billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 19, 2016

So remember last year when there was a major push behind songs that were linked to the Academy Awards and John Legend and Common rode 'Glory' to some reasonable chart success? Yeah, this year served as the rebuttal to that on the charts, because while the Academy Awards had some impact on the Hot 100, they didn't nearly have as much impact as last year, mostly because 'Writing On The Wall' has been generally panned by everyone except the Academy. But much like everyone else, I'm choosing to ignore Sam Smith and that song... but unfortunately the option is instead to focus on this week, and yikes, it's been a while since I've seen things this bad. Strap in, folks, this gets ugly.

video review: 'artpop' by lady gaga

You wanted it, you got it - although fair warning, it's probably not the opinion most of you are looking for. 

Up next... well, damn, I have no idea. I'll figure something out. Might be a retrospective coming, we'll see.

album review: 'artpop' by lady gaga

So here it is, the review you've all apparently been waiting for. It's a little amazing how many people left comments asking that I review this album, as if I wasn't going to bother - which, I have to admit, was more than a little funny to me. This album's hype machine has been working in overdrive the past couple of months, you didn't think I wasn't going to cover it, right?

Because here's the thing: I love talking about Lady Gaga. Hell, most critics do. She's the kind of artist who might not always make good music, but she always makes interesting material, and the fact that she's defiantly committed to making pop music suggests a populist streak I really appreciate. Plus, for the most part, she's a pretty solid artist in her own right, having written several songs I like a great deal. Is she arrogant or occasionally far too pretentious for her own good? Absolutely, but in most cases that's a feature rather than a criticism, and it's belied by her broad spectrum of musical influences and her willingness to experiment with different styles. She's a pop culture junkie just like me, and the fact that she clearly loves what she's doing and throws herself into it mercilessly earns her my respect.

All of that being said, I can't help but feel that some of the popular acclaim she's received might be a bit misplaced, because, really, she's really made only one consistently great album. I mean, The Fame was pretty good, but after the first five songs it takes a nosedive in quality. The Fame Monster was definitely a lot stronger as she stretched into darker, more subversive directions, and is arguably her best work, but songs like 'Telephone' are a bit weaker than they should be. As for Born This Way... well, I appreciate the experimentation and the broad variety of influences did lead to some fantastic songs, it also cast into sharper relief my big issue with Lady Gaga: that despite all of the well-crafted artifice, she doesn't really have much more substance beneath the flash and glamour besides self-obsession, exploration of the concept of 'fame', and surface-level references to other genres. And while as a pop culture geek I like and get the references, I always find myself disappointed there isn't more beneath said references. I like that she's driving the aesthetics of pop in a darker direction - I just wish she had something more to say with that shift.

But, then again, she's taken a fair amount of time off and come back with an album titled ARTPOP, which Gaga has described as 'subscribing to a reverse-Warholian formula'. This is actually kind of interesting because while Warhol was interested in exposing the art in commercialism (Warhol scholars, it's a necessary simplification, I know he was saying far more), Gaga is looking to flip that around, bring the 'art' culture into the commercialism sphere, using her own populism to introduce normally inaccessible elements to mainstream acceptance. Now let me make this clear: on a conceptual level, I love this idea, and Lady Gaga might be one of the few pop stars who could reasonably pull it off... but this sort of plan carries a lot of risk as it implies that Gaga will be able to, on sheer populism and skill alone, be able to bring these genres into the mainstream. Can she pull it off?

album review: 'the wack album' by the lonely island

As I've mentioned in a previous review, I don't tend to like reviewing comedy albums, and this is mostly rooted in two factors. For starters, everyone has different tastes in comedy, and I've long ago accepted I have differing tastes in comparison to the general population. Thus, if I'm going to be judging a comedy album (and since, I'll stress, my reviews are my undiluted opinions and thus are framed through my contextual vision), I feel that my review might be misleading, even if I explain my point of view in advance.

But even if I did lay all my cards on the table ahead of time, I'm still not sure I'd be a good comedy album reviewer, mostly because my knowledge of comedy is - at least in my point of view - somewhat limited. I don't tend to consider myself funny, I understand the fundamentals of setting up a joke but really have difficulty grasping some of the subtleties, and I haven't seen a lot of the comedy gold standards. Sure, I'm trying to catch up, but in comparison with my knowledge of music (I can play an instrument and sing, I can read sheet music, I've done a bit of production work, I have an in-depth knowledge of the charts, and I listen to a grotesque amount of material), I don't think I'm at a level where I can speak to comedy with the same expertise.

So why am I reviewing the new Lonely Island album, an act formed by three SNL actors that is fairly explicitly a comedy act? Well, here's the funny thing: I have a hard time dismissing them as a purely comedic exercise. Or to put it another way, like with Weird Al, I actually will give them credit as musical artists. That's something I don't often say about comedy acts, or even comedians attempting to be musicians (in case you all forgot, Eddie Murphy had a semi-successful singing career).

Now some of you are probably asking why I give The Lonely Island a pass here, particularly when you break the act down to its disparate elements, they really only have one main joke: taking the shallow conceits and style of modern hip-hop and rap and talking about sillier material, with the joke being that it's inherently funny to see a trio of white goofballs behaving like hardcore gangstas. Now there's more in the details, but The Lonely Island have structured a great deal of their career off of this joke, and for the most part, it has held up. And I do not mean to dismiss the talent or the ingenuity of The Lonely Island at all here - while they occasionally go for the gross-out humour more than I prefer, they still have great comic timing and a wide variety of subjects they tackle well. It also helps that unlike former SNL acts of the past - namely the Blues Brothers featuring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd - The Lonely Island aren't trying to be taken as 'serious' musicians or demanding respect from the musical community.

But here's the thing - in a bizarre twist that could only be explained by the changing trends in hip-hop and rap, The Lonely Island got respect from the musical community, and the incredible plethora of high-profile guest stars they continue to recruit for their work speaks to it. And while part of it likely comes from the fact that some pop stars wanted to jump on the bandwagon after Justin Timberlake and take the piss out of their own material, the major point is that in the shallow and increasingly ridiculous pop and rap landscape of the late 2000s, The Lonely Island fit in astoundingly well. Songs like 'Jizz In My Pants', 'I'm On A Boat', 'Jack Sparrow', 'Dick In A Box', 'I Just Had Sex', and many more did surprisingly well on the pop charts because their lyrical content wasn't that far removed from the pop scene as it was. And coupled with the fact that Andy Samberg and the rest of his crew knew how to write decent hooks, it's not entirely surprising why The Lonely Island did as well as they did. Hell, I'd argue on the musical front they managed to beat a fair number of the 'legit' artists that were putting out material during the club boom, with the most immediate comparison point being LMFAO (with their one joke from 'Sexy And I Know It' being 'Heheheh, butts'). 

But now it's 2013, and the hip-hop/rap world has changed a bit. The wave of darker, more serious-sounding PBR&B isn't as easy to parody. Well, that's not quite true, but I'd argue that serious, more conscientious rap is a little tougher to make silly jokes about than the avalanche of ridiculous club music. And there's also the legitimate concern that The Lonely Island, by attempting to sound like the darker, bleaker rap might lose some of their lightweight and fun personality. So, can they pull it off?