Now more than any ever we have unlimited access to the art of music
Not too long ago, finding new music took a walk to the record store to ask the employees what they recommended. These audio aficionados were real human beings with ears for music and the knowledge to point out what constitutes art worth listening to. In that same spirit, new music had long presented itself to consumers in the shape of the live show, something we’re generally bereft of in a pandemic world. Opening acts allowed patrons to discover a performer often unknown to them, giving listeners the chance to come to their own conclusions.
With the introduction of countless streaming services, infinite artists and genres are accessible at any given time. These have opened the doors to vast historical catalogues of music from Cab Calloway to Brian Eno, or from swing to shoegaze. There is no doubt that this is a fortunate time to be a lover of music, but at the heart of all these streaming services is something to remember: they are businesses, and businesses love to collect data.
Take Spotify’s privacy policy for example, which outlines their use of user data which includes search queries, streaming history, user-created playlists, browsing history, account settings, and much more. Most of this is used “to provide the personalized Spotify Service,” and “to evaluate and develop new features, technologies, and improvements to the Spotify Service.”
In this sense, the algorithm is always ahead of its listeners, basing recommendations on their digital footprints. Although streaming services offer discovery playlists, they are still generated by the service itself. As a result of this, it becomes easy to fall into a loop of listening to similar artists from similar periods over and over again. You don’t need to know who Cocteau Twins or Car Seat Headrest are to have good music taste, but you can do better than the cheap recommendations produced by your own habits.
All of this begs the question: what’s the answer to big tech mirroring our tastes back to us? Not everyone has parents with a basement full of vinyl records and a turntable waiting to be discovered. In this regard, it would suit us to find and define music for ourselves. With sites like Rate Your Music or Chosic, the experience of discovering new music without any personal data required can be achieved in a time where live shows are sparse. With music so easily accessible these days, it becomes easier and easier to forget that music is an art form — and the act of discovering it should be an art form as well.
Certified Lover Boy might be Drake’s most unambitious release yet
There are only a few artists in this world that, whatever your age is, you know about them. Artists that with a single release, can command the attention of the public. Drake is one of them. Everytime he drops a project, it’s a cultural event. Everybody listens to the record and it always breaks records. No matter how good or bad the album is, everyone is talking about it.
Certified Lover Boy opens strong with “Champagne Poetry,” where a laid back and introspective Drake raps over a well integrated sample of “Michelle” by The Beatles. Following the opener, the album struggles to find a pulse with multiple unoriginal and uninspired songs in a row. The third track, “Girls Want Girls,” might be one of Drake’s worst songs to date. One of the worst bars of the track sees him, in poor choice, saying, “Say that you a lesbian, girl, me too,” over one of the most generic and lifeless instrumentals Drake could have ever chosen to rap on.
Another track that drags Certified Lover Boy down is “Way 2 Sexy.” The song, featuring Future and Young Thug, is a horrible rendition of Right Said Fred’s song, “I’m Too Sexy” (which is also not a great song). From this point on, the record doesn’t really try to redeem itself. It continues to be as boring and uneventful as the first few tracks.
Part of what disappoints in Certified Lover Boy is hearing Drake be consistently outshined by his features on songs like “In The Bible,” “Love All,” and “Fountains.” The most obvious example is “IMY2,” a track that sees Drake hosting Kid Cudi, and one that feels forced onto the tracklist considering the nonexistent chemistry between the two artists. All of these have the recurring theme of Drake underperforming while the featured artist tries to save the song — but it’s too late.
There are a few highlights on this bloated tracklist. “Fair Trade,” which contains the most infectious chorus of the record, “Knife Talk,” “You Only Live Twice” and the aggressive “No Friends In The Industry” are all shining moments. They are gems in their own right as they redeem the album a bit, but by this point, the damage is done.
The biggest issue with Certified Lover Boy is that it completely lacks ambition. Many of the songs shouldn’t have made the final cut in the first place. Since Scorpion in 2018, Drake has not stepped out of his comfort zone. He has been delivering the same formula for more than three years now. You could take any song on Certified Lover Boy and put it on either Scorpion or Dark Lane Demo Tapes and the song wouldn’t feel out of place at all.
Certified Lover Boy’s 21 songs and an hour and a half run time is too much for it to be so poor in quality. If this is what new Drake looks like, then we have certainly witnessed the end of his prime. If he keeps dropping albums as mediocre as this one, we can’t expect to keep the rapper at the top of the game with countless other artists putting out quality projects.
After over a year of delays, teasing and announcements, Kanye West’s tenth studio album has been released at last. Donda, named after West’s late mother, was originally slated for a July 2020 release, but turned into frequent delays that saw it pushed further and further with no official tracks ever coming out. This led to a series of listening parties hosted by West throughout the summer, leading fans and listeners into what has been one of, if not the most anticipated album of the year.
Donda marks West’s first album since 2019’s JESUS IS KING, and continues to create sounds that bring together genres like gospel, rap, and ambient. However, the album falls short on listeners with its overbearing length. Coming in at a whopping 108 minutes of playtime, Donda is a difficult listen for one sitting, and is now the longest project in West’s discography.
Thematically, Donda is not much different from the artist’s last two bodies of work, ye and JESUS IS KING. West’s raps focus on his Christian faith and his family with the help of choirs, synths, and organs, leaving this album almost as a continuation of these older projects. Tracks like “Come to Life” and “Pure Souls” could just have easily come from JESUS IS KING.
Like any Kanye West album, Donda is ripe with features from a plethora of artists such as The Weeknd, Playboi Carti and Travis Scott, just to name a few. Throughout the 27-track project there are a great deal of highlights surrounded by moments that are questionable. While some features are incredibly compatible with their beats such as Jay-Z on “Jail,” there are also features whose verses simply lack a connection with the track, like the late Pop Smoke’s verse on “Tell The Vision.”
There are a great deal of homages to Donda West, such as West rapping “And if I talk to Christ, can I bring my mother back to life?” It’s moments like these that offer a glimpse into the love that West has for his mother and touch back to the idea of a tribute album. On the other hand there are insipid verses such as Baby Keem’s on “Praise God,” that seem to be nothing more than random words over a beat. While the diverse range of collaborators can draw in listeners of other fanbases, some end up souring the notion that this album is supposed to honour someone’s life.
Powerful tracks like “Hurricane” or the beautiful “Jesus Lord” are moments where this album excels, but they get lost in a sea of too many tracks on one record. As a result of this long and seemingly unending listen, Donda sounds like the work of a perfectionist who didn’t know where to stop — which is a shame for the casual listener that will not listen to almost 30 tracks straight.
At its core, Donda would have made for an incredible 12 to 15 track project if fewer songs made the final cut. With the amount of talent poured into the writing and production credits there is something to be said about West’s perfectionism, but at the same time the album is too long for its own good. As a work with multiple tracks that serve as multi-minute interludes and songs that have part ones and two, this album feels like it has too much going on to be a cohesive body of work.
Frank Ocean's Blonde, styled on the physical album release as Blond... it's confusing.
The acclaimed album is more than a collection of songs.
The end of August marks the fifth anniversary of Frank Ocean’s 2016 masterpiece, Blonde. The album came a day after the release of Ocean’s Endless, a visual album released under Def Jam Recordings. This was a punch in the gut to Def Jam, seeing as Endless satisfied the conditions of Ocean’s contract with them. The promotion used for it ended up generating attention for Blonde, which was released under Ocean’s own label, Boys Don’t Cry, exclusively licensed to Apple Music for a deal rumoured to be worth 20 million dollars.
Independence plays a large part in both the conception and musicality of Blonde. Throughout the album Ocean has multiple solo writing credits, and most others are just him and a few others –– a feat that is becoming uncommon in an increasingly collaborative music industry (Kanye West’s “Pure Souls” from Donda alone has 11 writers credited, as a recent example). Moreover, there is not a single song on the album that does not list Ocean himself as one of the producers.
On the surface, Blonde is the most airy sounding project in Ocean’s discography, where the majority of the album is upheld by gentle chords, beatless melodies and drum loops. Yet instrumentals are not the focal point of this album: the storytelling is. Still, Ocean’s minimalist approach to the production stretches the definition of R&B pretty thin, creating the ethos of this album with an emphasis on lyrics and story. In this sense, he threads a needle, touching on places and feelings but never giving enough away to the listener for any major dots to be connected.
In a 2016 New York Times interview, Ocean describes his commitment to his storytelling on the album, saying, “How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves, we know the story, we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.”
Following a strong opening collection of songs with “Nikes,” “Ivy,” and “Pink + White,” Blonde reaches its midway point with “Nights.” The first half is bolstered by an upbeat rap and spoken word track that sees Ocean describing a previous relationship. After the guitar-laden beat switch moves into a calmer, more subdued rhythm, Ocean raps about his history having moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In a BBC interview he admitted that he hated it at first.
Part of what makes Blonde such a complete and cohesive work is its use of skits, interludes, and a reprise to tie everything together. The use of interludes starts as a voicemail on the fourth track, “Be Yourself,” and continues onto the following tracks, “Good Guy,” “Facebook Story,” “Pretty Sweet,” before ending with “Close to You” as the last interlude leading into the album’s final four tracks. What these tracks do is almost equivalent to a palate cleanser before the album progresses into the following songs. Towards the end of the record, the narratives of “Facebook Story” and “Close to You” set up the broken-hearted ambience that is laid down by Ocean’s love story gone amiss on “White Ferrari.”
To put Blonde into words is not an easy thing to do. There’s a lot going on at the same time but it works. It is the sound of a vision fully realized, and there is something ineffable about the way this album felt back in 2016. Around its release was a very special period of anticipation and excitement that brought people together in a way not many artists have been able to match since then.
To this day, Blonde has aged beautifully. It has received widespread acclaim, and has since become the zeitgeist of a special period in music: the 2010s. Considering the story behind the album and how it has continued to inspire musicians since, it’s fair to say that Blonde is a record that will transcend time and continue to be revered as one of the best albums of our generation.
A decade on, the genre’s then-rookies have continued to have a lasting impact with several remaining in hip hop’s upper echelon.
When sports fans discuss the greatest draft classes of all time, there are a few that are a necessary inclusion on any list. Whether it be the ’96 NBA draft class, the ’83 NFL draft class or the ’03 NHL draft class, the best ones see a high volume of players go on to become all-time greats within their respective leagues.
In hip hop, while there’s no official “draft” per se, one can still apply that logic to the crop of new artists in a given year and look at the impact they’ve had since entering the game. When you take that into account, it’s clear to see that some of these “draft classes” are stronger than others, but none in recent memory are stronger than the class of 2011.
Now, due to the lack of an objective drafting process, selecting the rappers from this class is based solely on which artists had their breakthrough moments, either albums or singles, in 2011. When looking at these moments, the focus isn’t necessarily on mainstream success, but moments in which they gained considerable notoriety within their respective lanes in the genre.
For example, we can look at artists like Danny Brown who, while swimming in critical acclaim for the last decade or so, may not have the sales figures of a major label artist with a big budget. Regardless, he’s been one of hip hop’s most consistent artists of the last decade, with project after project finding their home on a multitude of album of the year lists, starting with 2011’s XXX. The project is incredibly unique and introspective, and while it wasn’t his debut, it was the first to put Brown in the spotlight, bringing him near-universal acclaim and showing his potential to become one of the genre’s all-time greats.
Similarly, Tyler, the Creator has found his way on many of those lists in recent years as well, following excellent releases like Flower Boy and IGOR. His emergence on the scene in 2011 came as the cockroach-eating shock rapper in the “Yonkers” video, which was one of hip hop’s biggest moments that year. The video went viral and, while his debut album Goblin wasn’t as well-received by critics as his 2009 mixtape Bastard was, it did help to build a cult-like following for the young artist and his group Odd Future. Ten years on, Tyler is now a Grammy winner and one of hip hop’s most prominent and adventurous figures, who’s become revered by both fans and critics alike for his development and experimental nature.
That growth and willingness to take risks is one of the ways that artists ensure longevity and continued success in the industry, and another 2011 draft pick who embodied that growth and progress was the late, great, Mac Miller. Now it’s arguable that 2010 would be Mac’s rookie season so to speak, with his first big mixtape K.I.D.S. dropping that year. However, Mac not only dropped a well-received mixtape in 2011 with Best Day Ever, but he also released his first platinum single “Donald Trump” as well as his debut album Blue Slide Park, which went on to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, the first independent debut to do so since 1995. From that point until his tragic passing in 2018, Miller grew from a traditional rapper to a multi-faceted, genre-blending artist whose creative output grew more and more unique with each subsequent release, becoming one of his generation’s most important voices.
Each generation of music has its defining artists in each genre – The Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Prince, etc. and there aren’t many talents that define this generation of hip hop more than Kendrick Lamar. In 2011, Kendrick released his debut album Section.80 to heaps of praise from critics, gaining notability from fans and fellow artists alike, leading to his eventual signing with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath record label.
The album jump-started what has become one of hip hop’s most impressive and consistent discographies, with his next three albums all receiving platinum and multi-platinum certifications, massive critical acclaim, several Grammy wins and even a Pulitzer Prize. Kendrick has gone on to become an all-time great that many people consider to be a top 5-10 talent in the genre’s history, one of music’s most important voices today – proving himself to be the MVP of the 2011 draft class in the process.
This is no small feat, as the class includes not only the artists mentioned above but also acts like Future, Meek Mill, Big K.R.I.T., YG, 2 Chainz, A$AP Rocky, Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, to name a few — all of whom have a presence that’s still felt today. It’s a group so absolutely stacked with talent that its impact is undeniable and hasn’t even come close to being duplicated since. 2011’s roster is one that represents a special time in hip hop, one that has gone on to shape the genre since.
The re-recording and release of Swift’s sophomore album is more than just a makeover.
On Taylor Swift’s sophomore album Fearless, the then-18-year-old singer begged to be saved, but no one was coming to the rescue. Thirteen years later, Swift holds back from altering that innocence with wisdom while re-recording, and captures the same confusion and passion of youth on Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
The now-31-year-old has explored indie-pop on her last two albums; the first of which, Folklore, won her a Grammy for Album Of The Year. In her latest release, Swift sheds the maturity that she has gained over the years and goes back to her country roots, singing about being caught in the rain, 2:00 a.m., or passionate screaming matches (“Fearless,” “Hey Stephen,” “Breathe,” “The Way I loved You,” “Come In With The Rain,” and “The Other Side Of The Door”).
The production is cleaner, and her voice has improved, but at the end of the day, Swift stayed incredibly loyal to the original tracks. The point of the re-recordings is not to perfect these songs; Swift decided to re-record Fearless in order to regain ownership of them.
When her contract with Big Machine Records ended in 2018, she left and signed with Universal’s Republic Records. In her new deal, Swift made sure she has ownership of all her future masters. Regardless, Big Machine still owned the masters of her first six albums. They sold them to private-equity group Ithaca Holdings, which is owned by music manager Scooter Braun.
Swift has spoken publicly about Braun bullying her about the masters, proceeding to sell them for a reported $300 million to Shamrock Holdings. Even after the sale, Braun still profits off streams of Swift’s first six albums. In retaliation, she decided to re-record the tracks, so her fans can play her versions instead of ones that benefit Braun. In an Instagram post, Swift writes that she believes that all artists should own their own songs, captioning the picture with “The artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.”
On Fearless (Taylor’s Version), she embraces her past, instead of shying away from it. Sung years later, and with the added context of time, the lyrics take on new meanings. On “Fifteen” she sings, “Count to ten / Take it in / This is life before you know who you’re gonna be.” She expresses that there was no need for her to be in a rush to grow up and figure everything out. There is peace within the chaotic process of being lost in dreams of alternate futures.
The original “Forever and Always” is filled with Swift’s signature revenge-filled lyrics, sung in a bitter and sarcastic tone, but fans have noticed that the newest version has a completely different feeling. When she sings, “Baby what happened? Please tell me,” the lyric is filled with insecurity, confusion as to where everything went wrong, and most of all, a deep sense of sadness. While years later, Swift forgets about the anger she felt, she remembers the pain her younger self was in, and expresses compassion and understanding towards it. Somehow, in the re-release, Swift has managed to become even more vulnerable with her fans.
Alternatively, ”White Horse” comes off as much lighter in the newest version. Previously, it was sung from a girl in the process of moving on, while now it is sung by a woman who has completely moved on. Fans hear the lyrics, “I’m gonna find someone someday / Who might actually treat me well” as more affirmative than just merely hopeful, knowing that she is currently in a long-term relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn who has been the subject of love songs in her last three albums.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is filled with anger towards boys that broke her heart, herself, and the world. At 18-years-old, Swift writes about fairytale love stories in some songs, while in others she is perplexed as to why there does not seem to be any happy endings. The album shows an inner battle between fantasy and reality.
“Change” takes on a completely new meaning in the face of the conflict that ignited these re-recordings. She sings, “It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair.” After being in the music industry for over a decade, Swift is very aware that the way it works is far from just. Confidently, Swift sings, “These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down.” In revisiting her work, not only does she get to explore the anger that comes with youth, but also the unquenchable hope.
While the six previously unreleased songs have the same lyrical tropes that we see throughout Fearless, they sound much more similar to her later work. Swift had no obligation to copy the country style of earlier versions, so she took advantage of this freedom to play around with them. This resulted in these added tracks having more breathing room and a melodic sound. In “You All Over Me (feat. Maren Morris),” Swift explores how she cannot shed her past. “But like the dollar in your pocket, it’s been spent and traded in,” she sings. “You can’t change where it’s been.”
With Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift rescues and reclaims what is rightfully hers: her past.
ROADRUNNER is a return to the lively energetic form BROCKHAMPTON became known for.
BROCKHAMPTON’s newest LP ROADRUNNER is a departure from the depressive and mellow aesthetic of their last album GINGER, as this new record sees the boy band going towards a more mature and hopeful direction.
ROADRUNNER is BROCKHAMPTON’s seventh major release in five years, and even though there was a year-and-a half-long wait for a new record, which seems like an eternity for the band, they did the right thing — taking time for themselves to breathe and let the dust settle after GINGER.
On GINGER, BROCKHAMPTON’s mood was at an all-time-low, mostly dealing with the departure of member Ameer Vann, resulting in some of their most downhearted and desperate songs to date. ROADRUNNER truly proves that the boy band has turned the page for good on this somber chapter by delivering one of their most focused and absorbing projects to date.
The band is undoubtedly in great shape on this new album and offers anything you would want or see from a BROCKHAMPTON record. They deliver their most aggressive and in-your-face bangers like on “BANKROLL” and on the abrasive opener “BUZZCUT,” which, in the context of the album, strikes even harder than solely as a single. They also haven’t shied away from making some of the most polished and sweetest pop tunes in the industry with songs like “I’LL TAKE YOU ON” and “WHAT’S THE OCCASION?” — both containing some of their most infectious and enticing choruses to date.
As is standard on a BROCKHAMPTON album, we can’t forget a bearface-led outro track that instantly puts you in your feelings, like on “DEAR LORD.” The boy band still finds time to unwind with some laid back and feel-good rap unmissables with songs such as “WHEN I BALL” and “WINDOWS,” the latter being a posse cut that sees every member come up with a hard-hitting verse. ROADRUNNER surely has something for everyone to enjoy while also being extremely reliable.
Kevin Abstract and Dom McLennon especially shine on this project with introspective verses, dropping one bar after another. Highlights include Kevin’s verse on “BUZZCUT,” “THE LIGHT” and on “THE LIGHT PT.II,” and Dom’s verses on “CHAIN ON” and “WHEN I BALL.”
Although the performances are top-notch, it is the production that unquestionably steals the show. Every single beat on this project is incredibly well-crafted and thoughtful, all aiming for a clear sentiment in their own unique way. Some of the best instrumentals include “COUNT ON ME,” “BANKROLL,” and “THE LIGHT.”
ROADRUNNER is the closest BROCKHAMPTON has come to reaching the level of greatness they once achieved on the legendary SATURATION trilogy, with the new endeavour seeing the boy band pursue this epic run. This new album is another incredible installment in their discography and is one of their most consistent and meticulous efforts yet.
Kristian North wasn’t originally set on making a career out of music, but now he’s coming into his own.
Being the son of two Broadway veterans, Montreal-based Kristian North’s love for music was almost written in the stars. North began his musical journey more than 20 years ago, playing music at an early age, but his passion truly came to fruition when he started playing in bands during his teenage years. Since then, pursuing a career in music has never been out of his radar.
Before becoming a solo artist, North was the frontman of the punk garage band Babysitter, where he performed all over Canada and the United States with his bandmates. After releasing their last project in 2015, the group disbanded. This was an opportunity for North to explore different music genres and to completely redefine his sound.
In the past three years, North’s musical journey has been quite a hectic ride. In 2018, he released his debut album, TheLast Rock ‘n’ Roll Record, which he qualified as a “lyrical ode to the so-called death of rock ‘n roll.” This ‘80s rock-inspired record was quickly contrasted by the two alt-country/rock songs he released last summer, “So Called John” and “Circle of Life.” Now, here we are, with his forthcoming sophomore LP, Passion Play, a disco and new wave record, to be released on April 30 via his label Mothland.
When comparing Passion Play to his first album, North associates one to a compilation of short stories and the other to a long novel. When reminiscing about writing TheLast Rock ‘n’ Roll Record, Kristian admits the album took a very long time to finish because he dove way too deep into the concept. For Passion Play, he wanted the eight songs of the album to have their own story plot while remaining sonically cohesive.
The album’s first single, “Fantasy,” released last February, perfectly sets the tone for what the record is going to sound like. When listening to the song, the funky guitar grooves of Janelle Monáe’s “Make Me Feel” or of Prince’s “THE GOLD STANDARD” instantly come to mind.
Though North is very proud of the entirety of his project, he has some favourites; one he is particularly proud of lyrically would be “Halfway To Heaven.” This song’s writing process took over six months to complete and is, according to him, one of the more crafted and significant songs on the record. He is also particularly proud of his second single “Genius Of Song,” for both its lyrical and sonic quality.
While North has had the chance to perform online live sessions like LePhoque OFF festivaland The New Colossus Festival, he is looking forward to performing the songs of his album with a physical audience as it is one of the elements of music he truly cherishes.
The Concordian spoke with Kristian North to talk about his musical evolution and to know more about his forthcoming sophomore album Passion Play.
TC: Has music always been in your peripheral as a career?
KN: I mean, I never thought too much about the future or anything like that. But I don’t ever recall having any moment in my life where I thought I’d ever go study for a particular career. And while I wouldn’t go as far as saying I have a music “career,” I do think music has always been one of my main focuses in life.
TC: You first were in the garage punk band Babysitter. Since then, you’ve made a stark shift in the kind of music you make. What led you to this reinvention of your craft?
KN: I guess there’s a strong aesthetic difference in my music before and after Babysitter, but I’d say that the songwriting aspect has kind of always headed toward the same direction. I even think that what Babysitter was doing musically towards the end, leading to this, makes some sort of “twisted” sense.
TC: Do you feel more creatively free as a solo artist?
KN: Yes and no. I mean, Babysitter was a pretty “free” band. But now, the compositional method is kind of different; the songs are a bit more thought-out now. Babysitter was mostly about improvisation when crafting the songs, and the structures were never quite as solidified as there are for me now.
TC: On your Bandcamp, you’ve referred to the music of Elvis Costello, Roxy Music and Warren Zevon as the foundation of your music. Have these artists had a particular impact on your musical self-discovery?
KN: Those artists are mostly musicians who people have compared me to, but I do really like these artists. A few artists who’ve greatly influenced my music, especially for this new album, would be Marvin Gaye and Zapp.
TC: Knowing you were in the process of making Passion Play when the pandemic hit, how did it change your creative flow?
KN: I mean the pandemic is crazy (laughs), but for me, it’s been generally a positive experience. I have a studio I’m working in every day, I’m writing, I’m recording… I miss the live aspect of music, for sure, but I know it will come back one day. So far it’s been a really good opportunity to get some work done. I’d even go as far as saying it accelerated the process of Passion Play.
What’s next for you?
KN: I don’t know to be honest, we’re kind of just waiting right now to see how this album will be received. Hopefully, we get this thing [COVID-19] under control and get some shows. And if not, we’ll just start working on the next one!
TikTok’s newest music meme does more harm than good
Picture it: you’re at a house show (pre-pandemic obviously), you get approached by a ghostly guy in Dickies and Vans sneakers, boasting a small rolled-up beanie with a cigarette behind his ear. He introduces himself and then leans in to sarcastically ask you if you know the band that’s playing, because they’re really experimental y’know, you probably wouldn’t get it.
While I’m sure this brand of interaction has happened to many women in alt music scenes (I’ve definitely met my share of pretentious music bros), this sort of exaggeratedly misogynistic conversation has become more of a meme than anything. Online spaces love to continue rehashing the “indie music bro”/“softboy” archetype that’s been popular for around five or so years now. However, recently he’s gotten a more nefarious makeover: the male manipulator.
The hashtag “male manipulator music” has 18.6 million views on TikTok, so what exactly are the teens talking about?
Trying to pin down what artists are considered “male manipulator music” is a fool’s errand. When going down the rabbithole of TikToks and Spotify playlists, additions of bands like The Smiths may lure you into a sense of understanding. The band is largely connected to media portrayals of the so-called male manipulators in 500 Days of Summer and High Fidelity, not to mention frontman Morrisey’s fascistic tendencies.
But as you go deeper, you’ll see acts with otherwise tame public reputations such as Radiohead, Neutral Milk Hotel and Slowdive, taking up a bulk of the spots. Go even deeper, and you’ll encounter the truly baffling additions of female fronted acts such as Metric, Beach House and Phoebe Bridgers.
What do any of these acts have in common? Basically, just some indie cred and a completely arbitrary label used to ascribe immorality to music taste.
Many of the videos under the TikTok hashtag follow a similar format. They include either joking skits or videos flipping through records with the caption “POV: you manipulate women.” Also common is a trend of ranking bands and singing along to audio of so-called male manipulator music containing Mac DeMarco, My Bloody Valentine and Tyler, the Creator, to name a few.
While it may all seem in good fun, there is something very sinister about manipulative relationships and even gaslighting being mapped onto music taste.
Firstly, the notion that you could determine which men are “safe” and which are “red flags” simply by their style and music taste is incredibly harmful. There is no singular archetype of a person who is abusive and toxic, and pretending like you can guess which men pose a threat from outside indicators can lure women into a false sense of security. Honestly, a man who listens to EDM is just as likely to be a jerk as one who listens to shoegaze. A lot of the posts under this TikTok hashtag come from teenage girls and young women, and it could be giving false notions of how relationships should look.
On top of that, the mere idea of ascribing morality to music taste is slippery at best. For the most part, in the manipulator music discourse, this isn’t a case of separating the art from the artist. Sure, some “male manipulator music” comes from toxic men, such as the aforementioned Smiths or Sorority Noise, but the majority of artists given this title are labeled such for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
There is an argument to be made that if a consumer continues to support artists they know to be bad people, part of that blame gets conferred onto them. Yet, how has that argument gotten twisted into ascribing malintention when supporting squeaky clean artists with a subjective “red flag” vibe?
Further, this puts female music fans in a tricky situation. When Joy Division, for example, becomes music for gross men, where does it place us women who hold a tenderness for it? Labeling these artists as “male manipulator music” ultimately labels them as for men.
The issue of male manipulator music may seem inconsequential, but labels can be impactful. As a culture, we’re already so steeped in the notion that the media you consume tells deeper secrets about who you are as a person. Rather than leaning so heavily into that notion, let’s try taking a step back and not micro-labeling and psychoanalyzing Spotify playlists.
Though not her magnum opus, Lana Del Rey’s latest record is an intimate collection of tracks.
Chemtrails Over The Country Club is Lana Del Rey’s return to form from her 2019 masterpiece Norman Fucking Rockwell!. After getting robbed at last year’s Grammys, she teamed up again with producer Jack Antonoff and bounced back with this new record by borrowing a similar aesthetic, this time even more lowkey and ill-defined.
This record sees Del Rey embark on a much more stripped back and simpler sound, with not a lot of percussion throughout the album. She merges sad and mellow piano ballads with a fair amount of acoustic guitar chords, embracing country elements at times, even collaborating with country singer Nikki Lane on the track “Breaking Up Slowly.”
While going towards a more subtle approach on this new project, Del Ray still borrows her usual aesthetic, which consists of melodramatic and nostalgic ballads that have cinematographic-like qualities to them, all layered with hauntingly beautiful vocals.
She puts a lot of emphasis on her voice and how she can experiment with it, like with the quirky opener “White Dress,” where she produces whispery high-pitched notes sounding almost like she is out of breath, which is surprisingly appealing for some reason. She also uses autotune on “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” which is not something we are used to seeing Del Rey play with.
Highlights include the song “Wild At Heart,” which witness Del Rey escape her Californian lifestyle to go live in the Midwest, where her wild heart is freer than ever. The chorus is really reminiscent of the chorus of the song “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it,” on Norman Fucking Rockwell!.
Another standout is the sixth track “Dark But Just A Game,” where Lana Del Rey sings about artists and actors succumbing to fame. She tries to stay the same throughout all of this, which is resumed by these lyrics on the chorus: “We keep changing all the time / The best ones lost their minds / So I’m not gonna change / I’ll stay the same.” Sonically, “Dark But Just A Game is exceptionally well-crafted, with a little distortion in her voice in the verses, with her vocals on the chorus making the listener feel like they are swimming in a pool of honey. All of this mixed with a somber instrumental makes for one of Del Rey’s best songs to date.
Regardless of this new album witnessing Lana Del Rey at a more calm and posed mood than on its predecessor, Chemtrails Over The Country Club is still a great follow up to her critically acclaimed Norman Fucking Rockwell!
The idea of putting different types of music in specific genres is a disservice to the art musicians make
Back in high school, when my friends and I would talk about the kind of music we liked, I always felt ashamed to admit I listened to pop music. Because of that, I always focused on other genres like indie and alternative music. I didn’t fully understand what those labels meant, but they felt better than saying I liked pop. Looking back on it, these judgements that we make surrounding genre are odd and limit our enjoyment of the music we consume.
When you tell someone you listen to a specific genre, it may elicit many different reactions. I noticed that when I mention to older family members that I like pop music, they tend to react more adversely than if I were to mention enjoying rock music. One of my aunts said that only rock music should be considered real music. I asked her why and her response was simply, “Well because rock music is better than the stupid stuff on the radio now.” However, when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of it, how do we define the differences between rock and the subgenres it spawned, like alternative rock?
There seems to be, in my experience, a lot of disdain for “mainstream” music. In a lot of ways, I feel ashamed that I like a lot of it. It seems as though people take issue with how successful many artists who get radio play are, as opposed to lesser-known artists. However, it comes off as a value-based judgement rather than an appreciation for the music. In my experience, people viewed themselves as better, or more cultured than the average listener, if they had knowledge of lesser-known artists because they needed to work harder to find the music. I have also heard people say they are “real” fans because they knew the artist before they became popular either on the radio or on streaming services — I’ve even been guilty of this myself. I realized that putting down popular artists wasn’t a fair way to assess whether or not I liked a specific song.
When I think about the artists that I like, compared to the genres I don’t like, I find myself wondering if I believe the labels as much as I thought I did. For example, I always talk about how much I dislike rap and hip hop, yet I enjoy many songs by Dax and a few by Cardi B. For a while, I was adamant that I didn’t like the music because I shouldn’t like it. I was focused on my decision that I didn’t like this music genre, so I wrote off the music without giving it a fair chance. While I enjoy both Dax and Cardi B’s music their music doesn’t sound remotely the same despite them both being rap/hip-hop artists.
My interest in this topic was sparked while I was watching a YouTube video about two people discussing Semler, a Christian artist and the creation of their album Preacher’s Kid. While the YouTubers share many views that I disagree with and find harmful to members of the LGBTQ+ community, or those who are not Christians, their discussion here was based on music genres. Christian music cannot contain swear words per Distrokid regulations, a site that is used to upload music to platforms like iTunes and Spotify, and Semler has swear words in their songs, yet still classified their music as Christian.
This got me thinking about the way music genres work, and if their rules could and should be bent. As much as I wanted to be in support of artistic freedom and rule breaking with the music, I find myself being on the side of the genre in this instance. I found myself wondering if there is a rule on what rules can be broken. It brought attention to just how debatable music and the classification method can be. For example, Justin Bieber was not pleased with the Grammy award category that his album Changes was nominated for. He was expecting his album to be nominated in the R&B category, as he felt that he put out an album in that genre. Yet, Changes was nominated for Pop Vocal Album of the Year.
Music genres and classifications are still necessary to a degree. It makes sense to have a system of categorization because it can create a good stepping stone for understanding music and the tropes that come with a respective category. In order to break the rules, you also need to know them, and genres provide just that.
However, there is too much focus on genres. When Taylor Swift released 1989, some fans were disappointed that she had mostly converted from country music to pop music. There was also a lot of talk about how Mumford & Sons sold out because some of their songs didn’t have the same folk feel as they once did. When genres become the source of the issue, the rigidity they cause ends up being the focus and the actual music is cast to the side.
The Canadian pop icon’s latest is a solid outing held back by questionable decisions.
An album is only as good as the sum of its parts, and sometimes all it takes is one bad decision to derail an otherwise good project. Unfortunately, this is the case with Justin Bieber’s latest outing, Justice.
Justice is the Canadian artist’s sixth album and his second in a little over a year. While it is musically quite good, the album’s thematic framing is a massive misstep. The record presents itself to fit the theme of justice, yet Bieber never even mentions or sings about the concept.
This is a jarring decision that sours the listening experience from the very beginning. When you press play on this LP, the first voice you hear is not Justin Bieber’s, but a sample of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his famous quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It’s an attempt to set the tone for this album, enforcing its supposed “theme,” yet it goes absolutely nowhere with it.
It’s hard to understand the reason why Bieber or anyone else who heard this album in advance thought it was acceptable for the 27-year-old pop star to use the speeches of an important historical figure to introduce love songs about his wife. It’s a bizarre and confounding choice that comes off very disingenuous.
In such a tumultuous time, one when many social justice movements are fighting against inequality, Bieber tacking Dr. King’s words onto a collection of love songs just comes off as lazy and borderline insensitive. With so much happening, if he really wanted to say something of substance, he could’ve done it for himself instead of relying on these quotes.
It’s a shame because this album had a lot of potential. While some of the songs miss the mark, the production is solid throughout and Bieber is at his most mature, both personally and vocally, singing of marital love and spirituality. While he isn’t some out-of-this-world vocalist, he knows what he can do within his range and it makes for quite a few captivating moments.
One of the bigger standouts is “Lonely,” which sees Bieber reflecting on his life growing up in the spotlight and all of the repercussions and downsides that came with it. It’s an incredibly human moment, and one that, despite his unique situation, is actually very relatable.
It’s moments like this, “Deserve You” or the excellent summer jam “Peaches” that make Justice’s missteps so frustrating. This isn’t a bad album, but it is bogged down by some outright terrible decisions.
Instead of framing this record as being something it’s not, Bieber should’ve embraced what it’s actually about. He’s so impassioned when singing about his faith or his wife, shifting the focus to a theme that isn’t present is an injustice to the great moments Bieber produced here.
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