album review: 'beautiful trauma' by p!nk

I remember the era when I used to be excited for a P!nk record.

And to explain why that is, some context is essential, because P!nk tends to get elbowed out of the pop conversation a lot more than she should, despite accruing the sort of hits and critical acclaim that have eluded so many of her contemporaries. She might have started in the prefabricated pop starlet scene on her first record, but by the time she dropped Misundaztood in 2001, that image had gone up in flames, mostly through an embrace of much rougher tones that fit her voice and cowriting credits from Linda Perry. And from there we can see the frustrated back-and-forth of P!nk's pop career - an industry desperate to capitalize on her charisma and firepower even as P!nk wanted to write songs that got more thoughtful or personal or raw, from the messy recording of Try This that still led to the titanic deep cut earworm 'Humble Neighborhoods' to the incredible chart run with I'm Not Dead and Funhouse that saw her rack up hit after hit along with smuggling songs like 'Dear Mr. President' into the pop conversation. No, it wasn't really punk, but P!nk seemed at least willing to run that gauntlet.

And then something happened. There seemed to be signs as early as 2010, but in 2012 we got The Truth About Love that seemed more sanitized and pop than ever - and yeah, it fit the overmixed sound of the time, pop rock had died a slow death by then, but it didn't fit her straining vocals and even if I don't dislike the album as much as I did five years ago, it was a painful low point for her, with Greg Kurstin and Jeff Bhasker trying to engineer a tone that used to come naturally and lyrics that could feel borderline self-parody in their party girl veneer that Kesha at least embraced with self-awareness - not even the Max Martin contributions were salvageable. And then P!nk left the mainstream entirely to work with City In Color on you + me and at that point I had just assumed she had left pop behind. But then came 'Just Like Fire', which felt like a pale shadow of everything P!nk had done before and wound up on my list of the Worst Hit Songs of 2016, and while 'What About Us' did seem like an improvement, I had no idea if Beautiful Trauma would bring any of the spark that I loved about P!nk back. The producers and collaborating list did seem a bit more promising - although like last time I was a little nervous about that Eminem collaboration - but hey, P!nk's still a phenomenal singer, so what did we get?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 28, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this week was... weird. Lot of charity stuff, lot of prayer, and overall it's tough to see if there was a lot of quality. Eh, we'll see.

Next up, P!nk, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 28, 2017

I don't often use the phrase 'be careful what you wish more' on this show - mostly because if a song I like gets big there's very rarely a huge negative consequence, but also because I've generally been pretty lousy at predicting the Hot 100 anyway. But if there's a week where that might apply on a generally scattershot week overall, it might be here, because if we take a look at yet another new #1...

video review: 'MASSEDUCTION' by st. vincent

And then there is this. You know, I thought this might be a little more contentious than I expected, until Fantano put out his review and honestly echoed many of my criticisms. Huh.

In any case, Billboard BREAKDOWN is coming up next!

movie review: 'blade runner 2049' (VIDEO)

So I don't think this is among my best videos, but this is still a pretty damn great film. If you get a chance, see it - it rules. :)

the top ten best hit songs of 2010 (VIDEO)

I'm so damn glad this turned out as well as it did, especially as I had to re-edit to avoid the damn copyright bot. In any case, thank you all for watching and subscribing, I dearly appreciate it!

video review: 'heaven upside down' by marilyn manson

I really need to get better at posting these updates when the video actually drops... so on that note...

album review: 'MASSEDUCTION' by st. vincent

I often feel like using the word 'evolution' to describe Annie Clark's ongoing career under the name St. Vincent isn't quite accurate. I think 'mutation' is the better word - and believe it or not, that's a compliment! She may have started in the more poised and polished realm of baroque pop with tasteful strings accenting her admittedly unorthodox style of guitar work, but as early as Actor things started to shift. The guitars got more processed and blocky that somehow still managed to support potent melodic grooves, the strings began giving way for synthesizers and tones that felt all the more alien, and while her voice kept its same ethereal quality - for the most part - the content and its connection to the human experience was contorting into something more primal, for lack of a better word. Oh, the empathy, complex framing, and willingness to bend taboos was always there, but its mode of expression was warping into something less and less recognizable, with the compositions and framing maybe losing a bit of their populism but opening up new depths of sound for her to explore.

And I'm a fan of it - a pretty big fan, actually. I'd still slot Strange Mercy as a shade stronger than the self-titled release just in terms of overall consistency, but with songs like 'Psychopath', 'Severed Crossed Fingers', 'Digital Witness' and the absolutely mind-blowing 'Bring Me Your Loves' St. Vincent was making a case for the more twisted sonic adventures having potential that was just as rich and promising. And considering that her newest record MASSEDUCTION was looking to be going even deeper in a thematically dense direction, I was most certainly curious where the hell she'd take this. So what did I find on MASSEDUCTION?

the top ten best hit songs of 2010

I have to admit, when I first added the highest tier option to include requests for a top ten list, I had no idea what was going to be requested. Opening up the vast decades of Billboard history meant this could go in any direction, and that could mean a wealth of new discoveries. And thus our first Patreon request is for the best hit songs of... 2010.

album review: 'heaven upside down' by marilyn manson

So here's one of the byproducts of the weird way I got into metal and industrial music: almost by accident I completely missed Marilyn Manson. Seriously, it's actually a little bizarre how until very recently I had just completely missed covering the industrial iconoclast or even hearing much of his music beyond the covers that managed to cross over - as I've said in the past, I never had an angry white boy phase, and I found goth music and culture more through symphonic metal, black metal, and early post-punk and industrial music more than the mutated hybrids that came out in the 90s and 2000s that spawned acts like Marilyn Manson. 

Now that's not saying that Manson doesn't have a place in pop culture - he most certainly does, from his 90s breakout records produced by Trent Reznor to his numerous artistic pivots throughout the early 2000s - but in retrospect you often get the impression that his image has persisted a lot longer than his music has. It's one of the reasons I actually respect his pop sensibility - if you're aware your currency is in shock value, you might as well pair it with tunes that can be pretty damn catchy that'll at least stick when all but the professionally outraged set grows up. But that's the thing: folks who grew up with Marilyn Manson did grow up, and he was still making music, and after severing ties with Interscope you could tell he was probing different territory, going for metal with Born Villain and even pivoting towards blues with The Pale Emperor, with the backing of producer and composer Tyler Bates. But I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before he pivoted back towards what made his career, and given that buzz was suggesting the political undercurrent was going to be flowing again, I figured Manson's natural gift for provocation could actually pay off here. And even if, again, I'm no big fan of the guy's music - I could easily rattle off a slew of other gothic acts that I find more potent than Marilyn Manson - I figure I might as well take a look. So, what did we unearth here?

video review: 'poppy.computer' by poppy

So this was cute. Fun record too, really happy I covered this.

And now onto something just as cute in its own way... ;)

album review: 'poppy.computer' by poppy

You know, it's very tempting for me as a YouTuber to start this entire review with a Poppy spoof. The washed out aesthetic and slightly offkilter delivery, full of fragmented non sequiteurs, internet soundbites and memes, the sort of layered satire of pop stars in the age of internet culture directed by Titanic Sinclair which has blown up into something I'd need the next hour to fully deconstruct and explain. To reveal more would be to strip away some of the charm of the original videos which you should all watch, but suffice to say, for the most part, I'm a fan of Poppy as an internet personality.

But I'm not reviewing an internet personality or a meme - I have enough trouble keeping reviews monetized as it is - I'm talking about the music, of which Poppy has touched since the very beginning with covers and eventually original songs that would leverage some of the satire against a technocolor backdrop. And while I've liked her pop music, I've always had my concern that her online persona would overshadow her records, that she wouldn't quite be able to capture the subtle twists and potency of her videos. Now you have to wonder if she'd even bother to try in some cases - around this time last year she released the ambient project 3:36 (Music To Sleep To), and despite certain eerier textures it was far more abstract than her usual content - but it also felt more like a digression, not the blur of k-pop, dance punk, and electronic synthpop I expected we would get on her debut. So okay, what did I find with Poppy.Computer?

video review: 'all i ever see in you is me' by jillette johnson

You know, this is one of the vids where the prospects were never good - even if I wasn't months late it'd still be a tough sell to get to a mass audience, she's pretty underground...

But with YouTube dicking over the sub boxes for this as well, I'd still like to see it get some traction, so I'd urge you all to check it out.

Thankfully, I've got some content coming that should boost my fortunes, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 21, 2017 (VIDEO)

Okay, so this was... actually a pretty lousy week, not helped by YouTube dicking over my sub box (which apparently happened for multiple users, but still wasn't all that fun). At least this'll have some longevity...

album review: 'all i ever see in you is me' by jillette johnson

So after the last album review I feel something needs to be clarified, namely with respect to the folks supporting me and voting on my schedule on Patreon - and a lot of it is gratitude. Seriously, with YouTube demonetizing the majority of my videos the second they go up, you guys have been a life saver, and you've introduced me to music that I would never have covered otherwise. Some bad - I'm not sure I'll ever forgive you guys for AJR - but a ton of it good.

And as such, given the rather peculiar state my schedule is in right now, I think it's time we handle some old business and review a record that took a long time to get to the top - and yet if I had done my homework I would have been pushing this months ago. For the majority of you who do not know, Jillette Johnson is a New York singer-songwriter who has been attracting comparisons to Fiona Apple, but really her style and instrumentation reminds me more of a split between Feist's personality, Regina Spektor's hyper-detailed writing, Florence Welch's power, and Vienna Teng's knack for slightly off-kilter indie pop production that could lead to phenomenal hooks all the same. Her debut album Water In A Whale came out in 2013 and my god, it is something special, full of the sort of indie pop that throws in enough left turns to keep you intrigued and enough bombast and creativity to suck you in. It's a terrific debut and it makes all the more sense why she actually turned down an offer to go on The Voice so she could focus on her career - she's a far more intriguing artist than what that show would have her do. In any case, she dropped a sophomore album in mid-July, and if it's anything like her debut I was definitely excited to see where this would fit. So, what did we get?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 21, 2017

So I've been predicting for the past few weeks that the charts are on the verge of something breaking - and thus far, the Hot 100 has been doing a fine job of making me look like a fool by not really doing much of anything. Worse yet, the predictions I did make about pop divas making a splash blew up in the face and, as so many of you predicted, the biggest splash we got this week was from the debut album from A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. I have to be honest, this wasn't even on my radar or schedule, so might as well take a dive into that, especially considering our other new arrivals this week!

movie review: 'mother!' (VIDEO)

Whoo boy, really wish I liked this a lot more... eh, it happens, I just hope I managed to clarify my point effectively, this was a pretty scattered vlog all things considered.

But next up, I've got a bit of old business before the 30k video, and of course Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

video review: 'life changes' by thomas rhett

Hey, if it was truly awful believe me I would have said so. As it is... well, made for a good bait-and-switch with the thumbnail. :)

And next up... hmm, interesting, we'll see what we get here. Stay tuned!

album review: 'life changes' by thomas rhett

There's a part of me that doesn't even want to pretend I care about this record, to basically pull a bait-and-switch and talk about something that actually dropped this week and that got forced back on my schedule because according to my Patrons I should just 'get this over with'. Because that's the optimum attitude going into an album review, right?

In all due seriousness, I should have vetoed this from my schedule. I didn't because I've got a morbid sense of curiosity surrounding this guy's inexplicable popularity... you know, I can't even say that! I know what Thomas Rhett is popular, he makes doofy pop music for people terrified of the raw sexuality of Bruno Mars. I've always found it contemptible that he's still advertised on country radio, because let's be honest, he belongs on the pop stations - but he'd also be consigned to the same territory as the b- and c-list like Andy Grammer or just get stuck playing catch-up to Charlie Puth, Shawn Mendes and Ed Sheeran if he's not going to rip them off entirely. 

My larger point was that going into Life Changes I didn't expect the genre-defying abomination that was Tangled Up, I expected something more 'normal' and sedate after the success of 'Die A Happy Man', a set of pleasant, underwhelming milquetoast pop that'll be forgettable to listen through and absolute torture to review. But, at the same time it's not like 'Craving You' or 'Unforgettable' were bad songs - they weren't country but they were at least passable, and you really have nowhere to go but up after Tangled Up, so maybe this would be at least inoffensive?

video review: 'the hype' by hoodie allen

Well, despite YouTube dicking me over again with monetization, here we go. Can't say I loved this, but it was passable enough I guess.

And now onto something far less interesting... well, stay tuned.