shady boots

tangled fog of pulsating yearning in the shape of a woman

[shadyb00ts]

That's Showbiz, Baby! by JADE - Album Review

I usually get on here to write about albums and other music opinions I feel very strongly on, but it's mostly pretty negative stuff. Things that bum me out or that I need to rant about or get off my chest. Everyone loves to complain, and my recent review/rant of The Life of A Showgirl was probably my most scathing post yet. While it was very cathartic to write, it also made me realize, you know what? I wanna write about something positive for a change, something I really love. I think that would be a much-needed palette cleanser from the negativity on this page.

Enter Ms. Jade Thirlwall, a woman who I believe is one of the most exciting pop stars we've seen in a long time. Her debut album, That's Showbiz Baby, is my personal AOTY and I just really need to gush about it. I've been telling anyone who'll listen to tune in to her, because she's really tapping into something here and she is such a student of the legendary pop girls that came before her. It hurts my heart to see greatness slept on.

If you haven't listened to this album, or you aren't familiar with Jade at all, then please stop whatever you're doing and get on whatever streaming service you use to change that ASAP. Quickly, go on! I'll wait. The review will still be here when you're done.

Still need some convincing? Alright then, read on. I'll make a Jade stan out of you yet.

Among the uninitiated, some of you might be somewhat familiar with Jade from being a member of the girl group Little Mix. They debuted back in the 2010s as a group of four, but due to some internal drama that we aren't fully privy to, when they went on their indefinite hiatus in 2022, there were only three of them, as one of them left the group in 2020. The fourth member, Jesy, no one really talks about and is often edited out completely from appearances, clips, music videos, etc. To this day, we're not quite sure what transpired between them, but the remaining trio--Jade, Leigh-Anne and Perrie--are still incredibly close. I bring this up because it'll be relevant later.

When it comes to Little Mix as a group, I never really considered myself a diehard fan--more of a casual one, really. I liked the girls, I liked a lot of their music, but it never really became an obsession like I'm currently going through with Katseye. (That's a story for another time.) Still, if you're a fan of any group, whether a casual or hardcore one, you most likely have a favorite member, a bias. Jade was always mine, because I considered her to be the quirky oddball of the group, the wildcard. I loved her personality, particularly how obsessed with Drag Race she was, because so was I at the time. She was the reason why one of their music videos--Power--had Drag Race girls in it. So even back then, when there were talks about the girls going solo, I always had my eye on Jade. Perrie’s music personally isn’t for me, even though I love her and she was always the strongest vocalist of the group. I love Leigh-Anne’s music and her energy, but as of my writing this she’s yet to release her debut album, so I haven’t gotten to the point of obsession with her quite yet. I just had a feeling that out of all three of them, Jade would release the kind of music that really spoke to me. And I was right.

If your music taste is anything like mine, then I'd venture to guess that your favorite album from back in 2020 was Rina Sawayama's debut album SAWAYAMA. That album was the soundtrack to my quarantine, and also the perfect example of a debut that comes out swinging. It's bold, it's daring, it's genre-defying, it challenges you as the listener to fully engage. It's not the kind of easy-listening pop that you can just put on casually in the car at any time--it's very in-your-face. It evokes all sorts of emotions and is meant to be thought-provoking. To me, that's what a debut album should deliver. That's how you make a grand entrance into the pop landscape, how you make your mark as a new artist and cause conversation.

Listening to That's Showbiz Baby for the first time, I had the exact same feeling about it as I did five years ago with SAWAYAMA. Hell, even before that, when Jade released the lead single Angel of My Dreams a year ago, I already felt it, because that song is the truest essence of what I just described. AOMD was the perfect introduction to Jade--it's chaotic, it's polarizing, it gives you a taste of exactly what you should expect. It opens with a soaring and ethereal power ballad-esque intro, before sharply transitioning into a gritty and pulsing euro club beat. I remember the initial reactions to that song, how people either loved it or hated it. Jade had said in an interview that she set out to create a song exactly like that, one that elicits a strong reaction from someone for better or worse. She didn't want to release a single that would make people simply shrug and go, "Eh. It's alright." That is very ambitious for a solo artist that's just starting out, because more often than not, they would take the safe route and release something more palatable for general audiences.

Beyond that, AOMD was also the perfect introduction to Jade lyrically. The song describes her tumultuous, love-hate relationship with the music industry. The lyric "Love when you call me a star / You let me down in the dark" illustrates this, how she loves being in the spotlight, and yet behind closed doors she is undervalued and mistreated, as many of her peers are in an industry that is very male-dominated and predatory. "Selling my soul to a psycho" is a play on words to SyCo Entertainment, AKA Simon Cowell's record label in which Little Mix was signed to for a long time, and she doesn't shy away at all from talking about how much she was exploited in those days. This is exactly why the song works so beautifully as a debut single and as an album opener, because it gives the audience insight into who she is, what she's been through, and how she's feeling now. The song hooks you right away, like a gripping prologue in a book that you won't be able to put down. And that’s not even mentioning the music video! There’s nothing I love more than a pop girl with a concept, a vision, and the video for AOMD comes with these fully realized characters and storylines based on Jade’s experience in the industry, and the subsequent visuals for the album all come with a continuity to this story. She basically creates a cinematic universe and commits to it wholeheartedly. I can’t stress enough how impressive that is for a debut.

She keeps the momentum going with the second song on the album, IT girl. If AOMD was her trying to reconcile with her complicated feelings about the industry, IT girl is a giant middle finger to it. She’s loudly proclaiming that she is that girl and that no one in the industry will ever make her into a puppet, especially not the creepy old men in power. She even ends the song with “It’s a no from me”, another direct callout to Simon Cowell, and I love Jade’s brand of pettiness here. After everything the girl’s been through because of that man and all the other industry weirdos she’s had to deal with, she has every right to be as petty and rebellious as she wants. IT girl is joyous, raucous dance-pop fun and does the perfect job of making you feel like an it girl yourself.

One of my favorites off the album is the third track, FUFN (Fuck You For Now). Lyrically this song is about having an argument with a partner and being annoyed with them, but not enough for it to actually be a dealbreaker or cause you to want to break up. “Love you but tonight you let me down / No more words, just fuck your for now”. Jade is describing a specific scenario where she was at a fancy event with her man, but even though they just got into a fight, they still had to make nice and keep up appearances. But once they were free of the cameras and the public, she wasn’t going to keep up the facade. I love this song lyrically because normally songs like this are usually very black and white, but in this case, they just had a fight and she’s just very annoyed with her partner. It’s not bad enough to want to end things, but she still needs time to cool off. In the bridge she repeats “Don’t walk away, just walk away” and I love the double meaning of walk away here. Dont walk away from me permanently, just walk away from this conversation right now cause I need a minute. It’s a nuanced look at a relationship of people who love each other, but just got on each other’s nerves for a second and need to get over that hurdle, something I find very relatable. And sonically, this song is pure power pop that reminds me of Gaga’s unreleased music from back in the early 2010s, or reminiscent of her The Fame and ARTPOP eras, so that’s another reason I love it so much.

Plastic Box is another beautiful song I find easy to relate to. It describes the feeling of jealousy one can get when you think about your partner’s exes, when you wonder about their past, if you measure up, if they love you just as much or more. It's wanting to erase your partner's previous loves so you could be the first and only, wanting to preserve their heart in a plastic box, "never used, fully clean, untouched." All of this stemmed from a moment where Jade discovered past love letters between her partner and his exes, and while she's very self aware that these feelings are irrational and silly, she still feels them anyway. Not to get too personal, but as someone who has a boyfriend that's had many partners in the past, while I'd only ever had one, this song definitely speaks to me. The mind can't help but wander, and you also can't help when the insecurity and selfish thoughts creep in, when you start romanticizing and wishing that you were the only person they ever loved.

My most favorite song on the album is easily Self Saboteur. This song is pure synthpop bliss, and lyrically I think it ties quite nicely with Plastic Box. It's also exploring insecurities that you might feel in a relationship, how you'd always be waiting for the other shoe to drop as paranoia makes you certain that you're going to mess things up somehow. The chorus goes, "You're bringing heaven to me / Why do I put me through hell?" and it describes the feeling so succinctly. You've got someone who treats you incredibly, but you're putting yourself through the wringer in your own head, wondering how it's all going to fall apart, if you even deserve to be loved in this way. I also find this song highly relatable as a chronically insecure and anxious bitch who often runs on fear. The cherry on top as to why I love this song so much, however, is the smooth transition to the next song, Lip Service, which is about wanting your partner to... take a trip down south. Now if you haven't heard these two songs, I bet you're wondering, how the hell could a song about insecurities flow into one about wanting to get eaten out? I honestly couldn't tell you, but these songs blend so seamlessly into each other to the point where I consider them a package deal. I can't just listen to one or the other, I have to listen to both. The transition is just that diabolically delicious. If I were to compare the vibes of both these songs to anything, it's kind of reminiscent of Hard Feelings/Loveless from Lorde's Melodrama. You'd have to hear it to believe it.

Alright, I've gotta talk about Natural at Disaster. Remember when I said the drama surrounding Jesy Nelson's departure from LM would be relevant later? Well here it is. Some people would call this song a diss track, but in my opinion, Natural at Disaster is a little too sophisticated to be considered that. It's a hauntingly beautiful ballad that packs a hard punch at the same time, and it slightly reminds me of Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever. Calling it a "diss track" feels reductive in a way, kind of dumbs it down even. This is not simply a "haha you suck and I'm better than you" kind of song, this is "you hurt me really deeply, you poison everything around you and being around you negatively impacts my mental well-being". It cuts deep. Whatever happened between those girls was absolutely serious, because Jade isn't shying away talking about just how much she's been affected by it. Will they ever fully talk about it publicly? Who's to say, really. But considering just how much Jade goes there on this track, maybe we as the public wouldn't be able to handle the truth at all, and it's better kept between them. It's none of our business, and I think this song illustrates the gravity of whatever the issue was without delving into specifics. It's clearly much more serious than just "tea".

I have to give a shoutout to the song Glitch as well. It's another favorite of mine, a more low-tempo, R&B-inspired track, and you can't have a song called Glitch and not have the production get all glitchy and distorted, which is exactly what the hook does. It's absolute heaven with headphones. The lyrics are so fascinating to me, because upon surface level you'd think she's talking about a person, but she's actually talking about her body, more specifically a certain tick that she struggles with. But I think that's the beauty of the song, because if you apply it to a person, it still works just as well. "Sick of you talking to me like I'm your bitch / When I'm that bitch." In a weird way, it reminds me of the song Galina by Allie X, from her album Girl With No Face. That song is somber and melodramatic synthpop that sounds like she's begging for a lover to come back to life, but she's actually talking about a real-life lady named Galina who helps her deal with her eczema by giving her a special cream for it. Yes, really. I was so taken aback when I first learned that, and I had a similar reaction to learning the true meaning behind Glitch. I love when songwriters are able to do this, to write about something so hyper-specific and personal, and yet the lyrics are vague enough that they can still be applied to your own personal life and interpreted how you see fit.

Finally, I'd be remiss not to mention one of the brightest highlights of this album, Before You Break My Heart. First of all, in today's music, I know how sick a lot of us are of sampling, how whenever we hear it in a song it's automatically eyeroll-inducing. That being said, I think this song pulls off one of the most beautiful and clever uses of sampling I've ever heard. This is not just slapping on an iconic sample of a classic song for the hell of it; it's intentional and holds sentimentality behind it that gives the song such a profound emotional weight. BYBMH heavily samples Stop in the Name of Love by The Supremes for its chorus, but it doesn't sample the actual song itself. Instead, it actually incorporates a recording of Jade as a child singing the song, because the song is meant to be a love letter to her younger self. "You're the dream that I've had for so long / You're the one who inspired all my love songs." I interpret this song as Jade trying to give her younger self a pep talk in a moment where she was feeling low, or wanting to give up on her dreams of being a star. In the visualizer for the song, baby Jade is I believe played by her niece, who looks so much like her, and the song makes me tear up as a result. What a heartfelt way to pay tribute to your younger self, and it's also important to note that Jade isn't getting any royalties off of this song, because that was essentially the price of sampling one of the biggest songs in the world. But she believed in the message of the song and wanted to put it out there anyway, and I think this is exactly how any artist should approach sampling. There should be intention and meaning behind it, because that can truly elevate a song into something special.

Do I have any critiques for this album? Honestly not really, just a few little nitpicky things. One of them is not even Jade's fault at all, and it has to do with the order of the tracks. Her label and team wanted to put all of the singles she released back to back as the first half of the album, and they didn't give her full creative control in ordering the tracklist the way she wanted to. That is quite a bummer because I would've loved to see how the tracks were supposed to be structured according to Jade herself, though I think the current order still works pretty well for the most part. Another much smaller nitpick I had is, as much as I love the song Unconditional, she does rhyme "intervention" with "self-neglection" which is absolutely not a word, because it's "self-neglect". Not gonna lie, that made me cringe a little bit when I heard it the first time, cause that's just the English major in me, but to be honest the song is just so damn good that it didn't take much for me to let it slide. Also this isn't necessarily a critique, but I don't love the song Headache as much as a lot of people do. I've seen some other fans claim it as their favorite, but to me it's kind of the weakest on the album. I still like it and I wouldn't consider it a skip--this album has none. But it's just not a favorite, and that's just a taste thing more than anything. Those are basically the only negatives I have about this album.

So yeah, I think I've rambled on long enough about this album. I had thought that Mayhem would be my AOTY, as a longtime Little Monster, but honestly deep down I always knew Jade was going to pull through. I had the utmost confidence in her because she just gets it. She's a tried and true lover and disciple of pop music. She knows her shit, knows who she is, and has an unshakeable perspective that is truly so exciting to witness. So if you haven't tuned into Jade yet, I hope this review was enough to convince you. Thanks for reading all the way through, and if I managed to make you a Jade stan by the end of this, then you're welcome!

[shadyb00ts]

Taylor Swift & The Life of A Capitalist Tradwife - A Track by Track Rant

Sigh.

Okay, just like I mentioned in my review of TTPD from last year, I made a post in 2020 about folklore and evermore and how those albums were so important to me that they made me become a Swiftie again. While that post is still accurate to how I felt at the time, and I still stand by the fact that those two sister albums are her magnum opus and I could wax poetic about them forever, I lowkey regret writing that post more and more every day. "Swiftie" has never felt more like a dirty word to me until this exact moment in time.

In that same review of TTPD, I'd said that I wanted Taylor to surprise me with her next release, and while she definitely did... This was not the kind of surprise I was hoping for. I was more... baffled than anything. That's the best word I could use to describe The Life of A Showgirl: baffling. Upon first listen, my jaw was open almost the entire time, and not in a good way. Not even close. I just didn't think it could get any worse, but somehow it went from worse to worser.

Let's talk about it. Strap in, I have way too many thoughts.

The first thing that caught me off guard about this album was the sound. When she first announced it, teasing the glitzy and glamorous aesthetic and building hype about how every song was produced by legendary hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback, I was expecting an album full of powerful pop bangers and anthems. Something akin to Chappell's Midwest Princess, maybe, so I was cautiously optimistic. I was not, however, expecting extremely bland and colorless mid tempo guitar pop. I don't think I've ever seen an album's sound and visuals having this severe a dissonance before, so that in itself was already enough to give me a bit of whiplash. It was all the more shocking to me that Max Martin had any hand in this, because just recently he'd produced Ariana's eternal sunshine album, which has become my all-time favorite album of hers and some of Max Martin's best work to date. How he went from that to whatever this was, I have no clue.

I think I've gotta go track by track, because I have thoughts about almost every single song--almost, because some of them are straight up forgettable. But most of them elicited such a visceral reaction from me that I just have to break it down bit by bit.

Things started off alright with The Fate of Ophelia. Like I said, I was expecting more of a boisterous and in-your-face sound, but besides that I thought it was pretty decent and listenable. The production was fine, the melodies were cute, and even though I cringed at her "pledging allegiance" to Travis Kelce's hands, team and "vibes"--whatever the hell that means--I mostly enjoyed the song. I know some English lit majors had issues with her referencing Hamlet incorrectly by portraying Ophelia as a damsel in distress trapped in a tower a la Rapunzel, waiting for a man to save her, but I've never been that much of a stickler for full accuracy in literary references, so that didn't bother me all that much personally. Overall, a perfectly serviceable opener. And I'll tack the next track, Elizabeth Taylor, on here as well because I don't have much to say about it--I thought it was another perfectly alright song. I just had no idea things were going to start plummeting so drastically after those two tracks.

So the cracks started to show immediately during Opalite. First of all I have to say that I am not Black, so I cannot speak to the discourse about the frankly off-putting racial undertones in this song, but considering the context of Travis's previous partners primarily being Black women and the optics surrounding their relationship, I totally understand this argument and the "onyx" and "opalite" dichotomy does feel a bit icky when looking at it through that lens. But I'd recommend checking out Black creators who can go into it more in-depth than I could. I'll focus more on the song itself, and I can honestly say that purely from a sonic standpoint, I find it incredibly corny and grating. It's reminiscent of one of my least favorite Taylor songs Starlight--that weird song she wrote that was essentially a fanfiction about the Kennedys. It's that kind of saccharine schlock that maybe I'm too cynical for, because it just sounds so empty and emotionless to me. If the person I was with wrote me a love song and it was Opalite, my response would probably be a forced half smile and an "Oh... Thanks". As opposed to a song like peace from folklore, which would move me to tears with how raw and honest it is. Opalite is just meaningless fluff in comparison.

Then there was Father Figure, and uhh... Oh boy. Look, I understand that this song is about Scott Borchetta, and she wrote it from his perspective. I should like this song with that in mind, right? Because I said in my TTPD review that I prefer it when Taylor is able to write from other people's perspectives, or that of fictional characters she's created. And yet... To me, this song just eerily mirrors what I'd imagine to be her own view about her would-be protégé Olivia Rodrigo. The parallels made me very uncomfortable with how well that interpretation applies. Also beyond that, Taylor saying the line "because my dick's bigger" was just so painful to hear with its Miranda Cosgrove "I actually do cuss a little" energy, and as much as I love dramatic key changes in songs and am an advocate for bringing them back to the modern pop landscape, the one in this song felt so jarring and out of place. I just couldn't get behind this song at all, and for the record Taylor, you don't have to explain to us what "mahogany" means. We know.

So... As a lot of you might know, track 5s are sort of landmarks for Taylor. She usually puts some of her best songs in this spot, and they're normally reserved for her personal favorites in any project. As much as I disliked TTPD, I thought its track 5--So Long, London--was a highlight and arguably the strongest song on the album. As for Eldest Daughter... I can honestly say it's the worst track 5 she's ever done. Yet again it has these bizarre racial undertones with her saying she's not a "bad bitch" or a "savage", terms that were popularized and often associated with Black women. But also the fact that that's the chorus. "I'm not a bad bitch / And this isn't savage" as if this song were White Horse's weird and edgy distant cousin, not to mention the egregious first verse with her mentioning "trolling and memes" and "hot takes" and I'm just like... How did we get here? What happened in 2020 that made her able to write some of the most heartbreakingly poignant and beautiful music of her whole career? Was it Joe Alwyn's influence? Was it the pandemic? Was she briefly possessed by the spirit of an English poet? Did she just have some sort of epiphany, if you will? How the hell did we get from "Your touch brought forth an incandescent glow / Tarnished but so grand" to "Everybody's so punk on the internet"? It's just so mind-boggling to me, how vastly her songwriting ability has deteriorated in just a few years time.

But yeah, as you can tell, Eldest Daughter was kind of the moment where I really started to spiral into, "What the fuck is going on here? What am I hearing right now?" Based on reactions I've seen online, it seems like even certain Swifties were just as baffled by this song--and this album as a whole--as I was. Some were merely disappointed, while others were having full-on crashouts. It made me realize that there are fortunately a sizable amount of Swifties who still have their critical thinking skills intact, who aren't completely brainwashed by their almost cult-like standom that they just love every single thing Taylor puts out regardless of quality or effort. It was quite fascinating to see a lot of the diehard fans seeming to wake up from a prolonged stupor or hypnosis. I guess this song is symbolic in that regard, because it was bad enough to even have her own fans second guessing everything.

Now we're reaching the halfway point of the album with Ruin the Friendship. After how particularly dreadful the previous song was, this one is another relatively tame one by comparison. A few things to note, though. One, I find it odd that she would include a song about her high school years. Taylor is a 35-year-old woman and for some reason she's still talking about her experience in high school? I get the sentiment of the song--it's essentially about how she wished she kissed this boy she knew back then before he tragically passed away, and she uses this as a sort of cautionary tale for the listener as a way to encourage them to go for it and kiss the boy, to seize the day before you lose your chance, I suppose. But... Why exactly are we talking about this? What does that have to do with the life of a showgirl? Because we're halfway through and there still isn't any discernible overarching theme to speak of. Moreover, I find it so morbid that she's basically using the death of this boy she knew back in high school to make some sort of statement about going after what you want before it's too late, and how she regrets not "ruining the friendship" with him, which is pretty much... making it about herself. It's just such weird messaging to me, and if this song was meant to be a tribute for this boy, it strikes me as a very roundabout and tone-deaf way to write one.

And now, here we are. The big one, the one that leaked right before release and caused quite a stir with everyone. Actually Romantic, the out-of-nowhere Charli xcx diss track. Funnily enough, Sympathy is a knife happens to be my favorite song from BRAT, even from my initial listen. I always appreciated how vulnerable and unflinching Charli was in that song, how one girl could really tap into your deepest insecurities, even to the point of suicidal ideation at the thought of never achieving that same level of adulation or success. I myself even relate to that on a personal level as a trans woman. So that song--alongside the Girl, so confusing remix with Lorde--makes it clear that Charli understands the complexities and nuances of female relationships. It is not, nor was it ever, a diss track. Taylor, on the other hand, clearly took it as such, because she felt the need to release one of her own. She mentions Charli doing coke and calling her "Boring Barbie" one time, and takes on an overall condescending "Aww that's so sweet, you're so obsessed with me" angle that's reminiscent of how Regina George views Janis Ian, comparing Charli to a tiny chihuahua in a purse that's trying and failing to be menacing. This is yet another song that made me incredibly uneasy with just how unnecessarily mean-spirited it was. It's not a clever takedown, it's not a measured response or a thoughtful exploration of women in the industry being pitted against each other--it is simply just "lol you do coke and you suck". That's it, that's the song. Yet another career low for Taylor in an album chock-full of them.

Alright, what's next? Oh great, it's Wish List. Or sorry, "Wi$h Li$t" stylized with dollar signs for some reason. I don't have much to say about this one other than the fact that it's really leaning into the whole aspiring tradwife thing. Basically it's about how "they", AKA other women, want all these fancy things, but Taylor's not like the others. All she wants is just to settle down and have a bunch of kids with Travis until "the whole block" looks like him. And if that's what you really want, Taylor, then go for it. Maybe you should focus on doing that and not release any music for like... a good few years? I think that would be best for everyone. That Eras tour took a lot outta ya, didn't it? I think you're overdue for a long, long, long, looooong break. Just you and your man and your soon-to-be gaggle of children.

Speaking of Travis... Wood is next on the chopping block. This one is Taylor's attempt at taking a page from Sabrina Carpenter's book of tongue-and-cheek, innuendo-infused songwriting. The thing is, though, Sabrina's sense of humor is very sharp and her delivery is unmatched. Even songs that would be considered corny coming from others, Sabrina is just able to sell it with her charm, wit and comedic timing. She has such a perfectly curated brand that works so well for her, but I guess Taylor wanted a piece of the pie, so she wrote a song about how huge Travis Kelce's penis is over a Jackson 5 sample. The best word I can use to describe this song is "embarrassing". Embarrassing to listen to, embarrassing for her that she wrote it, and overall an embarrassing release from someone that is purportedly supposed to be one of the greatest songwriters of our generation. Mentioning the Kelce brothers' podcast in particular was just... Yeah, I truly don't know what else there is left to say. I've seen a lot of people claim Taylor's got CTE by proxy from being with Travis, or even that he's been "fucking her brains out" in a literal sense and thus sapping her intelligence over time. At this point, either of these theories seem plausible.

I knew I was going to hate CANCELLED! when I saw it on the tracklist, stylized in all caps with an exclamation point. Mirroring how I feel about the album as a whole, I knew it was going to be bad, I just had no idea it would be worse than I could've imagined. This song consists of Taylor bragging about associating with problematic people, proudly proclaiming that she "likes her friends cancelled" and she likes them "cloaked in Gucci and in scandal". I think this song gives the truest insight into who Taylor is as a person at this moment in time. It illustrates just how much she's become a woefully out-of-touch billionaire who's constantly surrounded by yes-people that will love everything she does and would never bother to challenge or criticize her in any way. She's at a point in her life where she'd never feel the need to self-reflect or change or grow as a person, because why would she? She's got everything she wants now, yet somehow she still paints herself as this underdog who gets unfairly hated on and "cancelled" for ridiculous reasons. An eternal victim complex of sorts. I saw someone describe Taylor as a "sore winner" and I think that perfectly encapsulates her. So in a way, this is probably the most honest song on the whole project, because it's her revealing the kind of person she's become, and she seems proud of it. As a result, this song has been claimed by others who are problematic or hateful people as a sort of IDGAF anthem for them. I saw one TikTok in particular of a white girl using this song to justify being a Harry Potter fan, saying "good thing I like my books cancelled". So yeah, it's looking pretty bleak.

I barely remember Honey, just that it's about her liking it when Travis calls her honey or whatever and she calls other women bitches in it, which of course she does. I don't know y'all, at this point during my first listen I was so checked out and drained, I just couldn't wait for it to end.

We are finally at the last song, the title track, with a Sabrina feature, yet even she couldn't save it. I remember when Taylor was first teasing this album, she mentioned that it would have the same level of storytelling that folklore did. By this point in the album, I accepted that that was a straight-up bold-faced lie, because the storytelling was never in the room with us to begin with. She brings it out for this track, and I just remember being so... confused. First of all, the entire concept of this album was supposed to be "the life of a showgirl", AKA Taylor's life behind the curtain, behind all the glitz and the glam, but the whole time I was like... Taylor, we already know the life of a showgirl. We already know way too much about your personal life, because you keep talking about it in your music. You released an album just last year that filled us in on your life in detail. So what exactly did you want us to learn from this album? What new information or insight did you want us to glean? That you're rich beyond belief, that you associate yourself with problematic people, that you wanna have a bunch of kids with your man who has a giant dick? Was that supposed to be the takeaway here? Because I can't for the life of me figure out what exactly she was trying to do by haphazardly compiling all of these songs together, and then tacking on the title track at the end like it's supposed to tie everything together neatly, when in actuality it just further highlights the inconsistencies of what the album is even supposed to be about. There's no semblance of anything here. The title track made me realize just how much of a jumbled mess this album was thematically.

Imagine for a moment that Taylor releases an album called The Life of A Showgirl, and it is written from the perspective of a showgirl character that she's created. Imagine this album having a proper structure and storyline, complete with a beginning, middle and end. Taylor could write it in such a way that it took inspiration from her own life story, but overall it's an exploration of the entertainment industry, the exploitation and objectification of women within it and all the interpersonal complexities that come with rivalries among other showgirls like the main character. Hell, she could even make it into a visual album or a film. Lord knows she has the budget for it. Once upon a time I would've thought Taylor to be capable of concocting something like this, of fully flexing her creative muscles and challenging herself to write something that's bigger than herself. But now I realize that her world and her point of view are just getting smaller and smaller and more limited by the day. I keep hoping that who she was in 2020, who I believed was her at her most mature and evolved, would somehow come back and give us something of value, of substance. But I think that person is well and truly gone, and this album confirmed it. This is who she really is, and maybe it always has been.

The thing about Taylor is that everything she does is calculated and strategic. She is not an artist anymore--she is a brand, a product, and her public image is very important to her. In 2019 during her Lover era, she had a brief moment where she was actively showing her political beliefs, embracing feminism and queer allyship with the release of the (frankly insulting) single You Need to Calm Down and her Miss Americana documentary, in which she makes a big show of being vocally and vehemently against a Republican candidate during the midterm elections who she deemed to be "Trump in a wig". At the time, her label and team were pressuring her to stay silent about politics like she'd always done, but she felt compelled to speak up. Yet that was a very brief blip in her career, and upon reflection, I think she knew that at the time, with the political climate being what it was, it benefited her image to be more active, more vocal. Trump hated her, conservatives did too, and at the time being hated by him and his ilk was good press. Now, for the past few years, their opinion has shifted. Trump likes her again, and conservatives have felt compelled to claim more than a few of the songs on this album, such as Cancelled and Wish List.

Whether Taylor meant to or not, she has been catering to the rise of conservatism in American culture right now, with this album presenting capitalistic and traditional conservative values as an ideal. Whether or not Taylor is cognizant of this, I couldn't say. I have no idea where she's at when it comes to self awareness. But considering she's proud of this album and stands by it, I don't think there's much of that to speak of. She's incapable of being self-critical anymore, because as I said before, she doesn't have to be. Everyone around her worships her. The majority of her millions of fans will buy whatever bit of merch or tour tickets or album variant she puts out. It's only been about a week since Showgirl's release at the time of my writing this, and already there's been over thirty different versions of the album released, and counting. Every day I open Twitter and see a new one announced. Don't forget to purchase The Life of A Showgirl: Sitting On the Toilet Doing My Nails Deluxe Acoustic Target Exclusive Version featuring two voice memos of Travis farting, only available for six hours.

So that's where we are now. Taylor Swift the artist and songwriter is no longer in the building. Now there is only Taylor Swift the brand, the corporation, the product to be consumed. She doesn't even have to try anymore, hence this album being the inane, incoherent rush job that it is. Her mediocrity will always be rewarded. I'm glad that a certain number of her fans are realizing all these things and possess the wherewithal to know better and do better, but the majority are still very parasocially brainwashed and will defend her no matter what, because they don't want to see the truth--that Taylor only sees them as money machines. Buy more variants, buy more concert tickets, buy more ugly orange cardigans. At this point in time, being a hardcore Swiftie means willfully being stuck in a capitalistic hellscape, all for the sake of a woman who does not know or care that you exist. When they brag about this album, they brag about the sales and the chart positions. It's not about appreciating the art, it's about how much it can sell, how many records it can break. That's a common thing amongst stan culture in general, measuring the worth of art simply by numbers, but Swifties do it more than most. I just find it really sad because the majority of them don't know they're being exploited, and if you try to point it out, they'll just deny and deflect. This is why it feels cult-like to me, and it may sound dramatic but I've genuinely seen it first hand. But like I said before, I am at least glad that this album's release became a sort of wake up call for a significant chunk of them who aren't too far gone.

I'm not sure where we go from here. I'm not sure what else Taylor has in store, what other new scheme that she and her team will cook up to squeeze out more money from the fans. My prediction is her next project's gonna be a pivot back to country music, to really hammer in the whole conservatism thing I mentioned before as a sort of cherry on top to this shit cake. As for me, I think I'm better off just treating folklore and evermore as her retirement albums, the last time she wrote music for the love of it and not just for the financial bottom line. I used to hold out hope that she'll write like that again, that she still has that in her, but I don't think she does anymore. Not after this.

Like I said, I think it'd be best if she just took a break from music for a few years. But it doesn't really matter cause honestly, I think I'm done y'all. Whatever she releases next, I don't think I'll be tuning in whatsoever. I don't see any point in listening to artists that don't have a passion for their art, that don't have anything meaningful to say, that just want to regurgitate the same mediocre slop over and over again and sell it to you. It's boring, it's reductive, and it's just plain sad.

So that's the death of the showgirl, and the life of the capitalist. It felt pretty good writing all this down, so thank you so much if you managed to read all the way through. I think this'll be my last post about Taylor cause I've said all I needed to say.

[mothercain]

Hello very much :)

I thought about making a video on this topic but I decided to just write it out in a post instead. Either way, I'd like to speak a bit more specifically about a drunk rant I made on a separate account the other day that was not as well put together as I'd like to stand as my viewpoints on the subject.

tl:dr, I just feel as though there's a lack of sincerity in the world these days. I speak from personal experience as an artist putting things out into the world, yes, but also as a human being interacting with other human beings on the regular, and I have had my sentiments echoed by many other friends of mine over the past year or so, both artists and non-artists alike. Most of this will be framed through the consumption of art, because that's my own personal passion in this life of mine, but also the way we interface with each other and process the world around us. Now, don't get me wrong, I love to laugh. I love a good joke, and I love lightheartedness as much as the next person. But I saw someone this morning put it very succinctly in response to my rant, something along the lines of "don't let the joke about it overtake the source material." It feels as though it's a common occurrence these days to take a pinch of something with a lot more weight to it, often a humorous bit, and then run with it. Everyone then gathers around the pinch to ooh and ahh and consume it as a whole. Context is immediately lost, the legacy of that body of work becomes its own caricature, and anyone discovering that body of work via said caricature may forgo a piece of art they would otherwise love because "there's nothing there". And don't think this is me griping at those making jokes at the expense of my art. I make jokes about my own art. But when the joke dies, yet continues to grow, and spread, and finds its way back to me both on the internet and off for months (or, God forbid, years) to come, I can't help but say to myself; what the fuck is happening. Artists have fled the public and all their outlets for personality and expression outside the medium because they feel ridiculed. It's not even just their art. Katya comes to mind, speaking on how she went on youtube live a few years back in literal tears talking about police brutality and the injustices marginalized communities were facing at the hands of the government. Meanwhile, the entire comment section "yass" and "mother"ed her in barrages, not paying attention to anything she had to say. I get asked about when I'm dropping Preacher's Daughter vinyl en masse in response to my Palestine fundraiser links. It's everywhere and it's inescapable. No one can be serious for even two seconds.

This may all sound obnoxious; so be it. I tie strings from this central problem to many other complaints I have heard repeated ad nauseam the past few years. For example; the death of subculture. Goth, punk, whatever, you name it. People who built an underground counterculture movement with a rich history based on a love of art, community, and otherwise misunderstood worldviews and experiences deemed foul or inappropriate. Now we see bits taken from it, the terms and the looks, without any of the meat, spread thin across society as a whole. Words mean nothing anymore. One can rest on history and say they were a part of it when in fact, they did nothing. No appreciation or understanding to be had for the love and passion that built it. No serious interaction with the culture's very real confines and boundaries, just mindless co-opting. This has just as much to do with late stage capitalism as it does with excessive humor in lieu of sincerity, but it's certainly both. Again, this may sound like a silly complaint, but I don't care. The collective ennui we're all experiencing has a very real reason, whether we're ready to acknowledge or not.

In a twisted thread, it's even tied to our lack of care to change the world around us. People cheer on the idea of communism, but who among us is ready to give up the convenience of society as it stands? Amazon prime, doordash, fresh fruit out of season as I saw someone mention in a similar post last week; the marvels of modern technology. Do we really think these things can last in a society that isn't actively destroying the planet? We talk about the idea of something all day long but have very little to do with the actuality of what we're talking about. And don't think I consider myself exempt from this problem. I couldn't even try to claim to be. It seems nearly silly to be complaining, then, about the way people consume the art around them these days as we creep towards what feels like the end of days. But as long as I still draw breath, I must complain.

I miss genuine passion. As an autistic individual, when I'm alone, sometimes I cannot contain myself with how things make me feel. The music I listen to, the video games I play, the books I read. I almost feel the need to run through the house and scream in everyone's face how I'm feeling. It feels good to love intensely. Now, I won't pretend like autistic people haven't been bullied for this since the dawn of time, but there is surely a noticeable lack of passion in everything these days. Everyone can feel it, everyone is talking about it. Everything now is "cringe", or "doing too much", or "not that serious". Actually, it is that serious. Insecurity in one's own deeper feelings may not be a new thing, but a culture that seems to promote this eschewing of them does seem to be a new evil. The tone of the internet has completely shifted. I spent most of my time here when I first discovered it a little over a decade ago on Zelda forums and other chat-based websites, talking about how much I loved whatever fandom I was in at the time and having genuine and memorable interactions with like-minded individuals who felt the same way I do. Now, you have two options; if you hate media, you rip it to shreds, and if you love it, you word-salad it to death and parrot a joke about it that someone else said. I'm not saying people don't still talk seriously in a heartfelt way about the things they love, but it does not seem to be the initial reaction anymore. Do I have a solution to this problem? Of course not. I'm a 26 year old girl posting on a tumblr blog. If I had a solution, this is not where I would be dropping it. But conversation is God to man, and I believe in the ability to change things from the inside out. We make the rules, and we can change them.

Before I go, I'd like to just clarify that I am very grateful for my career, grateful to anyone who has ever given me and my art the time of day, grateful to anyone who has ever come up to me and connected with me over my work, and grateful for a life where someone making too many jokes is the worst part of my day. I do not think I am better nor smarter than anyone on or off the internet. I am simply a girl with big feelings and I enjoy talking about them with other people with big feelings, and it makes me sad when something avoidable or unnecessary gets in the way of that.

All in all, I love to love, and I love all of you, I love my life, I love this record, and mi amore vo- i mean.... oh, whatever.

(Feel free to sound off in the comments and please be nice to each other)

[shadyb00ts]

A Long & Brutally Honest Review of The Tortured Poets Department

So, if you follow this account for some reason, you'd know that four years ago, I wrote about how the albums folklore and evermore made me a Swiftie again. Those two albums were a big part of my 2020 and represent the evolution of Taylor Swift that made me care about her work again. Before that point I suppose I had been more of a casual fan of Taylor, and I never really got into Pop Taylor that much save for 1989. But when she released her pandemic duology, it really hooked me, considering she was playing to her greatest strength--storytelling. I kind of consider them her best work by far. Fair warning, I'm going to bring up folklore and evermore a lot in this review, so to simplify, I'm just going to refer to the two projects as folkmore.

2020 was definitely a high point for me in terms of general Swiftie-isms. 2021 also continued that with the re-releases of Fearless and Red, albums I deeply loved as a teenager. And then in 2022, she released Midnights, her first brand new autobiographical pop record since Lover in 2019, and uhh... I never did a full-fledged review of Midnights, but needless to say I didn't like it all that much. I thought it was a downgrade from the masterpieces of the folkmore duo, and only a few songs stood out to me. A lot of the project I thought was bland and generic for Taylor. I didn't really consider myself a Swiftie anymore after the Midnights era.

Well, I didn't think she'd somehow manage to make an album worse than that one, but here we are.

The thing about me is that, ever since folkmore, I always set myself up for disappointment when it comes to Taylor. When she announces a new project, I always hope that she does something that would really surprise me. Something new and unexpected, something that showcases her growth and evolution as an artist. As a pop music enthusiast since I was a child, I've grown used to pop stars reinventing their image, having unique and distinct eras to keep things fresh and keep everyone guessing.

I wish Taylor did this, and I think according to her fans, she does. In my opinion, Taylor likes to put herself in a box, and this album is the perfect encapsulation of that. Like Midnights, this album is a collection of songs that sound like they've already existed for years from her other albums. Barely any of the tracks made me feel anything really, and any one of them could belong in her other pop albums like Reputation and Lover.

As usual, she teamed up with her decade-long sole producer Jack Antonoff, and honestly, Jack Antonoff has made some great things in the past. Take Lorde's Melodrama for example, one of my all time favorite albums. He did some very interesting, out-of-the-ordinary production on that album. He's shown that he's capable of making really great stuff. This time around though, he created some of the most boring, snooze-fest synthpop I've heard in a while, with very little variety between songs.

Now I love synthpop as much as anyone; some of my favorite artists are MUNA, Allie X and Lights. Their brand of synthpop, however, has more of a grandiosity to it, a presence. Taylor herself has also proven that she can do synthpop of that vein, as 1989 had some great examples of it. This time however, she does nothing to elevate these milquetoast beats. A particularly scathing review I saw coined it as "dog water synth". There's so many recycled production elements, melodies and chord progressions. Taylor, not only am I begging you to work with anyone other than Jack Antonoff, I'm also begging you to stop having soooo many songs on your albums in C major. I get it, that's your key of choice and it's been that way since the beginning, but my god. Probably half this album is in C major. Please find another key.

So the production left a lot to be desired, but what about the lyrics? Taylor's strong suit has always been songwriting, right? And this album is supposed to contain self-proclaimed "tortured poetry", so it'll probably be her most beautifully written works yet. Right?

Well... no.

Something I've noticed about Swifties is that the majority of them only care about lyrics. If you pore through their live reactions of this album, the one thing they're listening for is lyrics. They don't particularly place any value in vocals or production, really anything outside of what Taylor wrote. They even make a meme out of pulling out a dictionary anytime Taylor drops a new project, cause Taylor's metaphors and word choices are so complex.

Do you remember that meme of someone talking about the show Rick & Morty? Some fan of that show made this long post about how a person has to have a very high IQ to understand Rick & Morty. The show where the most popular joke is an entire episode where Rick turns into a pickle and shouts "I'm Pickle Rick!!!!" for the entire runtime. Well, that same phenomenon is happening again with Swifties and this album.

I've seen more than a few of her diehard stans claiming that anyone who critiques or dislikes this album just doesn't understand "basic reading comprehension" or the concept of metaphors. That this album is just too smart for their tiny little brains to grasp. Mind you, this is an album with gems such as "You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep / Like a tattooed golden retriever" and "Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto" and let's not forget her romanticizing the 1830s "but without all the racists".

I resent the notion that this woman is exempt from criticism. Everything she writes is not gold. It boggles my mind that the same person who once wrote things like "Your Midas touch on the Chevy door / November flush and your flannel cure" or "Leaving like a father, running like water" or "I made you my temple, my mural, my sky / Now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life". She's proven time and time again that she's a very capable, very creative songwriter. And honestly, some of that is still present in this album, albeit very few and far between. It's bogged down by the above examples, which I think are some of her worst writing to date. And I thought "Hey kids, spelling is fun!" was bad.

One of the reasons the folkmore albums captivated me was that Taylor really flexed her storytelling muscles and wrote songs from other people's perspectives, even creating fictional characters. The song "this is me trying" from folklore is one of my favorite examples of this, a beautiful song about characters who are struggling with suicidal thoughts and alcoholism. Another standout in terms of writing is "epiphany", where she draws parallels between soldiers dying on beaches in World War II and the modern-day soldiers that were hospital workers during the height of the pandemic.

This was the type of shit that she never wrote about, because up until that point, her work had been 90% diaristic confessions. And yeah, that was the initial appeal with Taylor, that she was a small town girl whose songs felt like diary entries and you could really relate to her feelings. I remember listening to songs like White Horse and You're Not Sorry as a teenager and crying over a cheating ex that I never even had. Taylor was always really good at making music that perfectly sounded like whatever feeling she was trying to convey, and it's what made them so relatable.

Whenever she writes autobiographical songs nowadays, however, as a billionaire superstar writing about very specific scenarios and high profile relationships in her life, I find it hard to relate to anything, really. In this album for example, plenty of the songs are about her summer fling with Matty Healy, someone who I couldn't care less about. I was looking for songs about Joe Alwyn, because it was the longest relationship she had ever been in and he was a huge part of her life. And sure enough, songs like So Long London and loml did make me feel things, because I felt that her heartbreak was genuine over this relationship ending. So Long London is easily the best written song, because it's sincerely coming from a place of pain that many can relate to after a years-long love story ends. That to me encompasses the "tortured poetry" she was talking about more than any of the other songs were able to convey.

But like I said, most of this album is about Matty Healy. I have absolutely no idea what this man did that made her dedicate an entire album to him, a person that really does not matter in the grand scheme of things. He's a gross weirdo, so I mentally checked out during a lot of the songs centered around him, because no Taylor, I can't relate to the feeling of being a pop star that just got out of a seven year relationship and had a brief fling with a nasty lead singer of a band that's no longer relevant. That is a very specific thing that you went through that I have no strong feelings about, nor do I care about that much. I liked The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived though, I guess. I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to it, but it was decent and I liked the outro portion.

Another song I liked at first was Florida, the collaboration with Florence Welch. I think I liked it initially because A) Florence, B) it was finally something that sounded unique and different, and C) Florence's verse has a callback to the song "no body, no crime" from evermore which I thought was cute. But honestly, after a few more listens, the song is... Yeah, it's bad. The chorus is very grating to my ears, and not even Florence could save it. She sounds great of course, because it's her, but the song itself is just not giving what it's supposed to.

And then the other chunk of the album is about her current boyfriend, football player Travis Kelce. Because who couldn't relate to the feeling of being an international pop star dating an NFL football player? It's a very universal experience, like who hasn't, y'know?

Yeah, as you can tell, I didn't care for these songs either. I'm so tired of hearing about that man and their relationship. Everything I've heard about them being together has been completely against my will.

On top of the 16 songs on the standard album, she surprise dropped another one called "The Anthology", and that title piqued my curiosity because an anthology is a collection of different stories, so I thought she was bringing back the folkmore vibes. Turns out it was as if somebody sucked the life out of those two albums. This may sound harsh, but the Anthology portion of this album sounds like if you bought folklore and evermore on clearance. Just like the bulk of the first 16, I felt nothing. Out of 31 songs in total, I only liked 2 or 3.

This may sound a little mean, but I think I've made it pretty clear that I just... don't care about her life anymore. I don't find her experience as a global superstar selling out stadiums and flying around on her private jets to be interesting. It's certainly not relatable in any way, either. The reason I hold the folkmore albums in such high esteem is because yeah, while there are some autobiographical songs in there, the majority of them are fictional works. I've kinda been spoiled by those songs, because now I know what Taylor is capable of. I want her to go back to writing songs from other perspectives and really challenge herself, step out of that mediocre pop box she's put herself in ever since Midnights. I say all this because she's proven she can do it, so she doesn't need to backslide. She doesn't need to downgrade.

The best analogy I can think of is this. If you play Pokemon, then you know that whenever a Pokemon is evolving, you can press the B button to stop it from happening. I think the folkmore albums were her evolution process, and then someone pressed B and put a stop to it, and that's how we got Midnights and now this. Maybe she pressed the button herself, and she just likes to stay in her little comfort zone because she knows that her billions of fans will like whatever she does at this point. That's why I believe Taylor and Jack barely put in any effort with this project, because they don't have to. Swifties will like whatever they put out. They don't have to try new things or challenge themselves. It's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.

If you're a Swiftie reading this, and you didn't really love this album, I just wanna say that it's okay to critique it. I have plenty of artists that I stan, but I'm not going to love everything they do or whatever they put out. I can be a huge fan of someone and still use my critical thinking skills, still have my own opinions. Don't be passive or follow whatever the popular consensus is.

On the flip side, if you love this album, then please don't try to make it seem like it's this complex poetic masterpiece that only smart people get. Don't act as if Taylor is exempt from criticism, and anyone that dares to critique anything she does is just stupid or "doesn't get it". That's a very reductive and small-minded view of music criticism, and media literacy in general. No artist or their work is above critique. Period.

Anyway, that's pretty much all of my thoughts. Thanks for reading this all the way, and I appreciate you for caring enough about my opinion! And remember Swifties, use critical thinking skills and please don't dox me!

[dcminions]

HALLE BAILEY in THE SCUTTLEBUTT (THE LITTLE MERMAID).

[shadyb00ts]

The Little Mermaid (2023) - Review

As a longtime fan of Chloe x Halle, I knew from the moment that Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel that she was the perfect choice. Of course the racists were (and still are) whining and throwing tantrums about Ariel being black, because they never believe any person of color can truly earn a role with sheer talent, but for a long time I was sure that even if this movie ended up being an absolute dumpster fire, Halle would be the saving grace of that dumpster fire. She would be the best part, hands down.

Well, I wasn't surprised to see that I was right. About her being the best part, at least, but I don't think the movie itself is a dumpster fire at all. I actually really enjoyed it, and I've been very cynical of the Disney live action remakes for a long time like most people are. I had no confidence in this film but I had the utmost confidence in Halle to shine no matter what. However, there were things about this movie that pleasantly surprised me. Some disappointments though, I'll admit.

This is gonna be a long review, as my reviews always are. Spoilers ahead. I'd recommend you read this if you've seen the movie, but if you haven't and don't care about spoilers, read on.

So for starters, I was never really a Little Mermaid stan. Of course I loved the movie as a kid because I was obsessed with mermaids in general, and the songs were undisputed classics, but I wasn't exactly a fan of the movie as I grew older. I don't dislike it, it's just... fine. It's very of its time. So because of that, I knew they were going to update and expand certain things in the remake. For better or worse.

I've already stated how much I thought Halle nailed this film. Maybe you could say that I'm biased since I was already a fan of hers anyway, but hey, this is just my honest opinion. She captured Ariel's essence so beautifully; her innocence and naivete, her curiosity and inquisitiveness, her yearning and wonder. And while yes, the CGI during the underwater scenes could be a little janky some of the time, I was mostly mesmerized by the way she moved, the way her hair moved and the iridescence of her tail. She just looked so gorgeous and adorable and got Ariel down to a science.

As for when she gets legs and goes to the surface, that's where she shines even more, because she has to act without saying a word. It was all in her expressions and mannerisms and I thought she absolutely delivered. I haven't mentioned the new songs they added yet, but they did add a new Ariel song for when she goes to the surface called "For the First Time" and I have to say that it's my favorite new addition. It's soooo delightfully musical theater and I think it has the most Little Mermaid-esque vibe to it. It fit the movie perfectly.

Back to the actors, I also thought Melissa McCarthy was the biggest surprise. I had zero confidence that she would do the role justice, but I thought she actually did a great job. She was definitely channeling Pat Carroll and some of her lines elicited chuckles out of me. And I thought her rendition of Poor Unfortunate Souls was pretty good, even though it's unfortunately missing the iconic "body language" lyric. She's not a strong vocalist but I think she did the best she could, and she was one of the highlights. Also she did the Ursula Shoulder Shimmy which I appreciated.

Jonah Hauer King as Prince Eric also did a good job I think. The remake added much-needed depth and character to Eric that was missing in the original. Another thing I appreciated was how they tried to show more parallels between Eric and Ariel. There's a scene in the movie where Ariel finds Eric's library/study, and it's shot in a way that makes it reminiscent to Ariel's grotto. They tried to give the two more things in common, and I think they succeeded in that. Plus the chemistry between Jonah and Halle was just off the charts. I rarely find straight couples adorable, but I thought they were so adorable any time they were sharing a scene.

My one minor gripe with his casting is that he's not exactly the strongest vocalist. One of the new musical numbers is an Eric song called Wild Uncharted Waters, and.... I didn't really like it. His voice kind of sounded like the lead singer of an angsty rock band from the 2000s. As soon as it started it gave me war flashbacks to Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast, where they had to use very noticeable autotune on her voice. Granted that was much, MUCH worse, but still. I don't wanna be reminded of that travesty. The song itself is okay I think, but it could be much better if they had a stronger vocalist or a Broadway darling to play the role, to really do the song justice. But like I said, this is just a minor gripe because Eric really only gets one song, and Jonah overall did a good job.

A change that I really appreciated was, instead of Ariel getting invited to dinner at the castle, she and Eric go to a market instead. The kingdom in the remake is inspired by the Caribbean and I loved the tropical, colorful vibe of the locale. The market visit allowed Ariel to wander around and marvel at everything she doesn't understand, and it's a much cuter, more laid back way for her and Eric to spend time together. Some people were upset about the crazy chef who tries to kill Sebastian being removed, but honestly, I never thought that sequence added anything to the original. I loved what they did here.

Daveed Diggs as Sebastian... Sigh. Look, I love Daveed but I feel like he was so miscast for this. Anytime he spoke or sang, you could tell the Jamaican accent was very put on. Sure, the original actor who voiced Sebastian--Samuel E. Wright, RIP--also was putting on a Jamaican accent, but somehow it just felt more natural when he did it. His voice work as Sebastian was so iconic, and Daveed just missed the mark on this role. It just wasn't the right role for him. His version of Under the Sea was also quite underwhelming, and he did a lot of talk-singing during it. I liked the Under the Sea sequence visually, but not quite sonically.

As for Kiss the Girl, people were making such an uproar about the lyric changes but the changes were so minor. They literally only changed like, a couple of lines, and the song is still the same thematically. It's still just the animal sidekicks trying to influence Eric to kiss the girl in kiiind of a date-r*pey-ish way. They wanted to make it seem more consensual, but nothing's really changed. But yeah, I do think the original version of the song is still better regardless. Similar issue I felt about Under the Sea, it just... doesn't quite hit the mark.

Awkwafina as Scuttle was... alright. She had some funny moments, but I mean, she's just doing her regular voice. It's literally just Awkwafina as a bird. But what I really hated was.. Scuttlebutt.

Oh god, Scuttlebutt. I honestly have no idea what Lin Manuel Miranda was thinking when he wrote this? I don't know if he was smoking something really strong, cause like... Mama, this is garbage. Like, I can't even explain to you how painful to hear this song was. It's absolutely the worst and most unnecessary addition to the soundtrack. Nobody wants to hear Awkwafina, the queen of putting on blaccents, rapping. That's the last thing any of us wanna hear. It was just. So. Horrible. I've seen the movie twice in theaters now and each time I was just begging for that song to be over.

Anyway, that's the most negative thing I can say about this movie, was that damn song. Lin deserved jailtime for that one.

For the more minor characters, Javier Bardem as Triton was okay. Some people think he was horrible but I don't think he was that bad, it was fine. I still would've preferred Idris Elba as Triton but that's just my personal fancast.

Flounder was... Flounder. Yeah, I don't like his hyper-realistic design, but he was still pretty cute and 12-year-old Jacob Tremblay was just trying his best to emulate the original actor and I think he did a fine job.

Ariel's sisters were barely in it, like in the original. They did give them each unique, cute designs, but we all know that it's just to sell dolls. They appear in the beginning of the movie in a pretty awkward scene that's supposed to replace the concert from the original film. Apparently Triton and his daughters meet every time there's something called the Coral Moon? It seems to just be a family meeting of some sort. They left it so vague, they didn't even bother to explain what the Coral Moon was. I wish they had just kept the concert.

But yeah, the sisters are all named and apparently I heard each of them are supposed to have special powers? Well those powers weren't showcased in the movie at all, so we know it was just a marketing tactic. I'm sure there'll be tons of fanfics of all the sisters having adventures and whatnot. They might even make an animated series. It'd be called Ariel and Her Sisters, or Daughters of Triton.

I do think the dolls are very slay though. I'd buy the whole 7 pack.

Oh my god, I forgot to talk about Vanessa. Girl... Jessica Alexander bodied this role. Even though she was only in it for a handful of minutes, she ate up every bit of those minutes. I also really liked Vanessa's Trick from the soundtrack and thought it sounded beautiful. Do I wish it still had lyrics instead of "la-di-da's"? Sure I guess, but I honestly don't mind all that much. It's very haunting and Halle's voice is ethereal on it.

I think that's all I have to say on the movie. It's a fun time and it's bolstered by some stellar performances (particularly from Halle) and welcome changes/additions. But it's also kinda bogged down by not-always-great CGI, some clunky musical choices, and certain things cut from the original film that I thought shouldn't have been cut.

Still, I very much enjoyed this movie more than any of the other Disney remakes so far. I do agree with people's sentiments of it being the best of the bunch, but well... the bar isn't exactly high in that regard. Maybe because the previous remakes were so bad, this one just is the best because it's the only one that doesn't suck.

Whatever the case, I had enough of a great time that I went and saw it twice. I recommend you see it too before it leaves theaters.

[shadyb00ts]

Review: Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land

If you were a teenager in the 2010s who listened to alt pop music, you most likely have crossed paths with Marina's music, back when she was FKA Marina and the Diamonds. I first discovered Marina through her sophomore album Electra Heart, which I always thought was a masterpiece of a pop album sonically and conceptually. To this day, that is an album that means a lot to me and helped me through some dark times back in those days.

Since then, I've been obsessed with Marina's discography and there isn't a single album of hers I dislike. The Family Jewels was an excellent debut and really highlighted her creativity. FROOT I maintain was very much underrated and it's probably my second favorite album of hers overall. Love + Fear is... Well, I understand why it's polarizing, considering it is her most commercial-sounding, radio-friendly pop album and probably her weakest in the discography, but there was still something about it that kept me hooked. It was one of my most listened to albums of 2019 because something about the songs, despite them being so basic by Marina's standards, was highly addictive for me.

So when this album was announced, I didn't really know what to expect in terms of her next musical direction. The singles she releases, namely Purge the Poison and Venus Fly Trap, gave me an indication that she was bringing back her signature Family Jewels-era style that is so distinctly her, and for the most part this album did give that quintessential, quirky Marina-ness that I really missed from her.

I reviewed Chromatica sometime last year and in that post I talked about how Gaga sacrificed a lot of her weirdness to adopt a more commercial, generic sound with Chromatica, and I feel like Love + Fear was that for Marina. Like Gaga, Marina is weird, and even though the songs on L+F I thought were enjoyable, they were definitely missing Marina's personality and snark for the most part. I'm pleased that we got to see that side of her come back for this album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land.

I think Ancient Dreams maintains that energy, because even from the opening title track, you're already taken for a ride. It's such a strong opener and it sets the stage for what the rest of the album is going to be like sonically and thematically. Then she continues with songs like Venus Fly Trap, Man's World and Purge the Poison, and all of these songs consecutively paint quite a clear picture of what she's going for in terms of what the album's about. At least that's what it seems like at first, but then it didn't take me long to notice that this album kind of has a cohesion problem.

(Side note, while I think Purge the Poison is a banger, I always thought the lyrics are kind of like she just Googled "feminism 101" lmao. It's full of a lot of feminist cliches and "daughters of the witches you couldn't burn" energy, but with that said, I can't make the song not bop.)

Marina is normally the queen of cohesion, but it feels like there's two sides of this album, which is kind of hilarious to think about because she wanted to play with the concept of a two-sided album with Love + Fear that ended up sounding very same-y. In this one, it's supposed to be one continuous body of work with only 10 songs, but there's a clear divide between the themes and the sounds. Somehow the concept of L+F worked better for this album despite it not being her intent. It's like this one should've been called Politics + Heartbreak.

Basically in like the first six songs of this album, she's talking about universal topics like politics, feminism, existentialism, independence, etc. But then in the last four songs, she switches gears abruptly and now we're talking about breakups? So it felt kind of jarring to me that the album had a massive tonal shift not only in the overall theme but also in the sound as well, cause most of these last songs are breakup ballads.

Now around the time that this album came out, I was going through a pretty shitty breakup that broke my heart, so some of these songs did tug at my heart strings and made me feel things. Out of all the random breakup songs tacked on, I think my favorite is I Love You But I Love Me More. This one doesn't really count as a ballad since it's a little more uptempo, but it's probably the one that resonated with me the most and the only one I go back to.

Even though I was able to relate somewhat to these breakup songs and had an emotional reaction to a few of them, the critical side of me still felt a little perplexed by this album's direction. Maybe if the tracklist had been distributed differently and the breakup songs were more spread out, I might've overlooked it, but because those four songs were all clumped together at the end, the abrupt change in tone was extremely noticeable.

The highs of this album are the high energy tracks like Purge the Poison and Venus Fly Trap, where Marina's snarky, quirky personality we fell in love with in The Family Jewels and Electra Heart really show through. The first half of this album shines so well and really grabs you, but unfortunately it's another one of those albums that fizzles by the last few tracks. Hell, I'd even say this album would've worked better as an EP with the last four songs removed. They just didn't fit with the rest of it.

Overall, is this album enjoyable? Yes, there's a lot of songs on here (mostly the ones in the first half) that I go back to all the time, cause this woman is still just really damn good at making music. I don't even think I can say that any of the songs on this album are bad, really, my biggest issue is just that it should've been more thematically clear or cohesive. Usually Marina's really good at that.

If you are a Marina fan then you will love a lot of these songs, the ones that are bursting with her personality. If you've never listened to Marina, then you should probably go through the majority of her discography first before you give this one a shot. Like I said, she's not for everyone.

[shadyb00ts]

How 2020 Turned Me Into A Swiftie Again

If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d have not one but two Taylor Swift albums in my year-end favorites list, I would’ve thought you were out of your mind. Then again, stranger things have happened in this hellscape of a year.

I’m really not sure where the first time I heard the phrase “Life is too short to pretend to hate Taylor Swift” was. I have no idea who originated it, but it stuck with me when I started to unpack that about a year ago, during her Lover era. By then, my perception and feelings about Taylor had been very... inconsistent, to say the least. I started out as a full-on stan, then it dwindled from there overtime until I basically became a hater, which then turned into indifference but silent respect. Now, I’m pretty much on the road to becoming a stan again. Revisiting her catalog, analyzing her lyrics, watching interviews, the works. 

I wanted to examine what it was that made my opinions about her go through so many steep rises and falls within this entire decade. Part of it was her shift in musical style that I didn’t quite mesh with, but another part was owning up to the internal biases I had when I was younger and how gullible I was in going along with whatever the media or the popular conscious was saying about her and the kind of person she is. 

I’m somebody who’s incapable of separating art from the artist. I simply don’t listen to artists when I don’t like them as people or don’t agree with their actions. Examples include but are not limited to Kim Petras, Melanie Martinez, Azealia Banks, Grimes, just to name a few. I have my own personal reasons for just not wanting to engage with any of their music, and if you still want to, that’s none of my business.

At some point in my life, I think Taylor got on that list. Looking back on it now, I find that completely ridiculous, because she never really did anything or acted in a way that warranted that reaction out of me. So I wanted to delve into how that even came about in the first place.

With that said, I want to take a trip down memory lane and go back through her eras, and go through the timeline of my strange relationship with Taylor Swift’s body of work as well as her public persona. Fair warning, it’s gonna be really cheesy and emotional at parts, but it is fully my truth. Thank you in advance if you manage to read the whole thing.

Part 1: The Country Era

It’s 2010 and I’m in eighth grade. I’m in an extremely Muslim country, the only son of an extremely Muslim family that enrolled me in an extremely Muslim school. I’m getting bullied by the boys in my class for being too feminine and being ignored by the girls for being a boy. The last close friend I had from elementary school had just moved away the year prior, and I’d never felt more alone in my life.

I was a closeted gay kid still trying to figure himself out and hating who he was. I escaped to cringey online chat sites like IMVU and catfished as a girl, because at the time I thought the only way to get boys to like me and want to be with me was to pretend to be someone else, someone I actually liked.

When I think back on this era, I mostly remember the girls in my class obsessing over these three albums and singing her songs with each other all the time. I desperately wanted to join them and fangirl with them over her music, though of course they never gave me the time of day. I remember I would memorize so many of her songs and write them all down on a special notebook I kept. When I wasn’t paying attention in classes, that’s what I would do; scribble out a collection of all the songs of hers that I knew by heart.

To me, these three albums represented a certain kind of vivid fantasy. Taylor’s songwriting has obviously grown exponentially over the past decade, but even back then she was always so damn good at storytelling and detail, painting you a very clear picture of a scene and placing you right there. For a miserable, self-hating fourteen-year-old gay boy that was always seeking escapism from a homophobic environment, this was the perfect outlet for me to live out a different kind of life, to play pretend.

I honestly can’t explain what it is about her style of songwriting but she always made me feel like I was genuinely experiencing everything she was talking about. Things like kissing in the rain, riding around in the truck of the boy of my dreams in a tiny one horse town, shedding teardrops on a guitar that I definitely didn’t own, experiencing crushing heartbreak. This was stuff that my sheltered ass couldn’t comprehend.

Taylor perfectly captured that ideal, that small town girl with big dreams and storybook romances. I was in love with her discography at the time, having memorized pretty much the entirety of Fearless because that was my favorite of three. Middle school was hell for me, but her music was definitely something that helped me pull through, because she sent my imagination into overdrive.

This was a time in my life where I didn’t really care yet about an artist’s public image or the media’s portrayal of them, It was purely about the music for me. Of course, when looking at these albums now, there were a few questionable choices she made lyrically, I have to admit. Particularly with songs like “Better Than Revenge” and “Innocent”, both having aged terribly with the former being bafflingly misogynistic and the latter being about Kanye. As of my writing this, Taylor is currently in the process of re-recording her old catalog, and I assume that she would skip these two songs in particular, as well as several others that haven’t exactly aged well.

This era really got me through some tough times and she provided much-needed relief for me within each of these three albums. I’ll always have an attachment to them because of the bittersweet memories they represent.

Part 2: Red

Red I decided to put in its own category, because this was kind of a weird era for Taylor. Even back when I was an ignorant teenager that barely had any critical thinking skills, I felt the dissonance of this album and its Max Martin produced singles. This album represented Taylor dipping her toe into pop music, which she made abundantly clear when she decided to release We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together as the lead single.

I actually remember this moment quite clearly. She premiered the single at some kind of fan event that I believe was streamed live on YouTube, and either I watched it live or I watched the full recording of it later on. At the time I remember feeling it was kind of bizarre to hear Taylor adopt this style of music, because it was so drastically different from her previous work and it took me a while to adjust. Obviously I enjoyed pop music at the time as much as I do now, but I just hadn’t been expecting it to come from Taylor. 

Fortunately it was just the three singles that were full pop, and the rest of the album still had her signature DNA and also includes some of her best work. All Too Well, for example, is I think one of the best songs she’s ever made, if not the best. I think if I were introducing Taylor to someone that’s totally unfamiliar with her, that would be my first choice, because it’s a masterwork in songwriting and emotionality.

I do think the thing that irked me the most about this album and era, even to this day, was the lack of cohesion. Of course I figured that she would eventually venture into pop music, but the way in which she did it just felt a bit too jarring to me. Perhaps if the album had a more even distribution of pop songs and country songs, it would’ve been slightly more palatable for me. It’s not even that the three pop songs were bad; they were quite good for their time. Though to be completely honest they’re the songs I barely ever return to any time I listen to Red now. They’re the kind of catchy pop songs where it’s difficult not to get sick of them at a certain point in your life. I’ve grown to really dislike the lead single, and even 22.

Her image was also starting to get much more scrutinized by the media around this time. I think this era probably marked the sharp rise of the “Taylor Swift has too many boyfriends!” argument people loved to throw around. I wish I could say I was smart enough to not buy into that shit at the time, but I wasn’t. While it didn’t bother me, it was something that I wondered about, why she dated and broke up with so many guys at such a young age. It was something that I judged her for. Obviously I didn’t yet understand that it was normal for people her age to date around. Plus it gave her some great material.

By this time, Taylor was making the gradual transition of country sweetheart to pop star, and while Red was kind of a rocky start to that, naturally she managed to pull it off. But not quite flawlessly.

Part 3: The Pop Era

Okay, I have a lot to say about these girls.

I think this era started off strong with 1989. It was a more fully realized version of Taylor’s little pop experiment, and it actually had the cohesion that I needed to be able to fully adapt to this new style she’d cultivated. She wrote yet another one of her best songs with Blank Space, which I like to think was a precursor to Reputation (and dare I say that one song did Reputation’s concept better than that album as a whole?).

However... Shake It Off. I’m sorry, I just hate that song.

WANEGBT, the first single off of Red, isn’t exactly the best song either but it made sense as to why she chose that as the first single. It was to signify her dabbling into pop. Reputation’s first single I also am not the biggest fan of, but again, made perfect sense as an introduction, but I’ll get to that later. Shake It Off, though? For the life of me, I have no idea why this song was the first single. Or to be frank, why it was even on the album at all. 

I’m sorry y’all, I just hate it. Everything about it. The verses, the chorus, the appalling rap bridge. She should’ve kept that song in the drafts and released Blank Space as a first single, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on. Sorry Shake It Off stans, but I’m sure all three of you will get over it. ❤

That said, 1989 had some excellent songs, and I was finally starting to get used to Taylor doing pop. However, my excitement and enthusiasm for her music started to falter due to my weak mind at the time once again getting swayed by the media. 

This time, I began to see Taylor as someone that seemed to be very calculated and conniving in the way she curated her image. Something that didn’t sit well with me was the “girl squad” stuff, and how all of the women she surrounded herself with were essentially these supermodels with unattainable beauty standards, and also believing the rumors about how certain famous women were given private requests to join Taylor’s “squad”. And then of course, the Kim and Kanye thing happened. #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trended worldwide, and that was probably my earliest exposure to an instance of a celebrity getting canceled, so I was just happy to join the bandwagon. My opinion of her shifted like that, and it’s crazy to think about it now, how I barely had the capacity to form my own opinions and was easily influenced by everything I heard.

Despite me kind of joining the Taylor hate train, I did like Reputation as a concept. I liked how she disappeared from the public eye and came back being like, “You want me to be the villain? The snake? Fine.” Look What You Made Me Do, as I mentioned before, was the perfect choice for the first single despite the song itself being sonically....not the best. The music video and the line about how the old Taylor couldn’t come to the phone was an iconic moment in pop culture, I have to admit that.

I didn’t listen to the album as a whole until later, though. I was having my own hang-ups about Taylor that I think are silly now, but at the time when I didn’t like an artist I would mostly avoid their work. When I did listen to the album, though, I thought it was... okay. There’s one standout track to me and that is Getaway Car, and it’s the only song from Reputation I can say I fully adore to pieces. The other songs on there I either just like, or I find to be meh at best. (Also I know Ready For It is objectively a bad song but I really enjoy the chorus, don’t @ me, @ god)

A few years later, Lover happened and.... Once again, horrible first single. ME! is a genuinely atrocious song, and I have no idea how esteemed, prolific songwriter Taylor Swift managed to reach a point where she had a song with the phrase “spelling is fun!” in it. I feel the exact same way about this song as I do about Shake It Off. It had no business being in the album whatsoever.

As far as Lover the album goes, this came out around the time where I was kind of feeling indifferent toward Taylor (which is hilarious if you know what the first track on it is). I was much more politically aware and had learned not to put too much faith in white women, and I was focusing on other artists so much that Lover barely even came onto my radar. I listened to it once, thought it was meh, and moved on. I revisited it earlier this year and realized I was a bit too harsh on it the first time around. Sure it was her weakest album overall, but it wasn’t bad by any means. It was perfectly alright, and there were songwriting moments within it that were still quite strong. The title track and also Miss Americana comes to mind as standouts.

She started to become more vocal politically around this time. A lot of people thought it was too little too late, which was a fair point. However to me it made sense that she stayed tight-lipped about politics when she was younger, considering she was operating within the realm of country music. Plus, upon watching her documentary, it was pretty clear she had old white men behind the scenes telling her what she should or shouldn’t say, to make sure she maintained that all-American country girl sweetheart image. Still, I do agree with the people who thought that she should’ve used her platform sooner.

Oh and for the record, I think You Need to Calm Down is a terrible song. The video was cute, and the message behind it is fine, but I just hate it sonically.

At this point my interest in Taylor was probably at an all time low. The era started off strong with 1989, but it progressively got weaker. She just wasn’t really giving me much in terms of lyricism, and her pop productions were starting to blend together to the point where a lot of them were sounding very same-y. Lover to me marked the point of stagnation in her music; it was solid enough, but it just wasn’t going anywhere. We’ve seen Pop Taylor, she was cute for a while, but what else? Where does she go from here?

Well... She went into the woods.

Part 4: The Cottagecore Sisters

When I heard about Taylor dropping a surprise album, I suppose I was intrigued. She is one of the few artists that are successful enough to be able to make a move like that and cause a lot of buzz and excitement. I didn’t think much about it though, because my 2020 at that time was still inundated with SAWAYAMA and Ungodly Hour on repeat. On a whim, though, I decided to listen to it one day, not expecting much out of it.

Earlier when I was talking about her country era, I mentioned that Taylor’s storytelling and her penchant for detailed descriptions were my favorite parts of her writing. Her innate ability to transport me into other worlds, to provide escapism when my life became too much to deal with. I feel like these aspects were missing in the several years that Taylor focused on pop music. There were flashes of it in some of her later work, sure, but very few. She was becoming a huge mega superstar and her songs started to lose that sense of relatability that had been easy for me to latch on too. These things definitely contributed to my loss of interest for her work in general.

And then Folklore managed to bring me back to that place of fantasy I described before, but heightened. Elevated. Evolved. This is why I think that Folklore is Taylor Swift’s magnum opus.

Storytelling is without a doubt her strongest skill as an artist. To be able to construct not just a narrative but an entire world through songs is not something anyone can pull off. Throughout her pop era, there was always that something missing because I knew that she was capable of more. I couldn’t explain it well back then, but despite her penmanship still being commendable during those years, it still felt oddly lackluster. I knew she could do better, but I didn’t have the proof yet.

This is it. Both Folklore and Evermore showcase exactly what I knew she was capable of. This is Taylor Swift at her most creative, at her full power.

I think in a recent interview I watched (though I can’t remember which one), even she herself acknowledged how it would’ve been a disservice to continue strictly writing autobiographical songs, and so she decided to write from the perspectives of multiple different characters while also occasionally inserting herself and her life experiences into these narratives. She essentially created her own folklore and managed to make me invested in characters that don’t even exist.

I have to talk about the love triangle trilogy: cardigan, august and betty. It’s a testament to her songwriting ability that these fictional characters feel like real people. The story of Betty, James and Augusta/Augustine is just so well done to the point where I forget that it’s Taylor Swift singing. When I listen to these songs, I am fully imagining the characters she conjured up. 

The song that I find the most profound out of the three, and also happens to be my favorite song on the album, is august. To me, it is the most heartbreaking song out of all of them. I relate so much to that girl who’s hopelessly in love with someone that just doesn’t give a shit about them and is merely using her for a summer fling. And it’s not even like I’ve experienced something similar to this in real life, Taylor just somehow made it relatable with the sheer power of her pen game. It’s even more heartbreaking considering we don’t know what happened to this girl, if she ever managed to find happiness, because in the Long Pond Sessions Taylor mentioned that Betty and James eventually got back together. They got their happy ending, but what happened to Augustine?

I can’t believe she’s got me this deep in my feelings over non-existent teenagers, I swear to god.

Just when I thought Folklore was going to be the end of this new side of her for a while, she releases Evermore in December, its sister album. While I don’t think it’s quite as strong as Folklore, it still delivered immensely in terms of lyricism, productions and vocals. Evermore’s release pretty much solidified the realization that I was basically becoming a Swiftie again, a whole decade later.

I was embarrassed by that thought at first, but honestly now I’m at a point where I don’t think there’s anything to be embarrassed about. Taylor is too skilled of a songwriter for me to consider her a guilty pleasure. I just needed something to help me come to that conclusion, and these two albums did just that. She finally gave to me what I was waiting for.

Final Thoughts

I don’t really stan artists the same way I used to now, which I mentioned previously in my review of Chromatica. I don’t deify them or hold them to an impossible moral standard they could never live up to anymore. I see them as flawed human beings that have the capacity to make great art. So when I say I’m becoming a Swiftie, I’m still fully aware that Taylor Swift is a thirty-one year old rich white woman who is bound to have shortcomings and missteps as a person. In my mind, she hasn’t done anything drastic enough or stupid enough for me to become uncomfortable in listening to her work. I had my own ideas about how she could’ve been fake, conniving, manipulative or whatever else the media was trying to convey about her, but there really is no way of knowing who she truly is as a person.

Celebrities and influencers have the power to curate their image however they want. The relationships they have with us, the audience, are entirely parasocial, so of course we base our judgments of them based on very limited knowledge, or just the surface-level view of what they’re like. I don’t know if Taylor is as down to earth and genuine as she appears to be now, and I honestly don’t need to know. If she does things I disagree with or acts a certain way that deserves criticism, of course I’d still call her out, and depending on the severity of what it was she said or did, it might end up with me not wanting to engage with her work anymore.

But the reality is, as a person, I’ve realized that she is just fine. I was holding on to a certain idea of her in my head where I think at one point I dubbed her “the Anne Hathaway of music”, meaning someone that comes across too perfect to the point where it seems calculated and disingenuous. But honestly, I just don’t feel that way about her anymore. I don’t feel particularly attached to her as a person, either. 

But I do feel an attachment to her music. At the end of the day, that’s where I’m standing now when it comes to her. I don’t have any expectations or delusions about her as a human being, and I’m not going to remain devoted to her if she does something dumb, but I believe that she is an insanely gifted artist who has written so many songs that genuinely speak to me and make me feel intensely. She lost me for a while, but now I’m right back in it.

So yeah, like I said in the beginning of the post, life’s too short to pretend to hate Taylor Swift. I’d rather just pretend to live in a mystical small town as a sad gay witch. And I’m at peace with that.

[shadyb00ts]

A Chromatica Review

So I never really use Tumblr, but when I do go on here, it’s pretty much to review something long-form. As you can tell from my profile picture here, and from my glowing review of ARTPOP from 7 years ago, I am and have always been a Gaga stan. Just read the melodramatic first paragraph of my ARTPOP review and you’ll get the gist of how much I idolize this woman. Well, idolized. Past tense.

That’s not to say I suddenly hate Gaga–I’m still going to follow her career and listen to whatever she puts out. There have just been several factors this past year that have changed my perspective on how I view her, this album being one of those factors. But I’ll get to those later. First I just need to lay out all my issues with this album.

Yes, this is going to be that type of review, so if you’re a fellow Gaga stan that isn’t able to criticize her work, this probably isn’t for you. Otherwise please read to the end if you can, because this is honestly about more than just the album.

Issue #1: The Mismatch Between Music & Aesthetic

When the cover of the album came out, I was so gagged. Like, just look at it! It’s striking, and Gaga has rarely ever disappointed me when it came to visuals. Actually, I can’t even think of any visual choices she made in previous eras that disappointed me. Even in the Joanne era, the pink cowboy hat became iconic and all of her aesthetic choices fit with the overall vibe of that album cycle.

So naturally, when she revealed to us the new visual direction she was taking for Chromatica, I assumed it would give us some insight into how the music would sound. The aesthetic of this era always gave me grungy cyberpunk and heavy machinery tease. When I look at the album cover for example, I can hear a song produced by SOPHIE in my head, the clink-clank queen herself. (There were rumors that Gaga was going to or did work with SOPHIE but that was never confirmed, unfortunately for us.)

For those unfamiliar with SOPHIE, here’s Ponyboy, which was most recently used in the ad campaign for Beyoncé’s Ivy Park clothing line.

That was the kind of production I was more or less expecting when taking the visuals into account; dark, metallic, basically similar to ARTPOP’s production (to be honest ARTPOP sonically fits better with the Chromatica aesthetic; think about it). 

But what did we get? Light, garden variety dance pop, a stark contrast to what the album cover and the promo images teased us with.

In the album, we get these orchestral interludes that are beautiful but don't really mesh that well with the actual tracks. The songs don't have any orchestral elements by themselves, so the interludes felt a bit misplaced to me. I wish they'd incorporated more of that into the individual songs, so that there could be an orchestral through-line to give more cohesion, like what Ariana did in her album positions by using strings. However I will say, the transition from Chromatica II into 911 remains unmatched.

I get that the album is supposed to sound happy, that it was her returning to her “dance pop roots” and singing about serious topics like mental health over happy-sounding beats, because it’s supposed to reflect her current mental state. I get all that. But if that was the case, I think she should’ve gone with a different visual direction to match. Personally I wish she went a different direction musically instead, but even if it was just the other way around and she changed the aesthetic of this era, my opinion of the album would probably improve slightly, cause at least there would be cohesion between the visuals and the sonics.

I look at that album cover, and promo images like the one below, and then I listen to songs like Fun Tonight or Plastic Doll for example, and there’s a noticeable dissonance there. 

You might be thinking “why are you so hard on her for this?” and I guess it’s because I’ve always held Gaga to a high standard when it comes to how she links those two elements. Think of every era she’s had in the past, and you remember how the visuals always just worked with their respective albums.

And that’s before I’ve even talked about the videos. Oh lord, the videos.

Issue #2: The Videos Are Lackluster (Except For 911)

It started with Stupid Love, the lead single. I had mixed feelings about that song in the beginning, but because I was so thirsty for new music from Gaga at the time, I played that song like hell when it leaked and it was on rotation for a good while. But when Gaga premiered the Stupid Love video, I’m not going to lie; I really didn’t like it.

The whole “shot entirely on iPhone” schtick really did the video a disservice. I’m sorry but it had to be said. If I imagined the video with a higher budget and more of a plotline as opposed to just being a dance video, I think it could’ve worked a lot better and been a decent introduction to not only Chromatica the album, but this fictional world/planet that she’s created. Which by the way, she didn’t really deliver in that regard either. 

The concept of Chromatica being a fictional world could have been expanded on further; she could’ve showcased all of the different factions (I know they were called “tribes” at first but that’s appropriative so I’ll call them factions) and perhaps had an overarching storyline about how these factions are at war, and it’s Gaga’s job as one of the “Kindness Punks”, as she calls it, to bring everyone together for a rave.

This is why I will always say it: Chromatica needed to be a visual album. Just imagine the storyline I mentioned just now being turned into a full-length feature, and now imagine the album’s orchestral intro playing as they’re essentially opening the gates to Chromatica and Gaga discovers this world for the first time, and then it goes into the first song Alice where she’s meeting all the factions and getting acclimated to her surroundings.

Honestly I could go on and on cause I have thought about this for SO LONG now and I’ll never shut up about it. It’s just such a missed opportunity cause the concept was just begging for a visual album. Anyway sorry for my tangent: back to the Stupid Love video.

The whole “shot on iPhone” gimmick really was unfortunate. Like she really ruined the quality of a music video because she wanted that Apple check??? Come on, Gaga, there could’ve been some other way to secure that check.

And then there was the Rain On Me video, which definitely have visuals that are a massive improvement from Stupid Love because it was professionally shot and cinematic. But even that was another purely dance video with not much in the way of storyline. Not that storyline is always required for music videos, but I think specifically when it comes to Chromatica, not having storylines in the M/Vs does a disservice to the overall concept.

I guess my issue with these two music videos, but mostly Stupid Love, is that Gaga isn't fully utilizing her COIN. Like she's successful enough to the point where she has budgets for these videos and can go all out, but doesn't. She has the capacity for extremely high production value, but up until 911, the last video she did that had that level of extraness was G.U.Y. I miss the days when her music videos were an event. I still remember where I was and what I was doing the exact moment the Telephone video came out. That's impact.

Taylor Swift I think is somebody who really knows how to blow her budget on a video. Look What You Made Me Do may have been a terrible song, but I always thought the video was sickening.

Anyway, I have no notes on 911. She's a masterpiece. If there was a music video category at the Oscars, I'd be campaigning for it right now.

Issue #3: Any Other Girly Can Do This

The thing I always loved the most about Gaga's music was that nobody was doing it like her. Everything she put out always felt like it was distinctly hers and hers alone, it's unmistakable. Even in Joanne, despite that album being a major departure from what she normally did.

I know Joanne is a very polarizing album, even for Little Monsters, but personally I've always loved it. Joanne was an album that I always knew she would make and I thought was essential to her career and body of work. Despite her straying away from pop for a more earthy, grass roots sound, it still sounded very much like her music. Even from the first track, Diamond Heart, her DNA is all over that.

It's difficult to explain what exactly I mean when I say there's a certain signature "Gaga-ness" or that she has a very specific DNA injected into her songs. If you've been a fan of hers for a long time or followed her career, you probably understand what I'm referring to. It's the way she laughs maniacally in the beginning of ARTPOP on Aura, how she says "I don't speak German but I can if you like, OW!" and proceeds to recite broken German on Scheiße, how she invented the phrase "disco stick", literally the ENTIRETY of The Fame Monster.

These examples probably give you the gist of what I'm trying to convey. Gaga is fucking weird. She has always been fucking weird and I love that so much about her. And her brand of weirdness was so specific that if any of the other pop girls tried to do what she did, it would have been cringey as hell. To me, the most disappointing thing of all with this album was that this weirdness that was so uniquely hers was missing.

It's there in brief moments, in tracks like Sour Candy, 911 and Babylon, but most of the album doesn't really sound like her music. It sounds like songs that she wrote for other people, like her old unreleased stuff. OG Little Monsters probably remember songs like Second Time Around and No Way. These were leaked unreleased songs that Gaga had written for other artists, and even though they were absolute bops, they didn't sound like her. They weren't supposed to.

A similar feeling I had was when her song The Cure came out a few years ago. I genuinely thought that was something she wrote for someone else, cause even though it was a solid pop song, it absolutely had zero Gaga-ness and any current pop girl could sing it. This pretty much encapsulates how I feel about the majority of Chromatica.

I was gonna say it sounded like songs that were written for Ally, her Star is Born character, but I think even those pop songs from the soundtrack sounded more Gaga than Chromatica does. 💀 I can easily imagine Hair Body Face being on The Fame.

Final Thoughts

It's funny that the last review I had posted on here before this was my review of Kingdom Hearts III. The Kingdom Hearts game series is something that's very near and dear to my heart, and I waited a wholeass decade for the third game to come out. And then it did, and I was so disappointed.

So you know what happened after that? What helped me deal with my disappointment of that game was my anticipation for Chromatica, or at the time it was still called LG6. I had no idea I would feel the same exact way about this album the way I do about KH3. Now when I think of both of these things, I'm mostly frustrated by all of the potential and the missed opportunities, but I also look at them with a certain fondness. I had fun playing KH3, and I also had fun listening to Chromatica, despite both of them disappointing me overall.

In the beginning of this review I said that there were certain factors that have stopped me from idealizing Gaga too much. Firstly it's because I'm much older now, and secondly it's due to the sheer state of the world this past year. The pandemic really precipitated the fall of celebrity culture, and all of that made me really examine how putting someone on such a high pedestal can be damaging in the long run.

Gaga is a human being and I haven't agreed with everything she's done, particularly how she handled the whole R. Kelly situation back in 2013. And also the simple fact that she's a white woman, we know how a lot of the time they can't help but show their asses and are bound to disappoint us in some way. I'm forever grateful for her artistry and how she saved my life when I was a suicidal little eighth grader, but I'm also going to hold her accountable for any of her mistakes, and I'd be ready to stop supporting her entirely if anything she does ever goes too far.

Now I stan artists for fun. It's not healthy to idolize them to the point of revering them. I mean, I like to make jokes like that about Beyoncé, like "no way on Beyoncé's green earth", etc. But even she is just a person that we shouldn't deify for real.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Chromatica being a lackluster album and era ended up being a good thing, because it helped me grow out of idolizing celebrities too intensely. Chromatica was pretty much the best disappointment I've ever listened to.

If you've read all the way to the end, thank you! Writing this was very therapeutic but also stressful; this is a second draft cause Tumblr fucked up my first post. 😭

Anyway, SAWAYAMA & Ungodly Hour are albums of the year. Argue with the wall.

[shadyb00ts]

Kingdom Hearts III Review

I never use this site but I needed some place to put all my thoughts down and this was the only place I could think of.

I’ve probably waited for this game for around 12 to 13 years. KH1 and 2 brought me so much joy as a kid, and it wasn’t until later that I played all the other spin-off games in the series. This game was the primary reason I got a PS4 in the first place and, as fucked up as it sounds, one of the things that kept me going in life. The impact of this series runs that deep for me.

Because we got inundated with a ton of gameplay footage last year, I knew I was going to enjoy this game. I had a few worries that the combat would feel clunky/floaty/stiff when seeing some of the earlier footage, but within the first hour or so of the game I couldn’t deny how good the combat feels. It’s satisfying, fluid, flashy and so much fun. I’d say the keyblade transformations offer much more variety than Drive forms ever did, cause you could use them a lot more frequently. There’s also other things like the shotlock, team attacks, link attacks, flowmotion attacks, so much stuff that you can utilize to really mix up battles every time. It’s probably the most addicting combat I’ve experienced in the entire KH series.

Another change I liked is the gummi system. I used to dread the gummi ship portions in KH2 because they were annoyingly difficult and they served as blockades to the worlds that are unavoidable. In this game, the gummi portion is instead a huge open area of space that you can explore and find treasures in. Battles can be avoided and the way to initiate them is to approach the enemies on the field, which was a huge sigh of relief for me. The actual gummi battles themselves work somewhat the same way as it did in KH2, but it’s not as busy or frenetic anymore so it eliminates the annoyance.

The Disney worlds were well done for the most part. They made the levels pretty big and explorable, and the story/time you spend within each world is elongated so there isn’t a return trip. I guess I understand why they did that but I really liked how in KH2 you could come back to the worlds in the second half of the game and experience a new story within it. In this one, once you’ve finished a world that’s pretty much it. One world would probably take around 2-3 hours to complete, depending on how much you explore. Unfortunately this game was a lot shorter than I was hoping it would be, but it’s still packed with a lot of content so it wasn’t that big of an issue. I was particularly impressed with the Pirates world; it suddenly turned into Assassin's Creed Black Flag. You get to control your own ship and explore different islands and have ship battles. I hated the Pirates world in KH2 but had loads of fun with the one in this game. I also enjoyed the Toy Story world very much, because it’s essentially a giant 3-story toy store and you can explore virtually every inch of it.

Something that disappointed me was the 100 Acre Wood. I actually loved what they did in KH2 because it spanned throughout the entire game, since you had to find the missing pages and gradually see the story unfold. However in this one, I’m pretty sure the 100 Acre Wood was just an afterthought. You go in there and it’s pretty much just 3 mini games that are practically slightly different variations of the same game, and that’s it. It was way too brief, and they definitely could have done something to make it more interesting. Sure, 100 Acre Wood was never my FAVORITE world in either KH1 or 2, but they were much more well done in those games than here because they actually had stories and a lot of creative mini games. It’s pretty clear they didn’t put much thought or effort into this world, and since it’s one of the minor worlds I guess it doesn’t matter that much, but it’s still disappointing nonetheless.

The final act of the game was a bit messy, to say the least. Light spoilers ahead.

I never really try to question or make sense of the convoluted mechanics and plot holes of the KH-verse so I just rolled with it and was along for the ride when it came to the story, but I think in this game nothing hugely significant really happens in the story until the final act. They just packed everything into that last part of the game, throwing boss after boss at you and solving plot line after plot line. It felt a lot like the recent season finale of Steven Universe; a lot of unnecessary buildup until you just throw everything but the kitchen sink in the end.

If you think about KH2′s story structure for example, it was a lot more eventful because between the Disney worlds you also visited certain worlds like Hollow Bastion and Twilight Town and whatnot to advance the main story and have things actually HAPPEN. In this game, the non-Disney worlds were basically given little to no effort. Twilight Town just becomes a little hub area that has the bistro for the cooking mini game; which you can go to via the world map or save points anyway, so essentially Twilight Town is useless cause you never need to visit it again for story purposes. The penultimate area of the game, the Keyblade Graveyard, is pretty much just a gauntlet of bosses. There’s nothing to explore, it’s just a linear path to every possible boss in the game. Fighting all of them in one place like that made it feel oddly anti-climactic. 

And then my biggest disappointment: Scala ad Caelum. This was the area that was hyped up in the trailers, huge and gorgeous with cables connecting everywhere. I thought it would be the final dungeon and you could explore every inch.

Nope. It’s literally just a fancy stage for the final boss. It just breaks my heart to think about all the wasted potential. Maybe they focused all their efforts on the Disney worlds (besides the Winnie the Pooh world), so the non-Disney ones were just afterthoughts? They could have done SO much more with the set pieces in this game, like I just think back to how incredibly well-done Hollow Bastion was in KH2 and how much of the story unfolded in that area. KH2 really made good use of all the worlds and tied everything together. With this game, each of the worlds kind of just play out their own story and it feels very disconnected to everything else that’s going on. 

The great thing about KH2 and the fact that you could go to each world twice is that, the first time you go it’s all about playing out the story of whatever movie it is they’re basing it on; and then the second time you come back, it’s about how that particular world fits into the bigger Kingdom Hearts story itself. It tied everything together and it made it feel like the worlds were actually connected. In this game there’s a big disconnect, and I’m very disappointed in that. Also, I don’t understand why they didn’t have any Final Fantasy characters in this game whatsoever, not even Sephiroth who I thought had become a staple. 

I know it seems like this game let me down, and in some cases it did because of all the things that they could have done that for some reason they chose not to do, even after this game being in development for so long. This game took me about 30 hours to complete but I wish it was 30 hours longer. They could have added at least one more Disney world, they could have done something to make the worlds feel more impactful or connected to the overall plot, there’s just so many things they could’ve done. But even with all that said, I still enjoyed myself a lot in this game because the gameplay was enough to keep me engaged and it felt so good to actually have the game in my hands. 

I’ll give the game a 8/10. I can’t believe I’m doing that because I thought I would have given it a 10, and I was hoping I’d be able to, but it just feels like there’s a big chunk of this game that’s missing and I wish they did more. Still, the things they got right they got right, and I can’t deny that I had so much fun playing it and still am with the post-game activities. I just got the Ultima keyblade recently and it’s a dream to use. I’m eager for them to add a New Game+ feature, because I want to replay it but I want to carry everything over; I’d rather not just start from scratch.

Also sidebar, if you’ve never played a Kingdom Hearts game before in your life, don’t even bother having this one be your first one, lmao. It’s a continuation and an ending to a huge story, so if this game is your first KH game you will not understand ANYTHING that’s going on or know who any of the original characters are. If you want to play it regardless, then just skip the cutscenes and tune out the story, cause from a gameplay perspective this game is a fucking blast.

[shadyb00ts]

My Top 12 Favorite Pop Albums of 2017

Man, 2017 was a great year for pop music especially. This year was also when I started actually using Spotify, subscription and all, for the first time, so the new music I discovered just kept on piling up and I was so here for it. I decided I’d compile a top 12 list of my favorite albums, since it’s the end of the year, why not. And yeah I know the “normal” format is top 10, but bitch I have 12 favorites, whaddaya want. And even these I had to really narrow down. If you follow me on Twitter at all though, you probably know exactly what my number one album is. It’s an album that’ll probably be on many people’s number one spots, but I think I’ll do this list descending. This is also only the music that I’ve discovered personally, so if a big pop album/EP from this year wasn’t mentioned, means I either didn’t really like em that much or I have yet to discover them.

#12. BETTY WHO - THE VALLEY

Spotify | iTunes

I actually first heard of Betty Who through Troye Sivan’s song “Heaven” which she featured in. She strikes me as Australia’s equivalent of Carly Rae Jepsen because her songs are all just the completely infectious, bubblegum pop sound that I find irresistible. Some of my favorites from this album are “Mama Say”, “You Can Cry Tomorrow” and “Human Touch”. This is a great album to put on when you’re getting ready with your friends or just wanna jump around and be crazy. If you’ve never heard of her and you’re a pop music freak like me, this album is right up your alley cause it’s chock-full of bops. I’d also recommend checking out her debut album, Take Me When You Go, which has more of the Carly Rae-esque 80s-y feel to it than this one.

#11. TOVE LO - BLUE LIPS (LADY WOOD PHASE II)

Spotify | iTunes

Oh, Tove. What else can I say? If you love pop music then you know exactly why this album made the list and it probably made yours too. She is just the ultimate master of making unapologetically sexual bops. She’s always been very sex positive and seriously, the production on her songs is always spot on as fuck. I’d say “shivering gold” is one of the songs that I keep coming back to the most, as well as “stranger” and the addictive lead single “disco tits”, but this entire album is filled with solid and sultry pop songs that you can pop your pussy to any time. Tove is just always so unabashedly nasty and honest, I always love that about her.

#10. ANNA OF THE NORTH - LOVERS

Spotify | iTunes

One of the indie artists I discovered on Spotify which I’m immensely grateful for. Her music is right up my alley; modern yet very much rooted in dreamy, 80s-inspired synthpop. I pretty much like every single song across the board, but some of my favorites are “Money” which is a really cute song about warning a guy about dating a gold digger, and then “Feels” and the title track “Lovers “ which both just make me drift off into a dreamlike state every time and zone out, and I find most of the songs on this album have the same effect on me. “Dreamy” really is the perfect adjective to describe it. I strongly suggest checking her out if what I’ve described is your thing.

#9. BILLIE EILISH - DONT SMILE AT ME

Spotify | iTunes

I know this is technically an EP since it’s under 10 songs, however I couldn’t possibly skip out of putting it on my list. Billie Eilish is one of the biggest breakout artists of this year I think. I saw a tweet recently from someone who said and I quote, “Whatever ‘it’ is, Billie Eilish has it.” I agree 1000%. She’s got star quality all over her. Looks, talent, all of it. The thing I love about her songs is that her attitude is always present in every one of them. Like in “my boy”, when she’d go “WHAT” or “Alright, dude, go trip over a knife” in between the breaks, and in “COPYCAT” where she does this long, drawn out apology only to top it off with a “sike”. “party favor” is also a very interesting song since it starts off with an answering machine message and it gradually fades into the actual song, and I thought that was such a cool effect; her personality just shines through in her music and that’s what makes her such a star. I have a feeling Billie is going to take 2018 by storm.

#8. DUA LIPA - DUA LIPA

Spotify | iTunes

Yet another new artist who is just oozing with star quality. I had a bit of a slow-to-grow thing with Dua though, for whatever reason. I held off from actually listening to her debut album because I wasn’t really feeling the singles she’d released prior to it. I recognized that she had an incredible voice, but for some reason I just wasn’t warmed up to her enough yet. Enter “Scared to Be Lonely”, her duet with Martin Garrix, which I think is one of the best EDM songs ever made. When I heard that song, I was like okay let me just sit down and listen to this bitch’s album and see what she’s all about. And I was pleasantly surprised. I was surprised at how diverse this album was especially cause she explored a lot of different sounds for almost every song. “New Rules” will always be my favorite, because obviously. That followed by “Genesis” and “Begging” are just a few of the stand-outs for me. Just like Billie, I have a feeling 2018 will also be a big year for Miss Dua.

#7. MUNA - ABOUT U

Spotify | iTunes

God, I am so happy I found this group. I first discovered them through their song “Winterbreak” which I thought was so beautiful and melancholic, I had to dig up more of their songs. Even just thinking about this album gives me a feeling of joy because I just fucking love their music so much. It’s not even something I can explain, you just have to hear it really. The stand outs for me are, well shit, there’s a lot actually. As well as “Winterbreak” I also really love “So Special”, “Loudspeaker”, “I Know A Place” (which I think of as a queer anthem tbh and it is such an empowering, joyful song) and “Crying on the Bathroom Floor” (which has a pretty morbid subject matter but is I think one of the best songs on the album). Please please check them out and support them if you like what they’re giving. I can’t wait to see what they do next cause I am all aboard the MUNA train for sure.

#6. LANA DEL REY - LUST FOR LIFE

Spotify | iTunes

I thought for sure LFL would make it onto my top 5 but it just scraped it. I think when I first listened to the album I was a little too quick to say that it was Lana’s best album to date. I think I was just so wrapped up in the fact that she was back that the excitement and how much I stan for her had me caught up in the moment. I mean let’s be real, even though I do love all her albums, I think most people are in agreement that Born to Die will always be her best. I did really enjoy this album however, especially Lana’s new happier outlook and the fact that she’s a little more political with her lyrics. Even just looking at the album cover, you can tell that she’s in a much better place in her life My favorite song from the album is without a doubt “13 Beaches”, it’s just so stunning and so quintessentially her. Overall I was just happy to hear that she didn’t stray too far from her sound for this album; she’s still unmistakably Lana.

#5. KESHA - RAINBOW

Spotify | iTunes

The long-awaited comeback that at one point I honestly thought would never come. I remember the #FreeKesha movement and how horribly Kesha was treated in the entire case against that monster Dr. Luke. It made me sick how he literally owned her soul at one point, and I’m glad that now despite the fact that she isn’t fully free of his influence, she was at least able to work without him and produced this magical little album. When the video for “Praying” first dropped, I was in tears. In legit tears, because it was the perfect comeback. Her vocals in that song gave me chills, and even though those of us who are massive fans of her have always been aware of her vocal ability, I feel like Kesha always has to constantly prove to the world that she can sing all because for the longest time she was known as “the autotune girl”. While Animal and Warrior were really good albums in their own right and I have a lot of nostalgic affection towards them, I feel like Rainbow was the album she always WANTED to make, just like Joanne was for Gaga. It gave her a chance to truly showcase her talent, which people often forgot or didn’t even know she had. But the thing I love most about this album is that it comes from a place of triumph. I am so proud of my girl. I hope one day she’ll be free of her disgusting abuser and can truly be happy.

#4. ALLIE X - COLLXTION II

Spotify | iTunes

I hesitate to use the word “perfect” a lot of the time, but Jesus Christ I can’t describe Allie in any other way. Even when I first discovered her via her 2015 EP CollXtion I, I immediately described her music as “pop perfection”. Because that’s literally what she does. She takes everything that sounds good about current pop music and makes it her own. She is such a hit maker and it boggles my mind how underrated she is. I think her song “Sanctuary” from her first EP I would even go as far to say as one of the best pop songs I’ve ever heard in my life. IN MY LIFE. In this particular album, every song is a certified bop. “Casanova” is for sure my number one song from it because that production is so flawless it’s criminal. If you’ve never heard of her and are listening to her songs for the first time, make sure to hide your wigs because I’m telling you; they’ll all disintegrate by the time you’ve gone through her discography. Allie X is the real deal, and she deserves WAY more fame and success than she’s getting.

#3. SZA - CTRL

Spotify | iTunes

Okay, yes, I know that technically this is an R&B album, but it would’ve been criminal for me not to put SZA on the list. She joins Billie and Dua as some of the biggest breakthrough artists of the year. I don’t really know why I fell in love with SZA and this album so much, because it’s normally not the kind of music I go for or am interested in. But for some reason I got lost in her gorgeous voice and the insanely crisp production of the songs that I was just hooked the house down boots. Initially my favorite song was “Prom” because it was probably the most pop-sounding song out of the bunch, but it wasn’t long before I grew to love the entire album as a whole, which I didn’t expect to happen since it’s so out of my comfort zone. SZA has this honest way of writing that really cuts deep at times, for example in “Drew Barrymore” when she says: “I get so lonely, I forget what I’m worth / We get so lonely, we pretend that this works” that shit hit hard. It’s REAL. “20 Something” is another one of those songs that anyone in their twenties could probably relate to due its pure honesty. Ctrl was seriously the surprise hit of the year, and I can’t wait to see what SZA does next. I low-key hope her next two albums will be called Alt and Delete.

#2. LIGHTS - SKIN&EARTH

Spotify | iTunes

I have kind of a special connection with Lights. I first discovered her through her song “Savior” back in like, 2010-ish. I was in eighth grade at the time and it was a very tumultuous period in my life. I was in an Islamic school, I had zero friends and I was still coming to terms with the fact that I didn’t fit in with anyone and I never would. I was in a deep depression, and her debut album The Listening helped me through a lot of that period of time. While most people coped with depression through listening to music that mirrored those feelings, I dealt with it by listening to songs that were happy and upbeat. Lights’ songs at the time were adorable and cheerful, sort of akin to if Owl City had a female vocalist. Ever since then, whenever she would release an album, it always helped me out of slumps, and I became really devoted to her. I was obsessed with her follow up albums Siberia and Little Machines, and now Skin&Earth falls into that category. I adore this album, and it’s one of those albums that I have to listen to from start to finish all the time because I just love it so much as a whole. At this point I know she could never disappoint me, and she’s one of the girls I always look to for catchy pop sounds with beautiful lyrics. I love her dearly, and I implore you to go through her catalog if you’ve just now discovered her. She is a true pop gem.

Before we get to the #1 (which I’m sure is pretty obvious at this point), some honorable mentions, most of which are EPs. I’ve attached each of them with their respective Spotify links in case you wanna have a listen to any of em. In no particular order:

Astrid S - Party’s Over (EP)

Monogem - 100% (EP)

Khalid - American Teen (this one almost made the list)

Superfruit - Future Friends (this one too)

PVRIS - All We Know of Heaven, All We Need of Hell

Terror Jr. - Bop City 2: TerroRising

Terror Jr. - Bop 3: The Girl Who Cried Purple (EP)

Sigrid - Don’t Kill My Vibe (EP)

Daniella Mason - Daniella Mason (EP)

Echosmith - Inside a Dream (EP)

Phoebe Ryan - James (EP)

Charli XCX - Number 1 Angel

Fickle Friends - Glue (EP)

FRND - In Your Dreams (EP)

Paramore - After Laughter (another one that just scraped the list)

Transviolet - Kaleidoscopes (EP)

Zara Larsson - So Good

Lola Marsh - Remember Roses

Thomas Azier - Rouge

Halsey - hopeless fountain kingdom

Ralph - Ralph (EP)

Sabrina Claudio - About Time

Demi Lovato - Tell Me You Love Me

Vera Blue - Perennial

Brother Sundance - Honey (EP)

Fifth Harmony - Fifth Harmony

MØ - When I Was Young (EP)

Stalgia - NOMAD

EMBRZ - Progress (EP)

Aly & AJ - Ten Years (EP)

LP - Lost on You

Mothica - Heavy Heart (EP)

SAKIMA - Ricky (EP)

Ella Vos - Words I Never Said

I highly suggest checking these artists out. Just because they didn’t make the list, doesn’t mean they’re less good; my favorites just sorta overpowered them. Anyways, now that that’s outta the way, onto my not at all surprising number one pick.

#1. LORDE - MELODRAMA

Spotify | iTunes

I told you this was Melodrama. How could I not crown this masterpiece of an album number one? Ever since I first listened to it, I was adamant in saying that it would be THE album of the year and I’ve stuck to that. I strongly believe that it should win the Grammy, and deservedly so, because Lorde really outdid herself with this. I mean, holy fuck. When I first heard Pure Heroine I knew she was a talented writer and that was a great album, but I had no idea she was THIS talented. Melodrama really captured the depth of her ability and also how much she’s grown as both an artist and a person. Pure Heroine was all about teen life and coming of age, it was a very cohesive and uniform album and also a very influential album musically speaking, since Pure Heroine along with LDR’s Born to Die has such a heavy effect on the pop music of today. Melodrama still has some of that Pure Heroine charm but it’s unmistakably more adult, darker and grittier, and maintains the cohesive theme of the rise and fall of a relationship. I don’t know how Ella’s mind works but she writes like a dream. All of these songs are masterfully written, and her and Jack Antonoff make an amazing team. One of the songs in particular, “Supercut”, gives me a very euphoric feeling in a way that it makes me want to dance around while laughing and crying at the same time. It is very reminiscent of my feelings toward Gaga’s song “Gypsy” from ARTPOP. “Liability” is a standout in regards to songwriting also, because a lot of artists like to promote their work as “personal”, but this song and really this entire album is pretty much Ella baring her soul, and that’s as personal as “personal” can get. I’m just really in awe of her talent, and Melodrama deserves to top every “album of the year” list out there. It’s an incredible piece of artistry and I think decades from now it is going to be remembered as a classic.

[federalbureauofislam]

*rupaul voice* bring back my... will to live

[shadyb00ts]

Persona 5 - A Review

I should probably preface this by saying that the screenshots I’m using for this review are not my own, since Atlus has extremely strict policies about sharing footage of this game; PS4 Share features are completely unusable. The ones I do have, I got off of Google.

I should also probably mention that this is my first Persona game; I never played the previous titles, so I’m not biased towards the franchise in any way and I had no idea what to expect going into it. 

I was originally pretty iffy about getting this game, despite my love for JRPGs. I think I was a little worried about the micromanaging aspects and the deadline system. After Lightning Returns, I sorta avoided games with deadlines and limited time since I didn’t want to deal with the anxiety that comes with it. I like playing games at my own pace, and I also like to completely see EVERYTHING a game has to offer, and games with a limited time system obviously means you’ll have to miss out on certain things unless you follow a strict point-by-point guide that somehow lets you do all the things. From what I saw of this game, it seemed like it would be stressful having to manage social stats, relationships with people, a school life, etc, all while being a magical thief that literally steals hearts. 

So yeah, this game was definitely an impulse buy for me and, truth be told, I don’t regret it for a second. I got totally taken for a ride.

The first thing you should know if you plan on playing this game is that you need to have a lot of free time on your hands. This game is such a time sink that I basically lost track of the days. Once you’re in, you are IN. You immediately become attached to these characters and basically live out your life as this unnamed protagonist, raising various social stats such as knowledge and charm to name a few, maintaining strong bonds with the people around you, tackling high school life including getting pop quizzes and doing exams. It can be pretty overwhelming the first time around, at least probably if you’re a newcomer to the franchise like me. I even got a game over very early in the game cause I procrastinated too much and was met with the deadline. I overestimated how much time I actually had to do the stuff I wanted to. It takes a while to get into the groove of this game, but once you know where everything is, you start planning what you want to do, which skills you wanna develop and people you want to spend time with. It can be a lot to deal with, but it does feel rewarding when you max things out and learn to become more efficient.

The story, for a JRPG, is pretty impressive. You play a regular young Joe Shmoe who got unfairly tried for standing up to a shady powerful man and is now labeled a delinquent. He gets sent under the care of a cafe owner for probation and becomes a student in Shujin Academy where he ends up stumbling upon some weird shit, forms friendships with various other young misfits and they form the Phantom Thieves, a group of kids who seek to change the hearts of criminals and horrible adults so they’ll grow a conscience, own up to their horribleness and redeem themselves. That’s all I want to say about the story since I don’t want Atlus to sue me for posting spoilers. But like I said, I was extremely impressed by the story in this game, especially being a JRPG. I say that because, let’s be honest, JRPG stories are normally very predictable and endlessly cheesy. Of course, this game has those moments where it’s so clear how Japanese and Anime the game is from how the characters speak and whatnot, but there were a lot of points in the story where I genuinely had no idea what to expect and certain plot twists I didn’t see coming. 

Not to mention pretty much all the characters were very interesting and likable that it’s so easy to form attachments to each of them. Well, except for the protagonist, of course. I’m not sure what it is with JRPGs but it’s very often in games like this where the protagonist is completely mute and not even the slightest bit interesting. Maybe it’s so that it makes it easy for you to put yourself in their shoes, but I was never a fan of that. I prefer protagonists that have their own voice and distinct personality, so I personally wouldn’t mind if more Japanese games started taking a page from Western games when it comes to this kind of stuff rather than just have milquetoast, blank protagonists. That’s one gripe I have in regards to the story elements. Another big one is how empty and meaningless a lot of the dialogue choices really are. Oftentimes you’d see two or three options that basically consist of different versions of saying the same thing. And as far as I can tell, the options don’t really have any lasting effects either. If you’re a dick to somebody, they won’t remember you were a dick. A lot of the options also give you the illusion of choice; the game makes you think that there’s a decision to be made when really there’s only one outcome anyway. These things are basically my biggest problems with the game; it lacked weight when it came to the protagonist and the dialogue system. (Oh yeah, you also can’t be gay, which I was a little salty about but eh, I guess I’ll let it slide. It probably would’ve been too much to expect anyways.)

But enough of that, let’s get to the good part; the combat system. You have no idea how much I adore turn-based combat in JRPGs. I haven’t had this much fun with a JRPG since World of Final Fantasy and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, which are pretty similar to Persona 5 now that I think about it. I loved the hell out of the combat in this game and also the Persona collecting and creating. It did a great job of teaching you how everything worked and letting you differentiate between the skill types, Persona types, etc. Unlike the real-world aspects of the game that overwhelmed me, I was able to digest the combat system pretty quickly. Fusing Personas to create new, more powerful ones is also a lot of fun, I find. I could spend an hour or two just in the Velvet Room alone fusing and strengthening Personas, filling up the Persona Compendium (gotta catch ‘em all, after all). So yeah, honestly I don’t think I have anything bad to say about the combat system. It’s extremely enjoyable and easy to get used to. 

By the way, I have to say that this game is one of the most visually intriguing games I’ve ever played. Stylish is honestly the perfect word to describe it as a whole. Everything is constantly moving and the transitions between battles especially are just cool as fuck. The dungeon designs and especially the Persona designs are something to behold. It all just looks sooooo damn good. I’m always so excited when making new Personas cause I can’t wait to see what they look like. I also get very excited whenever it’s time to go to a new dungeon--or Palaces, as they’re called in-game. Each one has its own unique setting and theme depending on the person in charge of it. It was all just so.... cool. I know I sound lame right now, but I swear to god I don’t know what else to say about it, I was just so thoroughly impressed by this game’s style and aesthetic.

Oh yeah, and I rarely talk about the music in games, but the soundtrack meshes perfectly with the overall look and feel of the game. I found myself humming and singing along to the songs after a while, and they got stuck in my head afterward. As far as the English voice acting goes, I also liked it for the most part. Of course there are some cringey parts, that comes with the territory, but overall I think the VAs did really well. I think I recognized a couple of their voices, too. 

I spent around 80 hours in my first playthrough of the game, and with all the stuff that carries over from that save data to a New Game+, my experience with this game is far from over cause there’s still so much I haven’t seen from it even despite the amount of time I’ve spent on it. It is a HUUUGE game with a lot of content, so you definitely have to keep that in mind before buying.

I think I’ll give this game a solid 8/10. Next to World of Final Fantasy, I think this is the best JRPG I’ve played in a long while. I do have some problems with it, and it probably isn’t for everyone; if you’re not really a fan of JRPGs then I’m not sure how much you’d enjoy it. It’s not as action-oriented as, say, Final Fantasy XV, so if you’re looking for something more FFXV-ish then it would probably be wise not to get this game. But if you love turn-based combat, monster collecting and micromanaging the life of a high-schooler, this is right up your alley. All I can say is that this won’t be my last Persona game, that’s for sure.

[shadyb00ts]

Horizon: Zero Dawn - A Review

Right, gimme a moment to compose myself after the INCREDIBLE RIDE that was this fucking game.

Okay. So. Picture it: E3 2015. There I was, minding my own business, completely PS4-less and only scoping out upcoming PC titles since at the time I was a proud PC gamer. Deep down I was always bitter that I probably would never get a PS4, though, so I usually knowingly avoided any footage of PS4 games like inFamous: Second Son, Uncharted 4, etc. I’ve always been a naturally jealous person, so seeing footage from those games at the time sorta stirred up some jealousy there.

But regardless of that, I still end up seeing the original gameplay trailer anyways. And holy fuckballs, I was so pissed. There in front of me was footage of a game that was literally MADE for me, I swear to god. It had all the elements that I loved in a game. Let’s list them, shall we?

Lush open world with gorgeous vibrant landscapes and incredible graphics: check and check

Female protagonist that looks badass and is voiced by ASHLY FUCKING BURCH: check, check and check

Bow and arrow combat: check

Stealth: check

RPG elements like side quests, skill trees, dialogue trees, etc: checkcheckcheckcheck

Intriguing and mysterious story: check

Platforming and climbing mechanics a la Tomb Raider & Uncharted: check

Honestly, I could go on and on but you get the idea. I never thought I’d see the day where a game could so perfectly fit the criteria of everything I like. So 2-Years-Ago-Me was completely heartbroken since at the time I was convinced that I’d never own a PS4. It was up there with Kingdom Hearts III as the games I thought I’d never get to experience.

Flash forward to now, having been a PS4 owner for about several months. This game was pretty much top priority on what to get, so as soon as it was available for preorder, I clicked that shit so fast I almost broke my mouse. So naturally, when the game finally became playable, I completely immersed myself in it.

This may be a bold statement, but I think Horizon is going to be one of my favorite games of all time. For real.

So all those elements I listed up there were true, but there were also additional elements I love that I had no clue were even in it, prior to playing. Like for example, I had no idea just how deep into the RPG category it was going to go. This game was so freaking immersive. I was immediately in Aloy’s shoes and experienced the world through her eyes, starting from childhood. And then what a pleasant surprise it was when I discovered that the game presents you with moral choices, too! At that moment I knew that the game was going to exceed my already extremely high expectations.

There are also dialogue trees in which you can exhaust a lot of dialogue from, and I of course took every chance I got to choose all the options. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about this intricate world Guerrilla Games has built and encountering its inhabitants. I loved finding out more about all the different tribes and their own unique traditions and religious beliefs, as well as their relationships with each other. It also helps that their outfits are all so fucking rad. In addition to all that, there are collectibles called “datapoints” where you could find various text, audio and holographic documents from the world of the “ancient ones”, and there’s so many interesting tidbits you can discover from these files. Guerrilla really has fleshed out this world as fully as they could. And let’s quickly touch on the diversity this game has. Man oh man, there were so many people of all different races throughout this game. Lots of strong female characters who weren’t one-dimensional, and I even stumbled upon a gay character during one of the side quests. The diversity showcased doesn’t feel contrived or there to appease the masses, it feels natural and well represented.

I was a bit worried about the story at first, since Guerrilla were definitely shrouding it in mystery and being extra vague every chance they got, which I guess a part of me did like, since it made me not know what to expect and heightened my sense of discovery while playing. But these devs have crafted a really amazing story with a likable cast of characters, including the star of the show Aloy herself. I’m a little biased about her though, since she’s voiced by Ashly Burch who I adore to pieces, but even regardless of that she was simply a wonderfully written character. I just loved watching the story unfold, finding out more and more about what happened to the world and witnessing Aloy finding out the truth about who she really is. The lowest expectation I had initially about this game was probably the story, but it didn’t disappoint at all. I was thoroughly hooked and craved to know more. I won’t spoil anything, since I want those of you who are going to play the game to be more engrossed by it as you have your own experience through it.

Those of you who have seen screenshots and/or gameplay know that this game is a visual masterpiece. The environments are lush and full of life despite the post-apocalyptic nature of it. Originally I had thought the Last of Us had the most gorgeous post-apoc landscapes of all time, but Horizon definitely takes the cake for this one, no question about it. There’s a photo mode available, and because the game itself is so beautiful, it’s probably impossible to take a bad shot. Even without using the filters provided, the graphics have that gorgeous pinkish glow that I always love in games, very reminiscent of Dragon Age: Inquisition I think. The screenshots in this review were some snaps I took using the photo mode feature, and it’s really fun to play around with. You could probably spend hours with it taking scenic shots and action shots to your heart’s content.

Now let’s talk combat. A game automatically has me sold when it has archery. My love of this developed through the 2013 Tomb Raider remake, which I’m sure I reviewed on here a long while back. It grew when I played the sequel to that remake, Rise of the Tomb Raider. This game takes that style of combat and amps it up to a hundred, adding a bunch of various unique and craftable arrow types, as well as multitudes of elemental traps and explosives. Most unique out of these is probably the Ropecaster, which allows you to tie down enemies to leave them immobilized. These are extremely useful for the flying machines that you’ll encounter later on in the game, since they can be pretty tricky. The combat relies heavily on weakpoint takedowns, so you’ve definitely gotta have real good aim in order to slay them robots, especially the bigger ones. Unlike most action games, you can’t just go in guns blazing and continuously shoot arrows at random spots on the machines’ bodies. Focusing on their weakpoints is key, as that’s where all the real damage lies. Most of the robots are also weak to specific element types, so exposing those weaknesses gives you an even bigger advantage. Some enemies you could even strip off their ranged weapons and use it against them, which I thought was fucking radical. I did it more than a few times and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

There’s also melee combat in this game, although I rarely ever used it to be quite honest. The only use I found for melee are the silent takedowns during stealth, but in battle I would say ranged is the way to go. Battles with the machines are very exhilarating and intense, since they are clearly much more stronger than you, even the weaker ones. There are also human enemies like bandits and cultists, but they’re pretty easy to pick off since all it takes are headshots, basically. The machines are the real challenge. I played on Easy since I’m a scrub, and have always had no shame in playing games on easy difficulties anyways since, unlike most gamers, I’m not much of a fan of challenge. Basically for me, Easy is my Normal. That’s just how I roll. But even easy mode was a bit of a challenge at times, at least for me. I had some trouble with the huge, stronger machines. Then again, I pretty much spent the entirety of the game doing nothing but side stuff and power-leveling, so by the last few main quests I was already at max level. But even at max level and wearing arguably the best outfit in the game, the final boss was a lot to handle.

I’ve spent the majority of this review gushing about this game, but was there anything I disliked? In all honesty, not really all that much. Most of my negatives are pretty much small nitpicks. I thought the climbing mechanics could’ve been a little bit better, since unlike Tomb Raider or Uncharted, most of the platforming can be done just by pushing the left stick and only pressing the jump button once in a while. I would’ve liked it better if the jump button was more frequently used during platforming, basically. You also can’t filter between icons on the map, and the map interface can get pretty hectic as a result since there’s so much stuff cluttered in it. Not sure why they didn’t add the option to filter between machine sites, collectibles, etc. Would’ve made for an easier time navigating.

Another negative is probably how I wish the outfits were more customizable. As it stands, each outfit is already one full set, and the only modifications you can make are by using two or three slots where you can insert mods to increase certain effects like elemental resistances, stealth, etc. I wish it was a little more in-depth in that you could get different pieces for each body part, like most RPGs, and maybe be able to insert modifications to each individual armor piece. Actually, the modification system in general, for both outfits and weapons, is a bit too simplified for my taste. You can’t really upgrade them, it’s as simple as just inserting a mod or two and you’re done. This may be ideal for more action-oriented players, but since I’m an RPG enthusiast, I find it to leave much to be desired. There are some other small nitpicks I have with the game that hold it back from being absolute perfection, but honestly they’re all pretty much easy to ignore. The positives crush the negatives.

So yeah, overall I’m extremely overjoyed with how this game turned out. It’s everything I had been hoping for and then some. It literally just came out a few days ago and already I’m aching for a story DLC or, hell, even a sequel. This game better branch out into a franchise; there’s so much Guerrilla can explore with this world that they’ve created.

I give Horizon a 9.75/10. 9.5 seemed a little too low and 10 seemed a little bit too high, so I thought fuck it, 9.75 it is. This game is near perfection, and if you have a PS4 or are going to own a PS4 in the future, then I swear to you that you won’t regret having Horizon in your game library. It’s a mishmash of various elements in open world, action-RPG gaming all rolled into an impeccable, beautiful package. And for all you trophy hunters out there, it’s pretty easy to platinum too.

Man, do I love this game. Jesus. Looks like I’ve found something new to unhealthily obsess over.

[shadyb00ts]

ARTPOP Review (Track by Track)

Once upon a time, there was a little chubby gay boy sitting in his living room and watching MTV. You know, back when it was still actually MUSIC Television and still, well, mattered. He was catching up to the latest music video releases and countdowns. In one particular countdown he was watching, the number one spot of that countdown was a song called Just Dance by a singer he had never heard of before: Lady Gaga. When he first saw her stage name on the title card, he scoffed and raised an eyebrow. "What kinda stupid name is that?" he thought to himself. And yet, as he watched the video and listened to the song, he was intrigued. He wanted to know more about this enigma popstar that calls herself Lady Gaga. Over the next few months he ended up listening to more of her songs and seeing her music videos and he thought, wow, she's actually quite good. So he bought her album and liked it very much, but he wasn't too overly taken by her. He enjoyed her songs for a while before he moved on to other artists.

Cut to the next year, when she burst onto the scene once more with a certain song called Bad Romance, and the boy had no idea what happened. All of a sudden he fell in love with her, just like that. He thought everything about that one song was so compelling and iconic, and the video solidified that thought. It was not long after she released her EP, The Fame Monster, that the boy realized this woman was incredible, and was proud to call himself a little monster. And when Born This Way was released, he knew that Gaga also had the same deep love for her fans that they have for her, and somehow her music and the fact that she was just being herself was extremely empowering for the boy, and it helped him become a little more fearless.

Fast forward to now, Here I am writing this with headphones on and ARTPOP playing for about the hundredth time. Yes, I know it isn't released yet. I'm well aware of that. But after two years of literally no new Gaga music, how could any little monster resist? There are still those ones that are staying true to November 11th and will not listen to the album until then, but I just couldn't do it. Gaga has released snippet after snippet and performed a number of songs from the album live, and I just needed to experience the full album for myself.

And what an experience it was.

I do feel like ARTPOP is more than just an album. It's an experience. It's a journey. Every song has its own uniqueness to it, and each one, as Gaga had quoted once before, has a certain kind of adrenalin to it. She wanted us to feel those, and I definitely did. Oh did I ever. There's probably not an inch of ground in my room that I didn't cover, because I was dancing and jumping around all over the place as I listened to the album. I don't even know what came over me. The album just has such an impact on me. I felt like I was being transported elsewhere, to some type of rave in outer space or something. It's indescribable.

The album starts with a bang with the first track, Aura, one of the songs that we heard on the iTunes Festival Swinefest, and also the soundtrack to Machete Kills, Gaga's movie debut. The song goes hard with amazing production by the one and only Zedd, who I'm quite certain is my favorite EDM producer ever. The beat is pounding and the chorus is soaring. The vocals, however, I would say that I preferred the demo version a lot more. I just thought it fit with the tone of the song a lot better. Aura isn't one of my most favorite tracks on the album, but I think it's the perfect way to kick it off, because it gives you the feel of what the rest of the album is going to sound like.

Then we go right to Venus, which is definitely in my top 5 of favorite songs on this album. This was the song that Gaga produced herself, and I have to say, it sounds very very HER, if you get what I'm saying. It's very her style sound-wise but also lyrically. When I heard the first snippet back in October, I almost fell off my chair. I immediately thought, "Whoa, this sounds so 80s! It's giving me every bit of David Bowie!" And I loved that. Somehow Gaga managed to make this song sound so different and yet so authentically HER. And you can't deny the line "don't you know my ass is famous" is iconic as hell.

I love the fact that G.U.Y. plays right after Venus, because these two fit perfectly together. And that's because the beginning of G.U.Y. is a spoken part where Gaga is greeting Himeros, the god of sexual desire, and telling him to "lay back and feast as this audio guides you through new and exciting positions." The 20-seconds or so of the beginning of this song, my jaw was open the whole time. And when the first verse started, I nearly came. This would also be among my top 5, because G.U.Y. is so infectious and amazing from start to finish. Zedd's production especially shines on this song, and if I were him, I'd be pretty damn proud of it.

Then comes Sexxx Dreams, another Swinefest premiered song. Although I was still extremely excited to hear the studio version. One word I'd say about it is that it is really fuckin' HOT. The song talks about being in a relationship with someone but having dirty thoughts about someone else, and the production + vocals did an awesome job in giving off that sexual, forbidden lust type of energy. Right after the bridge, there's this small moment where Gaga goes "I can't believe I'm telling you this but I've had a couple drinks and oh my god" and then she laughs, it was so adorable and honest. I wouldn't say this song is in my top 5, but it definitely stands out, and it's one of my favorites.

Jewels n' Drugs is next, but to be completely honest it's pretty much the only song that I mostly skip over. Not that I think it's a bad song, because it isn't. I just generally am not that big of a fan of songs that feature, like, many different rappers in one song. Hell, I don't even like rap that much in general. It's a good song, and I appreciate Gaga for doing something she's never done before. And I do love the production of the song, the beat is siiick. Still, it isn't one of my favorites.

MANiCURE wastes no time in starting, because it kicks into high gear right after Jewels n' Drugs ends. This song is electrifying and catchy in every way possible, and I love the play on words Gaga uses in the lyrics, as she talks about getting actual manicures but also getting man cured. The studio version differs slightly from the version she'd premiered at Swinefest, however. The "heal me" part that was in the chorus of that version is sadly only in the bridge of the studio version, and at first I was a little bummed by that because that was my favorite part of the song. But I love the new version of the chorus as well, now that I've listened to it multiple times. And I'm also glad that she kept the guitar breakdown at the end, cause I just live for that.

Do What U Want was the second song Gaga released as a promotional single. You know, the one with Gaga's gorgeous derriere on the cover that I know have made lots of you question your sexuality. It's also a collaboration with R Kelly. I think this song has sort of a The Fame era feel to it. It's a song with a very prominent R&B feel to it, yet an awesome electronic beat. In the words of Tamar Braxton, you DID THAT with the production, DJ White Shadow! I totally got my life. Lyrically it's also a very powerful song, because Gaga's basically saying that the critics and haters can just do whatever they want with Gaga's body but they'll never get her heart, mind or voice. They'll never get to her, because she's gonna keep doing what she loves to do regardless of anything they say. A great message on top of a highly danceable song. One of my favorites, hands down.

Next comes the title track, ARTPOP. To me this was the standout song of Swinefest. I was so captivated by her performance, and I desperately wanted to hear what the studio version of this song sounded like. I remember Gaga had once said that this album was especially made to be listened with headphones, and even though I notice that in every track, I think this particular song is the perfect example of one that is much better to be listened to via headphones. It has a trance-like beat you can groove to but Gaga's vocals are soft and airy. I always can't help but just close my eyes when this song plays and I just get lost in it. The song ends with "free my mind, ARTPOP. You make my heart stop." And yes, the song and the album did both of those things to me.

But the tone quickly shifts from ethereal to gritty and dirty as Swine begins. Immediately I just heard the Zedd-ness in the production, because of his signature bass. What I love about this song is that you can tell it was written in anger. Gaga's emotion just really shines through. This song also has a killer beat drop that I swear to god made me cum. Out of all the songs on the album, this is one I'm pretty sure is meant to be played in raves and underground dance clubs. Oh and no, the studio version has no pig squeals, unfortunately. xD

Oh but the energy doesn't stop there, because Swine is immediately followed with another club-banger also produced by Zedd: Donatella. This song was inspired by Donatella Versace, although I wouldn't say it's directly ABOUT Donatella but more about what women like Donatella go through. It starts off with the sound of I'm pretty sure Gaga pouring champagne into a glass, and then she goes "I am so fab. Check out, I'm blonde, I'm skinny, I'm rich, and I'm a little bit of a bitch." I could totally see this song being played on a runway show. The chorus vocals sort of remind me of that Icona Pop song, "I Love It", and the beat is just straight-up orgasmic. This was one of the songs that I knew nothing about prior to hearing it, so I was extremely excited to hear it. Totally did not disappoint.

Fittingly enough, the song that comes after Donatella is called Fashion! And it's about, well, fashion. Haha. xD This is the song that will.i.am produced, and it has a very cool vibe to it. I adore the small parts where will.i.am says "Slay! Slay!" and nearing the end, where he speaks French. Although to be truly honest, as much as I like the song, I do feel like it's the most filler-esque out of all the songs. It stands out in its own way, but compared to the other tracks I don't really think it's as unique. It's still a pretty catchy song, though.

Ladies and gentleman, introducing Mary Jane Holland! Now this song, I'm aware that a lot of monsters have mixed feelings about it, but honestly, I think it's pretty fuckin' awesome. xD I mean yeah, when I first heard the snippet, I wasn't that sold, but the snippet totally didn't do the song justice. After listening to the full studio version, I thought it's really fun and playful and sounds like something that Gaga wrote when she was high, lol. And that "I am rich as piss" part? Slayed me.

It wouldn't be a Gaga album without a piano ballad. If Dope sounds familiar to you, it's because she'd performed a different version of it in Swinefest. It was called I Wanna Be With You. Gaga has said that this song is the most personal song she's ever written, and not only is it clear lyrically, but also in her vocals. That's one of the things I adore about Gaga's music so much. She's amazing at getting her emotions across and having us FEEL those emotions along with her as we listen to her sing. I've seen a lot of monsters bitching about how this song is bad and that they prefer IWBWY over it but, to be honest, I completely disagree. I feel like this song is a much less cheesy version of IWBYW. Lyrically it's a much more real and emotional song, and it gives us more insight on the struggles Gaga went through with addiction. When she sings "I need you more than dope," she's not only singing to us, but she's also singing to every person in her life that she loves. Despite all the backlash this song is getting, I think it's beautiful, and it never fails to get me all choked up.

Gypsy is actually playing right now as I'm writing this part. I'm grinning from ear to ear and my eyes are slightly watery. I have to say that Gypsy is without a doubt my most favorite song on the entire album. It's not even only top 5 anymore, it straight up tops the list. Words that come to mind are euphoric and liberating. Somehow the song makes me want to dance and cry at the same time. The first time we heard this song Gaga performed live as a piano ballad, so I had no idea what to expect with the studio version. My first time hearing it, I was so overwhelmed with this feeling of joy that I nearly burst into tears because...goddammit, this song is just so fucking good. Like, holy crap. It's very reminiscent of Born This Way, because the production has an Edge of Glory feel to it. Lyrically I also adore this song, because it gives us a peek at Gaga and Taylor's relationship, and it also lists off countries and cities at the end. She even said "Someday in Jakarta" which brought a big smile to my face, because as you know this friggin' country of mine didn't allow her to perform here, much to the dismay of Indonesian monsters everywhere, including myself. And she also gave a nod at Scheiße with "I don't speak German but I try." I could go on and on gushing about this song and how wonderful it is but it's better if you listen to it yourself, and hopefully you'll feel the same emotions I felt. <3

And of course, last but not least, Applause, the first single. I think it's a great song to end the album with, because after that exhilarating ride, it really does deserve a huge round of applause. I don't need to elaborate more on this song really, because everything needed to be said about it has already been said. Although a part of me does kind of wonder why Gaga released this song as the first single since I feel like, to be completely honest, the rest of the songs on the album are much, much better. Still, I love Applause and its legendary video, and I also love that this album both started and ended with a bang.

To those of you that have read all the way to here... Dang, I'd hug you if I could, cause I really really rambled on with this review. xD But overall, ARTPOP was so so worth the wait. Other than some small nitpicky things, I honestly don't have a single negative thing to say about the album. I'd even go out on a limb and say that it's Gaga's best album yet, and I think even some people that aren't necessarily big fans of Gaga would really like it too. I give it a glowing 10/10, and I cannot wait to buy the shit out of it come Nov. 11th. <3

[widewonder-deactivated20150726]

One of my favorite things ever c:

[alolancherubi]

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