It is a fact of my life that if your band either names your album after something related to adolescence, or mentions that an album was inspired/written about the age, I will be into it.
Beach House, Teen Dream
These are my 25 favorite songs of 2009:
25. David Guetta feat. Novel – Missing You
I discovered Novel this year and I think he’s the best in his field. What that field is called exactly, I am not sure – contemporary soul? I’d link him to Trey Songz and the like, but he is so vastly superior in both talent and intelligence that it seems silly to make comparisons. He has one of those ridiculously strong voices that makes controlling a melody as he does seem effortless. On “Missing You,” and perhaps more clearly on his unforgettable cover of Kid Cudi’s “Sky Might Fall,” I get the sense that he understands the technicalities behind crafting a memorable track as much as he feels the emotional components necessary to making it a personal triumph for both creator and listener. This is a piece of the What It Is About Justin Timberlake puzzle, the main reason why I think he is the greatest. True pop artists believe in manipulation – of both sound and emotion – as much as they believe in purity. They are not mutually exclusive, a pure sound can come from the twisting of something organic, and this is what I think Novel does perfectly. His voice is the most natural of gifts, but on a track like “Missing You,” he runs it through varying forms of anger, arrogance, and detachment to produce a pop song that creates as much technical texture as it does emotional depth: emotions are not just expressed through the music, they are seemingly purposely chosen to create rhythm and texture.
Jeremih – Imma Star (Everywhere We Are)
Jeremih gets melodies that are too good for him and every time I hear either of these two songs I think “why are YOU the person who got something that sounds so awesome?” Not that he’s not talented, because he kind of is I guess, but in that amusingly generic R&B dude way where they could all say they were the same person and it would take people a while to figure out that they were joking. This is why it’s so bothersome that Chris Brown is still pulling good producers – Chris Brown isn’t some one in a million talent with original ideas. Once the situation got out last spring Trey Songz should have taken over.
Every time I hear “Imma Star (Everywhere You Are)” I get forced into this weird state of conflicting emotions: 1) AH AH AH THIS IS SO AWESOME 2) UGH WHY IS THIS A JEREMIH SONG, it’s perfect for Timberlake. The hook is so incredible, guys. It’s SO. INCREDIBLE. It goes up instead of down when you least expect it, on (caps indicate upswing in pitch) “I thought I told you, I’m a star, you see that ICE?, you see the cars, flashing LIGHTS, everywhere we are, live TONIGHT, like there’s no tomorrow.” There is nothing more satisfying to me in the sonic realm than going up instead of down is. Well, maybe glockenspiel. Actually they’re tied.
But the rest of the song is so stupid, and even though Timberlake usually has dumb lyrics, they’re not THIS dumb, and they’re not so fixated on money and personal glory in such a narcissistic way. It devalues the melody when it could have been a masterpiece in more talented and experienced hands. BOOOOO.
“Birthday Sex” is more successful with respect to Jeremih’s talents because it’s the kind of silly song that garners immediate notice, and that was what he needed to stand out from the pack. But still, the melody on “girl you know I –” is so GORGEOUS, I wish it were part of a less comical song.
Cold War Kids – Audience Of One
Yesterday I was listening to Rihanna’s new album and I was so pissed about it I shouted the same incoherent BUT THIS IS ALL WRONG argument at upwards of six real life non-internet people, which is probably five too many. But seriously, THIS IS ALL WRONG, which, whatever, do what you want Ri, I will just sit in the corner and cry over the fact that I was WAITING for this album for EIGHTY YEARS, pre-dating my birth, and instead of adhering to the guidelines set forth for you by your robot cyborg alien overlord, someone in your camp (or you yourself) decided it would be totally cool to try to sound like an actual human. You know what no, let’s save this bit for a later post, because I am still in the rage stage, which promotes incomplete arguments.
But anyway I was sitting around doing spins in my spinny chair feeling sorry for myself because my best friend Rihanna let me down and I have nothing left in this world, when LO, this band that put out a shitty second album decided to give TOTAL MEANING to my worthless existence by releasing this piece of pop magic into the wild. There is this thing where I imagine it’s really hard if you’re a band to figure out how to evolve while staying true to your original sound. That sentence just before this one is the poorly worded quasi-definition of El Sophomoro Slumpo. GUESS WHO HAD THAT: COLD WAR KIDS. So, so badly. There was one good song on Loyalty To Loyalty, and coincidentally enough it was titled “I’ve Seen Enough.” Oh indeed. WAIT THOUGH, BUT THIS IS SO GOOD, THIS NEW ONE. Can you imagine if their second album had opened with this? It’s everything that you labeled as potential in “Hospital Beds” but was never acted upon until now. Seriously man, the flutter-light cadence of the “drop the needle” line is all I need in life, and it’s that type of buoyancy that floats this song on a river of SUCK IT RIHANNA, I AM CURED.
I cannot believe I went six months without this song, given this album’s May release. Usually I like to think that I find songs at the right moment, in a magical fate kind of way, but I can’t justify missing out on half a year with this. 100% perfect, thank you universe for inventing pop music because it totally led to this, and that is a victory like no other:
In moments of (their finest album) Combinations-induced delirium I have privately pronounced Eisley to be as masterful as my ultimate band, Radiohead. Their songs are so obvious in their beauty and so confidently delivered; they often feel surreal to me, like they are beaming their stuff from an alternate universe in which they are the true inventors of The Melody. How they are able to navigate through this increasingly murky land of one thousand genres while retaining such a staggering beauty and timelessness of sound continues to boggle me. They are untouched by trends and singular in their ability to evoke both a childlike innocence and the distinct melancholy that accompanies the loss of it. Everything they make sounds formed from glass – soft with sharp edges and flawlessly clear. That makes for a particularly intense listening experience, one I prefer to have through headphones. I recommend doing that with this new song of theirs, which may be one of their best ever:
Conversely, an oddity of lightness falls from the Ellie Goulding camp. It is a welcome one! Listening to this makes me think I’ve outgrown the type of cutesy lyrics that go with this whipped cloud of a melody, because I giggled at them instead of sighed. But I guess even so, Ellie Goulding is going to be one of those artists who can’t make something I dislike (or, I’m crossing my fingers about that). Instead of trite and twee, thanks to the unique combination of humor and plaintiveness in Ellie’s voice, the story of this song seems matter of fact in its confession. I’ve found myself coming over to my computer when I’m supposed to be off reading just so I can listen to it again.