video review: 'glory sound prep' by jon bellion

Hmm, this was kind of disappointing, especially given the songs I loved from his debut... eh, I guess it happens.

Next up, since I'm still exercising my policy of ignoring Imagine Dragons for as long as I can, let's talk about cupcakKe - stay tuned!

album review: 'glory sound prep' by jon bellion

I think I wound up alienating a lot of people the last time I reviewed Jon Bellion.

Now to be fair, some of this was intentional: I knew the thesis 'Owl City trying to be Kanye West' would be controversial as I dug through the tangled mess of genres that comprised The Human Condition, but the more I returned to it, the more it fit. The blocky production blending, the uncanny knack for a decent tune and hook marred by lyrical ideas that would have been better left on the drawing board, the flailing attempts at certain genres that left me wondering how hard I should laugh, the contradictory religious subtext that was probably best left unexamined... but when The Human Condition worked, it was magical. The big hit might have been 'All Time Low' - a song that grew on me more than I ever would have expected - but I've found a slew of deep cuts that I revisit to this day. The biggest highlights remain 'Hand Of God' and 'Morning In America' - both songs that were among my favourites of 2016 - but 'Fashion', '80s Films', even 'He Is The Same' have all wound up on my personal playlists, and I was convinced that once Bellion managed to iron out his wildly uneven tendencies, he could make something truly great. 

So, sophomore album, a fair bit shorter than his last but also featuring Roc Marciano and the RZA on a song... look, Jon Bellion's stabs at hip-hop are always the most awkward and embarrassing parts of any of his projects, and I had to hope he wasn't doubling down on it, so what did we get from Glory Sound Prep?

the top ten best hit songs of 2017 (VIDEO)

Always the one that's the most entertaining to put together, a real treat here. Enjoy!

the top ten best hit songs of 2017

So as I said in my last list, I haven't considered 2017 nearly as bad of a year as some critics have, especially when it comes to the hits. Yeah, there was a lot of stupid, misinformed, or just outright offensive garbage that clogged up the charts, and I can see if you weren't willing to dig beyond the top ten you might dispirited in the dreary trap slog, but the truth is that the songs that did break away from that sound or mold - or hell, even a few of the tracks within it - were true gems across multiple genres. Yeah, country struggled in the mainstream this year, but there was real greatness in pop, hip-hop, EDM, R&B, and even some rock-leaning tunes. I wouldn't quite say the overall quality or sheer number of hits is comparable to 2015 or 2012, but it is up there. 

And what surprised me in a great way was the truly amazing hits of this year were strong enough to maybe even reach my year-end list of my favourite songs of 2017, not just the hits! And you know, for as many obscure or weird albums as I cover and then love, this is still a great feeling, that sometimes quality does win out and rise to mainstream prominence for everyone to share, and that's good for culture everywhere! Yeah, I know some of these picks might be controversial - especially in my Honourable Mentions - but as always they debuted on the year-end Hot 100 for 2017, and I did manage to find some quality here. So let's start with the Honourable Mentions, particularly one that if you saw my worst hits last year might shock you a bit...

the top 50 best songs of 2016 (VIDEO)

A little late to post this one, but man, for as long as it took to get right, I'm happy it's done. Enjoy!

the top 50 best songs of 2016

I've gone on record that this list in particular is always the hardest to make. Refining a list of songs that I've covered on albums I've reviewed over the course of the year - which numbers in the thousands of songs - down to a select six hundred or so, then down to a subset of just under 200... and then the final fifty. Suffice to say, there's always a lot to cover.

But I have to say, this year felt easier than others. I'd say part of it is that I'm getting a better handle on my organization going into these lists, but that would assume I've got some inkling of what I'm doing here. I think the larger factor is that the truly amazing songs that monopolized my year - the top 35 or so - they fell into place remarkably quickly, and that made ironing out the details easier than I expected. Maybe it was because it was easier for me to get passionate about some of these tracks than before, because if you ventured away from the mainstream Hot 100, there was a lot of great music in 2016. Away from the charts there was great metal, rock, synthpop, hip-hop, and especially country, which had one of its best years in recent memory, and fair warning, there's going to be a lot of it on this list.

As always, the songs had to appear on any one of the albums I reviewed - singles or deep cuts, all are possible, so no more wasting time, we have a lot to get through! So let's start off crazy with...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 29, 2016 (VIDEO)

So this was way too much fun. No joke, I had more fun editing the 'meme' segment of this review than any other time I've edited a video - it was weird and zany and fun, I dug it! Might see more of it if more memes chart, I could do this Fantano homage pretty regularly (and yes, he did give me permission).

Next up, JoJo, and then Blackberry Smoke, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 29, 2016

So this week was weird. I'm not going to say it was a bad week - it definitely wasn't, there's enough quality coming up new that I'm not going to call this precisely bad - but there are both shifts and new arrivals that extend all the way to the top ten that deserve some investigation, so this episode might run long, for as strange as things are...

video review: 'the human condition' by jon bellion

The real miracle is that there are songs on this record that work at all, let alone that one of them might just be one of the best of the year. Not kidding, even if you don't want to try this record, 'Hand Of God' is something incredible.

Next up, I need to give Brandy Clark her due, so stay tuned!

album review: 'the human condition' by jon bellion

I'll admit being really surprised when the requests starting pouring in for this one. In fact, this is probably the most requested album I've had in weeks to cover, and my first response was, "Wait, we're talking about the guy who sang on 'Beautiful Now' with Zedd, right? Are people really interested in a debut album from that guy?"

Now before you all jump down my throat, let's be fair here: if you only knew him from that song, it would come as a surprise that he released four mixtapes over the past five years or is affiliated with Logic's personal label Visionary Music Group. And on some level I completely get why Logic would like this guy: he writes and produces his own work, steps into genres adjacent to hip-hop, and has the ambition to push into high concept territory. Hell, Bellion's goal with this album is not to attract the attention of hip-hop heads but Pixar so he could score one of their films! And that's only one piece of his bizarre list of influences: Kanye West, Coldplay, Andre 3000, John Mayer, J Dilla... many of these things are not like the others! So okay, at the very least this debut album promised to be interesting, at least, so I decided to check out The Human Condition - what did we get?