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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Cruella: Does Every Villain Need a Sympathetic Origin Story?

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Clearly this isn’t your parents’ Cruella De Vil. This isn’t even your Cruella De Vil. However, there is something fiendishly charming about seeing Emma Stone charge into a ballroom and light her black and white dress on fire, revealing a chic red number beneath that would do Scarlett O’Hara proud. If fashion is a statement, Cruella is here to say the villain has just arrived!

Yet one can’t help but shake the certainty that by the time we actually learn the plot of Disney’s Cruella reimagining, Cruella will be in anything but black and white, or fiery red. Rather Cruella is obviously posturing to take a sideways approach to an old classic. But then again, that increasingly feels like the only direction these Hollywood redos know: the sympathetic origin story for an iconic villain.

To be clear, we’ve only gotten a glimpse of Stone as the new Cruella, and she looks absolutely fabulous in a black leather coat and cane, purring, “I’m only getting started, darling.” There’s a wildness about this interpretation befitting our current era where Harley Quinn is the hero of her own story, and Wade Wilson now leads a Disney franchise. Nevertheless, when I watch Cruella on the edge of tears in the trailer, barking defiantly that she is CRUELLA—and seemingly embracing an unfair reputation that other characters may be placing on her—a nagging question persists in the back of my head: Do we really need a sympathetic Cruella De Vil?

The trend of supervillains getting intellectual property-expanding sob stories is nothing new, be it at Disney or anywhere else in Hollywood. Maybe 25 years ago when folks liked their villains big and outlandish—think Glenn Close in Disney’s previous live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians—it was novel to see the antagonist become a tragic protagonist. But like everything else with modern blockbusters, that all changed a long, long time ago with something called Star Wars.

Back in 1977 when the original Star Wars movie was released, many audience members left the theater giddy about the world George Lucas created. In a galaxy far, far away, every pop fantasy of the mid-20th century—Wizards! Knights! Princesses! Samurai! World War II ace pilots!—was thrown into a massive cauldron that seamlessly blended these elements.

Luke Skywalker’s galaxy felt like a real place of exotic, lived-in locales, all of which captured that dirt-under-the-fingertips, tactile quality so rarely seen in fantasy stories. Sure the characters might be archetypes, but they came with histories which gave their fantasy space battles human density. Old Ben Kenobi fought in the Clone Wars with Luke’s father Anakin, who was “a gifted pilot.” But what exactly was a clone war? And why was there more than one of them? Also, what did a Jedi’s “more civilized age” look like for Luke’s papa?

For more than 20 years, no one knew the answer to those questions, which made them all the more intriguing, and the “lore” of this fantasy evermore mythic. Then came Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the first modern blockbuster prequel devoted to filling in the gaps left by a beloved classic’s mysteries. That movie’s problems are numerous, but at its core the most persistent, lingering issue may still be the reveal that Darth Vader was once a blonde haired little boy with the emotional range of Beaver Cleaver. Of course everyone knew in the abstract sense Vader was once a child… but did they ever really want to see it?

Additionally, did anyone really want to learn Anakin Skywalker’s reason for turning to the Dark Side is because of a bratty streak that followed him into adulthood? Probably not.

Nonetheless, all three Star Wars prequels made massive amounts of money and rather than becoming cautionary tales of what happens when you attempt to explain away all the mysteries of a beloved character, they were the first steps toward a modern staple of media regurgitation where seemingly every mug, pug, and thug would get their own sympathetic redo.

Since then, we’ve learned on screen that Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis Venom, is really a well-intentioned bloke caught in a bad romance (with his alien space buddy), Batman’s arch-nemesis the Joker is really just a Travis Bickle clone with mommy issues, and Maleficent, the reigning empress of badassery in the Disney Villain canon, was really just a woman scorned by Sleeping Beauty’s toxic father. Even Hannibal Lecter became a victim in Hannibal Rising, and the Wicked Witch of the West starred in the most popular Broadway musical of all time… where it turns out she was the hero in a conspiracy with the Scarecrow to pull one over on Dorothy.

To be clear, some of these spinoffs and reimaginings work quite well. Even if I personally am a bit chagrined at Todd Phillips’ Joker being nominated for Best Picture, Joaquin Phoenix’s sad sack killer clown created the space for a riveting performance that reminded mainstream audiences that movies can still be for adults. In another comic book movie, Magneto’s heartbreaking backstory in the Holocaust was expanded in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, which made an already relatively complex supervillain just that much more compelling in Michael Fassbender’s hands.

Overall, however, this approach has left something to be desired. And to get back to Cruella, her remix as a misunderstood tragic heroine appears to owe most of all to Maleficent. In 2014, Disney made a killing when they cast movie star Angelina Jolie as their very best big bad, a character so evil in 1959’s Sleeping Beauty that she was willing to knockoff a princess simply because no one sent her a party invite. That’s cold. And it’s wickedly entertaining. Hence why Maleficent scared and captivated generations of children.

Some characters are just too good at being bad.

The marketing of Maleficent leaned into this with a melancholic cover of Sleeping Beauty’s Tchaikovsky-inspired theme song, “Once Upon a Dream.” Now in a minor key, the new version sung by Lana Del Rey promised a scarier, more menacing version of the story, which was then confirmed by Jolie’s wonderfully devilish laugh. The big bad was finally going to have her day at the ball.

But when the movie actually came out, we learned that Maleficent was an enchanted fairy who’d been wronged. In the end, she didn’t hate Elle Fanning’s Princess Aurora. In fact, she loved the little royal and tried to save her from the curse she herself cast in a fit of justified anger. Ultimately, the sorceress adopts Aurora as the daughter she never had after disposing of her now abusive father. That’s certainly an interpretation. I guess.

It also proved massively successful in the short term, opening at a staggering $175.5 million in its opening weekend worldwide, and grossing $758 million total. Those numbers also exclude merchandising and home video revenues. If you want to know why we’re getting the punk rock Cruella, look no further.

However, did a lot of folks really like Maleficent? It made all the money in the world based on that devious marketing campaign that promised a shocking tell-all about Disney’s closest approximation to Lucifer, but by the time a sequel limped into theater five years later, relatively few seemed to still care about the misunderstood, freedom fighting warrior fairy Jolie played. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ostensibly continued the good fight but flopped at the box office with a cume of $491.7 million, barely more than half of what its predecessor made. (Don’t cry for Disney though, as Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King in the same year made Maleficent 2 look like a clerical error.)

What this whole sputtering franchise reminds us though is that some characters are better left bad, and the mystique of the unknown is an end unto itself. While I enjoyed Phoenix’s take on the Joker, there is little argument the character was even scarier with a PG-13 rating when he manifested out of thin air, like Beelzebub, in The Dark Knight. Or to take a step away from just villains, was Han Solo really any cooler when you learned how he got his name in Solo: A Star Wars Story? Or could you have gone your whole life without knowing thanks to The Hobbit movies that Gandalf and Galadriel were kind of, sort of, just maybe friends with benefits?

The allure of Cruella De Vil is right there in her name: She’s a cruel devil. How could she not be when her entire ambition in Disney’s classic 101 Dalmatians is to skin puppies for their fur coats? Finding out she used to fight the power before hoarding it may make a lot of money, but it doesn’t make her necessarily more compelling.

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earwaxinggibbous · 5 years

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Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2019

So 2019 was kind of a weird year, wasn’t it? Not just for like, life, though it was weird in that aspect, but in music.

I can’t tell if 2019 was an incredibly strong year for music or a weak one. This, to me, is a sign that we’re transitioning into a new era of popular music. The youth are once again taking the reigns of the music scene as did the punks of the 70′s and the grunge kids of the 90′s. Meanwhile, the oldheads flounder for relevance in the face of this new adversity. “Nobody could’ve expected this!”, said no-one ever.

There was a lot of great pop this year, which I will get to, but there was also a lot of bad pop. All of it was either by shitty new artists who have no talent or previous hitmakers swimming around in their own piss. Regardless, it was all interesting to look at. You won’t see any “this entry is short because this song is boring” sections. I also won’t have to rant and rave constantly about the reprehensibility of certain artists, though it will come up. So I guess 2019 was a better year to talk about bad music.

Less do dis.

10. Senorita - Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes

I can’t explain why I hate Camila Cabello so much. I didn’t even realize I hated her until, like... now.

I thought Havana was okay, and her work with Fifth Harmony was tolerable, but every other single she’s dropped has been fucking excruciating. Bad Things sucked, that one song where she can’t pronounce the word “heroin” properly sucked, and this song sucks.

Much like Selena Gomez above, Camila Cabello is yet another female singer who lacks the ability to display any chemistry with anybody, even her actual real friend Shawn Mendes. As well, like sister Gomez, she fills the chart niche of sexy Latina women for men to drool over. “I love it when you call me senorita” is one of the corniest and stupidest lines ever written. She may as well have said “it gets me hot when you call me Ms. Cabello” because that’s essentially the equivalent.

There’s nothing sexy about the airy whimpering or the obnoxious “ooh-la-la”s or the way Shawn harmonizes, which implies he also loves it when you call him senorita. Nobody actually bothered to think any part of this song through because nobody ever thinks very hard about writing Camila’s songs. Otherwise Bad Things wouldn’t have accidentally sounded like an abuse anthem when it was supposed to be kinky and sexy. And it’s how creepy lyrics like this got by in Senorita.

If he says you’re just friends then you’re JUST FRIENDS. Did we learn nothing from Ann-Marie and Marshmello last year?

This is just yet another lame, plotless, meandering love/sex song by Camila Cabello who has a good voice, but only ever performs these god-awful sex jams with no sex and no jam. And it’s unfortunate because this is sort of the lot dealt to most Latinx artists. Pop-friendly artists like Camila are divvied up into racial categories without anyone even noticing, and most likely she will only ever write and perform sex jams because that’s what a Latina woman in pop is pushed into. Not that I think she has any problem with it, it’s more indicative of a bigger problem than specifically one with Camila herself.

People have been sexualizing the Latinx community since the dawn of time, and while the new movement of Spanish music might change this, it sure as hell hasn’t started yet.

At least it isn’t seven minutes long like Te Bote.

9. Money in the Grave - Drake and Rick Ross

Drake had 25 hits last year, and only one of them was a song I might say I actually like. I remember I said there’d be no boring songs, but... Drake hasn’t been interesting in a long time. Even when I found out about his secret son, or the fact that he was with a significantly younger woman, I just kinda shrugged and said “oh”. Drake has to be on his way out. How much longer are people going to stand this?

Money in the Grave isn’t as turgid as 2018’s Nonstop, or as audibly inept as the 2017(?)’s Pop Style, but God. At this point, every Drake song sounds the same. The man is incapable of bringing forth any kind of emotions, his beats are pathetic drum loops, nothing he writes has any personality. It’s almost funny how boring his music is.

Rick Ross, if you remember him, was known in his time for writing shouty drug dealer anthems. He yelled a lot, and I was sitting with bated breath waiting for him to fucking 6ix9ine scream over this track, only to be disappointed when he lowered into a calmer register for this tune. Drake even made Rick Ross boring, and Rick Ross is one of the funniest bad rappers I can think of, aside from like, Soulja Boy.

I no longer understand what niche Drake fills. You can’t dance to this, you can’t get high to it, nobody’s gonna think you’re cool if you enjoy it, the lyrics aren’t even passably interesting. It’s the same rap cliches as always, perhaps with a new coat of paint, but said paint is the same color as it already was previously, and makes no change.

No wonder Drake endorsed Lil Baby. Nobody else can equal his talent at sounding bored.

8. Bad Guy - Billie Eilish

So here’s an unpopular music critic opinion: I don’t like Billie Eilish.

I’ve known of her for a long time, and never once has she drawn my intrigue. I’ve gone all over asking people why they like her, and I’ve heard all sorts of answers. Her voice is good, her lyrics are good, her production is interesting, her subject matter is deep... whatever it actually is, I couldn’t tell you. But in the end, I basically feel the same way about her as I do about Twenty-One Pilots. She’s an artist in an oversaturated micro-genre who, despite being of lower quality than her contemporaries, managed to do something different enough that she rose up in the latter part of the genre’s life. In Billie’s case, it’s the trend of female alt-pop singer-songwriters who write about things like politics, feminism, and ESPECIALLY mental health.

Lorde was the original, but we also have Lana Del Rey, the more pop-friendly Halsey, Marina and the Diamonds, the dreaded Melanie Martinez, to some extent even Alessia Cara, just a whole bunch of them. They all had their own unique personality. Billie Eilish’s personality is that she has none.

Okay, I’m being a little mean. I do think that Billie’s music videos are actually very interesting, but good music videos does not a good musician make. Her voice is more of a phlegmy whisper than people let on, and her lyrics... like, what, what makes them so special? And why didn’t wish you were gay get ANY backlash when it’s basically just a backwards version of Little Big Town’s Girl Crush?

Bad Guy is the worst of her singles without question. Its beat, much like most of her songs, sounds like two people accidentally banged on top of the Cassio and somebody pressed record. Her voice continues to be boring and flat, for some reason she has to whisper everything, and the lyrics are some of the most mind-numbing shit I’ve ever heard. Which moron at corporate told the 17-YEAR-OLD to write a “steal yo man” song where she threatens to seduce my dad? Like, ignoring my own personal history with my dad, you are literally a CHILD.

Generally speaking, the song sounds like someone gargling mouthwash in my ear for a minute or two, but like, very quietly. Which is kind of pathetic for a song called Bad Guy. You sound like a pretty average guy to me.

It’s obvious from the music video that Billie’s main inspiration is grunge, and if that isn’t the case I’ll be surprised. The weird imagery and intentionally dressing like a homeless person to every public thing she does gives off big Nirvana energy. One could argue that Billie Eilish is a good segway into teaching the youthsters about the ghosts of music’s past. There’s just a few problems with that.

One: Bad Guy sounds nothing like a grunge song.

Two: Billie Eilish does not have a grunge voice.

Three: Billie Eilish just... isn’t doing it right.

Billie Eilish’s parents are two wealthy actors and she was basically born with the ability to get into the business easier than other people. I’m not saying that you can’t be a grunge artist if you’re wealthy and have a decent family life, but I am saying that Billie’s music doesn’t convey any kind of grunge appeal. There’s no roughness or rawness to it because she could immediately walk into a producer’s studio with a wad of fifties and ask for a sick beat. Her music displays no emotion, and emotion is the main draw of grunge. Like, Kurt Cobain wasn’t a very good singer, but he knew how to perfectly channel how he was feeling. Grunge music is about feelings, not polish. And Billie Eilish is all polish.

I’m not gonna get all angry because grunge is being gentrified by a tiny girl when it was originally started by broke heroin addicts and lesbians, but I am gonna get angry because her music sounds worse than albums made on a budget of 600 dollars by a guy who has had one voice lesson his whole life.

She should just go into modern art.

7. Worth It - YK Osiris

Originally I was gonna give this spot to a different song. Worth It was so immediately bad that it rescued Lil Baby from my list this year.

Don’t expect to be this lucky next year, bitch.

But we’re not talking about that squealing douchebag, we’re talking about THIS squealing douchebag:

YK Osiris. I have no idea where he came from, I think he was part of last year’s XXL Freshman Class? He’s more of a singer than a rapper, so I’m not sure why he was, other than the predetermined idea that all black artists in pop are rappers. I wouldn’t even call him a singer, because the man cannot sing.

At the beginning of the music video, you see dozens of paparazzi swarming around YK Osiris’ car as he exits with a girl. This is the set-up for the song’s impressive amount of self-fellating narcissism, as YK Osiris assumes he has fans. Who the fuck listens to YK Osiris? I mean, clearly someone, because he charted, but like... what does a YK Osiris fan look like? Do women actually like hearing him wheeze into their ear? Like BEES?

NO MORE BEES!

Hearing this fucking chicken nugget talk about whether or not I’m worth eet is the lamest thing. Why does she have to be worth it? Are YOU worth HER time? Who the fuck are you? The attitude is very, I guess, mid-70′s Paul Anka-esque. And now I’ve made you imagine a YK Osiris cover of You’re Having My Baby. I also remember Todd in the Shadows compared this song to Earned It by The Weeknd, but I dunno if I get that vibe.

I mean, Earned It is a song about like... BDSM sex, presumably. So that’s more of an “if you’re good master will make you squart” kind of thing. This is more some sentient dildo insisting that you prove his worth to him before you’re even DATING. That’s a red flag on the same level as meeting a guy who lives alone and still puts a lock on his fridge. Like, what’s in there? What’s in the fridge? Is it human meat?

The guitar solo in this song is the only thing about it that’s... worth it. ZING!

6. ZEZE - Kodak Black ft.Travis Scott and Offset

ZEZE is a bad song. Plain and simple. It’s the essence of bad.

It feels like... it wasn’t even finished. Like everyone involved came in the next day to finish tweaking it only to find out that it was already sent out to be published and sold. I feel like there are things missing. Like yeah, the steel drums are nice, but where’s the rest of the instrumentation? There’s a drum and a steel drum and then nothing. Why does this song feel so naked?

Kodak Black sure doesn’t help, still sounding like he’s half-man half-screaming rubber chicken and mumbling like an actual infant still figuring out the whole “talking” deal. It’s not like Travis Scott or Offset add anything. I can’t remember what they did. ZEZE sounds the way I imagine taking ketamine and cocaine would feel. This song is so amateurish, I almost have good will for it.

If this was made by, say, a couple of high school kids dinking around with a Garageband, I might find it a little cute. The problem is that this song was made by several Whole Ass Adult People who have enough money to not make shit that sounds like ZEZE. It’s cute until you remember that Travis Scott produced big sexy SICKO MODE and yet somehow his presence couldn’t make ZEZE sound like it was made on a higher budget than 20 bucks. Someone even put an echo on Kodak’s voice, like that’d make him ANY BETTER.

It doesn’t help that I have continuing ill will towards Kodak Black because he’s a sex offender and nobody seems all too pressed about it. (Some rappers even congratulate him for having a rough past, like yeah, I guess some of those serial killers really did deserve better, huh?) I won’t be satisfied until he’s wearing orange pajamas on an island far away, and until then my feelings stand.

As it is, ZEZE is a song so chintzy-sounding and lame that I can’t imagine who would enjoy it. This song has the same energy as one of those hula girls you put on the dashboard of your car: Cheap and ugly.

5. The Git Up - Blanco Brown

Whenever something new is created, there’s always a leech.

I probably don’t need to tell you about the monstrous year Old Town Road had on the pop charts. For weeks and weeks, Lil Nas X was blocking people from his throne at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, bumping off new faces like Billie Eilish and oldheads like Taylor Swift. Old Town Road knew no mercy. This is the year that a gay black kid singing about horses ruled the world.

And Blanco Brown wanted a piece.

Blanco Brown is one of those artists who started out producing and writing for other hitmakers. He worked on some song by 2Chainz, a couple by some woman named Demetria McKinney, he produced that accursed MILF song by Fergie, a lot of relatively famous people. But he looked at Old Town Road and realized that he, being a black man from the lovely state of Georgia, could also do that.

He could not do that.

The Git Up is a husk of a song, only validated by the fact that it achieved what it was aiming for: TikTok memes. It’s as shameless as Watch Me, but doesn’t even have the small sense of excitement Silento gives off. Blanco Brown’s The Git Up and the “challenge” that it’s attached to are pathetic. The only reason Blanco isn’t too ashamed to go outside after writing this is because he knows plenty of people have fallen into his trap, and that they’re bigger fools than he is.

I started off hating Old Town Road, but over time I’ve sort of come to love it. There’s innocence in it. Lil Nas X didn’t mean for it to be a number one hit, it just happened. A lot of artists were trying too hard this past year, and I suspect it’s why Old Town Road made the pop charts its bitch. It didn’t have to try.

A lot of people will point at rock bands for being “fake”. If they draw inspiration from grunge or punk, and they don’t have the proper edge, many will point and laugh. But just because something is fun and hip doesn’t mean it’s easier to make. In fact, I feel it’s a lot easier to tell if someone’s making a shitty pop song for any reason other than themselves. A lot of people thought Lil Peep was faking, and he really, really wasn’t. There’s grey area in topics like depression, but Blanco Brown (and anyone like him) is as transparent as a window. I see through his mock-excitement, his cute little dance challenge, his “innocent” song. We all do.

I believe Tyler Durden put it best:

“Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”

4. I Don’t Care - Ed Sheeran ft. Justin Bieber

Speaking of being fake...

I don’t know if Ed Sheeran realizes how embarrassing this song is. More than any other song he’s been involved in. More than Shape Of You, or that one song on Revival, more than anything. I Don’t Care is an exercise in humiliation.

Generally speaking, I don’t like Ed Sheeran’s music. I think he’s had a couple good songs, we all like Sing and Castle on the Hill, it’s not like he’s untalented. But every time he’s gotten a big hit these past few years it’s been so shitty or mediocre that I wanted to scream. I’m not sure why, but all of his fans seem to flock towards his worst songs. And of all of them, I hate I Don’t Care the most.

Usually the problems with Ed Sheeran’s music just revolve around his meek, tiny personality and his weird style of lyricism. The level of detail he gets into can be both an asset and a detriment. I remember I basically described Shape Of You as a virgin anthem, because Ed Sheeran exudes dorkiness. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and when it comes to nerd music I’d rather take Thomas Dolby, but he definitely had a style.

I Don’t Care is Ed’s Intuition.

As in, the Jewel song. The blown-up pop song released by Jewel, a previously sincere folk singer who played acoustic guitar and sang about break-ups and The Media(TM) and stuff like that. Ed Sheeran is a lot like Jewel, if you think about it. Both of them are skilled lyricists who play acoustic guitar and sing about personal topics, and both of them suddenly decided to throw that away and make a sell-out pop hit. If this kills Ed’s career, they’ll have had basically the same musical trajectory.

Ed Sheeran opens the song by saying he’s at a party he doesn’t wanna be at, and that’s how the song feels. You, the listener, are at a party you don’t wanna be at. What good did adding Justin Bieber to this song do? Oh, right, that’s what made it a hit. I Don’t Care goes far beyond Blanco Brown’s brand of shamelessness. Blanco Brown specifically wanted a dance challenge hit. Ed Sheeran just wanted a hit. Any hit will do. He brought in guaranteed hitmaker Justin Bieber, tossed out his acoustic guitar for fully electronic production, and sang about something vague and already done. And the worst part is that it WORKED.

I imagine this was almost entirely through radio play, because this song is so radio-friendly and milktoast it’s unreal. With a stupid music video greenscreening Ed’s face onto shit and “ooh ooh”s and all, this song exists to pander. It wasn’t created for humans, rather, it was created for the pop music algorithm that’ll shove it into people’s laps without them asking. There’s no artistic integrity, nothing worth thinking about for longer than its runtime. It made it to the Hot 100 because it can be played in grocery stores and clothing stores and really any kind of store. Ed Sheeran is a God of nothing, and I can’t imagine he’s proud.

3. No Guidance - Chris Brown ft. Drake

This song is bad on every possible level. Starting off with the fact that it’s nine minutes long. It out-lengths last year’s overly long garbage fire that was Te Bote.

And then you look at the credits and know exactly who’s to blame for all this:

I don’t know if Lil Dicky anticipated giving Chris Brown’s career a second wind with Freaky Friday, but I think that’s what he did. I defended Lil Dicky last year, and I’m still not clear on how much he actually wanted to work with Chris Brown since that’s not really the kind of thing famous people are honest about, but this wasn’t Lil Dicky’s hit. This was a springboard to launch Chris Brown back into the limelight. Earth didn’t even chart. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the last gasp of Lil Dicky’s career in the spotlight.

But I’d take Freaky Friday over No Guidance any day.

No Guidance is the formal beef-squash between Chris Brown and Drake. Apparently they both dated Rihanna at some point and allegedly had an actual literal bar fight. Despite Drake claiming he still loves Rihanna, he’s also choosing to publicly make up with and work with the man who got her hospitalized at 19 years old. Then again, Rihanna also wants nothing to do with Drake.

(source)

Over time, Drake has proven himself to be his own flavor of scumbag, a weirdo who dates younger women and pretended not to have a son. Perhaps this is his way of getting back at Rihanna. Or he’s simply using Chris Brown’s new power to bolster his own career. Regardless of why it is, it’s gross, especially when he’s dropping bars like this:

Someone else here is looking a little violent, no?

On pure quality, it sounds like every other Chris Brown song, just with Drake tossed into the mix haphazardly. It’s a lame song about hitting on some girl where both artists drop references to their old songs because that’s the easiest way for a failing artist to feign relevance. Assuming nobody features Chris Brown on another massive hit next year, there’s a fair chance he’s done for, and after years of oversaturation, the public finally tires of Drake. No Guidance is a nothing song with scummy shit going on behind the scenes.

RIP Lil Dicky.

2. 7 Rings - Ariana Grande

I never really understood the hype around Ariana Grande. She has a few songs that I enjoy, and her voice is very good, but nothing by her really stands out to me as an amazing song. Ariana stans are relentless. When I posted my review of the thank u, next album some complete stranger replied to it with “Uhhh ok sis”. Like barring the fact that I’m not a girl and we’re not related... it’s an opinion, calm yourself.

Frankly I don’t know how people enjoyed this song. Her stans are insane, but surely not that insane, right? I mean... this isn’t a song. It’s a MISTAKE.

Between Gwen Stefani and Ariana Grande, sampling The Sound Of Music for your pop song is a dangerous game. And really, she should’ve sampled like, anything else. Because nothing says “wealthy, savage girl” like a cute song about your favorite things, I guess!

I’ve never felt quite so immediately gross and uncomfortable as I did when listening to 7 Rings. I have no problem with women flexing, of course I don’t, but this isn’t flexing, it’s mocking. 7 Rings makes me feel like I’m being bullied.

Ari had a horrible 2018, and she’s more than allowed to flex a little, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to essentially play the villain of a high school movie. She’s not Cher Horowitz or Regina George, because then at least she’d be entertainingly bitchy. I judge a flex anthem based on how much I get excited for the person being wealthy and cool. This song makes me want to commit a robbery.

The lyrical content isn’t the only bad element. It also sounds like shit!

Ariana Grande is a belter. Everyone knows she’s here to sing and not... rap. Which is exactly what she does on this song. The filters she puts over her voice during the rapping sections are just... gross. When she drags out certain words it hurts my ears. That and apparently multiple people have accused her of stealing their flows, though that’s really hard to say since it’s an incredibly generic rap flow. Also, she samples Gimme The Loot by Biggie Smalls, a song about robbing people. Which makes sense because if you bought Ariana’s album, you were robbed! Congrats!

But in the end, the most damning thing about this song is its lyrics. Why should I be excited about this absolute bitch having tons of money? Why should I care when she has the gall to say shit like this?

There were ten writers on this song and nobody thought of saying “hey, maybe the phrase ‘happiness is the same price as red-bottoms’ is a little fucking shallow!”

And I’m not making any judgments on Ariana’s character in real life. I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice person, but if this song was supposed to project some sense of camaraderie and a “we did it!” attitude, it fails. What it does project is a snide, rich girl looking down on you for not just buying yourself out of depression. Never write a song like this again.

Honorable Mentions

Happier - Marshmello and Bastille

I’m not gonna be the first to say every Marshmello beat sounds exactly the same, but every Marshmello beat sounds the same. I picked this one because it charted highest, but really it makes no difference which Marshmello song I pick on.

Sweet But Psycho - Ava Max

This song reads like a 12-year-old’s deviantART journal.

Drip Too Hard - Lil Baby and Gunna

Like I said, this song almost got on the list proper. It’s a slow burn. At first you feel like the beat is solid, and Lil Baby rides it decently enough, but then it keeps going and the flows never switch and Gunna basically sounds the same as Lil Baby and you begin feeling like you’re losing your mind.

Thotiana - Blueface

People kept memeing about this. I thought it’d be fun. I hate you guys.

God’s Country - Blake Shelton

Namedropping The Devil Went Down To Georgia does not make you Primus. Because you are not creative or interesting.

Trampoline - Shaed

I wouldn’t have even given this song a second thought except apparently it’s hit the alt-rock charts? Where is this rock? Like I get we’re pushing the boundaries of genre but I think the bare minimum of a rock song would be a GUITAR.

Knockin’ Boots - Luke Bryan

This song is dumb. But I’m oddly amused by how dumb it is, so it may live.

Baby - Lil Baby and DaBaby

Sometimes things sound like a good idea, and then they’re not. This didn’t even sound like a good idea and it proved to be an even worse idea. Something definitely could’ve been done with this, but Lil Baby is essentially a creative void that consumes all it sees.

Someone You Loved - Lewis Capaldi

Another song that’s too dumb for me to really get mad at. God knows, Capaldi is putting a hell of a lot of effort into something. What it is, I’m not sure, but he’s doing his best.

With those out of the way, we move onto

Number One:

You Need To Calm Down - Taylor Swift

"I AM LAID LOW BY THE HUMAN RACE. ME, AN INNOCENT WOMAN, MUST DEAL WITH ‘HATERS’ EVERY SINGLE DAY. MY HEART HAS BECOME WEAK WITH ALL OF THE UNKIND WORDS. DARE I SAY... I AM OPPRESSED?”

It’s ironic hearing Taylor Swift tell me to calm down. She hasn’t been calm for a long time. She sure as hell isn’t calm in this song. It’s basically the equivalent of someone screaming “I AM NOT ANGRY!”

Like, you’re... still mad about the snake thing? It’s been a few years now and you’re still bothered enough by an emoji that you referenced it in a song about how not-bothered you are? I mean, apparently this song (as well as ME!) is about celebrating individuality. It definitely is celebrating an individual: Taylor Swift.

I think a big theme of this year was “embarrassing”. The Git Up was embarrassing, I Don’t Care was embarrassing, but none of them are more embarrassing than this. You could probably do a list of the ten worst Taylor Swift lyrics and it’d be mostly this song. And if the lyrics aren’t terrible enough, it also blatantly copies the beat from Sunflower, the second-biggest hit of the year and a personal favorite. Like, a fellow critic remixed them together and the backing track is essentially unchanged.

And then we get to the gay stuff.

I’m not the first to point out that the underlying message of this song is pathetic at best and offensive at worst: “I have haters, and gays have haters, so we’re basically the same.” This is essentially Taylor Swift hoping she’ll get an invite to judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

There’s just kind of an eensy weensy problem.

Gay “haters” are like... ACTUALLY DANGEROUS.

They’re not just the goofy, protest-sign waving boomers she depicts in her music video. An internet comment is harmless. Homophobia isn’t. Homophobia leads to suicide, gets teens kicked out of their homes, causes hate crimes, it can cause incredibly serious harm. Someone sending you a fucking snake emoji isn’t the same as years and years of systematic oppression!

Does Taylor Swift have to worry about her safety when she tours in more conservative areas? Does she have to fear the possibility of losing friends and family ties when opening up about herself? Does she have to worry about letting the public see who she dates, beyond the usual celebrity drama? Do people shout slurs at her on the street? Do churches and politicians campaign against her right to marry?

Of course not.

Taylor Swift has always made everything about herself. She’s lied and been petty for years and years in her music. Imagine lying about KANYE. You don’t need to lie about fucking Kanye to make him look bad! He does it himself! She was the victim that time, and every time. But at no point until now did she stoop low enough to openly compare herself to oppressed groups because people are mean to her on the internet.

Like this isn’t even about articles or tabloids or anything, it’s about people being nasty online. The phrase “shade never made anybody less gay” is basically a crackhead way of diminishing our suffering. It’s not “shade” we’re worried about, Taylor, it’s having our fucking legal rights taken away. Your biggest worry is “haters”. Haters aren’t going to ban you from being married.

This song is phony, it’s a rip-off of a much better song that literally came out in the same year, it’s repetitive, it’s petty, and most of all, it tries to diminish the oppression of the LGBT+ community by boiling down all of our pain and suffering to simple “shade”.

I will not calm down.

Woo-ee. That was something alright. We’ll be moving onto the best list soon, if I don’t get caught up in my other quarantine activities.

#panda posts #top 10 list #worst hits of 2019 #top 10 worst hits of 2019 #worst hits #pop song review #pop music #music criticism #music review

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pastelbatfandoms · 5 years

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asks for fanfic writers

things that inspire you- Aesthetic Images,Pinterest,FanFiction,Shows,Movies,Fan Music Videos,Songs,Whichever Celeb or Character I have a Crush on that Week or Month.

things that motivate you- My Muse,When People like and Comment on My work!

name three favorite writers-as in Published Authors? Cause I have alot of Faves on Tumblr. Authors-Yasmine Galenorn,Marissa Marr and Francesca Lia Block.

name three authors that were influential to your work and tell why-Not too many tbh. I’m mainly influenced by TV Characters. and OTP’s in MV’s. I would LOVE to write like Francesca Lia Block one day and I’d say as a Teen I was heavily influenced by Amelia Atwater Rhodes.

since how long do you write? How long have I been writing you mean? since I was 13.

how did writing change you? Made me more of a Day Dreamer and a bit Absent minded lol

early influences on your writing-Already told one but other’s would be Christopher Pike as well as Watching WWE and Anime’s like Sailor Moon.

what time are you most productive? Whenever I get free time and am Inspired.

do you set yourself deadlines? No.

how do you do your research? Again watching Episodes of a certain Character,Headcanons and such,or Wikipedia if it’s something on The None Fiction or Mythological side.

do you listen to music when writing? Sometimes.

favorite place to write-My Room I guess.

hardest character to write-Right Now Peter Hale,which is why I took such a long break from Teen Wolf lol (I need to finish watching it)

easiest character to write- Eobard Thawne aka Reverse Flash aka EoWells.

hardest verse to write- Not Verse but My hardest Fic to write was actually a One Shot of My Wells of Hearts Fic From The Flash. It was after HR Wells dies (on The Show) and I was pretty sad writing it.

easiest verse to write-idk about Verse but The easiest Fic I wrote was My Cat & Mouse one with WWE’s Bray Wyatt. It’s a bit too NSFW to put here though ;)

favorite AU to write-All Mine are AU’s since I create a bunch of insert characters lol

favorite pairing to write-Freddy Krueger/Robert Englund with My OC Rika. Also Michael Langdon and My OC Helena. I have a weak spot for Dark,Tragic Soul Mates.

favorite fandom to write-WWE’s The easiest lol I’d probably have to say The Flash or Walking Dead though.

favorite character to write-That’s not mine. Negan.

least favorite character to write-Archie Andrews from Riverdale lol I feel bad because I think reading my Mughead story you can tell.

favorite story you’ve ever written-Online I’d say My Flash one that is STILL not done.

least favorite story you’ve ever written-I probably have a few Sailor Moon one’s I wrote when I was younger that aren’t that good or Some of My Michael Jackson One Shots.

favorite scene you’ve ever written-Ok I’ll just Copy and Paste it. again keeping this SFW. TWD Kings and Queen of Disaster pt1- “Don’t. Merle knew you’d kill him for siding with his Brother and you did anyway,I was there when Daryl had too…” I closed My eyes briefly trying to calm myself. It didn’t work. Before I realized what I was doing I was standing,my gun pointed at him. But The Governor was always one step ahead as he pulled a gun from the back of his waistband and pointed it at me as well. We had each other a stand off. I didn’t waver as I glared at him. “Merle was the one man i knew loved me for all his faults and you took that away.” I said through clenched teeth,angry tears pricking my eyes.The Governor stared at me unblinking. “I loved you. I did.” He insisted at my scoff. “I realize it now. Killing Merle wasn’t personal. Even if it was,it didn’t make a difference,we both lost that day. Merle,My Daughter,Each other.” The Governor looked at me remorsefully. “I am sorry.” “So sorry you disappeared.” “So did you!” Governor shot back. “I had to…” I trailed off not wanting to explain myself to him. I felt defeated,saddened,confused in that moment,that I didn’t notice when The governor slowly circled around the table,gun still in hand to walk behind me,grabbing my wrist that held the gun,putting his own to my temple. I stiffened but didn’t shrink away. We both knew we wouldn’t shoot one another. No matter how psychotic he could be or how hurt and angry I was.

story you’re most proud of- That one ^ or Wells of Hearts.

best review you ever got-On My Gotham one or My Cat & Mouse Trilogy.

worst review you ever got-None yet.

favorite story/poem of another author-Not sure.

hardest part of writing-Getting enough Motivation to write what is in your Head!

easiest part of writing-The Smut lol at least for me. ;)

alternate title for (The Alpha) My Alpha. Yeah very original I know lol

alternate ending for (Wells of Hearts) Not to give anything away but I had this big Fight scene between Reverse Flash,Obsidian Storm and Team Flash and Obsidian was going to turn her back on Eobard and side with Team Flash again at the last minute. But I decided her staying a Villain,essentially staying how Eobard made her,and joining The Legion of Doom plus all that happens afterwards would be more interesting.

alternate pairing for (MugHead) I really don’t change My Mind when it comes to Pairs lol But I may write an Alternate Story with Michelle ending up with FP Jones instead of Jughead.

single story or multi-part story? Multi.

one-shot or multi-chaptered story? Multi.

canon or AU? usually AU unless the Canon is REALLY good. usually stay in The Canon World though.

do you reread your own stories? Yeah all the time lol

do you want to be published some day? Maybe but since I write about Other Creators Characters I don’t think that’s possible.

which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series-Any of The Wrestlers actually being in a Romantic/Sexual Relationship like the one’s I write them in would be ideal. I’d watch it!

one song that captures (Wells of Hearts) The title is literally a Song except it’s WELLS instead of WAR of Hearts. Kings and Queen of Disaster is inspired by Queen of Disaster by Lana Del Rey.

do you plan or do you write whatever comes to your mind? Whenever it pops into My head or when I can.

would you ever write a sequel for (The Mark) I’d write another Baron Corbin x Roxy story but probably not a Sequel to that one since Dean is no longer in WWE.

do you write linear or do you write future scenes if you feel like it? Linear. Though I should just write what pops into My head so I don’t forget it later. That just seems Messy to me.

share the synopsis of a story you work on that you haven’t published yet- The Alpha-My OC Marianna is 18 and Best Friends with Lydia,Alison,Childhood Friends with Scott and Stiles. When She meets Peter (in his Teenage Guise) After much banter and courting by Peter,they start dating. Until Derek tells her the truth about Peter being a WereWolf and killing Alison’s Aunt (She knows Scott’s a WereWolf at this point) and Peter appears to her in his adult form. Marianna breaks up with him but Peter starts stalking her,claiming they have a bond. It turns very dark after that and a year goes by until Marianna admits her real feelings towards him. They start dating again but in secret. Peter ends up turning her and becoming her Alpha,which is when The Group is finally told. After many Deaths,Forgotten memories,a short lived Relationship with Stiles and Memories restored,they end up leaving for Arizona and having a Child,Malia.

share a scene of a story that you haven’t published yet-The Alpha-I noticed his dark slicked back hair and all black attire but I also noticed The Claws on his hands and The Fangs jutting out as he snarled at Stiles,ready to take another swipe at him or a bite. I recognized that look and not just because My Pack,Scott,Derek and Erica,wolf out. This was different this wasn’t out of Protectiveness,because I mean it was Stiles,but Jealousy and Possessiveness,over me. Because this Wolf was... “My Alpha...”” I whispered in shocked realization as My memories started rushing back, I knew something had been missing,I just didn’t know what. “How could I forget you...”

how many unfinished ideas/stories are you working on at the same time? Currently like 5 lol

three spoilers for (Kings and Queen of Disaster)-Suzanna will end up becoming Pregnant with Negan’s Child,Philip Blake will eventually be told of His and Suzie’s Daughter but it will be too late as Negan will end up Killing him after.

writing advice-Nah this has already been too long.

open question to the writer

#fanfiction #asks #Imagines #Survey

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i-am-very-very-tired · 3 years

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Somewhere between Britney and Billie Eilish, liberated by social media and their direct relationship with fans, millennial and Gen Z women claimed the right to be complicated pop auteursRead all of the essays in the decade retrospective

📷 Laura Snapes Mon 25 Nov 2019 13.12 GMT 174

While Billie Eilish has reinvented pop with her hushed SoundCloud rap menace, creepy ASMR intimacy and chipper show tune melodies, there’s also something reassuringly comforting about her: as a teenage pop star, she has fulfilled her proper duty by confusing the hell out of adults. It’s largely down to her aesthetic: a funhouse Fred Durst; a one-woman model for the combined wares of Camden Market. Critics have tried to make sense of it, but when editorials praised Eilish’s “total lack of sexualisation”, she denounced them for “slut-shaming” her peers. “I don’t like that there’s this weird new world of supporting me by shaming people that may not want to dress like me.”To Gen Z’s Eilish, not yet 18, it is a weird new world. She and her millennial peers have grown up in a decade in which pop’s good girl/bad girl binary has collapsed into the moral void that once upheld it, resulting in a generation of young female stars savvy to how the expectation to be “respectable” and conform to adult ideas of how a role model for young fans should act – by an industry not known for its moral backbone – is a con. “It’s a lot harder to treat women the way they were treated in the 90s now, because you can get called out so easily on social media,” Fiona Apple – who knows about the simultaneous sexualisation and dismissal of young female musicians – said recently. “If somebody does something shitty nowadays, a 17-year-old singer can get on their social media and say, ‘Look what this fucker did! It’s fucked up.’”📷 Lunatics conquering the asylum ... the Spice Girls. Photograph: Tim Roney/Getty ImagesFemale musicians have been subject to conflicting moral standards for longer than Eilish has been alive. Madonna, Janet Jackson and TLC knew them well – but the concept of the pop “role model”, expected to set an example to kids, solidified when the Spice Girls became the first female act to be marketed at children. In the 70s and 80s, idols such as David Cassidy primed girls for a monogamous future. By comparison, the Spice Girls were lunatics conquering the asylum. But, given their fans’ youth – and the sponsors that used the band to reach them – they also had a duty of responsibility. Their real lives – the all-nighters and eating disorders – were hidden so effectively that Eilish, born in 2001, thought the band was made up, actors playing the roles of the group in Spiceworld: The Movie.In the late 90s, kid-pop became an industry unto itself: Smash Hits and Top of the Pops magazine pitched younger; CD:UK and America’s TRL aimed at Saturday-morning and after-school audiences; Simons Fuller and Cowell built empires. The scrappy Spice Girls preceded the cyborgian Britney, who was a far sleeker enterprise – until she wasn’t. She was pitched as a virgin: cruel branding that invited media prurience and set a time bomb counting down towards her inevitable downfall. Britney’s 2007 breakdown revealed the cost of living as a virtuous cypher and being expected to repress her womanhood to sell to American prudes. Her shaved head and aborted stints in rehab prompted industry handwringing, and so an illusion of the music business offering greater freedom and care for pop’s girls emerged in her wake. Advertisement Major labels abandoned the traditional two-albums-in bad-girl turn (a la Christina Aguilera’s Stripped). Social media-born artists such as Lily Allen and Kate Nash were swept into the system and framed as the gobby antithesis to their manicured pop peers – until their resistance to exactly the same kind of manipulation saw them cast aside. And if Kesha, Lady Gaga or Amy Winehouse burned out, their visible excesses would distract from any behind-the-scenes exploitation, inviting spectators to imagine that they brought it on themselves.📷 Reclaiming the hard-partying values of rock’s men ... Kesha. Photograph: PictureGroup / Rex FeaturesAt the dawn of the 2010s, social media surpassed its teen origins to become an adult concern, and an earnest fourth wave of activists brought feminism back to the mainstream. Like a rescued hatchling, it was in a

pathetic state to begin with – dominated by white voices that tediously wondered whether anything a woman did was automatically feminist. Is brushing your teeth with Jack Daniel’s feminist? Are meat dresses feminist? Is drunkenly stumbling through Camden feminist? Are butt implants feminist?Pop culture became the natural test site for these ideas – especially music, where a new wave of artists challenged this nascent, often misguided idealism. Kesha reclaimed the hard-partying values of rock’s men to embody a generation’s despair at seeing their futures obliterated by the recession. Lady Gaga questioned gender itself, as one writer in this paper put it, “re-queering a mainstream that had fallen back into heteronormative mundanity”. In a career-making verse on Kanye West’s Monster, Nicki Minaj annihilated her male peers and gloried in her sexualisation. MIA, infuriated by America’s hypocritical propriety, flipped off the Super Bowl and proved her point by incurring a $16.5m fine.📷 Infuriated by hypocritical propriety ... MIA gives America the middle finger during her Super Bowl performance in 2012. Photograph: Christopher Polk/Getty Images Advertisement As a former Disney star, Miley Cyrus stepped the furthest out of bounds. In 2008, aged 15, she had posed in a sheet for Vanity Fair. “MILEY’S SHAME,” screamed the New York Post. She apologised to her fans, “who I care so deeply about”. But in 2013, she torched her child-star image by writhing in her knickers on a wrecking ball, twerking against Robin Thicke, being flagrant about her drug use, appropriating African American culture while perpetuating racist stereotypes.Cyrus’s 2013 transformation bore the hallmarks of a breakdown – especially witnessed two years after the death of Amy Winehouse, who was then perceived as a victim of her own self-destruction. But Cyrus was largely intentional about her work (if, then, ignorant of her racism). She had waited until she was no longer employed by Disney to express herself. Earlier in her career, she said, she struggled to watch her peers. “I was so jealous of what everyone else got to do, because I didn’t get to truly be myself yet.” Despite apparently smoking massive amounts of weed herself, she didn’t want to tell kids to copy her. But she knew the power she offered her peers such as Ariana Grande, who that year left Nickelodeon to release her debut album. “I’m like, ‘Walk out with me right now and get this picture, and this will be the best thing that happens to you, because just you associating with me makes you a little less sweet.’”Pop did get a little less sweet. Sia and Tove Lo sang brazenly about using drugs to mask pain. Icona Pop’s I Love It reigned (“I crashed my car into a bridge / I watched and let it burn”) thanks to its inclusion on the soundtrack of Lena Dunham’s Girls. With its aimless characters and their ugly behaviour, the show mirrored pop’s retreat from aspirational sheen, and the culture’s growing obsession with “messy” women and “strong female characters”: flawed attempts to create new archetypes that rejected the expectation of girls behaving nicely.📷 An explicit rejection of role-model status ... Beyoncé performs at the Super Bowl in 2013. Photograph: Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesA new cohort of young female and non-binary critics shifted the discussion around music: in 2015, when the documentary Amy was released, they questioned how Winehouse was perceived in death compared to Kurt Cobain. They also pushed aside the virgin/whore rivalries of old. In an earlier era, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey might have been fashioned into nemeses, one sexualised and powerful, the other gothic and demure. Instead, their respective mid-decade self-mythologising showed that female musicians could be pop’s auteurs, not just the men in the wings. Advertisement Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 album was an explicit rejection of her role-model status. She was 15 when Destiny’s Child released their debut album. “But now I’m in my 30s and those children that grew up listening to me have grown up,” she said in a behind-the-scenes video.

The responsibility she felt to them “stifled” her. “I felt like ... I could not express everything … I feel like I’ve earned the right to be me and express any and every side of myself.”It was the first of her albums to reveal the breadth of her inner life – the coexisting kinks, triumphs and insecurities, showing the complexity of black womanhood. The critic Soraya Nadia McDonald wrote: “Mixed in with songs about insecurity, grief, protest and the love she has for her child, Beyoncé manages to present her sexuality as a normal part of her life that deserves celebration.” “It doesn’t make you a bad mother. It doesn’t make black people look bad, and it doesn’t make you a bad feminist, either.” When Beyoncé emblazoned “FEMINIST” on stage at the 2014 MTV VMAs, she helped reclaim the word from middle-class white discourse.Like Beyoncé, Del Rey countered the idea that female pop stars were major-label puppets. She had struggled to make it as an indie artist but found a home at Polydor – a detail that caused detractors to question her authenticity. Her shaky debut SNL performance revealed the flaw in their thinking: if she was manufactured, wouldn’t she have been better drilled? Her project was potent, but startlingly unrefined. More intriguingly, she opposed fast-calcifying ideas about how feminist art should look: Del Rey’s lyrics revelled in submission and violence, in thrall to bad guys and glamour. It wasn’t feminist to want these things; but nor was it feminist to insist on the suppression of desire in the name of shiny empowerment.📷 Exposing industry machinations ... Azealia Banks at the Reading festival in 2013. Photograph: Simone Joyner/Getty Images Advertisement Del Rey’s lusts and designs were her own – pure female gaze – a hallmark of the defiant female pop stars to come. Rihanna said she was “completely not” a role model, a point driven home by the viscerally violent video for Bitch Better Have My Money. Lauren Mayberry of Scottish trio Chvrches refused to be singled out from her male bandmates and wrote searingly about the misogyny she faced online. Janelle Monáe and Solange rubbished the idea that R&B was the only lane open to young black women.They started revealing their business conflicts. In 2013, 21-year-old Sky Ferreira finally released her debut, six years after signing a $1m record deal. She was transparent about her paradoxical treatment: “They worked me to death, but when I wanted to input anything, it was like, ‘You’re a child, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’” When Capitol pulled funding for the album, she financed its completion: it was widely named an album of the year. Facing similar frustrations, rapper Angel Haze leaked her 2013 album, Dirty Gold, and Azealia Banks wasted no opportunity to expose industry machinations.The rise of Tumblr and SoundCloud put young artists in control of their own artistic identities, forging authentic fan relationships that labels couldn’t afford to mess with. Lorde was signed age 12, but her manager knew he had to follow her lead because she knew her audience better than he did. Halsey was already Tumblr-famous for her covers, hair colours and candour about her bisexuality and bipolar diagnosis when she posted her first original song in 2014. It received so much attention that the 19-year-old – who described herself as an “inconvenient woman” for everything she represented – signed to major label Astralwerks the following evening.A new type of fan arrived with them. The illusion of intimacy led to greater emotional investment – and with it, an expectation of accountability. Social media was being used to arbitrate social justice issues, giving long overdue platforms to marginalised voices, and establishing far more complex moral standards for pop stars than the executives who shilled Britney’s virginity could ever have imagined. In 2013, Your Fav Is Problematic began to highlight stars’ missteps: among Halsey’s 11 infractions were “sexualising Japanese culture” and allegedly falsifying her story about being “homeless”.Musicians, particularly of an

older guard, were unprepared. Lily Allen’s comeback single Hard Out Here, released in late 2013, satirised the impossible aesthetic standards expected of female musicians – a bold message undermined by the racist stereotypes she invoked to make her point: “Don’t need to shake my arse for you ’cause I’ve got a brain,” she sang, while black and Asian leotard-clad dancers twerked around her in the video. The backlash was swift. There was the sense of a balance tipping.📷 Refused to let terrorists suppress girls’ joy ... Ariana Grande at One Love Manchester, 4 June 2017. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/One Love Manchester/Getty Images Advertisement Over the decade, female pop stars steadily self-determined beyond the old limited archetypes. But the most dramatic identity shifts were still a product of adversity, women battling for control.In 2015, Ariana Grande provoked mild outcry when she got caught licking a doughnut she hadn’t paid for and declaring: “I hate America.” Two years later, a suicide bomber attacked her concert at Manchester Arena, leaving 22 dead. She went home to Florida in the aftermath, then returned to stage benefit concert One Love Manchester. A victim’s mother asked Grande to perform her raunchiest hits after the Daily Mail implied that the bomber had targeted the concert because of her sexualised aesthetic. So she did. By prioritising her mental health and refusing to let terrorists suppress girls’ joy and sexuality, she set a powerful example for fans that ran counter to the moralising of commentators such as Piers Morgan.Grande appeared to emerge from this tragedy – and the death of ex-boyfriend Mac Miller – with a renewed sense of what was important, and what really was not. Her next album, Sweetener, defiantly reclaimed happiness from trauma; she swiftly released another, Thank U, Next, abandoning traditional pop release patterns to work with a rapper’s spontaneity. “I just want to fucking talk to my fans and sing and write music and drop it the way these boys do,” she said.Kesha had helped instigate this decade of greater freedom for female musicians – or so it seemed until October 2014, when she sued producer Dr Luke, making allegations including sexual assault. (In spring 2016, a judge dismissed the case; Luke denies all allegations and is suing Kesha for defamation.) She claimed she was told she had to be “fun”, an image that Luke’s label intended to capitalise on, revealing how revelry could be just as confining as its prim counterpart. In 2017, she released Rainbow, her first album in five years. Addressing her trauma, it got the best reviews of her career – a response that also seemed to reveal something about the most digestible way for a female artist to exist. But her forthcoming album, High Road, pointedly returns to the recklessness of her first two records. “I don’t feel as if I’m beholden to be a tragedy just because I’ve gone through something that was tragic,” she said.Taylor Swift’s refusal to endorse a candidate in the 2016 election, and the fallout from a spat with Kanye West, saw her shred her image of nice-girl relatability with her 2017 heel-turn, Reputation. But she rebelled more meaningfully when she leveraged her profile to expose the music industry, alerting the public to otherwise opaque matters of ownership and compensation. She joined independent labels in the fight to make Apple Music pay artists for the free trial period it offered consumers. Earlier this year, she despaired at her former label, Big Machine, being bought – and the master recordings to her first six albums with it – by nemesis Scooter Braun, an option she claimed she was denied. Now signed to Universal, and the owner of her masters going forward, she hoped young musicians might learn from her “about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation”, she wrote. “You deserve to own the art you make.” Advertisement Swift’s formative politesse came from country music, an industry that emphasises deference to power and traditional gender roles. In 2015, consultant Keith Hill – using a bizarre metaphor about

salad – admitted that radio sidelined female musicians: they were then subject to endless questions about tomatogate, as if they had the power to fix it. But that blatant industry disregard freed female country artists to shuck off obligation and make whatever music they wanted. In recent years, Miranda Lambert, Ashley McBryde, Brandy Clark, Kacey Musgraves, Ashley Monroe, Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile and Margo Price have all creatively outstripped their male peers.📷 ‘Just me existing is revolutionary’ ... Lizzo. Photograph: Owen Sweeney/Invision/APTheir situation resonates beyond country: greater personal freedoms for female musicians haven’t equated to greater commercial success. Just because a wave of female pop acts have refused old industry ideals, that doesn’t mean control is consigned to the past. There will be young women enduring coercive music industry situations right now – whether manipulation or more serious abuse. Some may never meet those impossible standards, and fail to launch. Others may quietly endure years of repression before potentially finding their voice. There are high-profile female pop acts working today who control their work yet are still subject to grinding suggestions that they change to meet market demands, and noisy women from this decade who have been sidelined. The tropes of the self-actualised female pop star are so established that labels know how to reverse engineer “real” pop girls beholden to a script.But the emergence of a more holistic female star will make it harder for labels to shill substitutes. Their emotional openness has destroyed the stigma around mental health that was used to diminish female musicians as “mad” divas. Charli XCX said she would never have betrayed her vulnerabilities when she was starting out in her teens. “If I’m emotionally vulnerable,” she thought, “people won’t take me seriously … Now I just don’t care.” Robyn spent eight years following up her most successful record because she needed time to grieve and unpick the impact of her own teen stardom. Britney – who in 1999 told Rolling Stone, “I have no feelings at all” – this year cancelled her Las Vegas residency to prioritise her mental health. 📷 More to the floor: the decade the dancefloor was decolonised Read more Advertisement They’ve relentlessly countered the male gaze. Chris refused to simplify queerness for the mainstream; Kim Petras stood for “trans joy”; Rihanna challenged the idea of skinny as aspirational by creating inclusive fashion lines and candidly discussing her own shape. “Just me existing is revolutionary”, Lizzo has said, while Cardi B refused to let anyone use her past as a stripper undermine her legitimacy as a powerful political voice.Where unthinking messiness was valorised at the start of the decade, now imperfection only gets a pass as long as nobody else is getting hurt. This summer, Miley, now 26, apologised for the racial insensitivity of her Wrecking Ball era. Soon after, she posted striking tweets in response to rumours of her cheating on her husband. She admitted to having been hedonistic and unprofessional in her youth. But she swore she hadn’t cheated in her marriage. “I’ve grown up in front of you, but the bottom line is, I HAVE GROWN UP,” she wrote. (To a degree – not long after, she found herself called out again when she implied that queerness is a choice.)In their fallibility and resistance to commodification, the women who have defined this decade in pop look a lot more like role models than the corporate innocents sold to girls in the early millennium. They’re still learning, working with what they’ve got rather than submitting to what they’re told. “I don’t know what it feels like not to be a teenager,” Billie Eilish said recently. “But kids know more than adults.” … as you’re joining us today from South Africa, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s high-impact journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5

million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.With no shareholders or billionaire owner, we can set our own agenda and provide trustworthy journalism that’s free from commercial and political influence, offering a counterweight to the spread of misinformation. When it’s never mattered more, we can investigate and challenge without fear or favour.Unlike many others, Guardian journalism is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of global events, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action.We aim to offer readers a comprehensive, international perspective on critical events shaping our world – from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the new American administration, Brexit, and the world's slow emergence from a global pandemic. We are committed to upholding our reputation for urgent, powerful reporting on the climate emergency, and made the decision to reject advertising from fossil fuel companies, divest from the oil and gas industries, and set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

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doomedandstoned · 7 years

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BAILEY’S CHOICE

Youngblood Supercult guitarist Bailey Gonzales shares her 10 favorite albums of Autumn.

Photo by Johnny Hubbard at Doomed & Stoned Fest

First off, let me preface by saying that this list is just a fraction of what I would include on a good, solid Autumn playlist, but everything must end at some point. Most of these you’ve probably heard, some you may not be familiar with, and others perhaps long forgotten and thus need a good revisiting. So here goes:

1. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young – Déjà vu

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This has been in my catalog since I first started smoking weed in the fall of my freshman year of high school and learned to enjoy the hazy, beautiful strains of intricate harmonies that permeate CSNY’s iconic brand of folk-blues rock. Their albums were always on rotation in my house when I was growing up, but until I started to fully understand its cosmic, layered beauty, Déjà vu fell more or less into the “lame music my parents listen to” category for me. Now it’s a staple, especially as the weather starts to cool and the leaves start to turn, and I’m thrown into some kind of sepia-tinged yearning for the past. Funny how things change. This album holds some of the group’s most acclaimed work; I can’t point out a single track I’d skip over.

2. Graveyard – Graveyard

Graveyard by Graveyard

Speaking of high school—I grew up in a very small town in Southeast Kansas, and when MySpace made its debut (yes, MySpace), I found a page for this indie label called Tee Pee Records that absolutely dictated what I would listen to take the edge of my Black Sabbath cravings—this is where I was ultimately introduced to stoner rock and all of the branches of the retro heavy metal genre—and one of them that always stuck with me as I worshipped this label’s releases thereafter was Graveyard’s self-titled album. There are so many great tracks on this album, with “Thin Line” being an absolute favorite and even an echoing of one of my darkest autumn remembrances (won’t delve into it, but the subject matter will lead you where you need to go). Fantastic, timeless album.

3. Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson – Room 237

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Room 237 (2012) is a funny little documentary. I love it, despite the fact that this film lays out conspiracies about Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining that range from absolutely Kubrickesque crazy-but-plausible to totally ludicrous, leaping-to-judgement scenarios and breakdowns related to the hidden puzzles within the original adaptation. But, we are talking about music here: this album plays like Stranger Things meets Goblin meets John Carpenter. There is nothing necessarily special about it, but in trying to find an OST that would fit neatly within this list, this fella kind of jumped out to me. Not everybody enjoys soundtracks, and while I could listen to creepy, ambient synth all day long, every day, Room 237 seems like it could entrance any listener, especially with standout tracks like “To Keep From Falling Off” to “Universal Weak Male” and even with the closing track, “Dies Irae” which plays off the original theme from The Shining.

4. Trouble – Trouble

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It blows my mind that this album was released in 1990. Everything about it screams, “I WANT TO MAKE YOUR EARS BLEED: ‘70s METAL STLYE.” It’s like a lost and very angry Sir Lord Baltimore album was found in someone’s murky basement and sold in a musty, long forgotten record shop. The kind of place where you might hear whispers of dark legends. Somewhere that may be evocative, in legend, of the kind of place that Mayhem’s late singer, Dead, slit his wrists, throat, and blew his brains out and everyone commenced for this orgiastic blood feast of mourning to say, uh, “let’s take a photo of his dead body and slap it on a bootleg album cover and make necklaces out of his skull...” It’s not that harsh, but there’s definitely something spooky, dark, and forbidden about it. You may ask yourself, if you’re just hearing this album for the first time: “Why don’t they play some of these tracks on the radio?” Well, my child...do you really want to know?

5. The Steepwater Band – Revelation Sunday

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This collection of hot tunes from The Steepwater Band is, apart from 2011’s Clava, one of our band’s road staples. We often don’t agree on much when that road cagey feeling hits or when disagreements happen, which incidentally is why things tend to work well with us, but The Steepwater Band, Mount Carmel, and Gary Clark Junior are all things we can come to terms with through the van’s trebly stock speakers. Maybe it’s the bluesiness. Very moody folk-blues rock tunes, with a touch of whiskey-fueled country, is what these guys exhibit in songs like “Slow Train Drag,” “Dance Me A Number,” and “Steel Sky.” A plus material, in my book, and good for the road on a cold night’s ramble.

6. Black Sabbath – Never Say Die!

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Can people stop it with the “I’m tired of Black Sabbath” comments??? You know they are the reason we’re all here, and whether you like to admit it or not, you dig a good Sabbath tune either once in a while or every day. Doctor’s orders. Now I don’t think that a playlist is complete without a Black Sabbath album, but autumn seems the appropriate time for their fumbling, but strong conclusion — 1978’s Never Say Die! And I really don’t care that I know I’m in the minority for loving this album. To me, while it’s their most strained Ozzy-era album (I won’t even touch 13, so don’t ask), it’s full of premonitions of things to come, including a full out jazz brawl in “Breakout” that reminds me of the mean streets in Dirty Harry, and songs that might make the bravest of our genre cry, like “Junior’s Eyes.” “Shock Wave” goes through the typical rough and tumble changes that Black Sabbath fans learn to embrace, but it comes in wave after wave after wave. Hell, even the title track is nearly full-out punk rock. If you’ve avoided this album, please—give it a spin. Even if it’s only to hear Bill Ward sing. It’s the album I fell into when I joined my first band in the fall of 2008 and what pushed me into the direction of branching out to things I’d long avoided. I literally shit my pants every time the first synth breakdown in “Johnny Blade” comes over the speakers, and I think you should, too.

7. Madonna – Madonna

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Speaking of shit you probably don’t wanna read…who out of us has given Madonna’s 1983 debut a spin? Anyone? Bueller? Yeah, I didn’t think so. For you folks who can appreciate this one, I applaud you for admitting it. It’s not a sin to listen to Madonna (tell that one to the Vatican), but unless she’s been covertly transformed into Lana Del Rey or someone else on the darker and more modern side of the pop spectrum, you’d be hard pressed to find an admitted fan in our heavy underground group. And you know what? I don’t give a single fuck (yes, I learned that language from M herself). She’s a goddess, an icon, a killer songwriter—if you don’t believe me, tell that to the $400 million she has neatly tucked away—and dammit, she taught me to give a little less of a fuck in times where I don’t have too many to spare. This is another reason my parents are badass. Who in the world would buy their kid the “Like A Virgin” album only if their 11-year-old can ask for it by name without getting too embarrassed at the thought of saying “virgin” out loud to the Camelot Music clerk? Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, listen to this. Just do it...Madonna would.

8. The Midnight Ghost Train – Buffalo

Buffalo by The Midnight Ghost Train

I met Steve Moss at a show in Topeka in late 2009 at a dive bar where the drummer from my first band was singing in his new group. We did the obligatory thing and then, holy shit—this band starts playing and glasses start clinking and I swear to god I thought the whole damn place was going to cave in. They play a bunch of tunes and I’m so fully entranced it’s stupid. After the show, I went up to their singer/guitarist and said, “Um, that was really fucking awesome. I loved how you slipped “Hand of Doom into the middle of one of your songs.” Bam. We were instant buds. I couldn’t believe that they had come out of Topeka, Kansas. Later, while they were prepping to record 2012’s Buffalo, we had a very memorable fall jam session and some shows together, and EVERY. DAMNED. TIME. I felt like there was just something insanely special happening. Buffalo proved to be an instant classic, and even though The Midnight Ghost Train boys seem to always be on tour, I visit with my old pal Steve from time to time when he’s around, and nothing can erase those crazy, almost LSD-like imprinted memories of our house shows together. Hell, we reunited again just last month in another Topeka dive bar. I still have almost 3 hours’ worth of an interview I need to write that documents Steve’s early life up until the recording of Cold Was The Ground. The circle goes round and round. And I sure as hell can’t shake that sound.

9. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River

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I don’t know what everyone else thinks about when they hear the track “Green River” from Creedence Clearwater Revival, but I think of Gary Ridgeway. I know that’s way far off, but I can’t help it. I also think about the album cover, and how many people still try to copy it, unintentionally. And I think about Stephen King. If you’ve read a few of his novels, you know from some of his passages, he’s a total CCR freak. I’ll give him a pass for mentioning Springsteen so much just because he’s a damn genius. But I bet the casual listener has never heard the song “Sinister Purpose” on the radio airwaves. It sounds like it belongs on a damn Leaf Hound album or something. Thank god for small favors. This is the epitome of southern blues rock. All you Lynyrd Skynyrd fans can fight me (although I won’t knock them), but CCR has earned their grimy, yet rightful spot as the Bayou’s most raw and creepy rock group. And way down in the fall, there’s always a bad moon rising.

10. Buffalo – Dead Forever...

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Man, I was going to write up a few more albums, but this is the end of the line, folks. Australia’s Buffalo caps it off with their 1972 album, Dead Forever... I can see this piece being released today, and that’s why I’m so glad everyone in this community puts out music that can rival little-known bands like Buffalo. I have a sweet spot for this group. Nobody will ever be able to answer why this killer band could never receive any airplay, and that question still lingers as absolute over processed shit continues to infiltrate the airwaves and real emotion can’t shine through. One of the promotional stickers for this record was, “Play this album LOUD.” Seen that before? Is history repeating itself in belittling our efforts to get out there and WARP THE FUCK out of people’s minds? I guess so. But we can fix that. Put the needle on some Buffalo, don your battle jacket, and work on getting some fuzz into some onlooker’s ears. Listen carefully, and don’t let the Buffalo situation happen to us all.

Hear Bailey's 'Autumn Vibes' Playlist on Spotify

Photo by Johnny Hubbard

The Great American Death Rattle by Youngblood Supercult

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