Echosmith and Rachel Platten debut major label albums were cheesy fun and what set them apart was that they sounded more like classic pop songs instead of what passes as current pop, which is basically vaguely EDM with that weird dolphin sound in ever song. So it was very disappointing that both of their new songs of their sophomore albums have that same vague EDM sound like everything else there right now.
Another Rihanna video and another Rihanna video where she wears a see-thru top. Why even wear clothes at this point.
Get You Back – Mayer Hawthorne
So we have reached the end of the Mayer Hawthorne noir trilogy and, well, it ended like every noir tale ever made, with him turning on the femme fatale. Guess I should have see that coming.
She Burns – Foy Vance
Putting hot chicks as a stand in is a music video staple, but Foy Vance (not to be confused with Vance Joy, the Riptide guy; not that I made that mistake or anything) could have done better than Aria. Should have tried to get Hannah instead.
Rock music has slowly been dying for years and pop-rock is also nearly nonexistent anymore. Which makes it even more surprising that Neon Trees have managed multiple hits this decade. To the surprise of probably no one, lead singer Tyler Glenn came out as gay last year despite being a Mormon. His faith and sexuality are in stark contrast to each other in his first solo song and music video. I am just disappointed as catchy as the best Neon Trees songs are, this new song just sounds like every crappy dance-pop song that is making top forty unlistenable these days.
2013 was a great year for new music, Lorde, Haim, Chvrches, and Daughter all put out very good debuts, but my favorite album by a new album was Same Trailer, Different Park by Kacey Musgraves (it came in second on my list of the 25 Best Albums of 2013). So her follow was one of my most anticipated albums of 2015. Except it became a little less anticipated when I heard the first single Biscuits which sounds exactly like Follow Your Arrow off the first album both musically and lyrically ("Mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy" is literally a left over line from Follow Your Arrow). I began to fear a Mumford and Sons situation where the second album ends up sounding like B-sides leftover from a stellar first album (Family Is Family which was released last week did not quash those fears). But I will say the music video for Biscuits is more entertaining than that of Follow Your Arrow although thanks to the bouncing biscuit, I learned that the first line of the chorus is "Hoe your own row" and not, "Hold your own rope" like I originally thought.
Ever since the turn of the century, RnB music has gotten worse and worse. And with the lack of good RnB meant the lack of good baby making music. Really there has not been many reasons to update the Baby Making Playlist since Babyface sank into obscurity. And then two years ago Miguel came along and lit the bedroom flames again with songs like Adorn and the kind of date-rapey How Many Drinks. I have high hopes for his follow up and though Coffee may not be as smooth as Adorn, it will certainly worth an add to the Baby Making Playlist.
Love 3X - ZZ Ward
I kind of wanted to like ZZ Ward's album but it was trying a little hard to be important but just failed despite have a couple good, but no great songs. That first album had a post Adele-bluesy feel to it, but judging by the first single from her sophomore album, she is going for more of a pop sound with this faux-Jamaican, cheesy fun ditty. It is definitely catchier than anything on that first album, but I still think Put the Gun Down is still a better song overall. But the music video is a little weird because for some reason ZZ has decided to look like Ashlee Simpson circa her new nose phase. At least that silly hat work better with the shorter hair.
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.
There comes a time in every guy’s life when a friend announces to you that they are gay. Then you have to decide whether you should be honored that he trusts you with something so personal or slap then upside the head for not coming out earlier because you pretty much already knew because he had done everything to convey he was gay except actually hit on you (then there is the uncomfortable situation of deciding if you should be relieved or offended they never hit on you). That was what was going through my head when the lead singer of Neon Trees Tyler Glenn recently came out as gay in Rolling Stone. Seriously dude, I think pretty much everyone already assumed that because you did everything short of making out with dudes in your videos. I would have been much more surprised if he announced his engagement to his female drummer.
Neon Trees were creative in the wake of The Killers, both with ties to Las Vegas playing pop rock, new wave infused music with a modern twist. For their second album, The Killers decided they want to be more rock than pop and tried to write Bruce Springsteen epics. Neon Trees went the other way going further down the new wave rabbit whole. Forget that the first two tracks off the their third album have titles like Love in the 21st Century and Text Me in the Morning, as you can tell from the album cover, Pop Psychology is straight out of the early eighties.
The first two Neon Trees albums followed the template, one extremely catchy first single, a couple good songs, and a bunch of filler. They have two multiplatinum songs and two albums that have even gone gold. Pop Psychology breaks that trend. But not in a good way. Those two previously mentioned songs with embarrassing titles go right up the cheesy like then leaps right by it. Sleeping with a Friend is the first single and best hope to catch lightning three times, but only ends up being mildly catchy and easily forgettable.
As overtly cheesy the first couple songs are, things do get a little more interesting in the second half starting with Unavoidable. The song is dreamy a duet with female where the syths finally get toned down. This song probably could have been a radio hit back into 1983, but thirty-one years later it probably too boring to get play. So Pop Psychology has no great songs, a couple good ones and a bunch of filler. It looks like Neon Trees may be resigned to two-hit wonderdom which is too back for the band because it is not enough to have a lengthy career and too many hits to be a much more celebrated one hit wonder. Thirty years later, more people remember Dexy's Midnight Runners than Level 42.
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.
When “A Jonas Akerlund Film” popped up at the beginning of the new Coldplay video, I expected a Best Music Video of 2014 contender. Akerlund has directed such great and thought provoking videos such as Smack My (Expletive Deleted) Up by The Prodigy, Turn the Page by Metallica, and Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful. I was slightly disappointed that the video turned out to be The Prestige meets U2’s All I Want Is You video seen through an oldtimey filter.
Linkin Park has made some creative, interactive music videos lately, and their latest is an actual video game (lean more here). Kind of looks like darker version of Sonic the Hedgehog. It is much cooler than the song which weirdly tries to mix early eighties heavy metal and late eighties hip-hop courtesy of the Microphone Fiend Rakim with mixed results.
The first music video off of the upcoming Neon Trees album had a definite eighties vibe. They went even further with their latest video which I am pretty sure Thompson Twins and / or Culture Club made the exact same music video back in the decade.
In the annuls of rock history, lead singers can go on to have successful solo careers, the band can go onto side projects no one cares about or joins a supergroup. So history is not on the side of Bleachers, headed by the Fun. guitarist. But the first single is catchy in an New Wave song I cannot quite place that it sound like kind of way. The whole therapist themed music video is entertaining.
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.
I always Neon Trees would have fit in well during the pop-rock band of the late ninties (as signified by having a McG directed music video), but the band went full eighties with their latest video and I am not sure if it make me nostalgic or is giving me bad flashbacks.
Who would have guessed the Lilest Lilith Fair music video would be made by Colbie Caillat in 2014. How did Paula Cole not make this video seventeen years ago?
Late last year a video circulated the internets claiming to be every country song of 2013 which features every song which sang about trucks driving down dirt roads, chicks in blue jeans named “Girl,” cold ones and about ten other country clichés. Really the video could have been every country radio hit of the past thirty years. And even though every country song that gets played on the radio sounds the same, Pretty Little Liars’ Lucy Hale somehow managed to come out with the most bland country song possibly ever. Even the music video looked recycled from some Carrie Underwood outtake. It somehow managed to be the most bland country song possibly ever.
I am not the biggest fan of Imagine Dragons or Kendrick Lamar and was weary when it was announced they were going to perform together at the Grammy’s but not only was it was the best performance of the night it also gave up the most GIF-able moments with many cutaways to Taylor Swift dancing and what may have been the first public appearance of Lorde smiling. I got excited when I saw a Kendrick Lamar Remix of Radioactive hit iTunes after the performance. Unfortunately the studio version just sounding like someone cut and pasted a random Kendrick rant that sort of had some time signature and put it in the middle of Radioactive. I never understand why artists do not put their award show performances on iTunes. I would have spent about ten dollars on this year’s Grammy’s alone. Instead I have to debate on whether to hunt down crappy version that someone ripped from their television. It certainly would have been nice to buy a high quality version of this performance without the lengthy bleeps or the Copy of A / My God Is the Sun closer without getting cut off (hey Grammy’s seriously just start at 7:00 and go four hours because that is how long the show overruns every year anyway).
It is a shame that Neon Trees did not form fifteen years ago because they are making the catchiest pop-rock music since bands like Smash Mouth ruled the radio and MTV with McG directed videos. Their ultra catchy Animal found its way onto pop radio and had anyone who heard it singing along but the time the second chorus came around but they were a band that no one really talked about because the acts that surrounded them were bigger than life personas than actual musicians.
The band is back with their sophomore album Picture Show with a just as catchy lead single Everybody Talks which may not be as easy to sing along with as Animal was but it should get your head bobbing whenever it comes on the radio. If Moving in the Dark is not slated to be the second single, it should. The song sounds like a Brit Pop band trying to create an anthem out of the early Bruce Springsteen catalogue and as weird as it sound, somehow succeeds. Mad Love shows that the band can even pull off a sweet synch-pop song.
Unfortunately much like albums by those pop-rock bands of the late nineties, once you get past those three or so obvious singles the rest of the album becomes less and less memorable or sticks out for the wrong reasons. The bridge of Hooray for Hollywood just consists of the lead singing listing a bunch of famous people that died because of their drug use and ends with him weirdly saying, “Amy, Whitney” back and forth way too many time. But when they hit stride, you will not find anything catchier. Maybe they can even inspire a Fastball comeback.
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.
A month ago Neon Trees released an animated version for this video, but I definitely the Zombie Bikers from Hell version much better. But this begs the question, why are there not any drive-in movie theaters with roller skating waitresses?
Another week, another new K'Naan music, this time with 100% more Nelly Furtado. And I am all for anti-bulling sentiment, but how about not defacing property with profanities?
As a dude, I have naturally never seen an episode of The Bachelor, but I guestimate that the latest Train video is basically every episode of the reality show but with twenty extra chicks hanging around.
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.
This may be one of the saddest comebacks in recent memory. The song is kind of lame and the music video even lamer (c’mon Van Halen, just because you made the exact same video twenty-eight years ago does not make it all right because you made this one in black and white). Maybe Michael Anthony should be happy he got booted out of the band for Eddie’s son so he did not have to taint his legacy.
I wonder if it says anything about me that when the Ouija Board started to spell H*E*L my first thought was the spirit was writing “Help”? But Neon Trees seems like one of those bands, had they came out a decade earlier would have been huge thanks to a McG assisted video.
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.
It should have been Taylor Swift’s week with the release of her highly anticipated junior album, but Kanye West just had to steal her thunder once again by releasing his thirty-five minute film just days before. Runaway is kind of boring and would have worked much better as individual music videos with a common theme. Like the song Runaway is much more digestible as a nine minute video (well the five minute version is more digestible as it cut off the fuzzed out ending).
Speaking of Swift, on her new album she has a song titled Dear John that may or may not be about John Mayer (okay, it probably is). The only problem that Jessie James also recently released a song titled Dear John that may or may not be about John Mayer (okay, it totally is considering seventy-five of the lyrics are composed of titles of Mayer songs). Which begs the question, do we really need two songs written about Jon Mayer released in the span of a month?
You really cannot go wrong starting a video with a Big reference (even if the movie came out in 1988 and the lead character wanted to be, well, big). Then throw in a lead singer with a Thriller jacket and imitating Billy Idol (at least I think that is what he was going for). Thank you Neon Trees. But what was with the random Corey Feldman sighting?
Even more eighties references, this time from Fatlip (you may better know his group The Pharcyde) reuniting him with Spike Jones who directed the groups seminal Drop video.
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meets U2’s All I Want Is You video seen through an oldtimey filter.
reference (even if the movie came out in 1988 and the lead character wanted to be, well, big). Then throw in a lead singer with a