video review: 'i remember' by alunageorge

Not going to lie, I may have chosen to cover this just to avoid Shawn Mendes for another day, because yikes. 

But no point wasting any more time... stay tuned!

album review: 'i remember' by alunageorge

Let's talk about female vocals in pop music.

Now I recently heard a comment from one of my close friends that she's exasperated with so much of modern pop because nearly every female singer is trying to imitate Rihanna, or at least a similar sort of mid-range nasal, husky tone. And really, I can't fault her on that, but I did start thinking where that trend came from. After all, Rihanna's been around for over a decade now on the radio, and yet this trend has been much closer to the forefront over the past few years, so what's changed?

Well, the argument could be that with the advent of autotune, less refined voices have been allowed to proliferate in the mainstream, but I think that's only a small part of this story. What's much more likely is that refinement in vocals goes in and out of style in pop, just like any other trend. Right now, it's more common to hear vocals that have a bit more of a rasp or bite to them - give it five years and I predict we'll have another subset of angel voices dominating the radio, mark my words.

So why bring this up? Well, in preparation for AlunaGeorge's sophomore album, I was struck by the odd contradiction of their sound: vocals that were clean and cooing, perhaps only a shade rougher than the pop princesses around the turn of the millennium, but production that was straight out of UK garage and modern, offkilter electronica. It's not a new phenomenon - two years before AlunaGeorge dropped Body Music Purity Ring dropped their debut, which was considerably stronger, but thanks to a fortuitous remix, AlunaGeorge actually got popular in the mainstream and was one of the acts responsible for elevating DJ Snake. As such, I was definitely curious to check out their sophomore album - they had delivered a pretty slick collection of R&B tinged electronic pop in 2014, what was their plan for 2016?