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Album of the Year 2013: Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience
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2021.07.25 19:04 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience
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Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/PaulaAbdulJabar discussing Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience! submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]March 19th, 2013 - RCA Listen: Apple Music Spotify Writeup by u/PaulaAbdulJabar: Show You a Few Things I’ve been spending all night trying to pinpoint exactly when my obsession with Justin Timberlake’s 2013 album The 20/20 Experience started. I haven’t been able to piece together a logical progression or a narrative tale, but I have this tweet about a “poll” to go off of as a starting place: https://twitter.com/Jorty_Spice/status/301126362171838464. During this period of my life I was really depressed and used the tried and true method of vomiting every thought, whether or not it was actually valuable or worth sharing, on social media to try to feel like I was expressing myself in a vulnerable way. I tend not to do that anymore, but it makes the 2012-2014 segment of my Twitter archive a fun time capsule. “Suit and Tie” dropped about a month before this tweet and, somehow, I vividly remember the bespoke poll taking place over the entire month. It took time to let “Suit and Tie” sink in. My extended college friend group was 17 (!!!) people strong, and we covered the spectrum of College Types: hipsters (W, C, B, me), ultimate frisbee players (J, L, White Scoops), arty weirdos (M), people that fuck and fuck each other (R, T), etc. Somehow, all of us became obsessed with “Suit and Tie,” to the point where it was the only thing we could play if any of the sundry friend sub-groups intersected. I couldn’t play My Bloody Valentine around R (I tried, he hated it), J couldn’t play any Griz around W (he was too self conscious to play music around the hipsters), but we could all agree that “Suit and Tie” fucking ripped. Or could we? I’ve been trying to remember what this poll was actually about. The video didn’t come out until a few days later (again, immortalized in a tweet), so I’m assuming that our (probably J and me) method of conducting the poll was to get a person in a room and play “Suit and Tie” for them. I remember the question we ended up asking everyone: “Is this a good song?” The answer, even for the non-obsessed, is most likely a flat “sure, yeah,” but our question went deeper than that. The “good” in that sentence is a loaded one. We weren’t just asking if “Suit and Tie” was palatable, we wanted to know if it was objectively good. We were convinced that Justin Timberlake had created a work of art that transcended all preconceived notions of good and bad. We danced to it the day before the poll results dropped. R was an asshole so we forced him to listen to it over and over again. I think the results read as yes-undecided-no, and I’m guessing that Rob was the asshole in the middle who refused to decide if Justin Timberlake’s supposedly landmark smash hit was really the achievement in music I thought it was. Eventually, R came around. I know he did, because within a week of the album’s leak and subsequent release, I listened to the album 67 times. I don’t think this is hyperbole. Have you ever found an hour-long album that 17 people can agree on? It’s magical. It’s an object to be cherished and experienced over and over again until it becomes so soaked into your bones that it’s an irrevocable part of you. But what’s the answer? Is it a good song? Is it an objectively good song? Are You Comfortable? R, J, A, and I (I as in the pronoun, not an initial) lived in a quad-style dormitory in Ole Miss’s Residential College.Our room was actually several rooms: four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a living room connecting all of them. The RC was a weird dorm - there was a cafeteria in the basement, showers in the rooms instead of communal ones per floor, and you had to apply to get in. It was also uniquely (for Ole Miss, at least) co-ed. The applications were approved by the residents currently living there, supposedly leading to a place where students feel truly welcomed by each other. The idea was that the residents that cohabitate the RC will already have things in common and want to grow from each other, leading to a more intellectually stimulating environment. The reality is that the first kids to get there were total fucking weirdos leading to future generations of denizens also being total fucking weirdos. I have nothing against nerdy weirdos, seeing as I am one myself. I am a professional wrestling diehard who can pratte off years old Meltzer star ratings with embarrassing accuracy. The RC residents were a little overboard with their antisociality, even by my standards. This was the kind of dorm that needed a town hall meeting to stop people from screaming at each other during Magic: The Gathering games during tours. The guy that worked the desk graduated from college long ago and was hanging out to hit on younger girls. You get the idea. The Quad became ground-zero for anyone who lived there who didn’t fit that mold. Shockingly, we were the minority in our dorm because we wanted to party. Nobody else on my floor wanted to mix water with Evan Williams in one of those giant plastic takeout cups you get from restaurants in the south and drink until 4 AM. The friend group was a mix of genders, something strictly outlawed by RC rules. The dorm was divided in half by gender and they must be separated by 10 PM. The RAs realized that we were devising new, unique ways to skirt this rule and stopped checkingThe Quad by Christmas. When R moved out and became a resident advisor we taped over the lock to his door and used it as a second living room/party room. At one point, White Scoops lived in that room for a full week without any of us realizing (through an intricate set of entry times and sleeping times) and dropped out of college shortly thereafter. It was a weird place. Basically, I lived in a small party apartment in the middle of a nerd dorm. The friend group wasn’t really founded on common interests or similar personalities; there was an intangible, distinctly collegiate bond formed between disparate people who realize they need to rely on each other to stay sane in a bizarrely inhospitable situation. A lot of that situation was probably more in our own heads than an actual real struggle of us vs. The Bad Nerds, but it felt like our 20 year old backs were against the wall. What that amounted to was drinking a fucking lot of PBR and Evan Williams. We would sit in circles, play Munchkin (pot kettle black, I know) or that one drinking game involving a deck of playing cards that everyone on Earth seems to have a different name for and drink for hours, like the sort of professional drinking (and drinking gaming) you can only do when you’re below the legal drinking age. There was very little we could actually agree on until “Suit and Tie” came out. Justin Timberlake’s music even got girls to finally talk to me about my record collection, something I had been dreaming about for a long time. Inevitably, if you visited The Quad, you were subjected to The 20/20 Experience and the subsequent discussion about whether music peaked. Let Me Get a Good Look At It I’m going to approach this a little anachronistically. The downside to drinking Evan and Water (the Marty, as I am now choosing to call it) is that I don’t actually remember a lot of that year of my life, or really any subsequent years of my life until about 2017. I have impressionistic snatches of it and, shockingly, most of them are either related to girls I unsuccessfully tried to kiss or listening to Justin Timberlake. Oh, also that time J made fun of me for really trying to make “noided” a thing among non-Death Grips fans. Here’s a 3:04 AM drunk tweet about “I’ve Seen Footage.” This is a form of radical vulnerability. When I say “anachronistically,” I mean that I really can’t remember exactly why “Suit and Tie” gripped me. I have feelings about it in the context of the entire album, but as a disconnected song I’m kind of at a loss. It’s definitely a good song, but I don’t know I’d go so far to say it’s a great one. The syrupy, downtuned Stax horns are a great touch, as is the radar ping percussive sound. There’s a lot of great contrasts in this song - the pitched down horns show back up later in unaltered form, the old school cool feeling (down to the name of the song) is played well against the signature Timbaland production techniques and the extremely 2013 Jay-Z verse. Sadly, I can’t remember exactly why it gripped me as much as it did. The song glides along effortlessly for four minutes and ten seconds until it glides directly into a wall. Questlove famously (to me) called the slowed down beat a “pander move” and it’s hard to disagree. Once you think about it too hard, you notice a lot of cracks in the song. “So thick/now I know why they call it a fatty?” What the fuck is that? Why does he say “daddy” like he’s embarrassed that he’s into it? And did Jay-Z even need to be on this track at all? The answer to all of these questions, and most questions I keep coming back to on this album, is that I don’t know how, but it all works. The style is substance for The 20/20 Experience. If My Red Eyes Can’t See You Anymore I had a very formative weed summer a few months after this album came out. Marijuana is an incredibly overrated drug (as are all drugs, including alcohol (including the Marty)) but when you’re a stoner-in-training, the feeling of taking a an enormous hit out of a Powerade bottle gravity bong, laying under a blanket, and listening to a good album is absolutely unparalleled. It’s like listening to music with an entirely new set of ears. The 20/20 Experience sounded immense while stoned. It sounded like I was invited to a party on a different planet, zooming from station to station with Justin Timberlake in a wigged out, reflective rocketship. That’s the kind of dumb shit you think of when you’re stoned and refuse to cut your hair (even when your job putting advertisements in public bathrooms asks you to) but it does get at the heart of why The 20/20 Experience and the Justin Timberlake/Timbaland partnership as a whole works: it feels like music an alien would make. I don’t mean like a cool alien, like a Prince or David Bowie. I mean a straight, white, alien from Tennessee who does not have a bone of actual funk in his body. “SexyBack,” the most popular of their efforts, doesn’t actually sound sexy at all. It sounds like someone described the idea of pornography to him and he did his best job musically approximating his knee-jerk reaction to it. I got this same vibe from watching his appearance on the hit YouTube show Hot Ones. He’s a handsome man, sure, but nothing about him is sexy or even remotely human. Consequently, nothing about The 20/20 Experience is really substantial. It just feels like it is. It’s a bizarre point to make about an album that I ostensibly like, but it was something else I noticed while I was high out of my mind and listening to “Suit and Tie.” It’s dense. The weed seemed to detach the low pitched rambling (scatting? harmonizing?) during the choruses and it felt like I was noticing a new element of a song I had listened to at least 67 times before. Was it always there? Was I always processing it’s existence and had it been affecting my enjoyment of the song? Did other people notice it? Those questions are interesting, but the real question was simple: does it matter? Even as I’m writing this, I’m noticing new elements of deep cut “Don’t Hold The Wall” - specifically the bassy humming in the intro. The other night while driving around to the album I got hyper zoned in on the fucking shaker in that song. But does any of it mean anything? Are the songs actually about anything? Or do they make me just feel like they’re about something? To borrow a mix of stoner and hipster metaphors, if FutureSex/LoveSounds is pop’s Kid A, The 20/20 Experience is it’s Loveless: a dense monolith of marbled sound that has a sculpture lying underneath if you chip away at it for long enough. Ephemera: Suit and Oblivion I’m lucky enough (for reasons that I’m not sure I can get into) own a clean, pristine digital MP3 of the instrumental to Grimes’ “Oblivion.” At some point I made a very cursed mash-up of it and “Suit and Tie.” You can listen to it here. I Can’t Hear You Through The White Noise My first exposure to The 20/20 Experience as an album actually came from the 2013 Grammys. The show aired on February 10, a few days before the absolutely gorgeous David Fincher directed music video was released and just one day before the fabled poll results rolled in. I can’t remember if my friends and I watched the show live or if we just streamed the video after the fact, but considering we were probably the biggest Justin Timberlake fans in the world at this point, I assume the we actually went and bought a coax cable and used the RC’s limited cable access to watch CBS on a Sunday. Even today, this performance still floors me. It feels electric. The full band arrangement brings new life to “Suit and Tie,” the live band sounds tight, Timberlake’s vocals have just enough edge to make him feel like he’s actually fronting a soul band displaced from time, and when he says “get out your seat, Hov” Jay-Z literally gets out of his fucking seat to rap his verse. It’s awesome. That image has been lodged in the folds of my brain for years. What’s more revealing is the second half of the performance: the network TV debut of “Pusher Love Girl,” The 20/20 Experience’s opening track. I can’t remember exactly how I felt about it at the time (again, anachronistic view of this album due to copious cheap whiskey consumption) but there’s an obvious distinction here between this performance and the album version. The Grammys version of “Pusher Love Girl” clocks in at just under four minutes, a perfect pop song length for a great pop tune. The album version is slightly over eight minutes long. It’s impossible to talk about The 20/20 Experience without mentioning the aesthetic challenge of just reading the track times. It begins with an 8:02 and ends with a 7:19. Neither are the longest song on the album - that honor actually goes to his second most streamed song on Spotify (and top streamed song from an actual album), “Mirrors,” which runs a svelte eight minutes and four seconds. Timberlake is no stranger to long songs; FutureSex/LoveSounds features three songs clocking over seven minutes long, but all of them are designated in the tracklist as multiple songs stitched together in a medley. That’s not how The 20/20 Experience is structured. The first part of “Pusher Love Girl” is the hit, the back portion is a dubby, fuzzed out three vamp on a simple riff. It’s one idea pushed to its logical extreme. That song structure idea comes up multiple times on The 20/20 Experience: “Strawberry Bubblegum' shifts from spacey, borderline ambient neo-soul to bossa nova, “Don’t Hold The Wall” cribs Boiler Room style beats, and JT even gets his own Kanye “Runaway” vocoder moment (sort of) at the end of “Mirrors.” “Mirrors' ' actually has a 4:27 radio edit that cuts out the vocoder bits and ends the song right before the coda begins. I think the decision there, and the decision to not play the end of “Pusher Love Girl,” is sort of fascinating. It makes sense in a commercial way, clearly, as no one in their right mind would play all eight minutes of any pop single on iHeartMedia owned terrestrial radio stations, but it almost feels like a fun bait and switch. There is real artistry in the active choice to make a majority of the songs on your pop album, including an obvious smash hit, distinctly un-pop lengths. It lulls the listener into a false sense of security. Looking at the track length for “Pusher Love Girl” and having absolutely no context for what the last few minutes of the song could possibly contain is a true joy that just doesn’t exist in the run-of-the mill pop album. Let The Groove Get In You Here are a few moments that still impress me when I listen to the album eight years on:
Ephemera: The Tennessee Kid I saw JT live once in early 2019 on the “Man of the Woods' tour. I took my mom as part of her Christmas gift. “Man of the Woods,” is a deeply, uniquely terrible album but the live show was incredible. He had this bizarre, elongated stage that ran the entire length of the basketball court at the FedEx Forum. He projected a hologram of a camping scene on it at one point, which prompted him and his bandmates to pantomime a campfire singalong. During “Mirrors,” an army of projection screens descended from the ceiling and displayed enormously surreal reflections of JT performing. The sheer amount of planning and cardio that went into the performance was impressive, to say nothing of how well the music translated in a live context What’s stuck with me for a few years now is JT’s insistence on calling Memphis “M-Town.” Not just “M-Town,” but “emmmmmm towwwwwwwwn.” He said this an uncountable amount of times during his performance. No one has ever called Memphis “M-Town.” Never. JT would know that if he grew up here, but he did not. Yes, that one fact you may have known about Justin Timberlake has been wrong all along. JT did not, infact, grow up in Memphis, Tennessee. This man was born and (partially) raised in Millington, Tennessee. You ever heard of Millington? No? Me neither, until I moved here and people told me that Justin Timberlake was from Millington. It’s a rural suburb of Memphis. There’s not much there besides chain restaurants, my girlfriend’s sister’s house (nice place), and trees. I honestly don’t blame Justin for adopting Memphis and making it a part of his mythology. There’s nothing sexy about saying you’re from Millington, Tennessee. Actually, there’s nothing sexy about claiming to be from Memphis either, but you might think that if you’re far removed from the concept and substance of what being sexy really means. Break You Down I have a tendency to overanalyze things that I love. Big shocker, I know. I think dissecting a work of art and actively thinking about it is the highest compliment you can pay to it. I only want to ruminate on the things I really love or fascinate me, even if those ruminations end with me exposing certain flaws in the work that I may have otherwise glossed over during normal consumption. I think this spills over into a new sixth love language that I am currently pioneering: engaging with my complete overanalysis of otherwise mundane art. My girlfriend regularly does this with me while watching AEW Dynamite each week, and it makes me fall deeper in love with her every time she does it. Our Timberlake-based numbers crunch didn’t just end at a poll. We wanted to power rank the entire album. I remember calling this a “scientifically objective” way of looking at an album. The idea was simple: each song gets an amount of points based on where you rank it and then the songs are ordered based on the average. I called the results polarizing. The power rank was completed on March 19, a scant four days after the album’s release. I’m a little shocked about that, honestly. The first time I tweeted about the album was a week prior, on March 12. I would’ve been listening to the leak at that point. I was in Gulf Shores when the leak dropped. I had enough time to listen to it, sure, but was a week enough time for a full friend group to power rank the album? Would it be too soon to see the results? Accurate or not, the results of our ranking are not polarizing at all (that one’s an image, just in case you got tired of clicking on old tweets of mine). Based on some quick math, the polling pool was limited to just seven people, which is probably not totally scientifically accurate. I get the feeling that it’s the only study done of its kind, so we can call it scientificish. “Pusher Love Girl” winning top honors isn’t shocking at all, it’s the perfect mix of this album’s distinct blend of crowd pleasing pop and boundary pushing song structure. Same goes for “Strawberry Bubblegum.” The one thing I remember about my vote in this is that I put “Tunnel Vision' up top, which seems like a weird move now. It’s great, sure, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s one of the songs on the album without a beat switch that would have greatly benefited from one. The only shocker in the rankings to Present Day Me is “Mirrors” dead last. It’s not the best song on the album, but through hearing it at various Walgreens and Targets over the years, I’ve grown to appreciate it a lot. Seeing these power rankings from over 8 years ago made me realize two things: 1) my taste has changed greatly over time and 2) I think I need to power rank it again. Taste is fleeting and, in the grand scheme of viewing how art has impacted my life, isn’t really what’s important. The memories and the feeling imparted on me by diving deep into this ambitiously weird pop album are what really matters. I am a constantly changing, constantly evolving human being who is informed by past experiences. Not even memories are accurate, but the impressions are long lasting. That being said, let’s re-rank the songs from The 20/20 Experience.
There’s an old Chuck Klosterman adage that says that all art criticism is inherently autobiographical. What a critic says about an album tends to reveal more about the critic themselves than any quality intrinsic to the album. If this is true (and it is) then what does my obsession and deep love for The 20/.20 Experience say about me? There’s no point in using this space to convince you, the reader, that Justin Timberlake is secretly good or some other cliche. That’s already accepted knowledge, dude has been a Pitchfork Approved Pop Artist since FutureSex/LoveSounds was released. His stock has dropped in recent years, sure, but for a brief, fleeting moment in time, JT had a foot in both the pop and alternative worlds. I think the adoration for an oft-forgotten pop album says a lot about the power I believe music holds and the reverence that I give said power. Do I think the album holds up after eight years? Kind of. Mostly. But that’s not really the point. The 20/20 Experience was something that I internalized as a part of my (and my friend group at large) identity. It was our album. It was the only album we could all readily identify with and love wholeheartedly. I have a deep, defining need to understand the world and be understood within it. It’s the reason I love music so much; art is a shorthand way for me to express the things I find beautiful and meaningful in the world. That is at its most interesting and valuable when removed from its vacuum of solo headphone listening and placed in the reality of social engagement. The 20/20 Experience was the link between me and all of these contrasting kinds of people. It was a conduit for a shared experience that went deeper than just drinking cheap whiskey in dorm rooms. It was about the love and connection we shared. That’s what this album reminds me of, and that’s what I will always carry forward with me. For all the shit I can and do give myself for my social media usage, I’m glad that 20 year old me’s instability and need to broadcast his thoughts in an unrelatable, microblogging format eventually paid off. I chose to use the tweets because they’re a crystalized form of memory. Memory is an inherently faulty thing that’s shaded by the past and present simultaneously. Tweets are true forever. The key takeaway is somewhere in between the reality and narrative that I’ve created for myself surrounding my love for this album. It felt bigger than it really was, like an all-consuming black void inside me that swallowed everyone else into it. In reality, I think I was just really excited about an unabashedly strange pop album and wanted to take my friends along for the ride. I know they loved it too, but it somehow still feels very singular to me. That’s also what’s bittersweet about this. I haven’t really spoken to any of these people in any real capacity in years. I’ve had falling outs with some, drifted apart from others, and just wasn’t that great of friends to begin with with a few of them. The album defined our bond, but all I have left is the memories of the intense, burning connection I had with these people for a brief amount of time. It feels like an echo sometimes. My memories of those times are viewed through a lens of both sentimentality and heartbreak. Am I sad that I don’t have a tangible connection to this time in my life anymore? To an extent, yes. More often than not, I’m awed by the sheer power and intensity of those memories, rather than disheartened by the inability to make new ones. I’ve moved on and am a much happier person than I was in 2013. Listening to The 20/20 Experience always brings a huge smile to my face because it reminds me that I can choose what I decide to internalize and carry with me as I go on through life. It’s a weird lesson to learn from a Justin Timberlake album, sure, but the shared weirdness of the human existence is what pop music is all about anyway. Thank you again to u/PaulaAbdulJabar for today's writeup. Tomorrow we'll be off, but hopefully the day after we'll have u/modulum83 discussing Boards of Canada's Tomorrow's Harvest! Feel free to discuss today's album and write-up in the comments and check below for the rest of the series' schedule. Completed:
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2021.07.24 20:48 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Kanye West - Yeezus
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Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/ProbablyUmmSure discussing Kanye West's (now comparatively normal but at release) polarizing release, Yeezus! submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]June 18th, 2013 - Def Jam Listen: Tidal Spotify Apple Music Background: Kanye West is an artist whose background is as vast and far-reaching as any other music figure of the last 20 years. It’s a fool’s errand to sum up this man’s entire career in a few sentences, but I will do my best to hit the highlights. Kanye West was born in Atlanta and gained prominence in Chicago as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records and for his contributions to Jay-Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint. After a car wreck in 2002 left West with a shattered jaw, West recorded “Through the Wire” which would kickstart his career as a rapper and appear as the lead single on his debut album The College Dropout. The album spawned multiple singles including “Jesus Walks” which reached #11 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy for Best Rap Song. Kanye would build on his success with his chart topping Late Registration in 2005. Sampling classic soul music, West would find his biggest hit yet with “Gold Digger” which would peak at number one on US Billboard charts. West also made headlines in 2005 for his statement that “George Bush hates black people” during a Hurricane Katrina telethon. West’s third album Graduation (2007) outsold 50 Cent’s Curtis in a public sales competition between the two artists (often cited as a sea change moment for hip hop's move away from gangster rap). The single “Stronger” would reach number one and increase mainstream exposure for sampled artist, Daft Punk coming off their acclaimed Alive 2007 tour. West’s mother, Donda West, died after complications from surgery in 2007 and would inspire the groundbreaking 808s and Heartbreaks in 2008. The album featured West both singing and rapping using heavy autotune effects on his voice. This album would prove to be an inspiration for many high profile, hip hop artists including Kid Cudi, Juice WRLD, Lil Uzi Vert, Post Malone, and Drake. In 2009, West made headlines for storming the MTV VMA stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Video of the Year. The fallout from this event would drive West to begin work on his next album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. MBDTF dropped in November of 2010 along with the film *Runaway* and was almost universally praised (notably received a perfect 10.0 score from Pitchfork). The following year, *Watch The Throne*, a collaboration with Jay-Z would be released and spur a world tour for both rapper (who’s highlights included performing “N***** in Paris” multiple times throughout shows). In 2012, West would also release GOOD Music label showcase, *Cruel Summer*. West channeled his growing frustration with the press and fashion industry on 2013’s Yeezus which would receive even more acclaim from critics. During this period he married Kim Kardashian and welcomed his daughter North. West would also begin working on multiple albums that would eventually be scrapped including titles So Help Me God and SWISH before ultimately releasing The Life of Pablo in 2015 (which West famously tweaked and updated songs after release). The subsequent “Saint Pablo Tour” would be cut short due to West’s health and mental stress. West stayed busy during the last half of the 2010s and early 20s. His Yeezy collaboration with Adidas and GAP would grow into a multi-billion dollar brand. He launched a bid for president and commended the US president at the time, Donald Trump, which saw outcry from his fanbase. On the music side, he spent 2018 working on multiple projects including his album ye, the Kid Cudi collaboration KIDS SEE GHOSTS, Pusha T’s DAYTONA, Nas’s NASIR, and Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E.. He worked on, but never released proposed 9th album Yandhi as well as a collaborative album with Chance The Rapper in 2019. He also began “Sunday Services” events leading up to the release of his Christian-focused album Jesus is King. At the time of writing this piece, Kanye West is prepping for the release of his 10th album (currently titled Donda). Review: Back in the fall of 2005, I remember being dragged out to my younger brother’s Boy Scout troop’s family camping event in South Carolina. It was a particularly uneventful weekend in my memory except for the night when a coalition of dads rigged a portable TV and spent the entire evening watching college football. On a weekend centered on braving the outdoors with their young sons, the dads brought their living rooms to the wild. I also vividly remember the car ride home from this trip. I was controlling the radio and found “Gold Digger” by Kanye West just starting. This was not my first time hearing the song, but it was my father’s. We drove through the woods, laughing at the witty word play, specifically the “we want prenup” line (I had no idea what a prenup was at the time). It was one of those inescapable rap songs that demanded pop radio play (much like Outkast’s output just a year earlier) and got people like my dad to pay attention to the genre. From parents whose musical aesthetic could be distilled into SiriusXM’s Coffee House station, this song was a revelation. West gave me the opening I'd been waiting for to finally play hip hop in the car for once in my teen life. When I returned home, I immediately familiarized myself with West’s fledgling catalog and was soon absorbed into the “Kanye-sphere”. Over the next couple years, my fandom would grow exponentially. When 50 Cent and Kanye West squared off in 2007 over sales for the release of Graduation and Curtis, I bought my copy of Graduation in solidarity (Curtis is good, definitely underrated in 2021). I listened to 808 and Heartbreaks and was convinced Kanye had altered the rap landscape. I would spend my weeks in college during the fall of 2010 awaiting the GOOD Music Friday songs to drop and obsess over until My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was finally released. Every year brought a new release and you couldn’t pick a better time to be a fan of Kanye West (unless you were also a fan of Taylor Swift). So when Yeezus dropped in 2013 and West said “I am a God”, I believed him. I also believed that Yeezus had done the impossible and had bested what many critics hailed as the album of the decade/West’s career just 3 years earlier. Time has been good to Yeezus and what may have been a radical opinion in 2013 has now grown more accepted. It was hard to read a piece about MBDTF or Watch The Throne without finding words like “lavish”, “rich”, and especially “maximalist” sewn into every major analysis. The counter narrative that arouse around Yeezus at the time was that everything was stripped back (a stylistic choice by executive producer Rick Rubin that constitutes the best moment of his 2010s career). However, after 8 years this album’s production is still leagues ahead of some West’s contemporaries at the time and it's hard to call an album with Daft Punk credits “stripped down”. West cleared out the rolodex for MBDTF with features from a number of high profile guests, but on Yeezus, Kanye filled out the roster of contributors with more creative choices, all of whom were at interesting points in their careers. Before the French duo would spend the 2010s delivering more hi-fi pop hits with artists like Pharrell and The Weeknd, Kanye tapped them to drive the opening 3 song suite for Yeezus. Nothing on this album resembles anything like the previous Daft Punk collaboration, “Stronger”. Blaring synths and primal screams, the driving one two punch of “On Sight” and “Black Skinheads” still hits just as hard in 2021 as it did in 2013. Much like the autotuned singing on 808s and Heartbreaks, West screaming into the microphone was the only way to convey the anger and frustration he was feeling at the time (alienated by his split with Nike, dismissal by the fashion world at large in Paris, and annoyance at the unrelenting press attention in the wake of his relationship with Kim Kardashian). Despite being fed up and angry, West was still having fun with the inclusion of hall of fame sacrilegious tune “I Am a God” (featuring the often quoted “hurry up with my damn croissant” line). No other artist could get away with a feature credit for God and considering the hard religious turn West would make in 2019 with “Jesus is King ' only makes the song that much better. Justin Vernon is also noticeable presence on the album after his own incredible run of contributing to MBDTF, the release of Bon Iver, and his Grammy win for Best New Artist in subsequent years. On “Hold My Liquor”, the combination of Vernon’s vocal, Chief Keef’s hook, Arca’s piercing production flourishes and Mike Dean’s sharp guitar solo create one of the truly transcendent moments on the album. That’s what I love most about Kanye, he is one of the great curators. He packs his albums with influences and samples that feel like that moment when a friend shares a playlist of their favorite artists. If you don’t know Chief Keef, now you will! Popcaan, King Louie, Arca, Assassin, TNGHT and a young Travis Scott all featured on one of the biggest albums of that year. No one else was giving these types of artists this much exposure. It's hard to narrow down the best moments on this album. The transition at the end of “New Slaves” when the beat drops out and the sampled guitar solo from “Gyöngyhajú lány” by Omega comes in is beautiful. Having Frank Ocean sing over that beautiful sample is also a great touch. I also have to commend the perfect decision to end the album with “Bound 2” which bucked the trend of the past half hour’s abrasiveness with bouncing soul samples that harken back to West’s earlier output. I won’t look past the cringe lyrics that are present on a few of these songs (and often present on every Kanye West album) which can take you completely out of his music. The only saving grace I can offer is that on this album more so than his other, there is something musically interesting about every song. So even though the lyrics that open “I’m In It” border on grotesque, the beat changes and the vocal trade-offs between Assassin, West and Vernon in the chorus are impressive. “Blood on the Leaves” is still the standout. Auto-tuned Kanye singing over an incredible sample of Nina Simone’s cover of “Strange Fruit” is very attuned to his work on *808s* (you could see the song transition into some minor key chorus and stay relatively subdued like “Bad News” or “Coldest Winter”). But having that distinctive TNGHT beat drop after the first chorus is one of the most thrilling moments in West’s entire discography. The juxtaposition of the sample material (a song about the lynching of Black Americans in the South) with the rap (about the destruction of a relationship via fame) is next-level genius and should never work in a million years. I can’t think of many major artists in the last few years that have taken such massive swings like this during their apex. Was Yeezus Kanye West’s musical peak? Yes and No. I believe West peaked musically the night of his SNL performance in support of The Life of Pablo on February 14th, 2015. West had me watching SNL (a triumph for Lorne Michaels) just to see him and I audibly gasped when Chance The Rapper walked on stage during the performance of “Ultralight Beam”. I thought West at this moment was unstoppable. The second that performance ended, I rushed to KanyeWest.com and was met with Yasiin Bey’s voice. Something had turned. I will ride for The Life of Pablo, but the album felt rushed and unfinished and you could tell that West wasn’t 100% in it. It was disheartening as a fan that the major hype had not yielded an instant masterpiece. Since 2015, I have grown less interested in each subsequent release, but I will always check out something he contributes to. My time in the “Kanye-sphere” appears to be coming to an end. Looking back, Yeezus was the last time Kanye could hole up and work solely on the music without having to concern himself with family or his billion dollar business (I know this was the narrative for ye, but I don’t buy it). And when it was time for that music to be shared, West went all out. Projecting videos on buildings across the world on the lead up to release and his masked live performances were on another artistic level than anyone else touring (this masked Kanye appears to be returning in the current lead up to Donda). He also would often stop shows mid-song to air his grievances. The one time I saw Kanye live was at Bonnaroo in 2014 and the press got a long, verbal tongue lashing (along with the previous Bonnaroo festival goers who booed him for his 4 am start time in 2008). It was a weirdly religious experience with West talking it all out in real time with his audience. The merch, which drew its inspiration from metal bands T-shirts, would also be so influential and inspired a wave of imitators over the ensuing years (I still regret not buying a shirt that night I saw him). I am not sure if West (or any major artist) can ever match the creative energy that surrounded this album's release again. I would love to be proven wrong. In November 2019, I was in an Uber with a group of friends and the conversation turned to which Kanye West album was best. I made the case for Yeezus and every album was discussed in some way among the group. The driver chimed in and told us she couldn’t vibe with any previous Kanye albums, but had recently fallen in love with JESUS IS KING. Being extremely online, I couldn’t believe someone would truthfully hold that opinion. The album that critics and fans completely shrugged off was this person’s favorite? My relationship with the album was non-existent. I listened a few times, but I did not return to it. The driver simply said the album “spoke to her” and proceeded to play “Follow God”. I sat in the passenger seat listening to Kanye West just like I had in 2005 and the parallels were painful. I wasn’t a teen at the beginning of his fandom showing off a new artist. I was now the adult (already a fan, but now on the fringes) who needed convincing. It was the first time I really heard “Follow God” and I enjoyed it. 14 years later and Kanye West still found a way to surprise me. Favorite Lyrics: As soon as they like you, make ‘em unlike you
In a French-ass restaurant, hurry up with my damn croissants
I don't give a damn if you used to talk to JAY-Z,
I know I got a bad reputation,
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2021.07.23 20:20 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Darkside - Psychic
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/Leeman727 discussing Darkside's debut record, Psychic! submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]October 4th, 2013 - Matador Listen: Bandcamp Spotify Apple Music Background by leeman727 Darkside is a New York based ambient electronic duo consisting of Dave Harrington and Chilean producer Nicolas Jaar, that formed in 2011. Jaar had met Harrington out of necessity as he needed help with work on Space Is Only Noise. While Space Is Only Noise saw great success as Jaar’s first strong electronic low-fi debut, it also served as a foundational point to Jaar’s style and increased his overall popularity. Come late 2011 and the duo dropped the Darkside EP, which was their first release as Darkside. While this didn’t get much traction it was nonetheless noted as a minor success. Fast forward to 2013 and Harrington and Jaar saw that Daft Punk had just put out Random Access Memories, which was another huge highlight in 2013 of its own accord. The duo saw this as an opportunity to take on Daft Punk’s songs and so they decided to remix them into something that stylistically fell in their wheelhouse. So low and behold, out of this they collaborated under the alias Daftside to put out Random Access Memories Memories on Soundcloud. Unlike Darkside EP, Daftside did manage to catch the attention of many and heavily helped put the Darkside duo on the map. Months after their adventure into Daft Punk's Random Access Memories the Brooklyn based duo surfaced again as Darkside. This time with their own standalone album, Psychic which promised a continuation of their collaboration, but with a more bluesy electronic theme to it. The album had taken two years to record. With recording taking place between Brooklyn, Upstate New York, and even Paris when they were on tour. After Psychic’s debut, the album quickly received high remarks and critical acclaim from all over the industry. To further promote the album the duo did pop up sessions in New York and provided some of their songs on social media for free. However, Psychic curiously seemed to remain publicly out of sight and underground to most listeners. With the success of Psychic, it still remains as a strong highlight in Jaar’s career even after he went on to form his solo electronic synth outfit as Against All Logic and Nicolas Jaar. This album greatly helped Jaar and Harrington breakout into their own and create something entirely unique to their own musical styles. Even though they put the Darkside project on hiatus in late 2014, it's clear there was something special about this album. We can clearly see this now in 2021 as the duo have returned from hiatus to deliver a new album set for late July 2021 in the hopes to be just as innovative as their previous work on Psychic. Review by leeman727 When discussing what Psychic is, this could be the sense of knowing what to expect of the future and or someone having increased emotional and social awareness to predict an outcome. The album itself plays out like an introverted dialogue of deep dark emotional thoughts one might have regarding their future which perfectly fits the title. Thematically this makes the album Psychic extremely indulgent while also coming off as broody and intense. What Jaar and Harrington were doing wasn’t new to the electronic world. In other words they wanted to create an electronic soundscape to experiment and push a contemporary sound that was totally unique to their own style. Just like any jazz album or classical piece, Psychic heavily relies on conveying it’s emotion through the use of the instruments, tone, and tempo. This and the fact that it’s ambient electronic music covers the reason why there is a lack of lyrics on most of the songs. When you dig deeper the album as a whole reminds you of all those restless nights you stayed up pondering your whole life story in its entirety. Everyone has had those moments where they meditate on everything from their past, present, and future. The album manages to capture that moment and distill it into an intoxicating experience. Psychic makes you feel like you have found the answers to existence by finding them hidden in the cracks of everyday life. Let’s talk about the album sonically, this includes Jaar’s echoey and mysterious soundscapes. These are deep, dynamic, and meticulously executed in a fashion that makes Psychic seem dark yet so organically emotional that it pulls you in. Harrington’s guitar work is crisp, clear, and vibrant that it shines through Jaar’s dark sound, breathing new light into the songs to create an extremely layered sound. Jaar even takes liberties with the instrumental songs adding his own creative flair that gives off a sense of urgency, anxiety, and despair. “Golden Arrow” is an eleven minute intro that places you in a void until a full five minutes into the song. “Golden Arrow” really sets the stage for the rest of the album, as Jaar’s experimental synth creates a spacious sound that is deftly delivered while it slowly builds up into Harrington’s indistinguishable ghostly wails. The execution of the mixed layering with the drum beats all while the guitar keeps building and building to the climax creates a robust sound. Steadily but surely they unite their instruments into a hypnotic dance instrumental that is heavily layered yet easy to listen to as they slowly fade out. The song “Heart” meanders in with its build up march into Harrington’s crooning guitar. With a title like “Heart” you quickly get the sense the lyrics themselves while short and few create a scene of reminiscing of a past romantic relationship. While the lyrics are somewhat ambiguous they can be interpreted to convey a sense of decay that occurs with any romantic relationship seen in the following lyrics “Can’t you see behind this love, tell me you don’t know”. It seems to foreshadow the fact that the person has become lost, exhausted, and resentful of their paramour as time has passed. Lyrics such as “Good for you, a little more evil for me' help emphasize that they are giving a lot of themselves for this person that’s not being reciprocated, leaving them dissatisfied. The guitar work is so crisp and clear on this track that it continually wanders into the front while Harrington changes the guitar fill ever so slightly as the word “You” echoes in the background. Lastly it ends with “What do you want me to be? Good for you” finally shutting the door that the relationship was one sided and they could no longer be together. “Heart” then seamlessly fades into “Paper Trails” which even further emphasizes the theme and ever so mysterious dialogue of Psychic. “Paper Trails” is easily one of the more influential songs off of Psychic. Harrington’s guitar work freely encapsulates Jaar’s serene soundscape, leading into a deep and wispy voice. As the lyrics rattle off you wonder where the love of this person has gone, are they chasing a dream, is it an obsession, or is it something more sinister. The dialogue is intentionally vague and deviant then flows off with “A wooden house to live in, A baby to care”. It’s finally come around that the person having the dialogue is searching for the love of their life, reaching the dream of having a normal family life, and that the “Paper Trail” they are following was all to lead to this goal. However, later on in the song the lyrics “The fire outside, it’s burning up place, but you’re inside” could imply that this dream they had once shared is metaphorically burning up leaving them to search again for more Paper Trails that lead to the aforementioned dream of a partner, house, and child. “Freak, Go Home” is another semi-atmospheric song with few lyrics. There is a heavy use of fade-ins and fade-outs that create a sense as if trapped in a padded cell. Freak, Go Home the name itself implies a notion of societal rejection and the sound they create only further conveys the isolation one might feel not fitting in. Jaar is quick to add in whirring noises, industrial ticks, and quick hi-hats over the fuzzy synth humming in the background, further adding to the somber tone. At the end of the song there seems to be a complete breakdown into a trippy industrial fuzz. While this is subjective the musical breakdown could be interpreted as someone having a manic episode back home after being rejected by society. We as humans all crave our existence to be validated in the arms of our community, as we all want to be part of society and accepted, right. What makes this song great is the plain and simple mechanical articulation of all the additional noises over the main instruments, all while constantly changing the sound. The last song “Metatron” comes out swinging with the low-fi jazzy guitar intro as if you were in a room filled with smoke in a noir film. The last song delivers this exceptionally and goes straight into a build up that comes crashing down at the will of Harrington’s one line lyrics “Now the world, it seems you care about”. Then slowly fades down into a single buzzing tone. Only to be brought back into Jaar’s magnificently executed soundscape followed by Harrington’s jazzy guitar fill. This song absolutely exudes the smoke of that noir room you picture yourself in, sitting in a luxury chair sipping a whiskey as you inhale the lingering smoke of “Metatron” while the song slowly cycles out. Finally leaving you to ponder your sense of worth with your place in the world as the heavy one liner lingers in your mind. While the lyrics are few and far between on some of the tracks. The lyrics stand more to add to the mysterious dialogue of the album and tend to create vagueness that can be construed many different ways. The lyrics themselves are not overly deep, but are effectively accompanied with the instrumentals that increase the overall immenseness of Psychic. Every second of sound they create is meticulously noted for and emphasized in a way that it adds to the emotional content of Psychic as a whole. It’s hard not to compare Nicolas Jaar’s work to that of Brian Eno. While they both fall into the ambient electronic genre, delivery is a bit different between the two. Eno is indeed considered to be the father of Ambient Electronic with the inception of Ambient 1: Music for Airports and he definitely sets the bar high as a producer and industry veteran. Whether directly or indirectly, we can definitely see Jaar’s work has been influenced by Eno and for that we can further delight in the influences that helped conceive this album. It’s safe to say that this album is a key piece in Jaar’s career that helped him rise as well as refine the sounds that directly led to his other projects such as; Cinezas, Pomegranates, and any work done as his solo act Against All Logic. Rest assured Jaar is fast proving to be a juggernaut as an ambient electronic artist and producer to the likes of Eno and others such as Tim Hecker. Overall this album stays true to its nature regarding its title Psychic. Without a doubt this album comes off as a deep, introverted, broody, and emotional piece that hangs over your head afterwards. Constantly shifting the sound into different textures followed by the stylish yet clear guitar fills that echo throughout. Listening to Psychic is a full time emotional commitment, a true ambient experience that is surprisingly easy to listen to. It completely changed how I listened and approached albums as a whole and made me appreciate the emotional tone that can be conveyed just through instruments. The overall broody aura it emphasizes makes you think and feel; it’s empathetic and guttural, yet curiously pleasing. Jaar and Harrington completely deliver on this organic sound on the album that it’s deep yet a satisfyingly easy piece to listen to. Lastly this album can be enjoyed by any would-be listener and its spacious soundscapes welcomes a thought provoking dialogue that comes off as something more high minded and contemporary for its time. Favorite Lyrics Paper tail on a mountain
Can’t you see behind this love
Not the world it seems you care about
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2021.07.22 21:33 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Okkervil River - The Silver Gymnasium
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/traceitalian discussing Okkervil River's The Silver Gymnasium. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]September 3rd, 2013 - ATO Listen: Bandcamp Apple Music Spotify Background Formed in 1998 by Will Sheff, Zachary Thomas and Seth Warren in Austin Texas, Okkervil River have gone through a revolving door of different members with vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Sheff being the only constant. Warren, who would become the band’s first drummer, had first met Sheff in their high school in Meriden, New England, meeting up years later in Austin. With bassist Zachary Thomas they recorded several EPs before meeting multi instrumentalist Jonathan Meiberg who would join, filling out the band’s sound and would later leave to form Shearwater. They signed to Indiana based Jagjaguwar Records and released Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You Meet and Down the River of Golden Dreams in quick succession. With new drummer Travis Nelson and a whole host of guest musicians, Okkervil River recorded the critically lauded Black Sheep Boy. Loosely exploring the life and tragic death of folk singer Tim Hardin, the record remains a fan favourite and pushed the band to international prominence. With a new line featuring Brian Cassidy, Patrick Pestorius and Scott Brackett who toured promoting Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River released The Stage Names in 2007. The album is focused on the possible disastrous effects of fame and notoriety, with tracks exploring the life of poet John Berryman and adult film star Shannon Wilsey. This was quickly followed by 2008’s The Stand Ins, an album exploring the same themes as The Stage Names having originally been conceived as a double album. Both records were well reviewed and led to the band’s first television appearances affording the band a wider audience. In 2010 Will Sheff produced 13th Floor Elevators’ frontman Roky Erickson’s album True Love Cast Out All Evil with Okkervil River (and new guitarist Lauren Gurgiolo) serving as the backing band. The record was to be a massive influence on the group’s next album I Am Very Far released in 2011, noticeably more stark and unflinching it remains divisive among fans. A Pageant of New England Okkervil River's previous album I Am Very Far was consciously ambiguous. The lyrics were vague and painted graphic violence in broad brush strokes. Nothing was concrete and the songs were ethereal but densely layered, especially musically where the arrangements were bombastic and excessive at times. The record's lyrics seemed designed to obfuscate their meaning behind a pervasive sense of dread and threat. Critics of the album singled out the lack of Sheff’s traditional writing and it remains an outlier in the band’s discography. Produced by the frontman Will Sheff following his experience with Roky Erickson’s True Love Cast Out All Evil it was an album crafted in the studio with songs iterated on until they no longer resembled what the band had started with. Recorded over long months, I Am Very Far was experimental in its instrumentation and approach. Torn paper and thrown filing cabinets as percussion, tape loops and orchestras of acoustic guitars were employed to give the album a distinct sonic and lyrical identity within the band's catalogue. It would also be Okkervil River's last with Jagjaguwar, who had been the band’s label since their first full length release Down the River of Golden Dreams. Following promotion for I Am Very Far, Will Sheff returned to his childhood home town to find it largely unchanged, frozen in perpetuity the way that small communities often are. Being back in his old stomping ground stirred up memories and Sheff began to make a record about the experiences of pre adolescence and explore the deep emotions and boundless creative energy of being ten years old. The record label's bio says that The Silver Gymnasium intends to evoke the sensation of 'an action figure you found in the woods.” The wonderment and possibility that seems to fade as we age, something difficult to recapture or recreate. To contextualise and prevent the album from being too broad in scope he wrote autobiographically about his childhood in Meriden, New England in 1986 (when Sheff was ten years old). A small town of less than five hundred people, Meriden is a bucolic community surrounded by expansive woodland (a map with track location indicators is helpfully included in the physical release). The album’s title is taken from The Charles Lewis Silver Memorial Gymnasium, a sportshall located at the boarding school which Sheff attended and both of his parents taught at. Over the course of The Silver Gymnasium Meridian transitions from a place of limitless freedom and potential to somewhere stifling and constrictive. It's a simple concept but one that could easily descend into mawkish sentimentality in the hands of a less capable band. Lyricism has always been Sheff's strength though ('The laureate of the Granite State'), his writing has always been literate and mature but this would be the first time an Okkervil River album would be focused solely on his own life and experiences. The band’s previous records had eschewed the biographical constraints of what some people had expected from indie musicians with songs more akin to character studies. It's no surprise that Okkervil River's next release The Silver Gymnasium would be a less intense production. “From the very beginning we said ‘let’s not get too precious with this, let’s not obsess about every little thing that’s not perfect”, Sheff told Line of Best Fit, which would be in stark contrast to the meticulous, laborious challenge of making I Am Very Far. The album’s production, handled by John Agnello (who went from producing Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual to working with Kurt Vile and The Hold Steady) is vibrant and immediate. Agnello was clearly chosen because of his experience mixing and producing the 1980’s pop and rock radio hits which were a huge influence on the sound of the record. There’s elements of classic rock and driving synth hooks against the traditional Okkervil River instrumentation, reinforcing the album’s themes of nature bristling against pop culture and society. The Silver Gymnasium never descends into simple pastiche though, the songs are delivered with absolute sincerity and an unironic affection for the music of the time period. There’s name drops to the media from time, Atari games or obscure television (I had to google the 1989 show 227) but only as props fleshing out the narratives. Sheff wanted to avoid the twee sentimentality of other nostalgic indie tracks “There was this whole genre of bullshit that came out of The White Stripes’ ‘We Are Gonna Be Friends, which really makes me want to puke,” he told The Line of Best Fit adding “But at the same time I feel a lot of value in a certain thing about childhood, and I guess that thing is…you’re on drugs! You’re on drugs made by your own body and distributed in a massive payload to your brain, and those drugs are making your creativity and imagination go bonkers!” It’s in that swirling, overwhelming mix of emotion that The Silver Gymnasium finds its centre. Adolescence is a massively confusing time; finding your autonomy, your preferences and own opinions fertile ground for any song writer. The record opens with It Was My Season, beginning simply with The Zombies-esque piano, it’s a dramatic song that reveals itself slowly adding instruments as the narrative reveals itself. It does an incredible job of establishing the themes and focus of the album. The song centres around a fumbling and nascent first sense of attraction, seemingly homosexual in nature.It’s an endearing start to an album that doesn’t offer easy outs or neat resolutions. Sheff allows us to intuit much specifics on the record, we know what has happened to certain people mentioned even if the details are vague. We’re given no conclusions though, only hypotheticals “They say that I'll go to college and you will stay home/And watch while I'm leaving. The cold will just creep in. Oh, Jason, I know”. Sheff mostly keeps things contemporaneous in 1986, smartly ensuring things feel as vital and urgent but there are notable excursions to later periods. The sublime Pink Slips seems to detail the change in lifestyle in the early days of the band in Texas while Black Nemo drifts like a spectre through Sheff’s life. With a sweeping time frame and acute incidental detail The Silver Gymnasium alternates between personal drama and detached reverie but the nostalgia is never allowed to exist for its own sake. 'This Wish just to go back… when I know I wasn’t even ever even Happy! Show me my best memory - it's probably super crappy' Sheff sings in Pink Slips, acknowledging the selective way that we choose what to remember. We're unreliable narrators and our emotions get softened by the distance of time. There’s genuine, visceral tragedy within The Silver Gymnasium and the album never shies away from the trauma these events cause. Meriden is a small town and the pain ripples through the whole community. This isn’t the boomer rock of Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69, we are reminded that things were never easy despite how nostalgic we might feel “We can never go back / we can only remember.” 'Tell me I'm always going to be your best friend' he pleads in Down Down the Deep River, “Now you said it one time, why don't you say it again?” It’s bittersweet and wounding because the audience is acutely aware of what usually happens with even the most loyal childhood friendships. We get older, we move, we drift apart or we become different people unable to sustain the bond which once seemed unbreakable. The track is a summation of the themes of the record, it’s a towering distillation of Sheff’s lyrical accuity. With one song he manages several events and perspectives into an incredible cohesive whole. The theme of wanting to return is repeated throughout the record, almost always with the acknowledgement that it would be futile (“We can never go back; we can only remember”). Walking Without Frankie is a driving, hypnotic plea to a lost or passed friend, “I want Frankie” Sheff repeats in the song's conclusion. The emotion is unflinching and honest, it becomes a pleading mantra. He sounds desperate and vulnerable and the song doesn’t give us the space to hide away from it. There’s a melancholy that tinges even the poppiest tracks of Silver Gymnasium, the fragility of these connections and the knowledge that everyone isn’t always okay. Despite the album’s pop rock sensibilities and more mainstream appeal the album sold fewer copies than I Am Very Far (figures seem impossible to find but Billboard Charts is a good indication), which is puzzling given the marketing push given by their new label ATO Records.. The reviews were solid but not glowing, with critics divided on whether the biographical album had the lyrical heft of the previous works and others criticising some of the slighter tracks of the album for being derivative. Had the album been a bigger success financially would the band have continued with that line up and sound? I’m not sure, the band have had more members than some artists have albums but this did seem the most extreme change in Okkervil River’s history. Personally I believe the album largely succeeds in its intentions. The Silver Gymnasium contains some of the best, most resonant and evocative writing of Sheff’s career. The lyricism on the album is mature, compassionate and inclusive, these events are from Will Sheff’s life but he writes with a welcoming universality that draws us in. Compared to similarly biographical albums (The Sunset Tree or Carrie and Lowell) you can see that Okkervil River’s interest lies more in the simple feeling and emotion that comes from youth rather than more specific details. The songs on the record are infectious and anthemic rallying cries of mundane small time life. The instrumentation is crisp with Lauren Gurgiolo’s guitar an unshowy but infectious complimenting the melody on tracks like Pink Slips and On A Balcony. It feels like a grasp towards a wider audience but doesn’t try to achieve this by sacrificing the strengths of the band. Listening to the record again with fresh ears I have grown to appreciate Stay Young’s complete commitment to the groove, it’s a joyous rock and roll song. Throwaway but infectious and unpretentious, even the harmonica solo feels earned. It was difficult to not discuss each track on the album in detail, to not dissect each lyric because there is so much to unpack. The Silver Gymnasium is a dense record that rewards those who pay attention but is still accessible with sing along choruses and hooks. Following The Silver Gymnasium, Okkervil River underwent their most drastic lineup change yet with all members save for Will Sheff and drummer Cully Symington leaving the group for a new band to be reborn from the ashes. Their next record Away was a stylistic shift that was originally conceived as a solo album with Sheff hiring session musicians to serve as a backing group. Away begins with the song Okkervil River RIP which (unsubtly) serves to draw a distinct line between incarnations of the band. Drawing clear inspiration from Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Nick Drake it abandons notions of the band’s style and sound. The album also featured the track The Industry which sums up the band’s experience within the music industry ('And the cheaper that the music starts to get / It's like they're trying to make us cheap along with it”) going some way to explaining Sheff’s seeming disillusionment with it. Clearly The Silver Gymnasium was creatively rewarding for Sheff though as he’s continued to write autobiographical songs for the next two records. Away would be another deeply personal album dealing with the events of Sheff’s life following The Silver Gymnasium (the death of his grandfather in particular) and Famous Tracheostomies from In The Rainbow Rain does what it promises, parallelling celebrity trach surgeries with his own. As great as these albums are though (I like both of these records) you would be forgiven for questioning whether they constitute an Okkervil River or a Will Sheff solo record. It’s always been Sheff’s voice though, his lyrical prowess and ability to give everyone in his songs whether murderers, drug addicts or a younger version of himself compassion and empathy, is the central pillar of Okkervil River’s appeal. His writing approach following The Silver Gymnasium is different, less direct and more poetic but the songs still resonate in a way in which their classic tracks did. This is not a Ship of Theseus, Sheff has always been there, as the frontman (the figurehead) the clear force in the band’s creative direction and sound. The line up and sound may change but you get a sense that it will always be Okkervil River. Favorite Lyrics “Do you fall so short of all that's in your heart
“Tell me about the greatest show
Each day gets a little more scary
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2021.07.16 18:28 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: HAIM - Days are Gone
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/abigavocado discussing HAIM's Days are Gone. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]September 27th, 2013 - Polydor Listen: Spotify Apple Music Background by u/abigavocado: Haim is a Los Angeles-based trio of sisters: Danielle, Este and Alana Haim. After years of playing music together as kids, including an appearance at the 2005 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, they first came to prominence in 2012 with the free EP “Forever,” which earned them lavish praise from critics and built up quite a bit of buzz for their debut album, Days Are Gone, which came out in September of 2013 and was itself a critical success, earning a wide variety of high placements on end-of-the-year lists and leading to a touring slot with big acts like The Killers, Vampire Weekend and none other than Taylor Swift in 2015, right when the latter’s popularity was really exploding. Writeup by u/abigavocado: Let’s talk about genre. What is, or is not, “indie” is always a reliable source of debate here on this forum. There was a time when the lines were clearly drawn: indie meant music that was released on an independent label, nothing more or less. But over time the lines have shifted. There are pop stars on indie labels; there are indie sensations who have signed to majors but left their sound unchanged. It’s hard to say what it means to be a fan of indie music anymore. The literal definition remains unchanged; but there’s a difference between what a term literally means and what it signifies to the people who hear it. It’s hard to say exactly when things changed; certainly, it happened over time and not overnight. But I’d argue that the year 2013 was an inflection point, and specifically, the most useful example that came out that year was the release of Haim’s Days Are Gone. Take Me Back To The Song Let’s flash back to the fall of 2013, and I can take you through my own personal feelings on genre, because I think they mirror a lot of how the broader conversation has shifted over the years. As 2013 dawned I was firmly what might uncharitably be called a “rockist.” I was interested in rock music and that was it; and I still had a particular antipathy against pop and my attitude was not improved by the fact that I had spent the past two summers working in a retail store that played Top 40 radio incessantly, to the point where hearing “Blurred Lines” or Maroon 5’s “Payphone” remains a source of mild PTSD. I was not in a place to be accepting of pop music, no matter how critically acclaimed; I had written off the love that the likes of Pitchfork showered on Robyn, Grimes, Beyonce and “Call Me Maybe” in years past as nonsense. But a couple of albums released in the fall of 2013 changed that - one was Chvrches’ The Bones of What You Believe (which already has an excellent writeup from u/BornAgainZombie), and the other was Days Are Gone. It Felt Right For those who weren’t tuned in to the indie scene of the 2000s and early ‘10s, it’s hard to remember how different it was, how clearly those genre boundaries were drawn. But this was a time when it was news that indie darling Grimes was a Mariah Carey fan, and not far off from the time when underground hero Liz Phair was absolutely pilloried for “going pop,” a move for which the likes of St. Vincent have been praised in recent years. I still remember hearing “The Mother We Share,” which would become Chvrches’ biggest hit, and thinking it was “too pop,” suppressing the instinct telling me that it was really good in favor of maintaining those genre borders. But in the days following that first listen, it stuck in my head, and I eventually succumbed. Maybe there was, in fact, one good pop song. Days Are Gone was something different. It was billed by much of the music press as being similar to Fleetwood Mac and other classic, ‘70s California bands. Being a huge Mac fan, this was all I needed to hear. But that description wasn’t quite right. It was too pop. The melodies were just too strong, rigorously adhering to pop structures but bursting with personality in a way that cookie-cutter radio hits just aren’t. The lyrics took a bit of a backseat, serving the song in the way the best pop songs lyrics often do, with more emphasis on melody, on the right amount of syllables to fill the line, than on what’s actually being said - just listen to the chorus of “Forever” for a masterful example of this. There’s a fair bit of R&B and funk in their DNA as well - check that bassline on the very first track, “Falling,” for proof. And then there’s “My Song 5,” whose bass sounds are made up of what could be uncharitably referred to as “that womp-womp shit” that was so popular at the time - everything about it, from the bass on down, is notably synthetic, and unlike many of the throwback-minded tracks on the album, its sound very much belongs to the early 2010s. But it has to be a rock album, too. I mean, the first three songs on the album all have guitar solos. “The Wire,” in particular, definitely lives up to that Fleetwood Mac description, except if that band somehow had three Christine McVies. The powerful drum-focused climax of “Honey & I” - that has to be the work of a rock band, and a damn good one. More than anything, it’s fun. You put on Days Are Gone and you’re hit with bouncy melodies, propulsive percussion, funky basslines, guitar solos—you’re just going to have a good time. This is another departure from what was long considered “indie;” the music on Days Are Gone isn’t experimental or “difficult.” In the past, indie music was Bjork, it was Neutral Milk Hotel, it was Kid A; not exactly stuff you’d put on at the family barbecue. But Days Are Gone would fit right in at such a setting--bouncy, fun and accessible, It’s just good music, and good music doesn’t need a label. It’s also clearly the work of a band that grew up with a lot of the same music I did - Sheryl Crow and Shania Twain hits playing over the speakers every day at the community pool, old Michael Jackson and Fleetwood Mac CDs being played at home by nostalgic parents. They took all of this, made it their own thing, and in the process, transcended genre and helped get us to where we are today: a musical landscape where genre restrictions have largely been tossed out the window. Never Look Back, Never Give Up Another thing separating Haim from what was traditionally deemed “indie” was their popularity. Haim came along with an avalanche of hype, playing overtly pop-influenced music, rocketing up near the top of festival bills, opening for Taylor Swift, all while ostensibly playing indie music. And they weren’t the only ones - 2013 saw Lorde, Chvrches, Sky Ferreira and Paramore following versions of this same path as well. That said, Haim could have become trend-chasers, aligning themselves with the Max Martins of the world, including ill-advised rap verses on their songs, and conquering the pop charts. But as their later work shows, they instead have continued to follow their own path. Something To Tell You, their sophomore album released four years later, really hammered home those Fleetwood Mac comparisons - it sounds like nothing so much as 1987’s Tango in the Night, glossy ‘80s-style production included. The second album may have been a step down, a mild disappointment, but it showed that the sisters were going to continue to do their own thing; they weren’t going to fall into what might be an understandable desire to chase the trends of the day. This came as good news to my still-somewhat-rockist self, who became worried when they appeared on a Calvin Harris track in 2014 (to show you how stubbornly I clung to those boundaries back then: I refused to listen to the Calvin Harris collaboration despite Haim having become one of my favorite bands. I finally heard it years later - it’s pretty good!) Their third album, 2020’s Women in Music Pt. III, cemented it - this is a band that’s going to chart their own course. And a good course it’s turning out to be - WIMPIII was a strong return to form, updating the formula in several ways, strengthening their lyrical game, but maintaining the band’s strong senses of rhythm, melody and songcraft. If I Could Change Your Mind Over the years, I abandoned my hardline stance on non-rock genres, slowly welcoming in more and more types of music, whether that was Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion in 2015 (and plenty of pop albums to follow), Kamasi Washington and other jazz artists starting in 2017, ambient music in 2018, throwback disco and funk that same year (disco rules y’all), and a hell of a lot more. Good music is good music, after all; why put it in a box? It seems that this has mirrored the path a lot of people have taken, especially younger people who have started to grow up with streaming services. To those of us who grew up with radio, CDs and even iPods and Limewire downloads (shhh don’t tell the feds), genres were the first thing you figured out about your music taste. Tuning into one station meant that was your genre; you wanted rock, you got rock and only rock, and don’t you dare touch that dial. But Spotify and its ilk, whatever their problems, left much of that in the past. Soon, playlist became the axis that many peoples’ listening habits revolved around, and those playlists had no genre restrictions, or indeed, any restrictions at all. That’s not to say that genre descriptions don’t have their uses - we still haven’t really found a better shorthand method for describing new music, and these labels can help you sort out what you might be interested in on a broad level - for instance, personally if I see the word “emo” anywhere in a new band’s writeup I know to just keep on scrolling to the next one. But genre isn’t the be-all end-all anymore, and for a lot of us, that started with records like Days Are Gone. While sounding like the past, Haim's debut set a course for indie's future. Talking Points:
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2021.07.14 21:48 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Death Grips - Government Plates
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/horsejeans discussing Death Grips' Government Plates. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]November 13th, 2013 - Third Worlds Listen: Spotify Apple Music Background: Death Grips are an experimental rap / punk / electronic trio from Sacramento, California featuring drummer Zach Hill, produce engineer Andy Morin, and frontman Stefan Burnett aka MC Ride. After releasing their debut mixtape Exmilitary in 2011 to much acclaim and buzz, the group signed a contract with Epic Records and announced two albums to be released 2012: The Money Store and No Love Deep Web. The Money Store catapulted them to an even bigger spotlight online, receiving a number of rave reviews — most famously Anthony Fantano’s first ever 10/10 review for a new release. Shortly after the release of The Money Store, the band cancelled their upcoming tour dates (the first of multiple such incidents in their career) in order to finish work on No Love Deep Web, but the release of that album would be anything but ordinary. Unhappy with the terms of their contract and the label’s lack of desire to release their second album right away, the band blew their entire label advance on a long stay at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles and leaked their own album to the internet — complete with an album cover that features Zach Hill’s erect penis with the words “No Love Deep Web” written on it in sharpie. This stunt obviously got the band dropped from Epic records and seemed like borderline career suicide at the time, but the provocation of the No Love Deep Web release only accelerated the growth of the cult-like internet fan base for the band, with the band amassing over 34 million “legal” downloads on bittorrent by the end of 2012. In August 2013, the band uploaded the single “Birds” to their youtube page, and in November the band surprise dropped the rest of Government Plates as a visual album that features various 3D animation models presented in a black vacuum of space that mirrors the official album art. Review: To fully understand Death Grips, a helpful place to start is where the band themselves started: California’s capital city, Sacramento. Sacramento is a bleak place. “Bleak” might be putting it lightly. While recording their previous album No Love Deep Web in Zach’s apartment above the Sacramento Bike Kitchen (Sacramento is a city notorious for bike thieves, with hundreds of bikes stolen every year), they claim that “‘You could tell people were trying to break in,’ says Hill. ‘In the middle of the night, I’d see someone fucking with the door, so I’d throw a bottle out the window in the alley so it would shatter and they would run’”. In another 2012 interview with NME, the band brings up a recent incident in which “A woman put her head on the tracks a couple of days ago and decapitated herself”. This is not the Sacramento you saw depicted in the film Lady Bird. It’s not uncommon for a state’s capital to be a smaller, less economically prosperous city compared to bigger cities in the state, but few state capitals feel as overlooked, neglected, and forgotten as Sacramento often done. As a former participant in the YMCA Youth & Government program (in which students from all over California would come to Sacramento once a year to participate in mock government exercises), I was always amazed at how empty the city felt every time I visited, how barren and ominous it seemed outside of the few blocks that house the important government buildings. But Sacramento is not an uninhabited ghost town; it is a city home to almost half a million real human beings, and those people are often forced to live in desperate and unjust conditions, feeling like they live in an entirely different world than the inhabited by government officials working in pristine marble buildings just a few blocks away. As Zach put it in the same NME interview: “You have these two really polar opposite things existing right next to each other. It feels like the UK or something in the medieval times; the monarchy and then you have these peasants right next to it”. That kind of cognitive dissonance and rampant inequality is what fuels the rage inherent to Death Grips and their music, but it’s crucial to note that even though they are clearly frustrated with “living in a third world in a first world country”, they are not concerned with making music with an easily identifiable agenda or explicit political message. In Zach’s words, Death Grips are “operating based on our own moral code. We're our own party.” Government Plates, like all Death Grips releases, is music about the purifying power of destruction, the liberation of self-immolation. “I am the beast I worship” is more than a lyric for this band, it’s a state of being. No agenda is the agenda. No expectations are the expectations. Even when upholding that code of conduct meant potentially sabotaging their whole career before it had even reached cruising altitude, this was a band committed to their ideals whatever the cost. As they discussed in their pitchfork interview after the No Love Deep Web leak: “frankly, a lot of things we've done over the past few months are not that easy. Staying true to the original concept for the group, we'd be asking ourselves: ‘Should we do this?’ There was plenty of back and forth before we leaked the album. But ultimately we asked ourselves, ‘What would Death Grips do?’ We have to live up to what we make the music about. There are a lot of full-circle aspects. It's very real. We have to come outside our own fears and practice what we preach”. If that thesis statement of anarchy wasn’t made clear enough by the band’s first three records, Government Plates was the moment Death Grips really hammered it home. By taking their already mutant, abrasive style of music from the first three records and turning it inside out, they proved that the only consistent principle of Death Grips was constant reinvention and provocation. This isn’t music concerned with clearly communicating ideas or emotions as much as it is aimed to provoke a visceral, fight-or-flight reaction. This is a conceptual art project with high minded ideas, but it hits you in the gut before you even have time to process the statements and ideas being communicated in the lyrics. All the same elements from the first three Death Grips albums are here on Government Plates: MC Ride’s vocals, Zach’s one-of-a-kind drumming, and Andy’s digital production elements, but somehow these individual components have been rearranged and reshaped into a new form that feels even more alien upon reconstruction. And that disorientation on the micro level is heightened by the album’s macro structure: a set of 11 tracks that flow seamlessly into each other, with constant left turns and trap doors hidden within nearly every song here, never going for more than a few minutes without introducing some radical new idea. MC Ride is always there to tie things back to earth with his bellowing vocals, but even that familiar element is reconstructed and rearranged into something different than the typical verse chorus verse structure utilized for a lot of tracks on The Money Store. Instead, MC Ride’s voice is often used on this album like a sample, or like a percussive instrument, looping the same pitched and warped phrase for a song’s entire runtime as a way of jackhammering it into the listener’s head. It shouldn't work as well as it does, but somehow phrases like “rings on my hand” and “LA creepin under my skin” get turned into downright infectious hooks by sheer force of will. This shift in approach was somewhat controversial among some fans at the time who preferred earlier releases where MC Ride was rapping the whole way through, but in hindsight Government Plates feels like a logical progression of the band’s original stated mission to recreate the ferocity and rawness of classic hip hop and punk with an updated sound palette that was equal parts digital and industrial. It felt like a left turn at the moment, but the longer their career has gone on since, the more it feels like a skeleton key to understanding the whole Death Grips ethos. While it is clear that the paranoia and darkness surrounding the band during 2012 inspired their work on this album (the album begins with the sound of a bottle shattering immediately followed by an alarm siren, which is possibly a direct reference to the attempted break-ins at their studio), this is not an album as concerned with the visceral, on-the-ground reality of life in Sacramento in the way that say Exmilitary was. Rather Government Plates is the moment in which the band fully embraces their fractured, digital image by making an album that feels like the band fusing with the internet itself. Some albums talk about the internet, some albums are influenced by the internet, this album sounds like it takes literally inside the internet. In the immortal words of Owen Wilson in Zoolander, “it’s inside the computer”. When a vocal sample pops up the middle of “This Is Violence Now (Don’t Get Me Wrong)” and announces “You have been banned from the channel”, or when “Anne Bonny” starts with a similar voice saying “Pirate”, you feel like you’re being spoken to by some unseen, omnipotent narrator who rules over the purgatory that is the internet, something much more powerful and ominous than a mundane pop up ad. Much like the album’s iconic license plate cover and the computer generated music videos that both take place in featureless black backgrounds, the music itself is produced in such a way that makes it sound like every single instrument and sound is being recorded in the airless black vacuum of outer space, all digitally re-assembled into these hulking monstrosities of sound that are so far removed from anything you could imagine a band of human beings playing together in a room. Unlike earlier Death Grips projects where the mixes are denser and more chaotic / rough around the edges, these abrasive songs are presented in crystalline hi-fi: they've never sounded clearer while also sounding more distorted and uncompromising than ever. You can draw parallels or comparisons to other electronic artists active at the time, like the whistling synth lead on “I’m Overflow” that sounds like something from the 2012 TNGHT EP or the antiseptic coldness and surreality to the production that feels akin to R+7 by Oneohtrix Point Never, but nothing before or since has exactly replicated the sound of Government Plates, not even future Death Grips releases. The way this record clevely uses empty space in the mix gives MC Ride even more room to show off the incomparable power of his vocals, especially on the album’s first two tracks “You Might Think He Loves You for Your Money but I Know What He Really Loves You for It’s Your Brand New Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” and “Anne Bonny”, where his relentless raps hit with the force of 1000 sledgehammers over some of the nastiest beats Zach and Andy have ever put together. The first verse of “Anne Bonny” is already incendiary enough, but when the beat roars back in on the second verse, we see MC Ride upping the intensity to somehow even higher levels as he screams “ghost ship ritual, double exposed / delusional tendencies, I’m belly up” over a textural sample that sounds more like a flamethrower igniting than any recognizable instrument (maybe they just sampled an actual flamethrower??). Even on tracks like “This Is Violence Now” where MC Ride takes a backseat to Zach’s mind-bending laser synths and drum patterns, the sheer heft of his voice and the charisma with which he can imbue single line readings allow his vocals to cut through even the most hectic compositions and ring out clearly. It can be easy to dismiss Death Grips as just aggression for agression’s sake, as meat-headed, hyper-masculine music aimed more at empty provocation than any sort of real artistic sentiment. You could easily view the No Love Deep Web release and the ensuing fallout with Epic as a publicity stunt (even though the band’s own publicist had no idea it was going to happen) and roll your eyes at the band’s insistence that the dick pic album art is not just a crude joke and in fact is deeply meaningful and conceptual. And I won't deny that some of those criticisms levied at the band are half true — but only half. The truth is that any attempt to neatly categorize or generalize the work of Death Grips is almost always going to be reductive, because Death Grips is a project that permanently lives in the uncanny valley, in multiple meanings, in dualities and contradictions. Nothing they do is entirely one thing: the No Love Deep Web album cover is a juvenile joke AND a deeply meaningful and powerful gesture. Their music is base, primal aggression AND high minded conceptual art that is equally interested in criticizing violent masculinity as it is participating in it. Death Grips is equally concerned with the real emotional scars and trauma of their upbringing in Sacramento as they are transcending the human form altogether. As they put it, “Listening to Death Grips is like taking a pill that makes you super-human. The music has emotional suffering, but it's also a beast-- you could take a bite out of a bowl while listening to it.” Their vulnerability is invulnerability, what makes them broken is also what makes them unstoppable. Death Grips are not just futurists, they are impatient futurists. They weren’t going to slow down their creative evolution to make sure fans could keep up, and they especially weren’t going to slow down in order to conform to outdated record label release strategies. As they said in the Pitchfork interview regarding their decision to intentionally sabotage their deal with Epic in order to force their hand, “We’re not anti-record label. We’re just anti-dinosaur'. It was a brave move by Epic to sign the band in the first place, and they should get some small sliver credit for not forcing the band to neuter their sound in order to sell more records. But their insistence on holding off the release of No Love Deep Web until it could be given a proper rollout with singles and a PR campaign shows a fundamental lack of understanding to what made Death Grips feel so vital and necessary at the time. This is a band that wants their art to go out the door the moment it is finished, because every second it spends waiting on a hard drive reduces the immediacy and urgency: “You just finished this song, and therefore it’s hyper-relevant, because it’s now”. But unlike other artists aiming to capture the moment by mimicking the style of whatever is relevant in the music world at the time, they managed to make a record in Government Plates that was as urgent and relevant as it is timeless and alien. One of the album’s biggest legacies is how it helped to popularize the surprise drop as a rollout strategy, but the music itself has stood the test of time even as that trend has come and gone out of vogue. Nothing else on the internet sounds like Government Plates, and yet Government Plates sounds exactly like how the internet feels. It was ahead of its time in 2013, and in my opinion we still haven’t caught up. Favorite Lyrics: Pupils swell
My scabs under my fingernails
So harsh in here think I've gone mad
FREELANCE MOTHERFUCKER
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2021.07.11 21:25 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/Hardrada_Brad discussing Queens of the Stone Age's ...Like Clockwork. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]June 3rd, 2013 - Matador Listen: Apple Music Spotify Writeup by u/Hardrada_Brad: I’m gonna suture up my future Queens of the Stone Age’s fifth album Era Vulgaris was released on June 12, 2007. Homme described it as “dark, hard, and electrical” and it's very clear to see why. It’s QOTSA’s most angular, jagged album to date with coarse sounds scattered throughout its 48-minute runtime. It marked a shift from their previous albums, the gloomy Alice-in-Wonderland-on-a-bad-trip Lullabies to Paralyze and the album that launched them into the stratosphere, the relentless and heavy Songs for the Deaf. Here, tracks like 'Misfit Love' and 'Battery Acid' are vicious in their guitar sounds, the juggernaut riffs of the past given even more weight and a harsher sound. A few experiments are on this album too, such as 'I’m Designer' showing Queens of the Stone Age mastermind Josh Homme’s vocals opting for a unique turn, taking inspiration from the angular sound of the album and using it for the singing. Now, you may be wondering why I’m talking about the album before the one featured in this writeup. With ...Like Clockwork, it’s important to know the context of when it emerged. Era Vulgaris marked an end of an, for lack of a better word, era for Queens of the Stone Age. After this album was released, feverish QOTSA addicts would have to wait over six years for the next one. In context, previously there had never been more than a three-year gap between albums, half the time it took for ...Like Clockwork to emerge from its cocoon. However, a lot of signs from Era Vulgaris pointed in the direction of ...Like Clockwork. One of these signs was the way they built up the release of the album. This started from February and began the slow build to Era Vulgaris. The first clip featured footage of the band jamming, the studio footage of what would later be identified as 'Misfit Love' and then finished off with a clip from the video for the song that would be the first single, '3’s and 7’s.' This was done on their website, which has been invaluable for this exact use further down the road. This was followed by another studio clip this time of album opener “Turning on the Screw”. Another hint to the future evolution of the Queens of the Stone Age fun machine were the additional parts added in the album cycle. Namely, the new members of the band. Michael Shuman replaced the ever-busy Alain Johannes on bass after the album was finished recording and Dean Fertita, famously also part of Jack White project The Dead Weather, also joined as the resident keyboard/guitarist/Swiss-army-knife. They were both present on the bonus tracks of Era Vulgaris and have been with the band ever since. Retrospectively, it's easy to consider Era Vulgaris as a transitional album. A clear distinction can be seen between what some might consider their heyday of Songs for the Deaf and Lullabies to Paralyze, and the third act of QOTSA. Whereas in those albums, the music did the shouting at a time where being the biggest rock band in the world meant more, Era Vulgaris fine tunes the package as a whole. Art was commissioned with strange characters such as Bulby, a broken, smoking lightbulb and his fellow bulb Stumpy the Pirate. Wherein Songs and Lullabies there was haze, Era Vulgaris brings the whole package into bright, dazed focus. You get what you give, I give goodbye Following a short tour until the summer of 2008, Homme stated he was going to head back into the studio to work on the next album. In truth, the next Homme project wouldn’t be a Queens of the Stone Age one at all. In fact, he would be reunited with previous collaborator and generally famous person Dave Grohl and teamed up with legendary Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The supergroup was titled Them Crooked Vultures. The project in fact dates back to as early as 2005. In an interview with Grohl by Mojo, he stated “The next project that I'm trying to initiate involves me on drums, Josh Homme on guitar, and John Paul Jones playing bass.”. Their debut album was released on 13th November 2009, and incorporated more bluesy sounds to what boils down to the Homme winning formula. Songs like 'Dead End Friends' and 'Spinning in Daffodils' are highlights on this album, skilfully weaving the Led Zeppelin references into a Queens of the Stone Age song with Dave Grohl’s thunderous drumming for all to see. It was shortly after this band wound up that reports of complications during knee surgery on Homme began to circulate. The news at the time stated that his heart had stopped and had to be revived by defibrillator. In a later interview, Homme explained that this was down to MRSA which, due to stress, his body couldn’t fight. During this time, he was bedridden for three months. Three months that he couldn’t be near or touch anybody for fear of passing on this infection, and having to send his young daughter away from him just to keep her safe. In recent years, Homme has discussed this and denounced the knee surgery story. Instead, he clarified that the infection was instead brought on by being “in too deep” with drugs and the stress of his work schedule. Regardless, his, thankfully, temporary death and subsequent isolation sent him on a downward spiral into depression. In an interview with Mojo in 2017, he described his mindset; “By the end of that, I wasn’t very happy. I was desperate for another story to tell about that record. But lyrically, the records are a diary of a lifetime. So they have to be real or I’m out.” Homme’s next steps were to announce a re-release of the then out-of-print debut self-titled album of Queens of the Stone Age. This release contained additional tracks that were recorded in the same sessions interspersed in the original tracklist. A highlight of these is 'The Bronze', a roaring, angular example of Homme’s new-found creative freedom. This was followed by a tour that included one of their best shows of their career. As the sun set on the Other Stage at Glastonbury on the 26th June 2011, they played a show before which they asked their audience for which songs they wanted. This ended up being a romp through the greatest hits of a band honed on the white heat of practicing their debut album. Their first album has a lot of influence on ...Like Clockwork. From the blues of Them Crooked Vultures, Homme was inspired by his previous work to go back to the genesis of what made Queens of the Stone Age in the first place. Promising a re-christened 'robot rock' album, rumours of work on the album were circulating ever since this tour. Far beyond the desert road where everything ends up These days, when an artist makes a part of their online persona black and deletes everything off it, you know something is coming. This is what Queens of the Stone Age decided to do with their website as an initial signal of intent. All that was there was a signup form which sent you an email of artwork with the subject line “RUNNING IN A DREAM IN A CODEINE CABARET”, which is suitably bizarre. Within the next couple of months, anonymous letters with similar artwork and text were sent out to various music news websites. One example to NME had cryptic clues and a downright title drop, not that anyone knew at the time, “As you may have already guessed, it’s going like clockwork.”. This particular one had an illustration of a man’s head complete with a neck bone being weighed down with three pocket watches, all showing 9 o’clock. This is a good opportunity to talk about the art direction. Liverpool based artist Boneface was drafted in to provide all the artwork for the album and beyond. According to one interview, he was given a direction and just started running in a way that very much excited Homme and the rest of the band. A gallery is currently available on his website and shows an artist inspired. The art for the project is the glue that sticks everything together and follows on from the increased focus on this aspect as seen in Era Vulgaris. Each song had its own artwork, each more vivid than the last. The album cover itself was inspired by old Dracula films on a vivid red background. A stunning piece of work. Returning to look at the website, it wasn’t long that a further teasing bit of content was released to the public. This took the shape of music clips, taken from the album and presented without context. They were, as follows:
This video ends showing the number of collaborations on this album in a credits sequence. With the album sessions being chaotic and difficult to the nature of Homme’s headspace, not everyone made it through. Joey Castillo, a mainstay from the Songs for the Deaf tour who went on to record the next two albums with the band, left a third of the way through, causing an empty slot to appear that needed to be filled. Prior to the permanent appointment of former The Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore who only plays on the final track on the album, the slot was filled by none other than Dave Grohl. Having famously worked on Songs for the Deaf and also being the drummer on Them Crooked Vultures, his contributions were highly valuable. In addition, the old faces of Mark Lanegan and past bassist Nick Oliveri also made fleeting but fun contributions. New faces also made an appearance, not in the least Elton John. Famous for helping musicians who are in a bad place, he called Homme and ended up playing on 'Fairweather Friends'. After playing with perennial classic singer Engelbert Humperdinck on the same day, in a later interview he said he was pleased not to be drafted in to sing a ballad. Trent Reznor, who appeared on one of the bonus tracks to Era Vulgaris, makes an appearance on two of the tracks. On Keep Your Eyes Peeled, Jake Shears’ voice is perhaps the clearest out of all of the guests, duetting with Homme in the closing moments of the song. From this piece of pure art, the marketing went more leftfield. Were you one of the few to be sold a ...Like Clockwork USB by Ricky Chism? This strange video starts off with a cameo from none other than Bulby from Era Vulgaris and leads to a long-haired man ready to complete the hard sale. The video is bordering on eight years old and holds up surprisingly well. The band also makes a cameo with a well-acted part from Michael Shuman and new drummer Jon Theodore air-drumming away in the background. A beautiful pastiche of a dodgy sales video. Did I mention it was also a bottle opener? The album opens with the sound of breaking glass (which is credited to Homme in the liner notes as Glass rather amusingly) on the track 'Keep Your Eyes Peeled'. This visceral audio leads into a sinister combination of a deceptively complex drumbeat, bass, guitar and silence. The bass and guitar work together, playing the same notes to sound as beefy and gritty as possible. The drums are provided by Joey Castillo and is the first of the four tracks he’s involved on. This is the moodiest song on the whole album, it oozes a malevolent and depressive force. The lyrical matter shows a circling, paranoid lack of control, “Shotgun, never behind the wheel (anymore)”, “If life is but a dream/Then wake me up”. The track lightens up in the centre, with a ray of hope shining into the “Hell” that he’s describing. However, this very quickly fades and falls back into the dirge. The crescendo has a clever bit of studio trickery. If you are listening on headphones, Jake Shears is in one ear and Homme is in the other. Together, their voices blend over the rush of the drums and noodling guitar in the background. This cascade collapses at the end, reverting back to the dirge at the beginning of the song, with the instrumentation shrinking down until there is just a piano deep in the background. 'I Sat by the Ocean' kicks off with a quintessential Queens of the Stone Age riff; silky and instantly catchy. Homme excels himself with the vocals on this track, fully utilising his range throughout the song and hitting crisp highs during the chorus. A true toe tapping song, this is one of the few on the album with no guest features and is the most straightforward song on the album. In the runup to the outro, a QOTSA staple of the slide guitar provides a nice bit of momentum without losing the silky-smooth nature of the song. Lyrically, it describes a breakdown in a relationship and fallout from it, such as dealing with friends (“Your friends, they all sympathize/Maybe I don’t need them to”) and losing a potential future (“Imagined I’d be your one and only/Instead I’m the lonely one”). The key line in the song, “Silence is closer, we’re passing ships in the night”, subtly changes in the outro to “Closer and closer, we’re crashing ships in the night”, imagery that describes how much damage the relationship is on course to cause. The intro to 'The Vampyre of Time and Memory' is one of the most simple and effective parts of the album. It’s a simple C note played on a Moog synthesizer, using a very synthetic and slightly rough sound. It leads into this most heart-breaking of songs in a truly unique and very Queens of the Stone Age style. Cutting through this intro is a soft piano tune that I have previously heard described as something a guitar centric writer would transfer over to piano. It’s the second softest song in the QOTSA repertoire, and is full of emotion. Dean Fertita punctuates the song with jagged guitar solos between Homme’s sombre singing and even more sombre lyrics. “Does anyone ever get this right?/I feel no love” is the chorus and it typifies the subject matter of the song. Being the first song written for the album and the first penned after Homme’s health issues, it’s the frankest and most melancholy on the album. From the second most sombre song to the second most sleazy and sultry on the album, 'If I Had a Tail' is a protest against fake glitz and materialism wrapped in a sleazy and catchy tune. This is the first track on the album where Dave Grohl is behind the drumkit, and the outro has Alex Turner and Nick Oliveri singing a variant on the chorus line. In addition to this star-studded song, Mark Lanegan’s gravelly voice can be heard backing up Homme in the chorus. Dirty guitars and sludgy riffs litter this song with a confident swagger. This is a true driving song, especially during the chorus where the drums carry Lanegan and Homme oh-oh-ing into the sunset. A key line to understand what the song is about occurs at the end of the first verse; “It’s how you look, not how you feel/A city of glass with no heart”. Homme is unhappy with the unfeeling, material world around him. So much so that he wishes he had a tail to swat away these annoyances so he could fit in as an animal and not care about materialism. It's a clever song that hits on every level. The first single of the album, 'My God Is the Sun', is a true Queens of the Stone Age classic. Of all the things to start with, maracas open up this heavy rocker of a song. After the opening riff, Shuman shows off his bass skills with a heavy bassline providing a steady base for Homme’s wild vocals. The chorus blasts you away with an onslaught of noise that invites you to mosh along. It’s such a technical song disguised as a straight-up rocker. Grohl plays a blinder on 'My God Is the Sun', you can feel every drum impact. The ferocity of the song is unmatched on the album and has become a staple of setlists. The lyrics make you feel like shedding the weight of the world and enjoying the freedom that the creation of art can give. What's interesting to think is that Homme has found a way through not even wanting to write music to it providing his salvation. A timely reminder to put down anything that's weighing you down, even for a time. The relationships Homme had with the people around him provide ample lyrical matter for this album. Leading from a song that had his son in mind (the wordplay in the title also references his son) to a song described as a song for his daughter “saying goodbye to dark days” by his then-wife Brody Dalle. Likely the strangest song on the album, with 'Kalopsia' the verses have a soft, dream-like sereneness to them where Homme's lead vocals are nicely harmonized with the rest of the band’s backing. The track floats along peacefully with lyrics referencing “Rose-tinted eyes” and saying goodbye, for a time, to the fear represented by a “black balloon”. The dream is curtailed by the shriek of a guitar in pain and an instrument-laden chorus. Homme goes from dreamlike to putting the full power of his voice to use. During the second chorus, listen closely and you can hear the familiar tones of Trent Reznor adding even more to the wonderful cacophony. The song’s title comes from an exchange of ideas between Homme and Alex Turner, with the latter providing the title which is a defined delusion when everything looks more beautiful than it actually is. 'Fairweather Friends' is a song, as the name suggests, about the frustration of how some of his friends reacted to his difficulties in getting back to being a musician after his MRSA scare. Although this is widely-considered the weakest on the album, the significance of the song on the album justifies its existence on ...Like Clockwork. In the tale of the album, the song feels like an exorcism of bad vibes and moving on with your true friends out of the bad times and into the good, especially with the song that follows it. Elton John’s piano flourishes are a highlight and add an old-school rock and roll to proceedings. Reznor’s characteristic voice appears again in the outro, Grohl returns on drums after Castillo on 'Kalopsia' and long- time collaborator Mark Lanegan co-wrote the music. The friends that matter were with him on this song, shedding the rest and getting back to enjoying music. A great line in the song is a reference to 'Walkin’ on the Sidewalks' from their then recently reissued debut; “Drink wine and screw is all we’ll do/Every day”, showing the impact of that album on this one. The final line in the song is the funniest moment on the whole album. Sleaze turned up to 11, 'Smooth Sailing' comes after. Never have Queens of the Stone Age made a stickier song than Smooth Sailing. The guitars have a sultry swagger that make you want to swagger down the street yourself! This is a song, building off My God is the Sun, that encourages you to let go of the past and the future and just live it up in the moment. It includes a reference to his near-death experience with “I’m a little bit nonchalant when I dance, I’m risking it all-ways, no second chance”. His life after this traumatic experience is a gift and he wants to live it up as much as he can before this second chance expires. Homme is back for good and for a good time. The way the song builds up during the “Hell is at the temple of the closed mind/closed mind” section is thrilling and feels completely off the rails. Smooth Sailing is the last moment of levity on the album, afterwards we sink back into the depths of depression only touched on in the album prior. 'I Appear Missing' is an epic six-minute saga of a song. A raw, honest look at his hospitalisation and the legacy of depression that he came away with. Lyrics are cutting and describe the mental place that Homme was occupying at the time of writing; “The splitting image of me/Except for the heart-shaped hole where the hope runs out”. It’s probably the best example of the overarching themes of the album if you were ever needing to give such an example. Hospital references are prominent in the chorus, with Homme singing “Shock me awake, tear me apart/Penned like a note in a hospital gown”, showing the toll the ordeal had on him. The principal guitar riff almost feels like something you’d hear in an old horror film, but instead of a piano, it's a jingly-jagged set of guitars. The opening section and the ending section are joined by a waterfall of drums and an assortment of percussion seemingly falling over each other aiming to be heard. It's a true testament to Grohl’s drumming ability, and to Homme for allowing such experimentalism into what is a deeply personal and affecting song. The crescendo is a piercing guitar solo (apparently ludicrously loud live), beautifully cutting, which leads into probably the highlight of the whole album. Still at a piercingly high register in the background, the guitars set a stage for Homme’s falsetto in an almost call-and-response format to his bandmates; “(Don’t cry) I never loved anything until I loved you”. It leads wonderfully into the final track. The title track both fits perfectly and is a bit of an outlier on the album. Before this moment, Queens of the Stone Age never performed a true ballad. This all changes at the end, with the piano taking the forefront and a full string accompaniment in the background. It’s the first to feature Jon Theodore’s technical drumming, finding a fitting home on this most unusual of QOTSA songs. Homme remains in falsetto for a large portion of the song, and sings about his regrets and more lamentations on the often material nature of people. One clever lyric occurs at the end of the chorus, and it reflects the two-sided nature of the album’s title, “One thing that is cleaIt’s all downhill from here”. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's for the listener to decide. The song rounds off the album beautifully, and a stark contrast to the visceral opener. It’s incredibly easy to get lost in the swirling orchestration and then before you know it, it’s over. Holding on too long is just a fear of letting go From a personal perspective, this album produced a feeling that I have attempted to replicate ever since. It consumed me. Every occasion I had to listen to it, I took to extract every last bit of magic and feeling I could. Every interview prior to the release I watched and attempted to glean any further nuggets of interest. It hit me at a highly influential age, at a time in my life where a comfort blanket was in great need. I still turn to it when I need it, and get lost in the arms of this diary of difficulty and defiance. I fell for this heartbreaker so hard, I still haven’t listened to Disclosure’s debut purely because it beat it to the UK number one (sad on my part, I know). From ...Like Clockwork, I devoured any more music that could echo my own sentiments. From ...Like Clockwork, I was led to Mark Lanegan’s solo work for a similar soundscape, to Post-Punk for the same emotional tones, to anything that had similar guitar tones. In my humble opinion, ...Like Clockwork is the most complete package of an album that not only Queens of the Stone Age has produced, but any band. Everything from the leadup, to the album art, to the lyrical themes, to the music itself feels to have fallen into its rightful place, well, like clockwork. You can’t ask for anything more than that. Favorite Lyrics (Confide) With my toes on the edge, it’s such a lovely view
You think the worst of all
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2021.07.10 21:39 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/teriyaki-dreams discussing The Knife's Shaking the Habitual. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]April 5th, 2013 - Rabid Listen: Bandcamp Spotify Apple Music Background by u/teriyaki-dreams: I rarely see The Knife mentioned on this sub, so a brief intro is in order. The Knife is a Swedish band comprised of two siblings, Karin and Olof Dreijer. (As a quick aside, Karin came out as nonbinary a few years ago, but is often referred to as “she” in old interviews and articles.) There’s a bit to unpack here. First came the self-titled: The Knife is a weird album, with cheap midi keys, stock drum machines, and Karin’s singular voice tying it together. Karin’s singing is a core feature to the Knife’s sound: their thick accent combined with the completely unrivaled (and indescribable) timbre and the duo’s tendency to pitch-shift the vocals makes their style utterly unique. Many acts have tried to imitate the band in some degree (comparisons were made between the Knife and CHVRCHES and Purity Ring), but none are able to emulate such an enrapturing voice. Their second album, Deep Cuts, pared back the weirdness just enough for one perfect track, “Heartbeats,” which is a dense, uplifting, and lyrically dense hit. You likely heard José Gonzalez’ cover of it first, a lovely acoustic joint that charted higher than the original (not to mention the many appearances in commercials and film). An easy way to rile me up is to ask me what I think of the Knife’s cover of the José Gonzalez song, but that’s neither here nor there. The rest of Deep Cuts is a great listen, but “Heartbeats” stands as a monument from that album. Silent Shout was the Knife’s big critical success, and for good reason: it’s a remarkably consistent piece that combines the Dreijers’ ear for pop with dark, brooding synthpop atmosphere. Karin’s voice is pitch-shifted to a menacing edge as they sing about illness, abusive relationships, and sex work. I’ll get into this a bit more later, but the unique sound of the album tended to overshadow a lot of the radical politics at play; had they been more obvious, I don’t know that the album would be as widely accepted. But I digress; Silent Shout remains their best album for many fans, and one that stylistically and thematically has never been topped (or even well-imitated) by any band. Between Silent Shout and Shaking the Habitual, they released a collaborative opera album about Charles Darwin titled Tomorrow, in a Year that, while not critically lauded (and, in this author’s opinion, not much fun to listen to) probably deserves an entire writeup of its own. Review by u/teriyaki-dreams Pt. 1: I Love The Knife The story of how I first started listening to the Knife is one that’s probably familiar to a lot of Indieheads: Pitchfork. I was exploring new music as a teen in 2008-ish and stumbled across Pitchfork’s “Best of 200X” lists, which, young as I was, I treated as gospel. Silent Shout was Pitchfork’s favorite album of 2006, with good reason. I had already heard Karin featuring on a few Röyksopp songs, and from there, I went backwards in their discography, becoming obsessed with their earlier records. Karin also released the self-titled album of her solo project, Fever Ray, right around that time, which was an equally life-changing release. All this to say: I was pretty excited when in early 2013, the Knife announced they would have a new album out soon after years of silence. If my memory serves, they mistakenly released the lead single, “Full of Fire,” before the album even had a name, which I promptly recorded from Facebook via screen capture and listened to on repeat. “Full of Fire” was new ground for the Knife: a pummeling, hypnotic 9-minute techno banger where Karin dismantles patriarchal storytelling and conservative politics, and caps it off with the catchy two-liner “Let’s talk about gender baby, let’s talk about you and me.” It was an instant hit for me. I think the line that stuck out most to me, a mostly open-minded but politically ignorant college student, was the repeated refrain of “Liberals giving me a nerve itch,” a critique that I didn’t expect. For context, in 2013 the US where I live, “liberals” are about as far left as mainstream politics went. Everywhere else, including in Sweden, liberals are often considered center-right. As absurd as it sounds now, I was confused! Were they suddenly conservative? Why were they criticizing something that seemed to agree with them? Maybe this is an extremely embarrassing admission, but up to that point I had no idea that leftist politics existed. This song, and later the album as a whole, changed my outlook on what was possible in the world. When the album finally arrived, it was a dense listen, but I’d argue not as difficult as many folks think. Most of its runtime is devoted to longform electronic pop songs like “Full of Fire.” “A Tooth For an Eye,” the second single, is a slippery, percussion-driven song, and perhaps the most similar to their older work. Lyrically, they critique anti-refugee rhetoric (“Border’s lies/The idea of what’s mine/A strange desire”) and the capitalistic tendency to rewrite history for its benefit (“Rewrite history/To suit our needs”). I’ll spare you the track-by-track review that I could turn this into, and instead talk about a few other highlights. “Without You My Life Would Be Boring” is an anxious, urgent song about changing the territorial nature of western colonialism. “Stay Out Here,” one of the less lyrically direct cuts, is a duet with Light Asylum’s Shannon Funchess. Funchess’ deep and direct vocal delivery directly contrasts Karin’s more shrill voice, making the song a great back-and-forth by two clearly kindred singers. The Knife claimed to have made their own instruments for some of the album, and while I’m not sure how true that is, whatever instrument solo plays at the end of “Raging Lung” sounds like it’s desperately squeaking out its final notes. “Networking,” the only instrumental song that’s not ambient, feels equally desperate in its stuttering vocal strums. That song feels a bit overlooked to me, it manages to tell a story without any actual lyrics. I’d be remiss to leave out a discussion of the most divisive part of the album: the noisy drone parts. “Oryx” and “Crake,” two short and scratchy instrumentals named after an excellent Margaret Atwood novel, are curious but not particularly noteworthy; they act as brief semicolons between songs. The longer ambient pieces, “Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized” and “Fracking Fluid Injection” are far more divisive and abrasive; people are still coming to RateYourMusic and complaining about them. For my part, I think they’re a little too long, but they break up the album in a really spectacular way because the songs that come after them feel like a breath of fresh air after being held underwater for too long. The opening notes of “Raging Lung” feel like I’ve walked into a new world. Lest that sound like torture, I think it’s intentional; the Knife consistently makes the listener intentionally uncomfortable. The process of making the songs is also quite interesting for a band previously known for off-kilter synthpop, as the latter was made by attaching a microphone to an old bedspring. Pt. II: Radical Political Inspiration The sound of the album is dense and unpredictable, but what I’d like to draw attention to is the political statement the Knife makes. I’d like to make the argument that The Knife have always had obvious political commentary at the heart of their work, from the subtle references to raising their hands for the color red, i.e. left-leaning political ideals, on The Knife’s “Parade” to the, uh, much less subtle feminist satire on Deep Cuts track “Hangin’ Out.” Silent Shout wasn’t exactly quiet about its politics either, with “Neverland” being a song supporting sex work, “One Hit” being a scathing feminist critique of abusive men, and “Forest Families” describing the Dreijers’ upbringing in a very conservative small town. The Knife let their songs speak for them, however, and made the audience look for their political statements in the lyrics. Pitchfork’s 2006 review of Silent Shout didn’t even mention a single line of the lyrics! Though, whether that’s because the political landscape was different then or if they just didn’t want to engage with them, I’m not sure. Shaking the Habitual changed all that. The Knife wanted everyone to know where they stood and what their intentions were. From the vinyl cover art loudly demanding to “END EXTREME WEALTH” to the press statements that accompanied the album, to the comic-based lecture written by Liv Strömquist. These were big, bold statements by a band that, up until this point, seemed much more interested in shadows and smoke. In interviews, the Knife said this direct approach was very deliberate; they had already sang about how harmful patriarchal and wealthy institutions affected them psychologically, and now they want to instead explore the processes for change. Even the title of the album loudly points to their attempt to unlearn these ingrained ways of thinking that seem baked into our collective human experience. Additionally, they made it clear that they were very deliberate with their collaborators, including feminist visual artist Emily Roysden and Light Asylum singer Shannon Funchess, as well as nonwhite and nonbinary remixers like Cooly G, Pursuit Grooves, and Planningtorock. I’m a biologist, not a philosopher, so some of my interpretations of this album’s big ideas may be a little simplistic, but I’ll do my best. I’ll start with examining their most obvious central thesis: ending extreme wealth. This may seem obvious, but until it was shoved in my face by one of my favorite bands, I hadn’t thought about billionaires being anything but good businessmen. As silly as that sounds, that this was 2013, when Bernie Sanders wasn’t very well known outside of Vermont and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tweets weren’t reposted endlessly on every website. This was a radical idea for me! It became central to my beliefs, that these people hoarding wealth were truly a detriment to our society, some sort of anti-cultural, rabid force that needed to be put down. Perhaps the song that most directly encapsulates this idea is “Raging Lung,” whose second verse is quite scathing: Hear my love sigh“Poverty’s profitable” is just such a succinct way of putting it. In the same breath, they also admit that there is no easy solution, but I’m sure they would agree with me when I say that a good way to start would be billionaires losing a little wealth. The album is heavily invested in the breakdown of borders, both societal and geographical. This is the political part of the album that I’m still grappling with, and have the least to talk about. “Without You My Life Would Be Boring” discusses the territorialism that we still instinctually reinforce, making references to territorial piss that would be pretty humorous if they weren’t delivered with such menace. “A Tooth For An Eye” calls for opening country borders, “Wrap Your Arms Around Me” satirizes the nuclear family, and “Stay Out Here” seems to be about how tearing down both literal and figurative walls will lead to better lives for all of us. I won’t discuss this too much further, because while anticolonialism and open borders are huge themes of the record, they aren’t issues that I feel particularly confident that I can do justice. Another important part of the album for me was the feminist angle, from direct lyrics and references hidden within them. I had always considered myself a feminist, but I never really knew what it meant until I started listening closely. I still don’t quite know what it means all the time, and there’s a lot more angles written by people a lot smarter than me, but I did start to look at it more seriously because of this album. I started to put their other records under closer scrutiny to see the deeply empathetic views. I started to question some of the misogynistic lyrics and themes of some of my favorite albums and came away realizing that maybe there’s better ways to spend one’s listening time. I may not be a perfect feminist, and I certainly can never educate myself enough about these issues, but the Knife has been a huge inspiration for caring about these things and considering my own behavior with regards to feminism. “Full of Fire” is perhaps the most straightforward feminist song, with a powerful verse in the middle proclaiming: Of all the guys and the signoriThe implication being that heteronormative, white men have been the ones writing history and written out many mentions and contributions by anyone but themselves. It’s a sobering thought, and one that I’ve considered often as, well, a straight cisgender white man. In what ways can I instead let someone more historically marginalized take the spotlight instead? There’s not always an easy answer, something the Knife mentions often in the album. The album was also released around the same time that conversations about “privilege” were hitting the mainstream (at least in my circles online and in person). Despite my conservative Christian upbringing, I had never bristled at the idea of privilege. Who am I to say that someone else with less privilege had the same opportunities as me? This discussion of checking one’s privilege was deeply helpful to me to empathize with folks who were different, and the Knife brought this into fine focus. “Ready to Lose,” the final track on the album, reckons with the idea that perhaps for a better community, we need to be ready to lose our privilege. This may be the Knife’s most radical song, calling for us to examine ourselves and ask whether we’re ready to end the cycle of succession (the emblematic example being the monarchy) that causes pain, not only in communities and countries, but in every aspect of life, even down to simple managerial overstep in small businesses. Indeed, even as a scientist, that line of succession is clear and raw in the nepotism and homogeneity of the people who make it to tenured faculty positions. In my own experience, professors relish in making their graduate students go through the same struggles that they went through, a process with tends to filter out those who weren’t already privileged in some way, whether through money, personal connections, or something else. All of my close graduate student friends are a great, diverse group of people who also never had to worry about money. The Knife specifically called out the music industry in interviews, which has documented problems with wealth, misogyny, and racism that have not been fixed eight years later. One other way that the Knife inspired me is on the philosophy of gender, which is directly tied into their live show, which I was lucky enough to see in 2015. Beyond a few lines in “Full of Fire,” the band didn’t make many references to gender and sexuality on Shaking the Habitual. Not that it was something they shied away from; an early EP was titled Gender Bender, and so many of their songs have Karin’s voice pitch-shifted to a masculine level. For Shaking the Habitual, they made these comments not on the album itself, but in the live show. The show (at least in the US where I saw it) was billed less as a concert than as a dance party. They toured as a large group of individuals with some impressive choreography, and played reworked versions of their songs better suited to the dance floor. This is neither here nor there, but if you have the chance to listen to their live album at Terminal 5, it’s pretty spectacular to hear “Silent Shout” as an upbeat pop track. Part of their live show was changing the lyrics to old songs to a more fluid sexuality: “Pass This On,” which originally referenced being in love with someone’s brother, is now about a sister. Elsewhere, “Got 2 Let U” from Shaken-Up Versions uses the nonbinary pronoun “ze,” which was new to me. Ze didn’t catch on quite as well as the simple “they,” but it was still my first exposure to the idea that gender isn’t as straightforward as the binary, just another border that makes it harder for us to live our lives the way we want. Related, they also performed a spoken word piece, “Collective Body Possum,” which is both hilarious and fiery in its theme of breaking down what the body is meant for; it’s worth a listen if you decide to listen to the live album, if just for how aggressively confident it is. They also translated some of the communal ideas they discussed in songs like 'Full of Fire' to a touring band. It wasn’t until several songs in that I managed to recognize the Dreijers themselves. They often stayed out of the spotlight even as they sang their own songs, instead choosing to wear shiny jumpsuits and wigs, dancing along with the rest of the performers. Shannon Funchess also toured as a member of the band, and the one time Karin took the spotlight was for their duet on “Stay Out Here,” which was phenomenal. They very carefully made the effort to say every member on stage was a member of the Knife, which makes it feel more like a collective owned by many, which in a way is a perfect ending to a band so profound. I think the audience felt like a member of the Knife by the end of the show, too, which makes their breakup all the more bittersweet. Pt. III: A Wrap-Up I dearly hope the Knife isn’t as finished as the Dreijers insist; at the end of the US tour, they stated that the project has ended. The siblings have continued in their own music, though the releases are few and far between. Olof has released a few remixes for Robyn, and Karin continues their Fever Ray project to great success, and even more radical politics. I think the point of this too-long essay is that bands have so much power to change minds, or at least plant the seeds of change. The fact that a single album could, and genuinely did, have such an impact on me is a testament to what art can do for people. I doubt that I’ll make anything quite as potent, as an artist or a scientist, but this album is constantly, powerfully inspiring. Favorite Lyrics: Under the sun
Ready, ready to lose a privilege
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2021.07.08 20:24 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Arcade Fire - Reflektor
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/McCretin discussing Arcade Fire's Reflektor. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]October 28th, 2013 - Merge Listen: Spotify Apple Music Background by u/McCretin: Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band formed in 2001. Currently a six-piece (with additional touring members), the band is known for incorporating a large variety of instruments which aren’t typical in rock music into their sound. They take something of a “Total Football%20is%20a%20tactical%20system%20in%20association%20football%20in%20which%20any%20outfield%20player%20can%20take%20over%20the%20role%20of%20any%20other%20player%20in%20a%20team.)” approach to their line-up, with several members swapping between duties on different instruments. The band came to prominence in 2004, with the runaway success of their debut LP, Funeral. The album received plaudits across the board, and almost overnight it catapulted Arcade Fire from obscurity to selling out venues and opening for U2. Arcade Fire’s momentum continued with 2007’s Neon Bible, but it was 2010’s The Suburbs that really established them as one of the biggest rock acts of the early 21st century. It was a critical and commercial juggernaut, making it to number one in eight countries and becoming the first indie record to win the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2011. In 2013, Arcade Fire released their fourth LP, Reflektor, co-produced by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. With a Rodin sculpture on the cover and lyrics exploring everything from Greek mythology to Søren Kierkegaard, Reflektor was clearly the work of a band with lofty ambitions and - thanks to their track record of commercial success - they were granted the creative freedom to express them. Review by u/McCretin: Nostalgia is an under-discussed side effect of the pandemic. The present is on pause and the future is uncertain, so it’s natural to take refuge in the past. And nostalgia, which relies on your brain’s tendency to view the past as better, more certain, more comfortable than the present, is especially alluring at a time when the recent past was objectively better than your current situation. That’s why I decided to revisit Arcade Fire’s Reflektor for this series. I thought about reviewing something else from 2013 that I’d discovered later. But I’ve been bitten hard by the pandemic nostalgia bug, and I felt I had to write about an album I was really into at the time, and the feelings that it stirred in me then and now. Sometimes, an album provides the soundtrack to a part of your life to the extent that you’re immediately transported back there when you hear it. And so, there was only really ever one choice for my album of 2013. Boy, they're gonna eat you alive In the summer of 2014, I got my first real job in London. I say “real job” - it was an unpaid internship at a PR firm. But because it meant I was working in an office, wearing a smart outfit and commuting on the tube, it carried a sense of adulthood that I hadn’t experienced before. The work was not particularly stressful, and my colleagues were friendly enough, but it sparked a deep existential crisis in me. I was one year away from finishing university and coming to the realisation that this unfamiliar office world was probably going to be my life for the next 45 years. I used to sit in Hammersmith tube station and watch the trains as they terminated, unloaded the smartly-dressed working people, loaded up again, and were dispatched back the way they'd come. Over and over, always more or less the same. The adolescent me, in the early stages of learning to cope with the repetitiveness of office life, read far too much into it, thinking that the regularity and uniformity was a profound metaphor for something or other. Looking back, it's no wonder I was so disillusioned. As I was only given lunch expenses at my internship, the satisfaction of paid work eluded me. While I was a master of getting the most out of those expenses, it did not quell the sense of worthlessness that came with being salary-less. Every day, after battling the cruel heat of the Piccadilly line, I would return to my tiny shared flat in a grim area. We had no living room or garden. The communal hallway stank of rubbish. Pigeons nested on the balcony. My room was miniscule - I couldn't open one of my wardrobe doors because my desk was in the way. Parts of the bedroom ceiling were falling off and landing on my computer. I didn’t particularly mind living in a grotty flatshare - I was a student, after all. But leaving university accommodation and experiencing London’s brutal housing market (it was bad back then and has got even worse since) was a shock. All of these new and unwelcome concerns added up to an unnerving cocktail of uncertainty about the adult world. I was young, awkward, inexperienced, resentful of my lowly status and lack of money, and having a full-blown crisis about where my life was headed. This was my mindset when I discovered Reflektor, the album that both soothed and soundtracked the worries that were filling my naive little head, and it couldn’t have been better suited to it. Our song it skips, on little silver discs Reflektor was the first contemporary album I can remember being really into. I spent my teenage years listening almost exclusively to metal and dad rock, but 2013 was a real transitional year for me musically and I was beginning to explore more modern sounds for the first time. I was vaguely aware of the hype around The Suburbs in 2010, but the album itself passed me by completely. Iron Maiden had released The Final Frontier that same month and, while it wasn't a great record, it was on hard rotation on my iPod Classic and was enough to distract me from the award-sweeping landmark album. So when Reflektor was released, I was immune to the sky-high expectations that much of the indie community had for it. This is probably a big part of why I'm more keen on it than a lot of others. I didn't know that much about Arcade Fire and only discovered their back catalogue after I'd listened to Reflektor, so I came to it fresh. But the residual hype for the band after the success of The Suburbs, combined with my newfound interest in modern music, meant that Reflektor was inescapable. It was advertised on an enormous billboard outside my flat. It featured prominently in Arcade Fire’s barnstorming Glastonbury performance, headlining the Pyramid Stage on the Friday night. And it was always on the office Sonos. First they love you, then they kill you I have to confess that I hadn’t listened to this album properly for a few years before this review. I was curious how it would stand up today, but I also wanted to look back on how it was received when it was released. Not everyone was convinced: Arcadethony Firetano dismissed it with a “Strong 5”. But overall it was received quite positively - Pitchfork handed down a 9.2 - which was, surprisingly, higher than the 8.6 they gave The Suburbs. And yet, the overriding opinion in indie circles now seems to be that it is a dud. Reading back the mostly positive contemporary reviews, I struggled to reconcile them with the haughtiness with which the album is currently treated by many. I think a lot of the negativity is down to what followed it - 2017’s Everything Now, which was (rightly) panned by critics and audiences alike. This has solidified the arguments of the harsher critics of Reflektor. Rather than being seen as a blip, it has now been written into a wider narrative and reduced to a stepping stone in the band's decline from the zenith of The Suburbs to the nadir of Everything Now. This is deeply unfair. Every album should be evaluated on its own terms rather than being tainted by what followed it. And, when you strip away the hype and discourse and debate and reputational issues the album suffers from to just focus on the music, there is a lot to be said for Reflektor. And after all this time, it's like nothing else we used to know Insofar as guitar music was a mainstream presence in the early-mid 2010s, it was obsessed with stripping everything back and returning to basics. From the lo-fi dissonance of Mac DeMarco to the folksy simplicity of George Ezra, art rock pretentiousness could not have been further from the zeitgeist. And Arcade Fire deserve credit for putting out something so antithetical to the trends of the time. The band also very clearly refused to rest on their laurels after the success of The Suburbs. Imagine you'd just become the first indie act to win the Grammy for Album of the Year two years earlier, beating out pop royalty Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Eminem. Whether or not you put a lot of stock in industry awards (I don't), that must affect you artistically in all sorts of ways. It has to put a huge amount of pressure on you and lead you to question whether what you're doing next is good enough. But there is no hint of self-doubt here. Arcade Fire took the mainstream recognition in their stride and used it as fuel for their ambitions. It is the sound of a band doing exactly what they want. Reflektor is a huge record in every sense, from its 75 minute runtime to its dense and multi-layered production. No fewer than 20 musicians - plus a full orchestra - are credited on the album, and one of them is David Bowie. The six members of Arcade Fire are each credited with playing an outrageous list of instruments, some obscure (the celeste, the musical saw, the omnichord, the concertina) and some apparently made up (the “elephant’s trunk” and the “ting-tong”). Even if I knew what a celeste sounded like, I wouldn't be able to pick it out from the dense instrumentation on this album. There are so many weird, unique sounds buried in these songs that you don’t necessarily notice at first, but they all add up to a deep, layered soundscape. Reflektor is of course not a perfect album - far from it. Few LPs fully justify a 70+ minute runtime, and this isn’t one of them. The lyrics are often questionable and most of the tracks could be trimmed down. The song Porno meanders around for six minutes without going anywhere and could be cut entirely, and the pointless second half of the 11-minute closer Supersymmetry should have been chopped off and left on the studio floor. It's also a real shame that Régine Chassagne doesn't sing much. She pops up here and there but there's nothing approaching her tour de force lead vocal performances on songs like Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) or In the Backseat, and Win Butler is a pretty average singer in comparison. But these complaints aside, many of the album’s flaws are due to its ambition, and only enhance it. Maybe I'm just a contrarian, but to me there's something obnoxious about a piece of art everyone loves, and believes that you should love too. I've always preferred the underrated, the beaten-up on, the divisive - especially when there is genuine ambition there, whether or not that ambition is completely successfully realised. Sometimes it moves so fast, if you stop to ask, it's already passed The pinnacle of my summer, and the thing that really secured this album into my memory of this time of my life, was getting to see Arcade Fire live in Hyde Park, headlining the BST festival. I would never have been able to afford the tickets normally - at £66, they were a luxury far beyond the means of an unpaid intern eking out a living on the last dregs of his student loan. Luckily for me, the stars had aligned. One of my friends was a member of a Facebook group called “UK & IRELAND BARGAINS” or something like that, which shared random deals and discounts. One day, the Facebook group struck gold. Someone at the ticket company had fucked up and accidentally released discounted staff tickets to the public, at £2.50 each. Naturally me and my friends all bought one. We showed up and sheepishly handed over our discounted tickets - and to our amazement, after a quick pat down from security, we were in. The ticket company had agreed to honour the tickets as it was their mistake. It was by far the best £2.50 I’ve ever spent. On that sunny evening, in that beautiful park, my existential woes faded away. No troubles could touch me as the band romped through their new and old songs in front of an adoring crowd. It’s a memory I’ve treasured throughout this pandemic, when mass gatherings are impossible and I’ve not been to a proper gig in over a year and a half. It reminds me of the importance of just getting together for the express purpose of listening to some great tunes, and how good that is for your wellbeing. It seems so important now, but you will get over Looking back on that time, I can now see that what felt like an overwhelming existential crisis was just a series of petty concerns. I was worrying about the wrong things, feeling helpless and like I was being carried along by the tide, too busy fretting about the future to realise how much control I had over which direction that future went in. I think that’s why Reflektor resonated with me so much. There is something gloriously cringey about Arcade Fire, which gave voice to my similarly cringey youthful concerns and expectations. Win Butler in particular seems like a guy who is perpetually stuck in his angst-ridden late teens. I can't say I'd enjoy that. You have to move on, you have to grow out of it - for your own sanity. It's important because the anxieties of the past lose their potency with the passage of time, and the sense of perspective it gives you. You have the benefit of seeing how it all worked out and whether or not a particular thing was worth worrying about (usually not). That is the power of nostalgia. You can enjoy the story more than you did when you were living through it because you know what happens in the next chapter and it doesn't scare you. The danger of nostalgia, of course, is that you can be swamped by it, unable to move forward, wishing for the return of a past that never existed. After all, the “algia” in “nostalgia” comes from the Greek word ”algos”, meaning “pain”. And nostalgia is a type of pain, because it's a homesickness for a place you can never return to. And that pain is especially acute when the present is as miserable as it is right now. I don't blame anyone who's been lost in nostalgia this past 16 months, reliving their pre-pandemic lives. Reliving is a misnomer, though, because each second we live only happens once. We can't relive anything, not in a literal sense. We can only remember. But sometimes, that's enough. Favorite Lyrics: Our song it skips, on little silver discs
They take their tea at two
After all the breath, and the dirt, and the fires are burnt
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2021.07.04 20:00 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: Mutual Benefit - Love's Crushing Diamond
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/WaneLietoc discussing Mutual Benefit's Love's Crushing Diamond. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]October 7th, 2013 - Soft Eyes Listen: Bandcamp Spotify Apple Music Youtube Background by WaneLietoc “Mutual Benefit is a decade-long NYC-based symphonic folk pop thing with Jordan Lee and many wonderful collaborators.” Since uploading tracks to a nascent Bandcamp at the tail end of 2009, Lee has taken the project across the United States, deep through a variety of baroque folk styles, with an ever-shifting line-up of collaborators. All without abandoning the essential do-it-yourself emphasis that colored his first releases. After a trio of 2011 EPs released across Father Daughter and Kassette Klub, Lee returned in 2013 with the first proper Mutual Benefit LP, Love’s Crushing Diamond, self-released through his friends’ label, Soft Eyes. It was recorded in three cities across 2012-2013, and quickly became one of the fall’s buzziest, most unexpected releases, earning attention from major music publications, and selling out of its original run to warrant a repressing on Other Music. Since then, Lee has settled in Brooklyn, where he has continued to issue Mutual Benefit releases with Other Records, Mom + Pop, Transgressive, and Never Content across the last 8 years. Review by WaneLietoc For the last month, I’ve been on the road more often than any time since the start of COVID. Therefore, CDs are back in rotation, with Mutual Benefit’s Love's Crushing Diamond positioning itself as something of a summer soother; in between waiting in parking lots or drives through the valley cut open wide by a 5 lane freeway. I didn’t anticipate that this would be the way I’d be spending my time truly diving into this album, when I picked it up directly from Jordan Lee in the back of an auditorium of a show my friend had booked in February of 2020. It’s a patient album that seemed to be waiting for me, I suppose. This isn’t to say that I was no stranger to Mutual Benefit’s trilogy of 2011 EPs. It was here where Mutual Benefit kind of just came together, with Lee making the move to pursue art full time. The lineup surrounding Mutual Benefit continued to shift (involving friends and other musicians hanging around Lee at the time), as Lee shuffled through a litany of ideas and friends’ labels. What would become Love’s Crushing Diamond--the freeform percussives, electronic ambience, folk melodies (that wouldn’t be outside of the AnCo wheelhouse circa Prospect Hummer), and seamless field recordings--were teased out quite effectively and with a keen ear for spiritualism. In particular, the I Saw the Sea EP emphasized surround sound characteristics for a most ritualistic endeavor that has kindly graced his works since. All the while, Lee never once kept the project’s sound and lyricism as anything more than a humble journal of sorts; each of these 2011 EPs carry an image and time/place to it; the giddiness of being in flux, pursuing your dreams and even seeing the damage of Hurricane Irene and the Pacific Ocean on a whim--in between sleeping on the floor of a friend’s place in Boston. Speaking of journals, Lee blogged under the Mutual Benefit moniker during the era’s early 2010-2011 peak. It was then that artists really liked to get mad at Spotify and withhold their music, while Bandcamp, in its infancy, had yet to have a bonafide success story outside of a couple burgeoning cult players. It didn’t even have a blog section! This was during this time that being into music online--whether that meant trying to write “first” on a Hipster Runoff post, trolling Gorilla vs Bear for the next batch of mp3s, or finding new labels on tumblr and meeting people at festivals/house shows--was oozing with goldmines and new communities. Last year, Lee reflected on the time, stating he “was really excited about the democratic promise of 2008-2013 online music communities…spending years listening to and blogging other people’s songs while quietly working on my own and eventually worked up the courage to share,”. And flipping though his old blog is quite a revelation in how much it follows the moment of Altered Zones, shouting out Beer on the Rug (“a promising new label”, Lee exclaimed in 2011), and uses kickstarter to fund a SXSW showcase. All while touring throughout the country running into Emily Reo and Matthew Sage, amongst a litany of other little nuggets; the American Underground was flush with new sounds and Lee was vigorously documenting them. At heart, it's a gigantic testament to the power of what it meant to follow music on this grassroots level, before everything jumped to twitter. It also paid off in a small capacity. Mutual Benefit logged TENS of thousands of streams on a burgeoning Bandcamp, finding small, dedicated audiences from house show to house show. Yet, by the time of Love’s Crushing Diamond announcement in June of 2013, Lee had scaled back the blogging. The album had been produced over the previous “year of notable absences” that found him quitting his telemarketing job in Boston before suddenly decamping to St. Louis on a whim to redirect Mutual Benefit and online time. In fact, the album outright alludes to this, about four minutes in, with the same economy of words as a DMD comment, “And in the water I could see/A piece of what you broke in me/I took a walk my usual way/I called to quit my job today”. Suddenly, Lee’s lyricism and eclectic sound medley seemed to snap into focus, carrying with it a modus operandus that hadn’t been completely realized. At heart, Love’s Crushing Diamond is about Lee’s friendships and wanting to demonstrate the compassion he best knows how through music. It’s also the closest Lee ever came to crafting a full blown bildungsroman in the wake of this first era of Mutual Benefit. Lyrically, this is bookended by a prayeode to the movement of a river. Yes, water appears quite often as a motif associated with walks, friends, and nature in these songs; and in that time as it rolls with grace and simplicity, it too, like Lee and those around him, reflects a steady, beautiful uncertainty of where you are going. Many tracks resulting emphasize situated epiphanies that chew on what it means to live unafraid or find beauty--bursting out of a statue in an abandoned mining town, of course--while on your own love again. Love, in its “falconry”, platonic, and careless forms, are intertwined and turned into breathless treatises on what it means to try and be better for others, even if you may never see them again. All without sacrificing Lee’s economy of language that lays out diaristic experiences with a level of universality. Figures come and go in our lives, and Lee’s lyrics leave plenty of blanks to be filled in with our own experiences that parallel his. Never once though, does this album teeter into bummer break-up territory (nor offers a literal ode to unemployment for that matter). Lee damn-well made sure that Love’s Crushing Diamond was Mutual Benefit’s most communal, breezy effort, traversing from St. Louis to Austin and back up to Boston to record with over a dozen unique collaborators, roommates, and friends who “put up with the inescapable presence of these songs everyday”. That power comes through often in his duets with Virginia de la Pozas, Cory Siegler, and Julie Byrne whom seem to perfectly parallel the grace and mindset Lee brings to the table, terraforming each song into its own space of grace; as much as in the form of Marc Merza’s zen-level guitar soundscapes that invoke driving on any open highway from the 101 to I-94; or Jake Falby’s violins that completely shifted Lee’s original vision for the sound (casio violins) to better present the instrument’s delicate bliss--the track “Advanced Falconry” practically soars and swoons thanks to Falby. Even the freeform percussion and electronic bleeps add a floaty, glistening energy to the compositions that color the atmospheric stars and cosmos of this sound. Mostly though, I found that the album is really tied together through the inspired usage of life recordings. Yes, these pieces--like turning off a lightswitch or fourth wall acknowledgement that Lee is recording a friend--are legitimately nifty ways to disguise the sudden end of a track and seamlessly move into a new mise-en-scene. They also capture the mundane wonder of waiting for a little machine to turn on and proclaim “let’s play” or the serendipitous sublime joy of screaming in unison with those around you. Lee’s world and the auditory snippets he shares from them always move me to tears; communal memories and celebrations, with an intimacy that only seems to be showing up more in the fringes of ambient emo Bandcamp. When Love’s Crushing Diamond was first announced, it was supposed to be a cassette only release. But then a couple of Lee’s friends patiently pressed a run of 250 LPs. No one was expecting (former) Stereogum night editor, Liz Pelly, to blog about “Advanced Falconry” and link to its Soundcloud (where over 8 years it has amassed over 727,000 plays-wowzas!), and slowly build hype that would lead to a mid-October CMJ showcase. By the time the album was self released on 12” and CDr, there was a substantial amount of buzz and interest that pushed well beyond the copies Soft Eyes had put together. As Other Music swooped in to help repress, Lee was suddenly the focus of a “Band to Watch” column and had an 8.4 Best New Music--the first for any album to be self-released on Bandcamp. In a bitter irony, you currently cannot purchase the album from Bandcamp, only sample its lead singles. That sudden ascendance from underground music blogger and DIY lifer to “exciting buzz band” is a story that seems almost improbable to happen now. Of course, unexpected blow ups have happened throughout the blog era--Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2005), the Antlers (2009), even DIIV (2011-2012). Rarely do they scale in such a way that signals the arrival of something novel to the music ecosystem that could shift the landscape for years to come, nor actually pull a rags-to-riches story for the artist. The album barely cracked a few top 50 lists. The label that repressed this album no longer exists (but you can still buy from their site). By all means, Mutual Benefit’s Love's Crushing Diamond has come to bear a level of claim as a “Remember Some Guys” classic. That Love’s Crushing Diamond had this success at all is a piece of sublime timing. 2013 was the last year to date Spotify pulled in less than a billion dollars in revenue, in an uneasy coexistence feeding from the early 10s ecosystem of blogs and era of music sites like pitchfork or stereogum; places that offered dedicated track coverage, tour blogs, amongst interviews for independent artists that seem to be missing these days. Yet, Lee never seemed to think that Mutual Benefit would be defined by buzz, but rather the connections he made from house show to show. Instead of becoming the face of a sect of 2010s indie folk, he took the album’s sudden good fortune and settled in Brooklyn. Here, he participated and lived at Silent Barn during a portion of the venue’s 2014-2018 lifespan; a haven for artists of all kinds passing through where Mutual Benefit continued to shapeshift. He made an album for Mom + Pop, as well as a cover album of Vashiti Bunyan’s Diamond Days, and even an album for Transgressive; it's quite a bit of whiplash to see Lets Eat Grandma, SOPHIE, and Mutual Benefit on the same label having all released an album in the same year. He continued to lightly music blog, offering recommendations for anything between Florist and Helado Negro (and still does to this day). And just like a decade before, Lee still insists on booking house shows and probably is intending to hit the east coast quite soon. If you do ever have that chance to catch Mutual Benefit in a house show, it's quite a serendipitous affair. On the edge of quarantine, in a room of less than two dozen people, the band’s line-up was just Lee and long time collaborator Noah Klein. Klein themselves shared a side of a tape with Mutual Benefit a decade prior, while being responsible for a litany of LA’s most communal and cherished music efforts--from Ambient Church to never content tape label that continues the Mutual Benefit mission and spirit. Keyboards, wind instruments, and a vocoder were the tools of the trade that night as the two sat down in a “campfire songs” position on the floor. Although both of them seemed more focused on sharing a story of how a fig tree needs a dead mosquito to grow or searching for the perfect, soothing tone to match the space than just simply playing music. They were kindred spirits, looking for other music lovers that night. In the process they opened a door to a community I didn’t know I was looking for. Favorite Lyrics by WaneLietoc “I clear my mind of joy and sorrow
“Sometimes my heart and brain conspire, to set everything on fire
“Let’s Play!”
“And that current took you away
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2021.07.03 19:44 IndieheadsAOTYAlbum of the Year 2013: CHVRCHES - The Bones Of What You Believe
Hello! Welcome back to the Album of the Year 2013 series, our special throwback writing series where indieheads users discuss some of their favorite records of 2013 through their own unique perspectives as writers. Today we have u/BornAgainZombie talking CHVRCHES' The Bones of What You Believe. submitted byIndieheadsAOTYtoindieheads [link][comments]September 20th, 2013 - Virgin Listen: Apple Music Spotify Background by BornAgainZombie CHVRCHES are a Glasgow synthpop band who formed in 2011 as a trio, with Lauren Mayberry on vocals and additional instrumentation, Iain Cook mainly playing synthesizers along with piano and guitar, and Martin Doherty also providing synthesizers and occasional lead vocals. Cook and Doherty had initially performed together in Aereogramme after meeting as students, before leaving and growing more interested in electronic music. In 2011, Cook produced an EP for Blue Sky Archives, which included Mayberry as the band’s vocalist/drummer, and invited Mayberry to provide vocals for the project he and Doherty had started pursuing. Together, the three of them formed CHVRCHES, and started releasing music the following year. In contextualizing this album for the sake of this piece, I’m less interested in hitting the bullet points leading up to the album — putting “Lies” onto a music blog in 2012 and receiving unforeseen buzz, the initial release of “The Mother We Share” in 2012 before its re-release the following year caught significantly increased traction, the Recover EP some months before this record, The Bones Of What You Believe dropping in September 2013 — than I am in invoking what I believe to be key pieces of the band’s ethos and songwriting as they’ve mentioned in interviews around this time that tie into my own personal reckoning with the record. CHVRCHES are a band who write without “going for a particular theme,” letting the writing guide any song’s ambiguities rather than guiding a listener’s hand. They actively leave things “all up to interpretation” with their lyrics, believing that “what the songs [mean] are only important when… recording.” As such, there’s very little available during the album cycle for The Bones Of What You Believe involving the band talking about the songs’ meanings, or what personal impetuses inspired most of the tracks. Instead, The Bones Of What You Believe is intentionally meant to be a mirror for the listener, one where they can hear and envision their own experiences and sentiments as commonalities being sympathized with. This was, at the very least, what has colored my own relationship to the album over all these years. --------- Review by BornAgainZombie It’s June 27th, 2021: I’ve known the album for almost eight years, and the bite of it still strikes me. It’ll hit me suddenly, or I’ll feel a rush of invigoration well up in me, knowing that line in “We Sink” is coming — while listening to the album otherwise absentmindedly at work or in the car on my commutes. And though I’ve listened to the album hundreds of times over the past eight years, it still leaves that impact — markedly more forceful than anything else, even amid a song already filled with frustration and venom: “What the fuck were you thinking?” It’s a strange moment to land with me the way it does — not least of which because Lauren Mayberry lets an emphatic use of “fuck” land with the force of an unexpected smack during the muted bridge of album opener “The Mother We Share” right before it. And yet, it’s the passion of that particular use of “fuck” that still cuts with the same sharpness as it did on first listen. Maybe, I reason, it’s because it’s the first place on the album where that kind of vitriol first emerges — a harbinger of the ways Mayberry will show bite across the rest of the record. Or maybe I’d grown attached to that vocal delivery — and, in my own most passionate private moments, expend more ardor in how I sing along with it — because I could filter all the bite I could never picture myself expressing outside the confines of the album. --------- Thinking about The Bones Of What You Believe now is impossible for me without thinking of the context I first grew attached to it — how I familiarized myself with it until it felt joined to the hip with me. These days, when I think back on what endeared me to the record, I realize my understanding of what I took from it was inherently incomplete at the time. It had to have been — how could I have foresight of the comfort and certainty ahead of me when I had no context for it in the moment? How could I have fully felt emotionally connected to Lauren Mayberry’s lyrics when still without the estrogen I consume daily, still not yet aware I even needed it? How could I have felt the album and its bite with the conviction I feel now when I was still convincing myself that the neglect and abuse I faced in my earliest relationships were worth staying in? When I told myself things would blow over and resolve and turn over a new leaf on the drop of a hat, without me expending any effort to induce a change? When I found voice in an album while scared to speak? The truth of the matter is that it’s precisely because of where I was in that period in my life that influenced how I hold such value in this album — because I could not have recognized the strength and conviction and voice it offered me had I not been without it when the album had come along. The bones of what I believe in now and hold as core tenets in how I carry myself first had to grow — fortify — before they could be as secure and foundational as they are for me today. --------- It’s November 5th, 2013, and the realization takes me by surprise. One of my friends confides he has a crush on me, though I had only ever known myself to be a straight man (no matter how incorrect both parts of that identity had always felt). Here was a friend, not knowing — in the same ways I didn’t even know myself — whether that was simply a learned facade and telling me anyway. And here I am, not quick to deny my thoughts entertaining the possibility. In fact, I take the next three days to think it over, to reconsider everything about those I’ve ever felt desire and compassion for. And on the third day, I realize how much of that I had kept locked away or passively dismissed without interrogating it any further. I tell him that night, realizing how much I see in him an outlet to finally explore those long-dormant feelings, and we begin dating. In the moment, it feels like relief — a much-needed first step toward opening myself up and exploring the depths of emotions and passions I’d had welling up in me all my life before. And, at first, things seem to head in that direction with him, the way all honeymoon periods lead on with lofty promise. But my path ahead to complete openness and fearlessness in expressing how I feel is much longer than I realize. In fact, it’s a path I still haven’t reached the end of. --------- It's the fear of overstepping that keeps me from showing bite of my own. The feeling that — if I were to show my frustrations, push back against that which pushes me first — it will be too much. It will betray my compassion, I think to myself, it will be a representation of everything I hate — it will be me adopting the ferocity and carelessness of those who have wronged me. This is something I've wrestled with in another essay about an album before, and it's something I still have difficulty reconciling and finding a healthy way to express. What most often happens is that I hold whatever frustrations I have within myself, or let them loose in a trusted private setting where whoever exasperates me cannot see. But one thing that hasn’t changed for me over time is that I’m still afraid to express anything resembling bite or frustration or impassioned defense directly to another, still afraid of the ways it could tumble into something stronger than what I intend. Most of all, I’m reticent to ever show bite with anyone I’ve ever been close and compassionate with — never quite knowing how to express my frustrations in a compassionate way. I think of the lines in the album’s bonus track “Strong Hand” that get to the heart of the matter more succinctly than any of CHVRCHES’ other lyrics: “Will I be the strong hand keeping you safe? / Or will I break you in half?” Will I still remain a compassionate person through all this? Or will the bite consume me whole? Because of this, I’ve only openly spoken with bite toward one person I’ve ever been close with — after they used my fear and pain as their attempt to feel entitled to me, and then lashing out at me the first time I tried to calmly stand my ground. I don’t know what it will take to even possess the bite Lauren Mayberry has on this album — on “We Sink,” on “Gun,” or even on “Recover.” I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable being that person. It’s this internal battle I find myself mulling over that is one of many reasons “Night Sky” has always stood out among the tracklist. Beyond its pulsing heft and push-pull dynamics with sound, Mayberry’s lyrics are knotted with complications and contradictions — in regards to time, to commitment, to what she means to another. In one moment, she is there with them — warm, passionate, wanting. In another, cold, shuttered away, afraid to even dare look back on what was once there. Yet it’s the declarative way she cycles through these states of being that allows the song to avoid a sense of wallowing or uncertainty. In its boldness stands a conviction of multiplicity. And with conviction, I can be anything I want to anyone. With those who rebuke me, I can be equally cold in response, even when it pains me to do so. And with those who are unafraid to open themselves up to me, I can hold a passionate yet welcoming fire and wrench myself open just as widely — just as fearlessly — knowing I’ll be listened to and loved for that honesty. --------- It’s April 2014, and he asks if he can join me when I leave our dorm, only to tell me when we’re outside that he refuses to show me any form of romantic affection (and, as I’ll learn later, any form of acknowledgement as a person) until I’ve come out on a larger scale. It had only been six months since it even dawned on me that I was a queer person and I still didn’t know what that had meant for me, or how to absolutely define it, least of all to a family who had all but kept conversations about this sort of thing off the table. But that didn’t matter to him. The way he had seen it, as he explained it to me, was that him being able to be out to a family that didn’t push back meant that would be the case for everyone else, and so no one else ever had anything to fear. I try to be the one who pushes back on his words — to tell him I’m still figuring things out, that my process in all this doesn’t need to interfere with how the two of us can be alone or in trusted company — but he won’t consider any of it. Instead, he tersely breaks things off, leaves a callous goodbye, and turns away before I let on the depths of hurt this sudden move leaves me with. When we had last spoken about it, in the first month we had been together, it had felt like a promise that he would be a source of support in this trial I’d face. Instead, he had left me to fend for myself, not even offering himself as a lifeline to guide me through this unfamiliar territory. All while knowing how new and daunting this had been for me. All while still wanting to call himself my boyfriend, no matter how inattentive he would become. He ignores me when he sees me. He keeps his distance when we go to meals together with friends. We don't talk the rare times he meets my gaze. Years later, I'll realize I never tried harder because I was too crushed by the reversal of trust this ultimatum represented, and because being as crushed as I was meant that I was afraid to say anything about how upset I had been at this wrenching of trust and support. --------- The multiplicities of what The Bones Of What You Believe covers — vitriol, frustration, resilience, vulnerability, tenderness, compassion — certainly played a factor in how this record endured for me over the years, my own emotional state of being shifting with each passing year and each further change I’ve made to how I exist in the world. But it’s the songs that hold two conflicting feelings — like the aforementioned “Night Sky” or the ironic twistings laced throughout “We Sink” — that have been the most instructive to me as my own emotional palette grew more complex, as I learned that holding seemingly contradictory sentiments could be a wholly ordinary way to exist as a person under knotted circumstances. In writing this piece, I realized it would be one thing if I could ascribe my fixation on this album to a running theme about dealing with tumultuous romantic relationships — but, on pouring over this album recently, I realized that there isn't a single song explicitly about romantic relationships. (The closest is 'We Sink' with its pseudo-matrimonial antagonistic hook 'I'll be a thorn in your side 'til you die,' but even still, it's vague lyrics about 'love' could apply to any form love can take.) Instead, CHVRCHES’ lyricism tends to favor other types of significant relationships: familial, sororal, as friends, to oneself. It’s in this way that the album’s role as litmus test for personal projection started to unfurl for me over the years: it felt deeply tethered to the unhealthy and antagonistic first relationships I found myself trapped in for some years, and then inextricably tied to both strong and toxic close friendships that veered in and out of my life other years. But perhaps most important of all is that The Bones Of What You Believe never holds resignation among its sentiments. I’ve only just realized this — and started adopting that steadfast refusal toward resignation — some years into listening to this album. In a sense, the exclusion of anything resembling defeat seems to belie a greater truth to the album I’ve also begun to adopt in recent years: vulnerability isn’t a surrender. Unlearning that misconception was a form of unlearning something I had naively accepted as truth in my attempts to embrace masculinity. To be vulnerable, as I had known it, was to show weakness. But, as I’ve come to understand it gradually, to be vulnerable is to show that you care, and vulnerability shows through even in moments codified as strength and aggression. What one is vulnerable about is clear in what one shows bite with. Guiding this personal revelation about the strength derived from vulnerability was eventually starting to accept my need to transition, and recognizing how estrogen’s grasp on my body loosed the years of welled-up emotions that testosterone had caught in a dam. Now, unrestrained, I’ve had the space to grow more acquainted with what vulnerability feels like for me and the ways in which I can comfortably express it. At the time of my first relationship when the album had just come out, I had been so stunted in my own forms of emotional expression that I couldn’t convey any form of vulnerability — not love, not sadness, not fear, not frustration. Increasingly, as I gravitated toward the people I began to learn I was most naturally likely to form healthy and secure relationships with, it became easier to allow myself to be vulnerable with partners earlier and earlier into things, to a far more fearlessly open extent than I had ever felt capable of before. And in my most recent listens to The Bones Of What You Believe, it’s the ways I feel a kinship to its expressions of vulnerability that hit closest. Sometimes, it’s in finally finding the strength of ending things on my own terms that “Tether” cathartically builds towards. Sometimes, it’s in the pleas of desperation and frustration of absent comfort on “Recover” when I found I hadn’t gotten that from those who were supposed to be closest to me. Sometimes, I’ll start to feel the pangs of the closeness I’d always wanted with my sisters who had known me as their brother until recently rising to the surface when “The Mother We Share” bellows at the top of the album. That the album starts with a song so thoroughly about vulnerability and care is a tell in itself: no matter what emotion(s) lies at the center of each song on The Bones Of What You Believe, each is borne out of and was brought into being through vulnerability. That’s what it takes to have feelings as strong as the ones Mayberry speaks into being on this album. That’s what it takes to follow through with the act of speaking it into being on such a large public scale. --------- It’s May 3rd, 2014: I make the call last-minute. Tickets are improbably — I see, scrolling through the CHVRCHES social media feed, where the band has posted a picture of Lauren Mayberry holding a puppy “to cushion the blow of the late set times” — still on sale. I had just registered my car with campus administration and started keeping it in the student garage. New York City is only a straight 90 minute shot away. I think to myself: “What else do I have for myself?” In the midst of my boyfriend’s abandonment of the month before, I find myself lonelier and socially drifting far more than ever. So I make that late call to go, knowing how close I had held The Bones Of What You Believe throughout everything that had transpired in the time since I found it. I arrive early and am led up to a rooftop bar where all sense of a normal queue has vanished while the venue waits to open doors, all other patrons casually milling about and drinking. When the doors finally open, I find that this process lets me easily get on the barricade in the pit. When the band takes the stage, it’s like something strikes me in the deepest recesses of my sternum — a stirring that spans all across my body. The trio’s energy, Lauren’s commanding presence as well as Martin’s when he takes lead vocals, the pounding bass, the twinkling synth hooks… it all fully captures me in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. It’s joy. It’s pure, unfettered joy I feel. It feels like finally being invited to celebrate the joy I know I’m capable of. Somewhere toward the middle of the setlist, when they launch into “Gun,” something is unlocked in me. Some fervor or fever, gripping me with the passion of someone who had been holding herself back for too long. It’s here that I can safely let out my frustrations, I realize. I can follow Mayberry’s words and her passion with my own voice in this crowd, and I can let myself finally release all the frustrations that had been welling up inside me. The truest gift of that night was CHVRCHES’ music being as optimistic and enthusiastic in its convictions and frustrations as it is. To this day, it still surprises me how completely it can be all those things at once. --------- The dawn spills over the horizon by the time I make it back. A creeping stain of orange and crimson overtakes the night sky, tinting the waning deep blues a shifting cerulean. I pull my car into the student parking garage, kill the engine, and rummage around for my headphones. The walk back to my dorm is only a few minutes, and the morning holds a calm too vital to be broken. I navigate to The Bones Of What You Believe on the iPod I still obsessively store all my music on, and select “You Caught the Light.” The opening fade into the alarm tone synth lead feels like an enveloping yawn, the drowsy last stretch after the uptempo passion driving all the tracks that came before. In this new morning, as the euphoria of the night before still has its claws tightly piercing me, this song feels like the transitional easing into the day ahead. For all that comes ahead, with this album and with that night in tow. It doesn’t even hit me in the moment the cruel irony of developing this newfound appreciation for a song with lines like “You caught the light / You carried mine” and “I have nothing but love for / The places that call me home,” at the mercy of an imposition that has me drained of light and love. For now, all that matters is the ties this piece holds to that which has given me strength. The Bones Of What You Believe had become my light, and — in its own unexpected way — become a record that held the semblance of an emotional home. In a way, it still remains that way today. --------- My boyfriend won’t speak with me for another 4 months. For reasons I still don’t fully understand to this day, I inexplicably cling onto the hope all fools in unhealthy first relationships hold that things will get better — that at some point, he’ll see the error of his ways, apologize, make a meaningful change, that we’ll mend things and get to a place he had never truly been, not even in our earliest days together. They don’t get better. He eventually convinces me to give things another deliberate go in the fall of that year, but it’s always in service to what he wants, and I never feel like more than an afterthought to him, something he has to tend to out of obligation. He unceremoniously breaks up with me out of the blue one day in May 2015. Later, I learn that he had wanted to end things as far back as a year earlier, possibly even sooner. Somehow, before I had known it, we had been together for a year and a half. I had been too distant from myself and my own personhood to notice that a year and a half had slipped me by, or that the tangible loss of time I mourned was from not taking hold of the bite I felt at being sidelined. To this day, I’ve never let my urges to unloose my bite and frustration that had been welling up in me spill over toward him — from being on the receiving end of an ultimatum that could have realistically put me at risk, for his passive remarks on trans people that built up the internalization and self-imposed walls that delayed my ability to come out to myself, from giving a future abusive partner I had cut ties with a direct line of communication to me just last year. At this point in time — with him mostly a distant figure in my life, within mutual friend circles but never close enough that we engage outside of some passing remarks — I don’t think I ever will. Sometimes, I think I’ve made peace with that. --------- It’s July 3rd, 2021: almost eight years have passed, and the compassion of it all still strikes me. I had made CHVRCHES one of the first concerts I attended after moving to New England, seeing them tour a year after Every Open Eye had come out. And, having followed the band's social media since that fateful show announcement post in May 2014, I had known that the band were still setting up dropboxes for letters from their FANCLVB at each show. Knowing how I had carried The Bones Of What You Believe with me during such a needed time in my life, I had a subconscious urge to write something to the band before the show. But, every time I gave it thought, the words I would want to say slipped away from me, or I would become too fearful of being truly vulnerable with a band whose music made me feel that way in private. Eventually, in a haze before leaving for the show — out of fear of regretting not writing anything — I hastily scrawl out vague allusions to using the band’s music to help me during periods of tumultuous relationships, and talk about how I’d embraced the vulnerabilities of their lyricism in tandem with my grappling with my gender and femininity, in embracing the inherent vulnerabilities that come with pursuing that form of gender realization and expression. I mention I'll be trying to imitate some of Lauren's iconic makeup and sign my with a feminine name that I've since traded out for another before sealing the letter and scrawling out my return address on the envelope. At the gig, I queue up before doors with two friends in tow, sloppily apply blue glittery eye makeup out in the open — without a mirror — and drop the letter into one of the boxes set up for the FANCLVB on the way into the venue. A month later, I get a letter in the mail with “FANCLVB” written on the envelope flap — in the same handwriting I recognized from Lauren’s social media pictures of letters she had written in return. My breath catches in my chest, and I carefully open the envelope. Inside are two small slips of paper, written across both sides. Among the affirmations for everything I had written about — the interpersonal disarray I had been through and my expressions of my gender through an eager admiration of my makeup — what stood out was Lauren’s gratitude that the band’s music had been there for me when I needed it most. The same gratitude I had shown myself through the roughest periods I had The Bones Of What You Believe in my life. And I know, finally, reading this letter: This is what it's like to truly hold compassion amid the capacity for bite. --------- Talking Points Where were you in your life when The Bones Of What You Believe came out, or when you discovered the album if you hadn’t heard it until later? How do you feel that affected your attachment to the album? How do you reconcile the often spiteful and lashing lyricism of The Bones Of What You Believe with the album’s synthpop stylings? What are your thoughts on the bonus/non-album tracks from this album’s sessions? (i.e. “Strong Hand,” “Broken Bones,” “ZVVL,” “Now Is Not The Time”) Do you think any of them would have fit into the album’s tracklist well? --------- Favorite Lyrics “Will I be the strong hand keeping you safe
“I’ll be a thorn in your side
“Icon of symmetry, swallowing sides
“Into the night, for once, we’re the only ones left
Thank you again to u/BornAgainZombie for putting down yet another excellent writeup for the Album of the Year series! Tomorrow we have u/WaneLietoc discussing Mutual Benefit and their record Love's Crushing Diamond! Feel free to discuss today's album and write-up in the comments and check below for the rest of the series' schedule. Completed:
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2021.03.15 13:24 stickywheels46Why 3.15.20 is important to me
3.15.20 is one of my favourite albums. Not just of Donald's, of all time. I've always admired Childish Gambino because his music is undefinable in terms of genre. His first musical endeavours revelled in boisterous hip hop music, until he transitioned to the more existential-themed lyrics and forward-thinking production on BTI. Then on AML, we saw Gambino completely abandon hip hop in favour of zany vintage funk music, rich with organic instrumentation. 3.15.20 feels like a bizarre trip through all these past styles, dwelling on the wild vocal performances of AML, and the experimental production of BTI, while offering a maturer outlook on life that makes it feel like the truly grown-up version of Camp.
The release of 3.15.20 was met with mixed reception. A lot of fans expressed disappointment for the exclusion of unreleased songs previewed on the TIA tour and Guava Island. Other listeners were unimpressed by the album’s artistic direction, and the music failed to resonate with a lot of people. For people who were even aware of its release, 3.15.20 seemed to come and go in a time when art and culture stood still amidst the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite rave reviews from critics, the album was completely snubbed from year-end lists, likely on account of the fact that it was simply forgotten. I, on the other hand, haven’t forgotten about this album at all...
Waking Up
The date is 3.15.20. I’ve just woken up. I’m in my room at my uni halls of residence in the UK. It’s recently been announced that my university is to close due to Covid-19. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m, quite frankly, miserable. I hate myself and I have no friends, and not a single soul I feel I can talk to about how I'm feeling. Being around happy people even made me feel drained and depressed, like I envied their emotions. And now it’s increasingly evident that the world is in a fucking shithole too. We had the Australian bushfires, the whole Iran situation where everyone was joking about WW3, and now coronavirus was approaching its first peak in the UK.
When I wake up, I’m of the intention that it’s just gonna be another Sunday where I spend almost the whole day alone in this room. I sit up in bed and check my phone. First place I happen to go is Reddit, and after a few scrolls I see “[FRESH MUSIC] Donald Glover Presents”. Oh shit, this is not a drill. Is the man finally dropping CG4 right when I least expect it? Oh fuck. I get myself comfortable, and I listen to the damn stream all the way through.
The Stream
The first bits of music I hear are the weird, scary noises at the end of 19.10, and I know this is about to be Childish Gambino’s weird, experimental masterpiece. Then transitioning into “Sweet Thang”, this track is just so soulful and D’Angelo-esque, especially at the ending when the harp comes in, it just sounds like love. Then, the next three track run was just wild, like I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Tribal screaming, animal sounds, a nursery rhyme about drug dealing, sudden trap beat switches, the beginning of what we used to know as Human Sacrifice transformed into a hauntingly atmospheric ballad in which Donald laments the passing of his father. Then, wait a minute, Feels Like Summer is on this? Okay. But I’m reminded of what this track is about and thematically, it’s message is something that continues to need reinforcing.
The music continues to get more socially conscious, with 'The Violence'. The hopeful lyrics were strong “don’t worry bout tomorrow”. Is he talking about what’s happening right now, I thought? “Little boy, little girl. Are you scared of the world? Is it hard to live? Just take care of your soul. Let the beauty unfold. You'll get through it.” Wtf is he talking to me right now?? Then that’s when Legend came in and my heart fucking stopped. “Do you love yourself?” I sometimes shed a tear listening to music, but I never remember actually bawling like I did at the end of this track. Through everything I was going through at the time, it felt like the music was talking to me. It felt like it was made for me. I know that sounds corny as hell, but it did impact me on a very emotional level. And in the midst of recovering from that, I could not prepare myself for the fucking atom bomb explosion that was “53.49/Under The Sun”. I fucking died. This was the best song I’d ever heard in my entire fucking life. I'm not a religious person, but Donald made me feel like I was worshipping a higher power during this moment. It was so good that it made 0.00 coming afterwards feel like a moment to just recover and take a breather from all that excitement.
“Algorhythm” comes in and the new vocals are kinda off-putting but I begin to fuck with it. That’s when it all breaks apart and suddenly gets into the loud, ethereal anthem that is “Time”. It’s with this track, it suddenly makes total sense why Donald released this album when he did. The apocalyptic themes couldn’t have been more relevant to the current status we were in. “Running out of time…” - how is this track nihilistic but somehow hopeful at the same time? Like I can envision a music video for this in which a choir of people with Gambino and Ariana come together on some idyllic grassy hill singing the song surrounded by butterflies and farm animals while the apocalypse happens in the background, with missiles and explosions in the sky. And what’s more to be said about 12.38 and 19.10 (the last two new tracks I heard)? You know these songs slap, I don’t need to tell you.
One Year Later
3.15.21... does it even feel like it's been a year? Or three years or three months? I'm very glad to tell you I'm in a much better place right now. From one perspective, quarantine allowed me to wipe the slate clean of sorts and try focusing on being myself for once rather than worrying about being judged by anyone else. I don't wanna say it started with this album, because there were certainly other factors, but 3.15.20 felt like a personal gift to me. It was a message of hope and healing, and in the past year that I've been growing as a person, more than ever, I've had this album in my rotation to soundtrack that journey. So what if there's no album cover, no track names.. the music has the ability to speak value by itself.
If you read all of this, thank you. And thank you to Donald Glover for just.. well... existing because he makes this world a bit more bearable for all of us. Love and peace ✌️
submitted bystickywheels46todonaldglover [link][comments]The release of 3.15.20 was met with mixed reception. A lot of fans expressed disappointment for the exclusion of unreleased songs previewed on the TIA tour and Guava Island. Other listeners were unimpressed by the album’s artistic direction, and the music failed to resonate with a lot of people. For people who were even aware of its release, 3.15.20 seemed to come and go in a time when art and culture stood still amidst the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite rave reviews from critics, the album was completely snubbed from year-end lists, likely on account of the fact that it was simply forgotten. I, on the other hand, haven’t forgotten about this album at all...
Waking Up
The date is 3.15.20. I’ve just woken up. I’m in my room at my uni halls of residence in the UK. It’s recently been announced that my university is to close due to Covid-19. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m, quite frankly, miserable. I hate myself and I have no friends, and not a single soul I feel I can talk to about how I'm feeling. Being around happy people even made me feel drained and depressed, like I envied their emotions. And now it’s increasingly evident that the world is in a fucking shithole too. We had the Australian bushfires, the whole Iran situation where everyone was joking about WW3, and now coronavirus was approaching its first peak in the UK.
When I wake up, I’m of the intention that it’s just gonna be another Sunday where I spend almost the whole day alone in this room. I sit up in bed and check my phone. First place I happen to go is Reddit, and after a few scrolls I see “[FRESH MUSIC] Donald Glover Presents”. Oh shit, this is not a drill. Is the man finally dropping CG4 right when I least expect it? Oh fuck. I get myself comfortable, and I listen to the damn stream all the way through.
The Stream
The first bits of music I hear are the weird, scary noises at the end of 19.10, and I know this is about to be Childish Gambino’s weird, experimental masterpiece. Then transitioning into “Sweet Thang”, this track is just so soulful and D’Angelo-esque, especially at the ending when the harp comes in, it just sounds like love. Then, the next three track run was just wild, like I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Tribal screaming, animal sounds, a nursery rhyme about drug dealing, sudden trap beat switches, the beginning of what we used to know as Human Sacrifice transformed into a hauntingly atmospheric ballad in which Donald laments the passing of his father. Then, wait a minute, Feels Like Summer is on this? Okay. But I’m reminded of what this track is about and thematically, it’s message is something that continues to need reinforcing.
The music continues to get more socially conscious, with 'The Violence'. The hopeful lyrics were strong “don’t worry bout tomorrow”. Is he talking about what’s happening right now, I thought? “Little boy, little girl. Are you scared of the world? Is it hard to live? Just take care of your soul. Let the beauty unfold. You'll get through it.” Wtf is he talking to me right now?? Then that’s when Legend came in and my heart fucking stopped. “Do you love yourself?” I sometimes shed a tear listening to music, but I never remember actually bawling like I did at the end of this track. Through everything I was going through at the time, it felt like the music was talking to me. It felt like it was made for me. I know that sounds corny as hell, but it did impact me on a very emotional level. And in the midst of recovering from that, I could not prepare myself for the fucking atom bomb explosion that was “53.49/Under The Sun”. I fucking died. This was the best song I’d ever heard in my entire fucking life. I'm not a religious person, but Donald made me feel like I was worshipping a higher power during this moment. It was so good that it made 0.00 coming afterwards feel like a moment to just recover and take a breather from all that excitement.
“Algorhythm” comes in and the new vocals are kinda off-putting but I begin to fuck with it. That’s when it all breaks apart and suddenly gets into the loud, ethereal anthem that is “Time”. It’s with this track, it suddenly makes total sense why Donald released this album when he did. The apocalyptic themes couldn’t have been more relevant to the current status we were in. “Running out of time…” - how is this track nihilistic but somehow hopeful at the same time? Like I can envision a music video for this in which a choir of people with Gambino and Ariana come together on some idyllic grassy hill singing the song surrounded by butterflies and farm animals while the apocalypse happens in the background, with missiles and explosions in the sky. And what’s more to be said about 12.38 and 19.10 (the last two new tracks I heard)? You know these songs slap, I don’t need to tell you.
One Year Later
3.15.21... does it even feel like it's been a year? Or three years or three months? I'm very glad to tell you I'm in a much better place right now. From one perspective, quarantine allowed me to wipe the slate clean of sorts and try focusing on being myself for once rather than worrying about being judged by anyone else. I don't wanna say it started with this album, because there were certainly other factors, but 3.15.20 felt like a personal gift to me. It was a message of hope and healing, and in the past year that I've been growing as a person, more than ever, I've had this album in my rotation to soundtrack that journey. So what if there's no album cover, no track names.. the music has the ability to speak value by itself.
If you read all of this, thank you. And thank you to Donald Glover for just.. well... existing because he makes this world a bit more bearable for all of us. Love and peace ✌️
2020.03.10 16:33 sgerkenPotential Headliner Discussion: KENDRICK LAMAR
Previous threads: Vampire Weekend - Flume - Zac Brown Band - Rage Against The MachineWelcome back to our weekly thread where we look at a specific artist that looks to be a serious contender for a headliner booking at ACL. This week, we’re looking at…
Who: Universally-respected rapper who best walked the line between commercial success and critical acclaim to run the hip hop game in the 2010s
Notable For: Bursting on the scene with 2012’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, K-Dot became a mainstay in both the charts and critical admiration for the decade. He has racked up 13 Grammy wins from 35 nominations in the past eight years to go along with every album & dozens of songs to reach the top of the charts. Recent work has propelled Kendrick to become one of the most influential and respects musicians of any genre, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music & names to Time’s 100 Most Influential People list. All hail King Kendrick.
Similar Acts: Kanye West, J Cole, Childish Gambino, Kid Cudi, Chance The Rapper
Last Played ACL: 2016, billed 3rd, closing Samsung (now AmEx) on Saturday
2020 Tour Dates: Touring European festivals this summer, highlighted by closing C3’s Lolla Stockholm. Only North American date is for Osheaga in late-July. There is heavy-speculation that he’ll play Lolla Chicago, which naturally leads to ACL speculation.
Likely Billing: #2-#3 range. He was our #3 four years ago and I don’t think much has changed from then to now in terms of Kendrick as a draw. He is rumored to be releasing new music this year, and if it does well, you could see him rise to #2. Nevertheless, he would 100% close AmEx whatever night he plays, which is what really matters.
Confidence: 40%. He would make a ton of sense but most of the speculation in centered around the potential fit he has a Lolla. We have shared each of the last three rap headliners with Lolla, so if he’s on their lineup, odds look good for ACL. If not, I wouldn’t get our hopes up. But considering he is working on an album, has no US date yet and given the lack of other acts that could fill the rap headliner slot, I’ll put Kendrick’s odds ain the decent-not-great range.
What are your thoughts? Would you like to see Kendrick on the lineup? Where/when do you think they’ll play?
submitted bysgerkentoaclfestival [link][comments]2020.03.01 18:22 MC_FuzzyThe Hip Hop Lines of the 2010s
I usually do an annual write up but here’s a bonus. NOTE: These are lyrics that somewhat defined the artists who in turn defined 2010-2019. These ARE NOT the best lines said by an artist nor their most memorable bars. Most of these lines also are from early in the decade/career as they seem fitting (self-fulfilling prophecy and shit). Also, this list is popularity over skill. Any of the relatively smaller artists mentioned are from my own bias of their skill and impact/notoriety in hip hop during the 2010s. I ask posters to tell me their favorite/memorable lines, and to try and put me onto an artist I perhaps never listened to. There are several of my favorites that I simply cannot put on here or are regulated to the honorable mentions. This is a thick list so I cannot do a proper write up for all entries.
What now? . . . whoa, whoa whoa. . . Jay Electronica dropping his album?! Woah
Well, that’s the list. Tell me who I missed. Ask me why there’s no Post Malone. Post better lines than the ones mentioned here.
Honorable Mentions:
EDIT: I dun fucked up, and totally forgot Young Thug, who played a big part in the decade more than half this damn list. Please, share your favorite Thugger lines, I personally like his feature on Sacrifices the most but that’s not his own track.
Also, the obvious fuck up: Fuck Donald Trump.
submitted byMC_Fuzzytohiphopheads [link][comments]“Rap is the new rock ‘n’ roll! We the rock stars!” - Kanye West, BBC Radio 1 InterviewThe most defining line of rap this past decade is not from a song, but is from a Kanye rant. My feelings on Mr. West has changed over the years, and while I disagree with his recent statements, this quote from 2013 is still stands. Rap is the new rock. Rap is now the genre that is at the top. Rap is the genre full of the “bad influences” that middle America is too ignorant to actual look at. Rap is the genre with the bad words, the political statements, the party tracks, the nonsense, the soul, the spirit, the drug overdoses, the groupies, the strong women, the breakoffs into sub-genres, etc. After 40 years, Hip Hop music is the dominant genre and its influence is worldwide. We can’t be stopped.
“If I die, I’m a legend,” – Drake, LegendI remember when Best I Never Had dropped its music video and my sister called me into the living room to watch it on MTV2. Halfway through, I asked her, “Isn’t that the wheelchair dude on that show you like?” Who fucking knew that Jimmy from Degrassi would turn into the biggest star of the 2010s. Love him, hate him, he’s broken records in sales/streaming and he made a lot of money in the meantime. When Drake said this bar in 2015, there was some arguments, but he’s right: If he died at that position, his fans would force the culture to see him as a legend. And despite my issues with him, I can name three) strongreasons that makes his statement true. A toast to the Champagne Papi.
“Step on my neck and get blood on your Nike checks. I don't mind 'cause one day you'll respect - The good kid, m.A.A.d city” – Kendrick Lamar, good kidDespite other rappers being more popular than him in certain circles of entertainment, Kendrick Lamar has earned his position as the King of Hip Hop. From his rise under Dre to beating Drake in sales, Kendrick’s journey to the top was an amazing experience for listeners. In three fantastic albums, Kendrick cemented his legacy in the 2010s and until another rapper can outdo him, he holds the crown. (Plus, three great albums tends to throws you into GOAT talk). Put it this way: Kendrick Lamar is a better rapper than your favorite rapper. His “throwaway” album was great. His soundtrack album was great. And yes, MAAD city is the better song, but dammit, the song before it should get loved as well.
“I can’t relate to my peers. I’d rather live outside. I’d rather chip my pride than lose my mind” – Frank Ocean, SiegfriedThis applies to the previous three lines: At the start of the decade, Earl was rapping about sexual assault, Tyler was pissing every one off, and Frank was putting out projects at a steady rate. Oh yeah, they also were all form the same group, named “Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All” which is connected to “Golf Wang” “Flog Gnaw,” and had a few members appear in the beloved “Gucci Gucci” music video with Kreashawn (more about that in another thread). The changes from 2011 OF to the standalone acts of Tyler, Earl, and Frank are crazy to review. Others have, so I won’t, but man I’m glad to have witnessed these three artist grow in and out of their music.
“I’m a fucking walking paradox” – Tyler, the Creator, Yonkers
“It hurt cuz I can’t keep a date or put personal time in, or reverse to the times when my face didn’t surprise you before I did the shit that earned me my term on that island” – Earl Sweatshirt, Faucet
“I'm just playing, but all good jokes contain true shit, same rope you climb up on, they'll hang you with” – J. Cole, Fire SquadI consider Cole the amongst Drake and Kendrick as the “Three Musketeers” of 2010s rap, at least popularity wise. The trio laid down so many good tracks. J. Cole fits a lot of what people wanted from a rapper after the ringtone-rap era. But, once he started doing it, it’s like people didn’t want it anymore. Folks called him boring, but everyone knew he could spit. In comes 2014 FHD, and boy, Cole cemented his place in the Big 3, and he’s pretty good at ball, too. While 4 Your Eyez Only and KOD split some fans apart, I liked the albums. He has pushed his image as a bigger brother in rap, or at least, a middle child, so let’s see what he can do in 2020.
“The kid that used to pitch bricks can't be pigeonholed” – Jay-Z, Family FeudIn the third decade of his (studio album) career, Jay has blessed us with another classic in the form of 4:44, expressing the maturity of a former drug dealer turned rappebusinesscomma man. Fanboying aside, Jay has taken up the role hip-hop’s dad. One that lectures you about what’s right from wrong at the end of a sitcom. Shout out to Uncle Phil, Carl Winslow, Pops, and even Dre from black-ish.FuckPillCosby Jay also collaborates and give shout outs to rising rappers he deems fit for the mic. It was a bit of a rocky start with MCHG telling people to appreciate art, but it took a retrospective of Shawn Carter and several guest features to remind people that Hov’s still alive.
“I’m beginning to feel like I’m a Rap god” – Eminem, Rap GodAnother legend in his third decade of rhyming. After the divisive Relapse in 2009, Eminem took on a different persona, or at least cut down on Slim Shady, until he wanted to promote a sequel. He has a “father of rap” role amongst the younger rappers of this generation, but it’s the dad whose jokes don’t always land well. For every Caterpillar verse or Chloraseptic Remix, there’s a Revival. He keeps doing those songs with [insert female pop vocalist] on the chorus that don’t land like they did on his first few albums, and yet, he’ll still give you a career just to destroy it in a rap beef. It’s like, we know he can spit, but he keeps releasing shit that proves otherwise. (I originally used a line from his 2011 BET Cypher, so go check that out )
“It's so different now, everything is so different now” – Logic, Till the EndIt’s like, we know he can spit, but he keeps releasing shit that proves otherwise. He keeps doing those songs with [“I’m biracial!”] on the chorus, but it don’t land like his first few mixtapes, yet, he’ll looks up recent Logic lyric . . . yet he’ll “suck a dick just to prove it ain’t that way”. . . Huh? I honestly Logic gets caught under pressure and the hate on social media gets to him. Here’s another white rapper that people say is killing mumble rappers and “saving rap.” Look, Logic and Em got skill, and they’ve proven so. If anything, their fanbase can be too much. White people really love white rappers, eh?
“I'm underrated, don't fit on nobody's playlist, If I ain't in your top 10 then you're a racist” – Mac Miller, Here We GoAnd all types of people really respect Mac Miller. From frat rap to philosophical lines to rapping about pussy to introspective lines about his drug habits, Mac gained a lot of respect from his peers. I know I said I can’t write a lot for everyone, but I’ll be unfair for Mac: he helped me better understand my own issues in life, namely any possible issues with my mental health and my thought process on certain destructive behaviors. He wasn’t my favorite rapper, but I loved listening to his shit. This lovable goof sadly passed away in September 2018, and it was arguably the hardest a celebrity’s death hit me. Partly because he was around my age, partly because he influenced my train of thought, as corny as some internet thugs believe that sounds. Thus, I did NOT pick one of the many lines that talk about him overdosing or dying before he turns 27. He will be sorely missed, by family, friends, and peers. Mac Miller is another example of a beautiful character arc, as much as the road was rocky and the end sucked. I really do hope people don’t just see him as an ex-boyfriend of Ariana Grande. . . R.I.P Mac Miller. Don’t do drugs, kids.
“Fuck it, mask off” – Future, Mask OffDon’t do drugs. Future’s influence on rap is something I probably cannot truly describe. From his cadence, to his subject matter, to his drug habits. He’s seen as a figurehead for toxic masculinity as well as someone hiding his some sad lines behind rattling hi-hats and neat beats. From autotuning his voice in the early years to collabing with Drake to give us a great time to be alive, to getting credited for being on Father Stretch My Hand pt 2, Future proved himself a staple in 2010s rap. It was hard to NOT hear him this past decade. . . Wait, that wasn’t Future on FSMH? He- . . .who? Desiigner? What?
“This ain’t a fucking sing-a-long” – The Weeknd, Crew LoveThe Weeknd gave his song to Drake for Take Care, but everyone fucking knows this is a Weeknd song ft. Drake. The Trilogy was some of his best work, and there some type of beauty in his tracks. It’s an R&B dude, but his lyrics aren’t soft. He’s talking about railing chicks and cocaine and shit. None of that between-the-sheets beauty. He’s fucking women on that island they got in their kitchens. And yet, he managed to break into the MAIN-mainsteam, getting kid awards for his drug songs. When will they learn, this ain’t a fucking sing-a-long.
“We don’t do the same drugs no more.” – Chance the Rapper, Same DrugsOriginally, I picked the opening bars form Pusha Man off Acid Rap. It’s one of my favorite projects from the 2010s (Can you tell I post on hiphopheads? Wanna watch this video essay on Tyler, the Creator and then bump some Griselda?) but, I think Same Durgs is a great metaphor. Chance talks about living a different life than an old friend, but it applies to some of his listeners. Many of us loved 10 Days and Acid Rap. But Chance can’t be that forever. He grew up from the kid who got suspended for 2 weeks. For as much as I don’t like The Big Day, he sounds happier. Plus, I’m not forced to listen to him.
“Mitch caught a body about a week ago” – Bobby Shurmda, Hot N---aSo, Bobby wasn’t the first, nor the last, but he’s a great example of this distinct trend in rap. Guy puts out song and blows up for it. I’m talking this shit goes viral. Music video is him and the homies. He’s talking about girls, women, cars, clothes, . . . oh yeah, and his crimes. Cops pull up, and they lock him up. Exhibit A. Exhibit B. Exhibit C is just going to be a song and not lead to an album. Bobby took a plea deal and after gracing us with the Shmoney Dance, was held up in Riker’s for the rest of the 2010s. This line, and others, were used against him and his team. Fun fact: this was one of the things I remember before it got big. A few friends of friends were sharing the music video via FaceBook, and I never guessed it would’ve blown up more than the other rising rappers I watched. Also, shout out to Bobby for dancing better than the women in his Bobby Bitch Music video.
“These bitches love Sosa.” – Chief Keef, Love SosaThis one I was late on. I didn’t hear Chief Keef until Mr. West put out the remix to Don’t Like. But you can bet your ass I heard his influence on rap this decade. Drill music was what all the kids wanted to hear. And I’ll admit, my best friend and I loved seeing kids our age making music. Joey dropped 1999, Chief Keef was half naked and toting guns, it was crazy seeing people who not only looked like me blowing up, but who were around my age. Keef’s attitude would help push rap into a sound for the mid 10s and is still being heard today.
“Who put this shit together? I'm the glue” – Travis Scott, Sicko ModeLa Flame provided a good spark for music this decade. I’d argue he has his own lane in rap, mostly centered around his sound, but the sound is gonna get tired one day. . . and that day ain’t tomorrow, that’s for sure. With three solid projects, including the long awaited Astroworld, Travis has achieved what many dreamed of: Being on pre-game playlists for both white AND black people.
“Twenty-plus years of selling Johnson & Johnson/I started out as a baby-faced monsteNo wonder there's diaper rash on my conscience/My teething ring was numbed by the nonsense” – Pusha T, NosetalgiaThe past decade has given Push a chance to showcase that he is more than a duo-rapper. Good mixtapes, great albums, and a few nice slaps in the face of certain rappers. He raps about many topics, despite the memes about him only rapping about coke (although he still raps about it). Thank God for all the great music. Everything is Pusha T.
“Influenced by Houston, hear it in my music/A trill n---a to the truest, show you how to do this” – ASAP Rocky, PalaceHe bes that pretty motherfucker, repping Harlem while experimenting with different sounds in his raps. Making strong strides at all points of the 2010s, Rocky proved his staying power in hip hop and in fashion. Although he got a cocky attitude, he isn’t afraid to shed light on what hurts him. Keep making music, Rocky, and I pray you find peace with all those around him who passed away.
“I ain’t sorry” – Beyonce, Sorry AND “Okay, ladies, now let's get in formation, cuz I slay” – Beyonce, FormationWho wants that perfect love story anyway? Sucks when you eat some of your words as Queen B, BUT, Beyonce is more than a cheated-on wife of a rapper. She’s her own person, her own icon, and despite the terrorizing fanbase, she’s a role model to many fans and other artists. This decade saw a rise in people fighting back against bigotry, and while she’s no Harriet Tubman, Beyonce carries herself with some respect, enough to be a dominant figure in black culture and sisterhood. Mad about the double feature? Oh well. Queen B can’t trip up
“Much cooler than the cool kids. Can you believe every night we do this?” – Swae Lee of Rae Sremmurd, PowerglideThe pre-games have never been the same. Two young brothers hit the scene mid 2010s and boy, has America loved ~Swae Lee~ these two. Perhaps not Black Beatles, but much more than “new age Kris Kross.” I must say though, bad bitches ARE a type.
“Name a n---a that want some, I’ll out-rap his ass, out-trap his ass” – 2 Chainz, No LieFrom Tity Boi to 2 Chainz, this dude managed to redebuted himself under a more advertisement friendly name (take notes, Mr. eXquire). And now, he don’t need Wayne pouring out his soul on a chorus to be remembered. I will say, revisit all his features from the past decade. I wanted to use one of them as a quote.
“Came out of jail and went straight to the top” – Gucci Mane, I Get The BagGucci’s home and it’s over for your Gucci clones. As you can tell, loads of people on this list influenced the rap playground this past decade, with Gucci doing the same. East Atlanta Santa spent years in jail (hasn’t stopped him for rapping) and came out a new man, or at least, a man running up the charts. He definitely running now that his lean belly is gone.
“Real n---a's dreams coming to fruition. Stumble but I never fall, leaning on my pistol” – Rick Ross, 3 KingsFat jokes from the early 10s aside, Ross really played a good role in rap music. BMF was big, I remember Diddy comparing him to Biggie ( yep ) and he always came through with good tracks. . . but then he rapped about drugging women. And on a lesser note, “Reeboks, I just do it,” is a weird fuck up, man.
I got a lot but want a lot more, yeah, we in the building, but I'm tryna take it to the top floor” – Big Sean, IDWFUA strong player in terms of popularity, Detroit’s biggest ass-man was able to give us quotables and showed some softer edges on tracks about family or being single.
“One's for the money, two for the bitches, three to get ready cuz I feel I finally did it” – ScHoolboy Q, BlessedTDE is more tHan Kendrick. In fact, tHere’s many well versed rappers in the crew, and ScHoolboy Q managed to pusH Himself more into the spotligHt. Now, He needs drop a collab witH Rocky, because Hands of the WHeel is STILL my most played track.
“Always be a real n---a, I never learned how to be nothin' but a real n---a” – The Game, 100Can you believe Born 2 Rap is his last album? After all these years, and here it is: The Game’s last project. And still, people say he name drops too much, but at least he’s in on the joke.
“Free the Carter, n---as need the Carter” – Lil Wayne, No ProblemsThis is cheating, as this is a guest verse and NOT a Wayne song, but it is important. After bad business tactics and after putting an end to stuntin like his daddy, it took Wayne years to finally have Tha Carter V get released. Goes to show that sometimes, it’s really the ones close to you that fuck you over. Top ten hip hop betrayals of all time. . .
“I ain't never need a man to take care of me” – Nicki Minaj, Truffle ButterHot take: Nicki gets a lot of underserved hate, or at least, misdirected hate. She definitely deserves bad looks for some of her antics, or her support (lack of calling-out) of sexual deviant, but at the end of the day, she truly made some great songs. There’s a ton of pop shit, but let’s not undersell her role in the game. Also. . . obviously. . . That fucking verse on Kanye’s Monster. I made the argument in a Daily Discussion thread before but. . . HOT TAKE: Nicki’s verse on Monster is a top 5 verse of all time in rap, fuck you. While Wayne helped take her to the top, for her to stay relevant and to still sell records for the whole decade on her own is a great feat.
“Ball so hard motherfuckers wanna fine me” – The Throne, N---as in ParisYep, Jay and Kanye get a second line here. Watch the Throne is debated about being a classic or not. My take: Whether you like it or not, this album is iconic for its influence, or at least, how many people referenced watching the throne all these years after. Collab albums are not new. Collab albums with Jay Z are not new. Some are loved), some want to be forgotten) but, it’s not everyday when Kanye can team up with his big brother. Well, at least it’s not happening these days. But for the moment, it was dope watching the throne get in their zone.
“Do it for the culture, They gon’ bite like vultures” – Quavo of Migos, T-ShirtExpecting a list of adlibs, right? Rap’s favorite triplet done flowed their way to the top. Constantly in people’s playlist, it took one rain drop, drop top, and the boys hit #1 on the charts, plus they’re hit day time television. Argue who’s the best, since it feels like the general consensus shifts around too much. It was Quavo when he was doing hooks and features, Offset when they hit #1, and now Takeoff for laying in the cut and always coming through.
“You say no to ratchet pussy, Juicy J can’t” – Juicy J, Bandz A Make Her DanceSomeone whose influence I think was overlooked a bit in the 10s. Three 6 Mafia’s legacy was proven this decade through samples, interpolates, and features. However, Juicy J shone in a lot of places, such as here, spitting one of my most quoted lyrics of the past few years.
“Me to rap is like water to raves” – Danny Brown, XXXYou know how people go out, party, drink, and turn their noses to water when water is gonna be the thing helping their asses? Yeah, that’s Danny. People hear the voice and instantly turn it off, but we need some straying from the norm. Also, his music ain’t that out there. It’s not like Death Grips. Plus, ignoring Danny means you’ll miss out on the best verse on 1Train. Yeah, I said it.
“ “Man, why does every black actor gotta rap some?” I don't know, all I know is I'm the best one” – Childish Gambino, BonfireHe grew up past the mixtape era of strong puns and punchlines. He also survived a hard rating on some of his early works. Because the Internet was dope and good lord Awaken My Love was beautiful. A talented man who can seemingly do it all. To be a bit controversial, I see him as this generation’s Jamie Foxx. Sue me.
“Push me to the edge, all my friends are dead” – Lil Uzi Vert, XO TOUR Llif3A figure in emo rap for all teens to look up to, Uzi was one of the artists to help push the genre in the last half of the decade, to the point where old heads got all sensitive about mumble rap. Who knew rapping about depression, sex, and suicide would top the charts?
“ Hopped up in my car Swag! then I drop my roof Swag! Wet like wonton soup. That's just how I do Swag!” – Lil B, Wonton SoupYep. Closing this out with Lil B. The exit is over here This decade, the internet went mainstream. As in, no longer was it something to do when you’re bored with TV or the PS3/Xbox/Wii. This decade, every day we’re using the internet, with several different social media accounts, blogs, news, etc. Videos of incidents are seen in an instant. At the very beginning of the 2010s, a young Brandon was blowing up on everyone’s radar. He was on WorldStar cooking, he was putting curses on KD (which actually worked), he’s been beefing with rappers and athletes, he’s been pissing of Myke C-Town, he’s been posting on Reddit, he was feature on Lil Wayne mixtapes, he’s been dropping his own mixtapes like a maniac, hopping on songs with Mac & Gucci & 40, he’s been creating memes before your mom knew what a meme was, etc. Him and Budden did what would become the norm before the norm became what it is now. Crazy to think. But yes, Lil B is getting recognition for his work. Based God truly came out and showcased what meme culture would bec-
What now? . . . whoa, whoa whoa. . . Jay Electronica dropping his album?! Woah
Well, that’s the list. Tell me who I missed. Ask me why there’s no Post Malone. Post better lines than the ones mentioned here.
Honorable Mentions:
Kendrick’s Control VerseThe real hot take here: Kendrick’s verse on Big Sean’s Control only an honorable mention? He called out his contemporaries and made it clear: He’s gunning for number one. It’s a good verse and it’s even better that he called people out by name, but most of the list are people he’s cool with.
“My parents’ were making the best when they were naked in bed” – Joey Badass,I really want Joey to be better remembered. I really wanted to include him in the main list. He’s actually in my top 5 of the decade.
“As a kid all I wanted was to kill a man” – Vince Staples, NateHere’s a link to that famous thread
“Don’t ever say that my music sounds like Ghost’s shit” – Action Bronson, Ron Simmons
“I was good on my own, that’s the way it was” – Rihanna, Needed MeLooking at her resume, Rihanna has a strong career for 2010 alone. Dance songs, pop songs, a dancehall(ish) track, rappers as features, features as rappers. Call her a bad bitch, a savage, just remember the game needs her. At least, her fans are begging four another album after the four year drought, so we need her to drop one more time
“Live fast, die young, Bad girls do it well,” – MIA, Bad GirlsHow the fuck y’all let this track NOT win video of the decade?
“Is it homophobic to only hook up with straight n---as? You know like closet n---as, masc-type? Why don't you take that mask off? That's the thought I had last night” – Kevin Abstract of BrockHampton, JunkyThe original sad boi, the original “emo rap”. Shout out to his comparison of himself to an orgasm.
“Don’t” – Bryson Tiller, Don’t
“Fuck your publication that say I'm a third wheel” – Flatbush Zombies, Palm Trees
“Might move away one day but I'm always gonna belong to the streets” – Freddie Gibbs, Thuggin
“By the beer, by ear, by boo what Yari saying?” – Isaiah Rashad, 4r Da Squaw
“Such a lost boy, caught up in the darkest I had. What's the cost, boy? Losing everything that I had” – Kid Cudi, 4th Dimension
“K to the I to the N to the G/Claim you the hottest, but I disagree” – Denzel Curry, UltimateDenzel is better than the memes from this track.
“I don’t dance now, I make money moves” – Cardi B, Bodak YellowCardi made big moves in the second half of the decade, arguably enough to be above HMs. She’s more than the one hit wonder many detracts tried to pin her as. If she started a year earlier, she’d be up there. I really want her to strive in the 2020s as well.
“Better recognize when I see you” – PARTYNEXTDOOR, RecognizeRelevant
“Kinda silly though, but I'm lyrical, Bet I put him in the dirt with the penny loafs” – A$AP Ferg, Work RemixR.I.P. Nipsey
“I bet I make you respect me, when you see the man dem are selling out Wembley” – Skepta, Shutdown
“Me, I try to leave the best for later, But Pusha tried to put me on the respirator” – Pharrell,
“They don't make 'em bar none, they don't make 'em real, they don't make it where I'm from, they don't take it here” – Nipsey Hussle, Victory Lap
EDIT: I dun fucked up, and totally forgot Young Thug, who played a big part in the decade more than half this damn list. Please, share your favorite Thugger lines, I personally like his feature on Sacrifices the most but that’s not his own track.
Also, the obvious fuck up: Fuck Donald Trump.
2019.12.05 09:40 bigpavelski35*BOTTLEROCK 2020 HEADLINER PREDICTIONS - UPDATED FOR DECEMBER*
- EDITED 12/22/19 --- Justin Timberlake has become a legit candidate now that he is NOT headlining Coachella. Lineup will officially be announced Monday 1/6/20
All artists that have announced big shows in the area for 2020 have been placed in the OUTS section below. Also keep in mind that BottleRock has only had 1 hip hop headliner in its history (Outkast in 2014, when they headlined virtually every festival), so it's a safe bet to assume rock/pop names at the top again in 2020. BottleRock also has a tradition of having a legacy headliner (every year except 2018, where Bruno Mars took the majority of booking money I'm sure), so it's safe to assume another is coming again in 2020.
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HEADLINERS:
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - 95% chance - The favorites to headline. Announced for Boston Calling which happens the same weekend. BottleRock has shared a rock headliner with that fest in the past (The Killers/2018). Also announced for Hangout Festival the weekend before which has also shared headliners in the past. The band is always a sellout, so it looks likely at this point that they will take a headliner spot. Add in the fact that John Frusciante has rejoined the group, adding an interesting aspect to a return after 2016, and I would be shocked if they weren't a headliner for 2020.
- Dave Matthews Band - 60% chance - They are a band that should have already played BottleRock as they fit the demographic perfectly. Interesting fact - they headlined the Kaaboo Del Mar festival in Southern California for 2019, and BottleRock has shared many, many headliners from that festival. Mumford & Sons, Imagine Dragons, Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, No Doubt, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, The Killers. Already announced for Innings Festival in Arizona for March so it seems like they could make the festival rounds in 2020 after touring solo nonstop in 2019.
- Lady Gaga - 50% chance - A late addition to the potentials list. She has a Las Vegas residency that ends May 16th, right before Bottlerock so she will be in the area. She has headlined Coachella (as a Beyonce replacement but headlined nonetheless). I'm honestly expecting an out of nowhere pop headliner and this makes a ton of sense.
- Justin Timberlake - 45% chance - His odds have gone way up now that he is not headlining Coachella. He is just the type of pop name that Bottlerock would book.
- Ariana Grande - 40% chance - Headlined some festivals last year. Not as likely as Gaga at this point because she just had 2 arena shows in San Francisco in December. But could still sell tickets if booked.
- Zac Brown Band - 20% chance - Announced a tour for 2020 with no California dates. Has all of May open. Headlined a night at the first BottleRock in 2013, and has headlined other festivals that BottleRock has shared headliners with. It's definitely a possibility, although with so many other names out there it's a slighter chance of happening.
- The Black Keys - 10% chance - Would be a safe rock act to book. They have also been announced to headline Shaky Knees Festival in May. They have limited buzz heading into 2020 though, so their chances are slimmer at a big festival like Bottlerock.
- Chris Stapleton - 10% chance - No California dates for 2020 tour yet. Has all of May open. BottleRock has stayed away from country-type headliners since 2014, however.
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LEGACY HEADLINERS:
- The Who - 95% chance - The fact of the matter is this. BottleRock has had a Legacy/Classic Rock headliner every year except 2018. So it's safe to assume that one is coming for 2020. The promoters like to book a legendary band. The Who is a legendary band that has done some festivals and would appeal to the demographic. They recently announced US tour dates for 2020 that puts them in Las Vegas the week before BottleRock, so they will be in the area. The fact that they scheduled their Las Vegas run right before BottleRock just screams that they were already booked. Also considering the fact that there are not many other options at this point, I would be shocked if they weren't a headliner for 2020.
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SUB-HEADLINERS:
Most Likely:
- The 1975 - Played a ton of festivals in 2019, yet no bay area one. They have been confirmed by their manager to announce their next round of tour dates for 2020 at the beginning of January, coincidentally the time that BottleRock and other festivals announce their lineups. I'd say it looks promising.
- Jimmy Eat World - Current tour dates have them in western Canada the week before Bottlerock with nothing scheduled in the bay. Looks very promising.
- White Reaper - ^ On tour with Jimmy Eat World.
- Milky Chance - Tour dates have them in California 2 days before BottleRock, and they have no dates lined up in the bay area. Looks very promising.
- Foals - No bay area date on upcoming tour. On west coast right around BottleRock, while having a suspicious break from 5/21-5/23. Looks very promising.
- Local Natives - ^ On tour with Foals.
- Cherry Glazerr - ^^ Also on tour with Foals.
- Ice Cube - Will be in the area Memorial Day weekend. He is headlining California Roots festival in Monterey, a festival that has shared names with BottleRock in the past. Makes sense as a 2nd stage headliner.
- Cage The Elephant - Looking like a popular festival name for 2020. Haven't played BottleRock in several years.
- Avett Brothers - On tour, and it will be 5 years since their last appearance on the BottleRock Stage. Also played the Sonoma Harvest Festival in 2018, so they are a favorite of the promoters. Very likely they are a bigger sub-headliner for 2020.
- Brittany Howard - Alabama Shakes frontwoman is hitting festivals in 2020 and makes perfect sense as a mid-day main stage or 2nd stage sub-headliner.
- Durand Jones & The Indications - Will be in the area BottleRock weekend, as they are on the California Roots lineup.
- Lizzo - Is rumored to be a big name at some 2020 festivals (Bonnaroo, etc.) so she would make sense as a big 2nd stage headliner that BottleRock has been getting (Chainsmokers, Logic, Santana, Pharrell).
- Usher - New music due for 2020. He is playing at Pharrell Williams Something in the Water festival in April. Makes a ton of sense as a 2nd stage headliner or main stage sub-headliner.
- Portugal. The Man - Haven't played BottleRock in a few years. Always a popular festival band. Already announced for a US festival in May.
- They Might Be Giants - No west coast dates announced for their tour yet. Current dates end 5/17 so definitely possible.
- Marshmello - Playing Hangout Festival the weekend before.
- Rainbow Kitten Surprise - A very popular festival name the last couple of years. Could be a bigger indie type act that they always have. Playing Hangout Festival the weekend before.
- Wu-Tang Clan - Would be an awesome choice as a bigger hip hop name for the 2nd stage. They played Kaaboo Del Mar in 2019, so always a chance.
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**OUTS****
- Green Day - 7/21 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Weezer - 7/21 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Fall Out Boy - 7/21 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Miranda Lambert - 2/28 @ SAP Center - San Jose, 2/29 @ Golden 1 Center - Sacramento
- Billie Eilish - 4/7 @ Golden 1 Center - Sacramento, 4/8 @ Chase Center - San Francisco
- The Eagles - 4/11 + 4/12 @ Chase Center - San Francisco
- Metallica - Only festivals in 2020 will be Danny Wimmer Presents festivals
- Radiohead - No plans to tour 2020. Thom Yorke has announced solo dates.
- Sting - 5/22 + 5/23 @ Las Vegas. San Francisco residency couple months prior
- Sturgill Simpson - 5/5 @ San Francisco. Also booked elsewhere Memorial Day Weekend
- Tyler Childers - 5/5 @ San Francisco. Also booked elsewhere Memorial Day Weekend
- Journey - 5/27 @ Concord Pavilion, 5/29 @ Toyota Amphitheatre - Wheatland
- Awolnation - booked 5/22-5/24 elsewhere
- Andrew Mcmahon In The Wilderness - booked 5/22-5/24 elsewhere
- Black Crowes - 9/8 @ Concord Pavilion, 9/9 @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
- Elton John - booked on the east coast 5/22 and 5/23, also 5/26
- Post Malone - 3/19 @ Chase Center - San Francisco
- Wilco - 3/27 @ Fox Theatre - Oakland, 3/29 @ Civic Center - San Jose
- Aerosmith - 5/23 and 5/25 in Las Vegas. Have no back to back dates on their tour
- Paul McCartney - 5/23 and 5/26 in France
- Alanis Morissette - 6/5 @ Concord Pavilion - Concord
- Dua Lipa - Touring overseas right around BottleRock
- Motley Crue/Def Leppard/Poison/Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - 7/19 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Tool - 1/14 @ SAP Center - San Jose
- Guns N Roses - International dates 5/20, 5/23, 5/26, etc.
- Kenny Chesney - 5/22, 5/23 in Texas. Not playing Sundays on tour
- Rage Against The Machine/Travis Scott/Frank Ocean - Headlining Coachella 2020
- Ed Sheeran - On hiatus for 2020
- Pearl Jam - Heavily rumored to announce a show at Oracle Arena for April
- Paul Simon
- Childish Gambino
- Twenty One Pilots
- Blink-182
- The Lumineers
- Hozier
- Leon Bridges
- Kacey Musgraves
- Lauryn Hill
- Death Cab For Cutie
- Chvrches
- Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
- Iration
- Walk The Moon
2019.09.05 02:55 danceonmePrimavera 2020: Official Confirmed/Rumors/Wishlist
LAST UPDATED: January 15, 2020Hi all,
As we are now starting to see more rumors fly around and 2020 festivals get announced, I think it's safe to start an official confirmed/rumors post. As this is a community, would love any and all input. Please comment below with any knowledge you have about an artist performing (or not performing) at Primavera 2020 and why you think they may perform (if you have source material like a website, that would be great but not required). I'll update this regularly and place the artists under the following buckets: Confirmed (5), Very Likely (4), Possible (3), Unlikely (2), Out (1)
Keep in mind with The New Normal theme we should expect another 50/50 gender split or close to it.
Hard to say when the lineup will be announced but my bet is on the earlier side (December), which gives Primavera more time to market and sell tickets. Below are the previous 3 year announcement dates:
Nov 30, 2016 - Primavera 2017 Announced
Jan 28, 2018 - Primavera 2018 Announced
Dec 6, 2018 - Primavera 2019 Announced
Nov 28, 2019 - Primavera Radio confirmed 11 artists for 2020
Dec 2, 2019 - Primavera Radio confirmed 4 artists for 2020
Dec 9, 2019 - Primavera Radio confirmed 4 artists for 2020
Dec 16, 2019 - Primavera Radio confirmed 4 more artists for 2020
Dec 19, 2019 - Primavera teaser video #bestfestivalever confirms Shellac and DJ Coco
Jan 16, 2020 at 10am Barcelona time** - Complete Primavera 2020 Announcement
**Countdown clock is live now: https://www.primaverasound.com/en **
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All sections below in alphabetical order (a, b, c...)
Confirmed (26 of 230 artists)
- Arthur Verocai - Dec 2, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- BigKlit (El Punto Stage) - Dec 16, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Bikini Kill - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Caroline Polachek - Dec 9, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Chromatics - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Cuban Doll (El Punto Stage) - Dec 16, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Die Katapult - Dec 9, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- DJ Coco - Dec 19, confirmed in Primavera teaser video '#bestfestivalever'
- Jenny Hval (Auditori Stage)- Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth) - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- La Favi (El Punto Stage) - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Les Amazones D'Afrique - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Les Savy Fav - Dec 9, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Lorena Álvarez - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- María del Mar Bonet (Auditori Stage) - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Mavis Staples - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Ñejo - Dec 16, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Núria Graham - Dec 2, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Paloma Mami - Dec 2, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Park Hye Jin - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Pavement - confirmed on final day of PS 2019
- Shellac - Dec 19, confirmed in Primavera teaser video '#bestfestivalever'
- Sudan Archives - Nov 28, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Trapani - Dec 16, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Vagina Dentata Organ - Dec 9, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Yo La Tengo - Dec 2, Radio Primavera Broadcast
- Allie X - EU tour ends just at Primavera begins, likely fit (u/claudiolemos)
- Bad Bunny - PS Radio playing lots of Bad Bunny and Gabi talked about him during interview. Also, 1/3 of the J Balvin/Rosalia trifecta who performed in 2019. Booked for Bilbao BBk. (u/danceonme)
- Beach Bunny - EU tour begins just as Primavera starts (u/danceonme)
- Bicep - past performer, just announced live 2020 dates, 'liked' a Primavera comment on their Instagram (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Black Midi - touring EU in June, performed at Primavera Weekender
- Brockhampton - EU tour ends before PS with no Spain dates, Gabi Ruiz really wanted them for 2019
- Caribou - new album, past performer, performing at All Points East and BBK live which we shared 8 artists with in 2019 (u/mr-ror)
- DJ Rosario - performs most years (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- DJ Shadow - past performer, new album, performing at festivals in 2020, clue in one of the teaser videos to his song (u/fedecasini78)
- Einsturzende Neubauten - past performer, new album, no BCN tour dates (u/petra_vonkant)
- Georgia - new album and tour, no BCN dates, strong rumors (u/patrick_fm)
- Girl in Red - performing at We Love Green in Paris, strong rumor to performer at PS as well (u/danceonme)
- John Talabot - BCN DJ, performs at many PS but not in 2019, likely for 2020 (u/BenjoDiMeo)
- Kelly Lee Owens - past performer, new album coming soon, also performing at All Points East (u/vel_4k)
- Kevin Morby - new album, EU tour skips BCN, Kevin confirmed on Instagram he would perform in Spain in 2020 (u/flagismyname)
- Kim Petras - Kim was mentioned by Gabi and her tour doesn’t stop in Spain we likely have her (u/claudiolemos)
- King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - past performer, touring EU in June (u/domambrose96)
- Lana Del Rey - new album and from Gabi Ruiz: 'I really like her, but we have never agreed with money and dates.' Update: Gabi had lots of chatter about Lana and it seems 2020 could be the year, she will be at We Love Green Fest in Paris on June 7, looks like we got her for 2020 (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Massive Attack - performing at Best Kept Secret June 12, 2020. PS and BKS shared 25 artists, would seem to make them very possible
- Max Richter - Gabi said Max is on their booking list, likely confirm for 2020.
- The National - UK tour date on June 6, leaves possibility for Primavera on June 3,4, or 5. Past performer, side project performed in 2019, skipped BCN on new album cycle, performing High Violet in full at Best Kept Secret June 12, seems likely
- Rina Sawayama - touring all over in 2020 with a new album, strong rumor to perform at PS (u/claudiolemos)
- Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - past performer, touring EU in June (u/danceonme)
- Sama Yax - performs most years (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Sampha The Great - new album, actively touring, performing in Paris same weekend as Primavera (u/danceonme)
- Sun Kil Moon - new album, past performer, EU tour ends in London on May 30, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Tyler, The Creator - Gabi mentioned that Tyler the Creator is a “classic” from the festival. Seems likely with new album, past performances and booked in Paris for June 3, 2020.
- Weyes Blood - touring EU in June, all indications that she will be performing, a perfect fit (u/Beebeedeedop)
- Whitney - new album, performed at PS Weekender, booked for All Points East (u/danceonme)
- Young Thug - performing in Poland same weekend as Primavera, a likely booking (u/danceonme)
- 100 Gecs - new album, trending artist, tours with Brockhampton (u/hjquique)
- Anna Calvi - performing at All Points East May 29, nice fit for PS (u/Jrkehres)
- Bill Callahan - new album, past performer, actively touring in 2020 (u/mandritao)
- Burna Boy - rising global artist from Nigeria (u/danceonme)
- Denzel Curry - Gabi has indicated he likes him, strong demand, touring in June (u/supersonicsilv)
- Disclosure - performing at several EU festivals including Down The Rabbit Hole, past performer
- Doja Cat - new album, trending artist, shared songs with Rico Nasty who performed in 2019 (u/iamhalsey)
- Frank Ocean - Still owes PS a show from 2017 and Gabi mentioned that Frank would tour the US in 2020 and end at Coachella indicating that he is at least doing shows in 2020 and could be likely for PS 2020 but who really knows. (u/danceonme)
- Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - new album, past performer (u/danceonme)
- Fontaines D.C. - new album, performing at Apolo on Nov 2, 2019, could be back for PS 2020 (u/alison_92)
- Holly Herndon - excellent new album, past performer, due to return to BCN (u/rshuffandstuff)
- Honey Dijon - performing in London the same weekend, past performer (u/danceonme)
- Hot Chip - new album, past performer, touring in June (u/danceonme)
- Kacey Musgraves - Gabi tried to book for 2019, newish album, due to play Spain, touring EU in June (u/danceonme)
- Kaytranada - touring in 2020 with new album (u/Loud_Fart)
- Megan Thee Stallion - playing festivals in 2020 (Coachella, etc), strong rumor to be at Primavera
- Polo & Pan - new-ish album, actively touring EU in June (u/wakefieldtwin)
- PUP - touring EU in June
- Run The Jewels - past performer, new album coming out and touring in 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Thom Yorke - past performer, new album, touring EU in 2020 (u/JKay96)
- A Winged Victory For The Sullen - new album, past performer, EU tour skips BCN (u/smittyman62)
- A.G. Cook - (u/claudiolemos)
- Alex Cameron - new album, actively touring (u/mandritao)
- Andy Stott - new album coming, past performer (u/BulkyAccident)
- Angel Bat Dawid - could be one of the Auditory jazz shows, excellent new album and touring (u/BenjoDiMeo)
- Angelo Badalamenti - possible 30th anniversary of Twin Peaks soundtrack (uZexionsix)
- Animal Collective - new album coming, past performer, haven't been to BCN since 2016 (u/Parking_lot_way_2hot)
- Anna Meredith - new album, touring 2020 with no BCN dates (u/BenjoDiMeo)
- Asgeir - new album, past performer, no BCN tour dates (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- BANKS - (u/claudiolemos)
- Bauhaus - a couple reunion shows have been announced (u/hihateheggs)
- Bat for Lashes - new album (u/Cactus_33)
- Battles - new album, past performer, no BCN date on EU tour (u/alison_92)
- Baxter Dury - past performer, new album, 2020 EU tour with no Spain dates (u/binh82)
- Beck - touring EU in late June, many rumors for him to perform at Primavera but tour routing causes some doubts
- Bombay Bicycle Club - new album, EU tour with no Spain dates (u/sla296)
- Brittany Howard - new solo album, actively touring, playing Bilbao, ES on Nov 2, 2019 (u/GLAMO1989)
- The Chemical Brothers - have not played BCN since new album released, touring in 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Cigarettes After Sex - new album, performing at PS Weekender & 2x in BCN in Nov 11 & 12, 2019 (u/binh82)
- Clubz - Mexican group heavily promoted by PS Radio (u/GranVictor)
- Confeti de Odio - local Spanish artist, played a lot on PS Radio (u/hjquique)
- Crumb - new album, actively touring (u/danceonme)
- Damon Albarn - past performer (with Blur), EU tour ends on June 1, 2020 in Dublin (u/alison_92)
- Death Grips - Past performer, new album (u/mindthenew)
- Deerhunter - perform at almost every PS, new single released (u/andmar)
- Delaporte - local MAD artist (u/mindthenew)
- Devo - announced a final tour but no dates yet (u/mr-ror)
- Earl Sweatshirt - new album, past performer, due for a show in BCN (u/FlyHoenn)
- Erika de Casier - new album, performed in BCN Dec 4, 2019, good fit for PS (u/rshuffandstuff)
- The Flaming Lips - new album, past performer, 20th anniversary of 'The Soft Bulletin', performing in UK on May 22 (u/GLAMO1989)
- Flight Facilities - (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Floating Points - new album, past performer, touring in 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Flying Lotus - new album (u/danceonme)
- Fuzz - past performer, new music coming (u/Umberju)
- Girl Band - post punk band, new album, fits PS style, performing London June 5
- Glass Animals - past performer, new album coming, performing at All Points East
- HANA - (u/claudiolemos)
- Helado Negro - new album, actively touring, performing in BCN on Nov 19 (u/GLAMO1989)
- IDER - (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Iggy Pop - classic PS act performed in 2005, will perform at All Points East on May 29, 2020 (u/Jrkehres)
- Inner City - tech/house royalty, could fill the slot where Cybotron performed in 2019 (u/rshuffandstuff)
- Jambinai - new album, performed at PS Porto in 2019 but not PS BCN (u/alison_92)
- Jamie xx - (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Jawbox - reunion tour, performing in London June 11, 2020, possible for Porto maybe Barca (u/feliceu)
- Jesus And Mary Chain - past performer, touring EU with no Spain dates (u/ScarletFire47)
- Kelsey Lu - new album, performed at Apolo last year, possible tour in 2020 (u/alison_92)
- Khruangbin - new EP coming out in 2020 with Leon Bridges, actively touring (u/JoeyJJShabadooJr)
- King Krule - touring US in April 2020 with no EU dates yet, past performer (u/Mikess03)
- Kraftwerk - headliner for All Points East May 29, puts them in possible for PS but they have already played Spain twice in 2019 (u/Mind-Mischief)
- L'Imperatrice - female fronted French dream, synth pop group, active tour in 2020 and new album (u/danceonme)
- La Bien Querida - Local Spanish artist, played a lot on PS Radio (u/hjquique)
- La Roux - new album and 2020 tour skips BCN (u/danceonme)
- Lingua Ignota - well received new album but no active tour dates for 2020 yet (u/alison_92)
- Little Dragon - new song/album coming, announced EU tour with no BCN date (u/danceonme)
- Manel - local BCN band, previous performer, new album (u/hanric1234)
- The Marias - dream pop band sings in Spanish and English, follow PS on Instagram, would be a nice fit (u/danceonme)
- Moses Sumney - new album coming, good fit for PS (u/b4848)
- MUNA (u/claudiolemos)
- The New Pornographers (u/mandritao)
- Pantocrator - local BCN artist (u/mindthenew)
- Parquet Courts - new-ish album, 2020 dates announced (u/danceonme)
- Phoebe Bridgers - performing at Mad Cool 2020 but lots of demand for her at PS, associated acts Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker both performed in 2019 (u/danceonme)
- Pulp - classic PS band, possible 'Different Class' 25th anniversary show (u/Zexionsix)
- Rapsody - very good new album, would be nice in the undercard, touring in 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Richard Dawson - new album, past performer, no active dates yet for 2020 (u/alison_92)
- Saba - semi new album, rising young rapper (u/danceonme)
- Sasami - trending artist with debut album, opened for Snail Mail in 2019, good PS fit (u/danceonme)
- Shame - new and trending rock band, nice fit for PS, performing in London on June 5, 2020 (u/Wordswitcher)
- Sharon Van Etten - touring US in April 2020, past performer, new album (u/FredWood12)
- Sleater Kinney - past performer, new album, side project played 2019 edition (u/danceonme)
- Sr. Chinarro - performed at 1st PS and again at 15th edition, could be at 2020 (u/BenjoDiMeo)
- Sky Ferreira - (u/claudiolemos)
- Slayyyter - (u/claudiolemos)
- Squid (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Squarepusher - new album coming, past performer, touring in 2020 (u/fedecasini78)
- Talaboman - new album, past performer (u/Zexionsix)
- Thundercat - new album, past performer and touring in 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Toro y Moi - due for a BCN performance, good fit for PS, new album (u/danceonme)
- Torres - new album coming soon and touring in 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Travis Scott - could fill the slot Future performed, Gabi seems to like the trap direction (u/danceonme)
- Tropical Fuck Storm - new album, 6 shows in Spain (Nov 2019) but could return for PS (u/Zexionsix)
- Ty Segall - (u/Umberju)
- Underworld - (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Wire - new album and tour in 2020, EU dates announced with no BCN date (u/alison_92)
- Wu-Tang Clan - lots of reunion shows in 2019 including festivals, would fit in nicely where NAS left off (u/danceonme)
- Xiu Xiu - past performer, new album (u/mindthenew)
- Algiers - already performing in BCN on Feb 29, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Childish Gambino - From Gabi Ruiz: 'I can't tell you more that I don't know why he hasn't performed at the festival yet and I think that if we asked him, he sure would still tell us that he will act in this edition. I had never faced such a complicated artist. I give up after almost three years of exhausting negotiations.' (u/danceonme)
- DIIV - already performing in BCN on March 16, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Kate Bush - doesn't perform live anymore but there is a lot of demand for her (u/bermuda74 & u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Men I Trust - Performing in Mexico City on June 3, 2020 makes them unlikely (u/danceonme)
- Metronomy - already performing in BCN on March 20, 2020 (u/hihateheggs)
- R.E.M./Michael Stipe - Gabi Ruiz said he'd like to see them play PS in his AMA yet they haven’t performed together in 10 years.
- RIDE - already performing in BCN on Feb 7, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- (Sandy) Alex G - already performing in BCN on Feb 27, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- The Strokes - rumored to be the Friday headliner for Mad Cool based on this post but still unknown (u/knightofkekdonia)
- Sufjan Stevens - From Gabi 'Gabi Sufjan is just like Frank, a very peculiar artist that you can't just simply lure in with huge amounts of money, they simply do not work like that and they're very complicated'
- Tindersticks - already performing in BCN on Feb 25, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- The 1975 - performing arena show at Palau Sant Jordi in BCN on March 9 (u/hihateheggs)
- Alt-J - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/Cactus_33)
- Anderson .Paak - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/IWillNeedThis)
- Angel Olsen - already performing in BCN on Jan 26, 2020 booked for Vida Festival and Mad Cool 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Babymetal - performing in BCN on June 24, 2020 (u/Kayleth)
- Belle & Sebastian - performing at Vida Festival, July 2020 in BCN (u/danceonme)
- Billie Eilish - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/vel_4k)
- Bon Iver - already performing in BCN April 17 (u/danceonme)
- Charly Bliss - touring the US during PS 2020 (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Chvrches - touring US during PS (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Dan Deacon - performing at Canela Party in Malaga, August 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Destroyer - performing at Vida Fest outside of BCN on July 2 thru 4 (u/ralgex)
- Dorian Electra - performing in BCN on May 2, 2020 (u/u/claudiolemos)
- Drake - From Gabi Ruiz: 'Technically impressive, lights screens, drones, a thousand things I had never seen. But the show .... a karaoke.' (u/danceonme)
- Dua Lipa - performing in BCN on April 28, 2020 (u/tolaphone)
- Foals - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/hihateheggs)
- Four Tet - will perform at either Porto or LA but not BCN in 2020 Haim - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid
- Grimes - announced she was pregnant on Jan 8, 2020 via Instagram (u/danceonme)
- HAIM - booked for Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Halsey - touring US during PS (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Holy Fuck - performing in BCN on May 5, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Idles - exclusive Spain festival date at Canela Party, Aug 5 thru 8 (u/mr-ror)
- Kanye West - excluded categorically. Gabi started by saying that the latest album is mediocre, and then basically said that Kanye has what he called a 'decalogue' of demands that are really hard to ascribe to in a festival setting and that while something like Coachella can build a stage for him only, that's not viable for PS. He said he'd need a stage for himself not to be shared with others, also not an option, an another stage 'for his ego'.
- Kendrick Lamar - Exclusive headliner for Bbk July in Bilbao, ES. This will be Kendrick's only Spain performance. (u/danceonme)
- Local Natives - touring the US during PS 2020 (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Michael Kiwanuka - booked for Mallorca Live, May 15 & 16, 2020 (u/Zexionsix)
- Migos - From Gabi Ruiz: 'Migos was very ugly, I don't think we will work with them anymore.' (u/danceonme)
- Mitski - on hiatus from touring
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - already performing in BCN April 26, 2020 (u/Zexionsix)
- Nine Inch Nails - Gabi said they were booked for 2020 for barcelona / porto / los angeles but having to postpone because Fincher asked Trent to score his next movie - might have been joking??? - if serious, said they'll play in 2021
- Omar Apollo - touring US during PS (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Perfume Genius - performing in the U.S. during PS (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Pet Shop Boys - tour routing doesn't allow room for PS (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Pixies - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/Cactus_33)
- Portishead - Gabi said that he has a spy that Portishead have a new album coming in 2020 but that it's too late to have them play so maybe 2021.
- The Rapture - booked for Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/udeelo)
- Rex Orange County - touring Australia during PS 2020 (u/hjquique)
- Stormy - Touring North America during PS 2020 (u/Dr-Gregorick)
- Swans - already performing in BCN May 8, 2020 (u/danceonme)
- Taylor Swift - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/Cactus_33)
- Tove Lo - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/Cactus_33)
- Tycho - already performing in BCN on March 1, 2020 and also booked for Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/danceonme)
- Vampire Weekend - already performing in BCN on Nov 24, 2019 and Gabi said they have been annoyingly hard to book. Tour routing for June 2020 leaves them in position to play Governors Ball in NYC (u/danceonme)
- Weezer - Gabi allegedly isn't a fan, also they are booked for Rock Am Ring the same weekend (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Wilco - performing in BCN on June 28 (u/Rico_Pliskin)
- Wolf Alice - performing at Mad Cool 2020 in Madrid (u/hihateheggs)
2019.08.24 08:22 bigpavelski35BOTTLEROCK 2020 HEADLINER PREDICTIONS
-UPDATED 11/25/19-
This post will be updated as the months go by. BottleRock's lineup is usually announced the first week of January. Post your thoughts/predictions in the comments. Artists will be added to the predictions or removed and placed in OUTS as tours are announced. Also keep in mind that BottleRock has only had 1 hip hop headliner in its history (Outkast in 2014, when they headlined virtually every festival), so it's a safe bet to assume rock/pop names at the top again in 2020. BottleRock also has a tradition of having a legacy headliner (every year except 2018, where Bruno Mars took the majority of booking money I'm sure), so it's safe to assume another is coming again in 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEADLINERS:
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - Have now become the favorite to headline. They are playing Boston Calling the same weekend, and The Killers played both festivals in 2018. They are also headlining Hangout Festival the week before Bottlerock, and both fests have shared headliners in the past. They are always a sellout draw and the promoters would probably want them back if they are doing festivals. As of now they are the favorites to be headliner at BottleRock 2020.
- Dave Matthews Band - Dave and the gang have been touring most of 2019 on a solo tour so it would make sense to do some festivals in 2020. They are a band that should have already played BottleRock as they fit the demographic perfectly. Another interesting fact - they are headlining the Kaaboo Del Mar festival in Southern California this year, and BottleRock has shared many, many headliners from that festival. Mumford & Sons, Imagine Dragons, Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, No Doubt, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, The Killers.
- Zac Brown Band - Announced a tour for 2020 with no California dates. Has all of May open. Headlined a night at the first BottleRock in 2013, and has headlined other festivals that BottleRock has shared headliners with. It's definitely a possibility.
- The Black Keys - Were reportedly not doing any festivals in 2020, but that is not the case as they have been announced to headline Shaky Knees in Atlanta in May. Would be a safe rock act to book.
- The Strokes - A new album and tour is on the way for 2020. They make a lot more sense for Outside Lands, but you can never count out BottleRock's ability to bring in big rock names.
- Chris Stapleton - No California dates for 2020 tour yet. Has all of May open.
- Kings of Leon - Also headlining Kaaboo Del Mar in 2019. Possible that new material is coming.
- Pearl Jam - BottleRock does not usually book acts that are stadium headliners, and PJ has been playing baseball stadiums lately, so a date at Oracle Park or Outside Lands seems more likely. However, they just announced international dates for Summer 2020. Always an outside chance that the promoters pay big money to get them.
- Coldplay - Most likely not going to happen. Has stated they will not tour their new album because of environmental concerns. The possibility for festivals is still there but doubtful to play BottleRock anyways.
*OTHER HEADLINER POSSIBILITIES - Sam Smith, Justin Timberlake, John Mayer, Panic! At The Disco, Eminem, Pink, Katy Perry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEGACY HEADLINERS:
- Guns N Roses - I have them at the top of this list for next year. They seem to be a band that would be a huge draw for this demographic. They are also now officially a festival headliner (Austin City Limits, Voodoo Festival, other rock festivals in 2019, Lollapalooza international festivals in 2020). They have been headlining their own arena tours the past couple years and now seem to be hitting the festivals. I think there is a good chance they could get booked for 2020.
- The Who - Tour dates for 2020 put them in Las Vegas right before Bottlerock. Would make perfect sense as a classic rock headliner for Saturday night of the fest. I still would rank Guns N Roses a little higher, but The Who could very well end up on the bill.
- The Cure - Will be touring in 2020. Has headlined BottleRock in the past (2014) so their chances are a little slimmer, but you never know. Much more likely for Outside Lands (have somehow never played that fest).
- AC/DC - Rumored to tour in 2020 with a new album. Rumored to play some Danny Wimmer Festivals (Aftershock) in 2020.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUB-HEADLINERS:
- The 1975 - Played a ton of festivals in 2019, yet no bay area one. They have been confirmed by their manager to announce their next round of tour dates for 2020 at the beginning of January, coincidentally the time that BottleRock and other festivals announce their lineups. I'd say it looks promising.
- Foals - No bay area date on upcoming tour. On west coast right around BottleRock, while having a suspicious break from 5/21-5/23. Looks promising.
- Local Natives - ^ On tour with Foals.
- Ice Cube - Will be in the area BottleRock weekend. He is headlining California Roots festival in Monterey, a festival that has shared names with BottleRock in the past. Makes sense as a 2nd stage headliner.
- Real Estate - Tour dates line up with a possible spot at BottleRock. They have shows 5/21 and 5/22 on the west coast and then nothing.
- Avett Brothers - New album coming fall 2019. On tour, and it will be 5 years since their last appearance on the BottleRock Stage. Also played the Sonoma Harvest Festival in 2018, so they are a favorite of the promoters. Very likely they are a bigger sub-headliner for 2020.
- Durand Jones & The Indications - Will be in the area BottleRock weekend, as they are on the California Roots lineup.
- Brittany Howard - Alabama Shakes frontwoman is hitting festivals in 2020 and makes perfect sense as a mid-day main stage or 2nd stage sub-headliner.
- Lizzo - Is rumored to be a big name at some 2020 festivals (Bonnaroo, etc.) so she would make sense as a big 2nd stage headliner that BottleRock has been getting (Chainsmokers, Logic, Santana, Pharrell).
- Duran Duran - Seems like a perfect BottleRock booking. Festival sub-headliner who has never played.
- Black Eyed Peas - No dates yet for 2020 but seem perfect for this festival as a sub-headliner.
- Khalid - Could be a big 2nd stage headliner, and fill that Chainsmokers/Logic/Pharrell slot.
- Portugal. The Man - Haven't played BottleRock in a few years. Always a popular festival band. Already announced for a US festival in May.
- Bastille - New album out, and I don't believe they have ever played BottleRock.
- Foster The People - Popular festival name that hasn't played BottleRock in a few years.
- Young The Giant - Another popular festival name that hasn't played BottleRock in years.
- They Might Be Giants - No west coast dates announced for their tour yet. Current dates end 5/17 so definitely possible.
- Jack Johnson - Another name that should've already played BottleRock. He is probably not a headliner in this day and age so main stage sub or 2nd stage headliner makes the most sense.
- Brandi Carlile - Starting to play festivals. Is free all May.
- Sheryl Crow - Does play festivals and seems right for the demographic.
- Greta Van Fleet - One of the bigger rock names in the world right now, but not big enough to headline. They are actually going on tour with Metallica overseas in April, so they will be on tour.
- Royal Blood - New material coming soon, and a new tour is coming, supposedly the biggest of their career.
- Michael Franti & Spearhead - Plays every year, so we have to assume 2020 will be no different.
- 311 - could fit into that Tash Sultana, Thievery Corporation, Sublime w/Rome, Iration, Soja slot that they have every year. Big reggae type act for the 2nd stage that will bring a big crowd. They are on a headlining tour on a new album so festivals could be coming for 2020.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**OUTS****
- Green Day - 7/21 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Weezer - 7/21 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Fall Out Boy - 7/21 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Miranda Lambert - 2/28 @ SAP Center - San Jose, 2/29 @ Golden 1 Center - Sacramento
- Billie Eilish - 4/7 @ Golden 1 Center - Sacramento, 4/8 @ Chase Center - San Francisco
- The Eagles - 4/11 + 4/12 @ Chase Center - San Francisco
- Metallica - Only festivals in 2020 will be Danny Wimmer Presents festivals
- Radiohead - No plans to tour 2020. Thom Yorke has announced solo dates.
- Sting - 5/22 + 5/23 @ Las Vegas. San Francisco residency couple months prior
- Sturgill Simpson - 5/5 @ San Francisco. Also booked elsewhere Memorial Day Weekend
- Tyler Childers - 5/5 @ San Francisco. Also booked elsewhere Memorial Day Weekend
- Journey - 5/27 @ Concord Pavilion, 5/29 @ Toyota Amphitheatre - Wheatland
- Awolnation - booked 5/22-5/24 elsewhere
- Andrew Mcmahon In The Wilderness - booked 5/22-5/24 elsewhere
- Black Crowes - 9/8 @ Concord Pavilion, 9/9 @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
- Elton John - booked on the east coast 5/22 and 5/23, also 5/26
- Post Malone - 3/19 @ Chase Center - San Francisco
- Wilco - 3/27 @ Fox Theatre - Oakland, 3/29 @ Civic Center - San Jose
- Aerosmith - 5/23 and 5/25 in Las Vegas. Have no back to back dates on their tour.
- Paul McCartney - 5/23 and 5/26 in France
- Alanis Morissette - 6/5 @ Concord Pavilion - Concord
- Dua Lipa - Touring overseas right around BottleRock.
- Motley Crue/Def Leppard/Poison/Joan Jett &The Blackhearts - 7/19 @ Oracle Park - San Francisco
- Paul Simon
- Childish Gambino
- Twenty One Pilots
- Blink-182
- The Lumineers
- Hozier
- Leon Bridges
- Kacey Musgraves
- Lauryn Hill
- Death Cab For Cutie
- Chvrches
- Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
- Iration
- Walk The Moon
2019.08.01 02:10 inodarehamalbum rollout is gonna be big--
--too big for a surprise drop.
last few months, i (with the rest of this sub) got insanely anxious and excited whenever a date we connected '28' to arrived. (june 28 being the most prominent one, of course)
and as we near yet another potential album drop date (august 2, 8/2 -> 2/8) i've been thinking. surprise drops/little notice among artists' new albums have been more and more common nowadays, and so it isn't totally out of the question for bino. but i also remembered this video i watched a while back, after ludwig won the grammy: https://youtu.be/Kxr7S63OzW0
at 2:13, ludwig and mastering engineer mike bozzi go a tiny bit into detail about don's new album. it's coming, they're working on songs, and 'something big is coming.' this is childish gambino's final album-- that paired with this (admittedly scarce) information made me think that the lead-up to the album is gonna be a big deal. in some ways, it's already started what with the Pharos AR app.
and bino's nearing the end of his tour, anyways, isn't he? lolla, osheaga, outside lands and then a nearly month-long gap between shows until a fest in austin. would make sense if he fully started the 'big' album and promo after closing off the tour, which clearly takes a lot out of him. a personal theory of mine is that as he nears the end, he might finally-- finally-- rate a crowd a 28/10, and then go from there. but that's just my speculation.
this is all to say that i wouldn't rule out the possibility of anything coming on one of these upcoming dates. coachella had guava island, lolla might (fingers crossed) have human sacrifice?? i dunno. trust the algorithm.
submitted byinodarehamtodonaldglover [link][comments]last few months, i (with the rest of this sub) got insanely anxious and excited whenever a date we connected '28' to arrived. (june 28 being the most prominent one, of course)
and as we near yet another potential album drop date (august 2, 8/2 -> 2/8) i've been thinking. surprise drops/little notice among artists' new albums have been more and more common nowadays, and so it isn't totally out of the question for bino. but i also remembered this video i watched a while back, after ludwig won the grammy: https://youtu.be/Kxr7S63OzW0
at 2:13, ludwig and mastering engineer mike bozzi go a tiny bit into detail about don's new album. it's coming, they're working on songs, and 'something big is coming.' this is childish gambino's final album-- that paired with this (admittedly scarce) information made me think that the lead-up to the album is gonna be a big deal. in some ways, it's already started what with the Pharos AR app.
and bino's nearing the end of his tour, anyways, isn't he? lolla, osheaga, outside lands and then a nearly month-long gap between shows until a fest in austin. would make sense if he fully started the 'big' album and promo after closing off the tour, which clearly takes a lot out of him. a personal theory of mine is that as he nears the end, he might finally-- finally-- rate a crowd a 28/10, and then go from there. but that's just my speculation.
this is all to say that i wouldn't rule out the possibility of anything coming on one of these upcoming dates. coachella had guava island, lolla might (fingers crossed) have human sacrifice?? i dunno. trust the algorithm.
2019.04.16 03:02 sgerken2019 ACL Fest Lineup Speculation & Confirmation Thread
Last update: April 29th @ 9:00am ESTNOTE: The last thread got locked so this is the main thread moving forward!
Got an update? Comment below and I’ll add it as soon as I can!
Hello ACL fans! Your friendly lineup nerd is back with the speculation tread! As I did last year, this will be our ongoing hub of all things rumors, predictions, who’s in/who’s out, etc until we get the lineup in May. Last year we were early and spot-on with the speculation around major acts, nailing Metallica, Childish Gambino, Arctic Monkey, Odesza, The National, David Byrne, and Travis Scott, among others.
Note: Please take all of this with a grain of salt. There is no way to include literally every band, so odds are that only a part of this will accurately be reflected on the official line-up. Also, I will do my absolute best to keep this as up-to-date as possible, but I am only one dude and thus might fall behind on updates on occasion. Please be patient!
Quick notes on my process:
- I am assuming acts that play in Austin in early May or earlier to be in play. There is precedence (albeit limited one) for acts to play in May and still make it on the bill.
- I will not include any acts that played ACL in the past two years. While I know there are some very limited cases of artists playing twice in a three-year span, it would be overkill to include the 300+ acts when 99% of them are out.
- I will use my discretion to determine the validity of a source/rumor. Sorry in advance if you disagree.
Lastly, if you have any updates you’d like to be reflected, feel free to comment below or DM me.Our categories are:
- Confirmed: Confirmations straight from the festival, artist, or other directly-officiated sources
- All But Confirmed: For the artists that have such damning evidence that they are playing ACL, yet still haven't been officially confirmed
- Likely/Logical: Tour dates align with ACL dates, leaks from reliable sources, etc
- Rumored: Chatter from fans, playing other festivals, rumored to be touring, etc
- Possible: No reason to believe they’re out, but no reason to suspect they’re likely
- Out: Conflicting tour dates, etc
Confirmed
| Artist | Reasoning/Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 21 SAVAGE | Confirmed via ACL social media | Solved Image |
| CAAMP | Confirmed vis ACL social media | Solved Tweet |
| CHILDISH GAMBINO | Confirmed vis ACL social media | Tweet |
| KING PRINCESS | Confirmed via ACL social media | Tweet |
| GARY CLARK JR | Confirmed via ACL social media | IG Post |
| GOGO PENGUIN | Confirmed via ACL social media | IG Post |
| GRIZ | Confirmed via ACL social media | Tweet |
| KACEY MUSGRAVES | Confirmed via ACL ad in Austin Chronicle | Image |
| MONSIEUR PERINÉ | Confirmed via ACL social media | Solved Teaser |
| SIGRID | Confirmed via ACL social media | Solved Teaser |
All But Confirmed
| Artist | Reasoning/Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Judah And The Lion | No dates from 10/4-10/14, literally the exact date range of ACL. 10/3 date puts them in the region (Tulsa). No Texas dates past May. Playing other mid-to-small-sized fests, like Hangout and Wildflower. | Tour Dates |
| The Raconteurs | ACL-sized gap in tour, no Texas dates, playing the Sunday of W2 in Oklahoma City | Tour Dates |
Likely/Logical
Free Speed Dating In Irvine Ca California
| Artist | Reasoning/Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Asleep At The Wheel | The only act to play every ACL since the festival’s inception in 2002. Why would they stop now? | Cool KVUE Story |
| Barton Hills Choir | The elementary rockers have played 8 of the last 10 festivals. | About BHC |
| Explosions In The Sky | Austin-based rockers have an gap in their tour over W1 before picking up in Oklahoma City | Tour Dates |
| Hot Chip | Tour ends one week before ACL with no Texas dates. Both ACL weekends are wide-open. | Tour Dates |
| Lizzo | ACT-sized gaps both weekends and no Texas dates on fall tour | Tour Dates |
| Muse | Playing in Mexico City before W1, a traditional indicator for an ACL-booking for larger rock groups (Radiohead, RHCP). Playing Austin360 in March for IndyCar. Recently played C3's Lolla and last year's Bonnaroo. Playing Rock In Rio on Sunday of W1, making Friday slot possible. | Tour Dates |
| Sigrid | ACL-sized gap after Colorado and Missouri dates; No announced Texas stops. | Tour Dates |
| The Strokes | Playing Lolla, Gov Ball, Lolla Paris (C3 property). Rumored to be touring in the summer through the fall. Slated to play Ohana Fest in California one week before ACL. | Tour Dates |
| Tame Impala | Playing Coachella and C3-produced Lollapalooza and Shakey Knees. No announced Texas tour dates | Tour Dates |
Rumored
| Artist | Reasoning/Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Animal Collective | Potential Weekend 1 exclusive; playing a small tour beginning in Oklahoma the Tuesday after W1. An anonymous source has confirmed to me that they had previously scheduled dates in Texas around W1 that leads us to believe they are extremely likely for ACL | Tour Dates |
| Guns n Roses | Rumored to be playing a small tour of festivals in October and rumored to be headlining Exit 111 Festival in Tennesse (co-produced by C3). Announced to be playing Louder Than Life Festival in September | Rumor |
| Otis the Destroyer | Austin's very own is rumored to be playing Sunday of both weekends. Confirmed to me by a very active user in this sub, and based on the evidence, I have no reason to believe they are wrong | For me to know, not you! |
Possible
| Artist | Reasoning/Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Aerosmith | Vegas residency ending in plenty of time for ACL. Would fit both the legacy and unique headliner bill that ACL usually has. Have played festivals before, namely Jazzfest 2018. | Tour Dates |
| Anderson .Paak | Playing Coachella. No Texas dates in winter leg of 2019 US tour. | Tour Dates |
| Aphex Twin | Playing Coachella. | Tour Dates |
| Bad Bunny | Playing Coachella. Playing HEB Center in Cedar Park 3/28. Tour dates into the fall. | Tour Dates |
| Bassnectar | Playing Coachella and Electric Forrest. | Tour Dates |
| Beach House | Playing Bonnaroo and III Points Festivals | Tour Dates |
| Billie Eilish | Playing Coachella, which are only US dates announced, suggesting a fall US tour is in play. | Tour Dates |
| Cardi B | Playing Bonnaroo and Hangout Fest, amongst others. | Tour Dates |
| Catfish And The Bottlemen | Playing Bannaroo. No Austin dates on spring tour. | Tour Dates |
| Christine And The Queens | Playing Coachella. | Tour Dates |
| Courtney Barnett | Playing Bonnaroo and Firefly. No Austin dates in wintespring tour. | Tour Dates |
| The Cure | Frontman Robert Smith tweeted they’re headlining 20+ festivals in 2019, mostly in Europe | Link to tweet |
| Dillon Francis | Playing Coachella. Playing two Stubbs show 2/9 and 2/10. | Tour Dates |
| Diplo | Playing Coachella, Hangout, and X Games | Tour Dates |
| DJ Snake | Playing Coachella, Firefly, and other European fests | Tour Dates |
| Flume | Playing Lolla and OSL | Tour Dates |
| Four Tet | Playing Coachella. No Texas dates on spring tour. | Tour Dates |
| Gesaffelstein | Playing Coachella. | Tour Dates |
| Girl Talk | Playing Bonnaroo. | Tour Dates Unavaliable |
| H.E.R | Playing Coachella. | Tour Dates |
| Kid Cudi | Playing Coachella. | Tour Dates |
| Lil Dicky | Playing Bannaroo. | Tour Dates |
| The Lumineers | Playing Coachella and Hangout Fest. | Tour Dates |
| Mumford & Sons | Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re playing 60+ dates well into 2019, including a headlining spot at C3’s Voodoo Fest in ’18 | Tour Dates |
| Phish | Playing Bonnaroo. Touring into September. No Texas dates on tour. | Tour Dates |
| Post Malone | Playing Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza's Latin American festivals (C3). Never played ACL. No Texas dates in sping tour. Touring into August. | Tour Dates |
| Pusta T | Playing Coachella. | Tour Dates |
| RL Grime | Playing Bonnaroo, Buku, and all of Lollapalooza's Latin American festivals. | Tour Dates |
| Tool | Playing smaller festivals in the spring and European festivals in the summer. No Texas dates in a while. | Tour Dates |
| Unknown Mortal Orchestra | Playing Coachella and Firefly | Tour Dates |
| Walk The Moon | Playing Bonnaroo and Hangout Fests. No Texas dates on Spring tour. | Tour Dates |
| Weezer | Playing Coachella. No Texas dates on spring tour with Pixies. | Tour Dates |
| Wiz Khalifa | Playing Coachella. | Tour Dates |
| YG | Playing Coachella. However, no dates after April. | Tour Dates |
| Zedd | Playing Coachella, Firefly, Ultra, and Rodeo Houston. | Tour Dates |
Out
| Artist | Reasoning/Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The 1975 | Playing in South Africa during W1 Playing Austin360 5/3 | Tour Dates |
| AJR | Playing ACL Live 10/30 | Tour Dates |
| The Avett Brothers | Playing two shows at Whitewater Amphitheater (New Braunfels) in May. | Tour Dates |
| Ben Folds | Playing Austin360 on 9/18 | Tour Dates |
| The Black Keys | Conflicting tour dates | Tour Dates |
| Cake | Playing Austin360 on 9/18 | Tour Dates |
| The Chainsmokers | Conflicting tour dates | Tour Dates |
| Deadmau5 | Playing ACL Live in September | Tour Dates |
| dodie | Playing Emo's 9/25. | Emo's Calandar |
| Elton John | Farewell tour is in Canada during W1. Should be noted that W2 is open. | Tour Dates |
| Hootie & The Blowfish | Playing Austin360 6/13. | Austin360 Calendar |
| Imagine Dragons | Headlining F1 in November | Announcement |
| Lany | Playing Stubbs 6/8. | Stubbs Calendar |
| Mac DeMarco | Playing Long Center Lawn on 6/14 | Tour Dates |
| Maggie Rogers | Playing ACL Live 10/20 | Tour Dates |
| Maluma | Playing San Antonio & Dallas weekend before ACL. In Northeast coridor during W1. | Tour Dates |
| Mary J Blige | Playing Austin360 with Nas on 8/3 | Tour Dates |
| Nas | Playing Austin360 with Mary J Blige on 8/3 | Tour Dates |
| P!NK | Headlining F1 in November | Announcement |
| Phil Collins | Playing in New York state and Omaha/Denver during both ACL weekends | Tour Dates |
| Santana | Playing Austin360 7/9 with the Doobie Brothers. | Austin360 Calendar |
| Tedeschi Trucks Band | Playing Bass Concert Hall 11/15 | Tour Dates |
| Vampire Weekend | Playing ACL Live 8/20 & 8/21. | Tour Dates |
Days Until ACL 2019: 158
Included in last update:
- King Princess: Added to CONFIRMED
2019.04.09 18:08 subreddit_statsSubreddit Stats: Music top posts from 2018-04-08 to 2019-04-07 20:22 PDT
Period: 364.32 days| Submissions | Comments | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 1000 | 285217 |
| Rate (per day) | 2.74 | 779.49 |
| Unique Redditors | 704 | 130580 |
| Combined Score | 8315499 | 11971825 |
Top Submitters' Top Submissions
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- Pearl Jam, Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, Stone Temple Pilots, and more join national suicide prevention campaign (29909 points, 527 comments)
- R. Kelly reportedly plans to 'sue everybody' involved in new documentary series (19086 points, 1319 comments)
- 50 Cent reportedly buys 200 front-row tickets to a Ja Rule gig 'so they can be empty' (18204 points, 1198 comments)
- Geoff Emerick, The Beatles’ audio engineer, has died at age 72 (17232 points, 416 comments)
- 'He’s not good enough and he never will be.' - David Crosby has hit back at Ted Nugent's claims he should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (14994 points, 3250 comments)
- Mike Shinoda joined Sum 41 onstage in England to pay tribute to Chester Bennington with a cover of Linkin Park's 'Faint' (14329 points, 475 comments)
- Radiohead, Stevie Nicks, and Rage Against The Machine amongst 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees (14158 points, 1257 comments)
- La Roux slams Fox Business Network for using her song ‘Bulletproof’ to promote armored backpacks for children (12113 points, 831 comments)
- 183690 points, 7 submissions: Sumidiotdude
- Rihanna Sends Trump Cease & Desist for Playing Her Music at Rallies (51059 points, 1415 comments)
- Rihanna turned down this year's Super Bowl Halftime Show in support of Colin Kaepernick (47280 points, 3794 comments)
- Snoop Dogg Gets Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame (29108 points, 760 comments)
- Weezer’s “Africa” Cover Goes Top 100, Their First Hit This Decade (28758 points, 1746 comments)
- Guns N' Roses - 'November Rain' becomes the first music video from the 20th century to reach one billion views on YouTube (22745 points, 1266 comments)
- The Kinks classic album 'The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,' a flop upon release, has finally gone Gold after 50 years (2714 points, 113 comments)
- Dinosaur Jr.'s 1994 song 'Over Your Shoulder' just became a hit song in Japan. Nobody knows why, but this 25 year old song is charting above Queen and Ariana Grande. (2026 points, 143 comments)
- 113360 points, 7 submissions: shabuluba
- Kanye West Announces New Albums Release Dates (solo album June 1st, another album with Kid Cudi on June 8) (28356 points, 1892 comments)
- Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' just broke the global Spotify record for the most streams in a single day (27984 points, 1469 comments)
- Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” Debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (23726 points, 1874 comments)
- The Who confirm first new studio album in 13 years (14652 points, 1092 comments)
- Tracy Chapman sues Nicki Minaj over unauthorised sample (13180 points, 1191 comments)
- DMX to Be Released From Prison Tomorrow (4732 points, 479 comments)
- The Cranberries Announce 'In the End', Final Album With Dolores O’Riordan (out April 26) (730 points, 29 comments)
- 98560 points, 23 submissions: beardlesshipster
- Electric Light Orchestra - Mr. Blue Sky [Progressive Pop] (1977) (16253 points, 632 comments)
- The Offspring - The Kids Aren’t Alright [Punk Rock] (1998) (12059 points, 749 comments)
- Kermit the Frog - The Rainbow Connection [Folk] (1979) (8980 points, 418 comments)
- Schoolhouse Rock - Conjunction Junction [Soul] (1973) (8893 points, 222 comments)
- Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta [Alternative Rock] (1997) (8598 points, 664 comments)
- Fleetwood Mac - Dreams [Soft Rock] (1977) (7956 points, 303 comments)
- The Wallflowers - One Headlight [Alternative Rock] (1996) (7241 points, 619 comments)
- Run the Jewels - Legend Has It [Hip-Hop] (2015) (4133 points, 284 comments)
- Fugazi - Waiting Room [Punk Rock] (1989) (3938 points, 230 comments)
- Fugazi - Waiting Room [Punk Rock] (1988) (3319 points, 163 comments)
- 90464 points, 1 submission: Not_so_ghetto
- With all the justified focus on R Kelly right now let's not forget that Chris Brown is also a complete pile of shit. (90464 points, 4267 comments)
- 89274 points, 4 submissions: Vranak
- Taylor Swift’s new record deal includes a clause for Universal to hand over a portion of the windfall from its Spotify shares in the future. Not just to Swift, but to all artists. A source close to the matter says this was instrumental in Swift's decision to sign with Universal over Sony and Warner. (29453 points, 1067 comments)
- Unlike Ginger Baker and John Bonham, Keith Moon hated drum solos and refused to play them in concert. At a 1974 show, Townshend and Entwistle decided to spontaneously stop playing during 'Wasp Man' to listen to Moon's drum solo. He continued briefly before stopping, shouting 'Drum solos are boring!' (23507 points, 1062 comments)
- 'Rocky Mountain High' was cautiously and briefly left off playlists by numerous radio stations after the FCC was allowed to censor music deemed to promote drug use. John Denver had to publically explain that the 'high' was his innocent description of the sense of peace that he found in the Rockies. (22087 points, 721 comments)
- Nancy Sinatra's no. 1 hit 'These Boots Were Made For Walking' was written by Lee Hazlewood, who intended to record it himself, saying 'it's not really a girl's song', but Nancy talked him out of it, saying that 'coming from a guy it was harsh and abusive, but was perfect for a little girl to sing'. (14227 points, 665 comments)
- 85961 points, 10 submissions: SupremoZanne
- R. Kelly's Daughter Condemns Him as a 'Monster' Amid Allegations (25797 points, 2464 comments)
- John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, denied parole once again (23436 points, 2133 comments)
- Fleetwood Mac member Lindsey Buckingham undergoes emergency heart surgery, suffers vocal cord damage (12254 points, 558 comments)
- Stone Temple Pilots - Interstate Love Song [Alternative/R&B] (7083 points, 558 comments)
- The Simpsons - Dr. Zaius [Comedy/New Wave/Musical] (5919 points, 325 comments)
- Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time [soft rock] (3766 points, 306 comments)
- Kraftwerk - The Robots [Electronica/Funk] (1978) (2916 points, 272 comments)
- Stevie Wonder - Sir Duke [R&B] (2548 points, 141 comments)
- Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off [EXPLICIT/Punk Rock/Political] (1179 points, 108 comments)
- Jamiroquai - Canned Heat [Funk/Rock] (1063 points, 97 comments)
- 78930 points, 1 submission: Sasowex
- Eminem just dropped a new album - Kamikaze - without any promo out of nowhere (78930 points, 5427 comments)
- 73362 points, 1 submission: NickCageIsAWoman
- Eminem Celebrates 10 Years of Sobriety (73362 points, 2771 comments)
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- Chris Brown arrested after a show in Florida on a felony battery warrant. Can we please end this piece of trash's career already? by robbman21 (63166 points, 3054 comments)
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- Fans trying to get Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ to No. 1 for Trump’s UK visit by RosemaryCrafting (60629 points, 4762 comments)
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Free Speed Dating In Irvine Ca 2019
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- 25481 points: PMvaginaExpression's comment in Chris Brown arrested on rape claim in Paris, police officials say
- 21076 points: NoOneSeesTheBarn's comment in Tekashi 6ix9ine faces 32 years to life in prison. Talkingsnour
- 20254 points: catching_signals's comment in Millennials prefer music from 20th century ‘golden age’ to the pop of today
- 19536 points: blueloveyou's comment in After Chris Brown challenges rapper Offset to a fight, he claps back with 'Only People You Go to Toe to Toe With Is Women'
- 19150 points: NevermoreSEA's comment in Eminem just dropped a new album - Kamikaze - without any promo out of nowhere
- 18584 points: Maleebo's comment in Spotify will no longer feature R. Kelly's music in editorial or algorithmic playlists
- 18572 points: stumpdawg's comment in Shakira charged with tax evasion in Spain
- 18552 points: Noreaster0's comment in R. Kelly walks out of Cook County Jail after a fan pays more than $160,000 in overdue child support
- 18441 points: evolj's comment in Eminem's diss track twoards MGK breaks YouTube reccord earning 38.1 millon views in 24 hours!
- 17976 points: QueenJamesKingJordan's comment in After Chris Brown challenges rapper Offset to a fight, he claps back with 'Only People You Go to Toe to Toe With Is Women'
Generated with BBoe's Subreddit Statssubmitted bysubreddit_statstosubreddit_stats [link][comments]
2019.04.06 19:34 TheRoyalGodfreyNovember-February RIAA Certifications
You may have noticed that I haven't done this thread in 4 months. This is probably way too overwhelming but after this one it'll be one month at a time. Source is RIAA website. It's sorted by cert level then release date| Artist | Single | Certification | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Katy Perry | Dark Horse (feat. Juicy J) | 11x Platinum | Capitol |
| Wiz Khalifa | See You Again (feat. Charlie Puth) | Diamond | Atlantic |
| Camila Cabello | Havana (feat. Young Thug) | 7x Platinum | Epic |
| Cardi B | Bodak Yellow | 7x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Lil Uzi Vert | XO Tour Lif3 | 7x Platinum | Atlantic |
| The Weeknd | Starboy | 7x Platinum | XO/Republic |
| Cardi B | I Like It | 6x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Rae Sremmurd | Black Beatles (feat. Gucci Mane) | 6x Platinum | Interscope |
| The Weeknd | Earned It | 6x Platinum | XO/Republic |
| Kanye West | Gold Digger (feat. Jamie Foxx) | 6x Platinum | Def Jam |
| Childish Gambino | Redbone | 5x Platinum | Glassnote |
| Travis Scott | goosebumps (feat. kendrick lamar) | 5x Platinum | Epic |
| Post Malone & Swae Lee | Sunflower | 3x Platinum | Republic |
| Lil Baby & Gunna | Drip Too Hard | 3x Platinum | QC/Motown/YSL/300/Republic/Capitol |
| Lil Baby | Yes Indeed (feat. Drake) | 3x Platinum | QC/Motown/Capitol |
| Khalid & Normani | Love Lies | 3x Platinum | RCA |
| Blocboy JB | Look Alive (feat. Drake) | 3x Platinum | OVO/Warner |
| Rich the Kid | Plug Walk | 3x Platinum | Interscope |
| SZA | Love Galore (feat. Travis Scott) | 3x Platinum | TDE/RCA |
| Tyga | Taste (feat. Offset) | 4x Platinum | Empire |
| Juice WRLD | Lucid Dreams | 4x Platinum | Interscope |
| XXXTentacion | SAD! | 4x Platinum | Bad Vibes |
| Lil Pump | Gucci Gang | 4x Platinum | Warner |
| Ella Mai | Boo'd Up | 4x Platinum | 10 Summers/Interscope |
| Kevin Gates | 2 Phones | 4x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Travis Scott | Antidote | 4x Platinum | Epic |
| The Weeknd | Often | 4x Platinum | Republic/XO |
| Chris Brown | Loyal (feat. Lil Wayne & Tyga) | 4x Platinum | RCA |
| DJ Snake | Taki Taki (feat. Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Cardi B) | 2x Platinum | Geffen |
| Gucci Mane | Wake Up In The Sky (feat. Bruno Mars & Kodak Black) | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Benny Blanco | Eastside (feat. Halsey & Khalid) | 2x Platinum | Friends Keep Secrets |
| YG | Big Bank (feat. 2 Chainz, Big Sean & Nicki Minaj) | 2x Platinum | Def Jam |
| N.E.R.D. | Lemon (feat. Rihanna) | 2x Platinum | Columbia |
| Lil Baby | Freestyle | 2x Platinum | QC/Motown/Capitol |
| Rich the Kid | New Freezer (feat. Kendrick Lamar) | 2x Platinum | Interscope |
| NBA Youngboy | No Smoke | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| 6ix9ine & Nicki Minaj | FEFE | 3x Platinum | TenThousand |
| GoldLink | Crew (feat. Brent Faiyaz & Shy Glizzy) | 3x Platinum | |
| Sheck Wes | Mo Bomba | 3x Platinum | Interscope/Cactus/GOOD |
| Yo Gotti | Rake It Up (feat. Nicki Minaj) | 3x Platinum | Epic |
| Kodak Black | Tunnel Vision | 3x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Kevin Gates | Really Really | 3x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Kid Ink | Show Me (feat. Chris Brown) | 3x Platinum | RCA |
| Miguel | Sure Thing | 3x Platinum | RCA |
| The Weeknd | Wicked Games | 3x Platinum | Republic/XO |
| Miguel | Adorn | 3x Platinum | RCA |
| Kodak Black | ZEZE (feat. Travis Scott & Offset) | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Childish Gambino | This Is America | 2x Platinum | RCA |
| Juice WRLD | All Girls Are The Same | 2x Platinum | Interscope |
| Cardi B | Be Careful | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| The Weeknd | Call Out My Name | 2x Platinum | Republic/XO |
| XXXTentacion | Changes | 2x Platinum | Bad Vibes |
| XXXTentacion | Moonlight | 2x Platinum | Bad Vibes |
| The Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar | Pray For Me | 2x Platinum | TDE/Aftermath/Interscope/XO/Republic |
| NBA Youngboy | Outside Today | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| 6ix9ine | GUMMO | 2x Platinum | TenThousand |
| Miguel | Skywalker (feat. Travis Scott) | 2x Platinum | RCA |
| Rae Sremmrud | Powerglide (feat. Juicy J) | 2x Platinum | Interscope |
| Gucci Mane | Both (feat. Drake) | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| The Weeknd | Reminder | 2x Platinum | Republic/XO |
| The Weeknd | Party Monster | 2x Platinum | Republic/XO |
| PARTYNEXTDOOR | Come and See Me (feat. Drake) | 2x Platinum | OVO/Warner |
| Kodak Black | No Flockin | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Rae Sremmurd | Come Get Her | 2x Platinum | Interscope |
| Rae Sremmurd | This Could Be Us | 2x Platinum | Interscope |
| The Weeknd | Acquinted | 2x Platinum | Republic/XO |
| PARTYNEXTDOOR | Recognize (feat. Drake) | 2x Platinum | OVO/Warner |
| Kevin Gates | I Don't Get Tired (feat. August Alsina) | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| A$AP Ferg | Work (Remix) [feat. French Montana, Trinidad James, A$AP Rocky & ScHoolboy Q] | 2x Platinum | RCA/A$AP |
| Missy Elliott | Lose Control (feat. Ciara & Fat Man Scoop) | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| 21 Savage | a lot | Platinum | Epic |
| Meek Mill | Going Bad (feat. Drake) | Platinum | MMG/Atlantic |
| XXXTentacion | BAD! | Platinum | Bad Vibes |
| Cardi B | Money | Platinum | Altantic |
| Future & Juice WRLD | Fine China | Platinum | Epic/Interscope |
| Lil Baby & Gunna | Never Recover (feat. Drake) | Platinum | QC/Motown/YSL/300/Republic/Capitol |
| Lil Baby & Gunna | Close Friends | Platinum | QC/Motown/YSL/300/Republic/Capitol |
| Lil Peep & XXXTentacion | Falling Down | Platinum | Columbia |
| Kanye West & Lil Pump | I Love It | Platinum | GOOD/Def Jam |
| Travis Scott | Stargazing | Platinum | Epic |
| Travis Scott | Yosemite (feat. NAV & Gunna) | Platinum | Epic |
| Lil Mosey | Noticed | Platinum | Interscope |
| Jucie WRLD | Wasted (feat. Lil Uzi Vert) | Platinum | Interscope |
| NBA Youngboy | Through The Storm | Platinum | Atlantic |
| NBA Youngboy | Genie | Platinum | Atlantic |
| Juice WRLD | Lean Wit Me | Platinum | Interscope |
| Tiesto | Jackie Chan (feat. Preme & Post Malone | Platinum | Republic |
| Playboi Carti | Shoota (feat. Lil Uzi Vert) | Platinum | AWGE/Interscope |
| NBA Youngboy | Overdose | Platinum | Atlantic |
| G-Eazy | 1932 (feat. Yo Gotti & YBN Nahmir) | Platinum | RCA |
| XXXTentacion | Hope | Platinum | Bad Vibes |
| XXXTentacion | The Remedy For A Broken Heart (Why Am I So In Love) | Platinum | Bad Vibes |
| Flipp Dinero | Leave Me Alone | Platinum | Cinematic/Epic/We The Best |
| Logic | Everyday | Platinum | Def Jam |
| YBN Nahmir | Bounce Out Wit That | Platinum | Atlantic |
| NBA Youngboy | Solar Eclipse | Platinum | Atlantic |
| Lil Skies | Nowadays (feat. Landon Cube) | Platinum | All We Got |
| Lil Skies | Lust | Platinum | All We Got |
| YBN Nahmir | Rubbin' Off The Paint | Platinum | Atlantic |
| NF | Lie | Platinum | Caroline |
| Jhene Aiko | While We're Young | Platinum | Def Jam |
| H.E.R. | Best Part (feat. Daneil Caesar) | Platinum | RCA |
| Lil Pump | Boss | Platinum | Warner |
| SZA | Garden (Say It Like Dat) | Platinum | TDE/RCA |
| SZA | Broken Clocks | Platinum | TDE/RCA |
| Gucci Mane | Met Gala (feat. Offset) | Platinum | Atlantic |
| Russ | Ain't Nobody Takin' My Baby | Platinum | Russ |
| Kehlani | CRZY | Platinum | Atlantic |
| Kevin Gates | Time For That | Platinum | Atlantic |
| Miguel | Coffee | Platinum | RCA |
| The Weeknd | Tell Your Friends | Platinum | XO/Republic |
| The Game | 100 (feat. Drake) | Platinum | EOne |
| Big Sean | Paradise | Platinum | Def Jam |
| Miguel | How Many Drinks? | Platinum | RCA |
| Kid Ink | Body Language (feat. Usher & Tinashe) | Platinum | RCA |
| Rae Sremmurd | No Flex Zone | Platinum | Interscope |
| The Weeknd | The Morning | Platinum | XO/Republic |
| The Rej3ctz | Cat Daddy | Platinum | Renaissance Music/Aurelius |
| Kanye West | Diamonds From Sierra Leone (feat. Jay-Z) | Platinum | Def Jam |
| Kanye West | Through the Wire | Platinum | Def Jam |
| Ellie Goulding, Diplo & Swae Lee | Close To Me | Gold | Interscope |
| Lil Uzi Vert | New Patek | Gold | Altantic |
| French Montana | No Stylist (feat. Drake) | Gold | Epic |
| Jucie WRLD | Armed and Dangerous | Gold | Interscope |
| Tyga | Dip | Gold | Empire |
| NBA Youngboy | I Am Who They Say I Am (feat. Kevin Gates & Quando Rondo) | Gold | Atlantic |
| NBA Youngboy | No Mentions | Gold | Atlantic |
| NBA Youngboy | TTG (feat. Kevin Gates) | Gold | Atlantic |
| NBA Youngboy | Drawing Symbols | Gold | Atlantic |
| Aminé | Reel It In | Gold | Republic |
| Trippie Redd | Taking A Walk | Gold | TenThousand |
| Smokepurrp | Nephew (feat. Lil Pump) | Gold | Alamo/Interscope |
| Summer Walker | Girls Need Love | Gold | LVRN/Interscope |
| Iggy Azalea | Kream | Gold | Island |
| Tyga | Swish | Gold | Last Kings |
| Meek Mill | Dangerous (feat. Jeremih & PNB Rock) | Gold | Atlantic |
| Shoreline Mafia | Bands | Gold | Atlantic |
| Mac Miller | Self Care | Gold | Warner |
| Wiz Khalifa | Hopeless Romantic (feat. Swae Lee) | Gold | Atlantic |
| Jucie WRLD | Legends | Platinum | Interscope |
| Kids See Ghosts | Reborn | Gold | Def Jam |
| Rae Sremmurd | Gautemala | Gold | Interscope |
| Jucie WRLD | Black and White | Gold | Interscope |
| Lil Duval | Smile (feat. Snoop Dogg & Ball Greezy) | Gold | Empire |
| Lil Baby | Life Goes On Recover (feat. Gunna & Lil Uzi Vert) | Gold | QC/Motown/Capitol |
| Lil Baby | All of a Sudden (feat. Moneybagg Yo) | Gold | QC/Motown/Capitol |
| NBA Youngboy | Diamond Samurai Teeth | Gold | Atlantic |
| Cardi B | Money Bag | Gold | Atlantic |
| Cardi B | I Do (feat. SZA) | Gold | Atlantic |
| Rich The Kid | Lost It (feat. Quavo & Offset) | Gold | Interscope |
| Ty Dolla $ign | Pineapple (feat. Gucci Mane & Quavo) | Gold | Atlantic |
| Lil Skies | Creeping | Gold | All We Got |
| No Jumper | Hard (feat. Tay-K & BlocBoy JB) | Gold | No Jumper |
| XXXTentacion | Numb | Gold | Bad Vibes |
| XXXTentacion | I Don't Even Speak Spanish LOL | Gold | Bad Vibes |
| TK Kravitz | Ocean (feat. Jacques) | Gold | 300 |
| YG | Suu Whoop | Gold | Def Jam |
| Saweetie | ICY GRL | Gold | Warner Bros |
| Noah Cyrus | Again (feat. XXXTentacion) | Gold | Columbia |
| Miguel | Come Through and Chill (feat. J Cole & Salaam Remi) | Gold | RCA |
| Joyner Lucas | I'm Not Racist | Gold | Atlantic |
| Blac Youngsta | Booty | Gold | Epic |
| Lil Uzi Vert | Dark Queen | Gold | Atlantic |
| Lil Uzi Vert | 20 Min | Gold | Atlantic |
| Gucci Mane | Curve (feat. The Weeknd) | Gold | Atlantic |
| NF | If You Want Love | Gold | Caroline |
| Ski Mask The Slump God | Catch Me Outside | Gold | Republic |
| Cheat Codes | Feels Great (feat. Fetty Wap & CVBZ) | Gold | 300 |
| DeJ Loaf | No Fear | Gold | Columbia |
| Lil Baby | My Dawg | Gold | QC/Motown/Capitol |
| Bhad Bhabie | These Heaux | Gold | Atlantic |
| NBA Youngboy | GG | Gold | Atlantic |
| NBA Youngboy | Grafiti | Gold | Atlantic |
| Baka Not Nice | Live Up To My Name | Gold | OVO/Warner |
| Gucci Mane | Tone It Down (feat. Chris Brown) | Gold | Atlantic |
| SZA | Supermodel | Gold | TDE/RCA |
| SZA | Go Gina | Gold | TDE/RCA |
| SZA | Doves In The Wind (feat. Kendrick Lamar) | Gold | TDE/RCA |
| SZA | Normal Girl | Gold | TDE/RCA |
| SZA | Drew Barrymore | Gold | TDE/RCA |
| Ski Mask The Slump God | Take A Step Back | Gold | Republic |
| Ski Mask The Slump God | BabyWipe | Gold | Republic |
| Kodak Black | Conscience (feat. Future) | Gold | Atlantic |
| NF | How Could You Leave Us | Capitol | |
| DJ Drama | Wishing (feat. Chris Brown, Skeme & Lyquin) | Gold | Eone |
| Jessie Reyez | Figures | Gold | Island |
| OT Genasis | Push It | Gold | Atlantic |
| Rae Sremmurd | By Chance | Gold | Interscope |
| Rae Sremmurd | Up Like Trump | Gold | Interscope |
| Yung Gravy | Mr. Clean | Gold | Republic |
| Kevin Gates | Pride | Gold | Atlantic |
| Miguel | Waves | Gold | RCA |
| Gucci Mane | 1st Day Out The Feds | Gold | Atlantic |
| Kevin Gates | Satellites | Gold | Atlantic |
| Kehlani | You Should Be Here | Gold | Atlantic |
| NF | Mansion | Gold | Capitol |
| Jon Bellion | Woke the Fuck Up | Gold | Capitol |
| Russ | Too Many | Gold | Russ |
| K Camp | Slum Anthem | Gold | Interscope |
| Kevin Gates | Posed To Be In Love | Gold | Atlantic |
| Ca$h Out | She Twerkin | Gold | Eone |
| Janelle Monaé | Tightrope (feat. Big Boi) | Gold | Atlantic |
| Nas | NY State Of Mind | Gold | Columbia |
| Nas | The World Is Yours | Gold | Columbia |
| Otis Redding | Try A Little Tenderness | Gold | Rhino |
| Artist | Album | Certification | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Weeknd | Starboy | 3x Platinum | XO/Republic |
| Bruno Mars | 24K Magic | 3x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Travis Scott | Astroworld | 2x Platinum | Epic |
| Migos | Culture II | 2x Platinum | QC/Motown/Capitol |
| Kevin Gates | Islah | 2x Platinum | Atlantic |
| Nas | Illmatic | 2x Platinum | Columbia |
| Lil Wayne | Tha Carter V | Platinum | YM |
| Eminem | Kamikaze | Platinum | Aftermath/Interscope |
| Nicki Minaj | Queen | Platinum | YM/CM/Republic |
| NBA Youngboy | Until Death Call My Name | Platinum | Atlantic |
| J. Cole | KOD | Platinum | Roc Nation |
| Juice WRLD | Goodbye & Good Riddance | Platinum | Interscope |
| NF | Perception | Platinum | Caroline |
| Kodak Black | Project Baby 2 | Platinum | Atlantic |
| 2 Chainz | Pretty Girls Love Trap Music | Platinum | Def Jam |
| G-Eazy | The Beautiful & The Damned | Platinum | RCA |
| Kodak Black | Dying To Live | Gold | Atlantic |
| Metro Boomin | Not All Heroes Wear Capes | Gold | Republic |
| Meek Mill | Championships | Gold | MMG/Atlantic |
| The Carters | Everything is Love | Gold | Roc Nation/Parkwood |
| Lil Baby | Harder Than Ever | Gold | QC/Motown/Capitol |
| Lil Skies | Life of A Dark Rose | Gold | Atlantic |
| Miguel | War & Leisure | Gold | RCA |
| H.E.R. | H.E.R. | Gold | RCA |
| Jhene Aiko | Trip | Gold | Def Jam |
| Solange | A Seat at the Table | Gold | Columbia |
| PARTYNEXTDOOR | P3 | Gold | OVO/Warner |
| Yo Gotti | The Art of the Hustle | Gold | Epic |
| Yo Gotti | I Am | Gold | Epic |
| Kid Cudi | Indicud | Gold | Republic |
2019.04.05 18:39 jesusworemink2 albums
- Guava Island is a visual album by Childish Gambino, the film is starting Donald Glover. We’ve gotten this from the trailer as well as the director of photography’s resumé.
- The songs we’ve seen/heard during tour didn’t have a tropical vibe or anything. Only song I could see being with guava is Saturday n Summertime Magic. Algorithm, Human Sacrifice, and All Night dont really have an Island vibe to them.
- It’s Donald n it’s Gambinos last run, I don’t think they’d drop 1 album n say “Ight let’s pack it up.”. Gambino is too multi faceted to end with just an album u feel me? I think this last era is a culmination of everything he’s wanted to do since BTI but fully realized now.
Then later on in the year we get the “actual” album, his last album with human sacrifice n all that.
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It’s just a theory n I have no real proof that there will be two albums, all we know fs rn is there’s new music tired to Guava Island and that it’s a “Childish Gambino film starring Donald Glover”Lmk what y’all think
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- Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music ...
- Results - YouTube
The official video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley “Never Gonna Give You Up” was a global smash on its release in July 1987, topping the charts ... We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.
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