o-song-blog

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Me updating this tumblr doesn’t seem to happen these days, does it? So I’m trying a tinyletter thingy, like all the cool people. The link is above and I plan to update it something like weekly? We shall see!

Oh, and me on Macklemore’s ‘Downtown’ at Junkee.

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Recent writings

(i.e., the entry I do where I update the tumblr after ages) 

The most recent thing: yup, One Direction have finally got to the top of the charts with ‘Drag Me Down’. I thus compare them to fellow chart-topping teen sensations Metallica, talk about Bob’s Burgers and wonder about the team of writer-producers who seem to put together most of their songs. 

Oh, and the previous #1 in Australia before 1D was Lost Frequencies’ ‘Are You With Me?’. They seemed unusual to me in being a purer sort of dance music than usually gets to the top of the charts here - it had dance music logic rather than pop logic. 

Before that: Meghan Trainor and John Legend’s ‘Like I’m Gonna Lose You’, more of a song-for-Idol-winner kind of thing than the problematic/cutesy 50s-rap thing she’s better known for. Seemed to me at the time to be a bit of a default #1.

ALSO! I have started writing some feature reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald, which is pretty awesome. Here’s the first: me weaving together my thoughts on recent albums by Desaparecidos, Frank Turner and Neil Young.

And that thing I do for Max TV where I figure out what happened on this day in music history and write about it. Max’s demographic means there’s lots of 1980s/1990s stuff which is fine by me, so here’s me on, e.g., Michael Jackson buying the Beatles’ publishing rights in 1985, and Weird Al getting into the 1985 Aussie charts with ‘Like A Surgeon’.

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Me again at Junkee with 2000 words about topics ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Lewis Hamilton, from Katy Perry’s boobs to Taylor Swift’s exes, from manufactured celebrity beefs to a single titled The Fourth Single From Unit. There’s lots to talk about - which is undoubtedly the point of something like ‘Bad Blood’ (as I argue!), which is a better talking point than song. You know, I could have written another, entirely different, 2000 word essay on the song, talking about the pure pop song as being an impure hybrid, and previous pop feuds (Blur vs Oasis, Lynyrd Skynyrd vs Neil Young, Eamon vs Frankee). Or on the music and how it functions...or....

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My Number Ones column is now at Junkee! (TheVine stopped taking articles from outside contributors, and old pal/editor Jake Cleland recently left). So yes, this week, it’s a cover by an 18-year-old from Brisbane of the old Lesley Gore song - produced by the famous Quincy Jones (apparently, anyway - I suspect his name’s been attached to it, but that he at most executive produced it - but you never know). I’m not a fan of the cover, but it’s still a great song. And it’s fascinating to see a cover at the top of the charts - first time in a while.

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Other recent writings

This March 25th Number Ones column on Lunchmoney Lewis’s ‘Bills’ (Lewis is the son of the one in Inner Circle who wrote ‘Bad Boys’ and ‘Sweat (A La La La Long)’, and the song reminds me a bit of Cee-Lo’s novelty pop soul. If Australia’s recent track record as the canary in the coalmine for future US hits is any indication, America will hear more of this one.

My March Music Reader column, linking to lots of writing on Courtney Barnett, some writing about the recent ‘Blurred Lines’/Marvin Gaye’s estate stuff, Tom Ewing on Britney, people who are still fans of Gary Glitter, Michelangelo Matos on Aphex Twin, a tribute to the great Lesley Gore, Stephen Thomas Erlewine on the first flowering of rock retromania, and the forgetting of hip-hop.

My March Science Reader column, featuring stuff on the cancer treatment lies of Jess Ainscough, #thatdress, the role of junk DNA, science’s struggle to define emotions, why left-brain right-brain stuff is garbage, what foreskin does, and the amazing ability of astronomers to see supernova reruns.

This February 26th Number Ones column on Ellie Goulding’s ‘Love Me Like You Do’, a song from the soundtrack of 50 Shades Of Grey. I argue that the song is meant to parallel the audience’s reaction to what is apparently at least intended to be a sweet love story (and that it is really a bit too ‘song written to a brief’ even for Max Martin).

My February Music Reader column, featuring Johann Hari on the politically-motivated hounding of Billie Holiday, Anwen Crawford on the whole Beck v. Beyonce thing, Jon Ronson on the legend of the never-was-a-soul-singer Mingering Mike, an interview with Noel Gallagher that actually goes beyond the quote-a-minute schtick, Jessica Hopper interviewing Bjork, oral histories of Laurel Canyon singersongwriter stuff and shoegaze, and Marcello Carlin tearing Wet Wet Wet a new one. 

My February Science Reader column, featuring stuff on hypersomnia (the opposite of insomnia), the sad tale of JFK’s sister Rosemary, Aboriginal memories of the end of the last Ice Age, a piece with the amazing title “Barns Are Painted Red Because Of The Physics Of Dying Stars”, a piece on why people doubt science, how optical illusions work, the increasingly likely spectre of using geoengineering to solve climate change, why we are terrible at keeping our facts straight when we tell our stories, and why people who say Putin has Asperger’s don’t really know what they’re talking about.

And I continue to do a daily column for Max TV’s website called On This Day, which discusses something or other from music history every day. The content falls away into the ether unless the Wayback Machine archives it. What’s there today, as I look at the website: a thing about ACDC in 1980 - 35 years ago today - deciding on Brian Johnson as the new lead singer to replace Bon Scott.

Phew.

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New #1 single in Australia is ‘Lean On’ by Major Lazer. To my ears, the song fits in a genre I’m calling jaywave - that is, the drowsy electronica that is currently the stock in trade of radio station Triple J (’Lean On’ is one of their most played songs at the moment). And because of Triple J’s recent Taylor Swift related controversy, the song was a good chance to think about the whys and hows of Triple J and the mainstream vs underground stuff in a music world where authenticity no longer matters in quite the same way it used to.

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Writing my New Number Ones column for the Vine, about Rihanna, Kanye, and Macca's 'FourFiveSeconds', I had the idea of making the Authenticity Bingo card above (with some help from some kind folks on Facebook). I also, predictably, talk about the Grammys, the actual song, the history and politics of authenticity, and liking music in 2015.

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Things I've written recently!

I am bad at updating Tumblr.

There's been two #1 singles and thus two Number Ones columns I've written since the last I thing I linked to on Tumblr (my Number Ones column on 'Blank Space'):

Mark Ronson feat Bruno Mars - 'Uptown Funk' (it was hard to avoid cataloguing the influences on the track, but also I wanted to show what was very 2015 about the song) 

and 

Omi - 'Cheerleader' (which I discussed in terms of it not really following the trends of #1s in Australia, and what pop is)

I also did an end of 2014 thing for TheVine where I went over Australia's top 20 highest selling singles according to ARIA, which features my thoughts on a bunch of songs I hadn't otherwise discussed, from 'Chandelier' to 'Stolen Dance' to 'Fancy' to 'Problem'.

I wrote three Science Readers, where I link to interesting new science writing:

Science Reader - Jurassic World, electric eels, torture confident idiots, more

Science Reader - Biggest Animals, Foetus Brains, Schwarznegger Raptors, String Theory, more

Science Reader - Feathers, Brain Tapeworm, The G-Spot, Cheese, Starfish, more

And a Music Reader column, featuring stuff on Jimmy Page, Sleater Kinney, Mark Ronson, Megan Washington, George Michael and more.

Oh, and I reviewed The Veronicas' album for The Guardian (!), and reviewed The Decemberists' new album and Father John Misty's new album (which I really think is great) for The Big Issue (who don't post things online).

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Tim Byron analyses the latest #1 single so you don't have to.

Carl Wilson had covered pretty much every angle on Taylor Swift in general in his piece 'Contemplating Taylor Swift's Navel', but here I was with a column about a #1 single in Australia. So I both zoomed in and out, focusing on the minutiae of pop song structure and drum sounds, and the bigger picture of music in general.

PS. I finally listened to the Echosmith song after finishing the piece, and it's actually pretty good. So there you go!

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Tim Byron collates the best in music writing from the last month, including pieces on Taylor Swift, Spotify, Calvin Harris, Nicki Minaj, Laura Jean, and Joni Mitchell.

Me linking to great music writing, again. 

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Tim Byron collates the best of recent science writing, including pieces about ebola, how massive solar flares may have just wiped out life in a nearby solar system, why you should worry if you lose your sense of smell, and why it takes a rhino and a raccoon about the same time to urinate.

Me at the Vine linking to great recent writing about sciencey stuff.

Other non-sciencey non-musicky bits of writing I liked recently: 

Escape From Microsoft Word by Edward Mendelson (New York Review Of Books): on the way that Microsoft Word has a Platonic form of a document in mind, and how that form is so deeply ingrained in the software that it gives everyone the shits.

The Truth about Evil by John Gray (The Guardian): John Gray makes an interesting argument here about evil (that I'm not sure whether I fully agree with): it doesn't come from society, it doesn't come from total evil people (the way we imagine bin Laden or Hitler to do), it comes from very real psychological flaws in us humans. And (as Gray usually does) he argues that neither side of the current political spectrum is really willing to admit that. 

Closed for Business by Giselle Nguyen (Rookie): It's not something I've ever had to deal with, but I do know of people who have had to deal with a thing called vaginismus: basically, a muscle spasm that makes sex very painful. Nguyen's piece on her experiences with it is warm and funny and has good info. 

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Tim Byron analyses the latest number one single so you don't have to.

I sort of find Ed Sheeran a bit boring. A sizeable portion of the Australian public does not, what with it being at #1. Can we work it out? Or is it pistols at dawn?

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Tim Byron analyses the latest #1 single. And writes a tutorial for writing a pop hit in the process.

The new #1 single in Australia is 'You Ruin Me' by The Veronicas. The song follows the template set by the producers, DNA Songs, of being safe, formulaic and a bit boring (IMHO) - it just follows the current sad ballad formula rather than the spiky 2005 era pop formula. And recently, I've been thinking about the words of Mike Caren in that Justin Timberlake Has A Cold piece, where he had 9 Rules of Hit Songwriting, which I thought were a bit rubbish. So I was thinking, what is the formula for a pop hit?

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I interviewed Steve Hogan, the head of Pandora Internet Radio's Music Genome Project, which is basically a team of musicologists who analyse/categorise songs in various ways. They use this analysis in an algorithm to try and predict what song you'll hear next. I was curious what the most important 'weighted' stuff in the algorithm was; presumably that's what matters to people when they want to listen to music.

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Tim Byron collates the best of recent science writing, featuring Stanley Milgram's creepiest experiment, seeing faces in cars, what carbon does, what happened when they put three people who thought they were Jesus into therapy together, the maths of Ebola, and what slipped disks tell us about evolution.

If you ever wanted to know what would happen if you made three people with Jesus delusions go into group therapy together, or why we see cars as having faces and personalities, well, click here to find out what happened next! (Also, Milgram's creepiest experiment is not the...shocking one you might know about).

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Tim Byron collates the best of recent science writing, featuring the mites on your face, the weirdo buzzsaw jaw fish, why coffee plants make caffeine, why you make typos, and more.

The fortnight in awesome writing about science! I mean, look at that weirdo buzzsaw jaw ratfish.

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Willie Nelson is the most American of singers; U2 and hypocrisy; why Miley should cover the Smiths; JT as Mr Nice Guy; Mick Harvey on drugs, etc

Me at the Vine linking to awesome writing about music.