The most infamous song of 2020 is finally here on Wicked Guilty Pleasures.
The song itself was a huge hit worldwide, both commercially and critically, but let's look at it a little closer.
It is a collaboration between two women who rap, a field largely dominated by men. It is, in fact, arguably the biggest hit by two collaborating rap artists.
It is a very explicit song, almost to the point of absurdity. And, it is unapologetically so - neither of these women care if you're offended.
And the song is a true collaboration. As much as their music demands a bit of bravado, neither upstages the other.
Plus, the use of tigers in the video sparked a feud with Carole Baskin.... so, there's that.
I have to admit something.
I wasn't a huge fan of this song until I heard this mashup with "We Appreciate Power" by Grimes. Completely different song. Brilliant choice both titular (look at what that title spells) and musically.
Couldn't have pushed that up a little for me, Ella?
Well, people are already talking about it being the Song of the Summer. While it's still a bit early for that, the song is really cool and mellow. While it does bear a resemblance to the Primal Scream song "Loaded" (which yeah, we posted earlier this week), Primal Scream is surprisingly OK with it.
We may never do this again. It's a rare album that is worthy of such a focus and such praise. This is that rare album.
And, on this Canada Day, I chose an album that thoroughly celebrates a part of Canada.
At the beginning of June, I mentioned in a blog post an all-piano album that I could not stop listening to. I still can't. I first heard the album on its day of release, thanks to Spotify, and in fact listened to it more than once that day. I was on vacation and sitting in a hotel room, and... it hit me just right.
The artist is Cœur de Pirate, and the album is Perséides. It is, thus far, my favorite album I've heard this year. Clocking in at just over a half hour, it is 100% piano. There is no vocal. There is no other instrument I can hear.
This is a woman who, because of surgery, could (temporarily) not talk, let alone sing, and yet she found a way to compose, perform and release these deeply personal songs about places in Quebec that mean so much to her. It's truly magic.
If you are not able to hear the album using the Spotify link, here it is on YouTube. It is a playlist that starts from the first track:
Before she was all "Fancy", Iggy Azalea was establishing herself as pretty hard-edged. We have featured Iggy Azalea on this blog several times - before AND after "Fancy".
This song, her first collaboration with T.I., is one that we've missed, mostly because we never found a great spot to slot her in that flowed with the feeling we were going with - either in genre, or theme. I've had this song sitting in my drafts for a couple of years.
The song appears on her 2012 EP Glory and would serve as her debut single (although "Beat Down" came a few months earlier, that was Steve Aoki and Angger Dimas's single, not hers). For those not familiar with Steve Aoki, seeing a long-haired blonde Australian girl coming with an in-your-face style of hip hop was a bit of a shock.... but in a good way.
Here she is performing the song live in 2013. It is one of the first times she had ever performed live, and she absolutely brought the house DOWN.
This song sounds really cool, right? I mean, the guitar rift is one of the greatest from the mid-1990s. Richard Patrick's delivery of his song is spot on.
So, listen to the song first with no preconceptions about what the song is about. Just enjoy the song.
In January 1987, Robert Budd Dwyer, Pennsylvania State Treasurer, was convicted of bribery and was due to be sentenced for up to 55 years in prison. The day before his sentencing, he held a press conference, maintaining his evidence. At some point during the conference, he pulled out a revolver and took his own life, without injuring anyone else.
So, that's the "Nice Shot" Filter is referring to. This song is about that incident. There were rumors it was about Kurt Cobain. Those are not true - the song was written in 1991.
So, now listen to it again, with that in mind. But here's a live version for you.
I won't be posting video of the incident. If you want to see that sad, tragic spectacle, you can look for it yourself.
I wanted to make sure I posted a band that Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor has obviously never heard of.
In all seriousness, this song, an acid house classic, was a top 20 UK hit for Primal Scream in 1990 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest dance songs of all time.
I agree with that assessment - I played it on college radio the ONE NIGHT they let me do the dance show. I don't think this was a contributing factor to me not doing that again (I made some questionable choices) but I thought it was great and I was certainly dancing to it in the studio, quite similarly to how I am dancing to it right now, as I write this.
The song samples lines from the movie The Wild Angels.
Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus were looking to become better known songwriters. Sure, they were known in Sweden, but not much outside. So, how does a European group get attention for their songwriting?
Easy. Enter the Eurovision Song Contest.
Which this song won in 1974, as Sweden's entry. And, it won handily.
This single was the first credited to the group as ABBA, is is likely the only song ever to compare a relationship to a Napoleonic battle. Usually, a song like this i.e. one that wins Eurovision isn't all that popular outside of Europe, but this song was different, igniting their fame worldwide.
It is widely considered to be the greatest song to come out of a Eurovision competition.
Of course, in order to QUALIFY for Eurovision, they had to perform the song for Sweden. Which they did, at Melodifestivalen, a Swedish music festival for the purpose of picking the Eurovision competitor. You might notice this version is a little different.
By the way, lest you think I'm kidding about this Eurovision stuff, here are ABBA, watching the results come in, followed by them performing the song as winners.
This is exactly the type of post that Scott would have posted. And yet, here I am, unapologetically posting country gospel.
Look, let's get it out of the way. It's a pretty straight-forward modern country song, with pretty blatant Christian overtones. It's about a woman praying she doesn't die when she hits a patch of black ice. Moreover, it's a song that demands a broad vocal range.
This song was American Idol winner Carrie Underwood's first Country #1 hit song (she would go on to have 15, so far). It also crossed over and became a Top 5 Christian hit (a chart she would later top, twice), and a top twenty POP hit - a chart she had previously topped with her debut single. This was her 2nd single.
And yeah, it won several awards, including two Grammys.
To call this song influential and important is not hyperbole. It set the direction of Underwood's music, away from the pop idol sphere in which Simon Cowell's greatest creation usually played, and it established her as a leading cross-genre artist for a generation.
In 2012, I first posted music performed by Amanada Seyfried on Totally Covered. The songs were from a movie in which she had acted - Mamma Mia! - and inspired by another - Red Riding Hood. These covers were, in a word, amazing. Both of them. The latter is still on heavy rotation for me, and the former was so good, I posted it again, unapologetically, on this blog.
When I wrote that original post, I made a bit of a flippant comment - "A reminder that this is the same person who played the dumb blonde in Mean Girls".
Which is true. She did.
She has since been nominated for an Academy Award (for Mank), and has continued to demonstrate that she is both a talented actress and musician with great depth. Seyfried's discography is absolutely loaded with covers - many tied to her movies - but this song, from her 2010 film Dear John, is not only not a cover, SHE wrote it.
You know, we've gone this whole month and we haven't even acknowledged Pride Month.
This song, originally pitched to Anne Murray, was written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg about Kelly's mother. When Cyndi Lauper got a hold of the song, it became something so much bigger - a song of empowerment and encouragement.
It was also become an anthem of LGBTQ pride. In fact, the song resonated with Lauper specifically because she had recently lost a good friend to AIDS - a good friend who had been ejected from his home at age 12 for the crime of being gay. One of the great things that Lauper has done is founded the charity now known as True Colors United, a group dedicated to the unique problems of LGBTQ youth homelessness.
If I were to ask you "what was the first US Top Ten hit by Genesis", you'd be hard pressed to come up with this 1983 hit. And yet, this little song with a Ringo Starr-esque drum part is indeed the right answer.
It's also their first appearance on Wicked Guilty Pleasures, so......
That drum riff was absolutely intentional. This song was Phil Collins's attempt to write a catchy pop song a la The Beatles.
If you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably expected a Charli XCX song to be the 1000th post. Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I used to post about Charlotte Aitchison more than I even post about Béatrice Martin now. That MAY be the only time those two artists will ever be mentioned in the same sentence. Trust me. I Googled that.
Anyway, this isn't the 1000th post. It's number nine hundred and ninety nine.
In 2013, I thought Charli was ahead of her time. Her 2013 album True Romance was a revelation - at the time, I said, and I quote, " Every single song can stand alone - and several have as singles - but the sum of all the parts - a dark pop gem that teeters between love and heartbreak - is so much greater." Its follow-up Sucker was solid. Of course, there was also "Fancy".... you know, the post where I admitted I had a Charli XCX problem.
Then came Vroom Vroom. The post I did about this song on September 1st, 2016 is the last time I posted about Charli XCX. I had misgivings about the song but spun it positive. Still, I found this period to be a step in a direction in which I wasn't interested - her subsequent single just didn't interest me. So, I turned my back on this music, and, frankly, her catalog.
I even unfollowed her on Instagram.
In the ensuing years, she has released a couple of albums and mixtapes. She's taken a stronger electronic direction, and a lot of it is really good. I largely ignored her late 2017 mixtape Pop 2, and that was a huge mistake, because that represents her best work since True Romance.
Apparently, though, I'm not the only one who missed Pop 2, because this video, released in April 2021, is for a song from that mixtape that has found a new life on TikTok. It would appear that the world has finally caught up to this artist ahead of her time.
I'm not going to show you the countless TikTok videos that are set to this song. I AM going to share a performance of the song, featuring Kim Petras, from 2019. I have always had respect for the fact that Charli performs her songs live, and doesn't rely on a helper track for all her vocals. Not every artist does that.
So I was minding my own business the other day. You know, doing normal Internet stuff before I headed off to work. Check Facebook, read a couple comics, update my fantasy baseball teams and lastly check Twitter. Big mistake (on the last one).
"Kinda want to bring @sneezeguard back to #WickedGP for a day so I don't have to write a @taylorswift13 post...." - Anthony D'Orazio @RedArgyle
Really? Called out on Twitter. I thought about it though and said, "maybe?" Sure I haven't done a Wicked Guilty Pleasures or Totally Covered post in like seven or eight years but it's just like riding a horse with three legs. Right? (By the way I left the kooshie blog world to run a Country Music website and then moved on to an outlaw country site where I seemed to only talk about metal or alternative bands, before settling in to "semi-retirement" after a stroke...seriously).
Could I spend an hour a week barely talking about specific songs while using the occasional clever reference? I don't know. Maybe...
So here we are...coming back stronger than a 90's trend.
In 2013, I wrote a post about a song, by a pop duo called Karmin. It was I believe the 4th post about them on this blog - there were another bunch on Totally Covered. Without actually counting, I think this might be the most I've posted about any single artist thus far.
The duo was a real-life engaged couple, Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan.
In 2014, Karmin fired their record label - who weren't promoting them -and began releasing music on their own.
Fast forward to 2017. At this point, the music had changed, and Karmin morphed into Qveen Herby, with the now-married couple both involved BUT with Nick behind the scenes and Amy billed as a solo act. They - she - proceeded to release a ridiculous number of EPs.
The debut Qveen Herby full-length album, A Woman, was released in May 2021. I'm happy to be able to share a pretty great single from that album.
On this blog, we've had three Hall of Fame inductees - Nirvana, P!nk, and the first, Katy Perry. When we inducted Katy Perry, she had only TWO albums released.
TWO.
We had so much material JUST from what she had released thus far, we left stuff OUT.
This song, from her landmark 2nd album Teenage Dream (this version technically from Teenage Dream; The Complete Confection 2012 reissue), was one of those outtakes. This, the fourth single from that album, was also her 5th #1 hit in the US, and the 4th from that album, making it (at the time) only the 7th album to achieve that milestone - it would go on to produce a 5th #1 single, only the second album to ever achieve that (Michael Jackson's Bad being the first). (The Complete Confection would spawn a 6th #1, by the way)
So, on the strength of two albums, Katy Perry was a Hall of Famer in our eyes. History has already been kind to both Katy Perry and to Teenage Dream. And this collaboration with Kanye West is quite interesting and a bit of a departure from the rest of the album, taking a harsher edge tone.
Katy still performs this song live - but this is one of the FIRST times she ever did.
I feel like this blog has grown up with Kesha. Our 3rd ever post - and my 2nd - was a Kesha song..... back when she was Ke-Dollar Sign-Ha.
This song, her second single, was a top 10 hit, but mostly off digital download, as it was a bit of an explicit song - "just turn around boy, and let me hit that" - and GOD FORBID a woman be as explicit as the men.
Kesha herself co-wrote the song, as she has done with most of her music. Her performance overshadowed any participation by 3OH!3 (whose Sean Foreman was also a co-writer), who had their biggest hit with this song as well.
We know that, since these songs came out, that Kesha has had some troubles and some tribulations, which we have discussed extensively in other posts. Because of all that, we're also still happy to have these songs and happy that Kesha is still making music.
The best laid plans sometimes get disturbed by new releases. Indeed, in this little review of the first 1000 posts, I had not intended to highlight Poppy, who isn't someone we've posted MUCH on this blog, but who has been an interesting and unusual force in the recording industry and performance art. Not that she doesn't deserve the attention - she's been featured previously on this blog. We just haven't found a place to slot her in more. There's a lot of guilty pleasures, folks!!!!
However, I promised myself that I would post this at the soonest opportunity I could, as soon as it was released.
Poppy first performed this song on the 63th GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony, unexpectedly debuting a new song as opposed to the song for which she was nominated. She finally released it on Tuesday (June 8th, if you are reading this later) as part of the Eat EP, which is a sonic wonder in and of itself. The song is an angry, appealing, noisy revelation.
This did bump another post, but we will feature that at a later date. Don't worry.
A few years ago, we did a week of Fleetwood Mac posts.
Several of those posts are the most popular we've ever written. By a lot.
Clearly, we leaned heavily on Rumors, but not just. However, because of that, we had to leave out a few great songs that really deserved a highlight.
This song. which was recorded in the middle of the night in 1976 and features some unusual instruments, like breaking glass and an electric harpisicord. It quickly became a classic and a signature Stevie Nicks tune.
On this very blog, in 2012, my friend and former co-author Scott Colvin posted a surprising XTC cover as performed by Mandy Moore. This song was actually one of the catalysts that sparked our OTHER blog, Totally Covered, but we didn't have that back then, so this is where he put it.
My immediate internal reaction when I saw that was, "you mean that girl who sang 'Candy'?"
There is a large subset of you reading this who are a little surprised that the mom from This Is Us was not only a pop star - at 15! - but a peer of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera who was actually making the same kind of music. And she was mentioned in the same breath as those huge stars, because her music was that catchy, and her voice was that strong - and still is.
So, big TV star Mandy Moore, who does XTC covers and classy folk-pop music now..... you might think she'd be embarrassed by this song now..... right?
Wrong.
I've got to be honest. When I started writing this, I expected to find an old performance of this song from year 2000 late night television - and I found a LOT of those. I didn't expect to find this. This incredibly solid performance that brings a fair bit more soul to the song is from February 2020.
Next week, we post our 1,000th blog entry. Let's spend some time looking back on some of the more important posts on this blog.
Lorde has always been popular on this blog. Our post about her song "Tennis Court" is the most popular by any solo artist on here. You would have thought it would be a different song, but no. Every Lorde post has done well, though.
In 2017, Lorde released her long-awaited 2nd album, Melodrama. She hasn't released anything since, despite the critical acclaim she received for songs like this, which was co-written by Lorde and Jack Antonoff.
While this song didn't chart in the US, it was a minor hit worldwide... and it's an incredible, epic song.
Lorde performed this song live many times, in different versions. In this version, she stripped it down, making it less epic and more intimate. I almost like it better.
This 1984 single, the lead single from her album A Private Heaven, was a huge hit almost everywhere in the world.... but not her native UK. Go figure. It was a departure from her more innocent love songs to a more adult, more suggestive sound - a sound she'd continue to pursue in a future collaboration with Prince.
I found early Sheena Easton to be boring, but 12-year-old Tony really enjoyed this song... and I still do. Also, great, now you know how old I am.
It seems noteworthy to say that she performed the song in a 1986 commercial in Japan while dressed as a geisha.
We posted about Tracy Bonham on this blog almost nine years ago. It i incredible to me that I am still writing this so far in the future from that.
We referred to the fact that she was a one hit wonder. This was that hit. In reality, she had a 2nd hit - which I will post another day. This was by far her biggest one, however, and for good reason - it takes a completely relatable story of a girl who has moved out of her mother's house and is trying to reassure mom that EVERYTHING'S FINE, even though it isn't.
This video, which got a lot of MTV airplay, features Tracy's actual mother on vacuum.
This version of the video was made for VH1, which had an audience that skewed older and more family-friendly. I guess trying on clothes in a closet mutes the primal scream that EVERYTHING'S FINE.
The VH1 video makes it a little clear, but this live performance makes it more abundantly clear that Tracy is playing a fiddle, and uses it to convey a tone shift and to punctuate the fact that EVERYTHING'S FINE.
You were about thisclose to forgetting this song even existed, weren't you?
And yet this was Lit's biggest hit, in 1999. It was only a moderate hit, but it was a hit nonetheless. It is the epitome of post-punk power-pop, but it was also a catchy tune. It's OK to enjoy it.
It has been a hell of a year already for Béatrice Martin.
She bought her record label - Dare To Care Records - and renamed it Bravo Musique. SHe is now its owner, President, and A&R Director....
She had vocal cord surgery - to treat a hemorrhagic polyp. She seems to have recovered, although it left her completely silent for a while..
She dropped a surprise instrumental album on April 30th (Perséides), recorded while she was recovering from vocal cord surgery. It's a delight. Highly recommended. I cannot stop listening to it.
Plus she keeps getting featured on this blog written by some silly American fellow who discovered and fell in love with her music accidentally. Seriously. We've posted more Cœur de Pirate music here than any other artist thus far - this is the fifth post and I promise you there will be at least a 6th. I want to make sure I say that loud enough for the people in the back. A French-languange artist is making compelling, catchy music that transcends language barriers - again and again.
And today, I am launching a campaign to make this single, released May 28th, 2021, the 2021 Song of the Summer, in the United States. This is a catchy, mature, piano-synth heavy song that really deserves a lot of attention.
Whether I am successful or not, this song is MY Song of the Summer, because it is a delight.
I have made an awful lot of Doja Cat jokes in my day.
However, this is a clever and catchy song that brings a warm summer vibe, and, on this unofficial first day of summer, I felt it was a great choice.
In writing this post, I gained a lot of respect for Doja Cat. You see, when you have a big hit song, your record label is going to push you to perform it EVERYWHERE. Well, that's what RCA Records did to Doja Cat when it came to the 2020 MTV European Music Awards...
So, in response, she made a genre shift.... and it was really good.
I used to go to a lot of drug company dinners concerning drugs for multiple sclerosis. This is because it is something that impacts my life (I won't betray medical privacy by saying why, but if you know me personally, you know why).
I remember going to one in Webster, NY, hosted by Teva Pharmaceuticals - a drug called Copaxone, which was one of the first drugs developed to treat relapsing multiple sclerosis. The way these things work, a doctor talks about the drug and its efficacy for about a half hour, and then a patient taking the drugs comes up to tell their story.
On this particular day, the patient's name was Julie. They are TYPICALLY only identified by their first names. She came in singing a Barbara Mandrell song. I know you're wondering what song, but it isn't important. That was the first clue that we were in for something different.
Julie told a moving story about her life - about she dreamed of being a country music superstar, how she lost her home in a flood that also triggered an MS relapse (when she was trying to ignore having anything wrong), how she came to work for a record label (Mercury Nashville) as their receptionist and eventually was signed. And....
"My debut album, Julie Roberts - that's my name, Julie Roberts....."
At which point I immediately reached for my phone to 1) find the post on Totally Covered that Scott had posted to 2) make sure I remembered correctly that there was a picture of him with her 3) wrote to Scott on Twitter to basically tell him all of this. He told me to say hi for him after the talk.
Which I did. Amazingly, she not only remembered him, but the venue in which he saw her perform - without a prompt from me. She was exceedingly nice.
Julie's patient story was far and away the best I've ever heard - so detailed, so moving, and so engaging. I won't tell her whole story - but she is a working musician who happened to have multiple sclerosis.
And she is a musician, and this was her debut single from that album. It would be a top 20 country hit, with the album receiving a gold certification.
You might be wondering why I am posting this on a Sunday. Today is World MS Day. I encourage you to visit the National MS Society website and tell 'em we sent you. Donate, learn more. Help find a cure.
Now here's more Julie Roberts performing this song live in some elementary school auditorium.
Guys, Jane was my favorite Go-Go. Let's start there.
That's why I saved this song, her biggest solo hit - top 10 in the US, top 20 in the UK - for last.
Two things of note about this song:
1) The video is very dolphin-centric, which doesn't really have a lot to do with the lyrics. It's a great video, for sure. but..... dolphins.
2) Video of this song being performed live is incredibly rare. It's complex and tough to reproduce live..... which is why this video from a couple of years ago is such a treat, and required a large band.
A little bonus for you - two Go-Go's songs from the same performance. This includes Jane's third verse of "Our Lips Are Sealed" and the Charlotte Caffey-penned "We Got The Beat".
To support this great cover band that doesn't usually feature Jane Wiedlin, go to nitewaveparty.com
Either I open the week with Belinda Carlisle or I end with her.
Either I open the week with Kathy Valentine's band The Delphines, or I end with it.
Pretty clear which way I went.
Smack dab in the middle.
So enjoy The Delphines. They are led by Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Kathy Valentine. This was a great band in its own right - so great I won't even mention that other band she was a member of.
Belinda Carlisle's first solo release was this song. It peaked at #3 in the Untied States and was a hit worldwide. Featuring Andy Taylor from Duran Duran on guitar (yes, he's in the video), the video also features her husband - who she married three weeks before this song was released in 1985 (they're still together, people).
Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go's sang bankground vocals on this song, and replacement Go-Go (for Jane Wiedlin!) Paula Jean Brown co-wrote the song, so any rumors about acrimony in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted band were not well-founded. In fact, this was almost a Go-Go's song - but when the band split, the song went to Belinda.
InB4 the hate mail I will get reminding me that House of Schock was a thing. I know. I grew up in the 1980s.
Former Go-Go Gina Schock is clearly not drumming here. No, no. She's singing and playing guitar. And she does a fine job - the song is enjoyable pop-rock - but the band - formed with Ellen's brother Vance DeGeneres - was clearly lacking in chemistry and record label support, so they were a one-album wonder.
Robert Pollard is perhaps the most prolific songwriter of all time. He's written few better than this song.
A clear workingman's anthem from the Dayton, OH band - that's the middle of the Rust Belt - it starts somewhat calm and controlled in the first verse, but Bob Pollard goes full on yell in the second verse, struggling to exceed the music that has also increased in volume, tempo and desperation. The third verse is a hypercompressed repeat in feel of verses one and two - with something of a greater desperation ending on a more somber note.
Live in Cincinatti in 2016, the contrast between verses is even more pronounced,
What really got me feeling the chills on this song, however, was this version billed as the demo. I heard a version the band recorded for the radio station KCRW, which is quite similar to this one. The desperate emotion in Pollard's voice really shines through with a slightly quieter mix.
This was Warren Zevon's last single. He wrote it after he realized he was dying. It was released on his last album, The Wind, two weeks before he passed away from mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer.
Think about mortality as you listen to it.
Despite being dead, Warren Zevon managed to appear on the Grammys in 2004. This is a very special tribute to the man, and you should see it. These artists - most of them legends in their own right - aren't singing a duet. They are singing backing vocals.
Let's be clear. The Marti Jones version, released in 1988, is absolutely a cover of Don Dixon's version. I am OPENLY posting a cover here, and not on Totally Covered.
However, Marti Jones brought a feel to her husband's song that was simply transcendent. It is a desperate, haunting song that I cannot get enough of, to this day. Also, this version adds a bridge, which absolutely adds to the mysterious appeal of this simple folk song.
Of course, this doesn't mean the Don Dixon version sucks. It's amazing. Here it is. It is a much simpler song in its arrangement - which is why it doesn't get top billing on this post.
It is "Songs That Are So Good They Give Tony Chills" Week,
We start with this 1958 single by the Everly Brothers. Written by famed country songwriter Boudleaux Bryant, who wrote a lot of Everly Brothers hit songs, it is a beautiful song of longing for the one you love. The harmonies of the brothers absolutely make the hairs on my arm stand on end.
The song was so good, it topped the pop charts for five weeks in 1958 AND returned to the charts in 1961. It also topped the R&B AND Country charts. Literally everyone loved this soulful, mournful song.
Throwing Muses, as I have stated elsewhere, is my favorite band ever. I've seen them live twice (1989, 1995) and neither time did they disappoint.
And if there was ever a post I had been dying to write, it was this one.
This song, from 1992's Red Heaven, is almost every Muses's fan's favorite song. It has been compared to "Stairway To Heaven", and I get that comparison - it's epic and pulls on a wide range of emotions. Essentially a fever dream, Kristin Hersh's vocals and unaccompanied opening guitar give me chills every time. In the middle, it moves to a very bass-and-drum heavy song
Live, the song has a slightly different feel, with Hersh on an electric instead of acoustic guitar... but Bernard Georges and David Narcizo still don't accompany her until nearly two minutes into the song, which opens a bombastic two and a half minutes before it becomes a soulful solo again. Simply beautiful, it is a song that you need to listen to until the end.
This, the first single from her new album Soberish, her first album in over a decade, is nuanced and layered and beautiful. Anyone who has been through divorce, or any breakup, can relate to the feeling of wanting to be alone and just hiding in the bathroom. This song illustrates that in such a artful way.
Contrast that with an also excellent, but less beautiful and more gritty, song from her 1993 debut album Exile In Guyville, and the Girlysound tapes before that. In 2016, she called this one of her favorite songs, and I agree. It's sad, and dark, but also jangly and hard not to relate to.
This song leans heavily on the beat from "Genius of Love" by the Tom Tom Club. Samples are a hallmark of hip hop music, and this entertaining song uses it well - changing the key on the sample ever so slightly.
This song, which went to #2 on the pop charts in 1997. would be British R&B singer Mark Morrison's only hit. Which is OK, since he is now a politician challenging to be the mayor of Leichester, in his native UK.
That famous guitar rift at the beginning of this 2003 song was the first part written by Jack White in 2002. The rest of the song flowed pretty easily after that. Jack plays both traditional and slide guitar on this song, as well as providing vocals. Meg White's drum beat keeps time.
But the song is more than that. It's an anthem at sporting events. It's a rallying cry for political rallies. It was a catalyst for a growing garage band movement, based on how incredibly sparse the song actually is - able to be played by a band of 2 or 3 people.
Of course, the White Stripes broke up in 2011, but we still have these songs and performances to remember them by. Take this show from 2005, in Brazil - proof positive that you can play this song with a band of 2.
Also, can we talk about how happy Meg looks on the drums?
We just can't stop the K-Pop. I feel like I short-change y'all last week because, well, Darling Buds Day, so I'm making up now.
MAMAMOO have been released really good music since 2014 - music that is both poppy and critically acclaimed. All four members have strong solo careers outside the group.. which, in K-Pop, isn't all that uncommon - but the level of success they've all had as solo artists is nearly unprecedented - all four of them have extensive solo discographies that rival the success of the group as a whole.
Still, the group stays together and makes excellent music. This single, from late 2020, is an example of that. Not only is it entertaining - it DIRECTLY addresses the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it had (and, as of this writing, still has) on social life.
As is not uncommon in K-Pop, a Japanese version of the song was released in early 2021. I'd like to point out that this isn't just a redubbing - there are a lot of portions of this video that were recorded to reflect Japanese lipsync.
I was originally going to post this during the two weeks of K-Pop, but, you know, the Darling Buds annual celebration interrupted that. So, you get an extra day of K-Pop. Not like I don't have literally three months worth of solid K-Pop to post.....
And when I first saw aespa, I thought they looked a lot like BLACKPINK - but theirs is a unique sound.
aespa, however, doesn't need uppercase letters. This was their debut single, premiering in November 2020. It is an bass-heavy song that has become a worldwide hit.
The video definitely does NOT shy away from the snake imagery. The song itself is meant to explain the concept of aespa.....yes, there's a whole concept about avatars and experience.... you see, a lot of K-Pop is focused on performance and entertainment, and not the actual music.
However, this one's a banger, DESPITE the high concept. The four women in the group (I promise you there's only four) are clearly talented at singing, and the music here allows each of them to highlight their vocals.
How do artists clearly in two different countries collaborate in the middle of a pandemic?
Clearly, via Zoom.
Yes, they made an actual video for the song, but I wanted to show off the Zoom version first. However, even in this version, you notice that BLACKPINK is very much not in Selena Gomez's area, as their scenes were recorded in Korea, whereas Ms. Gomez filmed in the States.
The song was teased before its release, with BLACKPINK fans hoping the mystery collaborator not initially mentioned would be Ariana Grande. As it turns out, Grande was a co-writer of this song, but Selena Gomez was chosen to perform.
The song is nothing more than a huge double entendre, mostly in English, save for Lisa's Korean rap near the end. I mean, it was partly in Korean - not that it wasn't filled with double entendres. The song is BLACKPINK's biggest in the US to date, peaking at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100.
We interrupt this K-Pop bonanza to bring you the Darling Buds.
And thank God for the Darling Buds. They last year recorded an update to one of the tracks from their 2020 album, Erotica. Which, of course, was a really timely update.
They even recorded it in May, but too late for our 2020 Darling Buds Day. However, something tells me it's still going to be somewhat appropriate this year. At any rate, Andrea Lewis's dog steals the show here.
