MG @barrybailbondsman-blog - Tumblr Blog

This blog is dead

Tumblr forced a password reset on me and the email for this account was a burner so that's all she wrote! I'm now @megankharrington which is hopefully straightforward. I'll reblog this until the app kicks me off. Bye forever!

#I hate tumblr #lousy sons of bitches

popculturediedin2009

On This Day In 2006 The Plain White T’s released Hey There Delilah, the third single off of their third album All That We Needed. A year later in July 2007, the song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. That month it was also the most played song on the radio, and most downloaded song on the U.S. iTunes store. Happy 10 Years!

thesinglesjukebox

The Singles Jukebox is seeking new writers

The Singles Jukebox is home to a talented roster of writers from around the globe with passionate, critical voices dedicated to the spectrum of modern music. We are an unpaid collective with a friendly community and many writers and alumni writing professionally elsewhere. If you’re a writer interested in exploring diverse genres and unfamiliar sounds we want to hear from you.

The site is seeking applications from writers with bold ideas and a willingness to tackle new subjects. We are particularly interested in writers whose voices are under-represented in music criticism and strongly encourage women and people of color to apply. All are welcome to apply, including those who have previously expressed interest in writing for the website.

If you’d like to be considered, please submit the following as an email to [email protected] (no attachments, please) by midnight at the end of May 15th:

Keep reading

crystalleww

Please apply. If you are a woman, please apply. if you are not white, please apply. If you are a non-white woman, please apply. if you are a non-binary person, please apply.

If you would like to discuss with me, please hit me up on Twitter or at my askbox. More than happy to help whatever way I can.

sleazeburger

The Babylon nightclub in Scarface

nineteenseventyfivenews

Out of the many albums released so far in 2016, no album fascinates me more than The 1975’s “I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It.” I have yet to fully wrap my head around the music, but for now I can confidently call it my choice...

barrybailbondsman-blog

Aahhh! This is so great and totally nails the unhappy underpinnings of “She’s American.”

#The 1975

thesinglesjukebox

The Singles Jukebox is seeking new writers

The Singles Jukebox is home to a talented roster of writers from around the globe with passionate, critical voices dedicated to the spectrum of modern music. We are an unpaid collective with a friendly community and many writers and alumni writing professionally elsewhere. If you’re a writer interested in exploring diverse genres and unfamiliar sounds we want to hear from you.

The site is seeking applications from writers with bold ideas and a willingness to tackle new subjects. We are particularly interested in writers whose voices are under-represented in music criticism and strongly encourage women and people of color to apply. All are welcome to apply, including those who have previously expressed interest in writing for the website.

If you’d like to be considered, please submit the following as an email to [email protected] (no attachments, please) by midnight at the end of May 15th:

Keep reading

barrybailbondsman-blog

BIG NEWS

aubreysgifs

#what the hell even

7, 12, 16

7: A song to drive to

Ok: during the daytime, “Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades” by Brand New, which is the ultimate sun is shining fuck the day up song. At night, “Careless Whispers” is the ultimate driving song -- the sound of the sky turning pink to black.

12: A song from your preteen years

Ok another song from my preteen years is “Basket Case” by Green Day. I was in the ~gifted~ program in school which more than anything academic meant that my classmates were sort of emotionally accelerated? Stuff that most people started encountering in middle school was already going on in 4th or 5th grade, in terms of emotional dynamics between girls. Anyway, this was also the pre-internet days so you could be legitimately cool if you had access to something forbidden and my parents gave me pretty unfiltered access to music which I happily used as currency with my classmates. I remember one field trip listening to Green Day with the COOLEST girl in my class and her telling me the shrink and the whore are the same person, which was such a complicated reading for a kid to come up with. I don’t know what happened to her but she was really fucking smart.

16: One of your favorite classical songs

Ouch, I have the most shitty, pedestrian taste in classical music. To be really honest, I’m not sure I even know what classical music is? I’ve always liked The Planets. Because my sister was in the school band for seven years and I heard a lot of renditions of The Planets. Sorry, I should get an education.

#jonathanbogart

9 and 20

9: A song that makes you happy

Since childhood, “My Girl” is a song that’s sounded like pure happiness. Though, I suppose the spirit of this question is more like “a song I use to cheer myself up.” That varies, but one of them is definitely “Take It Easy” by Eagles which always makes me feel like I’ve got a little fight left.

20: A song that has many meanings to you

This is a mysterious question! In terms of a song that has a lot of layered meaning, I can wring a lot of meaning out of Drake’s work and halfway through Views, “Redemption” is already a standout for commenting on modern romance and fame seamlessly. But in terms of a something that maybe means one thing on the surface but another thing to me, personally, the best example of that has to be “Wounded” by Third Eye Blind which is a foul song on the surface but which resonates with me because of my own life experiences.

#i still haven't mentioned the one nine i know everyone is keeping score #juanalikesmusic

4, 12, 21, 25

4: A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

“Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits

12: A song from your preteen years

You could pick pretty much any song that was ever played on Chicago’s Alternative WKQX Q101 because that was about 90% of my music discovery as a pre-teen, but I do have a distinct memory of making a radio mixtape (in this case a literal tape that I played on a walkman) to listen to while my family drove from Illinois to Michigan for a vacation. I can remember getting towards the end of the drive, somewhere in beachy upper Michigan, and playing “Bizarre Love Triangle” while the batteries died, which was weird and upsetting.

21: A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

There are loads, but I’ve been thinking about Dylan a lot lately, so let’s go with “Sara.”

25: A song by an artist no longer living

:( There’s obviously a rich well of 2016 deaths to draw from, but I’m going to go sliiiiiiightly more obscure and pick “Mondo Bongo” by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.

#these will get better as i go along #probably?#imathers

benedictervention-deactivated20

MUSIC ASKS these are actually pretty fucking hard but why not.

1:A song you like with a color in the title

2:A song you like with a number in the title

3:A song that reminds you of summertime

4:A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

5:A song that needs to be played LOUD

6:A song that makes you want to dance

7:A song to drive to

8:A song about drugs or alcohol

9:A song that makes you happy

10:A song that makes you sad

11:A song that you never get tired of

12:A song from your preteen years

13:One of your favorite 80’s songs

14:A song that you would love played at your wedding

15:A song that is a cover by another artist

16:One of your favorite classical songs

17:A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke

18:A song from the year that you were born

19:A song that makes you think about life

20:A song that has many meanings to you

21:A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

22:A song that moves you forward

23:A song that you think everybody should listen to

24:A song by a band you wish were still together

25:A song by an artist no longer living

26:A song that makes you want to fall in love

27:A song that breaks your heart

28:A song by an artist with a voice that you love

29:A song that you remember from your childhood

30:A song that reminds you of yourself

barrybailbondsman-blog

I will do this

groovesnjams

“A Change of Heart” by The 1975

MG:

It opens with a gentle, twinkling, pastel whirr. Like the first sip of champagne from an expensive glass. Like exhaling a thick, medicinal smoke that makes the process of life temporarily visible. Like your thoughts moving brilliantly through your mind and out of your mouth in complete circuitry. And a sadness. Of eyes that meet but not completely, so you can see the crowded city street beyond her, so the world still exists, so she has not eclipsed all meaning. Of watching her in your bed, crisp midday sun slicing through the curtains, unable to remember who she was the night before. Of a smile tentatively offered that you can’t return.

“Are we awake?”

This is not quite a memory and not quite reality. It is looking out a window. Your eyes are behind glass, your body framed, your face a portrait of stillness and calm but you – you are out there, you walking away with your head down and your hands shoved into your pockets. Matty Healy operates in duality. There is never one of him, one mind or one body. From the very beginning of “A Change of Heart” there are two of him, the Romantic dreamer in love with his weakness, his sickness, and the dark eyed pragmatist categorizing and organizing everything that went wrong and when. Healy’s mind, always working simultaneously in both modes, moves in patterns. He begins with critical self-indictment, pivots to indulgence, then resentment, and ends in ambivalence. It is this ambivalence “A Change of Heart” narrates. The second verse moves through the same motions, his gaze first firmly on himself, then away, then on her, then ambivalent.

“You smashed your glass into pieces.”

The theremin instrumental ends with the sound of clouds parting to reveal a rush of blue skies, lashes blinking, the uniform gravel blur of the road beneath the window of the passenger seat. It’s a snap that ends the trance. A glass that falls to the floor and breaks the fine silt reverie of chemical lust. The lie of love is over. And though she has not changed, she is different. She is clumsy now and each touch is wrong. There is nothing healing in the way she holds you, only an all consuming absence that begins in your chest and pushes outward until your whole body is hollow and she is the fragile shell enclosing you. The glass breaks and you diffuse, you are air and you take the shape of your space and she is part of that shape but she is not that shape.

Healy juxtaposes events remembered and events experienced. He remembers her knocking her drink off the table, he remembers her lighting her cigarette backwards. He remembers these moments of change – all tactile, all visceral – as love’s great undoing. But these aren’t acts of deliberation, they are accidental and she is helpless to his whims. He experiences only the aftermath. Wallowing in the trench of his hurt and his pain and his thoughts, her voice finally reaches him. Though she is later quoted directly, her words supplanting his own, here he’s still too wounded. He rewinds but he doesn’t repeat.

“You said I’m full of diseases.”

“A Change of Heart” is a mean, mean song. A cruel song. Healy presents her caring as weakness, his caring as depth. He romanticizes his lack, his absence, his repulsion while plucking her most superficial qualities to inter. He’s less taken with her than he is with how much he imagines he hurt her. George Daniel, The 1975’s producer and sonic architect, averages the lust and destruction in an intricate instrumental of total numbness. The muted gurgle of his work here is the equivalent of a pool of blood on the floor, silently spreading over linoleum tiles, uncontained. He is tuned to the physicality of heartbreak, always tempering Healy’s ego with flesh.

Healy is capable of explosion, he can stretch his voice into dynamism, he can match a production that’s equal measures Sunday church gospel and desert rave piano. “A Change of Heart” is, not by contrast but by intent, thinner and fragile. Healy sings gently, a tone or two more upbeat and he’d be speaking to a child. So, the saddest and meanest moment in the song’s sad and mean whole is when he delivers her thoughts, exactly, in a singsong lilt.

“’I’ve been so worried about you lately.’”

He mocks her sincerity, or, at very least, he doubts her sincerity. It’s this certain uncertainty that makes him so intoxicatingly vulnerable. He can’t let himself believe she cares, there’s comfort in the unsure, there’s familiarity in a heart that waffles. And there’s recognition. Bittersweet togetherness, bound by the incomplete, whole only in context and reference. Doomed.

DV:

I resisted The 1975 for a few months, both because I felt like I was getting caught up in something I didn’t understand - “Love Me” left me very cold - and because I was still listening to Emotion daily and didn’t need to risk another obsession. Then “The Sound” caught me by surprise - I was lukewarm when we covered it but I kept coming back in spite of myself. Wanting to hear, “I’ve got a problem with your shoes and your tunes, but I might move in” again, but mostly wanting to hear those big, arena-filling chords, that stomping percussion. Sometimes I’m nothing if not predictable; still I refused to admit to myself what was happening.

“Change of Heart” is the song that won me over, through and through. It’s a step away from lullaby, in both production and Healy’s delivery, but the lyric prickles so enticingly that I focused on it long enough to forget that lullabies are our earliest earworms: now I don’t know which part of the song I like best. It might be the honeyed synth tones or the warm ebb and flow of the backing or the slightly pathetic drone that winds its high-pitched way through the song.

Mostly I think it’s Healy’s lyric. There’s the line MG singles out, the “And she said, ‘I’ve been so worried about you lately’”, an extremely tight encapsulation of the complexities of the relationship. But mostly there’s the way that kind of insight is paired with the deadpan delivery of half-silly, half-revealing lyrics like “Was it your breasts from the start?/ They played a part” or the litany of cuts Healy inflicts on his ex throughout the song. These range: there’s the belittling but ridiculous juxtaposition offered by “And then you took a picture of your salad/ And put it on the Internet”, there’s the frankly unnecessary “you were coming across as clever/ Then you lit the wrong end of your cigarette”, there’s the utter dismissal of “You used to have a face straight out of a magazine/ Now you just look like anyone”. It’s hard to know when we’re supposed to laugh with Healy, and when we might want to laugh at him: "Change of Heart” is self-aware enough that he calls himself a twat, but is it aware that criticizing someone for Instagramming a meal might say more about the critic than the target? The only thing I’m sure of is that the song leaves the question open. That’s the contradiction that’s keeping me listening to The 1975, despite all my initial resistance: how much do I empathize with this narrator, how much do I despise him, and how much do I despise myself for empathizing?

barrybailbondsman-blog

Ha ha ha believe it or not, ok, but I still have so much more to say about “A Change of Heart.” This was just the stuff that’s been living inside me for months, that I’ve been hashing out in DMs, and that missed the OWOB because I didn’t have a decent video option. I have a much more personal thing that I’m putting together to post here (more of a continuation of the OWOB style than what’s above), and probably at some point I’ll also write about how I see “A Change of Heart” fitting in with the rest of the album. Anyway, I’m very proud of this post. I know it’s a rich struggle to have but I’ve struggled lately to write about anything that isn’t directly related to The 1975 and I feel less concerned about it when my writing on The 1975 is some of my all time best ever.

#the 1975 #matty healy #george daniel

behindthegrooves-deactivated202

On this day in music history: April 25, 2000 - “The Heat”, the third album by Toni Braxton is released. Produced by Rodney Jerkins, Babyface, Daryl Simmons, Bryan-Michael Cox, David Foster, Keith Crouch, Teddy Bishop, Jazze Pha and Kevin Hicks, it is recorded at Various Studios from Mid 1999 - February 2000. Following a four year hiatus from making music that sees the R&B diva having to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, in spite of having sold over 20 million records since the release of her debut album in 1993. She is able to regroup from the setback and resume her career. Braxtons’ third release sees her moving away from the pop/R&B ballad based material in favor of a more hard edged urban sound. It spins off four singles including “He Wasn’t Man Enough” (#2 Pop, #1 R&B) winning her a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in 2001. “The Heat” debuts in its chart peak position of #2 on the Billboard Top 200, spending one week at number one on the R&B album chart, and is certified 2x Platinum in the US by the RIAA.