#when almost every american singer has a song like ''fuck the music industry they are evil the music industry will kill you''

[howdon-aldi-death-queue]

NEW SAM FENDER INTERVIEW FOR NME

THE BIG READ

Sam Fender: “This album is probably the best thing I’ve done in my life”

The hometown hero has distanced himself from the ‘Geordie Springsteen’ tag, but there’s no shortage of rites-of-passage yarns and colossal tunes on the upcoming ‘Seventeen Going Under’

“You can see the ghost of Thatcherism over there…” says Sam Fender, pointing across the water to a vacant shipyard, where once the shipbuilding industry was so healthy that vessels towered higher than the rows of houses on the shore. We’re on the waterfront in North Shields, just outside Newcastle, and our photographer is snapping away for Sam’s first NME cover shoot.

The singer-songwriter stares stonily into the lens as wafts of seaweed and fishing trawlers are carried by the northern coastal breeze. He’s already been stopped for a few pictures with fans, but remains eager to point out the impact that Tory leadership has had on his working-class town over the last few decades. “It’s been closed since the ’80s, from the ghost wasteland of the shipyards. You’ve got all the scars of Thatcherism from The Tyne all over to the pit villages in Durham.”

It’s as good an introduction as any to the outspoken musician, whose 2019 debut album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ was a record for his sleepy hometown to be proud of – tackling themes that range from male suicide (the heartbreaking ‘Dead Boys’) to world tensions (and the “kids in Gaza” he eulogised on its soaring title track). He set weighty topics against blisteringly well-executed Americana with the fist-in-the-air euphoria of Bruce Springsteen’s colossal choruses and sax solos. Much like his hero, Sam smartly weaves his own political standpoint and personal circumstance into gripping anthems of a generation, which earned him the ‘Geordie Springsteen’ tag.

“I can’t exactly bat off those comparisons, can I?” he says back in his cosy recording studio nearby. “At the same time, I don’t feel worthy of that tag. The first time I heard it, I was like, ‘That’s fucking sick’, but you don’t want to be riding off the coattails of The Boss for the rest of your life. I can write my own songs, they’re different and my voice doesn’t sound anything like Springsteen’s. I don’t have his growl; I’m a little fairy when I sing.”

He may have toned down the Springsteen vibes slightly on his highly anticipated second album ‘Seventeen Going Under’, due later this year, but there are still plenty of chest-pounding anthems capable of making your hairs stand on end: “I much prefer Americana to the music we have in our country at the moment. I love the leftfield indie stuff like Fontaines D.C, Squid and Black Midi, but I love a chorus and melodic songs. I think the American alternative scene has that down with Pinegrove, Big Thief, The War On Drugs.”

‘Hypersonic Missiles’ thrummed with a small town frustration almost that every suburban teenager could surely relate to. This was most notable on ‘Leave Fast’, where he sang about the “boarded up windows on the promenade / The shells of old nightclubs” and “intoxicated people battling on the regular in a lazy Low Lights bar”, a reference to his beloved local. But album two sees him fully embrace North Shields, an ever-present backdrop to cherished memories and harrowing life events of his youth and surroundings.

It’s no coincidence that the 27-year-old has turned inwards and penned a record about his hometown while being stuck at home like the rest of the country: “I didn’t have anything to point at and I didn’t want to talk about the pandemic because nobody wants that – I never want to hear about it again. It was such a stagnant time that I had to go inwards and find something, because I was so uninspired by the lifetime we we’re living in.

“I’ve made my coming-of-age record and that was important for me – as I get older, these stories keep appearing; I’ve got so much to talk about. I wrote about growing up here. It’s about mental health and how things that happen as a child impact your self-esteem in later life. On the first record, I was pointing at stuff angrily, but the further I’ve gotten into my 20s, the more I’ve realised how little I know about anything. When you hit 25, you’re like: ‘I’m fucking clueless! I know nothing about the world.’ It was a humbling experience, growing up.”

Early last year, before the pandemic hit, Sam was set to jet off to New York pre-pandemic to record in the city’s infamous Electric Lady studios founded by Jimi Hendrix. “Looking back, I’m thankful that it happened,” he says. “If I went off to New York and did my second album there… it wouldn’t have been the same record. I will go and do the third one in NYC, come hell or high water – I’m fucking out of here!

“The forced return home really informed the direction [of the record]. I was on the crest of this insane wave; we’d sold out 84,000 tickets for the [‘Hypersonic Missiles] arena tour that we still haven’t played yet. I’m still waiting to hear when it’s going to be rescheduled. It’s incredibly frustrating; I’ve got loads of frustrated fans. That was all cancelled on the day of the lockdown. I thought it was only going to be a couple of months and that it would be another swine flu thing, but fool me – I was stuck in the house like everybody else.”

It’s not the first setback that Sam has dealt with in his career. In the summer of 2019, he was ready to make his Glastonbury Festival debut with a Friday afternoon set on the legendary John Peel Stage, a rite of passage for any emerging artist, but had to pull out due to a serious health issue with his vocal chords. The mood in the room shifts dramatically at the mention of this devastating period: “I don’t want to focus on that, to be honest, because it’s just negative news and it’s in the past.”

“The further I’ve gotten into my 20s, the more I’ve realised how little I know”

Looking back now, he says, it was a tough decision, but ultimately the right thing to do: “We were doing so much at the time and I just burnt out. If you damage your vocal cords, you can’t take it lightly. If something happens like that and you keep going, you’ll fucking lose your career forever. I never want to end up behind the knife; I just refuse to put myself in that situation.”

The fact that his 2019 breakthrough ground to a halt again in COVID-decimated 2020 “was frustrating as fuck”, he says, “but I took solace in the fact that everyone was stopped in their tracks that time; it wasn’t just me.” This was in stark contrast to the singer’s experience of pulling the biggest moment of his music career in order to rest his vocal cords: “I didn’t talk for three weeks; I had to be silent and just watch Glastonbury on the TV, going, ‘This is completely dogshit’. But you can’t even say that out loud – you’re just saying it over in your head like a psycho. I’d take a pandemic over that any day.”

There was a brief flash of light when he headlined the opening night at the world’s first socially distanced arena, Newcastle’s Virgin Money Unity venue, to an audience of 2,500. Yet Sam’s not in the mood to wax lyrical about that, either. “It was amazing,” he says, “but it didn’t happen again.” A local lockdown in the North East brought the following shows – which would have featured Kaiser Chiefs and Declan McKenna – to a premature end in September: “It was another false start. We thought everything was going to get moving again but then we were just sat around [again].”

As for this reaction to the Government’s handling of the pandemic? It perhaps says it all that he’s selling face masks emblazoned with the words ‘2020 Shit Show’ and ‘Dystopian Nightmare Festival’ on his website. “I think everyone has said enough haven’t they?” Sam suggests. “I never want to see Boris Johnson’s or Matt Hancock’s face ever again. As soon as they come on the TV, I just turn it off.”

Political tension bubbles through ‘Seventeen Going Under’. Its second half boasts tracks such as ‘Long Way Off’, a brooding but colossal festival anthem brimming with angst and unease. “Standing on the side I never was the silent type,” Fender roars, “I heard a hundred million voices / sound the same both left and right / we’re still alone we are.” It’s gripping stuff; a Gallagher-level anthem ripe for pyro and pints held aloft.

Sam says the song is about feeling stranded amid political divisiveness here and in the US, epitomised when Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington back in January: “You’ve either got right-wing, racist idiots or you’ve got this elitist, upper-middle-class section of the left-wing, which completely alienates people like myself and people from my hometown.”

“The polarity between the left and the right has me feeling like I have no identity”

Closer to home, the last UK election, in 2019, saw the so-called ‘Red Wall’ crumble as working-class voters in the north defected from Labour to Tory. “The polarity between the left and the right has me feeling like I have no identity,” Sam says. “I’m obviously left-wing, but you lose hope don’t you? Left-wing politics has lost its main votership; it doesn’t look after working-class people the way that it used to. Blyth Valley voted Tory just north of here. Now, that is saying something! We’re in dire straits when a fucking shipbuilding town is voting for the Tories – it’s like foxes voting for the hunter.”

He’s even seen his own working-class friends peel to the blue side: “I’m like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I understand it, though. I’d never vote for the bastards because I fucking hate them and I know what they’re up to, but I get why people don’t feel any alliegiance to left-wing politics when they’re working-class.”

As ever though, Sam isn’t masquerading as an expert: “I’m not fucking Noam Chomsky, you know what I mean? I’m not going to dissect the whole political agenda of the Tories and figure it all out because I can’t. All I see is a big fucking shit sandwich – every day through my news feed – and it’s just, ‘Well: that’s what your dealing with.”

The singer is fond of describing North Shields as “a drinking town with a fishing problem”. Today he adds: “That’s been the backdrop of my life: all of these displaced working-class people. It’s a town that’s resilient that still has a strong sense of community. In a lot of big cities that’s dead. In London everything changes from postcode to postcode, but everything is quite uniform up here.”

When NME was awaiting Sam’s arrival outside the studio before the interview, a passerby clocked our photographer’s gear and asked, “Oh aye – are you waiting for Sam? We all know Sam – a good lad; very accommodating with nae airs or graces about him.” Another pointed to The Low Lights Tavern down the road, where Fender used to pull pints on the weekends: “He was a terrible barman, and he’ll be the first to tell you that. I think he got sacked about six times during his time there.”

Sam (who confesses of his bartending know-how: “He’s totally right!”) hit the local to celebrate when ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ won him a Critics’ Choice gong at the BRIT Awards in 2019, placing the trophy on the bar. “I owed The Low Lights one for being such a shit barman,” he says. “I wanted them to be proud of us because they fucking certainly wasn’t proud of us when I was around working there!”

“Celebrity stuff freaks me out. I’d rather just live my life”

He’s clearly a key member of the local community, then. How did he see the pandemic impact on his family and friends – especially when the North East faced the toughest Tier Four lockdown restrictions last December? Sam pauses before bluntly saying: “I lost more mates; there was suicides again. Mental health was the biggest thing. We lost friends who had drunk too much.”

A track on the new record, ‘The Dying Light‘, is an epic sequel to ‘Dead Boys’, with the poignant last line of the album ringing out “for all the ones who didn’t make the night”. Sam, unable to truly distance himself from The Boss after all, explains: “It’s very Springsteen. It’s my ‘Jungleland’ or ‘Thunder Road’ – it’s got that ‘Born To Run’ feel; there’s strings and brass [and] it’s fucking massive. It’s a celebration. It’s a triumph over adversity.”

He stresses that it was vital for him to be in regular contact with his friendship circle through that traumatic time: “It becomes important when you lose friends to suicide… You realise it’s always the unlikely folks. We lost a friend to suicide at the beginning of last year and it was someone you’d never expect. It really hits home; it’s important to check in on your mates.”

Sam has alluded in previous interviews to a health condition that he’s not yet ready to fully disclose, and tells NME that he spent three months shielding at the beginning of the pandemic: “I was alone for three months and that was very tough… When you’re completely alone and isolated, it’s impossible. I spent a lot of time drinking and not really looking after myself and eating shit food, but I wrote a lot of good lyrics.”

There’s a certain resulting bleakness to some of his new songs, but Sam also wanted light to shine through. “It’s a darker record, but it’s a celebration of surviving and coming out the other end,” he explains. “It’s upbeat but the lyrics can be quite honest. It’s the most honest thing I’ve done.”

You might expect a young hometown hero to rail at having been denied the chance to capitalise on his burgeoning fame in the last year or so, but Sam insists, “I still have imposter syndrome,” adding: “I don’t feel like it’s happened… I’m walking around the street and people ask for photos and it just feels bizarre. I’m like, really? I feel like I haven’t come out of my shell yet.”

Sam has rarely been one to court celebrity, and revealed in 2019 that he’d turned down the chance to appear in an Ariana Grande video. “It was an honour but I would have just been known as that guy in the video,” he tells NME. “All of my mates would have been flipping their heads off, but I don’t think she would really want an out-of-shape, pale Geordie. I’d rather just live my life, because all of this celebrity stuff freaks [me] out, you know?”

He might have to get used to it: things can only get bigger with the arrival of the new album. “As a record I think this one is leagues ahead [of ‘Hypersonic Missiles’],” he says, “I’m more proud of this than anything I’ve ever done. It’s probably the best thing I’ve done in my life. I just hope people love it as much as I do. With the first album, a lot of those songs were written when I was 19, so I was over half of it [by the time it was released]. Whereas this one is where I’m at now.”

“This is a dark record, but it’s a celebration of surviving and coming out the other end”

Still, he adds: “At the same time, this record is probably going to piss a lot of people off.” He’s referring to a line in one of the more political tracks, ‘Aye’, where he returns to his most enduring bugbear, divisiveness, and claims that “the woke kids are just dickheads”. Sam’s no less forthcoming in person: “They fucking are, though! Some 22-year-old kid from Goldsmiths University sitting on his fucking high horse arguing with some working-class person on some comments section calling them an ‘idiot’ and a ‘bigot’? Nobody engages each other in a normal discussion [online] without calling each other a ‘thick cunt’.”

He’s eager to make this statement, though, come what may: “I don’t fucking care any more. I’m not really sure how the reaction is going to be. People used to say things online about me and I used to get quite hurt about it, but now I’m like, ‘Well, they’re not coming to my house’… [But] I get so angry. In Newcastle we say ‘pet’ and someone was trying to tell me that was fucking offensive towards women. You’re not going to delete my fucking colloquial identity. It’s not even gender-specific; we say it to men and women. My Grandma calls me ‘pet’! That brand of liberalism is fucking destroying the country. We could be getting Boris Johnson and all them pricks out of office if we stopped sweating over shit like that”.

Sam might be outspoken, but he’s self-aware, too. When we were talking politics earlier, he said: “I didn’t want to start on ‘cancel culture’ because I don’t want to sound like Piers Morgan [and] I fucking hate that cunt. But there is a degree of it which lacks redemption; people fuck up. Everyone is a flawed character. If you’re not admitting that you have flaws, then you’re a fucking psychopath. The left-wing seem to be that way and the right-wing are fucking worse than they’ve ever been. Politically I have just lost my shit.”

In all of this uncertainty, though, it seems a sure thing that Sam Fender will take his rightful crown – as soon as the world lets him – with the colossal ‘Seventeen Going Under’. “It’s going to be a hell of a return,” he insists. “I know the fans are still there, you know? So I’m not really worried – I’m ready to go out there and do my thing. Finally!”

[gayenerd]

This 2009 interview with Billie is from something called Urban Male Magazine (lol) which is apparently a defunct “men’s interest” magazine in Canada.

In this interview Billie Joe Armstrong talks about his new album ‘21st Century Breakdown’, about the band and his family; how his boys keep him young, and how he’s living his dream.

Here, in the middle of a dilapidated looking industrial zone, only separated from San Francisco by the Bay Bridge, singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool have established their headquarters, composed of countless rooms for living, working and playing, protected by an automatic gate and barbed wire.  As we enter the 37 year-old Billie Joe's room to talk to him about the new album '21st Century Breakdown', he is sitting at the piano, now black haired following a brief blonde phase, playing 'Last Night on Earth', one of the new songs.

Billie Joe, we have never heard you so romantic. In this piece you sing “You are the moonlight of my life”, and “I'm sending all my love to you”. How touched is your wife Adrienne in light of this declaration of love?

Billie Joe Armstrong: She should be moved by this song, which she is.

Who do you spend more time with? With your wife or the band?

BJA: With my wife. Without a doubt. I mean, I sleep with her. I don't sleep with Tré and Mike.

You have been together for over 15 years.

BJA: A hell of a long time, I know. Adrienne is my closest ally. She is also a very good barometer in respect of my songs. She has a different kind of distance, a different way of approaching our music. She is always pretty objective and honest about what she thinks of our songs.

Your sons Joseph and Jacob are 14 and 10. How do the two of them sharpen your understanding for youth culture?

BJA: At the moment I find it incredibly exciting how my oldest son is negotiating his way through puberty. I think that being a young person today is more stressful and complicated than it was in my day twenty years ago. The Internet has won so much control over the way kids live their lives, it's almost frightening.

You yourself were quite a tear away, a head through the wall type, am I right?

BJA: Right. But my boys are not like that, they are somehow…brighter and more hard-boiled than I was at their age. Their world is significantly larger than my world was back then.

You look 15 years younger than you are. How do you do that?

BJA: When we aren't touring I go to bed at the same time as my sons. Rarely later than midnight.

People, and presumably your children too, now prefer to download their music from the Youtubes and Itunes of this world. And now you come along and release '21st Century Breakdown', a monumental, approximately 70 minute long concept album consisting of 18 songs and encompassing every imaginable style of music. Have you lost your mind?

BJA: I write songs as if my life depended on it. The last album 'American Idiot' provided us with an opportunity, the opportunity to record another really powerful and ambitious album. We didn't want to miss the chance this time around. We had to overcome our uncertainties and really pull out all the stops to complete this album. But that was what motivated us. We weren't interested in shying away from success again, as we did with our albums at the end of the nineties. Now I can understand it when people say that we started pulling our punches after 'Dookie' (the 1994 breakthrough album with 'Basket Case'). We are proud of what we have made out of Green Day.

In 'Horseshoes and Handgrenades', you sing “I am gonna drink, fight, f**k and push my luck”. As one of the biggest rock stars on the planet, do you still have time to rip it up?

BJA: One should always make time for a bit of excess. However, I have become more cautious. A sense of responsibility towards myself and my family.

When was the last time you were drunk?

BJA: The day before yesterday (laughs).

It has taken you three years to write this album and record it with the help of the Nirvana and Garbage producer Butch Vig. Was completing the follow-up to 'American Idiot' something of a Herculean task?

BJA: Yes, it was. '21st Century Breakdown' demanded much more from us, was far harder to realise than 'American Idiot'. Originally we had the idea of shooting an animated film with us as the main figures, and then write the soundtrack to it.  In the end we didn't do this. Instead, we set off to climb new creative heights and to write the best fucking songs we could.

The songs have turned out very musical and melodic. Much of it is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, and even Meat Loaf.

BJA: We acknowledge all our influences and really enjoy painting with a broad palette of colours. John Lennon, Bob Marley, U2, The Clash and many more. Songs are the result of patience and concentration. You never know when a song will gently tap you on the shoulder or hit you on the back of the head with a lump of wood. I get my ideas for songs everywhere - when playing the guitar, in the shower, on the toilet or when going for a walk.

The central line in the title song '21st Century breakdown', says: “My generation is zero. I never made it as a working class hero”. Isn't that a damned pessimistic view on life?

BJA: You should view it a little more discriminatingly. The song is about the American Dream, which says that you can make it if you really want to, if you push yourself. Society is increasingly trivializing this dream of our forefathers. Today it is only about winning the next Lotto jackpot and becoming stinking rich. That is not enough for me. What I miss is people striving to be better, to perfect themselves, this sense of hunger.

Have you realised your dream then?

BJA: One hundred percent. I am the happiest boy in the world. I love my band and my work. If there wasn't Green Day, then I would be washing plates.

Is society, especially in light of the current economic downturn, too materialistic?

BJA: No, I don't think it is. I don't have anything against prosperity. This pursuit of money regularly lands our country in trouble. But it also helps us to pull ourselves out of trouble again. America is very inventive when it comes to generating wealth. However prosperity should only be one aspect, a society built exclusively on money will break down. But I'm not pessimistic. We now have our first Afro-American president, which is a tremendous thing. And in the long run this means that the voice and the desires of the people will not be ignored.

What will Obama achieve? Save the world?

BJA: He won't save the world, especially not on his own. But this is the best thing that has happened to America in a very long time. There is a new crisis every week, a new catastrophe. However at the end of the day the central statement of the album is: There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Is Billie Joe Armstrong in 2009, what Bruce Springsteen was in the 80's or Bob Dylan in the 60's?

BJA: I can't deal with that. I don't want to be the voice of a generation. I wouldn't feel comfortable with a label like that. I want to speak for myself. However, if people discover something in my songs for themselves, then I have succeeded in what I set out to do.

Are you secretly thankful to George W. Bush? Ultimately he inspired 'American Idiot' and played a considerable role in its success?

BJA: That may be true, but no! Not at all. Thank Bush? That would be really beneath me.

[spectralarchers]

hey christine!! i’m not a first-language french-speaker by i’ve been taking french courses for a few years so i can string a few sentences together, and i’m wondering if you have any french tv shows (or films!) that you really like that you’d recommend? maybe like something police/law procedural or crime drama esque? so far i’ve got secret histoires jotted down on a list and not much else. anyway! ((no pressure!!!!)) <333 sending much love!! <3

Hi, Nonnie! 

That sounds absolutely fabulous, I’m so glad that you’ve decided to give French a go, and I can only admire your courage (as a native French speaker, the French language still fucks with me sometimes, lol). Props to you!

Secrets d’histoire is absolutely FANTASTIC - they’re great, and Stéphane Bern articulates particularly well, so his enunciation makes everything great. I think I have the one on Beethoven stashed away somewhere too!

Here’s a non-exclusive list of French things you’re always welcome to try and watch:

Movies/documentaries: 

Avis de Mistral, a movie with Jean Reno that takes place in the South of France, where two youths from Paris are sent to their grandfather. There’s a lovely little deaf boy and some really emotional beats in it, I highly suggest it!

La Promesse de l’Aube, with Pierre Niney, a biographical motion picture about Romain Gary

Le Pacte des Loups, a weird fantasy / realistical take on the myth of the Beast of Gévaudan (it has nudity and violence, so be aware of warnings before watching it, it can fuck with you if you’re not careful)

Yves Saint-Laurent, with Pierre Niney, about the fashion designer of the same name

Gims (Netflix), a French language documentary about the rapper Gims and his career with Sexion d’Assaut and becoming one of the best selling artists in France

Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopatre, which is what it says on the tin,

De Rouille et d’Os, a Matthias Schoenaerts & Marion Cotillard movie about a former whale trainer who loses the use of her legs after an accident with a killer whale, 

De Gaulle, a biopic about the General de Gaulle which kinda sells itself,

Edmond, a sort of biopic of Edmond Rostand, the one who wrote Cyrano de Bergerac,

Au Revoir Là Haut, a con movie in the roarings twenties featuring two soldiers, one of which is completely disfigured. 

Here’s a further list of movies I think you could watch: La Rafle, Qu’est ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu, Rrrrrr!!!!, Les Bronzés Font du Ski, Intouchables, Les Misérables (2019), Brice de Nice, etc.

Shows:

Kaamelot, King Arthur on his quest to the Holy Grail but if it was an absolute comedy, 

Lupin, on Netflix with Omar Sy in the lead role (excellent!)

Un si grand soleil, a TV show that takes place in the South of France which I feel obligated to put on this list because it’s filmed in my home city (Montpellier, représente!) even though it’s not, by far, specially good and I’ve only seen a little bit of it, 

Section de Recherches, which is basically CSI in French, but I don’t watch it myself (I’m not a fan of law procedurals and such, but I hear it should be good!)

Joséphine Ange Gardien, which is not something I personally watch either, but from what I’ve seen of it, it should be quite fun if you’re into serialized TV shows with a little bit of procedures and crime and stuff, plus it’s kinda cute too.

Here’s some more you can look, if you feel like it: H, Bref, Engrenages, Un Gars Une Fille, Scènes de Ménage, etc.

Other:

The Restos du Coeur charity show, which is an absolute classic thing to watch in France with a whole bunch of French artists and other celebrities/public figures doing a sort of concert to raise money for charity,

Auto Moto, if you’re interested in cars/bikes etc. and you can, I’d try watching this, it airs every Sunday and is a car/bike specialist TV-show where they take a look at new cars and new bikes etc. every single week (it’s about 30 minutes long)

Les Aventures du Jeune Voltaire, an upcoming TV show about Voltaire, the first 2 episodes are airing on the 7th of February (I am looking for much forward to it!)

Cash Investigation, a good investigative television show that covers important current topics, 

The Voice France, and I know this is a stretch, but the principle of the show is basically the same as the American one, except in French... Bonus, you get French songs as well!

The documentary “Les stars racontent 20 ans de NRJ Music Awards” if you can find it somewhere which is a 90 minute documentary about the NRJ Music Awards, the biggest music industry award show in France (it gives a nice insight into what is going on in France when it comes to music and such),

Other things you can watch, if you can find them online / if they’re available: Secrets d’Histoire (which you already have), France 5 and Arte usually have some good documentaries you can look up, etc. 

Music: 

Gims raps mostly in French language and has very good and sophisticated lyrics, I’d definitely look up some of his tracks if you don’t already know some of them,

Kendji Girac, a French Catalan Romani singer who won his season of the Voice and is currently the best selling The Voice alumni WORLDWIDE, he makes some nice bops to chill out to (I always get in a good mood when listening to his songs),

Indila, French singer, she’s got some nice tunes to her as well,

Nolwenn Leroy, known for her Brittany inspired songs which celebrate her heritage, 

Soprano, French rapper who also does some nice bops, 

Louane, a wonderful young French singer who has a beautiful voice, 

Julien Doré, a nice French singer who does some nice stuff too, and I’m obliged to put him on the list because he grew up in Lunel which is like almost next to where I grew up, lol,

Johnny Hallyday, which is the most cliché thing EVER to put on this list because every single Frenchman will go “oh my god WHY” but his catalogue is so large that there’s bound to be some songs in there that you enjoy (He was called the French Elvis and is also called “the biggest rock star you've never heard of“ and I will unabashedly keep listening to his songs when I need it.

Other French singers/artists you can look up: Tryo, Indochine, Kyo, Slimane, Matt Pokora, Christophe Maé, Joyce Jonathan, etc.

There’s probably a whole bunch of other things I’ve missed myself because I haven’t been living in France for almost 6 years now, but this is just what I could list off the top of my head <3

(If you come off Anon, I know of a place to find some of the non-feature movies and non-fictional television shows if you’re interested!)

[fencesandfrogs]

sea shanties, work songs, tiktok

so apparently tiktok and sea shanties (technically they’re usually sea folk songs, based on the ones i’ve heard, which is not many) are having a moment and as someone who’s always been a fan of work songs, esp. sea shanties, i just wanted to take a moment to talk/think about them.

[this is abt 1.4k words with a lot of music, incl. 4 embeded videos. i included this break because scrolling past long posts is annoying but like. there’s some good music to listen to in here even if u don’t want to read the whole thing.]

call & response is a pretty common musical idea. i’m not sure at all, but i’d wager a good deal that it’s probably some of the oldest stuff we have. but, like, if you’ve ever sung anything in a group, it’s there. the classic call and response is shorter, but i just want to also say a lot of music can be thought of as call and response, like verses/choruses, etc.

i think it just speaks to a human desire to participate in music. many people know what i’m talking about here (maybe most? i come from a musical family so i don’t have a good breadth of experience but i’ve met very few people who don’t jive to music), and so we make this little welcoming come sing with me environment.

anyway, so work songs are a type of music meant to coordinate labor. a lot of work songs are formed by slaves, because for a work song to be helpful, you need to be doing work that requires coordination.

sea shanties are a specific type of work song that use the general structure of the american slave work song combine with irish, scottish, and english folk music.

folk music as a whole is a wider genre that overlaps a lot with work songs, especially as you start to turn to industrial work songs and cowboy work songs and the like which have a less specific rhythm than sea shanties specifically.

musical edification complete, i’m going to focus on sea shanties and industrial work songs b/c that’s what i listen to the most.

so call and response. sea shanties usually have a soloist part that’s a bit more musically complex, and the response is “simpler”. i’m not here to talk abt music theory or why they developed like that, but you know when you’re bad at singing, having a simple part to join in with is positive. hits the warm gooey spot of participating in group music. here’s a recording of blow the man down which i think demonstrates this quality really well:

(it’s a pretty popular shanty which is why i picked it. the “truth”of my argument is not at all universal, and it’s not just about speed, but also the rhythm, melody, etc.)

anyway there’s a lot of shanties and what typically comes to mind is drunken sailor which i know “all” the words to (as much as anyone can) but you’ll see theré’s no call and response

what do you do with a drunken sailor

what do you do with a drunken sailor

what do you do with a drunken sailor

early in the morning

right? that’s not a call and response, it’s just repetition. lyrically, its a call and response:

put him in bed with the captain’s daughter

(that’s my favorite line bc as kids we didn’t understand it so it made us laugh)

but musically you’re not having a back and forth. and so they’re things everyone just gets to sing together.

and that brings me to more industrial work songs. my favorite is sixteen tons, because i’m a basic bitch, and the line “saint peter don’t you call me cause i can’t go” is eternally stuck in my head. here’s a full version:

so as you can see, there’s no call and response, but the melody is relatively simple. it’s repetitive, the range is decent, and it’s got a really flexible tempo (the video i chose is pretty moderate, but here’s a fast one (and this is pure performance), and i swear i have a slower version on my computer but i can’t find it for the life of me).

(aside: one thing to notice in the johnny cash version is the backing. his is far more complex than ernie ford, and that’s because it’s dropped all pretense of being a work song. work songs don’t have much behind them because they’re almost always a capello. this isn’t super relevant to the discussion i just wanted to point it out.)

so mining work songs are generally like this (see black waters, another favorite of mine), and it’s not hard to see where folk music as a genre develops:

i just really like this song it’s probably not the best example.

on the other hand, other folk music maintains the structure. lets look at oh susanna (i hate this version, but the vocals are very clear so uhhh here’s a random cool fancy one listen to this it’s super cool).

the whole thing is fairly repetitive, it doesn’t have a strictly definite end, etc. the melody is still pretty simple, although i will say, having sung this in a choir, it can get more complicated in arrangement pretty easily.

anyway, this becomes bluegrass which is basically the folk version of country, here’s callin baton rogue which is absolutely one of the best songs to ever be written. this version is done by garth brooks, country singer, but listen to that fiddle and tell me it’s country.

(this is future matthew with an edit just to say, like, i’m not trying to establish a *strictly* factual chain of music genres here. bluegrass is, i believe, related closely to jazz & blues, while country was formed directly as an opposition to jazz & music history is really complicated.)

you get a lot of ballads here, eg ballad of john henry. i’m not going to say that’s good. but uh there’s a lot to filter through and i’m supposed to be working on my computer science assignment not doing an exploratory discussion of work songs and associated genres.

so this brings us to scottish/irish/english ballads. the clancy brothers are a popular band here, my mom had them on in the car a lot. here’s the work of the weavers for a slower song, but a good one, and here’s moonshiner, which is both a good song and takes me to my next point: sea songs, folk song, and tiktok (see its almost the same as the title it’s a joke).

i’m happy to see folk music making a resurgence. it was really a shame that we spent such a long time listening to not singing friendly music. that’s not a diss on any particular genre (except for edm fuck edm, everyone who makes dance remixes should have their music liscences revoked), because in isolation every genre is fine, but then you take it all together, and there’s a lack of the group singing, safe for bad singers, simple to play, music as a wider genre.

when did we stop singing lullabies? i mean i assume we still sing them to children, but how many do you know? how long has it been since a song like you are my sunshine has been popular? *caveat that i don’t listen to the radio, but if you have a counter example, make sure you think about how long it is and how large the range is and how complicated the rhythm is, etc., because that all is part of it.

at the camp i used to go to, we would sing bohemian rhapsody walking down the hill to the waterfront. someone would start it, and those interested get to join in sometime around “easy come easy go", but then you get to a guitar solo, and the thing kind of fizzles without a backing track.

and that’s what i mean, i mean people keep singing together, and wouldn’t it be better if more people made music that was meant to be sung? i mean sure you can gather your friends and sing anything, but will it resonate in the same way “what do you do with a drunken sailor?” would? will everyone be able to sing it, will it sound okay if you sing it badly? why did we stop making music that sounded best when we sing it the way we always have? why did we stop listening to it?

anyway i don’t have a deep take on this except like folk music is really good, and traditional songs exist for a reason. since i’ve focused really heavily on america and gaelic tradition, because that’s what i listend to growing up, and therefore can speak about in a qualitative sense, i would like to just leave this south african lullaby here, because my mom used to sing it to me, so it’s got a real soft spot in my heart. i didn’t really talk about lullabies because again comp sci assignment but they’re related, so anyway, this has an english translation in there which may or may not be the standard? but you can know what it means too:

[there-must-be-a-lock]

Business As Usual

Criminal Minds Rockstar AU! 

Word Count: ~3890

Warnings: Implications of offscreen shenanigans, Reid and JJ being devious little shits, but nothing too wild. 

A/N: Why does this exist? Fuck if I know! Was it a fucking blast to write? Fuck yes it was! The headcanon popped into my brain fully-formed while I was driving home from work one day, @stunudo​ and @rockhoochie​ encouraged me, and here I am. This will, at some point, be tied into the SPN rockstar au that I’ve been dicking around with, but for now it’s just the BAU doing their thing! 

Business As Usual

Talking Family and Feminism With Rock’s Hottest New Band

-

There are already fans lining up outside Terminal 5 when I arrive in the afternoon. It’s the first time Business As Usual will be playing in New York since the release of their sophomore album, Wheels Up, which has become the runaway surprise hit of the summer, largely thanks to the success of the first single, “Revelations.” They’ve gone from critically praised indie darlings to the brink of mainstream stardom, seemingly overnight. 

Band manager David Rossi, for one, isn’t surprised at the sudden attention. 

Rossi is an industry vet with almost four decades of experience under his belt. He’d been retired for a couple years when a friend dragged him out to see B.A.U. playing in a dive bar. He says that within two songs, he knew “the kids,” as he calls them, would be huge. By the end of the show, he was ready to come out of retirement if they’d let him manage them. 

With attention comes scrutiny, and for most bands, the rumors would be flying already. However, B.A.U. definitely isn’t most bands; there are no whispers of groupies, crazy parties, or other rockstar antics here. When you meet them face to face, that reputation makes perfect sense. They’re quiet and quirky, and they seem like five of the unlikeliest rock stars in modern music. 

-

“Very nice to meet you, Paul,” Rossi says, turning on the charm. This one’s gonna be a piece of cake. “Now. Before we get any further, just a couple things.” 

He gives the reporter his best fuck with my kids and I will fuck you up look and makes sure the guy looks suitably intimidated before he continues. 

“First, don’t believe half of what comes out of Penelope’s mouth, at least not until you confirm with somebody else. She likes to see what ridiculous things journalists will print.” This is, obviously, a lie, but they’ve found it’s the best way to deal with Penelope’s inability to keep anything private. “Trust me. You listen to her, you’ll end up with egg on your face.” 

“No problem,” Paul says obediently. 

“Second, you do not mention Reid’s stalker. Is that clear?” 

Paul nods, but Rossi waits for a moment, until he starts wilting slightly under the stare.

“I understand,” he says, nodding emphatically, and Rossi gives him a clap on the shoulder and a big smile. 

“Wonderful. Other than that, we’re an open book. Come in, they’re just getting ready for soundcheck. Let’s get you something to drink.” 

-

Officially, the band is made up of Emily Prentiss (vocals), Derek Morgan (guitar), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (bass), Spencer Reid (keys), and Aaron Hotchner (drums). At first glance, they don’t look like they have anything in common; most bands tend to dress in a similar style and come from similar musical backgrounds, but these five couldn’t be more different. Reid, for example, was a classical piano prodigy who graduated from Berklee at the age of seventeen, and has a tendency to dress like an absentminded professor, while Prentiss, with her Siouxsie Sioux eyeliner, dropped out of prep school to tour with a riot-girl band. 

Producer and sound tech Penelope Garcia is the unofficial sixth member of the band, and they all credit her with melding their various eclectic songwriting styles into one distinctive, experimental sound. 

Garcia is an anomaly in a male-dominated field, possibly even more so than Prentiss and Jareau, but instead of trying to blend in or prove that she’s tough enough to fit in with the rest of the crew, she makes a point to stand out. During sound check, she’s wearing a wildly colorful dress and pink heels, which match the pink streaks in her hair and her thick pink-framed glasses. When I ask whether she deals with sexism in the music industry, she just laughs. 

 “Of course there are jerks,” she says, shrugging. “There are always going to be jerks. But I know I’m good at what I do, and my band knows I’m good at what I do, and that’s what matters.” 

“And the other women? Do they get heckled or catcalled a lot?” 

“The only person who’s allowed to objectify my band is me,” Garcia says cheerfully, and then makes a face. “Kidding! I would never.”  

-

“Nicely done on that solo, hot stuff, you play that guitar almost as well as you fill out those jeans,” Penelope says into the dead mic. It goes directly to the band’s in-ear monitors, so nobody else can hear. Derek laughs and the rest of the band roll their eyes.

When they set up the extra mics and the band-to-booth-only channel, this was not what they had in mind (as Rossi keeps reminding her) but… it’s so much fun. She hasn’t made Derek crack up mid-show yet, but she’ll get there. 

“One of these days you’re gonna use the wrong channel and the entire house is gonna hear you,” JJ says into her own second mic, but she’s grinning too. 

“Let ‘em listen, they’d just be jealous,” Penelope says breezily. “Another one?” 

“Can we run ‘Eviler Twin’ with the new bridge?” Spencer asks. 

Penelope adjusts levels on his synths and shoots him a thumbs up. “You got it, Boy Wonder. Hotch, count ‘em in.” 

-

Lead singer Emily Prentiss has a larger-than-life presence from the moment she steps onstage. She’s commanding and confident, and it’s hard to take your eyes off of her, whether she’s crowdsurfing, jumping around the stage, or delivering one of her trademark fiery speeches between songs. 

When Prentiss first expressed an interest in singing, her mother hired a private vocal coach who specialized in opera, and was disappointed when her daughter showed interest in less classical genres. 

“She was pissed,” Prentiss says, smiling to herself. “I started sneaking out when I was fourteen or so and going to this one little local dive bar that got all the punk and hardcore bands. I’m still not sure how I convinced them to let me in. But seeing the Dead Kennedys made me decide I was going to be in a band. I just looked at Jello Biafra and thought, I want to do that.”  

While their music isn’t explicitly political, the band themselves aren’t shy about expressing their opinions, Prentiss in particular. 

-

“...and that’s why I never wear a bra,” Emily finishes. “Does that answer your question?” 

“I think so?” Paul says hesitantly. He’s making a noble effort not to look down at her tits. 

Emily’s pretty sure it doesn’t answer the question, not even a little bit, but she’s also pretty sure the question was about relationships, so. Fuck that question. 

Emily’s not great at press, but she is excellent at rambling about the patriarchy until people tune her out. 

-

Drummer Aaron Hotchner, best known as “Hotch,” has become the unlikely sex symbol of the band, despite being the only one who’s happily married. The attention only seems to embarrass him. 

“It’s real fun to read him thirst tweets and watch him turn colors,” Penelope says, with a devilish grin. “But you didn’t hear it from me.” 

When Hotch goes out to greet fans after the show, the female shrieks reach a deafening pitch. He greets everyone with a charming, dimpled smile and talks to each one as if there’s no one else waiting for his attention. The crowd is sizeable and some of the fans are overfamiliar, to put it mildly, but Hotch spends over an hour there, speaking to everyone individually. He remains unfailingly polite, taking pictures and signing things even after the rest of his bandmates have excused themselves for the night. 

“He’s just the sweetest,” one girl sighs to her friend as they finally head home. 

Hotch, who is notoriously unenthusiastic about talking to the press, did not want to comment. 

-

“Love you too, Jack. Take care of your mom,” Hotch is saying, as he walks through the green room door. He hangs up, and Emily can see the moment he notices Paul; his smile vanishes and his eyebrows flatten in a scowl. 

“Was that your son?” Paul asks politely. 

“Yes.” 

“How is he?” 

“Fine.” 

Paul’s smile falters for a second. “Do you talk to them every night, when you’re on the road? Touring must be tough.” 

Hotch just gives him a curt nod this time and Emily winces. Paul clears his throat. 

“So… you used to play in a grunge band, is that right?” he asks tentatively. 

Hotch gives him another stony look. “That is correct.” 

JJ opens the door, and Emily can’t help but mutter, “Oh thank fuck.” 

JJ looks between Hotch, who is holding eye contact without blinking, and a petrified Paul. Then she quirks an eyebrow at Emily, who gives her a panicked nod. 

“Hi there, you must be Paul,” JJ says warmly. She jabs Hotch discreetly in the side as she passes him. “Rossi and Morgan are getting food, Hotch, they said you should join them.” 

He looks like he’s about to protest, but Emily shoots him a look and he heads for the door. 

JJ sits next to Paul with a dazzlingly bright smile, eyelashes fluttering. “It is so nice to meet you. Reid and Garcia are in the batcave, I’m happy to take you out there, but I’m all yours if there’s anything you’d like to ask me about first.” 

Emily shoots her a thumbs-up and escapes before Paul notices. 

-

Jennifer Jareau, better known as “JJ,” has the sort of wholesome, all-American beauty that turns heads wherever she goes; she wouldn’t look out of place on a magazine cover. In fact, modeling was what led her indirectly to the band. 

JJ started playing music in her high school marching band, but never intended to pursue it seriously. She was the valedictorian of her small town’s high school and had a full scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh. Between her sophomore and junior years, though, she was spotted by a modeling agency and offered a job; it would just be one week, in Los Angeles. She says she was most excited about the opportunity to fly in an airplane for the first time. 

While in L.A., JJ met Prentiss, and the rest is history. The two women seem to work seamlessly together and frequently complete each others’ sentences, but while Prentiss is commanding and confident, JJ is soft-spoken and feminine, almost motherly. 

-

“I always wanted a family,” JJ says, with her most heartfelt Colgate-ad smile. “It ended up looking a little different than I expected, but here we are.” 

JJ’s 95% sure that’ll be the pull quote for the article. Men like Paul eat that traditional shit up with a spoon; she should probably rein it in before he jizzes himself. 

-

The “batcave,” as they call it, is so full of gear and recording equipment that I stand in the doorway while I talk to Reid and Garcia. Her desk takes up a third of the room, and it holds two laptops in addition to several sound boards and microphones. She’s putting together a rough demo of a song they started working on a couple days earlier. 

Reid, meanwhile, is sitting on the floor, surrounded by the disassembled parts of two amps, and he’s tinkering with something tiny and delicate-looking. When I ask what he’s doing, he rattles off a rapid-fire string of technical jargon, and I have to ask him to repeat himself. He looks to Garcia, who holds up her hands as if to say ‘don’t look at me,’ and Reid turns back to me to say, simply, “I’m making it sound better.” 

Reid has a tendency to speak at three times the speed of most humans, and frequently goes off on baffling tangents about everything from obscure composers to beekeeping to the origins of Halloween. It’s hard to follow, sometimes, but his bandmates seem used to it. 

When asked if anything has changed with the band’s recent success, he says thoughtfully, “I honestly haven’t noticed. None of it makes a difference to me, as long as I get to play music.” He pauses for a moment, then adds with a smile, “My high school reunion last month was very satisfying, though.” 

-

“... William Onyeabor, of course! Lately, also, a lot of Philip Glass and Gil Scott-Heron.” 

Spencer realizes he’s been staring up at the ceiling instead of talking to the reporter. He blinks and refocuses. Paul looks slightly shell-shocked. 

“So to answer your question, yes, we do spend a lot of time writing when we’re on the road,” Garcia interjects. Spencer winces. “We’ll probably have almost an album’s worth of demos by the time the tour is over. We could stay in here all day, the trick is getting Reid to remember to eat.” 

Spencer rolls his eyes. 

“So is that how you guys spend most of your spare time? Writing and playing music?” Paul asks. 

“Well, it’s not like we’re total shut-ins,” Garcia says. “We go out and have fun too. Admittedly, JJ and Emily’s idea of fun is starting bar fights, but -”

“Really?” Paul asks, looking at Spencer curiously. 

He scoffs. “No, she’s kidding.” 

Garcia, absorbed in whatever she’s doing on her laptop, continues absent-mindedly: “Well, it’s not that they start fights, but they both do Krav Maga and also attract a lot of idiots, so… idiots start bar fights and then the girls finish them. Let me tell you, you do not want to mess with JJ.” 

Paul looks at Spencer again. He shakes his head quickly. 

“I mean, can you really picture JJ in a bar fight?” he asks, forcing a laugh. 

Garcia’s still rambling. “Honestly though you really gotta watch out for this one right here. Reid’s our resident wild child.”  

He gives Paul a disarming, wide-eyed, ‘who, me?’ smile and shakes his head again. 

“Oh, man, one time in Boston he -” 

“Garcia,” Spencer interrupts. She looks up, glances at the tape recorder in Paul’s hand, and shuts her mouth hastily. Paul is starting to look suspicious.

“Ha! Just kidding,” Garcia says shrilly. “He’s a big ol’ dork, really.” 

Spencer nods earnestly, doing his best puppy eyes. “I spend most of my time reading, honestly. She’s just trying to make me seem cooler.” 

Paul’s expression clears slightly. “That… makes sense.” 

He doesn’t press for details, which is good. The legendary Boston Incident is not something Spencer needs in print. 

-

Derek Morgan learned guitar from his father, a Chicago blues artist, but says that when he began to write his own music, he immediately gravitated to classic rock. He cites Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin as influences, and it’s easy to see that onstage; Morgan has the rakish charm and suggestive swagger to rival the moves of any of his idols. If anyone out of the group were to fit the mold of the traditional rockstar, I’d expect it to be him. 

The truth is much more innocuous. Offstage, he’s a perfect gentleman, respectful and chivalrous to a fault. He doesn’t drink, and he somehow finds time to work out almost every day, even when they’re on the road. 

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m dead boring,” he says, with a wide grin. “Truth is, none of us really fit into any of the usual boxes. That’s why we get along so well.” 

He says Garcia is his best friend in the group, and I can tell he’s fiercely protective of the band, especially the women. When asked if he’s usually the one looking out for the girls, he laughs. 

“Honestly, they’re not the ones I worry about,” he says. “But sure. We all look out for each other, really.”   

-

The bartender shows up, finally, and slides two glasses over to JJ. She knocks back the shot first. If this dumb hipster keeps slurring at her about how much artistry there is in dubstep, she’s going to need another one very soon. 

“People just don’t get it,” he says, sidling a little closer. JJ steps back. 

“Ben - Ken?” she asks, and the guy pauses, affronted. “I’m sure that’s very interesting, but you should probably know that I’m gay.” 

He raises his eyebrows. “Like, gay gay?” 

“Gayer by the second,” JJ says coolly. 

“How do you know, though?” Ken says, which is a level of douchebag she didn’t actually expect from him. He must be even drunker than he looks. 

JJ gives him a polite smile. “I’m going to go find my friends now.”

“Hey, hang on.” 

He grabs her arm as she turns away. Behind his back she can see Derek heading in their direction. She gives him a little “stand down” wave. 

“Bad idea,” she warns Ken. 

“Oh yeah? What -” 

“Back off,” Emily snaps, appearing at her side. 

Ken looks at them mutinously, and as they turn away, he mutters something that sounds like (but probably isn’t) “Duckin’ bikes.” 

“Say it to my face,” JJ tells him sweetly. “Let’s see how that goes for you.” 

“What are you gonna do about it?” he asks belligerently. 

Emily grabs one of his wrists and twists hard, while JJ gets the other. Ken yelps. 

“Everything okay here?” Derek says from behind him. He’s doing what can only be described as looming in a distinctly menacing way. “I think it’s time for you to head home, buddy.” 

“Shoo,” Emily adds. “Go on. Skedaddle.” 

Ken skedaddles. JJ can’t help but laugh.

“We had it under control,” Emily reassures Derek. 

He frowns. “You sure?”

“Just another one who thought he could cure me with his magic dick,” JJ says with a shrug. “More shots?” 

“No way, uh-uh,” Derek interrupts sternly. “Emily. Come on. You remember what happened last time you tried to outdrink JJ?” 

“It was so much fun until then, though,” JJ chirps. He knows them too well. She exchanges a look with Emily. 

“Hey, have you seen Reid lately?” Emily asks innocently, and while Derek is scanning the crowd and scowling, JJ gestures to the bartender. 

-

Only time will tell whether Business As Usual will continue to grow in popularity, but Rossi seems confident that they’re here to stay. To hear him tell it, he’s met everyone from the Stones to the Strokes (“And I have the scars to prove it!”) and he has an eye for which bands are in it for the long haul. 

He says, “Long-term success isn’t about who’s the most talented musicians or the best performers, although these guys are both. So many bands crash and burn early.” 

“Why is that? What makes you so sure these guys will be different?”

“You hear people blame it on the lifestyle, the drugs, the parties, but truth is, those don’t matter all that much as long as the band is taking care of each other.” He smiles proudly. “These guys, they’ll always have each others’ backs. They’re a team.” 

-

“You about ready to head back to the hotel?” Hotch asks quietly, lining up his shot. “This isn’t going to last much longer.” Sure enough, he sinks the ball neatly and straightens up, giving the table a calculating look. 

“Let me round ‘em up,” Derek says. “Meet you outside in five.” 

“When has it ever taken five minutes to round up this bunch?” Hotch asks wryly. “You have fifteen and then I’m leaving. Shout if you need help.” 

He spots Penelope first. She’s in the middle of the dancefloor, dancing with a guy who might as well have cartoon hearts popping out of his eyes. She’s not drunk to the point where she’s doing her signature Shitfaced Shimmy, so she won’t be too hard to wrangle. He catches her eye and taps his wrist, then points to the door, and she shoots him a thumbs up. 

Piece of cake. 

He looks around for Reid next, hoping against hope that the kid hasn’t attracted any crazy tonight. He’s not sure why or how, but Reid has proven more prone to disaster than the rest of the crew combined. If you asked Derek who in the band was most likely to get slapped, get kidnapped, get stabbed (accidentally), lose his shoes on the way back from the bathroom, get fully lost on the way to the bathroom, get hit on by a prostitute, puncture his own foot with a dart, snort something sketchy and end up wired til dawn, or befriend a mob boss, the answer would be Spencer Reid, every damn time. 

He knows this because Reid’s already done most of those things. 

Emily pops up at his side. Her level of sobriety is surprising until Derek notices the smug smile on her face and the phone number Sharpied on her arm. He gives her a fist-bump. 

“Meet you outside,” she says cheerfully. 

This might be even easier than he thought. 

“Hey, Emily,” he calls, and she turns back to look at him. “Have you seen Reid or JJ?” 

“JJ found me a while ago to borrow my swiss army knife,” she says thoughtfully, and then her eyes widen in realization. “She never came back and I haven’t seen Reid. Shit.” 

“Alright, you check outside, look in the alley, I’ll do a sweep around here. If Garcia’s not already outside, call Hotch.” Emily nods curtly and turns toward the door. 

Derek elbows his way around the fringes of the dance floor, scanning the crowd for JJ’s blonde hair, but no luck. He checks a couple of the out-of-the-way nooks and crannies where Reid likes to curl up to pass out, even glances under a couple tables, but there’s no sign of him. He heads for the door that leads to the hallway with the bathrooms. 

He almost runs right into JJ and Reid, who are arm-in-arm as they burst through the door. 

“Oh good,” he says, mildly surprised to see them both upright. Then Reid looks up with big, innocent eyes, sniffing and twitching his nose like a goddamn rabbit, and JJ flaps her hand urgently toward the front of the bar, stepping around Derek without breaking stride.   

“We should go,” she says quickly. “Now.” 

“What did you do?” he groans, shepherding them through the crowd. He can see them exchange a glance. JJ wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve, Emily’s multi-tool still clutched in her fist. 

“We may have rearranged some things,” Spencer mutters. 

“There might be some physics magic brewing,” JJ adds. 

Just as Derek half-shoves them through the front door, he hears a shout from the direction of the bathrooms.

Amazingly, everyone is standing on the sidewalk waiting for them. 

“Double time,” Derek says hurriedly, and they all fall into step. 

“Eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds,” Hotch says, looking at his watch. He holds a hand out to Penelope. “Pay up.” 

“Thing One and Thing Two over there were just stirring up some chaos,” Morgan explains. 

“Do I want to know?” Penelope asks, fishing a twenty out of her purse. “Is this a plausible deniability situation?”  

Emily shakes her head. “I swear, Reid, one of these days I’m going to put a leash on you, and not in a fun sexy way.” 

JJ and Reid are already half a block ahead of the rest of them, arms linked, heads together like they’re plotting again. JJ lets out one of her weird little coke-giggles and Derek can hear Reid chattering about… the Wizard of Oz, for some reason? Whatever. 

Just another day for this weird-ass bunch he calls family. 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Riot Fest 2021: 9/16-9/19, Douglass Park

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Much like Pitchfork Music Festival earlier this month, this past weekend’s Riot Fest felt relatively normal. Arriving at Douglas Park every day, you were greeted by the usual deluge of attendees in Misfits t-shirts and dyed hair, the sound of faint screams and breakneck guitars and drums emanating from nearby stages. The abnormal aspects of the fest, at least as compared to previous incarnations, we’re already used to by now from 2021 shows: To get in, you had to show proof of vaccination and/or a negative test no older than 48 hours, which means that unvaxxed 4-day attendees had to get multiple tests. Props to the always awesome staff at Riot Fest for actually checking the cards against the names on government-issued IDs.

For a festival that dealt with a plethora of last-minute changes due to bands dropping out because of COVID-19 caution (Nine Inch Nails, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr.) or other reasons (Faith No More/Mr. Bungle because of concerns around Mike Patton’s well-being), there were very few bumps in the road. Whether Riot Fest had bands like Slipknot, Anthrax, or Rise Against in their back pocket as replacements or not, it very much felt like who we saw Thursday-Sunday was always supposed to be the lineup, even when laying your eyes on countless “Death to the Pixies” shirts. Sure, one of the fest’s main gimmicks--peeling back the label on Goose Island’s Riot Fest Sucks Pale Ale to reveal the schedule--was out of date with inaccurate set times and bands, and it still would have been so had Faith No More and Mr. Bungle stayed, since Fucked Up had to drop out last minute due to border issues. But the festival, as always, rolled with the punches.

The sets themselves offered the circle pit and crowdsurfing-inducing punk and metal you’re used to, with a few genre outliers. For so many bands of all styles, Riot Fest represented their first live show in years, and a few acts knew the exact number of days since their last show. For every single set, the catharsis in the crowd and on stage was palpable, not exactly anger, or elation, but pure release.

Here were our favorite sets of the festival, in chronological order.

WDRL

Last October, WDRL (which, amazingly, stands for We Don’t Ride Llamas) announced themselves with a Tweet: “y’all been looking for an alt black band,, well here you go”. A band of Gen Z siblings, Chase (lead guitar), Max (lead vocals), Blake (drums), and Kit Mitchell (bass guitar), WDRL is aware, much like Meet Me @ The Altar (who, despite my hyping, I couldn’t make it in time to see) that they’re one of too few bands of POCs in the Riot Fest-adjacent scene. Their set, one of the very first of the weekend during Thursday’s pre-party, showed them leading by example, the type of band to inspire potentially discouraged Black and brown folks to start punk bands. Max is a terrific vocalist, able to scream over post-punk, scat over funk, and coo over slow, soulful R&B swayers with the same ease. The rest of the band was equally versatile, able to pivot on a dime from scuzzy rock to hip hop to twinkling dream pop. Bonus points for covering Splendora’s “You’re Standing On My Neck”, aka the Daria theme song.

Joyce Manor

Joyce Manor’s self-titled debut is classic. The best part of it as an album play-through at a festival? It’s so short that you can hear it and you’ll still have half a set for other favorites. So while the bouncy “Orange Julius”", “Ashtray Petting Zoo”, and ultimate singalong “Constant Headache” were set highlights, the Torrance, CA band was able to burn through lots from Never Hungover Again, Cody, Million Dollars to Kill Me, and their rarities collection Songs From Northern Torrance. Apart from not playing anything from Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired (seriously, am I the only one who loves that record?), Joyce Manor were stellar, from the undeniable hooks of “Heart Tattoo” to the churning power chords of “Catalina Fight Song”. After playing “Christmas Card”, Johnson and company gave one final nod to the original fest cancellation, My Chemical Romance, who were slated to headline 2020, then 2021, and now 2022. If you ever wondered what it would sound like hearing a concise punk band like Joyce Manor take on the bombast of “Helena”, you found out. Hey, it was actually pretty good!

Patti Smith

Behold: a full Patti Smith set! After being shafted by the weather last time around, a sunglasses-laden Smith decided not to fuck around, leading with the inspiring “People Have The Power”, her voice as powerful as I’ve ever heard it. Maybe it was the influence of Riot Fest, but she dropped as many f-bombs as Corey Taylor did during Slipknot’s Sunday night headlining set. After reluctantly signing an adoring crowd member’s copy of Horses, she quipped, “I feel bad for you have to cart that fucking thing around.” It wasn’t just the filthy banter: This was Smith at her most enraptured and incendiary, belting during “Because The Night” and spitting during a “Land/Gloria” medley, reciting stream-of-consciousness hallucinogenic lyrics about the power of escape in the greatest display of stamina the festival had to offer.

Circa Survive

“It feels good to dance,” declared Circa Survive lead singer Anthony Green. The heart and soul of the Philadelphia rock band, who cover ground from prog rock to post-hardcore and emo, Green was in full form during the band’s early Friday set, his falsetto carrying the rolling “The Difference Between Medicine and Poising Is in the Dose” and the chugging “Rites of Investiture”. While the band, too, can throw down, they’re equally interesting when softer and more melodic, Brendan Ekstrom‘s twinkling guitars lifting “Child of the Desert” and “Suitcase”. Ending with the one-two punch of debut Juturna’s introspective “Act Appalled” and Blue Sky Noise’s skyward “Get Out”, Green announced the band would have a new record coming soon, one you hope will cover the sonic and thematic ground of even just those two tracks.

Thrice

Thrice played their first show since February 2020 the same day they’d release their 11th studio album, Horizons/East (Epitaph). To a crowd of fans that came to hear their favorite songs, though, the Irvine, California band knew better than to play a lot of the new record, instead favoring tracks like The Artist in the Ambulance’s spritely title cut and Vheissu standout “The Earth Will Shake”. Yeah, they led with a Horizons/East song making its live debut, the dreamy, almost Deftones-esque “Scavengers”, and later in the set they’d reveal the impassioned “Summer Set Fire to the Rain”. But the set more prominently served to emphasize lead vocalist Dustin Kensrue’s gruff delivery, on “All the World Is Mad” and “in Exile”, the rhythm section’s propulsive playing buoying his fervency. And how about Teppei Teranishi’s finger tapping on “Black Honey”?!? Thrice often favor the slow build-up, but they offered plenty of individually awesome moments.

Smashing Pumpkins

William Patrick Corgan entered the stage to dramatic strings, dressed in a robe, with white face paint except for red hearts under his eyes. He looked like a ghost. That’s pretty much where the semi-serious theatricality ended. The Smashing Pumpkins’ first Chicago festival headlining set in recent memory was the rawest they’ve sounded in a while, counting when they played an original lineup-only set at the United Center a few years back. It was also the most fun I’ve ever seen Corgan have on stage. Though they certainly selected and debuted from their latest electropop turn Cyr, Corgan, guitarist James Iha, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, guitarist Jeff Schroeder, and company more notably dug deep into the vault, playing Gish’s “Crush” for the first time since 2008, Adore’s “Shame” for the first time since 2010, and Siamese Dream barnburner “Quiet” for the first time since 1994 (!). Best, every leftfield disco jam like set opener “The Colour Of Love”, “Cyr”, and “Ramona” was quickly followed by something heavy and/or recognizable, Chamberlin’s limber drum solos elevating even latter-day material like “Solara”. At one point, Corgan, a self-described “arty fuck,” admitted that years ago he would have opted for more experimental material, but he knew the crowd wanted to hear classics, the band then delving into a gorgeous acoustic version of “Tonight, Tonight”. And while Kate Bush coverer Meg Myers came out to sing Lost Highway soundtrack industrial ditty “Eye”, it was none other than legendary local shredder Michael Angelo Batio who stole the show, joining for the set closer, a pummeling version of Zeitgeist highlight “United States”. Leaning into the cheese looks good on you, Billy.

The Bronx

Credit to L.A. punk rock band The Bronx, playing early on a decidedly cooler Saturday early afternoon, for making me put in my earplugs outside of the photo pit. Dedicating “Shitty Future” to Fucked Up (who, as we mentioned, had to drop out), the entire band channeled Damian Abraham’s energy on piercing versions of “Heart Attack American” as well as “Superbloom” and “Curb Feelers” from their latest album Bronx VI (Cooking Vinyl). Joby J. Ford and Ken Horne’s guitars stood out, providing choppy rhythms on “Knifeman” and swirling solos on “Six Days A Week”.

Big Freedia

The New Orleans bounce artist has Big Diva Energy, for the most part. After her DJ pumped up the crowd to contemporary Southern rap staple “Ayy Ladies” by Travis Porter, Big Freedia walked out and showed that “BDE”, firing through singles like “Platinum” and “N.O. Bounce” as her on-stage dancers’ moves ranged from delicate to earth-shaking. At this point, Freedia can pretty much do whatever she wants, effortlessly segueing between a cover of Drake’s “Nice For What” to “Strut”, her single with electropop DJ Elohim, to a cover of Beyone’s “Formation”. Of course, the set highlight was when she had volunteers from the crowd come up and shake and twerk--two at a time to keep it COVID-safe--all while egging them on to go harder. Towards the end of the set, after performing the milquetoast “Goin’ Looney” from the even-worse-than-expected Space Jam: A New Legacy soundtrack, she pulled out the beloved “Gin in my System”. “I got that gin in my system,” she sang, the crowd singing back, “Somebody gonna be my victim,” a refrain that compositionally not only leaves plenty of room for the thundering bass but is thematically a statement of total power--over sexism, racism, the patriarchy--even in the face of control-altering substances.

Les Savy Fav

During Les Savy Fav’s set, lead singer Tim Harrington at various points--*big breath*--went into the crowd, deepthroated an audience member’s mohawk spike, found a discarded manikin head with a wig on it, revealed the words “deep” and “dish” painted on his thighs and a drawing of a Red Hot on his back, rode a crowd member like a horse, made a headband out of pink tape, donned ski goggles, surfed on top of a door carried by the crowd, squeezed his belly while the camera was on it to make it look like his belly button was singing, and referred to himself as a “slippery eel.” Indeed, the legend of Les Savy Fav’s live show starts and ends with Harrington’s ridiculous antics, as he’s all but out of breath when actually singing dance-punk classics like “Hold On To Your Genre”, “The Sweat Descends”, and “Rome (Written Upside Down)”. We haven’t heard much in terms of new music from Les Savy Fav in over 10 years--their most recent album was 2010′s Root For Ruin--but I could see them and the extremely Aughts genre in general become staples of Riot Fest as albums like Inches, The Rapture’s Echoes, and !!!’s Louden Up Now reach the 20-year mark. Dynamic vocalists, tight bands, and killer grooves: What’s not to love?

State Champs

This set likely wins the award for “most immediate crowd surfers,” which I guess is to be expected when you begin your set with a classic track 1--album 1 combination. “Elevated” is the State Champs number that will cause passers-by to stop and watch a couple songs, the type of song that can pretty much only open or close a set. And because they opened with it, the crowd immediately ramped up the energy. It’s been three years since the last State Champs full-length, Living Proof, so they were in prime position to play some new songs. As such, they performed their bubblegummy “Outta My Head” and “Just Sound” and faithfully covered Fall Out Boy’s “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago” (releasing a studio version earlier this week). But the tracks from The Finer Things and Around the World and Back were, as usual, the highlights, like “All You Are Is History”, “Remedy”, “Slow Burn”, and set closer “Secrets”. At the end of the day, it didn’t entirely matter: The crowd knew every word of every song.

Bayside

Putting State Champs and Bayside back-to-back on the same stage made an easy decision for the many pop-punk bands at Riot Fest. Bayside’s been at it for twice as long, so the breadth of their setlist across their discography is more variable. Moreover, they’ve thrice revisited their discography with acoustic albums of old songs, so even their staples are subject to change. They provided solid versions of Killing Time standouts “Already Gone” and “Sick, Sick, Sick”, Cult’s “Pigsty”, and older songs like their self-titled’s “Montauk” and Sirens and Condolences’ “Masterpiece”. For “Don’t Call Me Peanut”, though, they brought out--*gasp*--an acoustic guitar! It was a rare moment not just for one of the most popular pop punk sets but the festival in general, a breather before Vacancy shout-along “Mary”.

Rancid

“Rancid has always been anti-fascist and anti-racist,” said Tim Armstrong before the band played “Hooligans”. It was nice to hear an explicit declaration of solidarity from the street punks, reminding the crowd what really matters and why we come together to scream and mosh. The band expectedly favored ...And Out Come The Wolves, playing almost half of it, and they perfectly balanced their harder edges with more celebratory ska songs like “Where I’m Going” from their most recent album Trouble Maker (Hellcat/Epitaph). My two favorite moments? The breezy, keyboard-laden “Fall Back Down” from their supremely underrated 2001 album Indestructable, and when they asked the crowd whether they wanted the set to end with “Time Bomb” or “Ruby Soho”. “We have 4 minutes left, and it’s disrespectful to play over your set time,” said Armstrong. It’s easy to see why Rancid continues to make an impression--instrumental and moral--on touring bands new and old.

Run the Jewels

The brilliant hip hop duo are masters of balancing social consciousness with the desire to fuck shit up for fun. Live, the former tends to come in between-song banter, the latter with their actual charismatic, tit-for-tat performances of the songs. However, Run the Jewels also are probably the clearest live performers in hip hop today, Killer Mike and El-P’s words, hypersexual and woke alike, ringing in the ears of audience members who don’t even know the songs. (Looking around, I could see people smiling and laughing at every dick joke, nodding at each righteous proclamation.) Some of the best songs on their most recent album RTJ4 (Jewel Runners/BMG) are perfect for these multitudes. Hearing both RTJ MCs and the backing track of Pharrell Williams and Zack de la Rocha chanting “Look at all these slave masters posin’ on yo’ dollar” on “JU$T” as the rowdy crowd bounced up and down was the ultimate festival moment. For those who had never seen RTJ, it was clear from the get-go, as Killer Mike and EL-P traded bars on “yankee and the brave (ep. 4)” that they’re a unique hip hop act. For the rest of us, it was clear that Run the Jewels keep getting better.

The Gories

It felt a little weird that legendary Detroit trio The Gories were given the first set of the final day--I’d have thought they’d have more draw than that. No matter what, they provided one of the more satisfying and stylistically varied sets of the festival, showcasing their trademark balance of garage punk and blues. Mick Collins and Dan Kroha’s guitar and vocal harmonies were the perfect jangly balance to Peggy O’Neill’s meat and potatoes drumming on “Sister Ann” and “Charm Bag”, while folks less familiar with The Gories were treated to their fantastic covers of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider” and The Keggs’ “To Find Out”. Smells like time for the first Gories album in 20 years!

FACS

I thought it would be ill-fitting to watch a band like FACS in the hot sun, early in the day. Their monochrome brand of post-punk seems better suited for a dimly lit club. But the hypnotic nature of Brian Case’s swirling guitar and Alianna Kalaba’s slinky bass was oddly perfect in a sweltering, faint-inducing heat. Just when you thought you might fade, squalls of feedback and Noah Leger’s odd time signatures picked you back up. Songs from their new album Present Tense (Trouble In Mind) such as “Strawberry Cough” and “XOUT” were emblematic of this push-pull. And everything from the band’s red, white, and black color palate to their lack of stage banter suggested a cool minimalism that was rare at a festival that tends to book more outwardly emotional bands.

Alex G

On one hand, Alex G’s unique combination of twangy alt country and earnest indie rock makes him an outlier at Riot Fest, or at the very least a mostly Pitchfork/occasional Riot Fest type of booking. On the other hand, like a lot of bands at the festival, he has a rabid fanbase, one that knows his back catalog hits, like “Kute”, “Kicker”, and “Bug”, as much as if not more than hyped Rocket and House of Sugar singles, like “Bobby” and “Gretel”. Backed by a band that knows when to be loose and when to tighten up--and the instrumental chops to do so--Alex G was better than he was a Pitchfork three years ago. He still sings through his teeth, making it especially hard to hear him on louder tunes such as “Brick”. But when the honesty of his vocals combines with the dreamy guitars of “Southern Sky” and circular melodies of “Near”, it’s pure bliss. 

HEALTH

The formula for the LA industrial noise band has pretty much always been Jake Duzsik’s soft vocals contrasting John Famiglietti’s screeching bass and pedals and BJ Miller’s mammoth drums. Both in 2018 and Sunday at Riot Fest, the heat affected Famiglietti’s pedals, which were nonetheless obscured by tarp. Or so HEALTH claimed: You wouldn’t know the difference given how much their sound envelops your whole body during one of their live sets. Since their previous appearance at the festival, the prolific band has released two new records on Loma Vista, Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear and collaboration record Disco4: Part 1. Songs from those records occupied half of their excellent set, including battering opener “GOD BOTHERER”, “BODY/PRISON”, and “THE MESSAGE”. It was so wonderfully loud it drowned out K.Flay’s sound check drummer, thank the lord.

Thursday

Last time Thursday played Riot Fest, Geoff Rickly was battling heroin addiction, something he talked about during the band’s triumphant late afternoon set on Sunday. He mentioned the kindness of the late, great Riley Gale of Power Trip in extending a helping hand when he was down and extended his love to anybody in the crowd or even the world at large going through something similar. To say that this set was life-affirming would be an understatement; after 636 days of no shows, Rickly was at his most passionate. He introduced “Signals Over The Air” as a song the band “wrote about men beating up on women in the pit,” that a record exec at the time told them that it wouldn’t age well because he thought--no kidding--sexism would eventually end. Rickly’s voice, suffering from sound issues last time around, simply soared during Full Collapse’s “Cross Out The Eyes”, No Devolucion’s “Fast to the End”, and two inspired covers: Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” and Texas Is The Reason’s “If It's Here When We Get Back It's Ours”. The latter the band played because TITR guitarist Norman Brannon’s actually on tour with them, though Rickly emphasized the influence the NYC post-hardcore greats had on Thursday when they first started. Never forgetting where they’ve come from, with self-deprecating humor and radical empathy, Thursday are once again a force.

Devo

Much like the B-52′s in 2019, Devo was the set this year of a 70′s/80′s absurd punk band with some radio hits that everybody knows but with a swath of die-hard fans, too. It’s safe to say both groups were satisfied. You walked around the fest all day wondering whether the folks wearing Devo hats were actual fans or doing it for the novelty. By the time the band actually took the stage after a career-spanning video of their many phases, it didn’t really matter, because it was clear the band still had it, Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale’s vocals booming throughout a massive crowd. They ripped through “Peek-a-Boo”, “Going Under”, “That’s Good”, “Girl U Want”, and “Whip It”, which caused the fans waiting for Slipknot (and presumably some Devo heads) to form a circle pit. And that was all before the first costume change. Mark passed out hats to the crowd, fully embracing converts who might have only known “Whip It”. The feverish chants of “Uncontrollable Urge” and synth freakouts of “Jocko Homo” whipped everyone into a frenzy. And the band performed the “Freedom Of Choice” theme song for the first time since the early 80′s! I had seen Devo before, opening for Arcade Fire and Dan Deacon at the United Center, but the atmosphere at Riot Fest was more appropriately ludicrous.

Flaming Lips

“The Flaming Lips are the most COVID-safe band in the world,” went the ongoing joke, as throughout the pandemic they’d give audience members bubbles for their bubbles to be able to play shows. The normally goofy and interactive band scaled back for Riot Fest. Before launching into their traditional opener “Race For The Prize”, Wayne Coyne explained that while the band is normally proud of where they come from--Oklahoma City--they’re saddened by the local government’s ignorant pandemic response and wouldn’t risk launching balloons or walking into the crowd because they might be virus spreaders coming from such an under-vaccinated area. To his and the band’s credit, they wore masks during the performance, even when singing; Coyne removed his only when outside of his bubble that had to be deflated and inflated many times and that sometimes muffled his singing voice even more than a mask. Ever the innovative band, they still put on a stellar show. Coyne autotuned his voice on “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1″, making it another instrument filling the song’s glorious pop melodies. Less heavy on props, the band favored a glitchy, psychedelic setlist that alternated between beauty (”Flowers Of Neptune 6″, “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate”, “All We Have Is Now”) and two-drummed cacophony (“Silver Trembling Hands”, “The W.A.N.D.”). They’ll give a proper Lips show soon enough, but in the meantime, it was nice to see them not run through the motions.

Slipknot

Apart from maybe moments of Slayer, I’ve never witnessed a headliner at Riot Fest as heavy as Slipknot was. Even the minor ethereal elements present on their most recent and very good album We Are Not Your Kind, like the chorus of voices during “Unsainted”, were all but abandoned live in favor of straight up brutality. Sure, there were moments of theatricality--Corey Taylor’s menacing laugh on “Disasterpiece” and pyrotechnics in sequence with the instrumentation on “Before I Forget” and “All Out Life”--but for the most part, Slipknot was the ultimate exorcism. Taylor’s new mask, with unnaturally circular eyes, seemed like it came from a particularly uncomfortable skit from I Think You Should Leave. They bashed a baseball bat to a barrel during the pre-encore performance of “Duality”. And the songs played from tape, like the gasping-for-breath “(515)”, were designed to contrast Slipknot’s alien appearance with qualities that were uncannily human. For a band whose performances and instrumental dexterity are otherworldly--who else can pull off tempo changes over a hissing, Aphex Twin-like shuffling electronic beat on “Eyeless”--the pure seething emotion on songs like “Psychosocial” and “Wait and Bleed” shone through. Like Smashing Pumpkins, and like so many other successful Riot Fest headliners, Slipknot abandoned drama for pure, unadulterated dirt.

[worstbillyjoel]

Billy Joel is a singular voice of the American Working class.

So, I want to talk about something. When you search Google for lists of the top songs about the working class (minus the lists only about country songs), you’ll find a lot to choose from. Pretty much every list has “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton, which is a good, even great, song. Troublingly few lists have “Working at the Car Wash Blues” by Jim Croce, which is a shame, but not what I want to talk about. You know who shows up on every damn list? Sometimes with multiple songs? Bruce Fucking Springsteen. You know who almost NEVER shows up on the list? One of America’s GREATEST LIVING SINGER/SONGWRITERS, BILLY JOEL. And when Billy Joel is included it’s always for “Allentown” which, sure,  is a good, even great, song. But NEVER “Downeaster Alexa” which could basically be a one-to-one comparison to the struggles being face today by the Taxi Cab industry. (the Downeaster boat is a perfect metaphor for a Taxi medallion.) 

It’s never “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” which touches on the price of chasing the American Dream in a capitalistic society. Even “Piano Man” which isn’t about a singular vocation, per se, but does feature a cast of characters — all of whom find little joy in their lot in life. They resent being stuck in jobs that aren’t fulfilling but are nevertheless unable to escape. But Springsteen tucked a greasy rag in his pocket and had a picture taken in front of a big American Flag, so he’s the singular voice of the working man in pop music. Bull. SHIT. Billy Joel is getting jobbed out here! And that’s not even mentioning Billy’s songs like “Goodnight Saigon” and “Leningrad” which deal with war in a way beyond being a chest-thumping, testosterone-driven anthem centering on the fetishization of military service members. And all of those are just songs from his "Essentials" best-of album, not even deep cuts! Billy Joel, man.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

The Last Word: Shirley Manson on Fighting the Patriarchy and How Patti Smith Inspires Her

The Garbage singer also talks racial justice, living for now, and why legacy is an inherently masculine concern

Almost as soon as Garbage’s self-titled debut blew up overnight in 1995, their singer, Shirley Manson, became aware of the patriarchy running the music industry. Even though she was the group’s focal point — belting dusky electro-rock songs about making sense of depression (“Only Happy When It Rains”) and taking pride in nonconformity (“Queer”) — she was still a woman fronting a band of men, one of whom, Butch Vig, had produced Nirvana’s Nevermind. Almost immediately, she felt as though her role in the group was being devalued — not by the guys she worked with, but externally.

“There was a lot of stuff written about me in the music press, and that’s when I started to realize how I’m being diminished, how, in some cases, I’m being completely eradicated from the narrative because I’m female and not a man,” she says now. “I was talked over by lawyers; I was ignored by managers. The list goes on. It’s boring and tedious; there’s no point in me moaning about it now, but certainly, that was my awakening.”

That revelation emboldened her to speak out about equality and she quickly became a feminist icon, using her platform to bring attention to human rights, mental health, and the AIDS crisis. All the while, she wrote inclusive hit songs with Garbage about androgyny and reproductive rights (“Sex Is Not the Enemy”). On Garbage’s great new album, No Gods No Masters, she grapples with racial injustice, climate change, the patriarchy, and her own self-worth. But as weighty as the subject matter is, she approaches each song in her own uniquely uplifting way.

“I don’t think really the record is serious, per se,” the singer, 54, says, on an early May phone call. “I think it’s an indignant record. I think in indignance you can still carry humor with you, as well as softness, kindness, and love in your heart. I just felt it would be inauthentic to say anything other than what I was saying in my daily life across the dinner table from my friends and my family. I think as you get older as an artist, the challenge is, ‘How I can be my most authentic self?’ because that’s the most unique story I can tell. In an industry that’s just absolutely jam-packed to the rafters with ideas, opinions, melodies, and so on, you can’t afford to be anything other than your most authentic self. It won’t last.”

Authenticity and being true to herself are the qualities that have made Manson who she is. And those traits seem to guide her answers to Rolling Stone’s questions about philosophy, life lessons, and creature comforts for our Last Word interview.

What are the most important rules that you live by? I’m 54, which is ancient for the contemporary music industry. At this point, I feel like if it’s not fun, then I’m uninterested entirely. If somebody’s treating me poorly, I have to walk away. Life is so fricking short, and I’m three quarters of the way through mine already; I just want to have a good life, full of joy.

Who are your heroes and why? Patti Smith is a huge hero for me for a lot of different reasons. Most importantly, it’s because she’s a woman who has navigated her creative life so beautifully and so artfully, with such integrity and authenticity, and she has proven to me that a woman, an artist, does not have to subscribe to the rules of the contemporary music industry.

It’s very rare for other women to see examples of women actually working still in their seventies. That, to me, is really thrilling and really inspiring, and it fills me with hope. At times when you come up against the ageism, sexism, and misogyny that exists in our culture, I always try and picture Patti in my mind’s eye, and it always brings me back to center, like, “OK, adhere to your own rules. Design your own life. Be your own architect. You can continue to be an artist the rest of your life.” And to me, that’s life. That is a fully lived life.

You’re also a role model yourself. How do you handle that responsibility? I’m a bit speechless if the truth be told. I realize that I’ve now enjoyed a long career in music, and by default, I think people are inspired by that. I think whenever you see an artist, no matter who they are, when someone can endure, I think that’s exciting to everybody else, because it’s a message that says, “You too can get up when you think you’re done. You too can brush yourself off and try again.” By just continuing, you can help other people continue and fulfill themselves in ways that they thought they wouldn’t be able to.

I try to be a decent person. I make mistakes. I fuck people off. I say stupid shit. I’m not all-knowing; I am ignorant in so many ways. But I do try my best. I think that’s really all I can ask of myself.

How others perceive me is absolutely out of my control. There’s always going to be people who think I’m an arsehole, and that’s just part and parcel of being in the public eye. People are just going to hate on you, so I try not to take too much of it in; I don’t let it absorb me too much. I have gotten to that point in my life when I’m able to just go, “You know what? Fuck it. You can’t win them all.”

You once said that the idea of legacy was a masculine construct that you don’t believe in. Do you still feel that way? Yeah. I still very much believe in that. I know a lot of male artists who bang on about their legacy and their importance. Not to knock that if that’s what’s important to you but for me personally, what do I care? I’m going to be dead and gone and totally unconscious of any so-called legacy that I might leave behind. I want fun now. I want to have a good life now. I want to eat good food now and have great sex. It’s absolutely meaningless to me what happens after I’m gone. I want to use my time wisely, and that’s all that I really am concerned with, to be honest.

What is it about legacy that’s inherently masculine? This is armchair psychology, so please forgive me, but I’m sure it has something to do with how women have this uterus that can bear children. I think that’s profound. One of the few gifts that men have not been given is that ability to create with your body, and your blood, and your heat and all these nutrients from your body. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why you don’t hear as many women banging on about the great legacy they’re going to leave behind. I think for women it’s their kids.

You’re Scottish. What is the most Scottish thing about you these days? I’ve got a lot of grit, and it’s served me really well in my career. I think that is a really Scottish trait. The Scottish people are tough, and they also have a good sense of humor. So, grit with humor. I should say “gritted with humor,” in the same way we grit roads.

As you were saying “grit,” it occurred to me that a lot of your songs are about survival and moving forward, going back to “Stupid Girl” or “Only Happy When It Rains.” They’re about perseverance. [Pauses] I think it’s funny you should say that because I’m just sort of like, “Wow, he might be right.” I do think that a huge theme for me is, “How do you overcome? How do we all overcome?” Things can be great for a while; things will not be great forever. And to every single life, these challenges appear. We all have to reconfigure ourselves in order to try to hurl ourselves over obstacles in order to have the kind of life we hope for. So I do think you’ve shocked me a little by discovering a theme for me. Yay, I feel thrilled. I have a theme. It’s exciting.

“Waiting for God” is one of my favorite songs on the album because of the way you address racial justice. How can we, as a society, fight white indifference? You know, that’s a question right there. It’s interesting that you use the words “white indifference,” because one of the things that shocked me so greatly is the ambivalence and the apathy of white people all over the world who are seeing what we’re seeing on our TVs and on the internet, and yet not having the moral courage to speak up. I think the most important thing we can do is pull back the carpet to see the mess on the floor in order for us to actually start cleaning it up.

If we could curtail some of the brutality of police against black people, that would be a good start. I think it’s going to be decades and decades and decades before we can start to really equalize our societies so that everyone is enjoying the spoils of Western wealth over in the developing world. It’s necessary that we try and help these countries that aren’t as powerful or as wealthy. It’s good for the whole world if we start to improve situations for everyone. Nobody will lose anything, and everyone has everything to gain.

But if I had the answers to how we go about fixing it, I would be in politics and not in music. I just know what I believe to be right, and I’m doing my best to use my voice to try and encourage my friends, my little ecosystem, to start with paying attention and supporting black businesses and elevating black voices and black talent.

What’s your favorite book? I have so many. The one that springs to mind would be American Pastoral by Philip Roth. I loved All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I loved The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje. I loved Winnie the Pooh and Wuthering Heights. I’ve got so many that have really stuck with me that are classics.

My most favorite recent book that I’ve just finished reading is Dancer by Colum McCann about [Russian ballet dancer Rudolf] Nureyev. I was just absolutely mesmerized by it. It was just such a fantastic read, and he’s such a miraculous writer. He brought out Apeirogon last year about the struggle in between Palestine and Israel. He talks about this complicated mess with such clarity, kindness, and generosity. I couldn’t believe Apeirogon didn’t get more fuss made of it last year. Somehow it just seemed to get buried in the morass of other books, and of course the suffering that Covid had brought upon the earth.

What advice do you wish you could give your younger self? “Take up your space.” When I was growing up, to be a girl was to be told to minimize the space you took up: “Close your legs. Don’t be loud. Smile. Be cute. Be attractive. Be pleasing.” I inherently balked against that as a kid. I was a rebellious kid, and I wasn’t going to sit in the corner and be quiet. I’ve never been like that. However, looking back, I still notice some of the patterns of my own compliance. It’s not that I hate myself for it, but I just wish I could turn around and say to my young self, “Take your seat. If there’s not a seat there, drag a seat up to the table and sit down.”

I’m still really aware of the sexism and misogyny that I have had to battle throughout my career. I’m not crying, “Woe is me,” because I’ve obviously flourished in my career, and it obviously didn’t hold me back enough to hamper me in any way. But I feel for all the women who were unlike me, who didn’t have my forcefulness of personality, or my education, or my ability to articulate myself. I want that for all people, though; I want all people to stop trying to please, and accept that some people will like that, and some people won’t, and that’s OK. It’s OK that some people just don’t dig you.

On the topic of gender, I got a kick out of your song “Godhead,” where you ask if people would treat you differently “if I had a dick.” I’m really proud of that song, because I think it’s talking about something really serious, and it’s really fun. It’s about addressing the patriarchy, and how omnipresent it is. When I was young, I was so busy trying to make it, I didn’t see that there was a patriarchy in place. And it’s only as an adult, I start looking back going, “Oh, wow — when that A&R man told me to my face that he wanked over pictures of me, that was really uncool.” But at the time, you kind of laugh it off and just press on.

I was oblivious to it. In this song, I’m talking about how patriarchy bleeds into absolutely everything, specifically under organized religion. The “Godhead” is the male, and we are all under the godhead forever, and that’s unquestioned, and how crazy is that? Because a dude holds a higher position in society, because he’s got a dick and a pair of balls. Often, these balls are smaller than my own [laughs].

It just gets silly after a while, when you watch other men protect other men just for the sake of protecting the patriarchy. So few men are willing to speak up about bro culture and call into question the behavior of the men they are associated with. There’s just a reluctance by men to address this absolutely shocking, terrifying, depressing, pathetic assault by men of other people’s bodies.

In 1996, your bandmate Butch Vig said about you, “So many singers screamed to convey intensity, and she does the opposite. It just blew us away.” How did you come up with that approach? I don’t know. I’ve found that when people speak to me quietly, I feel the most threatened because I’m really comfortable with conflict. I thrive on conflict. It excites me in a funny way. When people are shouting, I don’t feel scared. I like to shout back; that’s just how my family were. We’d just start to shout at each other all the time. I’m not scared of elevated temper. For me, when people get really quiet, that’s when I know they’re really serious, because they’re in control of their rage, and that’s when they’re most deadly.

The last question I have is a shallow one. I love being cheap and superficial.

What’s the most indulgent purchase you’ve ever made? At the height of my success, I hired a person who would shop for me and then send everything in a big box to my hotel room. I would choose what I wanted and return anything else. One day, this beautiful pair of Italian leather boots arrived. I wore a pair very similar in the “Stupid Girl” video, and I thought, “Oh, yeah, these are really me. I’m going to keep these. These are amazing.” It was only when I got back from tour, I found out they cost $5,000. I can’t even laugh about it. It makes me so crazy. I still have these boots. I’d like to get rid of them just so that I never have to look at them again, but there they are every day, warning me of my own greed.

[amphtaminedreams]

The Eras of Lana Del Rey: Lookbook no.9

Hi to anyone reading,

Hope you’re okay! AND that you didn’t end up here because you searched the Lana Del Rey tag so you could see people ranting about her-you’re about to be very disappointed. Sorry. This is not about to be some Question for the Culture discourse because the world is bleak enough right now and the last thing we all need is to be reminded of that saga. 

Being a Lana Del Rey fan is easy, they said. She’s not a controversial artist, they said. And yet 2020 had to do what it does best and fuck everything up. 

Whether people like her or not, it’s made me so angry reading all the abuse she’s been getting about her appearance for the last couple of weeks, because I really thought that if we could agree on anything it was that attacking individuals for the way they look because you dislike something they’ve done (with the exception of shit like racist tattoos and blackfishing) is, you know, awful and judgemental as fuck? Like you do realise when you treat the word fat as a pejorative that the fat people you don’t have a problem with understood that you meant it as an insult too? I think what all those people tweeting about Lana’s weight, and that includes some of her fans, are forgetting is that she was in her early 20s when she was thrust into the limelight. As much as there’s this conspiracy that her dad bought her a career in the music industry, she’d made the decision to go it alone and had lived in a trailer park as a struggling musician for years. On top of that, we have the unreleased tracks with lyrics seemingly referencing an eating disorder in her younger years. OF COURSE her body is going to look different. Why is it that we treat weight gain as an inherently bad thing without any insight into the other factors that constitute a person’s “health”? It’s fucking insane that so many feel they have the right to comment on other’s bodies in the first place and it breaks my heart that she might be reading these comments. This wasn’t intended to necessarily be a rant about how much I love this woman but all the shit I’ve read about her on the internet these past few months have pushed me to it. You'll respect your queen of alternative music or I shall stan twice as hard on your behalf. You can thank me later when you come to your senses xoxo

I’d love to say it was intentional that I finally finished this post the week Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass was released but that would imply I have my shit way more together than I actually do. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve only heard L.A Who am I to Love You so far 1). because I want to wait for the hard copy for the rest and that doesn’t turn up til September and 2). because I do not have my shit together, lol. That being said, there is no doubt in my mind that I am going to love it-one thing I have always loved about Lana’s lyrics is how well they paint a picture and this is something that poetry only more freely allows for the exploration of. That ability to create such a strong narrative voice and atmosphere is a talent that extends to her visuals and the production of her records too, and is something I really missed when it comes to the Norman Fucking Rockwell era. I’m just going to say it: a strong aesthetic is to NFR as memorable songs are to Lust for Life. Lacking. Am I allowed to say that as a fan? The collaborations don’t do it for me, okay, and as as NFR is concerned, aside from The Greatest/Fuck It I Love You video which went down the whole neon surfer girl route, it’s hard to identify a cohesive theme. It’s understandable that at this point, she would want to just focus purely on the music, and it goes without saying that NFR will stand the test of time in that regard but I don’t think we can deny that when people think of Lana in the future, it’s not gonna be a green windbreaker that comes into their heads.

^Illustration credit to Filip Kozak (https://filipkozaksart.tumblr.com/?fbclid=IwAR3vwLX2pNxoFNhTPD1ky14LllPqlLtL1GxGlD79xuHxdtzcHLw-6aNBZWo)

And here’s where this Filip Kozak illustration comes into it; after years of it sitting in my camera roll for years, it finally has a use. There’s really nothing better to illustrate how mundane life has become this year than the disproportionate level of excitement my photo-hoarding-self experienced realising it would fit perfectly into this post and is thus eligible for deletion. Up there with being able to fit a whole box of biscuits onto the shelf at work rather than having to individually take out as many as I can and then shove them on top of the existing box of biscuits one by one. Truly riveting content on this Tumblr page. Back to the point-by using this as my stimulus for the post rather than the Lana Del Rey albums as outfits tag that went round on Twitter, I can conveniently exclude NFR as an outfit inspiration category, and that saves me from having to buy a charity shop windbreaker with its price bumped up 150% by some upper middle class Depop e-girl or boy who uses the word peng as a descriptor like it’s a nervous tic. To make up for leaving out NFR, I’ve tried to branch out a bit and do the outfits not just based on the music videos or album covers but also from street style and stage looks and photoshoots from around the same period too. It was hard not to be influenced by the general “vibe” and sound of the albums either when I was planning outfits, whether it’s the grand, orchestral instrumentals of Born to Die or the 70s psychedelic rock inspired riffs of Ultraviolence and hopefully that’ll show as well! Enjoy:D

Born to Die (Release Date: 27th January 2012)

It’s been 8 years, and when you ask most people what they think of when they hear the name Lana Del Rey, they’ll probably dismiss her as the one who sings about being sad and doing coke and sleeping with older men. That’s the Born to Die impact. Say what you want but it’s one of only a handful of albums released by a female artist to have spent more than 300 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart and it really established the mythos of “Lana Del Rey” because before all this, before all the think pieces from other women claiming she’d set feminism back hundreds of years with her music, before she ousted grayscale Effy Stonem as the queen of angsty teen Tumblr (which as you can probably guess was a subsection of the internet I was very much engulfed by, lmao), she was just Lizzie Grant, a relatively normal aspiring singer songwriter in her early twenties. But as Lana Del Rey, she was someone else-some beautiful, mystical being that personified the sentiment of being born in the wrong era. Whilst every other singer’s record labels seemed to be trying desperately to thrust them into the future and keep them on top of all the musical and stylistic trends, it was refreshing to hear someone whose music and visuals captured all the most glamorous elements of the past. Part Priscilla Presley/Jackie O reincarnation (the National Anthem video really illustrated how Lana is just as much a storyteller as she is a musician), part high level mobster’s wayward wife à la Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, she was the good girl by day and the bad girl by night, and I think that’s a duality we can all relate to or would like to think we’re interesting enough to relate to deep down.

Her style from around this period was EVERYTHING. She had those grungy Tumblr girl elements, the camo jacket and the oversized pieces and the leather jackets, but she also heavily drew on the styles and silhouettes of the 50s and 60s with the beehives and the new look Dior inspired cinched waist dresses. Even now in 2020, I think this period is what most people would think if they were asked to describe Lana’s style. I made sure I got the grungy pieces in there with the chunky boots and the vinyl and the oversized leather but the foundation of her looks back then were usually these daintier throwback pieces like the white silk dress and the corset and the mint fur trimmed coat (House of Sunny’s Penny Pistachio coat).

Favourite lyrics from the album? “Now my life is sweet like cinnamon, like a fucking dream I'm living in” from Radio. Nobody asked but I’m gonna give it to you anyway.

Born to Die: The Paradise Edition (Release Date: 9th November 2012)

Lana’s Paradise EP contains probably my absolute favourite song of her’s, Ride, and with that, the beautiful opening monologue that will stay in my mind forever. This era was of course ushered in by Tropico, the short film that included the premiere of the songs Bel Air, Body Electric and Gods and Monsters, which established the ethereal tone of this period-it’s in the name, after all. Both the album and the videos were other-worldly and leaned heavily on religious symbolism which I’m sure pissed off many a middle-aged bible basher at the time. Most prominent in her lyrics were reflections on the freedom of the open road which corresponded with visuals of biker gangs and desert dwellers and modern interpretations of the Wild West, as was an attempt to capture the nature of the so-called “American spirit” which as Lana portrayed it shared more qualities with a kind of celestial, transient being than any kind of solid concept or identity. She played an emotionally detached stripper and a haunted saloon-style-bar singer (almost looking like a runaway bride) and Eve the “first woman” all in the same album and honestly, if that’s not iconic, I don’t know what is. We saw SO many incredible red carpet looks in this period too which built upon this idea of her as the fallen angel tempted by original sin that Tropico established; I feel like this era was all about laying bare the soul of the character she played, this broken, delicate but ultimately liberated being that was so dangerous to the idea of the strong, stable modern feminist ideal. She went about it in COMPLETELY the wrong way in a post that betrayed the ignorance of the privilege she has as a white female performer, but I think this is what she was getting at in it and Ultraviolence only went on to bolster her critics.

In response to the criticism she still receives about the choice to wear a Native American war bonnet in her Ride music video, I’d like to say that it really seems like she’s learnt from that-actions speak louder than words and so though it’s not my place to say whether this makes up for that error, the work she’s done with Native American reparations-focussed foundations since and the money she’s donated to the cause says a lot about her intentions. Again, I want to stress that it’s not my place to say! But it’s a detail that is often overlooked so I thought I’d mention it here. 

“I was a singer, not a very popular one. I once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet. But upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky, that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. But I didn’t really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.”

Ultraviolence (Release Date: 13th June 2014)

AH, Ultraviolence. My favourite of Lana’s albums and imo, a masterpiece. ONE skip. ONE. Sorry Guns and Roses. I got stoned in my back garden and listened to this (for research purposes ofc, heh) and ended up deciding that this is what I want to listen to when I die (also whilst stoned). It sounds dramatic but listening to this album in that state of mind is such a heavenly experience that I’d be too zen to notice myself slipping away into nothingness on the basis that if I didn’t as long as I could stay in that bubble of awe, nothingness forever wouldn’t be so scary after all. I know, I know, that sentence has big Jaden Smith’s old tweets energy. But if an album is what helps me get over an existential crisis, I beg you allow me the nonsensical ramblings about how I felt like I was ascending into the stars.

Though in terms of the lyrical content the public perception is probably correct, I think the reputation Ultraviolence has as Lana’s darkest, most gothic album (which is something I’ve in incorporated into the outfits I put together) is mistaken; instrumentally and visually it drew more on 70s psychedelic rock and the bohemian counter culture of the period than anything, and her stage looks are a clear reflection of that, and also the outfits I was most excited to channel. It seems counter-intuitive to the moody atmosphere I associate the tracklist with but it’s my go-to summer album; it’s raw (probably her most stripped back work along with NFR, lots of the songs are barely edited) and it’s gloomy but let’s be real, hot as fuck-don’t bother making a sex playlist, just put Ultraviolence on shuffle, and you’re good to go. This was the album where Lana debuted some of her most criticised lyrics and where the notion that she glamourises abuse comes from, one of the points she also seemed to be getting at in the Instagram post, but imo it’s fair to say that she sang truthfully about the initial allure of a dangerous relationship and the nature of the mindset that facilitates staying with somebody poisonous where you do feel like you’re nothing without them. Turning horrific experiences into romantic tragedies is how Lana has always made her music and yeah, out of context there are some fucked up lyrics on the album, but policing how a woman expresses her trauma and complaining that she glorifies weakness because she wrote honestly about the reality of a complicated partnership is hardly any more “feminist” than the lyrics themselves. I can only guess that the reason Lana felt the need to bring up this criticism in 2020 is because these darker themes are going to be revisited in her upcoming album and that in spite of the issues with the way she expressed herself, this time critics will be more accepting of how she chooses to address these themes. 

On a lighter note “yeah my boyfriend's pretty cool, but he's not as cool as me” will always be a great line. Simple but effective. If my boyfriend ever is cooler than me it’ll be doing Lana a disservice.

Honeymoon (Release Date: 18th September 2015)

Considering that a lot of other Lana fans are of the opinion that this is her best album, I find it weird that I really don’t remember all that much about this period, other than High by the Beach being released and then hearing Salvatore and Freak for the first time. I guess because she didn’t do a Honeymoon specific tour and didn’t make that many public appearances in this period? It was definitely harder for me to find visual reference points beyond the HbtB music video and the cover art, so I mostly drew on the general vibe of the album, a cinematic accompaniment to a summer in Italy or the South of France, filled with exotic instrumentals and the sense of impending romantic doom that Lana does so well. I suppose if I associate the visuals of this era with anything it’s idyllic florals and warm tones, bygone country club pool days, a rich American’s vacation in Southern Europe, long walks on the beach (and as our Lord and Saviour Jujubee once said, big dicks and fried chicken). Apparently inspired by Lana’s relationship with Francesco Carrozini, it’s a hazy story of some ultra-feminine, submissive archetype becoming unhealthily enchanted by a mysterious “foreign man” who’s ultimately not all that good for her, which as the story goes turned out to be quite prophetic. Going against the grain, it’s my least favourite of her albums after Lust for Life, but in spite of that, I will always remember how obsessed I was with the sax riffs (I think? I don’t know my instruments all that well so forgive me, lol) on Freak and I definitely understand why it’s a firm favourite for so many.

“You could be a bad motherfucker, but that don’t make you a man.” was truly a cultural reset of a line.

-on an unrelated note, OMG, I never realised how I have my mouth open in literally every fucking photo I take, somebody tell me how to pose, please and thank you-

Lust for Life (Release Date: 21 July 2017)

Lust for Life is a controversial one. On the one hand, I appreciate that this album was the victory cry of a happier, more independent, politically-aware Lana in spite of it apparently being a far more optimistic sounding album than the one she wanted to release, but on the other there were way too many collaborations for me and this meant that the album lacked a sense of cohesion and the characteristic narrative thread that usually runs throughout her tracklist. Aside from Love, Cherry, Get Free and Tomorrow Never Came, most of the songs on the album aren’t hugely memorable and it’s a crying shame that a collaboration with STEVIE FUCKING NICKS of all people left so much to be desired. Coming from two witchy icons, I expected something absolutely magical so maybe I was setting myself up for failure, but come on. We could’ve had a real anthem there.

Aesthetically speaking however, this is one of my favourite eras for Lana, which is unsurprising when you consider the tracklist contains references to both Woodstock and Coachella. I’m not gonna lie, I think seeing Coachella fashion in my early teens was my style awakening-I remember seeing Vanessa Hudgens’ outfits and being like, wow, I want to be her (oh, what a fall from grace)-so the late 60s/early 70s flower power groupie style Lana adopted in this period really spoke to me. It was all long hair and dreamy pastels, and this era included some of the most head-to-toe coordinated looks we’ve ever seen from her. Of course I couldn’t completely abandon the grungy touches that I love, that I tend to associate with the early Lana street style days and the Paradise and Ultraviolence music videos rather than with this album, but I’m never gonna pass up an opportunity to whack out a good floral two piece and putting together Lust for Life inspired looks is the perfect excuse to do that.

So, that marks the end of this post! If you made it to the end, thank you so much for reading! I have a Yesstyle lookbook and review to edit but now that I’ve finished that, I’m trying to go down more of a style inspiration focussed  route with my lookbooks rather than just putting together outfits from clothes I’ve just bought (though I might still do one every so often to bring in a new season-let’s just ignore the fact that they’re all blending into one bc climate change for now, one catastrophe at a time please universe). I find that if you have a specific idea in mind of what you want, it’s super easy to find something similar on Depop and Ebay and that way you avoid buying new things and also take old things off a person’s hands that might otherwise end up being thrown out by a charity shop and then dumped into a landfill from there. Something I’d LOVE to do before this year is out is put together a lookbook based on the most stylish TV shows of the last decade, but that probably won’t be for a while-even so, if you have any recommendations of series to watch which could fit into this category, let me know! 

To finish, I need to go a little bit off-topic so forgive me, but I truly don’t know why this even needs to be said: WEAR A FUCKING MASK. IT IS NOT A POLITICAL ISSUE. IT IS A BASIC HYGIENIC PRACTICE THAT HELPS SPREAD THE STOP OF A HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS DISEASE! RUDIMENTAL SCIENCE! NOT A CHANCE TO PROVE HOW “EDGY” YOU ARE! SERIOUSLY, STOP MAKING A FUCKING PANDEMIC ABOUT YOURSELF! NOBODY ENJOYS WEARING THEM BUT THEY HELP PROTECT OTHERS! SO UNLESS YOU HAVE A VALID MEDICAL REASON NOT TO BE WEARING ONE, DON’T BE A SELFISH PRICK! 

Sorry to sign off on a rant-y note with something that has nothing to do with Lana, lol, but all the stupidity has been grinding me gears lately and I had to let it out on behalf of all retail workers: if we can wear a mask for 9 hours at a time, YOU can tolerate the mild discomfort of wearing one for 10 minutes. I know this doesn’t apply to the majority of people but there’s always a couple of arseholes, isn’t there!?

Stay safe,

Lauren x

[carolinenicolettes]

MEET CAROLINE ESTELLE NICOLETTE ! 

(IN)CORRECT QUOTE -

“ this is taking too long ! i’m going to miss the farmer’s market ! ” —scary terry or scary caroline? who knows

“ she liked messy beds and movie nights without any lights on. she liked the quiet company of a few good friends. her idea of love was gentle and silent, like a whisper of a touch. some things are magical and magic, contrary to popular opinion, is often found in the most ordinary of places. ”

BASIC

NAME: caroline estelle nicolette NICKNAMES: n o p e it is caroline or NADA  AGE: 21 BIRTHDAY: may 1st SPECIES: starchild  GENDER: cisfemale PRONOUNS: she/her

FAMILY

MOTHER: amelia nicolette — born into money, massive name in the fashion industry, only wears fashionable power suits and celestial themed jewelry, drinks expensive whiskey neat FATHER: unknown PARENTS: raised by her mother, kind of. had a nanny named maggie growing up whom she loved dearly and was very good friends with a doorman named robert as well. it takes a village, you know. FAMILY: direct relation to the nicolette family that you all know and love aka odette. caroline’s mother is odette’s father’s sister. SIBLINGS: not at all.

PHYSIAL ATTRIBUTES

FACE CLAIM: scarlett leithold NATIONALITY: american HEIGHT: 5′7 WEIGHT: 139lbs BUILD: slender, and a bit insecure about that HAIR: long with a subtle wave , nearly down to her waist for now  HAIR COLOR: golden blonde with a few summery platinum highlights EYE COLOR: baby bluuuue DOMINANT HAND: left ANOMALIES: during warmer months, and nearly year round since moving to california, there are little freckles dusted across her nose  SCENT: seasalt, cocounut, sunscreen . . . . and occasionally mon paris by ysl ACCENT: she fought against that new york accent tooth and nail so none ALLERGIES: cats but also bullshit DISORDERS: dbd — dumb bitch disorder FASHION: an odd mix of vintage. corduroy dresses, plaid skirts, ribbed turtlenecks, velvet headbands, doc marten boots. a lil 60s, a lil 70s, a lil 90s. despite having quite a bit of money, she’s always wearing at least one thing that looks hand-me-down and that’s because her mother never threw anything away, so it likely is.  NERVOUS TICS: rocks back and forth from her toes to her heels, death grip on a camera strap, tucking her hair behind her ears QUIRKS: collects enamel pins, always has a camera on her, closes her eyes when trying to focus on listening

LIFESTYLE

RESIDES: east side, victoria BORN: new york city RAISED: new york city VEHICLE:  black 1969 chevy camaro, rarely ever drives it though as she bikes/skates most places PHONE: iphone 11 pro :\ COMPUTER: mac desktop collecting DUST PETS: too busy sneezing bc of odette’s cat

HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION: graduated COLLEGE EDUCATION: senior MAJOR: museum studies, photography MINOR: film studies CAREER: freelance photographer, current waste of space living off of that family $$$ EXPERIENCE: apprenticeships in fashion photography, internships in museum curation  TRAINED IN: photography and classical ballet (reluctantly) OTHER: literally just .... she’s had a camera of some sort in her hand since she was like 12

POLITICAL AFFILIATION: liberal RELIGION: worships the ground stevie nicks, cher, and debbie harry walk on but that’s about it BELIEFS: you have to be really careful when buying sweaters from thrift stores because 80% of them are absolutely haunted MISDEMEANORS: none FELONIES: none  TICKETS AND/OR VIOLATIONS: NONE  DRUGS: once or twice but she’s strung out enough on her own  SMOKES: weed, on occasion. cigarettes are gross. ALCOHOL: leisurely, mostly socially. Queen of Beer Pong™ DIET: fairly healthy, not at all picky, a little bougie.

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: labels are stupid SEXUAL ORIENTATION: and sexuality is fluid MARTIAL STATUS: never going to happen CHILDREN: *nervous laughter* AVAILABILITY: not at all LOOKING FOR: she’s actually legally blind so

LANGUAGES: english, french

PHOBIAS: fuck spiders SPECIFICALLY. might cry but also doesn’t want you to kill it just... take it out and awaaaay HOBBIES: photography, film — the act of and the watching of, hiking, live shows, bothering odette. literally has/had 3294328049 of them but is really only good at photography/film TRAITS: + adaptable, loyal, charismatic, clever, playful, adventurous ; - flighty, forgetful, cynical, unforgiving, disorganized, impatient SOCIAL MEDIA: the works - snapchat, twitter, instagram

FAVOURITE

LOCATION: photo pit at small venue concerts, anywhere within 10 feet of the pacific SPORTS TEAM: whomst  GAME: playin w people’s HEARTS ...... jk ....... kinda MUSIC: haim, fleetwood mac, the aces... any band with a female lead singer SHOWS: ghost adventures, big little lies MOVIES: frances ha, almost famous, bob dylan: don’t look back RADIO STATION: anything that strictly plays oldies FOOD: loves baked goods BEVERAGE: cold brew coffee, cinnamon spice tea COLOR: a nice dusty rose :\

CHARACTER

MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic good MBTI: isfp — the adventurer ENNEAGRAM: type 7, the enthusiast  ZODIAC: taurus HOGWARTS HOUSE: hufflepuff TAROT CARD: the empress TV TROPES: max mayfield, serena van der woodsen, ainsley howard, donna sheridan and honestly? eloise  SONG: summer girl - haim

IDEOLOGIES: shove it down shove all the emotions DOWN do not feel. you can tell a lot about a person based on the music they listen to when they’re sad. three is the luckiest number.

THE RUNDOWN 

amelia nicolette never intended to be a mother. she was freshly 21, inches from a moment that could launch her career in the fashion industry, and she hadn’t been in love or even interested in the idea since she was seventeen. so when a one night stand with a wealthy older man, left her with morning sickness and an odd appetite for two, she was less than thrilled. 

he was even less thrilled, insisting that she terminate the pregnancy. i’ll drive you, he’d said in a hushed tone. only then did she see the tan line wrapped around his ring finger. a married man. a one night stand. and a complete bastard . amelia decided, then and there, to carry to term and then put the baby up for adoption.

until may 1st at 3AM on the dot when the most obnoxious scream split through the air. a baby, just slightly too small, kicking and screaming relentlessly was born in manhattan. a baby who wouldn’t shut up until she was placed in the arms of her mother, where she fell quiet and calm and she slept. 

amelia nicolette never intended to fall in love, but holding her tiny baby girl, she knew then and there that she was a goner. caroline, as a song that sounded like joy played from a radio at the nurse’s station. estelle, for the stars. nicolette, the only family name she’d ever need. 

for three years, it was just the two of them in a new york penthouse, and amelia learned quickly that she was good at being a mother. but that didn’t change her free-spirited nature or the way her heart had a tendency to yearn for more. she had the resources, and caroline was old enough — . . . and she’d been sketching for years, sitting on top of a portfolio that piled a mile high.

along comes nanny, maggie, and thus began the life she’d lead for the rest of her childhood. mom spent a lot of time at work, building a fashion brand that went international by the time caroline was 6. because of this, she was gone more often than not, leaving caroline to grow up under the watchful eye of a nanny.

but she called every night. made it home for every big holiday, every recital, every birthday. in the summers, caroline would spend her time split between visiting her mother, visiting odette, and visiting a beach house in victoria. there was a certain lack of permanence that caused her to be adaptable, allowed her to be comfortable with change and give into the whims of a free spirit like her mother’s.

but people filtered in and out, came and went, and on the flip side of the same coin, there was a sense of detachment , a fear of getting too close to people who would move out or move on.

despite this, caroline never found herself to be lonely. she was a friendly little thing with bright eyes and a sparkling curiosity, picking up hobbies instead of toys, but never quite being exceptional at any of them. she made friends with doormen and caused problems for the people behind the desk. she became good, early on, at keeping herself busy, making her own fun – . . . all things that have very much carried into adulthood.

she was lucky, and she’s fully aware of it which is why, from a young age, she always did her best to find ways to give that luck to people who seemed to need it. 

things had a tendency to be tumultuous, what with her mother coming and going and her very best friend being in and out of the hospital, but she tried to go with the flow as best as she could. things were good but never truly exceptional.

until she met jude. he’d been in the same children’s wing as odette, and they’d known each other for a little bit before caroline met him. the three of them were inseparable, at first, simply best friends. but as they got older, feelings shifted and two friends became more than that.

our girl was in love for the very first time. and it was sweet and gentle and everything a first love is supposed to be. over time, that love grew, just as they did, and it was visible to anyone with eyes that they were in love. for two years, it was good, he was good. 

and then he wasn’t. despite two years of remission and a healthy life, he fell ill again. there was nothing to do but stand by and watch as six months passed by, far too quickly, and he slipped away into nothing. ultimately passing away just a week before his 20th birthday. 

caroline didn’t allow herself to feel it, for a while, lingering in the denial stage of grief for far too long. new york felt empty without him, without odette, without her mother, and it didn’t take much for her to pack her things and join her mother overseas, taking a gap year from school and focusing on herself, on her photography.

she spent a lot of time with a press pass around her neck. fashion shows and fashion shoots. major events and sports games. concerts and festivals. but there was one thing she loved more than anything else, and that was capturing the off-guard joy of life in candids of strangers on the street or in the crowds of bars and concerts. she found her own style, her own way of storytelling through a lens, and slowly but surely she began to heal.

still, there was no way around the way her heart felt a little heavier, a little darker, and how smiles from strangers at the other end of the bar made her stomach churn. she developed an aversion to new relationships of any sort, anything deeper than surface level becoming a bit too close for comfort. 

and while life traveling was fun, she missed having a sense of home, so she went to where the only other person who felt like home was, finding herself moving into a house with odette in victoria.

she’s been around for a couple of months, coming out of a gap year and looking to finish her degree in the spring. victoria, for now, is home.

these days she’s a little bit more cynical. a little bit less likely to let people too close. a little bit lost but also who isn’t when they’re 21

[madamebaggio]

Is Sansa Stark done?

Pop singer Sansa Stark seems to have reached a rough patch on her career. After passing out before a big concert, the teen star has suffered another big bit hit -this time a double one. Stark has reportedly ended her relationship with Joffrey Baratheon and her partnership with producer Cersei Lannister. Although official reps claim that both partings were friendly, close sources say otherwise. Stark’s budding career might not survive a hit that big.

Chapter 3

Arthur did his best to stay out of tabloids and gossip websites, he also didn’t give those a lot of credit. For this reason, he hardly knew what was going on in the music industry. Every once in a while, he’d hear something about someone, but it was always some casual remark.

He knew very little about Sansa Stark, but if he planned on making her forgive him, he needed more information.

For the motives previously stated, he wasn’t about to Google her and see what he could find, so he went to talk to William.

William -or Goosefat Bill, as Arthur called the slippery fuck -was the producer that got Camelot on the map. He was an old mate of Bedivere, and he knew everything about everyone.

“Arthur. Good to see you, lad.” Bill shook his hand. “Take a seat. Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thanks.” Arthur dropped himself gracelessly on the closest chair.

“What can I do for you?” Bill asked, sitting across from him.

“What can you tell me about Sansa Stark?” Arthur asked directly.

Bill’s eyebrows almost disappeared on his hairline. “I thought this had been settled already.” He commented neutrally.

“Can’t I just ask out of curiosity?” Arthur asked innocently.

Bill snorted. “No, you can’t. That’s not like you.” He gave the younger man a long look. “What do you want to know?”

“What happened to her exactly?”

Bill hummed, drumming his fingers on the table. “Do you remember when she came out?”

“A bit.” Arthur shrugged. “She had a song… I have no idea the name, but it played fucking everywhere. I got that stuck in my head for weeks.”

Bill chuckled. “She was just a kid; 15 or 16, I don’t remember well. All American princess, great family. She was a sweet kid; a lot of critics called her naïve and childish, but the public loved her and her cute songs.”

Arthur remembered that much; she was everywhere, this pretty girl with songs about first loves and things like that. Her biggest hits were all pop songs that would glue to the brain and never let go.

“Then Baratheon, that prick, convinced her family to let his people produce her.” Bill snorted, disgusted by the name. “They got her all pretty and innocent, and -two years later -she had a new album and a completely different attitude. Her clothes became minimal and her songs were all about boys and parties. People got mad, because she was still 17 when she started singing about going crazy in parties.”

Arthur arched a brow. He remembered that too, but it was like his brain never really processed how extreme the transformation Sansa Stark had gone through was. Sure, he’d noticed -anyone with a pair of working eyes would -but he just shook it off at the time as another pop artist “reinventing” herself. He didn’t even realize how young she was at the time.

“How did that happen?”

“As far as I know, Baratheon and Sansa’s father went all the way back, so they trusted her to him, but she ended in Cersei’s hand.”

Arthur winced in sympathy. A person would have to be brain dead to not know who Cersei Lannister was. One of the most famous pop singers of her time, she left her singing career to work as a producer. She had a reputation for being brutal, and there were always nasty rumors around her, but nothing ever seemed to stick.

“What did the Wicked Witch do to her?”

“Officially? Nothing but nurture little Sansa Stark as if she were her own daughter.” Bill scoffed. “Sansa even dated her son, that little prick.”

Arthur snickered. Joffrey Baratheon had the fastest career he’d ever seen; he’d tried singing and didn’t even last his first single.

“Sansa even -supposedly- wrote a song bashing Margaery Tyrell for trying to steal her man.” Bill continued, clearly finding the whole thing ridiculous.

That was interesting. Sansa was having lunch dates with the Tyrell and the model seemed genuinely protective of her, so they’d obviously made up.

“So what changed?” Arthur asked.

“Sansa passed out before a concert.” Bill became serious. “They hushed it all up, but I have my sources. They had to take her to the hospital, she was dehydrated and malnourished. At the time, they claimed she had food poisoning, but it came out she had all the signs of anorexia.” Bill gave Arthur a look. “How come you don’t remember that? It was almost a national commotion.”

“I don’t pay attention to those things.” He sighed. He honestly didn’t remember anything on the subject. He was unlikely to think about Sansa Stark back then; she was another young pop singer and he couldn’t care less about her life.

“I heard she talks a lot about anorexia nowadays.” Arthur offered.

“Yes, because she went through that.” Bill pointed out like Arthur was a particularly slow student.

“After this she was done with the Lannisters?”

“Logically. I think there was some deal between them all, because they parted ‘amicably’, without getting the justice involved, even though she had a five-year contract.” Bill explained. “However, rumor has it that Sansa’s anorexia and all the problems that came along were because of Cersei. Some people swear she nearly destroyed the girl; there were even whispers of physical abuse from the little Baratheon prick. Stark never said anything, but…”

But she spoke openly against domestic abuse. She had a foundation to create awareness against anorexia.

Arthur cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “ And then?”

“Well, after fainting and the ‘divorce’ from the Lannisters, she took a hiatus. People thought her career was over, but three years later… Here she is: full of Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, being a streaming success… She’s back on top.”

“But whose style is she following now?” Arthur wanted to know.

“Her, supposedly.” Bill shrugged. “She gave an interview saying she was finally doing what she truly wanted. She wrote all the song of this new album.”

Arthur hummed his understanding.

“Why are you curious?” Bill asked, this time clearly interested in an answer.

“I’m just trying to understand her.”

“But why do you suddenly care?” Bill insisted.

“I don’t know.” Arthur replied honestly. “But she’s pissed at me and I don’t like that.”

Bill arched a brow. “Don’t do anything stupid.” He warned the other man.

“William, who do you take me for?” He gave his most beatific smile. “I would never.”

Bill clearly gave up on trying.

Notes: Hey there! Sorry for the short chapter, and for the lack of Sansa on this one. I used this for a much needed exposition on her past.

I promise that we’ll have more fun on the next one.

As always, those pictures don’t belong to me. I’m not sure about the source, but if you are, let me know.

Cheers!

[setlist-ud-blog]

Female Artists vs Record Labels

(photo credit: People Magazine)

by Maddie McVey

The Veronicas. JoJo. Tinashe. CL. Sky Ferreira. If you’ve ever heard of any of these artists, you may be wondering: what ever happened to them? It’s a good question, with the same answer for each case: they’ve all been held back from releasing new music by their record labels.

These five artists are definitely not the first to fall victim to the dark side of music industry politics, which affects singers and bands of all kinds (most notably recently with the controversy surrounding Kesha and the abuse she suffered at the hands of Sony Music). Each have something in common: despite coming from different places and releasing their debut albums at different times, everyone in this particular group makes pop or pop-crossover music, was in their teens or early twenties when they first rose to fame, and is a woman. While it can’t be strictly proven, this pattern points to the underlying issue of systematic sexism that makes it easier for companies to take advantage of young women. Each of these artists’ stories lends support to the theory.

(photo credit: theveronicas.com)

The Veronicas

The Veronicas, the duo of twin sisters from Brisbane, Australia, is probably best known in the US for their 2007 top ten hit, “Untouched” off of their sophomore album, Hook Me Up. However, instead of allowing them to ride on this success, their record label, Warner Music, brought their career to a halt.

"They stole four years of our lives,” Jessica Origliasso, one half of The Veronicas, told the BBC in 2014 while explaining how the label delayed and refused to release their third album. “It became a bit of a battle, and it took one bad-assed lawyer to help us get the hell out of that situation. It tests your faith, it tests your self-assurance and your confidence. Every part of you.”

The sisters got the last laugh when they signed to Sony Music Entertainment in 2014 and released their self-titled third album later that year. The superb first single, “You Ruin Me” went straight to number one in their home country of Australia. The girls then tweeted their former label Warner Music a simple, “Haha.”

Origliasso laughed when asked about the tweet in the BBC interview, admitting, “I can be a bit of a spiteful bitch. But at the end of the day, it felt good...That company was very, very, happy for a long time to sit on us and not allow us to do anything. It was criminal. But there’s no better feeling in the world than being proved right.”

(photo credit: People Magazine)

JoJo

An artist with a similar story is JoJo, the teen sensation known for the smash hits “Leave (Get Out)” and “Too Little Too Late,” released in 2004 and 2006, respectively. Once again, instead of allowing her career to flourish, Blackground Records (JoJo's then label) shut her down for seven years, rendering her unable to release anything but unofficial mixtapes and covers. She eventually got out of the situation in a 2013 lawsuit, in which she cited various offenses against her, including “irreparable damage to her professional career.” She moved on to sign to Atlantic Records in 2014, and finally put out her third album, Mad Love in 2016 after a whopping ten years.

"I’m going to be paying back my litigators for years,” JoJo told TIME magazine in 2015. "I was told by tons of lawyers that I would never get out and that I should go to college. But I knew that I needed to seize my youth and seize the moment, because I’m not going to be in my twenties forever. Now is my time.”

(photo credit: Billboard)

Tinashe

If you were part of the club scene in 2014, you probably heard Tinashe’s major label debut hit “2 On” on the dancefloor. Unfortunately, you may not have heard from her since. Despite beginning work on her sophomore album in January of 2015 and planning to release it soon after, Tinashe was met with dozens of setbacks and inappropriate actions from her label, RCA Records. She was forced to feature Chris Brown (who later trashed-talked her on Instagram) on a song, record with accused sex-offender Dr. Luke, sell her upcoming album title-track to Rihanna (before it was later bought back), and take part in a photoshoot where she had to pose fondling Travis Scott’s crotch over his pants. She told Vulture in 2018 that despite recording “probably 200 songs” for the album, RCA refused to budge. Eventually she took action herself, leaking the first single “Party Favors” from her mixtape Nightride without her label’s approval in 2015.

"I knew if I didn’t put something out, I ran the risk of continuing to push back my singles and my whole process,” she told Spin magazine. “I’ve got the songs, I need to put them out. I was just like, ‘Fuck it. I’m putting it on SoundCloud.’ So that’s what I did.”

Tinashe has since released her second studio album, the dark and sultry Joyride, in April of 2018.

(photo credit: allkpop)

CL

An artist who hasn’t been as lucky getting her music released is CL. The former leader of the world famous Korean pop band 2NE1 has been attempting to cross over into the American music market since before the group disbanded in 2016. Despite releasing her debut US single, “Lifted”, and going on an American tour all in that same year, the album she promised has yet to see the light of day. CL has recorded over 200 songs for the album, but the singer/rapper hasn’t been able to release any of them, the problem being that, although currently managed by Scooter Braun (who also manages the likes of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande) in America, she still also has contractual ties to YG Entertainment, the Korean company that formed 2NE1.

The dark side of YG (and the Korean music industry as a whole) has been well documented. CL revealed to Elle magazine in 2013 that the company asked her to get plastic surgery before her debut as an artist. She said in her interview: "I stood up for myself and said, ‘No. I’m not doing it.'"

Her relationship with the company is still strained as they continually hold her back from releasing new music. In July 2018, when YG president Yang Hyun Suk posted on Instagram about starting recording on another artist’s album, CL commented, “Boss, what about me? #PleaseReplyToMyTexts.”

This wasn’t the first time CL had gone against her contract to stand up for herself. In December 2017, she uploaded a minute and a half of a music video for an unreleased song and wrote in the caption, “Showing this little bit I am able to may get me in trouble. But it’s worth the risk.”

Unfortunately, the K-Pop queen is still struggling to reach a breakthrough.

"I didn’t even know that it was hard,” she said amid tears on a 2017 episode of Korean TV show Livin’ the Double Life when discussing her US career. "Since (a K-Pop artist crossing over) never happened before, there’s no path I can follow. People want to help, but they don’t know how to help.”

(photo credit: Stereogum)

Sky Ferreira

Indie pop artist Sky Ferreira has also been unable to work with her current label much the same way. After releasing her stellar debut album, Night Time, My Time, in 2013, the singer has been struggling to get her next project, Masochism, released ever since. In 2015, she accused her label, Polydor Records, of intellectual property theft, tweeting:

"At least have the decency to give me some support/budget/promotion for my work, if you’re going to rip off my previous work that I paid for…” and added, “Maybe I would have ‘sold more records’ if I had the resources to do so. It’s completely unfair that can even get used against me… I’m talking about labels & how they all need new structure… & need to be more creative & supportive of the people that they sign.”

This has been a major point Ferreira has brought up on social media when giving her fans updates on the album. In July of 2017, she posted on Instagram:

"I was genuinely stuck at the mercy of other people before (for almost years at this point). No matter how hard I tried, it was beyond me. I couldn't say anything because of the possibility that it would make things worse. Being silent or ‘politically correct’ wasn't much help either. It felt way worse tbh. It has been genuinely tasking on my soul & so frustrating.”  

Most recently, in July 2018, Ferreira publicly called out her record label yet again on Instagram for locking her out of her own SoundCloud account and refusing to let her access her own music posted there. All the while, the release date for Masochism has still not been set.

It’s a shame that all of these talented women have fallen victim to the petty politics and sexism of the entertainment industry by the hands of record labels that seek to hold their professional careers and dreams hostage. Even The Veronicas, JoJo, and Tinashe (who all eventually released their albums) never reached the same amount of success they had previously. The worst part is that we’ll never know if these artists could’ve gone onto greater stardom under different circumstances. The best thing we can do now is support their releases when they do come out, keep supporting them despite their setbacks in a difficult, often unfair industry, and push for a change in the way record labels treat their artists.

[emilieautumnarchives]

Emilie Autumn’s Musical Art is Most Peculiar || Charleston City Paper (11/24/2009)

Original Link Last accessed 1/7/2022

Emilie Autumn has deemed herself the “innkeeper of the asylum,” becoming a de facto real-life poster child for Emily the Strange enthusiasts. A conversation with the goth/glam singer-songwriter and violinist is a strangely happy, if heavy, whirlwind of monologue. She calls over an hour and a half late for our interview, apologizing profusely, but cheerfully, for her long-winded nature.

After a few minutes, it’s clear that Autumn’s name seems too small to contain her personality: a crashing amalgamation of all the seasons in her world, which is occupied by images of Victorian corsets, pink flamingo hair, and a fiddle almost permanently attached to the 30-year-old’s hands. Classically trained, Autumn’s been playing professionally for well over a decade, releasing albums, breaking contracts, fighting record labels, and playing with big names like Courtney Love and Billy Corgan. But it was the 2006 release of her rock-cabaret-electronica-glam-goth album, Opheliac, released by her own label, Traitor Records, that earned Autumn acclaim and a large European following.

Now, Autumn and her back-up group, the Bloody Crumpets, are enjoying their first North American headlining tour, playing to sold-out crowds in almost every city, courting controversy at every turn.

“We were told, ‘Don’t expect too much, and then our fans really pulled through for us,” Autumn says. “It’s been amazing.”

Autumn’s relationship with her fans is intense. Her songs are confessional and dark, detailing everything from her stay in a psych ward (“Thank God I’m Pretty”) to songs about suicide (“The Art of Suicide”) and cutting (“Liar”). She’s unapologetic about the subject matter, and with the arrival of her first novel (she wrote and illustrated the whole thing), The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, she’s ripping open plenty of old wounds in the hopes that her fans will learn something from her experiences.

“There’s so much about the book that’s fun and beautiful, but a lot of it’s from my diary entries from when I was locked up or during suicide attempts, during bipolar episodes or cutting myself, during those hardcore episodes that nobody really wants to talk about,” Autumn admits.

The fan devotion is definitely a response to Autumn’s overwhelmingly confessional-style writing, and her unwavering commitment to what she earnestly refers to as her “brand.” Autumn has her own clothing label and design house, makes her own business decisions, and writes the music she wants to hear. Her earlier music industry experiences could have soured her indefinitely, but she’s opted to learn from those mistakes.

“Working with Courtney Love, for example, now I can deal with anything,” Autumn says. “I went from being a terrified little girl to being able to handle anything, so, like, thank you. And, working with Corgan, to see how long somebody’s been around, how they’ve grown up in the industry, and yet to see how they can still be dictated to by their labels. I swear that’s never going to be me. I had to learn that very quickly in order to survive those people. I will live on the streets and be a busker and make music for nobody. I will never let that happen. I will never care that much that anybody listens to me or that I’m popular. I don’t give a fuck … that was something to really, really learn. No matter how long you’ve been around or how many records you’ve sold, there’s that desperation among some very, very famous people to keep repeating it, to not get old, to worry when you lose your hair.”

[popmusicu]

Waterparks and Fandom Expectations

Waterparks is a North American band that has been releasing music since 2011. Their music could be described as pop-punk or pop-rock (amongst others other genres) but their sound is not the only thing that draws you in when you listen to this band. The lyrics cut deep and it's not always about how you can relate to what's being said. Sometimes it's a call out to your behavior.

Lead singer and composer, Awsten Knight, has a particular point of view when it comes to how fans interact with his music, and it's not that he thinks that fans are negative, but he thinks that fans expect very specific things from him and the band, and those expectations hinder not only the evolution of the band but the growth of its members. He does not shy away from expressing his opinions, and a couple songs show his stance on this matter:

Watch What Happens Next

   "I put autotune on Worst and

Caught all their disgust

Hip hop can do what—

-Ever it wants

Like make country songs

And hit number one

And that's fucking awesome

We could never do that

All the fans that like us need an easy fucking format" 

  In this song, Knight denounces how almost every other music genre can experiment or try new things and alternative music has to remain unchanged to maintain its fanbase. And he goes further in saying "I'll never be enough Until it's too late" referring to how no one seems to care about alt musicians until one of them dies, gaining more renown in death than what they had during life, and how social media floods with “such a bright soul, we lost an angel” statuses.

  TANTRUM 

  “If I wasn't thin and white with blue hair would I be here?

Maybe if I kill myself you'll know I'm sincere

I'll shave my blue hair

Burn the rest of two dares

Drop from 'parks

Like "fuck it, who cares?"”

  This time the focus is on how the music industry is not really diverse, and how in the alt community relevance often mans extravagant clothes and colored hair, but at the end of the day, the success is really not important because the toxicity and double standards of the community make him want to drop everything, knowing that probably no one would really care, after all, it’s just another band who was doomed to fail.

Lowkey As Hell 

  “I just cried into a shirt I could never afford last year

My Drake problems, my fake problems

But it's really how I'm feeling here

I guess at least my work is working, right?

I think people like me better when I'm hurt inside

They say it's not true, and they hope I'm alright

But their eyes probably rolled at the first line (F*ck 'em)”

  How fans deal with the "emotional status" of alt musicians is also on Awsten's mind. Most fans are really positive with their feedback, but alt music and how its lyrics focus on how the singer struggles in life. And fans always want new music, making it hard to believe that they wish the singers to be okay. This double standard hurts Knight, making him doubt how his fans want him to be. 

All of this comes to show how musicians are usually treated just like entertainers and not as humans, foregoing some fundamental things like their aspirations with their music and new things that fans usually shut down bc its "selling out" or "becoming mainstream" and also how they seem to ignore their emotions when it’s not on a song. This is a part of fandom culture that I would like to change, this toxicity doesn’t help anyone. And we have to remember that artists are humans with goals and needs and we can’t berate them for that.

- By Amanda Urrutia

[rfsak2]

Cactus, Part XI

I actually really enjoyed writing this chapter. Hope you enjoy this too!! Drop me a line and hit that little heart on the bottom. I need your love and affection...

Cactus, Part XI Summary: Support. Harry/Jamie Warnings: A jerk who says jerk things.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. She’d had a migraine all day.

She appreciated rock. She loved it in all it’s many forms: soft, glam, indie, grunge, she even veered into the land of 80s hard rock every once and awhile. She loved music.

But as with everything in life, she was allowed to have a preference and screamo just wasn’t hers. Especially when the bloody band’s guitarist didn’t know the first thing about writing melodies or playing them for them for that matter.

Hence why she was brought in.

Not that the guitarist appreciated it.

He didn’t. Loudly and obviously.

“I don’t need help from some upgraded groupie.”

The producer grit his teeth and frowned. “You do if you want to make a debut album that does anything, if you want to make music that someone will listen to. You need a melody. Right now all you have is a mush of noise that doesn’t make any s-”

“That’s what it’s supposed to sound like.”

“Well right now, it doesn’t sound like anything. Even your average screamo fan isn’t going to be into this.”

“Good!” He threw his hands in the air. “It’s not for public consumption. It’s art.”

The producer rolled his eyes. “You dumbass, welcome to being signed to a major label. There is no such thing as ‘not for public consumption’. If you’d wanted that you should’ve stayed with your indie label.”

She sighed. “Look, I’m not here to do your job or change-”

“No you’re just here to steal my place in the band.”

She rolled her eyes. “I have two bands, I don’t need another one, promise. I just-”

“Want to find another man to-”

The lead singer stepped forward. “Hey, man that’s not necessary.”

“Don’t need another one of those either.”

“Look, bitch, just because you suck some fam-

The producer shoved to his feet. “That is out of line! The-”

She held her hand up and stood, setting her guitar in its stand. “Look, dude. I don’t give a fuck about your opinion my relationship. Couldn’t really careless and it’s none of your bloody business. Also has absolutely nothing to do with this. I’m a guitarist and a fuckin’ good one. I can help you, but I won’t if you don’t want it. It’s fine. No skin off my nose. I get paid either way.”

The lead singer nodded. “I want her help.”

She looked at the guitarist, who shrugged. “Don’t want any watered down fake-psychedelics on this record. Don’t want none of that pop shit.”

“C’mon, man, even you were busting a nut over some of the solos she wrote for Styles.”

“Co-wrote, with our friend Mitch, by the way.” She shrugged. “It’s up to you though. I can help. Write ya a couple melodies and get right back out of your hair. But it’s up to you.”

The guitarist made a noise in his throat. “Fine. I don’t like whammy though. And I play exclusively on heavy strings. Like the sound better.”

She turned away to grab her guitar and rolled her eyes, who did this fucker think he was? The next Slash? She shot a look at the producer who gave her an apologetic shrug.  “Duly noted. Let’s do this shit.”

Later, migraine still sitting heavily behind her eyes, she stopped at the Whole Foods. Harry was due back today after a week in New York for a photo shoot. The only food they had in the house currently was junk food and the poor boy would be exhausted, she should get some real food in him.

She was was trying to decide if the broccoli looked fresher than the zucchini when her phone rang. FaceTime audio, meant he was still on the plane’s wifi.

“‘ello, beautiful monster.”

She smiled. Two years and she still couldn’t get enough of him. His voice still made the center of her chest warm, still made her want to bury her face in his shoulder, let him wrap himself completely around her. The way she was currently feeling, mutual bathtime was on the list tonight. “Hey gorgeous boyfriend of mine.”

He chuckled. “God I miss yeh, woman. Need yeh… badly. Gonna bury myself so deep in yeh when I get home…”

“I missed ya too.” She felt her cheeks heat and she turned her phone down. “But you need to be careful with all that, baby. Don’t need PhoneSex-gate part two.”

She could practically hear the one-hundred watt stunner on his face. “No one around te hear, love. Promise.”

“You’re in a flying metal tube. Not really anywhere to not hear ya.” She smiled. “So cool your jets and we’ll follow up on that suggestion when ya get home.”

“They are never cool when it comes to you, y’know that. But, I’m gonna hold yeh to that… and to me.”

She snorted. “Was that a pun? Not your best work, Hazza.”

He sighed. “I’m tired and horny for yeh, love, give me a break. Still in studio?”

She shook her head forgetting that he couldn’t see her. “No. I’m at Whole Foods. Any requests for welcome home dinner?”

“You.”

She flushed again. “Haz… I’m serious.”

He chuckled again, the sound deeper and a little more stimulating. “So am I, love. Just wantcha. Don’t much care about what else happens tonight.”

She smiled. “Should I just get take-out then? I’ll grab some breakfast stuff and I can make breakfast in the morning.”

“What time d’yeh have to be in studio tomorrow?”

“Don’t. The guitarist is an asshole and the producer’s givin’ him a day to cool off.” She sucked her tongue. “Not gonna help much. Can’t cure bein’ a prick.”

He was quiet for a minute and she knew her very astute boy was putting two and two together from past conversations. “What did he do?”

“Don’t worry about it, baby. It’s handled. What do you want for breakfast?”

“What did he do, Jamie?”

She sighed. “Hazza-”

“Don’t Hazza me. What did he do and how long has he been doin’ it?”

She fought against the migraine and the exhaustion that tempted her with snapping something rude at him. She knew he was just trying to help. “He’s just… just bein’ a twat, y’know? Doesn’t want help obviously and his only response to that is to-”

“Harass you?”

“Not physically.”

“What did he say?”

“Just bitchy comments about our relationship, Hazza. I swear, it’s not a big deal.”

He huffed. “Because if it was, you’d tell me, right, pretty girl? You’d tell me.”

“Of course. If I didn’t feel like it was under cont-”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s under control or not, love. I want te know.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t like it when you give in so easily, monster. Don’t trust it. Just means you’re not planning on doin’ it.”

She laughed. “It’s just not a-”

“Don’t say it again, love. It is a big deal. It’s a big deal that yer being harassed in yer workplace because of yer relationship with me. It’s a very big deal. To me, at least.”

“It’s just…” She sighed.

“Just what, love?”

“There’s not much that can be done. If someone wants to be a pig-headed jackass and comment on somethin’ that isn’t his business, he’s gonna do it. All I can do is defend myself.” She shrugged.

“I can defend you, love. And if they’re not willing to listen to you, they will definitely listen to me. Why else was I blessed with height and a deep, scary voice, if not to knock some sense into chauvinists?

“That is a valid point and you know that I appreciate your chauvinist-knocking skills. But I can’t have my rich, famous boyfriend steppin’ in to fight all my battles, baby. Ruins my street cred.”

He laughed and she felt like the conversation was back on track. “Fine. Okay. I want waffles and bananas and bacon, British bacon, none of that crunchy American shite.”

She chuckled. “Okay. That I can do. When do you land?”

“Within the hour at this point.”

“Okay, we left your Rover in its normal spot. What do you want for dinner, gorgeous?”

“Thank you, love. Chinese?” He yawned. “From that one really good place in Chinatown?”

She smiled. “Yeah, I can do that-”

“Excuse me…?”

She jumped, almost dropping her phone, and turned toward the girl. “Yeah?”

“Who’s tha’, love?”

“You’re Jamie Schwartz, right? Harry Styles’ girlfriend?”

She nodded sort of dumbly. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the fact that people, people who were not related to the music industry at all, knew her name.

“Jamie?”

“Are you on the phone with him?” The girl edged closer and Jamie took a step back, almost tripping over the low shelf of the vegetable aisle.

“Jaime? Are yeh okay?”

She nodded and then remembered, he couldn’t see her. “Yeah… I’m fine, baby. Just a fan. Just a second.” She smiled at the girl. “Yeah. I’m Jamie. What’s your name?”

“Candace.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” She shook the girl’s hand. “Sorry about that. I’ve a bit of a migraine. Makes me a little slow on the uptake.”

The girl shrugged. “I just wanted to say that the BTS of the tour is fantastic and you all looked like you had a blast.”

“BTS?”

“Behind the Scenes.”

The video of all the random shit they did to keep busy on the tour. She smiled. Harry had sent it out via youtube and twitter not long ago. Twitter fuckin’ imploded.

He hadn’t even really intended to ever release something like that, in fact most of it was shot on someone or another’s iPhone, not by his professional photography team, but so much of it had been legitimate comedic gold and it just seemed unfair to keep it to themselves.

It had everything from dance numbers (chiefly from The Best Song Ever music video complete with everyone wearing one of Harry’s big cheesy grins) and compilations of her and Mitch’s Riff-Offs, band members falling asleep in random places (shot mostly by Harry) and of her saying ‘Let’s do this shit’ over and over again… set to a sick drum beat laid down by Sarah.

It really was great.

Jaime smiled. “Oh. Yeah, we did have a blast. Fun group to tour with.”

“I think Harry may be the most extra person alive.”

“He has his moments.” Jamie smiled. “He can be dramatic but it keeps life interesting.”

“I am not dramatic!”

She grinned at the girl who probably couldn’t hear Harry and spoke into the phone. “Yes, you are, baby. But I do love you anyways.”

Candace smiled. “I also wanted to tell you that… I know you’ve gotten some hate from the fand- from his fans, that some people have said some really horrible things about you, but most of us love you and think you’re great and we want you two to be happy.” She took a deep breath. “We all, the normal fans, we all think he seems like he’s the happiest we’ve ever seen him. I want to thank you for that.”

Jamie smiled and set the broccoli that she’d been holding this whole time down. She held her arms out and wrapped Candace up in a hug. “Thank you, Candace. That is very much appreciated.”

She nodded and waved before quietly excusing herself.

“What did she say, love?”

Jamie smiled. “She said that they think you’re the happiest you’ve ever been. And then she thanked me for it. Sweet girl.”

She placed the take-out order as soon as Harry had to hang up to land. She made it home maybe ten minutes before he did, popping the cork on a bottle of wine and letting it breathe almost as soon as the grocery bags hit the counter.

She had just put the groceries away when she heard the door open. She smiled and made for the foyer, pausing in the archway to watch him toe off a boot. He was holding their take-out, plastic bag containing those distinctive cartons and he smiled at her.

“Come ‘ere, gorgeous woman.” He set the bag down and opened his arms. He caught her as she all but threw herself at him. Wrapping her legs around him, she sighed into his neck.

“I missed you, baby.”

He grinned and squeezed her tighter. “Ah… my pretty, little monster. I missed yeh too.”

“Even though it’s only been a week?” She leaned back and cupped his face in her hands.

Pursing his lips for a kiss, he nodded. “After the first five minutes, darling.”

She smiled and leaned in for the kiss. “I love you.”

“Love yeh too.” He carried her into the kitchen and set her on the counter, almost knocking over to open wine bottle and the glasses she’d set out.

She just managed to catch one of the glasses before it rolled away and cackled. “You are a menace. I swear, I just want to wrap you up in bubble wrap.”

He grinned. “I didn’t see them, love. Didn’t expect them to be there. Too busy suckin’ on yer neck.”

Leaning forward, she cupped his jaw and leaned in to slip her tongue into his mouth. He groaned, pulling her forward on the counter so she had to lean against him to stay upright.

She drew back and he followed her tongue, drawing her bottom lip between his as he started tugging rather incessantly at her flannel button-up. He tugged it down her shoulders until it got stuck in her elbows and pulled away from her lips to rasp, “Need yeh naked, love. Please.”

He reached down to unbutton her jeans and paused. “Wait, monster. Is your head still hurting?”

“Huh?”

He grinned. “You told the girl that you had a migraine. Are you okay now?”

“I love you.” She smiled up at him and kissed him. “Yes I’m fine. Please don’t ever stop being you, Haz.”

He blushed and kissed her again, his hands unbuttoning her jeans.

Shrugging the shirt off, and started at his buttons, not that there were many to undo, God bless him. She was working a hickey into his jaw, when she remembered. “Dinner, baby.”

His shirt dropped behind him and she ran her hands over his chest. He shook his head. “Need yeh naked. Now. Been hard for yeh since I called yeh. Love, I need yeh.”

She groaned and leaned forward to suck harshly on his collarbone, hands smoothing up his chest to bury in his hair. “Okay… We’ll eat later, we’ll eat... “ She moaned against his skin as he shimmied one large hand into her jeans, cupping her intimately.

Later, laying on the couch after a long, hot bath and reheated Chinese food, they settled in to Netflix binge, each sporting a nourishing layer of her Oatifix face mask and a glass of wine. He laid back against her, head against her breasts, his weight pleasant and comforting against her.

She ran her hands through his fringe, keeping the unruly hair from drifting into the sticky paste.

“Still no studio tomorrow?”

“Nope.” She shrugged. “It won’t do anything. You just can’t fix fucktard.”

He smiled softly. “What did he say, love? Tell me the truth.”

She sighed and ran her fingers through his fringe. “I knew you wouldn’t let this go.”

“Monster, I could tell yeh were still angry when I talked to yeh on the phone. Yeh never hold onto to things like that. So how bad was it?”

Jamie smiled. “Well, apparently I make ‘pop shit’ and I’m after his job.”

He looked rather amused. “In a screamo band? Yeh want his job in a screamo band?”

“Evidently. I also have a nefarious plan to contaminate his ‘art’ with my fake-psychedelics.”

“Oh?”

She chuckled and carded through his hair again. “Also, I think I have a right to do this… because I suck your dick. I mean he didn’t really get to finish that thought, Benny shut him down pretty quickly, but that is where it was going.”

Harry glowered at her over his shoulder, the expression a bit softened by the paste on his face. “Oh really?”

She shrugged. “It pissed me off for sure but I was going to let it go. I know the truth, this asshole clearly doesn’t. Also I suck your dick and I enjoy it, so why shouldn’t I?” Harry laid back against her chest and chuckled. “But then he finally ‘agreed’ to let me help and told me that he hated whammy and only liked heavy guitar strings. Like who the fuck are you? You don’t pay me, the studio pays me to help you sound your best. I don’t care what you like. If what you liked was good, they wouldn’t have brought me in.”

He snorted but arched to watch her face. She smiled and kissed his hair.

“That’s why all their shit sounds so muddy, they need at least one person not just strumming to some indiscernible beat.” She rolled her eyes. “So I tried to introduce a subtle melody, nothing crazy, just something to break up the constant wha-wha-wha. I ruined it by mentioning that he’d be able to play it on heavy strings if he wanted but that it’d be easier and more comfortable to play them on mediums.”

Harry turned to face her fully, pulling her legs into his lap. “And then wha’?”

She ran a hand over her face and sipped at her forgotten wine. “I shouldn’t have said anything. In the back of my mind, I knew I was poking at him-”

“You were offering your professional opinion which is part of your job. You’d be remiss not to mention it.” Harry shrugged. “He’s the fuckwit that let it hurt his feelings.”

She went to kiss his cheek but remembered that his face, like hers was covered in an oat-y, gritty mask. “We need to get this stuff off our faces.”

He nodded and let her up, throwing an arm over her shoulder. “And then what happened?”

She sighed. “He just lost it, ranted about me trying to change his style, the whole style of the band, called me some names, made some insinuations. His bandmates tried to check him but then he hollered at them for a bit and stormed off.” Jamie huffed.

He frowned and motioned her into the en suite before him. They took up position at their respective sinks and he sighed, washing his face. “I like the way this stuff smells.”

She nodded. “It makes me think of how warm and sweet your mom’s house always smells.”

“Yes! That’s what it is!” Harry grinned. “I couldn’t place it.”

She threw a towel at him. “You’re drippin’.”

He grinned. “So were yeh… not three hours ago.”

She let him pull her into his arms and kissed at his jaw. “You and your dirty puns…”

“Nothing dirty here, love. I am so fresh… so clean, clean. Took a bath, washed my face.”

She laughed, throwing her head back. “Very true.”

He kissed her head. “What’re yeh planning te do then, love?”

“About that guitarist?” He nodded and she shrugged. “I’ve already written the melodies for the songs that needed it most. I’ll deliver them to Benny. I get paid anyways. He’ll just have to figure it out for himself.”

He nodded. “Sounds good.”

She kissed his chest, right next to the little monster charm she gave him almost a year ago. “Thank you for listening. I appreciate it.”

“Thank you for telling me.” Harry buried his face in her hair. “I just want te support yeh the way yeh support me.”

She smiled against his skin. “How do you mean?”

“Love, whenever I’m with you, I’m allowed to just be me. I can be goofy and stupid. I can be sensitive and intelligent. I can like football and candles and take baths in rose-scented water and do face masks with you. You don’t judge. You won’t judge. I don’t feel like I’m being edited at all. None of that will turn you off…”

She made a face. “I don’t know, baby… the Packers though…”

He put his hand over her mouth. “Shh… woman, don’t ruin the moment.”

She smiled under his palm and kissed it. “I love you. For you. That includes but is not limited to those suits I’m not as fond of as your other suits, your candles, your god-awful taste in NFL teams and everything else. I love you.”

“Which suits?”

She mimed zipping her lips.

“But no, love. Really. Which suits?”

Part X Up Next: Part XII

[kvndeathmusic]

THE BEST RECORDS OF THE 2010S PT 2 (THE TOP 10!!!!!!)

if you thought the last post was long, you just wait. ive also decided to actually number this list, but pls keep in mind my opinions change often and drastically so dont think anything is set here.

please read my other post too if you want to know about the records i like a little less than the ones here as well as some honorable mentions

#10: Some Rap Songs  -  Earl Sweatshirt (2018) 

This record is a perfect fusion of rap and lofi hip hop. Nobody makes a beat like Earl, and this record is a perfect example. Earl uses his samples to create layered soundscapes of distorted vocals and sounds, paired with his emotionally blunt flows. It’s short, but it really doesn’t feel that short, and frankly I could re-listen to it a handful of times in a row and probably not care that much. Not to sound like Todd Howard, but it just works dude. 

#9:  ゼロコンマ、色とりどりの世界   -  Mass of the Fermenting Dregs (2010)

According to Google, this record’s title translates to Zero Comma, Multicolored World. Which is interesting. I wish I knew Japanese just to understand this kind of stuff to be honest. But that’s besides the point.

Zero Comma, Multicolored World is a fantastic collection of tracks from my personal favorite J-Rock band, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. Like for context, I got into this band around the same time as I got into Nirvana. I spent the entire summer of 2016 crying to In Utero, playing Overwatch while listening to MF DOOM, and jamming to Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. I managed to find a copy of their fantastic self-titled EP when I was in Tokyo a few years back. Anyways I’ve gotten off track. 

This record is a breathe of fresh air for those tired of American “alt-rock”, incorporating elements of shoegaze, post-hardcore, pop, and more to create a totally unique and explosive record. Every member of this band is playing out of their minds on some of these tracks, and lead singer/bassist Natsuko Miyamoto’s vocals are powerful and blend so well with everything else this record offers. At this point in most paragraphs I’d gush about some specific tracks but I don’t have a Japanese keyboard to write the track titles and I’m lazy, so just trust me and go listen to this record, their self-titled EP, the reunion record No New World from 2018, and their EP World is Yours if anything I’ve said interests you. 

#8: Fetch  -  Melt-Banana (2013)

This record melts my fucking brain dude. Melt-Banana is some of the most eccentric and weird music I’ve ever heard, blending noise, punk, and just plain absurdity to create music that I want to simultaneously describe as cursed and blessed. From the wailing walls of pure volume coming from the guitars to the sporatic and often manic vocals, this record sounds like no other I’ve ever heard. My personal favorite tracks are Hive, Candy Gun, Zero, and Schemes of the Tails. Seriously, if this sounds interesting to you, set aside 32 minutes to just appreciate this record. It’ll be worth your time. 

#7: Joy as an Act of Resistance - IDLES (2018)

On Joy as an Act of Resistance, British band IDLES offers up some of the best punk of the decade in a package that is full of hope, anger, and love. From singer Joe Talbot’s cries for unity in tracks like Danny Nedelko and Great, to self love anthems like Television and I’m Scum, Joy offers an alternative to their much angrier and sad 2017 debut record Brutalism, which I now realize I forgot to include on my fucking honorable mentions god damn it. Anyways, this record isn’t all sweet. IDLES tackles some heavier topics on this record as well, with songs like Samaritans dismantling toxic masculinity, Rottweiler tearing into sensationalist news and media, and the introspective June seeing Joe speak bluntly about his experience being the father of a stillborn. It’s also some of the unique punk out there at the moment, with jangly guitar “riffs”, Joe’s accent heavy shouts, and noisey drums. IDLES is definitely a band to pay attention to going into the 20s. 

#6: Adults!!!... Smart!!! Shithammered!!! And Excited By Nothing!!!!!  -  Bomb the Music Industry (2010)

Adults!!! is short, coming in at 21 minutes over the course of 7 tracks. And yet, this EP contains some of the catchiest and refined ska punk of the decade. The record acts almost as a condensed summation of BTMI’s entire career, featuring some of the repeated themes that has defined Jeff’s whole discography. Not only that, but some of BTMI’s best tracks are on this EP, from Jeff’s strained vocals on You Still Believe in Me?, to the peppy and depressing Planning My Death, to the defiant Slumlord and the explosive penultimate track, The First Time I Met Sanawon. I could wish it was longer, but I’ll be honest, with the quality of tracks here, I don’t care. It’s a near flawless EP that represents everything I love about one of my favorite bands ever.

#5: The Money Store - Death Grips (2012)

Like Fetch, The Money Store is similarly mind melting in completely different ways. This record is brutal. MC Ride’s “vocals” are like no other, with some describing them as the shouts of a drugged up homeless man. Paired with ear bursting, stereo busting beats, and esoteric dark flows, the picture this record paints is one of filth and primal violence. And I love every minute of it. And despite the harsh nature of this record, some of these beats fucking slap. This record features some of the weirdest uses of sampling, like seriously who the fuck finds Arabic Nokia ringtones and thinks “yeah let’s sample these in like half the tracks on this record” and make it sound this good. And at times I have no clue how they even managed to make some of the sounds they did. All of this is backed with Zack Hill’s extremely technical and wild drumming. I contemplated putting other Death Grips records in this spot, but The Money Store is the complete DG package. It also has Hacker on it. im in your area 

#4: Teens of Denial  -  Car Seat Headrest (2016)

I’m a fucking moron and I’ll tell you why. When I initially heard the first few tracks from this record when I was 17, I wasn’t that blown away. Like, I added Fill in the Blank, Vincent, and Destroyed by Hippie Powers to my big ass shuffle playlist and didn’t bother digging much deeper. Here I am now, 20 years old, kicking myself in the ASS for overlooking Car Seat Headrest for this long. I only gave this album a proper listen to back in January! And I LOVE it! Teens of Denial is a fantastic record, full of complex, multilayered tracks that are not only incredibly catchy, but full of heart and passion. Lead singer and songwriter Will Toledo has voice that sounds equally uneasy and leaking with confidence, and that confidence spills over into every aspect of this record. While not as emotionally intense as their only other studio LP as of February 2020, Teens of Denial is just track after track of some of the greatest indie rock made this decade. Including the songs I mentioned before, you’ve also got Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales, 1937 State Park, and the powerful Cosmic Hero. And if you like reading, the narrative of this record is interesting to follow.  And while I was working on this list they literally just announced a new record so like I’m fucking hyped dude. 

#3: To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar (2015)

Ok. Look. I know everybody is putting this at their #1 spot. And they probably have even more to say about this record than I do. There’s probably nothing I can say that hasn’t been said a million times by literally everyone. But that’s just a testament to the quality of this record. This is one of the greatest hip hop records ever made, if not the best depending on who you ask. Some of my favorite rap songs are on this record, Wesley’s Theory, King Kunta, Alright, The Blacker The Berry, and more. TPAB offers detailed glimpses into one of the biggest rappers in the world’s psyche and pain, mixed with profound social and political messages. The beats on this record are beautifully mixed with jazz and gospel influences, starting a trend many artists have since continued. And Kendrick’s signature flow from gkmc are at their absolute finest on TPAB. There is something to enjoy out of this record no matter your background, which would explain this record’s near universal appeal. To Pimp a Butterfly is just full of life, energy, and passion. It’s weird to think this record is only 5 years old, because it feels just as powerful as it did when it came out.

#2: Twin Fantasy - Car Seat Headrest (2018)

Twin Fantasy is a rare kind of record. The emotions expressed on this record are intense and laid flat out for you to hear, dissect, and empathize with. The entire record being structured around the idea of reflection works both as a fun way to organize a diverse and varied track listing, while also playing into a handful of the record’s motifs and themes. Speaking of which, each song on this album has a unique identity, both in terms of sound and feeling, and how it plays into the larger narrative of this record. Some songs have multiple tonal shifts, such as the epic Beach Life-In-Death, split into three distinct parts making it a song that, despite its 13 minute run-time, is a song I never grow tired of listening to. What each track shares, however, is the same fantastic songwriting, with layered instrumentals and some of Will’s greatest vocal performances. It also helps that all the tracks are just flat out catchy, like the fantastic Bodies, the chill Sober to Death, and the energetic Nervous Young Inhumans. While the 2011 original is great, the 2018 rerecording adds so much new complexity and clarity to this record. In addition to the original themes, the 2018 version adds new perspectives and meta commentary to the 2011 original, with Will reflecting on the feelings he was experiences at the time he wrote the original record, 7 years afterwards, adding an additional layer to this record’s larger narrative. The final 22 minutes of this record provides a strong emotional climax to the record, sending off a fantastic and absolutely classic record. There’s a good chance that, in 10 more years or so, I may look back at this record and put it above my #1 record. Hell, while I write this I really question whether or not I should do it. What I’m trying to say is, take that #2 with a grain of salt, because I love this record just as much as my #1 at this point. No record has managed to leave such a profound and strong impression on me this quickly after my first listen a few months ago, besides Twin Fantasy. Because Twin Fantasy is a rare kind of record. It’s a perfect record.  And now it’s time for my favorite record of the decade. It’s probably obvious what it is considering some of the things I’ve said on this list, so without any more delay...

#1: WORRY.  -  Jeff Rosenstock (2016)

WORRY. is my personal favorite record of the decade and of all time. It is an absolutely triumphant record. Every song here is a classic. WORRY. radiates pure, unfiltered energy that I haven’t been able to shake for the nearly 4 years this record has been out. Songs like Festival Song and Wave Goodnight to Me still get me pumped, and the so called “WORRY. medley” that spans the back half of this record rivals the medley of Abbey Road. And the opening track, We Begged 2 Explode, fuck man it’s a hell of an opener. Hell, I know every line spoken on this record. This record is a product of a man who has spent over 20 years perfecting his music, never compromising to trends or demands. Jeff has always been open about what he loves and what he believes in, and it’s no more apparent than on this record. Trying to describe every way in which this record works for me leaves me grasping for the right words to describe the feeling. It’s a record that makes you wanna chant along to it, move your body to it, and tell everyone you love about it.  So just listen to it. I don’t care if you don’t like punk, or ska, or ska punk, or just garage/indie rock in general, or if my enthusiasm hasn’t sold you. This is one of the best records out there and you can either realize it now, or regret it later. 

I know the record literally says that the perfect sound doesn’t exist. But it does. And it sounds like this.

And that’s it for this list. I’m excited to see what the new decade brings. If my mind ever changes about these records, or I get around to listening to a record that deserves to be on this list, maybe I’ll do an updated version, but like right now? This is how I feel.