redrobin-25 · 6 months ago
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Yall, it’s like 1:30 am where I am. Mae is one of my all time favorite bands. I know in the past I’ve daydreamed of some of the tracks being about ATLA (I used to imagine the song Boomerang about Sokka x Suki back when the show was still on TV). Someone tell me why I am now headcannon-ing this song being about Sokka and Zuko. What I’d pay to have someone adapt this song into like a comic or an animated music video
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youareinlovetv · 1 month ago
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What's your reasoning behind your picks for the albums' season (esp Speak Now being a December winter rather than a late one and Fearless being summer, because I feel like those aren't very popular, so genuinely curious)?
OK here we go. i’m gonna list every album and why i think it is where it is
debut - debut to me is very early spring but it also just feels like spring in general to me tbh 😭 it’s kinda chill like spring is and there’s some bumps along the road but it’s nice
fearless - fearless feels like late spring/early summer going into the energetic part of the year where you can just do whatever. when you’re full of love and sneaking out to see your boyfriend (love story) or just dancing in the rain (title track) or something idk. especially the title track it just feels very beginning of summer to me
speak now - ok so honestly speak now to me is a july album but 😭 july was already mostly filed by 1989 and i needed to put something in december so that’s where it goes. but it fits december too with back to december and some other songs!! but yeah it’s very summery to me i just couldn’t put it there bc 1989 is THE summer album
red - i would’ve spread red out more in the fall tbh but i wanted midnights to kinda have its moment. to be honest, red og feels like summer and red tv feels like fall if that makes sense… state of grace and red are so summery and the singles too but the deep cuts are so fall and most of the vault songs feel like fall too. so honestly red og would go in about mid-late july and red tv would be from late september to about mid november.
1989 - no explanation needed. 1989 is THE summer album. it definitely feels like a beginning of summer album but fearless fills that up for me so 1989 is like after the initial start of the summer happens and you just party during the summer like it’s forever… yeah.
reputation - reputation was a hard one… i feel like the first half would be in mid january-mid february but the second half feels so late december-early january to me. ultimately i settled on early january to mid february but with a tiny bit of december as well, i just didn’t put it in the picture.
lover - lover was a bit of a hard one considering i feel like it’s in the same place as folklore but i tried my best. lover to me feels very august but i had folklore taking up august so honestly i just kinda moved it back a bit and called it a day. lover is like after 1989, after the parties and shit and when it starts to just be chill, waiting for the summer to end.
folklore - and THEN after lover comes folklore. folklore is august to me and then also that period in september where it’s fall but it doesn’t feel like fall because it’s still like 80° outside and humid as hell
evermore - evermore is a winter album to me with a tinge of fall so i put a bit of november into it lol. no explanation needed i think
midnights - midnights’ release date feels right to me. early september to mid october feels so right for it tbh. the fall when stuff is starting up again and things are changing. when the most drama is happening. a third thing.
ttpd - this might have been the hardest one for me… i think it’s late winter/early spring to me because it’s that period where you’re just done with the cold weather and are moping around (hence the album being like 90% sad) but early spring gives you a little hope so you get some optimistic and upbeat songs in the package.
this took a long time to type omg 😭 but yeah that’s my reasoning
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deus-ex-mona · 3 years ago
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Watashi, Idol Sengen: part 1
Hi, this is part 1 of the Watashi, Idol Sengen novel (which comes with the second CHiCO with HoneyWorks album)!
mona vs LIPxLIP hostility index for this part: ★★★★★★
Next part (part 2)
The moment she saw LIPxLIP’s performance, Narumi Mona felt as though she had been struck by lightning, rendering her unable to move from her spot. 
The event that had been held that day was a live festival that was hosted by the record label. It was at a packed outdoor venue held under the evening sky. 
After a moment of silence, loud cheers and screams echoed out as the two of them ran out onto the stage. Mona found that the excitement spread throughout the venue all at once. She could tell that most of the spectators had come to the event to see them and to listen to their songs. It was the performance that they had been waiting for. She could also see that the tension amongst the spectators had naturally risen just by their appearance. 
They were Yujiro and Aizo of LIPxLIP, the idol unit that was rapidly rising in popularity. The both of them had good reputations, not only for their looks, but also for their singing abilities. Teenage girls made up a good portion of their fanbase. 
Their first single had also been a big hit, and tickets for live events that LIPxLIP performed in were always sold out. Their first solo live seemed to be scheduled for the following year.
Mona knew that they were popular. No matter which shop she went to, LIPxLIP songs were playing, so they naturally reached her ears as well.
But…
(You’re kidding… What’s the meaning of this?)
Mona had subconsciously started to rub her own arm.
Aah, she had goosebumps…
Was it because it was the first time that she had seen their live performance?
Or was it because she was listening to them from up close?
Or was it because the lighting and sound producers were good at their jobs?
No, that was wrong. That was not it.
Mona was engulfed by the overwhelming presence of the two of them, being swallowed up by their energy. She herself was unable to take her eyes off the two of them as they stood at the centre of the stage.
“The next song is…”
After they had finished singing their third song, Yujiro took a light breath before beginning to speak.
Yujiro and Aizo met each other’s eyes for a moment.
“Romeo!!”
When Aizo mentioned the title of the song, a particularly loud cheer sounded out. Before the cheers had quietened down, the band began to play.
The voltage of the spectators was at its peak.
The only one who was left out of the excitement that had enveloped the entire venue was Mona.
(So this is LIPxLIP…)
As she gripped her arm painfully tightly, Mona continued to watch the two of them sing on the illuminated stage from her spot in the wings of the stage.
(I didn’t know a single thing about them.)
She knew nothing about them---.
★~★~★
Narumi Mona was a High School student as of the Spring of that year. 
She did not choose to attend Sakuragaoka High School, like her older sister had attended, having enrolled in a different High School instead.
Mona’s older sister, Narumi Sena, first started to gain popularity when she became a magazine model. After graduating from High School, she was now active in many fields as a model and an entertainer. As there were currently about three commercials airing on television alone, everyone would have seen her at least once.
In Mona’s eyes, her older sister Sena was a very beautiful and cute girl. She had a small, oval face and big, bright eyes. She wore her long hair in twintails, and she had a great sense of style. She was admired by the girls of their generation.
In addition to being blessed with good looks, Sena was also a hard worker. Despite having a busy work schedule, she would go to the gym and attend dance classes to keep fit. Although she had a dainty physique, she had more energy and vitality than most other people. Additionally, even though she did not have the free time to take a proper rest, she did not look tired at all, appearing to be rather lively instead.
People seemed to shine the most when they were doing something that they wanted to do. That brilliance of Sena’s may have been another attractive point that drew people to her.
It was just that, Mona, who was the younger sister of such an older sister, held some slightly complicated feelings about it. 
The more brightly her older sister shone, the more Mona seemed to be driven into her shadow… She felt as though she was being viewed through a haze…
If she went to the same High School that her older sister had attended, she would inevitably be seen as Narumi Sena’s younger sister. She did not like that… being seen as such a thing would be a painful annoyance. She wanted to start from scratch in a place without her older sister’s influence.
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By her own admission, Mona was plain in both personality and appearance. She was often told that her way of speaking was dark. She was sure that it was because she did not smile at all hours of the day, much unlike the other girls. She rarely had a smile on her face.
Mona was considered to be “boring” and a “person who doesn’t talk much” by the people around her. In fact, she did not find any fault in that reputation of hers at all.
The only thing that she could be a little proud of was the fact that she was good at singing. However, she never let anyone listen to her singing. She especially did not want her classmates at school to ever hear her sing. It was extremely obvious that she would be laughed at or teased for it. Even when they were singing as a class, she would only sing at a low volume.
And yet, because her older sister was a celebrity, several whispered rumours of “She’s the younger sister of that Narumi Sena, isn’t she?” rose up around her. Following that, it was obvious what everyone would say to her.
“Eh, you’re nothing like her at all. You’re kinda plain.”
(That’s right. I’m plain. It’s normal, isn’t it? Not everyone can be like Big Sis.)
Rather, it would be a problem if people had expected her to shine as much as Sena did, only to be disappointed instead. Her older sister was a strong person, but she did have her weak moments. Mona thought that her older sister was cute and, having seen how hard she had worked from up close, respected her for it.
Mona was an ordinary person. She was content with being a plain person. She saw nothing wrong with being plain. 
However, every time someone mentioned her older sister, Mona felt as though she was being blamed.
“Even though you’re that Narumi Sena’s younger sister…” and things like that.
Mona did not hate her older sister. Conversely, they got along rather well for sisters, and they often had fun shopping together on their off days, and they would even take baths together.
It was just that…
Every time she was compared to her older sister, there were times when Mona felt like screaming.
“I am me. I’m Narumi Mona!!”, or something along those lines…
However, she would always swallow that scream of hers with a sigh before she could vocalise it. 
It was pointless for her to say such a thing. No one would understand her. No one would…
No one was seeing her for who she was.
She had become accustomed to giving up without being consciously aware of it.
After all, she was unable to become a special person—.
★~★~★
Mona met “him” shortly after enrolling into High School.
On that day, after school, Mona had stopped by her favourite CD shop by herself. 
It was a small shop along the shopping district. However, as the manager of the store was very fond of music, the shop also sold CDs from minor bands that could not be found elsewhere.
Owing to the wide selection of items, as well as the occasional bargain deal, Mona had been patronising the shop ever since she was a Middle School student.
Besides, the possibility of encountering a classmate from her school at the store by sheer coincidence was low. 
Having entered High School, Mona was finally able to befriend a group of girls in her class. 
Truth be told, Mona loved idols to the extremes. She loved them so much that she could admit that she was a “geek” about them. She would also go to concerts and lives that idols would perform in. Owing to that, she had collected way too many penlights, towels, stickers, and other goods that she had bought at the lives, with the items overwhelming her closet. Just the penlights alone filled up a cardboard box. Many magazines, CDs, and DVDs lined her bookshelf. She had also put up a large poster of an idol group that she was really into at the moment on the wall of her room.
If Mona’s current group of friends from her High School were to see her like this, they would be 100% put off by her. That was why she had no intentions of telling them about this hobby of hers.
It was Mona’s own secret pleasure. No matter how bad things got at school, no matter how depressed she felt, she could return home, put her headphones on to watch the DVD of her favourite idol’s live performance, and all her woes would be blown away.
Idols gave her strength to live her daily life. They were the source of her motivation.
The time that Mona spent immersed in it belonged to no one else. It was her time. A period of time that existed just for her. She did not have to care about anyone else. She did not have to hide her true feelings. She could just be the real Narumi Mona.
That day had been the release date of the album of her favourite band, so she had been in high spirits since that morning, and had headed for the shop the moment school had let out for the day. It was a given that she had preordered the album, especially since it had come with an advance lottery ticket for a live concert as a first issue purchase bonus.
Mona collected her album and made to leave the shop, brimming with excitement.
(I need to save up, just in case my ticket is a winner!)
She briefly wished that she could have been a magazine model, just like her older sister Sena. She found herself sagging in resignation as that thought crossed her mind.
“Impossible! No. No way~,” Mona muttered to herself with a shake of her head.
Mona wondered why she was so different from her older sister, even though they were sisters. If she had at least one tenth of her older sister’s cuteness, she might have been a little more confident in herself.
Mona heaved a sigh as she headed for the door of the shop. 
“I need to look for a part-time job…”
She had no intentions of joining a club in High School for that reason.
Mona suddenly stopped just as she was about to leave the store. 
The characters “Wagon Sale” had caught her eye.
She had just purchased a CD mere moments ago, so she did not have much money left. However…
(I’m just taking a look, just a look!)
Mona made excuses in her heart as she walked up to the wagon, which contained stacks of CDs. 
She had been looking at the jackets of the CDs intently, when she noticed a CD buried at the bottom and reached out for it.
“This is… a CD that is out of print and can’t be found anymore! Even though it has a premiere on the Internet!!” Mona’s two hands trembled as she held the CD in her grasp.
(Is it really okay?! It’s not good to have such a precious CD be thrown into this wagon sale, right? What if it gets thrown away and scrapped without anyone noticing it? I have to rescue it… Or, wait, maybe it was buried here for me to buy it. God is telling me to buy this CD. That’s definitely it.)
“Do I have enough for it?” Mona remembered, setting down the CD to check the contents of her wallet. “Ugh… I barely have enough.”
If she bought that CD, she would have no choice but to give up on buying ice cream at the convenience store for half a month.
“Which is more important between ice cream or the CD?! I don’t have to give it any thought, right?”
She could always eat ice cream at any time. She could resist the urge to eat it. Rather, it was better to resist eating it for the sake of a diet. 
However, the CD may only be there at that very moment. No, it was only there for that moment.
Mona closed her wallet. 
“Alright! Let’s buy it!”
Having made up her mind, she turned to pick up the CD that she had returned to the wagon, only to find that it had disappeared without her knowledge.
“Eh, h-huh?!”
Raising her head in surprise, Mona saw a male student clad in his school uniform standing next to her. It was the uniform of Sakuragaoka High School that her older sister used to attend. She could not help the fact that her eyes were naturally drawn towards his pretty face.
(He looks like he could be an idol… Huh, I think I’ve seen him somewhere before, but where was it?)
Mona did not attend the same school as he did, so she was unable to know for sure. As she looked at his face while thinking along those lines, she suddenly regained her senses.
(Wait, no!)
In the hand of the boy was the CD that Mona had intended to buy. He held it as he headed for the counter.
“Aaaah, my CD!” Mona found herself raising her voice as she grabbed the hem of his uniform.
“Huh?” the boy stopped, turning his head towards Mona. His brow was furrowed in his apparent displeasure.
“Uhh…” Mona’s gaze wavered under the pressure of his piercing glare.
(It’s twice as destructive when his face is this pretty…)
But that was not the time to be admiring his face.
(I can’t get drawn in here!)
“I-I was going to buy that!”
“Isn’t it your fault for hesitating?” the boy spoke, cruelly swatting Mona’s hand away.
“You’re the one who stole it while I was taking my wallet out!”
“I’m the one who wanted to buy it first.”
“But I was here first, wasn’t I?!”
“How was I supposed to know what you wanted to buy?”
“Please let me have it. It’s the precious CD of a band that I really love. It’s something that I can’t get anymore. That’s all I want!!” Mona pressed her palms together and bowed her head. She then glanced upwards to look at the boy’s expression.
“No way. I was looking for this CD too,” the boy jerked his chin towards Mona.
(I-it’s frustrating, but… I have to say that he has good taste.)
“Is that all?” the boy asked, an edge of tedium in his voice, as he turned away.
“W-wait!” Mona grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“What?!” the boy raised his voice in annoyance as he stumbled backwards.
“R-rock-paper-scissors!!”
“You don’t know when to give up, do you?” he sighed wearily.
“It’s fair this way, isn’t it?”
“Rock-paper!” Mona called out as she thrust her hand forward. “Scissors!”
The boy put forth his hand as well.
A moment of silence washed over the two of them.
“And that’s how it is,” the boy withdrew his hand, which had made the sign for “paper”, and walked away with the CD.
“I-I lost…!!” Mona lowered her hand, which was clenched in the gesture for “rock”, and sank to the ground on her knees.
It had been a CD that she may never come across again.
With a plastic bag from the shop in hand, the boy quickly walked past Mona as he made his exit.
As Mona saw him off with a sense of regret, she suddenly recalled where she had seen him before and raised her voice. “Ahh!!”
“Mona, why are you crouched over in such a place? Did you drop some change?” the shop owner, who Mona was familiar with, called out to her.
“T-that boy… that boy from earlier, he’s one of the guys from LIPxLIP!!”
Mona had seen his face many times in her magazines. Even so, she wondered why she had not realised it.
“Ah, are you talking about Yujiro? He comes to this shop often. He’s a regular customer, just like you, Mona,” the shop owner said with a bright smile.
(He’s a regular customer at this store, just like me?!)
Mona quickly stood up and bowed her head. 
“I’ll come by again,” she said as she left the shop.
“What’s with LIPxLIP? The only thing nice about them is their appearances. Their personalities are absolutely twisted!” Mona muttered to herself as she walked quickly. 
Recalling the proud expression on Yujiro’s face, her anger returned in full force. Her rage would probably take a while to dispel.
(I won’t ever listen to their songs.)
Mona loved idols, but she would not support the two of them.
Narumi Mona’s first impression of LIPxLIP had been the absolute worst.
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dailytomlinson · 4 years ago
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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”
The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?
“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”
“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.
July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.
It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.
Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”
In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.
“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”
“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk
To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.
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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”
One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.
“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.
“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”
Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.
“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”
Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.
Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”
Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.
At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”
“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”
At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”
Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.
“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”
Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.
Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.
“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”
Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.
But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”
“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”
That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”
For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”
“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”
Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.
“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”
Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.
“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.
“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”
“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.
“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”
Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.
“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”
A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”
Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.
But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.
“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”
After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”
In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.
“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says
There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”
But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.
“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”
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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”
The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?
“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”
“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.
July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.
It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.
Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”
In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.
“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”
“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk
To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.
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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”
One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.
“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.
“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”
Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.
“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”
Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.
Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”
Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.
At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”
“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”
At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”
Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.
“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”
Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.
Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.
“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”
Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.
But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”
“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”
That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”
For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”
“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”
Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.
“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”
Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.
“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.
“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”
“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.
“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”
Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.
“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”
A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”
Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.
But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.
“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”
After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”
In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.
“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says
There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”
But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.
“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”
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hlupdate · 4 years ago
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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”
The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”
“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”
“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.
July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom. 
It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.
Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”
In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.
“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”
To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars. 
The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”
One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.
“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.
“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”
Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.
“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”
Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.
Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”
Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.
At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”
“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”
At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”
Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.
“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”
Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.
Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.
“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”
Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible. 
But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.” 
“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”
That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”
For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”
“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”
Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.
“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.” 
Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.
“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.
“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”
Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.
“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”
Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.
“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”
A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”
Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.
But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.
“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”
After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”
In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.
There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”
But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.
“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”
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cxhnow · 4 years ago
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CHLOE X HALLE AREN’T HOLDING ANYTHING BACK
It all started with a mood board.Back in December 2018, sisters Chloe and Halle Bailey, along with their younger brother Branson, wanted a weekend away — a “free your mind retreat,” in Halle’s words — to get some creative juices flowing. They hopped in Chloe’s Mini Cooper and headed to Palm Springs; 48 hours later, they left with 15 new songs and the spark of an album. Once home, they took that spark, plus a few old magazines, and created the mood board for what would eventually become their second album, Ungodly Hour. “There was a specific phrase that we were drawn to: ‘the trouble with angels,’” says Chloe, 22. “We didn’t know what we liked about it, but it stuck out. We picked a bunch of edgier images, including nude women and nude men to symbolize baring our souls and being naked in the music… After we finished the album seven or eight months later, we looked at the mood board and we had articulated everything we wanted to.”
Released on June 12, Ungodly Hour has received rave reviews for the sister duo. “Chloe x Halle shed their innocence with grace, as they do with everything else,” wrote Pitchfork, while Rolling Stone called it a “beautiful example of sisterly solidarity.” The album is a powerful, hit-filled record that’s made for the dance floor, while also seeing the duo — who were 19 and 17, respectively, when their first album The Kids Are Alright came out in 2018 — at their most provocative yet, both lyrically and visually. The album cover shows the sisters in matching latex mini dresses by Venus Prototype, standing intertwined, with gleaming metal wings protruding from their backs. “This album felt a lot darker, a lot naughtier than our usual selves, so we wanted to mirror that in the album cover,” says Halle, 20. “We wanted to show that we are strong and powerful and sexy. The latex did just that. Then the thing with the wings is to show that yes, we can be angelic, we can be fragile, but at the same time we are strong and built to withstand anything. And as a woman, you can be all of the above.”
On a recent morning in June, the sisters are dressed down in comparison to their hyper-stylized cover, but no less put together: Chloe wears her hair pulled back with large silver hoops and a glossy red lip, while Halle sits next to her in a ruffled turquoise blouse. The fact that they are camera ready at 9:30 a.m. — on a summer Friday, no less — is not surprising, given the pair’s reputation for professionalism (they are, after all, graduates of the Beyoncé School of Media). They answer each question thoughtfully, rarely speaking over each other or showing signs of disagreement; the only time the Zoom call — a notoriously chaotic interviewing vessel — gets vaguely off track is when their mom calls a question from another room (and even then, they swiftly mute their side of the chat).
The pair’s politeness, however, should not be confused for passivity. In both their music and in their beliefs, Chloe and Halle are quick to speak truthfully and clearly about what they believe in. Ungodly Hour was originally supposed to be released on June 5, but following the death of George Floyd and riots against police brutality that followed, they decided to push it back a week. “We were collectively mourning, in a way,” explains Chloe. “It felt very heavy in that week, especially. Being young, Black women, we feel very attached to what’s been going on. L.A. is usually always sunny, and it didn’t help that the sun was gone that week. We really felt it from all angles. We didn’t want the attention on us at that time.”
Instead, like many of their peers, they took to social media to make sure their voices were heard. “With all the things that we stand for and trying to bring about change and justice, we have to use our platform to speak up,” says Halle. “I’m proud to be a part of this generation. We’re not afraid to speak up and let our voices be heard. We are demanding justice. We are demanding basic human rights. Our skin color should not be a death sentence. Every time we see our peers speak up, we speak up right with them because we have to. It’s our duty as young Black women.”
When the pair eventually did release the album, its critical acclaim was met just as wholeheartedly with mass appeal; here was an album from two young Black women totally in control of their power (in addition to writing and performing, Chloe also produced nearly every track on the record). In extremely online terms, there was no choice but to Stan. “We have seen a lot of positive comments about the album, and that makes us so happy because this has been so important to us to release this project, especially during this time when we really feel it can be a healer,” says Halle.
With 13 songs that tackle topics ranging from heartbreak to the pressures of fame, creating the album was especially healing to the singers themselves. “In the beginning, we [held back] a little bit, but then we were like ‘screw this, we’re going to bare our souls and our hearts,’” says Chloe. “Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, she was baring her soul and you connected with it. You felt, ‘She’s going through this, I’m going through this, and this music is for me.’ We want to create music like that.” Two major themes of the album, Halle adds, are the notions of confidence and vulnerability, as well as how they intersect. “The ideas are married to each other; sometimes you feel great and other days you are not so great,” she says. “For the album, we wanted to combine the two so that when you listen to it, you feel like you’re going through the phases of your life.”
Halle was in the midst of a new phase of her life — the starring role as Ariel in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid — when COVID-19 sent her back home from London, where she was in her third month of rehearsals, to quarantine with her family in California. But even with the album under their belts and the country essentially at a standstill, the creativity flowing within the Bailey household hasn’t stopped. Now that the album is out in the world, the pair have focused on creating groundbreaking at home performances, practically all of which have gone viral immediately after. “We realized that the possibilities were endless when we did the Dear Class of 2020. I was in awe like, ‘This looks like an actual concert.’ After that, the bar was set.” In the performance, the duo perform their hit “Do It,” swathed in white and crystals and shrouded in a circle of strobe lights. Between the cinematography, the choreography, and the overall perfectionism of it all, you’d never guess it was filmed in their backyard.
“After that, the bar was set,” says Halle. “And I can’t wait to keep raising that bar with my sister.” [x]
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quarantineroulette · 5 years ago
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Minor Disappointments’ 10 Least Disappointing Releases of 2019
I wasn’t going to compile a 2019 year-end list for a number of reasons (lack of time to listen to new music, general malaise, little time to write), but I’ve read so much bad end of year music writing that I feel like I must either stoke the embers or assist in extinguishing it. I don’t think I’m doing either here, but everyone likes list so here’s another.
I haven’t had time to really think about 2019 in songs but my favorite this year was, no kidding, a Tindersticks song featuring Robert Pattinson. Speaking of...
10) FKA twigs - Magdalene
  I really wish I hadn’t remembered that Pattinson and twigs dated because it put a slight damper on my enjoyment of this album. Instead of appreciating it in all its genre-destroying glory, as I did on my first listen, subsequent spins led to me becoming sidetracked by tabloid speculation over what RPattz must have done to have wronged this very singular artist. So, whether this is your first listen or 50th, forget all that I just wrote and instead let twigs fill your empty mind with her sometimes delicate, sometimes Kate Bush-evoking, wholly epic songs.
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Favorite moment: It’s pretty commendable and bold to place the lead single as the closing track, especially if its something as monumentally gut-wrenching as “Cellophane.” Also, that video is the visual treasure everyone says it is, no fooling. 
9) Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising
If you’ve ever heard Karen Carpenter’s Beatles covers you might have some idea as to what this record is like. But beyond Natalie Mering’s cozy vocals and timeless compositions is an undercurrent of ambient mystery that sets everything ever so slightly askew. At times, Laurel Canyon vibes are completely dispelled for more crepuscular textures, as in the album’s centerpiece, the Julee Cruise-esque “Movies.” Who knows where Mering will go next, but her path, whether from the California sun or glow of the silver screen, is certainly bright. 
Favorite moment:  “A Lot’s Gonna Change”, “Andromeda”, “Everyday” - as strong of a three song run as on any release this year. 
8) Angel Olsen - All Mirrors
The cynic in me wanted to resist this album, but as soon as the cinematic strings kicked in on “Lark” I decided the enormous amount of critical hyperbole that was being thrown at it was mostly warranted. Stately, dramatic, occasionally synthy and largely devastating, All Mirrors taught me that sometimes you may find many of your favorite things in the unlikeliest of places. Please insure your heartstrings. 
Favorite moment: “Spring” which, like a lot of great songs, sounds a little like a fairground ride breaking down. 
7) Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿
This might be the funnest album I’ve listened to all year. It can be hard to do positive but “Best Life” is as heartening as Nardwuar’s interview with Brown and fewer things are happier than that. With his fifth album, Brown has proven he can ably do every mood with aplomb. And if using cleaning references as euphemisms is your poison, then, hell, he can do that too. 
Favorite moment: “Hoes on my dick ‘cos I look like Roy Orbison.” Need I say more?
6) Omni - Networker
One of the strongest post-to-the-nth-degree-punk bands from the latter 2010s, I still have Omni’s 2016 debut, Deluxe, on heavy rotation. Networker, the trio’s third record and first on Sub Pop, has no shortage of twists, turns, technical dexterity, quirk and compositional audacity. Looks like I’ll be overplaying this one too. 
Favorite moment: I could listen to “Courtesy Call” over a hundred times and I still wouldn’t be able to guess what direction it’s going to go in. 
5) Aldous Harding - Designer
 Of all the artists on this list, I find Harding the most inspiring in both her songwriting and her performing style, which is arresting to say the least. The songs on Designer are paradoxically accessible and impenetrable, with seemingly breezy songs like “Weight of the Planets” leaving you with a feeling that’s a cross between a “wow!” and a “huh?”(perhaps a bit like this). Most impressive of all, Harding draws to mind such greats as Nick Drake, Syd Barrett and Nico while always sounding completely like herself. I honestly don’t know what layer of reality Harding is from, but we should all be thankful she’s residing in ours for the time being. 
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Favorite moment: “The Barrel” had been in my YouTube queue for ages; after finally watched it I was left confused, mildly disturbed, amused and completely beguiled. This kookily hatted lady is just semi-dancing in a heavily-draped room for nearly five minutes and it’s the most fascinating video in years. If the video wasn’t entertaining enough, it also happens to have one of the funniest and sweetest comment threads on YouTube. Oh yeah, and the song is brilliant. 
4) Deerhunter - Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
Deerhunter have really only misstepped once for me and that was with 2015′s Fading Frontier. Seeing as this is the band’s first full length since then, I had quite a bit of trepidation going in. Of course, a lot can happen in four years and Why Hasn’t Everything... is a thankfully thrilling addition to the band’s canon. Whether it be Cate Le Bon’s production, Bradford’s growing ease as a performer and eccentric, Lockett’s unexpectedly Low-esque "Tarnung,” or all of the above, this may well be Deerhunter’s most consistent release since Halcyon Digest. I’m even slightly tempted to say it’s better than it, but the sacrilege is too great.
Favorite moment: “What Happens to People” -- totally unique to the Deerhunter canon and already a classic. 
3) Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!!
I never thought I could ever love an album with a Sublime cover on it, but here we are. In all fairness, the inclusion of “Doin’ Time” matters little when the originals on this treatise on Americana is so glorious.  Between the torchiness and the LA-specific witchiness of songs like “Bartender”, there’s not much on here that I’m able to resist. There may still be haters but “The Greatest” drowns them out a little more with each play.  Favorite Moment: “And we were so obsessed with writing the next best American record” - yeah, thank you for doing that.  2) Karen O & Danger Mouse - Lux Prima Truth be told, the first time I listened to this record I cried when it ended because I didn’t want to leave its world. There may have been more radical records by newer artists in 2019, but hearing Karen O doing what she does best, as well as trying many new things, was such a joy to me. I’m probably among only a handful of people who wanted to hear Karen do a straight up disco song in 2019, but we got it and it’s something to be treasured for years to come. To paraphrase Sparks + Franz Ferdinand, collaborations don’t (often) work, but thanks to O’s flawless vocals and Brian Burton’s sometimes Dave Fridmann-esque production, this one is an exception.  Favorite Moment:  I’m tempted to say the whole thing, but “Turn the Light” and “Redeemer” are maybe two of the biggest surprises on an album of many. 
1) Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains 
Purple Mountains is quite possibly a new touchstone in gallows humor. Given David Berman’s suicide less than a month after the record’s release, what should now be a grim and discomfiting listen is so mordant and wry that it somehow overpowers its bleakness. More striking than perhaps even the moments of humor is the album’s tenderness, so beautifully represented in songs like “Snow is Falling in Manhattan” and “I Loved Being My Mother’s Son.” Although it’s undeniably tragic that there will be no more words from Berman, the ones he’s left us with will fascinate and move us for decades to come. 
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Favorite Moment: Unsurprisingly, Berman’s lyrical dexterity on this album is beyond measure. From the internal and slant rhymes in a line like “see the plod of the flawed individual looking for a nod from God” to the layers of meaning in “the light of my life is going out tonight”, the wordsmithery here is mesmerizing. If I had the time, I would gladly write an essay on how Berman used color to further emphasize a point. Thanks for the music, David, but thanks especially for the words. 
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fugandhi · 5 years ago
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What Ska Means & Why It Matters
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‘What Ska Means & Why It Matters’ (A Film Review) by Adam Wękarski
I recently went to check out a brand new documentary called “Pick It Up! Ska in The ‘90s” at the local Enzian Theater (literally the only showing I think I saw in the central Florida area). For anyone who was alive in America in the 1990s - you may or may not be familiar with the incredibly energetic and upbeat explosion of Ska music in the 1990s. The “Third Wave of Ska” had officially arrived in the U.S.A. thanks to a lot of younger people having grown up listening to all of the previous (and totally awesome) acts of the second wave of Ska (up in the U.K.) and of course the original wave of Ska in Jamaica back in the 1960s (and then forming their own bands with the ‘90s vibe and flavor of the time).
This documentary goes well into detail over many aspects of the first & second waves of ska (aptly narrated by Tim Armstrong of Operation Ivy & Rancid notoriety). For anyone who loves (or has loved) Ska music - this documentary is for you! I speak as someone who very happily (and very thankfully) had got to experience the Ska movement of the ‘90s (which absolutely without-a-doubt helped shape me into the person I have become today), and without the third wave of Ska music I wouldn’t be playing music. Having said that, it must be mentioned that this documentary is a smorgasbord of all of the big players in the Ska scene (throughout all generations of ska) and is a real reward for any devoted lovers of Ska music.
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This documentary has a very informative take on Ska music (which honors the style of music) and a wonderfully-animated historical story or two of Jamaican Rude Boys crashing Ska shows in the ‘60s and English Skinheads in the ‘80s adopting Jamaican attitude through style and expression (in addition to a ton of other stories from first-hand accounts). The documentary also has the best sense of humor exuded through every person on screen who gets that Ska music is kind of a butt-of-a-joke to a lot of people who listen to other styles of music. The unfortunate reality is that Ska did have a rise and a fall in the mainstream due to the eventual lack of interest and appeal (and in my own humble opinion: especially after “9/11” - after that happened, everyone got really angry & miserable and the music industry bought into that and kept feeding that negativity).
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When Ska was at it’s height in the ‘90s, it was indeed everywhere and everyone had at least heard a Ska band on the radio or had known what Ska music was (due to the rising popularity of the genre). I truly enjoy how the documentary does show all of the people who made the Ska scene happen in the ‘90s, and who brought SO MUCH INFLUENCE to people like me (I was also TOTALLY in my band program in school and felt like Ska music gave people like me a CHANCE - Band Kids Unite! Hahaha). It was truly refreshing seeing a ton of photos and video footage of all of those bands, and then having everyone pretty much “sit around the campfire” so-to-speak to talk about how their experiences were being a part of that movement in music. The positive atmosphere cultivated due to the most energetic and dance-friendly (and jump friendly) bands with the raddest shows had never really happened in such a manner before (with exception of The Specials and The English Beat and the like during the second wave) - at least certainly not in USA.
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The somewhat bizarre and unorthodox nature of the musical instrumentation of Ska bands even gets discussed in this totally excellent documentary. All of the borderline awkwardness of Ska music and how it’s basically the ultimate party music (while at the same time being a party for dorky, dweeby, unwanted, unnoticed group of people who really love to have a good time despite going through ups and downs in life just like everybody else). I think that it’s also very commendable that YES Ska music has values and convictions (i.e. Ska Against Racism), and something I always noticed and appreciated was how so many Ska bands had a variety and DIVERSITY of people on stage. You’ll see all people come together unlike any other style of music - and it’s all good - there’s no isolation or hatred when the party is on - people in the ska scene “have arrived” in terms of understanding one another. This is a genre for the enlightened.
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Ska music is the one place where you can find unity & fun and a lot of people with really awesome styles or outlooks. The genre itself is full of a unique variety of bands and people who have been around for a long time and typically know a great deal of the in’s and out’s of Ska. ALL of the AWESOME bands of the Ska scene are featured in this documentary: Operation Ivy, Sublime, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, The Aquabats!, Less Than Jake, No Doubt, Chris Murray, Hepcat, The Slackers, Skankin’ Pickle, Rx Bandits, The Hippos, Buck-O-Nine, Mad Caddies, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Five Iron Frenzy, Dance Hall Crashers, Rancid, Goldfinger, Mustard Plug, The Suicide Machines, Big D and The Kids Table, The Pietasters, Mephiskapheles, The Toasters, Spring Heeled Jack, Fishbone, The Selecter, The Wailers, The Skatalites, Madness, The Specials, Oingo Boingo, Pilfers, Bim Skala Bim, Kemuri, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Catch 22, Streetlight Manifesto, Bomb The Music Industry! (and plenty more! - Seriously).
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Watching ‘Pick It Up!’ truly brings out the overall sense of a person who listens to Ska (as well as dabbles a bit with a hilarious remote done with Scott Klopfenstein asking people on the street if they know Ska music - SO Funny!). This documentary has an undying sense of humor (and sense of heart) throughout telling the entire story of Ska in the ‘90s - especially when learning about how these people were working day-jobs prior to their break-out in their respective bands. It was fascinating watching that human story behind the show and understanding a bit better the effort that was put in behind the scenes while these bands were getting rejection letters from record labels that didn’t believe in their sound (despite the success of those of whom had kept going strong through the years to keep the Ska sound alive & well).
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“Pick It Up! Ska in The ‘90s” does go over a lot, and pretty much covers all you need to know to become a true Ska scene aficionado (if you haven’t lived like all of us who have been to a sh!t ton of Ska shows since way back when).
There are, however, a few things that I did notice weren’t necessarily covered: 1) The term “Ska” originates from the sound of the guitar having that upstroke “scratch” sound on the “off-beat” in a measure of music (as opposed to the downbeat) - hence, “uhn-ska, uhn-ska” which did indeed originate in Jamaica in the 1960s. 2) Ska music is correctly described as “fast reggae”, and “The Godfather of Reggae” - but it must be mentioned that the reason why Reggae birthed from Ska music is due to the Jamaican weather of the late ‘60s. As it’s said, there was an overwhelming heat wave in Kingston, Jamaica during “The Orange Street Sound” around ’68-’69 which wore down the dance halls so they would begin jamming a bit slower and a bit easier and smoother - thus the Reggae boom in the 1970s. 3) The real reason why the Ska scene dissipated and eventually dissolved (as far as “mainstream” styles go) was primarily due to big business getting involved and trying to make all of the Ska (and Ska/Punk) bands basically become the same carbon-copy acts that were already “industry standards” or “successful acts”. 
So, there were Ska bands that did drop their horns (which was lightly gone over in the documentary) due to either economy, or not wanting to sound like Ska anymore, or just simply transforming their sound. There were some bands that completely sold out - and then there are other bands that stayed true and have kept Ska music and the dance scene FUN & AWESOME this entire time and never gave up in the true power of music and the possibilities that come with creativity, fun, and optimism through adversity (coughcoughREELBIGFISHcoughcough).
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Aside from all of the fun facts, familiar faces, and excellent music throughout the entire documentary - there is a moment when the documentary goes into the heart & soul of the sound of Ska music and how it provided such an important & positive outlet and release for people (of all types) who would simply put on a good Ska band or album or song to replace any sense or feeling of sadness, frustration, anger, loneliness, or problems and by the end of the experience can have a form of newfound happiness or refreshed outlook. There was actually a moment when viewing the documentary (at least in my own humble opinion) where I could completely and whole-heartedly relate to the underlying message of Ska bands and Ska Music and what it means to people now who experienced it (and still push for the scene to thrive to this very day).
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I still believe it can literally save lives. Ska music saved my life and I know that if it wasn’t for all of the people who have been working hard through the years to perform their hearts out - I wouldn’t have worked so hard in my own life to keep fighting for my dreams, and, in a greater picture - keep working towards more unity, fun, and good times in the world around me - because that’s what Ska is really about at the end of the day. I never thought Ska was a joke (despite how humorous the style can be) - I always knew Ska was a really big deal and it’s still the best style of music (in my own opinion) and I still think the music industry has failed music-lovers and music-listeners by not developing more of an open mind to Ska music (which is the only style of music that can use all styles of music to express itself amidst the traditional formula of the genre). It’s literally the most interesting music to experience (melodically, lyrically, rhythmically).
Despite the reality of Ska music and the judgmental stigma towards the genre - there are still a ton of people in the world who believe in having Ska music and Ska bands and Ska shows. There’s a reason why people love Ska music and there is a totally awesome reason why Ska will never die - because it’s THE MOST FUN STYLE OF MUSIC EVER! I have always been proud and fearless with my admiration for Ska music and Ska bands and people who still believe in having a really good time and sweatin’ our asses off dancin’ at shows and singin’ along to the party. There is no other style of music like it - it’s completely unique & completely awesome. It’s not for everybody, and that’s all good because the people that “get it” will always sing along and dance their hearts out - I know I will!
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I give “Pick It Up! Ska in The ‘90s” a Perfect 10 out of 10. It is the best music documentary I have seen. This documentary does for the ‘90s what “American Hardcore” did for the ‘80s. 
This is the Perfect Documentary for any fan of Ska.
“...Take me back to my happy land, take me back to my happy land, take me back to my happy land, take me back to my happy land...” ~The Aquabats!
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kalluun-patangaroa · 5 years ago
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Suede: All That Glitters
England’s new Band of the Century hits a glam slam
Rolling Stone, May 27, 1993 
By Steven Daly 
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Photo by Denis O’Regan
Brett Anderson puts his bare feet up on a Columbia Records conference table and rakes back his lank fringe. Suede’s gaunt frontman wonders why no one back in balmy London troubled to mention that he’d be arriving in New York on the heels of an early spring snowstorm. In the corner of the room, a pair of sodden moccasins pays mute testament to his climatic misjudgment.
As befits its neo-glam reputation, this month’s English Band of the Century travels with only carry-on luggage. Suede’s glamour, though, is of a distinctly seedy stripe. Anderson’s leather bomber jacket is peeling quite badly, and his black needle cords have seen better days, while bass player Mat Osman’s pin-stripe jacket, desert boots and suede appliqué shirt are equally unlikely to spawn a collection of designer rip-offs.
With its triptych of instantly classic singles – “The Drowners,” “Metal Mickey” and “Animal Nitrate” – Suede announced a changing of the guard in British music, powerfully confirming it with a debut album, Suede, of formidable grace and authority. Anderson’s sterling writing partnership with guitarist Bernard Butler lends much-needed gravitas to the singer’s arch vocal style, a pained cockney whine that recalls London pop lineage from the Small Faces and David Bowie through the Sex Pistols. If Suede has done anything to deserve the mark-down tag of glam, it has been introducing the post-acid-house generation to pelvic posturings.
The trajectory that dumped these threadbare dandies in New York has been a sharp one. Brett Anderson grew up in Haywards Heath, a glorified stoplight between London and Brighton, and after the standard-issue alienated adolescence he lit out for the bright lights of the capital with fellow Smiths buff Osman. They placed a small ad seeking a guitarist for their “eminently important band” and reeled in Butler, at 22 three years their junior, who was later joined by drummer Simon Gilbert.
The nascent Suede slogged around lowly London stages until its penchant for preening drama got the band members laughed out of town. They slunk off to spend the last half of 1991 in squalor, a siege mentality shrouding intense bouts of writing and rehearsal. “We started out with the idea that we wanted to be in a great band, but it was a while before the musicianship caught up,” Anderson now admits. “We began listening to classic songs like ‘A Day in the Life,’ more for their sense of elegance than anything specific in the chord structures.”
When Suede emerged, the turnaround was alarming: Melody Maker anointed it Best New Band of 1992 before one new song had been committed to vinyl. So strong was the avalanche of media that the band’s publicist garnered an industry award for “campaign of the year.” For once, though, the press hype has a toehold in reality.
“We’d have been birched on the streets of Bermondsey if people didn’t think we’d got it after that,” says Anderson. “But it was the new year, and people were getting bored. London was overrun by these shoegazing bands, and there was a feeling of ‘I’ve had enough of this. . . .’“
And sure enough, the nation was soon gripped in the throes of Suedemania. The band’s turn-on-a-dime dynamics not only counterpoint Anderson’s falsetto flights, they put a jut in his strut that provokes followers to hysterical displays of worship at live shows. So violent are these reactions that Suede has actually had to tone down its stagecraft of late.
“This group appeals to people who are isolated in some way,” says Osman of Suede’s dramatic rise. “Geographically or socially or sexually or fashion-wise.”
“Or biologically,” says Anderson with a laugh. “I think there’s a section of music lovers in Britain who are in certain dead-end situations who flock to certain sentiments in music. And I think for that to happen, the artist has to have felt them themselves. That’s probably where a lot of the Smiths comparisons came from. I think there’s a parallel to be drawn.
”One early Suede convert was in fact Morrisey himself, who sent the group perfumed regards before covering its stately, decadent anthem “My Insatiable One” (from the B side of Suede’s first EP, The Drowners) on his world tour. Like Manchester’s Nabob of Sob, Anderson has been the subject of intense sexual speculation. An oft-quoted – and much-regretted – remark about being a bisexual man without homosexual experience only furthered an impression given by lyrics slathered with NC-17 imagery, where a third person of transient gender nibbles freely at the whole carnal buffet; now he leers, “She’s a luvverly little numbah!” (from “Moving”) and now “we kiss in his room to a popular tune” (“The Drowners”). Before you can say, “It’s Pat!” this switch-hitter is imploring, “Have you ever tried it that way?” (“Pantomime Horse”).
“I think I’ve got scope as a writer, so not everything I write is completely autobiographical,” explains Anderson thoughtfully. “I feel vague when it comes to where I stand sexually; I don’t know what to say – I’m willing to be persuaded, whatever.”
In a climate clogged with infantile techno-novelty records and TV-marketed oldies, Suede has rushed through the British charts like a hormone shot – even if no one knows which type of hormones. As one of the most subversive stars ever to taste Top Ten action, Anderson’s seamy subconscious terrain bears greater resemblance to the world of, say, the Sixties playwright-provocateur Joe Orton than it does to the lazy lexicon of contemporary rock, with its calcified sentiments of indolence, infatuation or “rebellion.”
“My mind has always been much more encased in reality than that,” says Anderson. “And the reality that everyone knows involves a certain amount of sexual failure. Not everyone’s stomping ground is Venice Beach – I can’t think of anything more boring than Baywatch set to guitars, which is how a lot of music treats the idea of sex.
“Most music is lazy; it speaks in pop-speak, prodding your memory about things you’ve heard before,” Anderson adds. “I’ve never wanted to write like that. I wanted to do something with a bit of tension, look at things through different perspectives. It’s the Oscar Wilde thing of lying in the gutter and looking at the stars. Life has always been cinema to me, even when I’ve been sitting in the dole office. That’s the only way to do it sometimes.”
The following afternoon sees Suede visiting the influential alternative radio station WDRE in an office block in suburban Long Island. The band is, it seems, coming to terms with the New York weather. Six-and-a-half-foot Osman has scored some inexpensive socks at J. Chuckles, while Anderson has economically stuffed a plastic bag inside his shoes.
Suede might find America’s cultural climate a little harder to accommodate. Several U.S. record companies tend, bizarrely, to set their clocks by British hype (Suede’s reputed $500,000 Sony pact is unexceptional), as does a significant cohort of media Anglophiles. When the bicoastal greeting parties are over, however, things can get a little sticky. The freeways of the Midwest are littered with the bones of pale, snaggletoothed hopefuls who came to grief on America’s punishing concert circuit.
As Osman takes the Columbia promo man’s rental Ford Taurus for an unscheduled spin around the DRE parking lot, he muses. “We’re completely aware that we’re a bunch of insects over here compared with even Screaming Trees or Soul Asylum,” he says, “a horrific thought, but one we recognize.”
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goldstarnation · 5 years ago
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JUNE 2019 GOLD STAR MEDIA SCHEDULES & REVIEW
Members may earn 3 points each (up to 6 points) for writing, by the end of June 30 KST:
A solo para of 400+ words based on their monthly schedule (does not count toward your monthly total).
A thread of six posts (three per participant, including the starter) based on their monthly schedule.
Threads do not have to take place directly during an important date listed on the schedule, but must be related to what the muse is mentioned to be doing in the paragraph explaining their schedule/the company’s schedule for the month and/or their thoughts on the mentioned activities or lack thereof.
These schedules may be updated throughout the month if new information needs to be added.
Overall Company
All artists will talk with part of a management team in charge of the organization of their upcoming company concert to discuss general plans for stage and conceptual design. Idols are given the chance to pitch special stages to management. It’s highly unlikely they’ll actually make the cut, but the illusion of the artists’ input is what’s important here.
Important dates
June 1-6: Hawaii retreat.
Gold Star Soloist 1
She continues to work on her next album behind the scenes with pressure from Gold Star to release it at just the right time, but to keep her fans engaged, the company has booked her to do a Dingo video that's sure to only get positive PR for her where she’ll surprise a fan, give her advice, and sing with her.
Important dates:
June 22: Dingo video filming.
Gold Star Soloist 2
Album recordings continue as songs are picked up and scrapped or altered and new studio time is needed, but she’s got a concert in California this month too, about two weeks after returning from Hawaii for the retreat.
Important dates:
June 22: [Gold Star Soloist 2] in California concert at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, CA, USA.
Gold Star Soloist 3
After returning from Hawaii, he’ll be back out on a flight a week later for a half a week of Australian concerts. He’ll do a little bit of radio, podcast, and local promotion while he’s there, but not anything full-out.
Important dates:
June 14: I COLOR U concert at The Triffid in Brisbane, Australia.
June 16: I COLOR U concert at Metro Theatre in Sydney, Australia.
June 17: I COLOR U concert at 170 Russell in Melbourne, Australia.
Silhouette
At the end of the month, Silhouette will hold their summer Japanese tour, where they’ll perform several of their Japanese releases and debut their new Japanese single “Trouble” which hasn’t officially been released yet. This means rehearsals and Japanese lessons between their return from Hawaii and their flight to Japan on the 19th.
Important dates:
June 21: Silhouette Trouble Japan Live Tour concert at Zepp Namba in Osaka, Japan.
June 23: Silhouette Trouble Japan Live Tour concert at Zepp Fukuoka in Fukuoka, Japan.
June 25: Silhouette Trouble Japan Live Tour concert at Diamond Hall in Nagoya, Japan.
June 27: Silhouette Trouble Japan Live Tour concert at Zepp Tokyo in Tokyo, Japan.
Aria
To air alongside their comeback, Aria will be shooting a short fake reality series based on Aria members’ lives in an alternate universe. Major filming will begin next month, but this month the members will be filmed an interview explaining what they think they’d be doing in a parallel universe. This must be family-friendly and different enough from being an idol to be interesting (a student or a model is okay, but a solo singer or an idol in a different group isn’t), and their answer doesn’t necessarily have to be true. Since this series will involve acting, all members will be required to take an acting class or two as well.
Important dates:
June 9: Performance at Asia Model Festival (also attending: 7ROPHY).
June 12: Aria‘s Parallel Universe series pre-filming.
Origin
They’ll finish up their American tour in the few days following the Hawaii retreat before flying back to Seoul on the 12th. After that, it’s a CF shoot and intensive rehearsals for their sixth anniversary fanmeetings in Busan and Seoul. They’ll spend the middle of the month in Korea, getting some studio recording in for potential Korean comeback album songs and final vocals on their next Japanese album in the meantime, before once again jet setting off on the 28th to end the month doing their Brazil concerts.
Important dates:
June 8: Speak Yourself Stadium Tour concert at Metlife Stadium in Rutherford, NJ, USA.
June 9: Speak Yourself Stadium Tour concert at Metlife Stadium in Rutherford, NJ, USA.
June 11: iHeart Radio Live Show in New York, NY, USA.
June 13: VT Cosmetics Spotlight Yourself L’atelier Paris CF filming.
June 15: Magic Shop Fanmeeting at Busan Asiad Auxiliary Stadium in Busan, South Korea.
June 16: Magic Shop Fanmeeting at Busan Asiad Auxiliary Stadium in Busan, South Korea. 
June 22: Magic Shop Fanmeeting at Olympic Gymnastics Arena in Seoul, South Korea. 
June 23: Magic Shop Fanmeeting at Olympic Gymnastics Arena in Seoul, South Korea. 
June 29: Speak Yourself Stadium Tour concert at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil. 
June 30: Speak Yourself Stadium Tour concert at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil.
Impulse
This month is for recording their next comeback album once the members have returned from the retreat. Songs have been finalized and chosen, so all recording will be finished this month to get that done before they have their first Korean comeback of the year in early August. This month also involves rehearsals for their world tour, which will immediately follow music show promotions and go until the end of the year, and a CF filming for Shinsegae Duty Free.
Important dates:
June 24: Shinsegae Duty Free CF filming.
Fuse
One festival performance, a Japanese single release, and a show filming will be slotted in between major studio time for a summer comeback. The track list is still likely to be narrowed down, so they’re recording for songs that may never see the light of day. The Stage K filming will involve judging dance groups covering several of their songs, and they’ll also give an interview with questions on their favorite Fuse choreography, the hardest Fuse choreography, and the most memorable choreography to them.
Important dates:
June 9: K-Pop World Music Festival at Mall of Asia Arena in Manila, Philippines (also performing: Unity).
June 20: Release of “Sayonara” Japanese single.
June 21: Filming for Stage K episode (to be aired July 7).
Element
To milk this comeback single for all its potential, Gold Star plans to send Element out on television appearances past the end of their music show promotion period leading up to their concert in Seoul later in the summer. Gold Star has become known lately for not utilizing television appearances in the marketing of their younger, more internationally based groups like Origin, Femme Fatale, and Element, but they’re breaking that pattern for Element with an After School Club appearance and what they have faint hopes of being a breakthrough appearance on Immortal Song. Element will be performing Wingless Angel, as they’ll learn at the beginning of the month, and they’ll be drilled in continuous practice to give the best live performance they can.
Important dates:
June 15: End of music show promotions.
June 18: Live filming of After School Club episode.
June 29: Filming of Immortal Songs episode (to be aired July 6).
Femme Fatale
Once they return from the Hawaii retreat, the members will go full-force into final pre-comeback prep, making it their busiest month in a long while. On top of perfecting their performance for Ddu-Du Ddu-Du and Forever Young, they also film their comeback music video over two days of filming mid-month. They’ll then be sent out to film an Olens contact lenses CF, as well as photo shoots and interviews for High Cut and for Cosmopolitan magazines. Gold Star has every intention for going all out for likely the only comeback Femme Fatale will have this year and it seems to pay off, even from the first day of release. Gold Star has also booked arenas for their first ever tour, a Japanese arena tour, to happen in the third quarter.
Important dates:
June 14: First day of Ddu-Du Ddu-Du M/V filming.
June 15: Second day of Ddu-Du Ddu-Du M/V filming.
June 17: High Cut Magazine photoshoot (August issue).
June 21: Olens CF filming.
June 25: Cosmopolitan Korea Magazine photoshoot (August issue).
June 28: Release of “Ddu-du Ddu-du” & Square Up mini album V Live-exclusive showcase, promotions continue until July 28.
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tassium · 5 years ago
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#TAYLOR SWIFT APPRECIATION LIFE
PART 3 - Speak Now
(part 1, part 2)
Hello and again, welcome to the Taylor Swift Appreciation Life. We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault-- wait, wrong fandom.
This is probably getting posted in the middle of the night, which doesn’t bode well for anyone actually seeing it, but oh well. It’s time to hop in and see a little more from the amazing @taylorswift by taking the ride through her third album, Speak Now.
1. Mine
I really like this track, but I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. The storytelling in the lyrics is probably my favorite thing about it, and the way the instrumentation propels the song along. And.... I’ve heard varying opinions on the way it turns around and she’s “quoting” the love interest of the story. Personally, I like it. I like thinking of it as if he said that and it’s what inspired her to use the line as such a key part of the song.
And I’ve gotta be honest here, the POP mix bonus track version doesn’t really hit me that hard. I can’t pick out enough of a difference between the two that I really care all that much about that version.
2. Sparks Fly
This is one of my favorite tracks on this album. I like the understated instrumentation behind the verses and the way it just drops into the chorus in a way that feels like going over the first rise on a roller coaster - the way there’s nothing behind her voice for “Drop everything now” feels like that moment where you know it’s coming and you kind of pull in a breath and then you’re irrevocably In The Moment. 
She does a lot of really cool vocal things - in the second verse I love the way she does that warble on “really wish you wo-ould”. Another favorite is the vocalization in the background of the last chorus. Instrumentally speaking, the solo before the bridge is one of my favorites because of how it’s just a little different from the main motif of the song, and I adore the strident guitar and drums behind the bridge itself.
This song also has the first of several mentions throughout her songs of green eyes! Same, Taylor, same.
3. Back to December
I’m just gonna jump ahead and talk about the acoustic version of this song that’s on the target deluxe version, because if given the choice, I’d pick that one to listen to any day. The strings are my favorite part of the original version, and so the fact that the acoustic version lets them shine just that much more is excellent in my opinion. I also like the way that the harmonies stand out a little bit more - usually I prefer the ones where it’s Taylor overdubbing her own harmonies, but in this one I really like how it sounds with that male voice in the background - it actually makes me think that this song has a lot of potential for being made into a duet song with that delicious aching kind of mutual regret feeling.
4. Speak Now
I don’t know about anyone else, but I really like this song. There’s a lot of really smart choices made, both vocally and in the instrumentals (like the way the drums don’t drop in until the second half of the first verse) and overall I think it’s a solid track.
Over the course of relistening to this early work of Taylor’s for these reviews, though, I’ve also had a thought - Speak Now is the culmination of an escalating pattern of Standing Up And Stealing Other Girls’ Guys that’s been going on through both of the other albums. You have Teardrops on my Guitar, where she just pines herself into oblivion over the boy - then you have You Belong With Me, where she actually does something about it, and now we have this, where she literally breaks up an engagement IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WEDDING in order to get her chance at the boy she’s been daydreaming about.
5. Dear John
Easily my favorite track on this album. This is an optimal example of Taylor’s ability to take a song and build it up until it just explodes, even beyond the chorus. The way the song just soars in the bridge, complete with the way her voice just goes a little ragged on "burned them out”.... man. I love it. I love it so much. Another of my favorite moments is when the harmonies slide in with “run as fast as you can” as if that’s the ‘they’ who said that to her.
I think Taylor’s voice really shines in this track in a way that was really foreshadowing of her current vocal talents.
I’ll also never be over the fact that John Mayer claimed this song for being about him. He could have just been like ‘oh yeah I dunno, a dear john letter is a breakup letter right’ but no. He brought it down on himself. “You should’ve known.”
6. Mean
Mean is a jam, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. I’ll bop to this song anytime. I love the bending fiddle between the chorus and the second verse, probably my favorite musical choice in the song overall. The mandolin and the banjo are way up there as well, just in general. There’s something so delightfully vindictive about this track, such a clap back at the haters - and I get Taylor singing her own harmonies, which you already know I love to pieces. (Is it just me, or could Mean be the little sister of Calm Down?)
“Someday, I’ll be, singing this at the grammy’s…. and all you’re gonna be is mean”
7. The Story of Us
THE STORY OF US IS A BANGER, END OF DISCUSSION
…..
ok not really, because I have more feelings to express first.
Taylor’s vocals soar at the end of this track, and I honestly cannot get over the sheer improvement from Fearless to Speak Now when it comes to that. Those belted notes give me life. I love the ‘next chapter’ and ‘the end’ spoken lines, they’re the best for when I’m singing along and dancing around my kitchen. This song is nearer and dearer to my heart than I even realized coming into this review, and I will go to bat for it anytime anyplace any day.
8. Never Grow Up
It sure is a song, alright. It’s a pretty arrangement, and I like the harmonies, but I... don’t have much for strong feelings about this one.
9. Enchanted
Mmmmm, this one’s so pretty. The opening, I love whatever that is in the background, maybe it’s a keyboard? It’s beautiful and ethereal, at any rate, and I love it. The track builds so beautifully to an absolute monster of a chorus - the lead guitar up into that drum hit is a classic and I love it to pieces.
And don’t even get me started on the ending “please don’t be....” etc bit and the use of stereo - listening to this track in headphones is a treat and I love the high in one side and low in the other, accompanied by that soft vocalizing centralized that leads into the belting before we hit another chorus.
It wasn’t until I was listening to this song to write this post up that I noticed that if you really focus you can hear her singing that repetition behind the second half of the last chorus, but I think it’s only on the left. It’s a really nice touch.
10. Better Than Revenge
I’m just gonna go ahead and quote you a conversation my friend @defiantlywhole had about this track to explain my feelings:
Me:  listen. listen. i fully agree with "Better than revenge? we don't know her" but. it's such a banger. i hate it. i love it. why 
Her:  SAME! Dude esp with the whole sb-squared issue. If we could just. Recognize that better than revenge is problematic and love her anyway?? Can you imagine the kind of cool shit the fandom coulda churned out last month? I just want graphics that yell THERE IS NOTHING I DO BETTER THAN REVENGE at them for trying to force Taylor to stay and then punishing her for leaving
So if you wanna know my opinions, there you go. there they are. 
Also i’m never going to be able to unhear “she’s full of springs and she’s not what you think, she’s a mattress” from @stateofswiftpod​ (have you gotten the message to listen to their podcast yet? this is the last of her main albums they’ve talked about so. now’s the time.)
11. Innocent
This isn’t a track I seek out to listen to, like, ever... but it’s a pretty piece of music, and her voice is lovely. Honestly, there’s something about it that just makes me sad, which is probably why I don’t seek it out. Listening to it to write this, thought, I am noticing a lot of things about it that I’d forgotten or maybe not even noticed in the first place - like the haunting background vocalizations that I’d missed previously, and the choices in the instrumentals. There something about this song that just feels heavy, if that makes sense. It just sits right on my chest, and I’m not sure if I like it.
12. Haunted
Speaking of liking acoustic versions of songs better, this is definitely one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love the original version, but...The piano just hits so much harder for some reason than anything about the original manages, and her vocal delivery is so aching and beautiful and just. Shivers, every time.
The backing vocals come across as very dark, almost, fittingly so to go with a song with the topic and title this one has. Her soaring vocalization in the bridge, and the way her voice breaks when she drops into the low note... man, I can’t even. I don’t have words for what this acoustic track does to me. The note after the last chorus is what gets me the most thought, the almost mourning wavering she sneaks into it and just... I love this song, okay.
13. Last Kiss
This track is so beautiful, but speaking of songs that make me sad. Good heavens. I hadn’t listened to this one in a while prior to this listen through the album and it hit me so hard. Legitimate tears.
I can’t even put it into words - this song is a masterpiece of emotion.
14. Long Live
This song also makes me cry, but for entirely different reasons. Somehow it has even more of an impact now, after seeing everything that’s happened for her and after having been privileged enough to see her live with one of my best friends. This song takes that weight still hanging on my chest from the last few tracks and pushes it aside, replaces it with a bursting pride for this woman who I’ve never met and probably never will. She’s done so well.
To be more specific - there’s some incredible guitar work on this song, and I adore the “THIS IS ABSURD” part - and “tell them how I hope they shine” will always make me cry. I love that she wrote this song, and I love that things have only kept going. That belted “fall” at the end of that post-chorus or whatever it is that then also fades and falls away. The ethereal Aaahs in the background of the bridge. The way she leans into the last “all the mountains we moved”. Gosh. It’s all too much.
Proper full bonus track time!
15. Ours
This is definitely my favorite of the bonus tracks. I’m a little sad it got relegated to a bonus track, since there’s definitely songs that I’d cut in favor of letting this one onto the list, but I’m just glad we have it in the first place.
I’m extremely fond of this song - it’s connected to playing music with my dad (who bought me my first guitar - well, him and my mom both) because we’ve teamed up to do this song, and so that gives me all kinds of happy feelings when I listen to this one.
I don’t have much for specific comments on this one, but it’s a Good.
16. If This Was a Movie
I love the guitar opening for this song, it’s on my list of songs to learn to play one of these days. The first few times I heard the song, I definitely didn’t hear “to me-e like” properly, but now that I know what it’s supposed to be, I don’t struggle too much, thankfully. Overall, I like the song - there are things about it that I’m not super fond of, but there are more things that I do like (the drop after the bridge is definitely one of them).
17. Superman
This one’s a bop. She’s a cute little number. Optimal dancing around my room (a la the you belong with me video) material. I won’t say this track is any work of genius or anything, but it’s a solid danceable pop song, and sometimes that’s all you need.
Whew! We’ve done it again. It’s 3am where I am at the time of writing this, so I’m going to go to bed now, but tomorrow we’ll start our transition into New Taylor. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited.
Next up: Red
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lolbtsaus · 6 years ago
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An Introduction to Kim Namjoon
And now it is time for the wonderful Kim Namjoon aka RM aka joon bug
This post is for any new Armys out there but it’s also for people who have been around for a while, it’s an appreciation post meets an introduction post
I have quite a few appreciation posts dedicated to Namjoon, too many to link tbh but here is my official Namjoon appreciation post
Also if I miss out on something you love about him or a moment of his that you love, feel free to reply to this post with whatever you wanna add or reblog this and leave it as a comment on there, I’d love to read your guys’ personal favorite moments or qualities about Namjoon, these are just gonna be my personal favorites or things that have stuck out to me
So, an introduction to Namjoon
His full name is Kim Namjoon and his stage name is RM
His birthday is September 12th and he was born in ‘94, making him 23 internationally and I think 25 in S. Korea
I don’t really do astrology but I believe he is a Virgo, if that means anything
He is the fourth oldest member and he is a part of the ‘94 line with Hoseok
He is one of the three official rappers in BTS
I would describe joon’s rapping style as powerful
He’s got this deep ass voice and it just it’s so nice hearing him rap tbh he’s just got a s h i t ton of power in his voice when he wants to
He can also be really soft when he sings and that’s also a really amazing thing to listen to, would absolutely recommend
He and kook have done a couple songs together, they’ve done a cover of Fools by Troye Sivan, they’ve done a song called I Know, joon has also done a song with Tae called 4 O’clock, which is r e a l ly fucking good
He has also done a solo mixtape called RM
He’s released quite a few singles, some of which were from the mixtape and some weren’t
He’s released a song with Wale called Change and the lyrics in it are really fucking amazing (the video can be found on bighit’s channel)
He’s released Do You, Awakening, Joke (these can all be found on the BangtanTV channel)
He’s also been featured in a song by MFBTY called BuckuBucku, which he’s performed live with them (if you havent seen him perform it, plz go watch it bc bts were so excited in the audience and kept looking around for namjoon and got so hyped when he came out) 
But his mixtape is really re a l ly good and underrated in my opinion
Namjoon is the leader of BTS and he’s a damn good one at that
You really see just why he’s the leader in American interviews
He’s amazing at encouraging the other boys to speak up during the interviews but he also knows when to step in and take over
He knows when to joke around in interviews and when to be serious about things like the album/songs and what they mean to him and the group
There’s this c la s s i c moment where it’s like a hidden camera situation and I think it’s BangPD who asks him if he’d prefer going solo or staying with BTS and without a m o m e n t of hesitation not even a second, he responds with BTS
That moment still gives me chills tbh
Now for some things joon is known for in the fandom
English
Namjoon learned English fluently by watching Friends a bunch of times
He is the only member that is considered to be fluent however the other boys are improving every time we hear them speak English so that may change v e r y soon
Intelligence
Joon has a really high IQ and he’s shown his intelligence in so many different ways
He’s obviously been able to teach himself English, which is already so fucking impressive
He’s so smart when he talks in interviews too?? like i saw this one comment that pointed out that joon’s never afraid to admit he doesn’t know what something means and that he always asks to find out
Like when someone asked him about being a heartthrob and he didn’t know what the word meant, he had z e ro hesitation to ask on the spot and find out new information and I think that’s really cool and important to note bc he’s not afraid to say hey i dont know what that is, mind explaining??
What I love about joon is that he doesn’t try too hard to come off as smart or try to boast about being smart, he embraces the fact that he’s smart and uses it to his advantage but he never rubs it anyone’s face
He’s got a really good balance of showing his intelligence and being proud of it while still being humble about it
Producing
Namjoon is another one of the main producers/composers/writers of BTS, he’s worked a l o t on their albums, there was one album I don’t remember which one but he’d literally had a part in creating almost every single song
He’s written s o many different songs for BTS
Namjoon also has started this thing where every time BTS release an album, he does a VLive and will talk about the album and sometimes, like last time, he’ll released snippets of another version of the song
So, in the last album related VLive he did, he showed what Fake Love was originally gonna sound like and that sort of insight is just honestly amazing
Dancing
Namjoon is one of the members that was not originally a dancer
With every era, his dancing just continues to get better and better and seeing his improvement is honestly so amazing
Clumsiness
Namjoon used to be referred to as the God of Destruction, I don’t see it being used as often as it used to b u t he is known for being pretty clumsy 
He once almost fell over while sitting down
He’s not 100% clumsy though bc he’s actually really good at ice skating!!
A LOVE FOR CRABS
Literally just posted a video of him saying hi to a crab and is forever trying to hold them and just chill with them when he sees them he l o v es crabs and I think that’s really fucking adorable
Fashion
Joon bug has a whole OOTD series called KimDaily, which can be found on the official BTS twitter 
They’re rea ll y really cute and the outfits are always just s o him like he really expresses himself in his fashion choices and I think that’s really fucking cool
Namjoon has never shied away from trying new looks, he’s worn lace and skirts and corsets and looked amazing in all of them btw
SpeAKin G of looking amazing, here are some of my favorite Namjoon looks (in no particular order)
First look is probably his purple hair
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This look is from the Not Today/Spring Day era
And my god was it was a look
I loved the styling of his hair and I loved the color and the way it looked on him and I love him and I loved this look and this era
JUST LOOK AT HIM
Second look is thIS LOOK
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Idk what era to put it in bc it’s technically in the Fake Love era but it’s a really recent color and is after their promotions for iT bUT
I love it okay
I can’t tell completely if it’s light brown or blonde I think it’s a really dark blonde judging from the twitter pic but on stage it looked like it could be either but i LIKE IT
Third look is this shit
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Now listen I love me some namjoon but i’m gonna need him to relax with this whole look
I loved his hair during this era in general buT THIS SHIT MHM MHM THIS WAS SOME GOOD SHIT
The jacket the shirt the hair the all of it i was ready to fight someone
This is from the DNA/Mic Drop era which btw, just gonna add this gif here bc I think it’s needed to further prove my point of this being a good ass hair era
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POINT P R O V E N
But that wraps up my introduction to Namjoon, make sure to give him some love and appreciation bc he is a very important member of BTS (as all of them are) and deserves to be given the same love and support as the rest of the members
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callmenateybird · 6 years ago
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Depression Never Drove Me To Attempt Suicide; Being Bullied While Depressed Did
I don’t wanna relive my bullying hellscape today but I can’t shake the feeling that people still just continue to blame the brains of suicidal people for any and all suicidal acts.
I’ve experienced depression for a long time. I was lucky that depression alone never led me to a suicide attempt. Being bullied along with being depressed, however, did. I need to use my own experience as an example to get through to people about this today.
Spring 2016: I dated a person I met on The List App (just what it sounds like - a list-making app created by BJ Novak). I went out to CA to be with her for 2 months. She felt it was moving too fast, but didn’t tell me for awhile. Eventually she did, we broke up, I was crushed, I went back to OH to be with family. I whined, I pitied myself, I spoke about the breakup on List.
Eventually, friends of my ex decided this was too much & brought my ex & others into a FB group chat, where they shit talked & mused that I had been manipulative & that I’d threatened self harm.
This was the first in two instances now of upping the ante of false accusation. First, from whining & taking a breakup hard -> manipulation & threats of self harm, then, a year ago right around this time, upping the ante again to “abuser.” More on that in a bit.
Back to 2016 — August, as the group chat began. I had been listing about the upcoming 2 year anniversary of my dad’s passing — Aug 10. On the night of the 9th, my ex’s close friend did what I guess was an accidental like of an old list of mine. At the time, it seemed odd because she wasn’t following me and we’d had conflict with each other on Twitter about a week before.
The next day, it made sense why she’d been far back in my old lists. As I listed about the anniversary of my dad’s passing, parody accounts began to go public.
The first was called Predator. My screen shots here were taken later (I was too upset to screenshot anything the day it all happened) after the name was changed to “Chris, Kay?” to target one List guy these people hated. The original name on the account was “Chrislie K. Veshester” — a mashup of the names of 3 of us from List.
In the second and third screenshots, you’ll see parts of a list. This list has direct excerpts from lists the 3 of us guys had previously posted (gathering lines from old lists the night before…yes, bullies go to great efforts to bully). The writing and recording line, the bravery line, the baggage line, the body is your friend line, the quote of Coyote Hours (an album about the death of my father) — all from me & gleefully twisted into being somehow creepy or wrong.
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The line “I try to get others to take care of me” didn’t seem to come from any of us, but seems more to be a line from my ex’s friend’s imagination that reflects how those people saw me in the wake of that breakup.
Also launched that day, in tandem, was the Flounce account (to flounce means to announce that you’re leaving a community, which I had done the night before my dad anniversary, because of what I was going through at the time). I later was told this was created by Jack Waz, an employee of List. The first few followers on the account — my bullies, “Jo-Ann Fabrics” (another parody account by Jack), & even List creator BJ Novak.
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Also popping up that day was this dormant “imacreep” account where luckily no new vitriol was added — but you can see, based on the few lists that account had “liked,” that it came from the same group of people.
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You can also see, from the few likes on the predator account, that it came from the same group of people.
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On Aug 10, I had a nervous breakdown after seeing all of this. The passing of a parent is a deep trauma and, only 2 years out, was obviously very fresh for me. It is an event that is almost sacred in a way, & part of the unhealable scarring of my bullying experience is that this sacred date was snatched away from me, and tainted by this awful social media experience. I now forever associate the day my dad died with being bullied.
On September 1st, an older guy from the group chat sent me an unsolicited harassing email, after being given my contact info by my ex. I had just called her to ask if she would be completing some album artwork she’d promised to do for me around the time of our breakup. I hadn’t heard from her in ages (this was before I knew she was involved in the group chat), so I took one last chance at reaching out about it. In the email from this guy, I was summarily smacked down for “not respecting her boundaries” and told very cruelly by him that she didn’t want to do my art, or hear from me ever again.
In mid September 2016, a former friend told me everything about the group chat. She had been brought into it and pressured/intimidated (by, among others, men in their late 30s — she was in her early 20s, as were a few other women in the group chat) to “provide receipts” of me talking about my breakup. She was forced to “denounce” me and swear she’d never talk to me again.
She named names to me in September and let me know who was involved. I learned that my ex — who had been silent through all the stuff in August — was in the group chat, participated, and watched it all go down. A couple days later, I began a suicide attempt.
The ordeal led to both myself and my mom being hospitalized (she has a heart condition). Thankfully, we both came out of the ordeal ok.
Plenty more vitriol was unleashed on List after August 10th. I was lucky that much of it didn’t involve me (another guy from List got it worse than I did). One older guy from the group chat did a particularly nasty “sublist” and a few other remarks came out here and there, but it seemed to be dying down finally.
Through the fall, I began to find balance again. I returned to List with a new account, and took small steps in standing up for myself.
In November, I confronted my ex about what I knew, in an attempt to make peace. She expressed some regret, but never really apologized in a way that felt adequate to me, nor would she concede that her friends had bullied me and that she had condoned it.
In December, I returned to CA to resume the life I’d begun building when I was dating my ex. I had been dreaming of living in Southern California since the trip to scatter my dad’s ashes there in fall of 2014, and I was using the last chunk of inheritance money I’d gotten to get myself re-established in Orange County.
In January of 2017, I finally realized that my ex was never going to apologize to me for everything, so I launched a text tirade of criticisms her way and stopped speaking to her.
But in the next few months, I faltered in that commitment and sent her three harassing emails. Since the previous fall, I had begun an agonizing habit of digital cutting (creeping on social media that you know is bad for your mental health) and snooped on her accounts, plus those of her friends and family. It is a habit that I have yet to fully shake, even all this time later. The three emails I sent all involved seeing things she’d liked on social media and being angry or jealous about them. I finally stooped to the level of the people who harassed me, and I harassed her. After the final of those three emails, in April of 2017, she wrote back and said she’d file a harassment order if I contacted her again, and I never contacted her again.
But I continued to grow more and more emboldened in standing up for myself publicly, and over the course of 2017 it became a huge part of my social media (especially on Twitter) to speak openly about my experience being bullied, harassed, and ganged up on.
In June of 2017, I was walking in a park in my ex’s town and saw her. A few days later, many of the ladies from List were tagged in a massive Twitter thread. For some reason, a few of us guys from the app were tagged as well. Later that day, my ex’s friend from the group chat - the one who had made the “Predator” account - subtweeted that these List ladies in the mass tagging had “an abuser among [them].” The ante of false accusation had been upped again, from whining and self pity and taking a breakup hard -> manipulation and threats of self harm -> abuse.
This subtweet alone, which I’d only discovered because of my continuing struggle with digital cutting (creeping online), sent me reeling on the verge of another breakdown. I knew that things were heating up culturally, that the imperative to believe women was more important than ever. And now, for the first time, I had to face that dissenting argument from the trolls who don’t like the prioritization of believing women no matter what — “what if somebody falsely accuses someone just to fuck up their life?” But even then, I brought myself back from the brink (with much help from my therapy sessions, my support system of family and friends, my writing, and the good-for-the-soul environment of southern California).
I even had a phone call later that summer with the friend who’d told me about the group chat, where I explained to her that I still acknowledged the importance of believing women, even if I was experiencing a false accusation. I told her that I was trying to hold onto the understanding that the cultural prioritization of listening to and believing women was bigger than me, more important than me.
But I also continued to speak openly about being bullied, and now included the mention of being implied to be an emotional abuser, all through 2017 until finally standing up for myself on social media impacted my real life once more. A few days before Christmas, after a really good period of no digital cutting for the entire month of December so far, I had a weak moment one evening and looked at the social media of my ex and her family. On her mom’s Instagram, I saw a repost from my ex’s private account where she’d said she had gone to the police station to file a report about “a year and a half of harassment, stalking, and general creepiness.” (A year and a half would be going back to right when we broke up - we were still on good terms then - and six months before our friendly if flawed semi-clearing of the air in late 2016). In her mom’s repost, she said “if we see this guy in our neighborhood again, we are coming after him!” I saw this — and hope you will understand my seeing it this way — as a threat of physical harm. If “our neighborhood” meant seeing me on their street, well that was never going to happen. But if it meant seeing me in their whole entire town — like I’d seen her in a park last June — well, what was I supposed to do about being seen in an entire town??
I was terrified, and made a hasty decision two days later (Christmas Eve) to leave my Orange County long term Airbnb about two months before the end of my lease. I struggled for about a month to stay afloat in LA, looking for a new space. But my savings was too low to handle the temporary added expenses of new Airbnbs and hotels, and by early February of 2018 I decided I had to throw in the towel and go back to Ohio to regroup with family until I could afford to be out west again.
And that is my ordeal, to date.
I took a breakup badly, and cried and cried and said “I can’t take it anymore” (the closest I came to “threats of self harm,” as were the initial accusations from the group chat). And all because of taking a breakup badly —
I was ganged up on, parodied, mocked, and bullied on the two year anniversary of the death of my father.
The actual creators/employees of the app where I was bullied - including BJ Novak himself - celebrated and *participated in* bullying me.
I suffered a nervous breakdown.
I attempted suicide.
My mom was sent into the hospital with a heart scare, from watching what I was going through and reacting emotionally as most mothers would.
I drained thousands of dollars from my savings for additional therapy, spiritual counseling, and cross country travel (twice).
I literally left my home because I felt unwelcome and physically unsafe in Orange County, after being threatened with violence by my ex’s mother. 
And now I exist in this particular moment on social media, where the valiant and important efforts of the #metoo movement are still sometimes misrepresented by cold statements like “don’t ever fucking tell me that a false accusation ruins a man’s life.”
Even if you set aside my experience of being ganged up on and bullied, of being called a creep for being friends with women who were younger than me in a social media community, of being accused of manipulation and emotional abuse, it should be understandable as a general isolated statement — When we talk about someone’s life being ruined, we have to look at more than just their external life. We have to also look at their internal life.
And rest assured — beyond all the external stuff I just listed, my internal life has been forever impacted by being bullied and by being called “abuser.”
I can no longer say I have never attempted suicide. After years of living with depression and being proud of myself for never giving into the darkest of places, I now have experienced a suicide attempt. I now have experienced being called an abuser. And who knows what else I may experience as repercussions for posting this essay with screenshots and names, since the past two years of interacting with bullies has shown me very clearly that bullies always — ALWAYS — win.
We now live in an age where bullies are empowered by important cultural movements. They sneak in through weak spots, they use amped up language and terms that they know will attract attention. They are stronger than ever.
But the part of the narrative that my bullies and threateners will always leave out of their callouts - their own screenshot exposés of past and possibly future - is the part where they bullied and harassed first. My own instances of email harassment of my ex, my own flawed and self destructive habit of creeping online — these are personal flaws that arose AFTER being bullied. That part of their narrative will always be conveniently scrapped from the record. Bullying proves the age old saying — hurt people hurt people.
And so now, two years after my ordeal began, I try to be mindful that angry statements can verge on harassment, I do less and less digital cutting, I try to be a good person and to value the people who value me.
But when famous people are lost to suicide, and the conversation zeroes in squarely on mental illness and mental health, I just cannot abide the ignoring of so many other cultural factors that lead people to no longer want to live on this planet.
Whether the factors are due to marginalization, systemic oppression, economic hopelessness, ageism, a broken health care system, disease and physical pain, or a bullying ordeal like mine — there are an endless number of external environmental forces that drive people to suicide besides their own pure brain chemistry. And remember, environmental doesn’t just mean places and things — it means people. Many of those external forces that drive people to suicide involve how the people are treated by the others in their environment.
I have experienced depression for much of my life. But it was only being bullied that finally pushed me to the brink. This screenshot below shows the folks from the group chat. Some of them were silent bystanders, but they all watched it go down and did nothing to stop it. They are all complicit.
These are my bullies.
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And if I have to live forever with being bullied the day my dad died, with having attempted suicide, with watching my mom go into the hospital, with being called an abuser and whatever else I’ll be called between two years ago and the end of my life, then they will have to live with being called bullies. And even if this post is removed, even if this account is suspended or deleted, I will continue to speak up and speak out when I am bullied or when I see others being bullied. I will not stand for it ever again.
Because all the things those people took away from me left a gaping hole inside me. And, so far, I have only found a couple things with which to sufficiently fill that hole — the understanding of my very loving and supportive family and friends, and love and respect for myself. Standing up for myself is just one of the ways I have learned to love and respect myself, ever since the ordeal that scarred my life forever.
June 12: I decided to add an afterword to this essay, a sort of “FAQ” to address a question I’ve been asked a few times in one form or another. 
The question: Do you talk about your bullying experience so much because you want your bullies to feel bullied?
No.
First, "bullying bullies" isn't a thing much like how reverse racism isn't a thing. To be a broken record - to continually expose the bullying act & “Scarlet Letter” the perpetrators - is the only power a bullying victim has, since the act of bullying unfortunately isn't treated like a punishable crime, especially when it’s done online (even though being bullied has robbed me financially and wounded me - and my family - both physically and emotionally).
Second, I talk about this as much as I do because I want the people who bullied me to feel haunted by the consequences of their actions (and inactions, in the case of those who watched and condoned) - actions they probably felt, at the time, were not a big deal. To have spoken about it publicly for almost three years is an effort at making them feel so haunted by their behavior that they not only never bully another person again, but that they *themselves* become dedicated anti-bullying crusaders. It sounds almost laughable - and certainly would to them, as cynical as they are - but I am trying to make a difference in these few peoples’ lives. You can label it crudely as “badgering,” which I feel does a disservice to me by downplaying the severity of what happened to me, but whatever you call my continued persistence in talking about this experience - it is persistence that aims to make a few people more decent and mindful of their past and future behavior.
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deadcactuswalking · 5 years ago
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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 14/02/2020
This’ll either be a long episode, a very confusing one, or both. We have nine new arrivals, which might actually be our most ever, although it’s probably tied with one from last year unless we had something ridiculous like twelve new arrivals. Let’s just get this over with.
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Top 10
First of all, celebrating its second week at #1, we have “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd stable since last week at the top spot. I love this song, so I’m definitely glad to see it here.
Speaking of songs I love, “The Box” by Roddy Ricch isn’t moving either at number-two.
In fact, much like most of our busy weeks, the top 10 doesn’t necessarily reflect that, as with some exceptions, there’s nothing of note to speak of here. “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi is stable at number-three.
The number-four spot has also stabilised; “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa is there, and doesn’t seem to have any competition.
Neither does “Godzilla” by Eminem featuring the late Juice WRLD, unfortunately, at number-five.
Up two spots to number-six for whatever reason is “Life is Good” by Drake, then Future – this might rebound even higher next week due to a DaBaby remix.
“Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi is down a spot to number-seven, but it’ll be back in the top five once the BRITs have their impact. Delightful.
Our big story in the top 10 is the 13-space boost for “Roses” up to number-eight, meaning it’s Saint Jhn’s first ever top 10 single in the UK, and, yeah, sure, we’ll give Imanbek credit for that too, since his unauthorised house remix really blew it up all over Europe. Hence, I’m pretty sure this is the first Kazakh lead artist on a UK Top 10 single, and that’s pretty epic.
Billie Eilish’s “everything i wanted” is down two spots to number-nine.
And finally, to round off our top 10, is the non-mover, “Adore You” by Harry Styles.
Climbers
To my surprise, we do actually have a few notable climbers, and a lot more than I expected at that. First, there’s “You should be sad” by Halsey up five spaces to #12, making a pretty unexpected play for the top 10. There’s also “Lonely” by Joel Corry up 14 spaces to #16 off of the debut, and “Lose You to Love Me” by Selena Gomez inexplicably moving up six spots to #21. Maybe in the wake of a Justin Bieber album, there’s some stan revenge streaming? It’s a stretch but that’s honestly my only explanation other than it making another, more organic chart run. I do have a reason for Jonas Brothers and the nine-spot boost for “What a Man Gotta Do”: the second video as well as the One Show performance, which is still something millions of people watch here in the UK. “Better Off Without You” by Becky Hill and Shift K3y is up 12 to #24 off of the debut and finally, “Say So” by Doja Cat is up 10 spots to #25 also off of the debut (Not complaining about that one).
Fallers
There were some pretty massive fallers this week but also not actually that many that were notable, and definitely ones that demonstrate a transition period between Winter 2019/2020 and Spring 2020, but these are also mostly hip-hop and rap, hence can be explained by streaming cuts, an arbitrary UK chart rule that affects nearly exclusively one genre for the most part. That’s not the case for all of them though; “Wake Up Call” by KSI featuring Trippie Redd is down 17 spaces to #28 because it’s a song by a YouTuber, and hence usually a bit crap. The rule did affect, however, “ROXANNE” by Arizona Zervas, down 24 spaces to #33, and “Memories” by Maroon 5, an exception to the rule seemingly, down 23 spots to #39.
Dropouts & Returning Entries
There were a hell of a lot of dropouts and actually two returning entries, for once. All of these dropouts don’t seem like they’re going to gain much traction after this week, and if they do, it’ll probably be some kind of fluke or special event that gets them back up there. I can see about three or four of these returning to the dregs of the top 40, but otherwise this seems to be the end of the line for most of these. “Bruises” by Lewis Capaldi is out from #15, “Pump it Up” by DJ Endor is out from #23, “Lose Control” by MEDUZA, Goodboys and Becky Hill is out from #25, “This is Real” by Jax Jones featuring Ella Henderson is out from #26, “Ride It” by Regard featuring Jay Sean ends its second run out from #29, “Gangsta” by Darkoo and One Acen is out from #32, “Don’t Rush” by Young T & Bugsey with Headie One is out from #34, “Ladbroke Grove” by AJ Tracey is out for what must be the fourth time from #37, “Those Kinda Nights” by Eminem featuring Ed Sheeran is thankfully out from #38, “Vossi Bop” by Stormzy is temporarily out from #39 but the BRITs will probably pick this one up and boost its numbers, and finally, “Big Conspiracy” by J Hus featuring iceé tgm is out from #40. The other two J Hus songs are somehow still in the top 40.
The two returning entries are, firstly, “Hold Me While You Wait” by Lewis Capaldi returning at #30, seemingly in a trade with “Bruises”, because, I guess two Capaldi songs in the top 10 isn’t enough. The second is “Pee Pee” by M Huncho at #40, and I just love how stupid that song is. It’s actually a pretty fun and arguably good song, but I also have so many questions about it, like why the album it’s from is called Huncholini the 1st. I’m glad to see it back here though. Anyway, before we get to the new arrivals, here are some songs below the top 40 that I could see getting here in a couple weeks, if that. Not all of them are good, not all of them are bad. We have “All I Want” by Olivia Rodrigo at #72, “No Judgement” at Niall Horan at #70, “Yikes” by Nicki Minaj at #69, “No Shame” by 5 Seconds of Summer at #68, “What if I Told You that I Love You” by Ali Gatie at #63, “Charades” by Headie One and Fred Again at #57, “Stop this Flame” by Celeste at #56, “Staqdo” by MoStack at #54, “Mya Mills” by Lil Pino at #50, “Run” by Joji at #46, “High Fashion” by Roddy Ricch and Mustard at #45, and finally, “Ourself” by NSG at #43. Now, for our new arrivals.
NEW ARRIVALS
#38 – “Ballin’” – Mustard and Roddy Ricch
Produced by Mustard, Justus West and Gylttrip
Okay, so this is a song I’ve been predicting would breach the top 40 for ages, mostly because it’s already been a massive hit in 2019 for the US, and hence is on my list of the best hit songs of 2019, which will probably be the last of one of those lists that I actually do. It’s #14, so it’s not that high, but I feel like I should talk more in-depth there since the list’ll be out as soon as possible, probably this month. It’s Mustard’s first UK Top 40 hit as a lead artist (Congratulations) and Roddy Ricch’s second – I love this song, we’ll talk about it more another day, that’s all.
#37 – “Suicidal” – YNW Melly
Produced by Z3n
Okay, so let me explain: Yes, YNW Melly, real name Jamell Demons (Fitting name by the way), is still in prison facing murder charges. This is the third album he’s released behind bars, obviously the others were released while he was incarcerated for less serious offenses, but it’s not exactly a new concept and hey, the label aren’t milking his death, at least, although they are milking the murder of two other people, so I guess that point’s out the window. It’s not impossible to make an album from prison but they’re probably just taking snippets of his SoundCloud stuff or unreleased demos and re-releasing it as new content. This is his second UK Top 40 hit after “Murder on My Mind” – if you go by just his song titles, this man is guilty as all hell – and well, it was never going to be any good, was it? The dull piano-lead trap beat isn’t emotive at all, and with the disruptive producer tags and clipping bass, as well as the generic emo guitar, it just feels emotionless, which is awful for a song called “Suicidal”, and YNW Melly is actually giving it all trying to replicate a typical emo-pop song with his voice that I actually love hearing most of the time, especially when it’s drowned in Auto-Tune like this; the vocal track here, despite oddly mixed, would sound great in isolation. Sadly, this beat is so boring, and he goes off topic so many times, with his structure-less flow and monotonous rambling about how he’s got his bag now and everyone’s wishing bad on him now (Probably because he’s facing murder charges)... yeah, this just does nothing for me, and it’s clearly an immature attempt at making a deep, powerful break-up song, even with some of the most pathetic inflections I’ve heard from the man in that “I’m drinkin’ Hennessey” bridge, as well as his heartbreak ending up being as deep as “I swear to God, I swear to God, you stupid bitch”. Yeah, no, this is not great at all, and way too long, by the way.
#36 – “Birthday” – Anne-Marie
Produced by Oak
So, if you forgot who Anne-Marie was, first of all I don’t blame you because so did I, but second of all, she’s a pop songstress who often hops on dancehall or house beats with a voice and delivery that treads the line between indie-girl mumble mouth and a fake Caribbean accent. This is the lead single from her second album, that actually debuted dangerously low—seriously, this is looking like it’s prepared for a sophomore slump ala Camila Cabello’s Romance late last year, although admittedly Anne-Marie’s chart presence, whilst seemingly omnipresent in 2018 and early 2019, has dwindled considerably. This is her tenth UK Top 40 hit, and well, I don’t exactly know what to expect but I’m guessing some fluffy, vaguely tropical dance-pop tune, but it could be a ballad for all I know. It doesn’t look like I’m too far off, but this one is particularly obnoxious, with a dated, beeping synth tone acting as the main melody, an aggravatingly static hi-hat pattern, a messy and out-of-place drum beat that sounds straight out of a shit Flume rip-off, some of Anne-Marie’s most obnoxious Auto-Tuned vocal inflections (And some of her most Kehlani-like, may I add), and vocal mixing that is questionably lower than the drums in the pre-chorus, even though they’re clearly not backing vocals. The chorus is hilariously trite, saying, “Goddamn, it’s my birthday”, and that people should give her money because it’s her birthday. Basically, it’s about a spoiled teenager on her 16th birthday being all rebellious and edgy to spite their parents but without any actual emotion or passion, and instead some pathetic vocal runs and disgusting, cluttered instrumentation... actually, that would describe a teenage birthday party pretty well. The little chuckle at the end in place of an outro is also really cringe worthy. What an awful song – it’s been a while since we’ve had a hit here that seems fundamentally broken, but this gets pretty close.
#34 – “Know Your Worth” – Khalid and Disclosure
Produced by Disclosure
R&B singer Khalid and EDM group Disclosure, two acts I happen to be very fond of whenever they appear on this show, have collaborated for the second time since 2019’s “Talk”, a song which I love but won’t be making an appearance on my best list for that year for one simple reason that’ll seem obvious once you read that list. This collaboration doesn’t seem to be for an album, though, and is instead an advert for Levi’s jeans. Nice. It’s Khalid’s thirteenth and Disclosure’s sixth (ironically excluding “Talk” as they weren’t properly credited as lead artist) UK Top 40 hit, and it sure is a Disclosure song, with their more modern EDM touches they’ve been picking up recently in productions like the aforementioned “Talk” and Mac Miller’s “Blue World”, but with some really sweet steel pans, the same stilted groove they’re known for, a quirky collection of beeping synths and a familiar yelling vocal sample that I can’t find the original source for anywhere. Khalid rides on the instrumental pretty nicely and smoothly but this really isn’t anything special, with the lyrics mostly being some kind of general motivation or self-empowerment, mostly directed towards a girl whose significant other doesn’t exactly treat her like she is worth, apparently to Khalid. I think Shawn Mendes is rubbing off on you, mate.
#32 – “London” – M24 featuring Tion Wayne
Produced by ETS
Hey, Tion Wayne! I like this dude a lot, and I was thinking about him a couple days ago, thinking that he’d had his time up on the charts, but he seems to be back with M24, another British rapper, for this new single. Tion Wayne is one of the main reasons “Options” by NSG is one of my most-listened songs of last year, and has since delivered excellent verses on “Bally” with the equally charismatic Swarmz and tried to lighten up the amazingly dull “Keisha & Becky” by Russ splash, who has since changed his name because of course he has. It’s safe to say he’s one of my favourite of the recent crop of London rappers, simply because of how fun his cadences can be. I was surprised when I saw him on a sharp black-and-white cover art with a song about London, which I assumed would be about the struggles of gang violence and poverty that Tion Wayne has since risen above, but instead, for his fourth UK Top 40 hit and M24’s first ever, we have a chorus that goes, “That gyal wan’ shock, one eye on her arse like, “Holy f***”, look at the arch, you know I buss, back up the arse like uh-uh”. That’s actually about what I expected from Tion Wayne to be honest. Looking back on all those songs that I mentioned, especially “Bally”, it has interesting, eccentric, exciting and energetic cadences, as well as some upbeat production that is sourly missing from people like Aitch and DigDat. That’s why while I was slightly disappointed by the more minimalist, dull, colourless drill production, which honestly actually kind of bangs, I was welcomed by Tion Wayne’s hilarious hook, especially the “UH UH” ad-lib, and his injections of humour into the verses, which M24 tries as well. Both M24’s more aggressive stuttering delivery and Tion Wayne’s more carefree flow work for this beat (which is unfitting for a song that’s supposed to be about attractive women by the way; this is in no way sexy), with Tion Wayne’s first verse seemingly carrying the theme of “beef”, and he likes a fight in prison because it’s “beef in a cell”... “like Beyoncé”? Huh? He kind of gets away with it though, as the next line is even funnier; his gun is like his roll-on deodorant because it doesn’t leave shells. He shouts out his designer-brand boxers then says that he will fight a man for his phone charger. You get why I like this dude, right? He’s kind of absurd. M24 and Tion Wayne trade bars on the second verse, with M24 even lightening up to say that his sex is so good that his groupies try to invite their mother. Lovely. They also share some clever worldplay about “ye” (drugs) and Kanye, both comparing themselves to Kim Kardashian in the process. All this is without overstaying its welcome, by the way, it’s less than three minutes. Wayne then, for a final few bars, adopts the “A$AP Forever” flow to shout out basically every woman in England, as well as saying this:
I f*** your girl from the back / I put my block on the map
These two events (hopefully) have no relation to each other, like at all. Never change, Tion Wayne.
#31 – “Destined for Greatness” – Tobi & Manny featuring Janelle
Produced by Krunchie and Zdot
I knew this was going to be a tricky one once I realised that I know more about the producers than I do about any of the three primary vocalists here. Krunchie and Zdot are responsible for much of Bugzy Malone’s discography, especially the older stuff. Anyway, this is the first UK Top 40 hit for Tobi & Manny, a duo much like Young T & Bugsey or Krept and Konan made of two members or affiliates of the Sidemen, namely: Tobi and Manny, two brothers that joined KSI’s group of YouTubers, rappers, entertainers, FIFA players, what have you. They teamed up with their sister Janelle, who actually contributes very little to the song, no more than a short intro and backing vocals, for a kid-friendly motivational anthem – on a dark, menacing beat. Of course. Yeah, this is pathetic. Both Tobi and Manny have no interesting bars, and whilst it is mostly a story-telling song, there isn’t any passion in their voices about their come-up, so why should I care? Janelle doesn’t exist, and if she does, she’s annoying, joining in on the bland hook for a somewhat colourful addition to the shitty non-entities of Tobi and Manny, both of whom are just phoning it in, but I feel like this is them trying to be their best, to be honest. This is just corny, and aggravatingly so, with a boring beat to boot. I have no idea how this debuted this high, when it is this painfully amateur. “We’re controlling the game like Nintendo Wii”? Give me a break. Oh, and I listened to Tobi’s only other official single as part of the Sidemen on “The Gift”, and somehow he had the best verse.
#29 – “React” – The Pussycat Dolls
Produced by Will Simms, Johan Gustafson and Ivares
The Pussycat Dolls were a girl group formed in the 2000s, who were reasonably  big worldwide and massive here in the UK. They weren’t made by a British talent show, but they were similarly generic and basically just the sexier alternative to the more teeny-bopper groups, and hence I guess were made more for boys than they were for girls, in that respect, but even for today, despite being produced and directed by men for men and presented consistently in an awfully objectifying manner, they have kept that “girl power” schtick. You may know them for “Don’t Cha”, “Buttons”, “Beep”, “I Hate This Part”, whatever, they’re all garbage. After the group split only lead singer Nicole Sherzinger retained relevance and officially made the only good song tangentially related to the Dolls, with her (originally uncredited) feature on “Club Can’t Handle Me” by Flo Rida and David Guetta. I mean, it’s a low bar that you’d think they’d be able to ascend, but I can’t think of a single song from the Dolls that is better. Anyway, they’re all in their 40s now, and they’ve reunited for their eleventh UK Top 40 hit (and their first since 2010’s “Hush Hush, Hush Hush” peaked at #17), with massive comeback, television debut, high-budget music video and... a chart debut at #29. Yikes. Well, the Dolls were always dancers rather than singers, so people won’t purchase the single in the streaming era where you can choose what to listen to and you’re not having songs pushed down your throat by radio stations incessant label promotion (Well, at least not most of the time, Drake). I think the only reason the song is even in the top 40 at all is that the UK Singles Chart decided three years ago that YouTube streams counted for the chart. Listen, the song is manufactured plastic dance-pop that’s worth no-one’s time, with even the most distinct voice in the band, Scherzinger, sounding like a vocaloid. The chorus is a massive rip-off of the melody from the verses of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “I Really Like You”, by the way. Once I heard that, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Jepsen’s song is actually good, by the way.
#27 – “Power Over Me” – Dermot Kennedy
Produced by Koz
Remember “Outnumbered”? That was a pretty decent folk-trap hit, right? Well, Dermot Kennedy is back for his second UK Top 40 single, which was actually released far before his breakout hit but is getting the push now, “Power Over Me”, originally released in 2018. Now, it’s basically the same concept: Irish dude croons and belts over a guitar-lead pop song... but this isn’t a ballad, and instead has a real kick to it, figuratively and literally, but very little groove. The song isn’t bad at all, and I love the concept of a song of not him having the power in this relationship, but him finding himself subservient to this girl, who he paints as some kind of deity figure, and it’s convincing. God, I love how the drums sound in this song. The humming in the pre-chorus is just so sonically pleasing as well. The belting in the bridge and the mesh of guitar, on the other hand, isn’t really, but damn, the strings in the final chorus are genuinely gorgeous, and it’s catchy as hell, so for a good folk-rock love song, yeah, I can vouch for this one. There’s a MEDUZA house remix to this that hilariously misses the point of this song but sounds crazy good doing it, and might be a bit better than the original, if just for the blend of 80s post-disco and 16-bit chiptune bass in the drop. Either way, this is a good song, and reminds me kind of 2000s alt-rock, as did “Outnumbered”, to be honest. Maybe I should check out that debut self-titled album.
#14 – “Intentions” – Justin Bieber featuring Quavo
Produced by Poo Bear and the Audibles
This is the most 2016-sounding song that was released after 2017, and that’s just off the title alone. You guys want to add Chance the Rapper while you’re at it? God, what an anti-climactic end to our new arrivals. Justin Bieber and Quavo. I cannot imagine a blander, less interesting duo than Justin Bieber and Quavo. I think I’ve lived approximately five Quavo verses ever, the dude is so non-descript compared to the rest of the Migos, especially Offset, who, to be honest, I’ve become quite a fan of in recent months. It’s Bieber’s 46th UK Top 40 hit or something to that effect, and Quavo’s seventh but who cares, honestly? Who is listening to Bieber out of passion for his music or voice or whatever? Only his biggest, most loyal fans. The general public who casually listen to Bieber are listening more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, and for someone who seemed like the biggest star in the world at some point, that’s just depressing. Yeah, I have nothing else to say, and I’ll continue to ignore actually reviewing this dude’s songs, even once the album bomb comes next week, if it even does. I think the “(feat. Lil Dicky)” song might be even more dreadfully embarrassing than the “(feat. Quavo)”, actually.
Conclusion
All things considered, this was a below-average week but I had a lot of fun reviewing these songs, so at least most of them were interestingly bad or had intriguing stories behind them. Even if I didn’t review it, the Best of the Week is still going to “Ballin’” by Mustard and Roddy Ricch, with Honourable Mention probably being a toss-up between “London” by M24 featuring Tion Wayne, and “Power Over Me” by Dermot Kennedy. The Worst of the Week is undoubtedly “Birthday” by Anne-Marie, with “Destined for Greatness” by whoever that was by picking up the Dishonourable Mention. This could be one of two or three big weeks on the horizon, so watch out for that and follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank for my real-time reactions to said weeks, and more pop music ramblings. Thank you for reading!
REVIEWING THE CHARTS 2020
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bthenoise · 5 years ago
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Yes, Another Decade Recap List: These Are The 16 Most Impactful Records of the 2010′s
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Look, to be honest, when it came to constructing some sort of “end of decade” list looking back on the 2010′s, we here at The Noise really had no idea what we wanted to do. 
With literally hundreds and hundreds of amazing releases over the last 10 years, how in the world are we supposed to pick “the best” of the decade? 
The answer: We aren’t.
See, the idea of something being labeled “the best” is subjective. It’s simply one person’s opinion vs the other. And truthfully, the idea of us thinking our opinion on something is any better or more important than yours makes us look like a bunch of assholes. 
Really, who cares what we think is the best? 
So, after constructing a colossal playlist featuring 1000 of our favorite songs from the 2010′s, something became very clear to us. Of all the songs we picked, there were a handful of records that contributed way more songs than the others. 
Simply put, these albums made a lasting mark on this decade that go way deeper than them being any good or not. These particular albums helped influence a generation, jumpstart artists’ careers and ultimately solidify themselves as the most impactful releases of the 2010′s. 
The albums we decided to shine a light on from the last ten years are records that carry more weight than just being a fan-favorite. We’re talking about releases we’ll look back on as a moment where everything changed for that artist.       
To check out the 16 albums we think are the biggest movers and shakers from our scene over the last ten years, be sure to look below. Afterward, if you hate our list and really want to tell us your opinion, you can file a complaint at: [email protected].  
16) Movements - Feel Something
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Starting our list off is a debut record from 2017 that helped propel a band from opening act to headliner in no time. With an impressive six-track EP released the year prior, SoCal act Movements quickly solidified their emerging star status with their flawless LP Feel Something. Following their first-ever full-length, Movements went on to sell out 27 dates of their first headlining tour and perform on the main stage of the final cross country Warped Tour. With a new album on the horizon, we’ll see just how far Movements and their unique brand of alternative pop-punk are able to take things leading into a new decade.  
15) Dance Gavin Dance - Acceptance Speech
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How does a band with two former frontmen and four fantastic LPs continue to thrive eight years into their career? Enter, Tilian Pearson. Following another departure of original vocalist Jonny Craig, post-hardcore experimentalists Dance Gavin Dance turned to the former Tides Of Man singer to handle the vacant role of clean vocals. The result? The game-changing release of Acceptance Speech which helped spring-board the band to another level of musical perfection. Six years and three more genre-defining albums later, DGD and Pearson are still going strong gearing up to headline their own hometown festival and release their ninth full-length album all thanks in part to their 2013 LP.      
14) Ice Nine Kills - The Silver Scream
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Coming in as the most recent record on our list, this horror-based release will be seen as the turning point in a band’s seasoned tenure. After 10-plus years of honing their craft, Boston’s Ice Nine Kills finally saw the fruits of their labor with the groundbreaking, career-defining album The Silver Scream. Taking the passion of metalheads and scary movie fanatics and combining them into a blood-soaked, breakdown-heavy package, Ice Nine Kills constructed a record that will easily withstand the test of time and help them extend their careers well into the 2020′s.   
13) Code Orange - I Am King
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Dropping the “Kids” from their moniker and shifting gears into their first album as just Code Orange, the Pittsburgh bruisers constructed an unrelenting metal record that shook listeners to their core. With a punishing opening track that literally warns you about what you’re about to experience, it was pretty evident I Am King was unlike anything people have ever heard. Coupled with the mind-altering “Dreams In Inertia” and the utterly pulverizing “My World,” Code Orange quickly and deservingly so became the metal megastars they were destined to become.  
12) Ghost - Meliora
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Speaking of metal megastars, after slowly creating word-of-mouth with their cult-like presence, throwback metal sounds and revolving door of Papa Emeritus frontmen, Sweedish act Ghost finally put it all together with their third studio album Meliora. Lead by the Grammy-winning single “Cirice,” Meliora fused haunting heavy metal imagery with roaring and anthemic songwriting creating the perfect package of evil-yet-accessible music. Debuting at number 8 on the Billboard 200 chart selling an estimated 29,000 copies in its first week, it was clear no matter which Papa was fronting the band, Ghost was ready to claim their spot atop the metal hierarchy.    
11) Issues - Issues
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Not many bands can say that their first full-length album debuted inside the top ten of the Billboard 200. But then again, not many bands are Issues. Fusing djent, hip-hop, metal, pop-punk, R&B and more to create their sensational self-titled album, Issues proved they were more than just a band featuring former members of Woe, Is Me. Instead, Issues showcased a group of talented, trendsetting musicians destined to change the landscape of metalcore music for the better.     
10) I Prevail - Lifelines
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After a famed cover of a well-known pop artist quickly put them on the map, Detroit’s I Prevail instantly had all the pressure in the world as they started to create what would be their debut album. Riding the success of their first EP Heart Vs Mind and tours with the likes of Hollywood Undead, Crown The Empire and Pop Evil, the Michigan act suddenly shot to the top of the metalcore ranks with the release of their remarkable, sonically-charged LP Lifelines. Charting at number 15 on the Billboard 200 selling over 19,000 copies in the first week, I Prevail went on to play Warped Tour for the first time -- finding a home on the main stage -- and later headlined the Rage On The Stage tour with scene veterans We Came As Romans, The Word Alive and Escape The Fate. Now Grammy-nominated and continuing to grow even larger, thanks in part to the accomplishments of Lifelines, I Prevail is without-a-doubt one of our scene’s biggest acts.
09) PVRIS - White Noise 
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In the midst of metalcore’s supremacy in the Warped Tour scene -- thanks to the never-ending list of “Risecore” bands -- came an act no one saw coming. Featured on a roster with the likes of Memphis May Fire, Miss May I, Like Moths To Flames, Crown The Empire and more was a pop-savvy, synth-lead baby band mistakenly pronounced “p-ver-is.” With their infectious, critically acclaimed debut White Noise landing at number 88 on Billboard and totaling nearly 50 million YouTube views on its TEN music videos, PVRIS proved it was possible to make an impact in this community with sheer talent, hard work, and catchy-as-hell lyricism. After just one listen to the undeniably great lead single “St. Patrick,” you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.    
08) Knocked Loose - Laugh Tracks 
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15 years from now, if we haven’t burnt the earth to the ground yet, we’ll look back on the Laugh Tracks era of Knocked Loose and remember where we were -- you know, because by 2034 Knocked Loose will be one of the biggest bands on the planet. Anyway, for us, the most memorable moment was watching them play “Billy No Mates” on the 2017 Vans Warped Tour at the Full Sail Stage. It was easily the largest and most insane side stage set we had ever seen in our 10 years of attending Warped Tour. From that very moment, we knew Knocked Loose and Laugh Tracks were going to be a big deal. Fast forward to 2019 and the band is now selling out 2,000-capacity venues on a semi-nightly basis. 2034 here we come!  
07) Beartooth - Disgusting 
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Very rarely does a member of a former band make it bigger with his second act. In those situations though, those people aren’t Caleb Shomo. Venturing out from his teenage band Attack Attack!, Shomo started Beartooth as a fun project with zero expectations of anything blowing up. Little did he know after building buzz with his chaotic 2013 EP Sick, Beartooth was about to take things to a whole nother level with the release of their massive breakout LP Disgusting. Fiery and fearsome from start to finish and full of nothing but hits like “In Between,” "The Lines” and “Beaten In Lips,” Disgusting is definitely the fuse that lit Beartooth’s outstanding career.
06) Every Time I Die - Low Teens
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How does a hardcore band 18 years into a well-respected career keep things relevant and progressing to a point where they’re anointed into “cult” status? Well, how about releasing their darkest, most emotionally charged album of their discography. After a life-altering scare to frontman Keith Buckley and his family, the longtime vocalist constructed some of his deepest and most honest lyrics for Every Time I Die’s soul-crushing LP Low Teens. Featuring guest vocals from Deadguy’s Tim Singer and Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie (plus their most moving song to date “Map Change”), ETID showed off their versatility with their eighth studio album and were treated to a successful two-year touring cycle with the likes of Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy, Motionless In White and Turnstile as well as a memorable run on the last-ever Vans Warped Tour. Not to mention, following the success of Low Teens, the band’s hometown of Buffalo, NY officially proclaimed December 15th, 2018 as “Every Time I Die Day” and a year later inducted them into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame.     
05) Of Mice & Men - Restoring Force 
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While some may point to 2011′s The Flood as the record that “broke” scene-favorites Of Mice & Men and others might argue their debut self-titled release was what laid the foundation for one of this decade’s most successful acts, we’d like to focus on 2014. Continuing to climb the metalcore ranks following the release of two very well-received records, Austin Carlile and Co. put out their career-changing LP Restoring Force featuring new bassist and clean vocalist Aaron Pauley. Laying to rest any displeasure about their changes in sound or lineup, Of Mice & Men went on to sell over 51,000 copies in the first week peaking at number 4 on the Billboard 200. Riding the success of their third full-length album, OM&M later went on to support bands like Linkin Park and Rise Against out on tour thus solidifying their spot as one of the biggest metalcore acts of the 2010′s.       
04) A Day To Remember - Common Courtesy 
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Some people remember A Day To Remember’s Common Courtesy for different reasons. Maybe it was the hilarious “reality series” made to promote the record -- the “Golden Eagle” episode was our favorite! Or maybe it was the seemingly never-ending lawsuit battle between the band and the notoriously greedy Victory Records -- we’ll never forget when ADTR broke the news on stage that the album was actually coming. For us, what we remember most was the first time we saw the music video for “Right Back At It Again.” We watched that goofy, cartoony music video 500 times trying to catch all the different things they put in the video -- like did you ever notice the surfing dog or aliens abducting cows? Well, whatever it was that got you to check out Common Courtesy, there’s no denying the impact it had on A Day To Remember’s career as the Ocala natives have only gotten even bigger since that 2013 release. With a new album on the way from the not-at-all-greedy Fueled By Ramen, it’ll be exciting to see where the 2020′s take ADTR next.        
03) Architects - Holy Hell
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With all the biopics being made today, there is no doubt in our mind one will be made about Brighton’s finest, Architects. With an already established career under their belts dating back to 2006, the band was continuing to see growth following their signing to Epitaph Records and the release of breathtaking LPs Lost Forever // Lost Together and All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us. Then, just like that, on August 20th, 2016 founding guitarist and primary songwriter Tom Searle lost his fight with cancer. Leaving the band in an obvious state of disarray after losing their bandmate and brethren, Architects were left with the choice of giving up or continuing Tom’s legacy. As with most biopics, this story has a positive ending as Architects decided to fight through the pain and ultimately release not just one of the best records of their career but one of the best records in metalcore, period.       
02) Bring Me The Horizon - That’s The Spirit 
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This can go one of two ways: You either accept That’s The Spirit is Bring Me The Horizon’s most impactful career-defining record to date or fight with us to the death that Sempiternal is deserving of this spot. Either way, there’s no denying Bring Me The Horizon’s influence on this decade. With their boundary-pushing LP That’s The Spirit, frontman Oli Sykes traded his growl for more of a pop-laced bite as BMTH ushered in their most successful era as a band seeing their fifth studio album land at number 2 on the Billboard 200. Still doubting That’s The Sprit’s impact on the scene? In 2018, only three years after its release, the gold-certified record amassed over one BILLION Spotify streams -- billion, with a B!  
01) Pierce The Veil - Collide With The Sky 
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Want to talk about a life-changing album? For San Diego scenesters Pierce The Veil, the famed four-piece went from a successful slow-building career to becoming a full-blown force with their third full-length record. Building off two well-received albums in A Flair For The Dramatic and Selfish Machines, Vic Fuentes and Co. (with the help of a Kellin Quinn-featured song) absolutely exploded into another stratosphere -- no pun intended -- with their now-gold-certified album Collide With The Sky. Lead by their platinum-selling single “King For A Day” and their Spanish-styled song “Bulls In The Bronx,” Pierce The Veil took the scene by storm thanks to their angsty, heart-pounding Fearless Records debut.
Honorable Mentions:
Deafheaven - Sunbather  Falling In Reverse - The Drug In Me Is You  Neck Deep - Life’s Not Out To Get You Nothing More - The Stories We Tell Ourselves  PUP - PUP State Champs - Around The World And Back The Amity Affliction - Let The Ocean Take Me  The Story So Far - What You Don’t See The Wonder Years - The Greatest Generation Wage War - Blueprints
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