album review: 'tangled up' by thomas rhett

There's no easy way to do this review.

See, this is the problem with being one of the few critics who covers country on YouTube and one of the only ones who covers mainstream country. I feel I've got an obligation to show off the best stuff, mostly because I want to see it get more traction, but for the bad stuff... well, who wants this review? Certainly not me because as I've said in the past, negative reviews aren't often that fun, and you guys mostly come for recommendations. I know there's a certain visceral catharsis watching someone tear into a terrible record, but there's a hollowness to it for me - if there was ill intent, I could feel righteous, but this is just taking out the trash.

Now some of you have realized this is all predicated on the album being bad, which is not an assumption you ever want to enter into when it comes to art. The big problem was that almost every factor going into this record screamed of outright disaster. I covered Thomas Rhett's debut album back in 2013 when bro-country was near its peak, and that album sucked. And it did so in perhaps one of the worst possible ways: by being so forgettably sterile and limp its production and melodies that the only things that stood out were Thomas Rhett's obnoxious voice and even more obnoxious personality. Let me put it like this: when you owe your industry career to your dad being an average-at-best songwriter and you make songs like the cheating song 'Take You Home' and 'All-American Middle Class White Boy', and frame them both as glorification rather than commentary, there's nothing I can remotely respect about it. 

So I'll give Thomas Rhett the slightest bit of credit when he announced he was taking his new album Tangled Up in a different direction, more towards a metropolitan pop country sound. The problem was putting aside that he needed over twenty additional songwriters to do this, the lead-off single was 'Crash And Burn', a slice of bad pseudo-vintage pop that outright stole from Sam Cooke's 'Chain Gang', made Thomas Rhett look and sound like a braying asshole, and was cowritten by Chris Stapleton, which just makes me feel really, really sad. The presence of LunchMoney Lewis and Jordin Sparks on the features list only made me feel worse - more talented people completely wasting their time. That said, the ballad 'Die A Happy Man' actually seemed decent, and right now, this album has nowhere to go but up - is there anything that can save it?

video review: 'miley cyrus & her dead petz' by miley cyrus

Yeah, I know you guys all like it when I tear a record like this to shreds, but this was not a fun experience. So yeah, it'd be nice to some quality coming down the pipe...

Oh, look, I can talk about Maddie & Tae next! Stay tuned!

album review: 'miley cyrus & her dead petz' by miley cyrus

None of you should be surprised this happened.

Think about it, the signs were all there. From the VMA performance in 2013 that catapulted Miley Cyrus back into the public eye for better or worse to the album Bangerz, a record that was really all over the place to be salvaged beyond a few genuine gems, to the uneasy collaborations with hip-hop artists that created abortions like '23'. For a solid six months on the back half of 2013, Miley was dominant in the cultural conversation, for better or worse, and then it all fizzled out. In my opinion, she crippled her own momentum by releasing 'Adore You' under the delusion that song had any hope of being a hit instead of the near guaranteed smash and genuinely awesome song 'FU'.

And then came the rumours leaking out that Miley had gone back into the studio to work and do drugs with Wayne Coyne and later showed up on his Beatles tribute album With A Little Help From My Fwends, so you knew the favour was bound to be returned in full. It became even more evident when Miley severed her ties to Dr. Luke - the same producer who prevented Kesha's collaboration album with The Flaming Lips from getting released - because apparently he hates free festival publicity - amongst more horrid accusations that has seemed to stall Kesha's career indefinitely in lawsuits. And the parallel is important here: sure, both Kesha and Miley worked with Wayne Coyne, but Kesha always had a level of raw tightness and restraint and imagination in her compositions that balanced her ragged instincts against excess. Miley has never had that restraint, considering the massive overcompensation that has come with the burning of her child star image and her appropriation of whatever she can to flesh out an artistic identity.

So fast-forward to the annual craziness that was the VMAs, where Nicki Minaj buried the hatchet with Taylor and Kanye tried to filter through incoherent honesty... and through the entire show, trying to outshine everyone and prove she was still relevant, was Miley Cyrus. It cast her infamous 2013 performance into sharp relief - the shock might have worked twerking against Robin Thicke, but with no momentum, her attempts to throw herself into the drama of Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift or squeal raucously after Kanye's polemic, it reeked of desperation. And then she announced an album from out of nowhere and it made way too much sense - she needed something to boost the hype behind an album with no lead off single, no momentum, and the only shock value coming from the fact it was mainly produced by the Flaming Lips and had Phantogram and Ariel Pink on it! Not only that, it was over ninety minutes long over twenty-three tracks, all the more proof that there had been no restraint in its creation. In other words, I had zero expectations this would be good, but I knew it'd make for something interesting, so I dug into Miley Cyrus And Her Dead Petz - what madness did we find?

album review: 'fan of a fan: the album' by chris brown & tyga (ft. ARTV) (VIDEO)

And to think there was still worse things that neither Jon or I could mention, like Tyga referencing OutKast when he has no business doing so or referring to a girl as 'Ass-zilla.'

I wish I was kidding. Next up, something better!

video review: 'sremmlife' by rae sremmurd

Ugh, fuck this album. Completely worthless.

Okay, next up is... honestly, not sure, depends what I feel like. Stay tuned!

album review: 'sremmlife' by rae sremmurd

One of the things I've always tried to do, as a music critic, is ascertain what is the purpose of the albums I review. I look for themes, ideas, or at least artistic intentions, and it's one of the main reasons I tend to be kinder than most to pop records. After all, most shallow pop music only has a limited purpose, and if it accomplishes that purpose, it's hard to argue it doesn't succeed at least partially. You might not get great pop music - I said a while back in my Special Comment defending pop that making a truly great pop song that will stand the test of time is often just as difficult as any other brand of music - but it'll pass the low bar. It's one of the reasons I can enjoy crunk or hair metal - sure, they aren't trying to be anything but dumb party music, but there's a scale of quality even there.

And sure, some of my rationale for this is pure populism - like it or not, as much as I might enjoy two-and-a-half hour experimental rock records with 34 minute songs or half-improvised acid and post-punk performance art pieces, the mainstream public's enjoyment of music is a lot narrower - they'll listen to a pop song for a season and odds are unless it really sticks with them, they'll forget it in a few months. And with attention spans getting shorter and shorter, that window of relevance for pop acts is always getting smaller - forget Andy Warhol saying everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes, try six seconds. 

Which takes us to Rae Sremmurd, a Mississippi-based hip-hop duo that made a big smash into 2014 with two hits: 'No Flex Zone' and 'No Type'. And from those singles alone and the fact that Mike Will Made It was supposedly their executive producer, I was dreading this album. Not only was this album being released in the dumping ground of early January, I got the impression any attempts at lyricism were going to be pitched right out the window when paired with one of my least favourite producers in modern hip-hop. But I had to be fair - hell, this could be the record that manages to surprise me and win me over for Mike Will Made It, right?

video review: 'ignite the night' by chase rice

Oh, I can't imagine how this review would inspire controversy WHATSOEVER...

Okay, got that out of the way, what's next... 

Wiz Khalifa. By the Nine Hells...

album review: 'ignite the night' by chase rice

There's one thing that tends to be true about trends in music: the acts that jump on the trend last tend to be the absolute worst. We're looking at the group that's not perceptive enough to realize it's dead and gone, the group who are gunning for the quick cash-in, and those who weren't talented enough to ride the wave when it first began to crest.

And thus I knew that as I had chronicles the rise and subsequent collapse of bro-country, I dreaded the acts at the tail end of the trend, the ones who owed their careers to helping craft the music and now had the chance to grab a hold of the spotlight, if only for a brief time. And thus, I couldn't help but feel a certain amount of dread when I prepared to look at the major label debut of Chase Rice, who was most notable for his big single 'Ready, Set, Roll' that is only now inching up the charts. And really, that song annoyed me right out of the gate, a grab-bag of country cliches with some of the most sterile and electronic production I've heard thus far this year in country music outside of Cole Swindell. And like Cole Swindell, he got his start writing for other country acts, most notably co-writing 'Cruise' with Florida Georgia Line, a song I don't exactly dislike but one that doesn't inspire anything close to intelligence.

Now to be fair, like Florida Georgia Line, Chase Rice at least seemed to be having some fun on his song and I had heard that some of his deep cuts did actually talk about things outside of the bro-country catalogue, so I steeled myself for the absolute worst and looked up his major label debut Ignite The Night. What did I find?

video review: 'a.k.a.' by jennifer lopez

Ugh, this was a dud. Guarantee that it'll be forgotten by the end of the year.

Next up... either Ed Sheeran or Tiesto. We'll see, so stay tuned!

album review: 'a.k.a.' by jennifer lopez

It kind of amazes me that it's been over fifteen years since Jennifer Lopez released her first album. It definitely amazes me that this is her eighth studio album over the course of the past fifteen years, and that people are actually requested that I cover this album in some way.

It amazes me because I, for the life of me, do not understand the continued appeal of Jennifer Lopez outside of the Hispanic demographic, or even inside it. J.Lo began her career in TV and movies before jumping into the oversaturated pop diva scene of the late 90s, and for a few years she was very successful. However, looking back on that material, I can say that it's not exactly good. She never had the pipes of a Christina Aguilera or the creative songwriting of Shakira, instead riding the Latin trend of the time before transitioning into R&B and giving The LOX a legitimate charting hit. It didn't help matters that songs like 'I'm Real' and 'Jenny From The Block' tried to coast by on assertion of 'realness' and down-to-earth authenticity that plainly didn't reflect her multi-millionaire lifestyle and tabloid fixture romances. Eventually, hip-hop got dirtier and Jennifer Lopez's material got milder, which lead to her mid-period albums not catching on and her to star in a succession of terribly forgettable romantic comedies after the hilarious catastrophe that was Gigli.

And yet in 2011, thanks to the rise of Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez's music career suddenly got a second wind and began to ride a second smaller Latin wave that saw Enrique Iglesias and even Marc Anthony briefly return to the charts. And look, the hits that J.Lo charted in this wave of dance pop weren't bad, but at the same time, we weren't exactly short on pop divas making club songs, and with Rihanna, Ke$ha, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Pink, Britney Spears, and even Christina Aguilera, what unique elements did Jennifer Lopez bring to the table?

And thus, I was planning on skipping this Jennifer Lopez album. I mean, while Pitbull's career has somehow held steam despite his consistently awful lyrics, the club boom is over, and somehow I didn't get the feeling J.Lo was going to be hopping on the EDM trend, so I had no idea what to expect, especially consider twenty-six different producers worked on this record. So, what did we get?

video review: 'ultraviolence' by lana del rey

I predict to get hit with a hailstorm of hatred over this video, but I do think it's one of my better written reviews, so what can you do?

Okay, Linkin Park, show me what you've got. Stay tuned!

album review: 'ultraviolence' by lana del rey

How many of you are familiar with Hollywood director Sofia Coppola? The daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, she defiantly made a name for herself with an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost In Translation, which I most remember for an absolutely stellar performance from Bill Murray. But since then, Sofia Coppola's movies have drifted towards a theme she has explored many times: the hedonism and existential emptiness of the idle rich. Marie Antoinette, Somewhere, and The Bling Ring hammered on these themes, and while each film is beautifully shot, the framing of the movies always frustrated me, in that there always seemed to be an attempted justification behind her protagonists' poor behaviour that tended to feel flimsy. Coppola seemed to show a lot of empathy for her characters, even when that empathy didn't feel earned by the script.

And I get the exact same feelings whenever I listen to Lana Del Rey. Like most people, I listened to her major label debut Born To Die in 2012 - and like most critics, I wasn't impressed. Yes, the production was lush, and Lana Del Rey could create some very pretty and opulent songs, but there was an air of artificiality and calculation surrounding every song of the record, from the arsenal of brand names to the completely out-of-place trip hop elements placed to blend both old and new ideals of wealth and success. And on a certain, shallow, fantasy-level, it kind of works... but in an era where we have Vienna Teng, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Tori Amos, Lykke Li, and Sharon Van Etten, you're not going to convince me that any of this is soulful or deep. It's not even a commentary on this sort of opulence in the vein of Lorde, but is instead framed as a glorification, a fantasy - and to be fair, I got the impression that was Lana Del Rey's intention. And such a fantasy would be fine if there weren't some really troublesome narratives beneath it, such as Lana Del Rey's obsession with glamorizing bad relationships or retrograde sexual politics, and she didn't really step up with the personality to back it up. So when I heard that Lana Del Rey had written 'Young And Beautiful' for Baz Luhrman's version of The Great Gatsby, I wasn't surprised in the slightest - because like that film, it's a fusion of old and new flavours of glamour that misses the depth in the spectacle. But even if I were to give Lana Del Rey the benefit of the doubt and say she was self-aware, her artistic framing certainly wasn't - coming back to Sofia Coppola, there's shallow hedonism and existential emptiness in Lana Del Rey's music, but it's framed as though we should empathize with the drama she presents when the text and subtext don't support it.

And thus when she titled her second album Ultraviolence, I had no idea what to expect, especially considering the album was mostly produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. But, since it was requested time and time again, I decided to give the album a fair chance: what did I find?

video review: 'honest' by future

Ugh, good lord, this album sucked. Glad to get this shit out of my system once and for all.

Okay, Ratking needs to be addressed, and then... well, not sure, we'll see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'honest' by future

I do not understand why Future is famous.

I've said this before about other artists, most notably about 2 Chainz way back when I reviewed his last album, and the fun fact is that I actually came to an answer about that particular rapper: apparently, he's the funny one. Frankly, since my own sense of humour is weird, I guess I can accept that for 2 Chainz, even though his technical skills as a rapper would have had him laughed out of the game only a decade ago.

But with Future, I don't get it, and I'm starting to think I never will. The only reason Future has a career is because his cousin Rico Wade founded Dungeon Family and brought him on - which from a larger point of view blows my mind because this is the music collective that gave us OutKast, Killer Mike, Cee-Lo, Janelle Monae... and then Future. One of these things is not like the other, folks, so let's all give thanks for nepotism! But okay, that's obviously the push that has gotten him success, but why him? He can only barely sing with gratuitous autotune that barely gives him a personality, his rap flow varies between disinterested and embarrassing, his content only manages to paint him as a materialistic, lecherous asshole with none of the charisma that briefly made it excusable from Ludacris or T.I., and he works with terrible producers like Mike Will Made It. I listened to his debut album Pluto, which had five singles that managed to chart, and frankly, I couldn't recommend any of them other than overproduced commercials for the luxury brands he crams into his rhymes. The one thing I'll give Future is that he sounds like nobody else on the radio, but you know that's not always a good thing, right? Just because you stand out somewhat stylistically doesn't mean your lyrical content is worth a damn.

But apparently he scraped up enough goodwill to make a second album titled Honest, which apparently is distinctive because Future proclaimed there would be 'no love songs on this album'. I'm fine with that - Future was never convincing on the love songs anyway - but did that mean his new album was worth a damn anyway?

video review: 'high noon' by jerrod niemann

Ugh, I had no assumptions this would be good, but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

Up next... okay, look, I'll get Madllib & Freddie Gibbs, but this YG phenomenon needs to be explained before I start hitting fellow critics with lead pipes. Stay tuned, this might get messy.

album review: 'high noon' by jerrod niemann

Do you guys remember back when I reviewed the Eli Young Band that I said there was just a period of time I wasn't listening to much country music outside of the material that hit the charts? Well, even with that scant knowledge, I had no idea who Jerrod Niemann was before starting to research this album - and he had a number one country single that actually briefly landed on the pop charts! 

That was the first warning sign I got when I started going through Niemann's discography and those hit singles. Signed to Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville, a label co-owned by Brad Paisley, Jerrod Niemann released his major label debut in 2010 and it's not hard to see some of Paisley's influences on that album - it was silly, hopelessly corny country music, but it wasn't offensive. But then again, I'd have a hard time calling it interesting or all that distinctive either - outside some of the comedy bits and the fact that Niemann had an agreeable voice, I'd have a hard time picking him out of a line-up of other good time country singers. And it looked like the general public agreed, as his second album did have greater musical flavour and diversity, but not a lot else especially in the breezy songwriting to really give Niemann a lot of distinctive staying power. He reminded a lot of Jake Owen, except Owen always seemed to have more charisma or maybe better songwriters.

And thus, I can't exactly say I was enthused to listen to Jerrod Niemann's third album High Noon, especially off of his lead single 'Drink To That All Night', which featured the twin cardinal sins of bro-country in bad low-key rapping and auto-tune, and none of the instrumental diversity or humour that at least made Jerrod Niemann remotely distinctive. And thus, I wasn't looking forward to covering this album but I figured I owed him at least one chance to really surprise me. How did it go?

video review: 'mastermind' by rick ross

Well, this wasn't much fun. Gah.

Next up, not sure. Right now, I need to make sure I get some sleep. Stay tuned!

album review: 'mastermind' by rick ross

I have never, ever been able to understand Rick Ross' appeal.

And by this point, I probably should have an idea why this guy is famous, but for the life of me, it's not clicking. Rick Ross released his debut album in 2006 and ever since then, we've been inundated by hits from this guy, none of which have impressed me. His reported 'best' album was Teflon Don back from 2010, and if we're looking for admittedly well-produced luxury porn, I guess Rick Ross delivers, but that's not a version of escapism I find attractive or all that interesting. Maybe it's because I look at that sort of music as walking advertisement from all the brands he mentions in his songs, and sure, I get the appeal of luxury rap, but wouldn't you want a better rapper spitting those lines?

Because here's the problem: while he has gotten better, I've never thought Rick Ross as a good rapper on a technical level. What's worse is that I can't exactly look past how transparently phony elements of his persona are - sure, he's rich as all hell, I can buy into that side of his rapping, but when he talks about hustling coke or blowing away his rivals, I find it hard to buy in comparison to a guy, to take a recent example, like Schoolboy Q. At least at his peak, Rick Ross' appeal was that of the crime boss, but maybe it was a lack of charisma, his inconsistent technique, or the fact that he was frequently blown off the stage by his many, many collaborators in the Master P school of making albums, but I was always underwhelmed by the guy. Where he wanted to come across as Vito Corleone, I always saw Luco Brazzi. And when you throw insulting trash like the 'U.O.E.N.O' verse from last year onto the mix and the complete lack of stage presence appeal in the 50 Cent mold, I was just about done with Rick Ross.

But yet, he still gets positive reviews and that utterly mystifies me. And since I'm always one to give artists a chance to surprise me, I gave his newest album Mastermind a few listens. How did it turn out?

video review: 'cole swindell' by cole swindell

Ugh, glad I could get through this. 

Next up, probably Angel Olson or Schoolboy Q. Stay tuned!

album review: 'cole swindell' by cole swindell

I have no idea why I'm doing this review.

And at this point, does anyone care? Does anyone want to hear me deliver yet another discussion/rant about bro-country like the half-dozen other times I've done it in front of every other act in this vein I've covered? I've given this particular subgenre more intellectual consideration and brain cells than it deserves, talked about the good albums and the bad albums, and at this point, I don't know what else to say. Despite songwriters, country artists, and even radio programmers saying that we've hit peak bro-country a good few months back, we're still getting artists coming out of the woodwork trying to cash in! How and why does this keep happening?

Well, in the case of Cole Swindell, I actually have an answer for that. See, what you might not know is that bro-country superstar Luke Bryan and popular Nashville songwriter Dallas Davidson were roommates at Georgia Southern University. Well, it turns out - and this is so hilariously ironic I couldn't believe it when I first read it - that Luke Bryan belonged to the fraternity Sigma Chi, and so did Cole Swindell. In fact, Swindell sold merchandise for Luke Bryan for three years before trying to make it as a songwriter himself. Fortunately for him, he hitched his star to the right wagon, Luke Bryan and bro-country became the biggest things in country music, and Cole Swindell became his opening act. 

Now Cole Swindell is a bit unique in comparison with most bro-country acts, in that he doesn't really rely on the Nashville songwriting machine as heavily (indeed, there's not a single Dallas Davidson song on the album, which did surprise me) and he has writing credits on all of his songs. Hell, he's even written songs for other artists like Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett, Scotty McCreery, and even Chris Young's half-hearted stab at bro-country last year. The bad news is that everything he's written is terrible, some of the worst songs on the albums in question and at best only rising to being interchangeable and bland. And that was one of the reasons I didn't want to cover this album, just abuse it for five minutes.