Were those children in the beginning supposed to be young Christina Aguilera and Demi Lovato because the former has to have a decade on the latter. It is kind of weird to have this female empowerment song and video that ends with: directed by a dude. As for the song itself, meh.
Lost My Mind - Lily Allen
When Lily Allen released her last album, songs went into two categories, her usually bratty songs that she did on her first two album while the other half were more adult sounding. At the time I said I wished Lily would dump the bratty persona and just do grown up songs. Her new album is mostly adult sounding, unfortunately it is mostly boring.
Elton John was made for MTV. Too bad most of his best songs predated the music video format. Weird that \Little Big Town went with a Phantom Zone look for their version of Rocket Man.
Someone pointed out to me that my list of the 100 Best Songs of 2017 was very chick heavy. Looking back at previous year end lists, it looked like a bit of an anomaly with the fairer sex lucky to make up a quter of previous list. But looking at my most anticipated music of this spring, maybe it was not an anomaly but a trend because most albums I am looking forward to are by female singer. Here are five albums I am really looking forward to over the next couple months
1. Love Is Dead - Chvrches (May 25) - There used to be a sophomore slump, but I wonder if maybe the third album is the hardest. If you have a great sound, you can just duplicate that on your second album and still have it sound good. But it is hard to stretch it into three albums without sounding tired. Chvrches released two very good album based around melodic electronic sounds. From the first single they did not sound like they were switching things up but things got a little more interesting with the second single where they brought into the singer from The National whos voice is a start difference to that of the Chvrches singer. Hopefully the album takes more chances.
2. No Shame - Lily Allen (June 8) - Speaking of third albums, Sheesuz was a turning point for Lily Allen. It seemed like half of the songs were he same snotty songs that she sculpted to perfection of her first two albums, but the other showed huge growth with a more mature Lily. I am actually hoping for more maturity from her fourth outing.
3. Dirty Computer - Janelle Monáe (April 28) - Janelle Monoe started out as this weird alt-RnB songstress but her latest Prince inspired song, Make Me Feel, may be the catchiest pop song you hear this year but still does not lose that coolness from her early work.
4. Golden Hour - Kacey Musgraves (March 30) - Musgraves is also on that tricky third album. Except her second album was a bit rougher. But both singles released from the new album definitely do not sound anything like the down home songs from the first two albums.
5. When My Heart Felt Volcanic - The Aces (April 6) - Rock's demised has been discussed for a while now, but one causality that does not really get talked about is that pop rock or power pop is pretty dead. Whether you consider it pop with a little edge or rock with a heavy dose of sugar, you just do not hear that anymore. Here are four friends from Utah, just a guitar, bass, and drums, and no weird computer sounds to be heard. Very familiar but very refreshing since no one does it anymore.
Here are a bunch of album that will at the very least be worth a spin on Spotify including the first album from a nineties one hit wonder, their first since that decades, and a bizarre collaboration from an eighties New Wave singer and nineties reggae artist.
When I released my Winter 2018 Music Preview, one thing was clear: ain’t nothing is coming out until maybe the summer. At least nothing by anyone people have actually heard of. Winter is usually the time when you have to dig deep looking for new artist. And here is one to look out for: Jade Bird. Lottery is one of those instantly catchy songs you cannot get out of your head even after one listen. The song is a mix of pop and folk while also harkening back to the alt rock nineties Liith Fair days.
It seemed to take forever for the last Lily Allen, it seems like she did not take the same amount of time for a new one. Not only did she release a new single, she also popped up on one by some dude named Burna Boy. I do like her song better, it continues the growth from the last album which was plit in two, a new grown up Lily and old snotty Lily. I hope the next one is all grown up Lily.
The Marshall Mathers Album 2 was my favorite Eminem album since… maybe ever. But oh my goodness, Revival, what was he trying to revive, the bad Relapse album. Sad thing is this song is about how a perfectionist Eminem is yet this and the whole album is actually worse than Relapse. I think it was wise Beyoncé sat out the music video, maybe should have skipped the song completely.
There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.
URL Badman was probably my least favorite song on the new Lily Allen album. As a wise man once said, you never beef down an d Lily going after lowly bloggers should be beneath her at this point. This is way I liked the more grown up Lily on Sheezus. But this may be the best music video with those freaky special effects.
I am always fascinating with one-shot music video and the new Spoon one was looking like it was going to be one of the more boring ones (slow-mo also seems like creating in one shots). Then the Godzilla sized toddlers showed up at the end. Awesome.
Who knew Sansa Stark could sing? Okay it is not the best song in the world. Bastille is pulling out the big guns in hopes of not being relegated to one hit wonder bin. I am not sure it will work, should have held out for Arya, but she is probably holding out for Coldplay to be in a brit-pop-rock music video.
Country radio has never been that intellectually stimulating, but last year it came to a head at just how mind numbingly clichéd at just how the genre got when someone made a video how every hit talked about trucks, dirt roads to river beds at sunset, beer, and of course girls named “girl” in tight blue jeans (see Why Country Music Was Awful in 2013). To give you a sense of just how much Bro Country has taken control of country radio, there has not been a female to top the Billboard Country Airplay Chart by herself since November 2012 when Carrie Underwood did that (female featuring groups like The Band Perry and Lady Antebellum have topped the chart in the interim). Well, it took seven months after that video exposed all the clichés but the Bro Country backlash is finally starting. First in line are newcomers Maddie and Tae taking aim at the biggest country singers like Blake Shelton and Florida Georgia Line, not so subtlety referencing Bro Country’s biggest hits in their Girl in a Country Song. The song and video are fun, but not all together great or probably a game changer. But in its second week it did move up to number 45 on the Country Airplay chart.
When Beyoncé dropped her album late in December, I was hoping she would chance the promotional game. Promotional cycles have started so early, by the time an album is released; most people have already moved only the next big new thing. But realistically only about five artists these days could airdrop their album out of nowhere and be as successful as Beyoncé. Unfortunately Lily Allen is not one of them. Depressingly her biggest hit stateside is being sampled by T-Pain. None of her solo music has even cracked the top forty in America.
So her rollout has been a more traditional as she has released a new song every month since November. That is six of the fourteen songs that appear on Sheezus. And with only one song being released at a time it is easy to pick the songs apart. When she released Hard Out Here I was just so happy to have Lily Allen back in my life that I initially ignored its shortcomings. But after a couple weeks, I realized that the song just was not as good as the tongue and cheek music video. The auto-tune was annoying, the lyrics about the double standards have done much better and the bridge trying to reclaim the derogatory word for women by just repeating it again and again for the bridge just did not work.
The follow up Air Balloon worked better as it was a true return to form for Allen. It was a bouncy track was reminiscent of her first album but much more fun than snarky and was good despite a weird lyric about Kurt Cobain and Elvis. Then came L8 CMMR which was originally on the Girls Soundtrack. At the time it was released I was just hoping it was just something she gave to the television show because it was not good enough for the album but unfortunately popped up on the track list to Sheezus too when it was released.
Our Time continued the trend of one good, one lackluster song. It is a more chill song than she has ever done, a just kick back and relax type of song. Then we got to hear the title track and to call it lackluster would be nice. Sure the M.I.A. type track sounded cool, but the lyrics about having a period was just embarrassing while the chorus was clunky where it is unclear if she is praising the likes of Rihanna and Lorde or burying Katy Perry and Lady Gaga (which she rhymes with LOLO ha ha). Maybe worst of all, Yeezus himself Kanye West gets nary a mention on the track.
The rest of Sheezus follows the trend of switching between good and uninspiring. You can really split the songs into the two camps with the songs where she tries to be her old snarky self not living up to her previous work while the more “grown up” tracks are much better. On former side there are songs like URL Badman (which is a worse title than L8 CMMR) and its pseudo dubstep breakdown that just do not work. While on the flip side a song like Take My Place and Close Your Eyes (which may be the most awkward slow jam ever… and I mean that in a good way) are dreamy throwbacks to mellower seventies. Insincerely Yours actually splits the difference with more boring snarky comments with a backing track that would not have been out of place on Solid Gold. Then As Long as I Got You is a more uplifting version of Not Fair but this time she co-opts zydeco music instead of country.
Lily Allen stormed the public consciousness on a wave of retro music that still managed to sound modern, which was copied by Amy Winehouse and Adele, and lyrics dipped in a heavy dose of, which was copied by every female rapper since. Three albums in and that stark it getting a little stale. Yet the highlights of Sheezus show Allen at her most mature or most vulnerable like on the very sweet cover of Somewhere Only We Know. Hopefully on future albums, Lily does not force the snark because that was her claim to fame in her early years because her growth on this album can sustain a full album down the line.
There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.
Oh Pharrell, the hat was a good way to grab attention at the Grammy’s, but after you sold it to Arby’s, that should have been it, going with different colors of the same hat is being to be a bad look. And what is with the random Kelly Osbourne sighting in the video?
I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the latest Neon Trees album as a whole. First Things First did not stand out when I listened to it in the context of the album, but now hearing it outside the context of the album, I like it much more than the other singles released from it. Plus the video does a really god job creating a connection with the band.
Just last week I was mentioning that if something if someone claims something is not racist, I am inclined to go into it assuming that it is racist. Avril Lavigne set off an internet firestorm with accusations of racism with her new video so much that it was actually pulled for a short time. Stupidly someone put it back up, not because it is overtly racist (she is not doing anything that Gwen Stefani did a decade ago for a whole album cycle) but because the video, racist or not, and song may be the most embarrassing someone posted this year.
Beyoncé changed the game late last year dropping a visual album out of nowhere on a Thursday night about a week before Christmas. But that change looks to be slow because most of the albums released early this year were announced at least a month in advance aside the new Kid Cudi album (which went as quickly as it came) and Skrillex whose new album drops today after just announcing it last week. Granted there are still plenty of names that are supposedly at work at a new album that could break the internet much like Mrs. Carter (considering they just teamed back up at SXSW, could a second Watch the Throne album be far behind) like Adele and Taylor Swift. Here are some albums that will not be air dropping out of nowhere over the next couple months since they already have hard release dates. Click in the artists name to be taken to their iTunes page and the album tile or cover art to pre-order on Amazon.
1. Sheezus – Lily Allen (May 5): Forget Yeezus, 2014 will be the year of Sheezus. After teasing new songs for the past four months, Lily Allen finally announced her comeback album which will feature the previously released Hard Out Here, Air Balloon, L8 CMMR, Out Time (as well as the Somewhere Only We Know cover on the Bonus Track Version). I am most interested in the title track, if it is half as good as her takedown of Window Shopper’s Window Shopper off her debut, it will be a great start for the new album.
2. Ghost Stories – Coldplay (May 19): The band has always been considered the poppier version of Radiohead, but it still came as a shock when their first new music was the non-pop song Midnight which sounded like Radiohead by way of Bon Iver. A week later the released a more conventional Magic but with its throbbing bass and drum machine mixed with Chris Martin not in falsetto, it still was one of the least Coldplay songs the band has ever recorded it. It should be interesting to hear what the rest of the album sound like, will they be pushing their limits even further or is the rest what we have come to expect from the band?
3. A Dotted Line – Nickel Creek (April 1): 2013 was the year of the reunion and that has seeped into 2014 with the first new album from the Afghan Whigs in sixteen years and Outkast headlining basically every festival this summer. I am more interested in the reunited Nickel Creek who will be putting out the first album in almost ten years. Where most reunion albums are just an excuse to go on a more profitable reunion tour, the album's first single Destination is as good as anything in the band’s library.
4. Supernova – Ray LaMontagne (May 6): Ray started out as the folk guy but on his last album he recruited a full band for a fuller sound and produced the album himself. The Pariah Dogs are sitting the new album out and benched himself when it came to production. Instead The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach is doing the producing the album and if first single, and title track, are indication, Ray is going for a seventies pop-rock vibe.
5. TBA – U2: This album should be higher on the list but it is becoming more and more unclear just when we are going to hear the first U2 album since 2009. When they dropped Invisible during the Super Bowl, a spring or summer released seemed inevitable, but after the song was met with a resounding, “eh” it was reported by Billboard that the album and tour would be pushed back to 2015 and they would go back into the studio with Ryan Tedder (ugg) and Paul Epworth (Adele). But that story was refuted by a spokesman for the band who said, “U2’s album is planned for this year, is still on track and touring plans haven’t been confirmed yet.” Though still no date, or even timeframe was given. So maybe there will be a U2 album this year, but maybe not until the holiday season. Maybe after all this gossip, maybe they will just end up Beyoncing the album just before Christmas.
Here is a list of more albums coming out this spring that will at the very least worth a spin on Spotify.
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