

He bathes me until I forget their names and faces. I ask him to look me in the eye when I come home. Why do you deny yourself heaven? Why do you consider yourself undeserving? Why are you afraid of love? You think it's not possible for someone like you. But you are the love of my life. You are the love of my life. You are the love of my life.

Title: reformation - a moment of change after thinking about childhood & daddy lessons - catharsis, the next stage

Visual: empty stadium (New Orleans, Superdome) - important because place of her first Super Bowl performance & shelter during hurricane Katrina (three people dies) , Beyonce lies alone in the middle → loneliness, black and white images (return to the past) → house and burned plantation, reformation in race equality, abolishing slavery

Rhetorical questions “Why are you afraid of love?” - not directed at anyone

“You are the love of my life” - tripling, echo (empty stadium)

Baptize me ... now that reconciliation is possible. If we're gonna heal, let it be glorious. 1,000 girls raise their arms. Do you remember being born? Are you thankful for the hips that cracked? The deep velvet of your mother and her mother and her mother? There is a curse that will be broken.

It is important to forgive as it is the only way to heal.

Visuals of the lake - connected with baptism, symbolising purification and a new beginning, Beyonce being ready to move on.

Cracked bowl - kitsugi art, broken pieces of pottery repaired using laquer mixed with gold. Symbolises how Beyonce’s broken relationship can be fixed, and will become even more beatiful.

Motif of the past and present merging, generations of women going through the same issues, hopeful tone: ‘There is a curse that will be broken’.

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hshouse · 5 years

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are you done with your essay?

YES!! Harry essay is here and I love her.

It’s under the read more!!

Harry Styles: the gay icon gay women deserve.

If you walk into an arena to watch a Harry Styles concert, you might think you came to a pride parade instead of a concert. His fans bring pride flags (all kinds of them: the gay, the lesbian, the bisexual, the transgender and the asexual have all been spotted) and wait excitedly for the moment when Harry snatches the flags for himself and runs around on stage with them. To understand the Harry Styles that his LGBT fanbase knows and love, it is crucial to know both his path to a successful solo artist and how he is perceived by the general public. Before his solo career, he was a member of the boyband One Direction. Boybands (and their members) have historically occupied in a curious position in popular culture. These groups, mostly composed of early twenties men, have been openly marketed towards a young female audience (who is presumed to be straight). The magazines write about the perfect date for each member and which actress the cute one is dating - all in a clear effort to sell them as romantic/sex icons for teenage girls. However, despite all of these efforts, these boybands are also adored by the LGBTQ community. While the appeal to gay men is more understandable, the bulk of the LGBTQ fans, at least in Harry Styles’ case, is composed of lesbian and bisexual women. Through analyzing four of his songs, I will shed a light on why this appeal exist and how he has become one of the iconic gay icons of the 21st century.

The first two songs that have become an important gay anthem for his LGBT fans were written by Harry Styles during his time in One Direction. The song “Happily” is featured in the third album of the band and “If I Could Fly ” is part of the fifth album. To understand the importance of these songs, some context is needed. A significant part of the One Direction fandom (the word used to describe the collective of fans) believes that Harry Styles was/is on a long term relationship with another bandmember, Louis Tomlinson. This belief is held mostly by the LGBT fans and it has shaped the fandom from the very beginning (this video - which has been watched over five million times - provides a good introduction on the topic). Many LGBT fans were introduced to the band by hearing about this belief. In different, and often controversial and unconvincing ways, both Harry and Louis have denied this relationship. However, the fans, including myself, even after four years of the band break, still believe in the existence of their relationship (the dynamics of this group are extremely interesting but are unfortunately outside of the scope of this essay).

In both “Happily” and “If I Could Fly” Harry writes/sings directly to his lover without (or with few) pronouns. Both songs invoke a common theme of certitude about their relationship while facing outside struggles to maintain this relationship. In “Happily”, Harry directly addresses how their relationship is viewed: “I don’t care what people say when we’re together/You know I wanna be the one to hold you when you sleep/I just want it to be you and I forever”. For straight listeners, this verse may not seem like more than a common love declaration in a pop song. However, for LGBT fans this verse is understood as a clear and loud representation of the queer struggle with acceptance for their relationships. Moreover, Harry is sending a strong optimistic message about queer love: “I don’t care what people say when we’re together”. In a pop culture that still often portrays queer love stories as tragedies or unattainable desires, hearing a song showcases a fairly happy queer love story is important for young LGBT people. Later in the song, Harry also plays (as he does in many songs as we will see) with the common listener’s assumptions about his sexuality: “It’s four a.m. and I know that you’re with him/I wonder if he knows that I touched your skin/And if he feels my traces in your hair”. A straight listened will likely assume he is jealous of another man who is with his female lover. However, the lover Harry is talking to is not specified as a woman so these sexually charged lyrics are understood by his fans to be within the context of a gay relationship.

In a distinctively sadder tone, “If I Could Fly” showcases another side of queer love: the understanding that that relationship is often the only social space where LGBT people get to truly be themselves. While many are lucky to have LGBT spaces and friends, it is still not the case for everyone - especially those in the closet. When performed live, this song seems to be personal and even perhaps painful to him. He sings: “For your eyes only, I’ll show you my heart/For when you’re lonely and forget who you are/I’m missing half of me when we’re apart/Now you know me, for your eyes only/For your eyes only.” These verses seem to say that he is himself only when he is with his lover or that only his lover truly knows him. Again, for his LGBT fans this song is undeniably about feelings and experiences that are unique to queer love within the context of our society. During his first tour as a solo artist, Harry performed this One Direction song in a separate B stage alongside one of his own love songs (the small stage was quickly nicknamed “the Boyfriend stage” by fans). During one of his London shows (linked above) the fans used their phones to form a pride flag across the arena. As he sang “I can feel your heart inside of mine”, his fans held a pride flag and sang back to him “I feel it/I feel it.” An incredibly powerful moment to us and to him (as you can see in the video).

In 2017, Harry started his solo career post One Direction. His first album cycle (including album release and tour) lasted until 2018 and it included over a million albums sold and 69 sold out concerts across the world. His career has been marked by his refusal to share anything substantial about his personal life outside of what is said in his songs. Harry talks through his actions and lyrics more than through any interview. Further, his solo career has also been marked by his fashion choices. He is the face of several Gucci fashion campaigns and the first gender neutral perfume. On tour, he was usually on a two piece suit with an extravagant pattern or in a creative variation of it like this prince outfit. But by far the most unique part of any Harry Styles concert is pride flags that flood the audience everywhere he goes. During every concert of his tour he grabbed some of the flags and ran around the stage. This movement to bring pride flags is a culmination of four years of efforts from his LGBT fans. During the One Direction tours a few brave fans brought pride flags, in a movement named Rainbow Direction, and were often met with hostility from other fans. It wasn’t until Harry started grabbing the flags and, in his fashion “saying without saying” that he supported and liked this trend, that the pride flags became accepted by the larger fandom.

Two of his solo songs deserve special attention for their importance for the queer fans. The first one is “Two Ghosts”. This song, like the ones mentioned before, is believed to be about Louis Tomlinson. The song was released as part of his 2017 album but was written in 2013. During that time, the Louis/Harry belief was first partially addressed when Harry and Louis, who were self declared best friends who lived together, completely stopped interacting with each other. This arrangement was in place until the last day of the band almost 3 years later. In a five person group, it was painfully obvious. “Two Ghosts” is believed to address this new public arrangement: “Sounds like something that I used to feel/But I can’t touch what I see/We’re not who we used to be/We’re not who we used to be/We’re just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me.” Styles then goes on to repeat “We’re not who we used to be” multiple times. Regardless of one’s belief on that relationship, when the song was released, Harry’s queer fans were stunned with how raw the song was. While being a celebrity in that situation is a mostly unrelatable problem, the feeling of not being able to express queer love freely is shared by many. In particular the lyric “I can’t touch what I see” shows a sadness and struggle that is known to many, if not all, queer people.

The second song is “Medicine”. This is Harry’s most openly queer song and also his most sexually charged. The second verse of the song boldly states that he is gonna treat his lover like a gentleman - a line that is hard to be interpreted in any other way but that his lover is a man. The song goes on to describe, by using the metaphor of taking medicine, the singer’s sexual desires with this person: “Here to take my medicine, take my medicine/Rest it on your fingertips/Up to your mouth, feeling it out/Feeling it out.” These lyrics are more explicitly sexual than any of his other songs. In a fan loved moment, Harry sings “I had a few, got drunk on you and now I’m wasted/And when I sleep I’m gonna dream of how you -” and the fans complete the (supposed) lyrics by screaming “tasted”. The song then comes to its most talked about verses: “The boys and the girls are in/I mess around with him/And I’m OK with it”. These verses exemplify what queer women love on Harry: in an unprecedented hint on his sexuality Harry is said in the same breath that he says is okay with it. Again, the reassurance that it is okay to feel this way. It is crucial to highlight an unsurprising detail about this song: it was never released as a track, he only performs it live. These lyrics, therefore, are not in the canon of what non fans know about him. Harry constantly seems to want to share his experiences in some contexts but not others - a feeling entirely too familiar to his queer fans.

During his concerts, Harry talks to the fans close to him from the stage and he seems to have talent (perhaps a radar) for choosing gay fans. This video contain most of the moments mentioned here. He helped multiple fans come out during the concert, he helped a girl find a girlfriend and even said that “everyone is a little bit gay”. His connection with his lesbian and bisexual fans is evident to anyone who follows him. In a very tangible way, this connection was not supposed to exist. Harry was, and still partially is, marketed as a sex symbol who girls are supposed to want to sleep with. His fanbase is supposed to be straight women that daydream about having a chance to date him. Of course, this is an incredibly sexist and condescending way to treat women and Harry has never been okay with this framework. Considering his silence on most topics, he has been loud and clear about his respect towards women and his love for his mostly young female fanbase: “Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music – short for popular, right? – have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That’s not up to you to say. Music is something that’s always changing. There’s no goal posts. Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious? How can you say young girls don’t get it? They’re our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans – they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there. They don’t act ‘too cool.’ They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.“ And this sentiment, if his on stage interactions are anything to go by, seem to be even more clear about his gay fans. It is not to say that every straight fan wants to sleep with him or that he loves them any less. But there is a clear understanding by him that there is something special about the LGBT fans that, despite a marketing that was not meant to appeal to gay women, stood by him for now almost a decade. Show after show he has made it abundantly clear that this relationship is just as important and sacred to him as it is to us.

#oh what a well timed asked that was not sent by me at all cause I wanted to publish it as an ask incredible coincidence.#harry essay #also like if you disagree w stuff #it's all fine #this is not a gospel #asjhdjkashd #it's a school assignment #Anonymous

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peachyromanoff · 4 years

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My Future

youtube

Now, I know I said I’d try to write about more than just music on here, and that I’d branch out to keep things fresh. And, to be fair, I only had two music related posts last week, and one about the infamous Elon Musk. But, c’mon, we all know the word “writer” is just another term for liar so—happy Friday and welcome back to yet another weekend dedicated to new music and music videos alike. On days like this, I like to focus on newly released music by artists I’ve never heard before, and by artists I’ve heard too much from. I’m not always the grinch of music, but I can be a little biased at times, though I try to be fair with most musicians I post—keyword, “most.” Now, since the tone of this week—or past few months, really—has been rather unfulfilling and frankly kind of anxiety inducing, I thought what better way to make things worse by listening to today’s song. Now don’t get me wrong, sad songs are the foundation of humanity—I think it’s written in the bible somewhere that mankind had no direction before “How To Save A Life” by The Fray was released. It’s something that’s crucial to the human experience, but there are times when a song is just... too sad, y’know? This hardly makes any sense now, but you’ll understand what I mean later. Now, before I unintentionally write this piece backwards, let’s get into what today’s song is, and who it’s by. Today’s song is titled “My Future,” and it’s brought to you by none other than the “Bad Guy” herself, Billie Eilish. Yes, that pun was very painful for me to make, thank you for noticing. Alongside the new song, Eilish has also released an animated music video which I will be covering as well.

But, before we get into the song itself, let’s do a little history lesson on Miss Eilish. For those unfamiliar with today’s musician, Billie Eilish is an American recording artist and songwriter who rose to fame in 2015 with her song “Ocean Eyes.” Since then she’s released a 2017 EP titled “Don’t Smile At Me,” that garnered Eilish an increasing amount of recognition. Though, it wasn’t until her first studio album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go” was released in 2019, that she essentially became a household name. As of 2020, the eighteen year old has secured five Grammy Awards for her 2019 album—wow. Quick disclaimer before moving forward: I like Billie Eilish, I think she’s a talented singer and it’s honestly remarkable what she’s accomplished at such a young age. She’s creative, and her songs always manage to portray the emotion she put into them without seeming artificial. That being said, I think her new song is possibly one of her saddest yet—to me, at least.

“My Future” is a song about taking comfort in yourself and the person you’ll become. For many young people, this seems to be a common thought, especially for those who are currently struggling, but desperately want to see who they’ll be after the dust has settled. In a way, your “future self” is someone to hold onto, because just the mere thought of their existence means you made it though whatever trials you’re facing now. It doesn’t make things easier in any way, but it can offer a small sense of relief to those who just want a break from life and living—especially nowadays. Living through a pandemic as a younger person, can take a toll on you. You feel like you’re wasting your youth, like nothing you do is good enough, though you have no control over anything in your life. So the idea of a “future self” is like looking up to someone who survived, despite it all. As for the song, and it’s lyrics, it’s more simple. The lyrics aren’t too detailed, and mainly stand as grounds for interpretation. Though, it’s the vocals that really emphasize the entire feel of the song. They’re slow and meaningful, and I won’t lie, I originally thought the song was vaguely inspired by “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera. Like I said prior, she’s a very talented vocalist, though I hope she can branch out more with it, in time. The reason why I called this song “sad” isn’t because of the meaning behind it, it’s how the song is structured. Everything about it screams “add me to your sad playlist, add me to your sad playlist” despite the fact that it’s a relatively positive song. The lyrics alone are what hold it back from sinking into itself, though we could always use new music to play whilst crying into your pillow at night. I think the main problem is that it’s too slow, where it just feels like you’re being physically dragged through mud. It’s like a weight on your chest, and it’s extremely misleading. So misleading, that when the song finally picks up, you’re already lying face down on the cold ground with carpet burn on the side of your face and crust in your eyes.

As for the music video, it’s not too elaborate. The art style is adorable and the scenery is beautiful. The video mainly consists of animated Billie wandering through a forrest and singing in the rain, waiting for the sun to rise again. It’s strange, in a way, because the style of the video reminds me of the old cartoons they’d play on television at night that I never knew the name of, but watched anyway because I couldn’t catch a wink of sleep that night. It’s nostalgic, and I think that’s why I have a newfound respect for the song. Darn you for using nostalgia against me, Billie Eilish. However, my one critique is that I’m dumbfounded as to why the water droplet never fell off the leaf. It was playing a dangerous game of tightrope with the greenery of the earth and it won! I’m aware that this is a petty thing to focus on and that I’m probably nitpicking, but c’mon, I can’t not criticize the video just because it doesn’t really have many flaws—I wouldn’t be me. So, overall, I thought the song was nice, if not a little melancholic, and the video was a creative way to portray the song’s emotion during a time when you can’t really leave the house to actually wander through the woods with a big camera crew. 6/10

#billie eilish #new music #review #song opinion #opinion #music #youtube #my writing

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lisinfleur · 5 years

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Surprise, surprise!

Hey guys!

This month I saved this sweet surprise for you all. Believe me, it was a surprise for me as well. I never thought it could happen someday and to have this content to offer you guys is really something impressive and almost unbelievable to me.

I have been working hard on edits and fictions all this time to provide the events from the "Uncrowned King's Thursday" to the "5 Crowns Weekend" and, somehow, it filled my life with joy, so add this small interview as a part of this event - especially for THIS prince you all know is my favorite haha - is something very special and a huge gift. Maybe the hugest a fan could ever get from its idol.

Well, let me stop the rounds and rounds and tell you what this surprise is all about: dear David Lindström agreed in answering some questions for me to publish here, for you guys!

We all know our sweet bardic prince launched on July 12 the first single of his album to come, a beautiful song named "Autumn". If you didn't hear it yet, you're losing a hit! However, I didn't lose time and pre-saved my single and my chance to have this amazing content for you guys!

Enjoy!

Image source: Instagram (@dalindstrom, credits to the owner)

Me: First of all, and once again, thank you for this amazing opportunity! Considering this small article will be published in an event about Sigurd, I would like to start with a few questions related to him if you allow me. Would you mind telling us a bit of what was the meaning of this character in your life as an actor? How did it contribute to your professional career, acting style, and personal life?

David: My pleasure! Obviously, the role of Sigurd has been extremely important for my career, giving me exposure and resources that I would otherwise never have had at this point which in turn has made possible almost everything I do today. But it was actually the process around getting the role that impacted me the most personally and that has affected the way I approach acting, music, and life in general. Here’s the story: When I got to the open audition for the sons of Ragnar at 07:30 in Stockholm there was already a line outside the building with 200 giant dudes in a Ragnar mohawk, each and every one having about as much mass in their beards as I had in my entire body at that point. I realized that I was never going to get the job by competing with these guys on who’s the biggest, baddest warrior so if I were going to do this at all I’d have to take a different approach. I had the belief that even in the Viking age not everyone could have been the giant beasts that we associate them with, so what if I could present a character that was a little more sensitive, slender and insecure? Even better, what about a Viking in his awkward teenage phase, gradually growing into the legend he would later be known as? I took a shot and was told from the start that I was unlikely to get the part, but there was something interesting in my interpretation so I was still brought back repeatedly up until the final audition in Ireland. At this point, I was auditioning both for the role of Sigurd and Ivar, with the latter having a flamboyance and hubris that was suppressed in Sigurd. When all was done Travis Fimmel and Alexander Ludwig came into the room for a group shot, during which I awkwardly waved to the camera and was promptly called out by Travis and told that I could forget landing the role. I’ll admit that I believed him, and part of me would continue to believe him all the way through filming and even long after. But what was so special about the whole thing was that from the very first second I was put in a situation where I was forced to believe that I had something unique to bring to the table, if I didn’t go all in on embracing my differences I could as well forget it. So, whereas I’d never normally trust my instincts and go out on a limb that way, when that became the only option, I had a chance to see for myself that it can be worth it. Ever since, I try my best to remember how hopeless it all seemed until it suddenly worked out, and that no matter how inferior and incompetent we feel at times, it’s our unique combination of flaws that make us valuable, exciting and irreplaceable.

Me: We’re a large community of Vikings fans, passionate about the series, their actors, and everything related to the world your talent helped to bring for us. This community embraces the characters with such love, that many of us write fictions about the series, giving our beloved characters what we think they should achieve or deserved. How it is it for you to know there are such fanfictions and that - in a great number of them - Sigurd was described with a different ending, where his life followed the curse of history and he became a king, or he found love, had children, etc.? How does it feel for you to know so many people wanted a better life and a sweet ending for your character?

David: It’s incredibly humbling to see the passion and investment that so many of you put into the character’s fate. It’s a hard feeling to describe, but it’s sort of just the reassurance of having a whole bunch of great artists on your side. Even though the reason behind Sigurd’s fate has been somewhat explained to me, I can’t honestly say that it’s a decision that I really agree with. Of course, Hirst does a job writing the show that I can’t imagine many others could, and it’s crucial for a good story that the writer’s vision takes precedence over the actors getting what they want. That said, it’s obviously no question that I personally would have wanted more time to release what I’d built up, and for Sigurd’s coming of age-arch to be completed. When I was told what was going to happen, I actually felt I had to get involved with making suggestions to Hirst for the remaining scenes to get some sort of closure, which can be seen in Sigurd being noticeably more proactive and confrontational towards the end. The fact that so many in the community seem to have similar ideas and feelings on the subject means more than you’d really believe. Still, we should never underestimate the impact that a story can get out of an uncompleted pattern, maybe it’s better that Sigurd left us wanting more rather than outliving our interest for him. But there’s so much good writing in the community that I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it became a great screenplay of its own.

Me: Despite the huge project Vikings represented for us or the fact that many of us came to know you because of Sigurd, you worked in different projects on Swedish television, theatre, and other fields. Would you mind talking about some of these projects for us? Something you recommend for your new fans?

David: I’d love to! The part I’m proudest of is probably Simon in the TV series “Blue Eyes”. It was my first major professional role and I was overjoyed to receive such a well written, complexly human character that I felt really fit my style. The filming was also incredibly fun, I was warmly welcomed into the business and had great guidance from a number of caring directors and while I was personally going through a major heartbreak at the time, I had the opportunity to make use of those emotions and grow both artistically and personally. The series itself is a great political drama that mirrors the ideological situation that much of the world was dealing with at the time in a way that I thought was both insightful and thrilling.

Image source: Google Images (credits to the owner)

Me: Now, speaking of your present life, you changed your focus from acting to your musician self, now gifting us with this amazing work that's your soon-to-come album. What is the meaning of this project to your life as an artist?

David: I’ve probably always seen myself as a musician more than anything else, and although acting has been another one of my favourite things since long before I got paid for it, my go-to source of expression has always been music. I’ve loved sharing musical ideas with my close friends and processing life through song writing, and few things have been as exciting as finding someone willing to give my stuff a listen. Landing a record deal like the one I have means the sudden realization of so much that had only been fantasy before, and it’s been surreal to see this imagined world take shape. But that’s still something I’ve had more than a year to prepare for. What I could never prepare for was the reception we’ve had so far. I know that I tend to not expect things to go very well, but even when I allowed myself to dream big, I thought that it would take Autumn a year to get where it’s now at after a month. It’s once again the feeling of being surrounded by incredible people giving incredible support, and there’s nothing quite as uplifting as the feeling of being in such good company.

Me: I'm a writer myself. And to compose my text works, I usually have some sources of inspiration like listening to some specific musicians and music styles, reading books related to the work I want to compose, etc. What are your inspiration sources when composing your songs?

David: Of course, my main source of influence is other music, and that would mostly be my favourite artists such as anything Julian Casablancas, Muse, Kent, MGMT and Lars Winnerbäck, as well as the classical music of Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff. I love anything with great lyrics or big melodies. I’m also lucky enough to live with one of the most creative people I know, so I always run my ideas past her when I’m stuck or unsure, but the ideas can really come from anywhere. If I come across a story, place, picture or anything that resonates with me it usually has something special when it comes to structure, dynamics or flavor that I can try to apply on what I’m working on, so I find that really just living life and being aware of the world around me gives me more than enough input without having to actively pursue it. However, if I’m working towards a deadline, I find it most effective to take an idea that I already like and either jam with it or elaborate on it until it’s become something else. In either case it’s important to remember that the majority of creative work is just finding out what doesn’t work, so no effort is ever really wasted. I sometimes task myself with writing 10 songs that I think are shit, because even if I’m right 90% of the time that will still leave me with a good one.

Image source: Spotify (Autumn, 2019)

Me: Dayfelice. At the pre saving of your album's first single "Autumn", we saw the album was signed "by Dayfelice". I already know this is a new artistic name, but how did you come up with the idea and what’s the meaning of this name you chose, in your personal view?

David: It’s a stylized version of my first names “David Felix”. When I make music, I try to liberate it from trends or expectations when it comes to genre and sound, and to end up in a space where the song’s emotion, narrative, and imagery can really shape it without limits. So, most of the songs are very different from each other, but they center around an emotional, cinematic larger-than-life style, and I wanted to signal that with an artist name that had a romantic, elevated feel without saying too much else. Something that could be either a band or an artist of any gender, as well as something that just sounds good.

Me: I’ll never be tired to thank you for this amazing moment! Would you like to leave a message to the fan community of Tumblr and Vikings' fans that will reach this work?

David: I know it's cliché, but I genuinely just want to thank you all for your amazing support. I want you to know that I see your comments, I read your messages and it truly means a lot be surrounded by such a smart, progressive and kind community. Stay awesome and take care of each other.

Well, that's it, guys! The apex of what a fan could get and one more of the thousands of reasons why David became one of my favorite artists in this world: his sweetness and kindness towards his fans is admirable such as his talent and beautiful work. A complete artist bringing to us not only our sweet and beloved prince Sigurd but also lots of amazing works and new songs for us to enjoy!

Thank you one more time for your gentleness, dear David, and for you guys, thank you for bringing me the courage to go there and get this for us! I hope

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fuse2dx · 4 years

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August ‘20

Ruiner

Ruiner frames its action at an isometric tilt. There’s a lot of red; in the game’s interface, as the prominent colour of the neon lighting that adorns its stages, and in the blood that is frequently spilled. Its cyberpunk setting isn’t anything particularly new, but as a unifying aesthetic, the glitchy effects, and out-there personalities doing their best to cope in a dystopia do well to build a convincing and intriguing world. Stages are action packed and throb with electronic noise and big loud industrial bass hits, with the play being akin to an arena shooter; enemies surging at you in bite size, minute-at-a-time waves, with each of these closing out with a grading screen serving as the pat on the back to keep that dopamine rhythm pulsing. It’s a pretty hypnotic cocktail.

These stages evolve out of a singular hub city, and while it’s not particularly big, there’s just the right level of hubbub, and it has a lovely Hirusawa Susumu track acting as an excellent, melancholic mood-setter. Based on the size of its world and the the quick-fire action being split between a very small number of stages, it’s not surprising to say it’s fairly brief - I mean, how could it get so big? But what is important is that it’s plenty of fun and and has style by the bucketload. I got a good kick out of it.

Carrion

On one hand, a horror game where you play the horror is just the kind of flip on a genre that’s needed to freshen things up a bit. On the other, it’s one straight out of the spoof ‘Peter Molydeux’ playbook. What a carri-on.

... I’m sorry. After your initial escape from a lab, Carrion centres around a hub world, with individual stages then breaking off to allow for more specific themed stages. What you’re trying to do within these is to spread your big, goopy self around, where certain spots will act as save points but also count toward unlocking an alternative path back to the hub and opening up new routes in the process. What’s unique to this particular metroidvania take is that while there are new skills that open up new routes, your movement in general is uniquely freeform - point in a direction and off you go, free of any worries about platforming and the gravity that’d otherwise bind you. While it may not be the most precise movement given the size to which you grow - and boy does this become a point during some forms of combat - it does remain responsive, and quite fun to simply shamble about like a giant congealed blob of bloody, multi-toothed sinew-y mess. Everything scales up nicely on both sides of the fighting, with distraught pistol-equipped humans turning to shielded folks with flamethrowers, all the way up to drones and mechs that are just as mobile and / or deadly as yourself, even in spite of your own upgrades that allow for more ranged, varied, and sharper extremities. It’s not especially long, and is never so taxing as to demand too much expertise of you, but it is fun and importantly, quite unlike anything else out there.

Yoku’s Island Express

Pinball continues to feel like a lost art form to me, with the nuance of skilled play being more like a foreign language than another type of game you can easily pick up. Yoku, newly-appointed postmaster, is but a tiny little bug, and as such is indebted to these skills in his efforts to travel and clamber about an environment much larger than he. Flippers are casually littered about to shoot you from one area to the next, but there’s also plenty of sections you’re led to by the story that are small yet just detailed enough to play like a neatly sectioned off area of a complete table - complete with requirements for precise shots to move forward, and those inevitable moments where you have to sit back and watch as your ball falls with miserable, exacting precision between the flippers. Failure typically sets you back a few pickups, but given these are just as quickly re-earned, you’re never punished too hard - there’s certainly no three strikes and out mentality here. It’s a very friendly interpretation of pinball’s mechanics, and there’s a decent enough story layered on top, with its characters and art demonstrating enough pleasant charm that you can definitely see this being a great way to introduce pinball to a younger audience. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable from an older player’s point of view - just that you know what’s being presented is a wisely palatable version of a classic hobby, rather than the arse-kicking ordeal you may be used to.

Rime

I am certain that Rime would love me to compare it to a certain Fumito Ueda PS2 game. There’s the ultra-minimal scene that’s set as a boy washes up on an island; a sparse, beautiful, somewhat Mediterranean set of landscapes, and with very few ways to interact with it all that don’t involve clambering over things or shouting out in wordless desperation. But as you’ll have noted, I haven’t found it in myself to justify using that game’s name here.

As much as I wanted to give this a chance, it often felt directionless, uninspired, and at worst, slow and tedious. The puzzles are derivative of any number of games I’ve played before, and the biggest danger is that you might assume as to their difficulty and over-engineer your approach, rather than not be able to tackle them. The platforming is simplistic and regularly drawn out with ledges, ledges, and more ledges to climb across and dangle from; even if you were to find a way to fall to your doom, as is tempting, it is unlikely to take you back much further than a few seconds. Crucially, there’s really very little to sink your teeth into on any front, and even when the game does finally start to weave some plot threads into the game’s canvas, it’s well into the latter half - long after I’d already racked my brains for any hint of an allegory that’d fit, and given up on expecting one. Sadly, to the point that the actual story felt like a cheap afterthought when it did finally start to unravel. This bounced off me much harder than I’d expected - I came away wishing it had forged a bit more of an identity and a purpose rather than just an aesthetic strung together with some weak elements of play.

If Found

As far as interactive elements in visual novel-type games go, If Found has a different approach to most. The story’s primarily told by means of a diary - one that’s full of witty observations, personal reflections and enigmatic sketches - that you actively erase as a means to push events along. The diary belongs to Kasio, a trans girl returning to their small Irish hometown after a stint away at university in the city; a return that’s not met in the warmest or most understanding fashion. As a mechanic, the erasure of this diary is loaded with meaning; peeling back layers of a scene often matches a more poignant set of observations, and the scrubbing of such personal details away offers a painful reflection on an identity being chipped away at. It’s very much a story about finding one’s self, about coming of age, and as it rides these highs and lows it does an excellent job in making you ride along these alongside the characters, and it does one hell of a job to make you think about the compassion that you both see and offer in the world outside. I’ll put my hands up and say that there are some elements of the story running in parallel to this main one that didn’t gel with me quite so well, but this is a minor footnote to an otherwise highly enjoyable play through. In a short space of time, Annapurna have done a great job in winning me over with their publishing choices - particularly in holding up the kinds of voices and ideas that fit these smaller titles so perfectly.

Double Kick Heroes

It’s a rhythm game. I like rhythm games! It’s about a zombie apocalypse. Oh no. It’s... a heavy metal rhythm game? Ok, maybe we can work with this.

After a trailer name dropping a bunch of familiar artists - Jinjer, Carpenter Brut, Gojira - what surprised me straight off was that none of these licensed artists featured in the game’s story mode. They’re all sectioned off in a separate menu, and while on the bright side they’ve each given a unique stage with a visual theming in keeping with the bands in question, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Instead, all tracks throughout the story were composed by just one person, and with only a small handful of featured musicians being included to diversify things. It starts with more (arguably) palatable hard rock numbers, but goes up to and includes grindcore, death metal, black metal and the like, meaning that not only is it going to put a lot of folks off right away, but that it’s asking a heck of a lot for one composer to cover all of these sub-genres with the appropriate care. While it was refreshing to hear some types of music I’d normally not expect to hear in a game, some tracks inevitably grated, and while I enjoyed some others, I wasn’t ever bowled over too strongly either.

The story itself is fairly by the numbers. It sees an on-tour band fighting back against a zombie uprising, and has unsubtle references to any number of heavy artists, albums and songs shoe-horned in at every opportunity. It also bears the hallmarks of its dialogue being written by someone that has a very particular sense of humour which personally all fell very flat. While the team undoubtably do love music, the over-enthusiastic style rubbed me in a similarly uncomfortable fashion as Jack Black does regularly, with his half-comedian, half-musician schtick. The gameplay itself is based around the drum parts of its songs also corresponding to different weaponry on your car that holds the hordes back, and while this on its own can prove tricky, higher difficulties also mounts other expectations - like steering your vehicle, or alternating pedals to shoot different parts of the screen. Some of my frustration with all of this is likely my own fault for having chosen to play on the ‘Hard’ difficulty, but traditional wisdom feels a little bit lost when you can still get damaged when your combo meter is racked up well into triple digits.

In all, Double Kick Heroes presented some pretty unique gaming scenarios; like having to work out the best controller configuration to play blast beats with, or asking out loud “did I just hear the words ‘we are Genital Absolution’ coming from a Nintendo console?”, and it’s clearly a small team working on something they really care about. I respect that. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping, but I hope they’re proud of what they’ve created.

Manifold Garden

A puzzle game taking significant inspiration from the works of M.C. Escher is a pretty good starting point in my eyes. It being presented in a wonderful manner certainly doesn’t harm either; from the UI all the way into the game, it’s beautifully clean and defined, opting for delicate shading rather than messy textures, and with its intricate, recursive geometric patterns, you’ll likely find cause to stop and take stock on a regular basis.

One button looks after your basic interactions with the world (pushing, picking up, and so on), with your other crucial way of interacting with the world being the ability to approach a surface and then assign it as ‘the new down’ - spinning everything about an axis, planting your feet to it, and changing your perspective on everything. There’s a nice steady introduction of puzzle pieces as you ease your way in, but they all stem gracefully from these simple mechanics. That I - not the world’s greatest puzzle gamer - was able to enjoy this without every getting too stuck may hint at it perhaps not being as complex as some puzzle fiends might desire, however this amounted to me coming out the other side with great waves of satisfaction, and nought but positives to say. I would go so far as to say that it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a puzzle game in a long, long time, and to boot it’s also perhaps the game where I’ve used the screenshot button the most copiously. Wonderful stuff.

#ruiner #carrion #yoku's island express #rime #double kick heroes #manifold garden

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fytoo · 4 years

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Debuting a K-Pop Band During Coronavirus: TOO on Their Creative Concept & Promotion Strategy

With a new act making their debut on the K-pop scene roughly every two days, entering this multibillion-dollar industry is never easy but becomes all the more tricky in a global pandemic.

Since the December conclusion of the singing-competition show World Klass, the debut for boy band TOO has been actively in the works for months. After the TV program whittled 20 participants into a 10-member lineup, the promising band with an already established fanbase has been in preparation mode. While coronavirus concerns hit South Korea earlier than most of the world (with social distancing measures still in place today), TOO and their teams were forced to adapt and get creative in their marketing techniques.

It all falls under a new term that has developed in Korea called "untact," referring to how artists and entertainers are still attempting to make contact and connect with fans throughout health concerns and social-distancing regulations.

"We didn't have any issues when preparing for debut," says TOO vocalist Donggeon. "But it's sad to be on stage without fans. It's really upsetting that we can't be with our fans on the television music shows and during other activities we're doing."

The 20-year-old is referring to Korea's tradition of live-performance music program shows that air nearly daily and see promoting artists perform until a "No. 1" of the week is announced at the conclusion. These performances are important to introduce new music to local viewers and potential international clicks via YouTube, with wins on these shows helping secure public recognition and brand deals. Since February, the programs have gone without live audiences (viewers can get the sense of acts on a hot promotional streak from those with loudest chants) with on-hand staff limited (The Show broadcasted on Korea's SBS MTV channel saw an MC's staff member test positive for COVID-19 requiring a two-week break for all hosts).

Financially, person-to-person contact has long been a crucial aspect in the K-pop industry as many companies depend on physical album sales that grant buyers lottery tickets to potentially access private, in-person fan meetings. It's also important for the relationship between artist and fans as it marks a rare time for supporters to get nearly unrestricted access to take photos of their stars and score face time. The more popular an act, the more albums that tend to be bought for these potential meetings. But with a group like TOO so early in their career, getting that contact time is important to make lasting first impressions.

"If not for the virus, we would have fan meetings, we could go outside and just wander around," adds TOO leader Jaeyun. "But right now, we just move by car from one place to another, company to company."

When the boy band held the televised music concert showcase TOO Day to mark their debut, there wasn't an audience to cheer the guys on but followers did see themselves incorporated in a performance. The band asked their growing followers on Twitter for keywords to describe the different members for what they teased as a special remix. What fans found is that those descriptions made their way into the lyrics of "Too You," the band's reinterpretation of The Supremes' No. 1 Hot 100 hit "You Can't Hurry Love."

For those who would have scored access to the events, the group instead autographed their albums personally and held video conference calls with fans with each member taking one minute to personally talk to them. In place of the candid photos that fans would have taken and uploaded online, TOO's staff posted their own snaps of the members in the cute headbands and animal ears that are usually brought as gifts for the idols.

Also pushing TOO into the scene is their upcoming participation on the singing competition show Road to Kingdom. Alongside six other rising boy bands, they are the youngest competitor by far but if the show performs anywhere near its first, female-focused season Queendom (which produced competitors (G)I-DLE, MAMAMOO, AOA and Park Bom with Billboard chart hits), the show's reach and potential to secure a larger fanbase is worth it.

"It's a really big chance for us," says TOO rapper J.You of the new show. "At first, we're very nervous to be competing with seniors who we've been fans of since we were trainees and other groups that we have admired, however we'll do our best with passion and learn from them too. We would like the public to get to know us through Road to Kingdom."

TOO is a joint project between Stone Music Entertainment and K-pop agency n.CH Entertainment, who say they recognize the difficult timing but are prioritizing health. "We are paying most attention to the safety of the artist and fans," the companies share in a statement to Billboard. "We are looking for and implementing flexible measures tailored to the current situation...focusing more on online platforms than offline events to promote our contents and are expanding opportunities to communicate with fans live such as online showcases and fan signing events. As soon as the COVID-19 situation stabilizes, it is hoped that we will be able to host face-to-face events and resolve the disappointment of artists and fans."

Or as Jaeyun sees it, "We are working hard so we can give our positive energy to our fans and everyone during the difficult times of the virus." Read on for more about TOO from the members about their artistic concept, writing on their debut album, plans once they can travel again and more.

Congratulations on your debut even in these difficult times, TOO! In your own words, can you describe TOO and what sets you apart from other K-pop acts?

Jaeyun: We are a group that aims to represent Eastern values. So, to introduce our group, first TOO's music aims to be centered in Asia and focus on the values that lie in the inner cultivation of the mind. That's music that captures and moves peoples' hearts which we call "heart music." Along with heart music, we want to be artists with killer dance moves that go beyond K-pop standards.

Donggeon: We have a special worldview. There are combinations between members based on five elements [earth, fire, water, wood and metal] and each member is in charge of one value each. For example, the first mini album tells the story of "benevolence," the value represented by J.You.

J.You: This first mini-album is my story, with me as the center, and future albums will be focused around other members' stories.

Why was "Magnolia" the right song to choose as your debut single?

Woonggi: I think that "Magnolia" is a great fit for us because it contains our team's worldview very well and has a strong image to it. In particular, the hook is very addictive so we thought the track would be a good choice to introduce us to the public.

Jaeyun: We also wanted to capture TOO's unique worldview in lyrics of "Magnolia" so, for example, the lyrics about "shattered ideals" is a hint toward our worldview regarding the ideas of utopia versus dystopia -- or as we call it, u-too-pia and dys-too-pia. It's part of our story. In the [music video] storyline, the current is dystoopia: we go in the past to change the future, which is the present right now, so it can be a utoopia.

Jerome: There are a lot of hidden meanings in the music video. To give you a hint, if you focus and take a closer look at our accessories, you'll have more fun watching it.

It's impressive some of you have been involved with the music already too. Chan, J.You and Chihoon wrote on "Take It Slow." Was that a special case or will we see more participation in the future?

Jaeyun: Half of our members choose "Take It Slow" as the song most special to us on the album. Some of us were involved in writing, but also the lyrics are lovely and just makes us happy.

Chan: The song name is "Take It Slow," right?" I used fire as a metaphor to love in the lyrics, but you don't want a fire to overwhelm: you want a steady, warm vibe.

J.You: I also tried to match the overall concept of "Take It Slow," but how I interpreted the theme was like, "Let's love each other for a long time, and work to understand each other even if it's clumsy in the beginning."

Chihoon: I was drinking a Coke at the time and suddenly wanted to use Coke as a metaphor for the feeling of love. When you shake a can of Coke, it explodes right? When you shaken up inside the love, it doesn't show the outside but inside it's already blown up. That was my focus on the lyrics. But I do have a number of unreleased songs already that I've already written. I'm going to continue to write songs and produce them for the fans so I want to tell them to look forward to it.

There were 10 other guys in World Klass that you trained and competed with, do you guys stay in touch?

Woonggi: Of course we stay in touch and have a Kakaotalk group chat. They cheer for us when we release new videos.

J.You: But I also want to tell them that we miss all of them and can't wait to see them soon. Some of them are foreigners and we can't see each other, we all miss them.

Jaeyun: We hope they all will be happy no matter which way they go.

It's tough to predict the future, but anything we should look out for in 2020 or messages to fans?

Jaeyun: You will be able to see us making steady efforts and making progress as a team, step by step.

J.You: We also want to win Rookie of the Year as this year's goal. R-O-T-Y!

Donggeon: To our international fans, times are difficult right now, but I hope our small steps into the K-pop world brings you small happiness in your daily lives.

Woonggi: We will show you sides of us as a team and individuals so please keep an out for us. When things get better, I want to travel abroad and see our fans overseas; to see you and other fans. We hope to come back to New York first. We love you!

#too #ot10 #t: interview #s: billboard #d: 200423 #e: benevolence #read more

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ifuckinglovestvincent · 5 years

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Stereogum:

ACTOR TURNS 10

Ryan Leas May 3, 2019 1:59 pm

When revisiting the major albums of 2009, the year begins to look like an inflection point. A simultaneous culmination of a burgeoning scene while still only a prologue of the unforeseen dominance some of these artists would later achieve. Whether in revisiting the ’09 albums that hold up, crucial moments like the compilation Dark Was The Night, or albums that seemed to be instant classics in their time, you get a portrait of artists rising and establishing their scene, but in hindsight also glimpses of artists who had only just begun. Artists who would transcend those circumstances, go beyond being an indie luminary and become of the definitive names of their time. There are only a couple in that latter category. St. Vincent is one of them.

Ten years ago this Sunday, Annie Clark released her second album under the moniker. Actor was, in many ways, very much of its time and place, the late ‘00s stretch of baroque-pop Brooklyn indie. Clark excelled within that milieu, and the album solidified her as one of the emergent names at the tail end of last decade. And within its DNA, you can already see the blueprints for where St. Vincent would go. It’s a moment that both represents Clark’s talent crystallizing and still feels rooted in another era, prefiguring how far behind she would leave those origins.

Just under two years beforehand, St. Vincent had debuted with Marry Me. When Clark first started making a name for herself, people would mention how she cut her teeth touring with the Polyphonic Spree. They’d talk about her playing in Sufjan Stevens’ band. It is disorienting, foreign, to look back on those times and recall this is how people used to introduce St. Vincent’s backstory.

And in turn, the Annie Clark that appeared in those interviews, discussing the making of Actor, comes across as a totally different version of herself. The press, already growing fervent about this artist, dug into the album’s conception with her, and she often answered straightforwardly enough. Ten years later, she’s on the far side of an arc that begins here, removed and steely and inscrutable, trolling the press, almost directly throwing back all the things that were written about her in those Actor days, when people would go on and on about this “demure brunette guitar genius.”

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Of course, even with the initial embrace of St. Vincent’s work, few could have predicted how her star would ascend and morph — likely herself included. As would be the case with many of these late ‘00s indie artists on the cusp of some kind of mainstream penetration, Actor first came from humbler circumstances. Before teaming with producer John Congleton, Clark worked on it in her New York apartment, recording into a computer, the gentle vocals partially a byproduct of noise complaints from neighbors.

The whole nature of the album was also rooted in being at home, trying to reset after a lengthy spate of touring. Clark began revisiting old movies, favorites from earlier in her life, and writing music along to them as they unfolded on mute. The ones most often-cited in Actor’s rollout were of a particular nature — childhood fairytales with just a bit of eeriness or something sinister lurking underneath. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs informed the orchestration and tonal shifts of opener “The Strangers,” while “Marrow” resulted from The Wizard Of Oz.

“I felt like I wanted to create something that was Technicolor, was visual as much as musical,” Clark told NPR at the time, speaking specifically about “Marrow.” “And also lyrically — this person wishing they had a spine made of iron — it’s sort of along the thematic lines of The Wizard Of Oz.”

From the unnerving placidity of Actor’s cover to its lush and bright instrumentation, you can still hear what Clark was setting out to achieve. Written to those old movies, Actor is burst after burst of primary colors. But that’s not to say it sounds, or ever sounded, like a happy or precious affair the way some of her peers’ work might have when tackling the same concept. That brightness suggested something sickly, something haunting festering just below the surface.

That, too, was by design. “I wanted to make something that had the whimsy and the sweet of something very pure, like the Disney films, but also something that was kind of bloody and gory and disgusting,” Clark told The New York Times. “I tried to combine those two things, both things that I love in equal parts, and see what happened.”

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This is what made Actor seem special in its moment. By 2009, it wasn’t uncommon for the young generation of indie artists to be experimenting with chamber-pop affectations or with layers of strings and woodwinds. And while a lot of that material seems fussy all these years removed, Clark had somewhat insulated herself from the same criticisms. Actor shares a prettiness, an immaculate and composed veneer, with what was happening at the time. But it had a darkness growing, threatening to overtake it.

It was a juxtaposition Clark had toyed with previously, on Marry Me, where poppy indie confections like “Now Now” and “Jesus Saves, I Spend” were countered with freakouts like “Your Lips Are Red” and “Paris Is Burning.” And there were still songs on Actor — perhaps the ones that don’t loom as large, that feel more 2009 when you hear them today — that don’t represent the tension Clark was baking into the album overall. As memorable as “The Party” is, it feels like refuse from a less-complicated St. Vincent, one that would soon disappear entirely. (Ironically, as a counter-argument, you could see the feint of “New York” being MASSEDUCTION’s lead single working partially because it almost hearkened back to early St. Vincent, a misleading intro to an album that represented her biggest departure yet.)

Perhaps one reason Actor garnered Clark so much positive buzz was in how it improved upon Marry Me in every way — the songwriting sharpened and focused throughout, and that conflict of dark and light woven tighter together, so that you never knew when individual songs might rupture. “Black Rainbow” begins pillowy, then pulls you inexorably into the shadows its name suggests; “The Bed” swings jarringly from lullabies to strings that sound like dying birds falling from the sky. The whole thing begins with “The Strangers,” featuring a lilting melody in which Clark keeps promising to “Paint the black hole blacker” until distorted guitars raze the seeming calm that preceded.

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The album’s success was in its cohesion, the way it kept these themes going to provide some kind of skewed, poisonous interpretation, an early example of Clark taking what surrounded her and bending and twisting it into her own funhouse vision of the world. This tendency set up a fruitful career, and here it also resulted in some songs that still rank amongst her best. “Actor Out Of Work,” the pseudo-title-track, is throbbing, caustic, and infectious — a gliding melody atop frothing distortion. Perhaps the album’s most gorgeous song is called, of all things, “Laughing With A Mouth Full Of Blood.” One of her more underrated compositions, “Just The Same But Brand New” is a striking dreamscape of semi-renewal at the album’s conclusion. “Marrow,” as clear-cut a St. Vincent classic as anything here, made the polarities the most severe, fluttering woodwinds and airy-but-foreboding verses and an off-kilter chorus of fear and guitars warped almost beyond recognition.

There was a specificity to what Clark was doing on Actor, but it also set up what would prove to be a career in contrasts. Back then, it was the tranquility vs. violence, the quiet and peaceful vs. eruptions of rage. This is what defined St. Vincent’s earlier work: She would build pristine architecture, then set fire to it. Later on, it would take different forms: earnestness and blood vs. artifice and manipulated images. In its way, Actor is the conclusion to the first era of St. Vincent, that indie singer-songwriter who used to play with Sufjan, at the same time as it’s the prologue for the journey that would unfold over the next 10 years and three albums. Anything that could loosely be described as twee or whimsical from those early records, anything that could signify Clark’s roots in a particular era of New York indie music, would soon be burned away entirely.

In that same 2009 New York Times interview, Clark explains the meaning behind the title Actor. “It’s about just the general sense of feeling like a fraud, because I think anyone who is creative or self-aware in any way, there’s like a humility to it, or I should say a humiliation to it,” she explained. “But there’s also a self-delusion … The self-delusion is the thing that makes you go, ‘Oh you know what, all the music I’ve ever loved in the world, I want to be a part of that — hey, listen to what I have to say, it’s really important, it’s going to matter.’”

On some level, Clark was talking about the very endeavor and anxiety of creation; that fraudulence, the fake it until you make it, proving to people you deserve to be there. But on some other level, you know her ideas were good. That they were better than a lot of other people’s. In that sense, her follow-up quote is more prescient: “You can’t apologize your way into people’s hearts. You have to go full force.” Soon after Actor, that fear of self-delusion, that trepidation, seemed to evaporate from the work of St. Vincent. The name and concept behind her sophomore album became less an existential musing and more of a key into her following chapters.

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This idea of St. Vincent we saw on Marry Me and Actor is almost quaint, primitive despite its intricacy, in comparison to what came next: the pharmaceutical fog and synthetics of 2011’s Strange Mercy, leaning directly into a retro-futuristic space age queen aesthetic in the coronation of 2014’s self-titled, the dense entanglement of heartache and lust and vivid Pop Art on 2017’s MASSEDUCTION. As the years went on, Clark continued to modulate her identity and push her instrument into its outer limits. She had gone as far as she could within the original context of her career and sound, and instead took a thesis, not sonic cues, from Actor forward. There, it was the gore and whimsy against one another. Afterward, it was constant transformation, the entire project of St. Vincent becoming an exercise in different tensions musically and thematically, the entire persona of St. Vincent becoming a war in which what was performance and what was reality could often be questioned.

Consider the Annie Clark we now know. The one who had a high-profile relationship with Cara Delevingne. The one who worked with David Byrne, and the one who worked with Jack Antonoff. The one who has perfected a distance from the usual machinery of indie star interviews, trying to provoke reactions out of those who speak with her or producing videos mocking the whole enterprise. The one who performs with Dua Lipa at the Grammys. When was the last time you thought about the Polyphonic Spree at all, let alone could imagine it being listed as some kind of pivotal resume builder in Annie Clark’s career? That was still the case when Actor came out 10 years ago. Now, she’s eclipsed almost everything about where she came from. She has become an art-rock star capable of sliding between worlds, dancing towards pop to then turn and produce a Sleater-Kinney album.

Without the rest of the story, Actor might feel like more of a relic of last decade; you could imagine an alternate history in which Annie Clark continued on in a similar vein and was a respected if not visionary force. But after crafting the perfect realization of one version of herself on her sophomore album, she imploded it on her third. The forces fighting within Actor, those hints of stranger shapes and pathways, would drive her career forward. After the first implosion, there was another, and then another — each time, destruction of the old St. Vincent yielding some vibrant new creation. Actor lives on as an innovative indie album from an era littered with them, a lingering document of who St. Vincent was and a harbinger of who she would be. She had already changed here, and would do it again and again. This was just the beginning of Annie Clark proving herself the David Bowie for a new era of rock music, able to shed skin after skin, sliding into new ones repeatedly and with ease. It was the beginning of her remaking herself constantly — just like an actor.

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#st vincent #annie clark #actor #currently listening to album from beginning to end #with actual decent headphones (that haley got me for xmas) and holy fucking shit #i guess i just need to relisten to all of her records since apparently i have been hearing like 85% of the sounds #this whole time #its like listening to the record for the first time #FRISSON ON EVERY SONG #fuckin genius #🙏#ugh

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