video review: 'cuz i love you' by lizzo

You know those reviews where you're just certain that you're going to piss off a lot of folks, and certainly the artist should she see it? Yeah...

Anyway, I've got Billboard BREAKDOWN next and then probably this PUP album - stay tuned!

album review: 'cuz i love you' by lizzo

I get the feeling, looking at Lizzo's career arc, that her story could have been a lot different.

And to explain this, you need to go back to her debut project in 2013 Lizzobangers - and if you're familiar at all with her larger discography, this project will surprise you in sounding very little like her major label work. For one it's a lot more hip-hop, produced mostly by Lazerbeak of Doomtree - which makes sense because she had moved from Houston to Minneapolis and you can tell how her sound was influenced by the tropes and genre-blending that came out of that. Which was awesome, I've always been a huge fan of that sound, and while she took steps towards thicker indie R&B atmospherics on her 2015 follow-up, it's a tone and style of hip-hop that I'd love to see get more traction... but that was quick to evaporate by the time she signed to Atlantic, mostly because executives probably saw her huge personality and great singing voice and knew she'd probably have a bunch of crossover appeal. 

So Lazerbeak is gone and replaced by Ricky Reed, Oak, and X Ambassadors - and look, this doesn't have to be a bad thing, but when I listened to her EP Coconut Oil and then saw a tweet from a fellow critic suggesting Lizzo might be falling in the line of Bruno Mars... look, it's an easy and unfortunate comparison to make. But there's truth in it: a great personality who ultimately is more palatable to a larger audience making pastiches of sounds and styles that are not uniquely hers alone, only redeemed by the fact that she's a legitimately great talent behind the microphone - certainly better than when Ricky Reed tried a similar schtick with Meghan Trainor nearly five years ago! But suffice to say my expectations for Cuz I Love You were considerably diminished going in, but this could still be a good album, right?

video review: 'WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?' by billie eilish

So this was remarkably fun to put together - good album, some nice tweaks for the editing, cool stuff.

Tomorrow... well, that's Billboard BREAKDOWN, but I HIGHLY advise you pay attention when and where it is dropping, so stay tuned!

album review: 'WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO' by billie eilish

This wasn't supposed to be a controversial review.

I mean, regardless of the album's quality where I step in and somehow piss off everyone - that's expected - but even going into the conversation, there's already a backlash in full-swing against Billie Eilish and I've yet to pin down any place where it makes sense or isn't industrial grade stupid. She's been accused of being an industry plant - mostly by people who don't know what 'artist development' is because their Soundcloud waifus aren't getting it - along with people who find her "edgy" presentation a theatrical act that isn't scary and I really don't have the patience to watch a bunch of disaffected edgelords stroke their e-peens. 

But I reckon it runs deeper than that, because if you just look at the music in context, it's hard to deny the quality. I'm not about to give Billie Eilish a pass because she's young, but there is a parallel to Lorde in presenting lyrics with interesting framing and haunted by wisdom and talent beyond her years. But where Lorde was dialing into raw intensity to amplify her pop, Billie Eilish was spiraling into a different direction, coaxed out by the darker sides of trap and Soundcloud rap and all the rest of the disposable music marketed at teenagers that seemed to have more going on. And Billie Eilish's desire to alienate and shock kind of amplifies preexisting antipathy from certain quarters that would have hated her regardless of quality: an act going dark and creepy with real subtlety and depth but without an obvious point of appeal in pop for guys in terms of sex appeal or immediate shock value, it's almost as if she's being positioned to appeal to an audience that's not them or something!

And make no mistake: it's working, and indeed, the slow growth and maturity of Billie Eilish's development by Darkroom and Interscope, guided by her cowriter Finneas deserves attention - its development that reflects a longer rollout and wells of potential and longevity many of her peers don't seem to have. And it's worth mentioning that Billie Eilish is still a relatively unique performer - she might have started in territory to close to Lana Del Rey and Lorde but the brand of creepypasta crossed with subtle slow-burns that's deliberately avoiding obvious sex appeal is rare in any genre, let alone pop and for a female performer. And once you start seeing things from that angle - and realize that the backlash towards anything teenage girls could like is tired and one of the most utterly petulant bitchfest gestures an opposing audience can bring - I was excited for this project; I've liked the majority of what Billie Eilish has released, and I wanted to see her stick the landing - so what did we get from WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?

video review: 'thank u, next' by ariana grande

...sigh, I really wish I didn't feel like I was going out on a ledge with calling out the issues of this project, but whatever.

Anyway, next up is something a LOT more indie, so stay tuned!

album review: 'thank u, next' by ariana grande

So as some of you know, I'm currently working on an extended video essay surrounding the separation of art and artist and how especially in the modern social media/tabloid landscape it's a theory that's increasingly unfeasible. Of course, my larger point will be that it was never that feasible to begin with, but you'll have to wait until I release that project in... I'd like to say a month or so before I explain further - just something to think about.

But really, if you're looking for a project that might as well prove my point in block capitals across every fiber of its being, it was the rushed creation and release of the album thank u, next by Ariana Grande, and yes, before even getting into the album directly I'm calling this a rushed job. Not only was sweetener released midway through last year, singles were still in charting circulation. And this was not a case like Taylor Swift's reputation where the album was tanking upon arrival - the singles had staying power and top 10 presence, and the reviews were solid. But like reputation, it was hard to avoid the feeling that thank u, next was being presented as a slice of spin control in the tumult of Ariana Grande's public life, with both the collapse of her engagement to Pete Davidson - which in going back to sweetener and especially the song she titled after him it was so easy to predict - and the tragic passing of Mac Miller, where in both cases Ariana Grande faced the sort of toxic social media backlash that would be hell for anyone. 

Now as I said last year when the song 'thank u, next' was first released, Ariana Grande had a few advantages over Taylor Swift in that she didn't have the insane weight of cultural expectations placed upon her, and that allowed the song and response to be so breezy and magnanimous, a moment of well-timed spin control that seemed to work in her favor. But that is what it was, especially with the inclusion of names which gives the song additional emotional impact and intensity - pull back from that, separate the art from the artist, and the entire track seems flighty and disposable, an underweight fusion of pop, R&B and trap that for an outside observer would make no sense to sit on the top of the Hot 100 for weeks, only made to feel more because Republic is throwing more money than they probably should to make it stick. And if 'imagine' increased those suspicions, '7 rings' confirmed it, along with the cheap, controversy-laden rollout that for an artist and her team so measured and big-budget over the past three albums that felt alarmingly slapdash. Combined with such a quick turnaround time - she's bragged that this album was written in a week and recorded in not much longer - that is actively cannibalizing singles from the previous project... yeah, I'll freely admit I was worried this would be a rush job and not nearly reflect the potential shown on sweetener for the sort of experimentation and emotional maturity that gave that project such promise - was I wrong?

video review: 'dna' by backstreet boys

So okay, I'm pleased enough with the review... less pleased that I only was reminded during the upload about the allegations against Nick Carter. Left a note in the description surrounding that whole business... yeah, ugly stuff, and Brian Littrell's response was even worse, gross.

Anyway, next up looks like Bring Me The Horizon, so talking about controversy, stay tuned!

album review: 'dna' by backstreet boys

So here's a difficult question: what does a Backstreet Boys album sound like in 2019?

Here's a better question: what should a Backstreet Boys album sound like 2019? Because while I'd argue there might be a market for the long-running boy band to deliver a project that imitates the sound of what made them famous twenty years ago, the group has always striven to update their sound with the times, from the pop rock flourishes on their underrated mid-2000s output to the Red-One-infused club boom pivot of 2009 to the embrace of broader, sunnier textures in 2013 for In A World Like This, of which I defended in one of my first ever reviews because it gave all of them the space to really exercise their harmonies. Yeah, there were some dull acoustic moments, but big flashy pop has always been a good fit for them and I really enjoyed that album - hell, a song from it even made my list of the best songs of 2013!

But in 2019... look, pop music is not really in a healthy place, and I wasn't at all convinced the Backstreet Boys would be able to persist amidst trap beats and an increased unnecessary reliance on Autotune - I hadn't been a fan of 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' for succumbing to those cliches, and I had no reason to believe this new album wouldn't face similar issues. And again, this is coming from a fan who has seen them live twice and could compile a healthy list of favourites from all of their albums... but I call it like I see it. especially when I saw their list of co-writers and producers. But hey, I had to hope, right, so what did we get off of DNA?

video review: 'singular: act i' by sabrina carpenter

So this is one of those projects where I expected backlash for the review... but I'll admit to still being surprised by it. I mean, seriously folks, you're defending this? There's so little personality and character... eh, whatever, you can have it.

Next up, we've got a (mostly) miserable Billboard BREAKDOWN, and then... well, we'll see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'singular: act i' by sabrina carpenter

So this is the sort of review I would normally consign to the Trailing Edge, except in this case I made a deal with the patron who requested it to swap this for that bloated Zayn album no music critic wants to touch - it's at least shorter, I'll give it that. And you know what, as much as it would be very easy for me to pass albums in this lane off as just another vanity project for an actress in between movies or TV pilots, but I've been surprised in this lane before - go back to Lucy Hale's Road Between, a pop-country debut that came right the hell out of nowhere and wound up as one of the best in its subgenre this decade!

And then I noticed Sabrina Carpenter's label... and then listened to her two previous albums... and consequently got a distinctive sinking feeling. Yeah folks, you all might know Sabrina Carpenter as once having one of the starring roles in Girl Meets World, but her music which has taken up a surprising amount of her schedule is exactly what you'd expect coming out of Hollywood Records: the sort of sterile, underwritten, badly produced pop pablum you'll hear chasing the trends and barely having any distinctive identity. I'm normally inclined to just call these vanity projects, but Sabrina Carpenter seems to have placed a lot of stock in these albums, along with a lot of her own writing credits... probably not a good thing, because the production is mediocre and trend-chasing at best and I wasn't impressed by her vocals or her songwriting. That said... look, it's twenty five minutes, it's eight songs, it can't be that bad, right?

video review: 'what is love?' by clean bandit

Overall a little surprised I had enough to say about this thing... but hey, it happens?

Okay, Earl is up next - stay tuned!

album review: 'what is love?' by clean bandit

So this is the sort of review that I have no idea why I'm making - well, at least beyond the most cynical of responses, which is that Clean Bandit have several songs that have attracted a lot of attention and this'll likely wind up getting traffic for relatively little effort on my part.

But is that a fair assessment, especially given how many singles worldwide Clean Bandit have notched with a more distinctive blend of tropical elements, classical strings, and grooves that don't feel beholden to overweight trap percussion? Well, yes and no - I'll admit I've never really loved a Clean Bandit song - they have a weirdly pristine but fussy nature that can come across as oversanitized and underwritten, and I include 'Rather Be' in that category - but I wouldn't say I dislike them either. Yeah, the personality of any given song is more dependent on their guest stars and to expect a cohesive album is a crapshoot, and it's hard not to feel like a lot of their music is custom-designed for department stores trying to sound hip... but they can land some good melodies and while their first album didn't impress me at all, maybe their follow-up would be okay... even if it feels like I've already heard a significant chunk of it. Yeah, that's the other thing about reviewing an electronic project like this, the albums feel more like singles compilations - but hey, that's normally the formula for great pop albums so I'm not going to hold it against Clean Bandit here, so what did we get on What Is Love?

video review: 'the pains of growing' by alessia cara

So yeah, I really wish that I could like this more. I mean, it's not bad by any stretch and I'm still rooting for Alessia Cara, but man, this should be better.

Next up... honestly, not sure, but I've got Billboard BREAKDOWN next, so stay tuned!

album review: 'the pains of growing' by alessia cara

I can't help but find it a bit strange that going into this review, I was rooting for Alessia Cara.

And let me make this clear, I've been at least trying to be on her side since 2015 and the influx of Lorde-wannabes in which she came up - I'd certainly prefer her to Halsey or Daya, that's for damn sure. But Alessia Cara's success has frustrated me, because as much as I liked her breakthrough single 'Here' and her follow-up 'Wild Things', I had the sinking feeling that given the success of 'Scars To Your Beautiful' and her feature on Logic's suicide hotline song, that would be the direction Def Jam would shove her in. Yes, she had won the Grammy for Best New Artist off those singles, but that award can be the kiss of death for a lot of new acts, and poor management has destroyed more promising pop artists than bad albums. 

And I can't stress how much I didn't want that to happen, because I've always been convinced that Alessia Cara was a more interesting and vibrant personality and songwriter than just churning out self-esteem anthem pablum, and given how rushed Know-It-All felt, I had to hope that her follow-up would show more refinement, especially as her competition had gotten stiffer with Lorde's resurgence and the striking rise of Billie Eilish. Yeah, I'd still prefer to listen to Alessia Cara than Camila Cabello or Halsey or especially Bebe Rexha, but this project had to stick the landing. And by all accounts it could - Alessia Cara had taken a much bigger writing and production role with her sophomore album with no guest stars, and major labels don't tend to offer that freedom unless they've got faith in the release... or are looking to cut their losses by keeping the team and budget as small as possible. And I didn't think it was the latter case here - Know-It-All had moved a lot of units on the back of Alessia Cara's writing - but I was cautious about The Pains Of Growing, so what did we get?

video review: 'lm5' by little mix

...yeah, I wanted to like it more too. Hopefully will be better next time.

But next up... let's get a little weird here, so stay tuned!

album review: 'lm5' by little mix

So this is the fourth Little Mix album I've covered on this channel, and by now I think you all know the beats I've hit. Yes, the girls can harmonize their asses off and the writing is often punching above their weight class, but the group's pivots towards pop in recent years have been handicapped by slapdash production that doesn't always flatter them as much as they could, most likely because of budget constraints because they're a reality show girl group assembled by SYCO and Simon Cowell. Like their peers in Fifth Harmony, they were a group assembled for disposability, and I'll admit that I was waiting for the moment when they self-destructed just like Fifth Harmony did...

And that hasn't happened, and for the life of me, I'm a little stunned they've lasted with as much quality as they have. Hell, not just lasted but prospered! They get their most flamboyant pop push on Get Weird... and nab their first #1 in the UK with 'Black Magic'. They're saddled with the most slapdash collection of ideas and cowriters on Glory Days, and not only did that album get better with every single listen, they snagged a second #1 and a respectable number of solid hits even before UK radio began remixing them with everyone under the sun. Oh, and despite its terrible video, Little Mix made 'Touch', which is one of the best pop songs of the decade and also wound up becoming a top 5 hit in the UK! Let's make this clear, while Little Mix hasn't quite won the critical acclaim of Girls Aloud, their sheer amount of success and consistent quality despite everything deserves to have them put in the conversation of the great girl groups, and the surprise is that they haven't had the US crossover yet - hell, if they had released the fantastic new jack swing of 'Private Show' to US radio, they'd have beaten Bruno Mars to the punch by a solid year!

So now we're in 2018, Fifth Harmony has been knocked off the board, and Syco is even out of the picture now - unfortunately they were involved in production of this album but now Little Mix is on RCA UK and Columbia. The marketing was priming the band for the US market, and while I had high hopes for the girl group - especially given how many genres they've managed to leap across over the past five years - pop and R&B are in a very different position in 2018 and I had genuine concerns whether this would be what they need, especially with even more producers and cowriters joining them. There's no excuse for this to not be good and I had high hopes - so what did we get with LM5?

video review: 'honey' by robyn

Well, this was kind of underwhelming... still good, but it should be better.

Next up, Billboard BREAKDOWN, and it looks to be short (hopefully), so stay tuned!

album review: 'honey' by robyn

Even before I knew I was a fan of pop music - hell, before I even had firm context surrounding what pop music was - I was a fan of Robyn.

And yes, I know that's a bizarre thing for me to say, especially coming from someone not from Europe and who only got passing snippets of what Robyn creating in the late 90s and 2000s... but we did get a few pieces, and the majority of them have held up amazingly well. I'll freely admit that when I was a child and heard 'Show Me Love' I didn't have the slightest clue who Robyn was - and let's be honest, most folks who were adults in North America didn't know either, her distribution and name-recognition stateside has always been shaky - but I knew the song connected on a fundamental level. Fast forward over a decade later and I'm hearing 'Dancing On My Own' in HBO's Girls and while the vocal timbre had subtly changed, the ridiculously intricate and tight pop music remained the same. And that prompted me to go back through whatever albums in her back catalog I could find and it's honestly a little astonishing how consistently great Robyn has been. There have been missteps - I might be one of the few people who find the hip-hop elements on the self-titled album to have aged pretty badly and hurt the album as a whole - but for the most part I've been a consistent fan of her terrific sensibility around melodic grooves and her remarkably keen sense of emotional dynamics.

And thus the past eight years where we haven't had full Robyn albums... well, it's been a long wait. Yes, I heard those EPs with Royksopp and La Bagatelle Magique, but they felt compromised, not nearly the clear organic creative vision I knew Robyn could deliver, and thus I was thrilled to get a chance to hear her newest project, Honey - was it everything we could have hoped for and more?

video review: 'always in between' by jess glynne

Damn, I really do wish this was better... but it happens, I guess...

Okay, this week is going to be crazy for personal reasons outside of video production, so we'll see where this goes, but Billboard BREAKDOWN is up next, so stay tuned!

album review: 'always in between' by jess glynne

So here's something I've realized about myself and pop music: when it comes to sheer competence in song construction, more often than not I'll give acts that might not be the most innovative more of a pass than most. Part of this is the appreciation and acknowledgement that crafting a damn solid straightforward pop song is often just as hard if not harder than making a track in any other genre, but I do think it runs a little deeper, to the pop that did work so damn well in the late 90s on which I was raised. Hell, one reason I've gone to bat for S Club 7 more than I think anyone should is that they put out at least three albums of damn solid, well-produced pop music that might not have blown apart any paradigms but did exactly what it was designed to do - that consistency rarely gets the hype it deserves.

And I think there's some truth to that surrounding how much I like Jess Glynne, because I was much more positive on her debut album in 2015 than pretty much any other critic. Yeah, there were a few misfires in production and the lyrics were never great, but Glynne was a solid enough singer and the hooks were there, enough so that I was genuinely interested in her sophomore follow-up this year, even if I had the expectation that like last time I might not have much to say. But what the hell - what did we get out of Always In Between?