Radio Rant: Bruno Mars – When I Was Your Man

Posted on May 21, 2013 by bgibs122

Hello, and welcome to Radio Rants! Who’s on today?

Ah, Bruno, welcome back ya pompadoof. I feel like Bruno Mars is one of those guys you might as well be ok with, because, barring any really bad decisions, he’s going to be around for awhile. Even his dud singles catch on, and the guy’s made a reputation as a talented if not phenomenal performer who’s great at mining your parents’ record collections for inspiration. Mars operates at the level where he’ll probably only wow you once, but the rest of his material is consistently decent enough that it’d be hard for him to burn out. Most of the complaints that I had about him went away with “Locked Out of Heaven”, but one remains.

Bruno Mars has to be one of the worst people to go on a date with. Of all of his singles, exactly one isn’t about whoever he’s with (“The Lazy Song”), and out of that bunch, only one is about a relationship actually going well (“Just the Way You Are”). In the rest of them, Mars comes off as this possessive, obsessed, and overly clingy kind of guy. If pop music was high school, he’d be that guy who dates someone new every few weeks, and he never shuts up about it. All he talks about at lunch is how he thinks he sees a future with this one, this one has self-esteem issues, he cares about this one more than she cares about him, this one won’t put out, and all you need are the answers to his damn homework.

I’m bringing this up because right off the bat with the title of “When I Was Your Man”, I couldn’t help but think “not again”. There’s so much melodrama and grandstanding to the phrase “when I was your man” to begin with, and when you stack that with the guy who wrote a song about his girl leaving him called “It Will Rain”, it only gets worse. I mean, what’s Mars’ next move going to be, whipping out a lone spotlight and solo piano for this so–

…well, if nothing else, he plays to type, alright. At least it’s not an acoustic guitar.

Yes, “When I Was Your Man” is the stock Stripped Down Piano Ballad, which makes talking about the production to it a pretty short conversation. The Smezingtons are going for grandeur through size here; the piano and Mars’ voice both have a health dose of reverb. I actually like the piano part: it’s fairly uncomplicated, but has enough rhythm to it that the song doesn’t sag. The melody’s pleasant, especially towards the end of the chorus, and the chord progression’s a little overdramatic at times (remember who we’re talking about here), but overall, “When I Was Your Man” is a decent composition.

As for the vocals, Mars turns in a solid performance that I’m sure is going to be mangled on The Voice Idol Factor someday. He makes full use of his range, and even though he oversells the song, his theatrical styling fits the tone, and he does great work on the song’s bridge. “When I Was Your Man” is supposed to be his most honest, most personal song to date about a pre-fame romance that went wrong, so what kind of lyrics are we looking at?

“Same bed, but it feels just a little bit bigger now” You ever heard of Death Cab For Cutie? They have a fix for that…

“When our friends talk about you, all that it does is just tear me down/Cause my heart breaks a little when I hear your name” Holy shit, Bruno, how did you screw this up that hard with someone you care about?

“I should bought you flowers/And held your hand/should have gave you all my hours/When I had the chance/take you to every party cuz all you wanted to do was dance/Now my baby is dancing/But she’s dancing with another man” 

So wait, you weren’t showing her affection, making her feel wanted, or doing things that she enjoyed? What the fuck were you two doing while you were together?! No wonder you aren’t her man anymore.

“My pride, my ego, my needs, and my selfish ways/Caused a good strong woman like you to walk out my life” Fine, points for honesty.

“Oh, I know I’m probably much too late/to try and apologize for my mistakes” Wait, wait, sorry Bruno, I keep zoning out to songs you’re not quite name checking. Are we ready to bag this?

“I hope he buys you flowers/I hope he holds your hand/Gives you all his hours/When he has the chance/Takes you to every party because I remember how much you love to dance/do all the things I should have done/When I was your man”

Alright, I’d blow this one off were it not for the line “I remember how much you love to dance”. It ties the narrative of the song together nicely, and shows a nice bit of thought at the end. It’s kind of touching.

I guess “When I Was Your Man” gets by for me. This time, Mars raided your mom’s old Billy Joel cds, but the result’s nice. The song has a Billy Joel feel not just because it’s a piano tune, but because it’s a pop ballad that might not reach the back of the stadium transcendence that the artist was going for, but still holds up as a solid pop song. Just talk to me about something other than your girl next time, Bruno. Like, where do you buy your hats?

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Feedback: Taylor Swift – Taylor Swift

Posted on May 16, 2013 by bgibs122

In “Feedback”, I reexamine the least famous album by a major artist, and today, I’m writing about Taylor Swift’s aptly named debut Taylor Swift.

Few people get to the pop culture stratosphere  and even fewer stay there as long as singer/song-writer/occasional actress Taylor Swift has. But, as this is a Feedback, w’re not looking at her today, we’re looking at her from 2006. First, let’s see what 2013 T.Swift is up to.

Taylor Swift was a star before last year’s album Red, but that album made her the kind of star that shoots Ke$ha-as-told-by-Youth-Group-ministers videos through Instragram filters. Swift’s fourth album contained some no-apologies pop songs that have launched her into the Top 40 as one of the regulars, not the country pop visitor she’d been when the crossovers came. Since her breakout Fearless, Swift’s been a cultural mainstay, now she was occupying a space similar to Katy Perry instead of Miranda Lambert, and the change feels natural. And a little overdue; Red makrs the first time that her image has changed any in the last seven years since Taylor Swift.

It’s a little weird, to me at least, to think that Taylor Swift’s existed as a standalone artist since 2006. My first limited exposure to her was in 2007 when “Teardrops on My Guitar” charted, and even then, I was only vaguely aware of her existence as an entertainer of some sort; the same way I imagine plenty of people think of Vampire Weekend. Taylor Swift has moved 5.6 million copies since its release, but it had a long gestation period, and picked back up once Swift broke out with Fearless. So, does any of that future greatness show through? What was Taylor Swift: The High School Years like?

Most of the songs on the album were written in Swift’s freshmen year of high school (the album was released when she was 16), and she’d been trying for a record deal since even before that. As early as 11, she was making trips from her hometown in Pennsylvania to Nashville to hunt for a record deal. A calculated if cynical look at Taylor Swift suggests that she was after mega-stardom from this record onward: she sought out a record deal, worked with Nashville movers and shakers, and was quick to establish her approach and image. Her first music videos are quick to assert her brand, too, as the country girl next door who had an understandable but complicated relationship with a boy.

Taylor Swift’s lovelife has been a near singular source of her lyrics, and a talking point around her entire public life and career (interestingly, she gets infinitely more flack for any romantic move she makes as opposed to, say, Bruno Mars, who pouts about romantic bullshit more than Swift ever has). That’s still the case with Taylor Swift, which has a grand total of three songs that aren’t about relationships: the loneliness anthem “The Outside”, the searching “A Place in This World”, and the ‘My Friend’s a Mess’ tune “Tied Together With a Smile”. The songs about relationships get handled in relatively simple ways as well; “Dump that idiot and date me, dammit” is the most complicated take present. An album full of loving romance, hating an ex, loneliness, and trainwreck friends? Yeah, that’s high school.

Some of the love songs get downright idyllic. “Our Song” (detailing every pre-Internet tactic teenage couples used to talk to each other) is so innocuous it’s the audio version of drawing hearts drawn in a biology notebook. Part of the reason that it’s so picturesque could be that Swift wrote it for a talent show, but even her explicitly personal cuts have a cinematic disconnection between their big emotions and their diary “this happened, then this happened” depiction. First person pronouns aside, “Teardrops on My Guitar” reads like stage directions more than a personal account. The storybook vibe is only helped by the song’s big chorus of slide guitars, anguished duets, and slowly strummed mandolins.

Just as much as Taylor Swift is by a country artist, it’s by a country music fan. For crying out loud, the first song is called “Tim McGraw”. More than that, though, the album’s very “country”. For one thing, Swift sings with the most “I’m Actually From Pennsylvania” affected country accent you’ll come across, and additionally, each song takes a very basic country approach to songcraft. It’s not hard to imagine that each of these songs began as bedroom acoustic guitar compositions that got an added backing band with banjo, fiddle, and mandolin once Swift hit the studio. The livelier cuts hold up alright, but even without the comparison to Swift’s grandiose later albums, the entire album can’t help but feel slight.

Nowadays, Swift has started to leave country behind, and with that, her most country album. She’s moved on to bigger and better things; Taylor Swift‘s biggest song is basically just a practice swing for one of her biggest hits. Besides, at age 23, I’d rather not sing whatever I wrote when I was a high school freshmen, either. But even taken alone, does Taylor Swift deserve to get ditched? Well…yeah. Even though Swift and her songwriting are the exception to the “Burn every lyric you wrote in high school” rule, very little of the album leaves any last impact; she’s talented, but there’s little noteworthy material here. At the very least, I guess it’s a good listen for teenage girls to have someone who gets them like this, but even they’ll outgrow this sooner rather than later. Taylor Swift sure did.

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Album Review: Justin Timberlake – The 20/20 Experience

Posted on May 13, 2013 by bgibs122

I can’t think of a pop star that wouldn’t want to be Justin Timberlake. The guy started off at the absolute lowest point you can reach within pop music: a member of a 1990s teen pop group. Conventional wisdom says that he was destined for breakdowns, ridicule, and irrelevance, but Timberlake beat the odds. His two other albums were well-received with half a dozen major singles between them, and even when he wasn’t in music, he refused to go away (hosted SNL multiple times, roles in movies, general Celebrity Pass). He went from a punchline to one of Hollywood’s most loved men, and when news of a new album hit, the anticipation hit the public like a tidal wave.

And all that public good will culminates with The 20/20 Experience. The 20/20 Experience is ostensibly a pop album, but a sprawling, surprisingly challenging one that takes time to sink in. True, Timberlake is a Pop Star (TM), but he’s not a pop star like anyone from 2008 onward: can you imagine Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, or even Lady Gaga releasing a ten song album running 70 minutes that played more as a cohesive whole than four minute iTunes friendly singles? Or an album that’s shortest song is 4:48, and longest is 8 minutes? All of these are true of The 20/20 Experience.

Longtime Timberlake collaborator Timbaland shows up again as executive producer for this record, but he takes a different approach than his usual here. The album primarily dwells in string and horn heavy R&B and soul with electronic flourishes. It can sound ostentatious and bloated, but in places like opener “Pusher Love Girl”, the strings are sweeping and full of pomp to announce the long-absent star’s return. As mentioned earlier, The 20/20 Experience isn’t a single-friendly album; lead single “Suit & Tie” (one of the stronger cuts here) clocks at 5 and a half minutes, and second single “Mirrors”–the most Timbaland-y cut here with its synths and looped snares–runs at 8 minutes.

“Suit & Tie” is the most singular song here, and even it barely sticks to a pop song structure; the most “pop” thing about it is the luxurious and lazy Jay Z guest verse. The reverb-laden production has size, but the percussion and horn section give the song soem bounce, as well. Jay Z was the perfect choice for the album’s lone guest performance since he’s come to represent the class and elegance that The 20/20 Experience so eagerly caters to. It’s arguable that the album is best experienced as background music to a somewhat upscale party: tailored to a tee, very atmospheric, but doesn’t hold up as well as it could under direct observation.

The songs are all quick to establish a groove that glides along a loose verse-chorus structure, but they rarely build or shift that much outside of their initial set up. For example, “Don’t Hold the Wall” launches a world music beat early on, and keeps almost the exact same music for four and a half minutes without changing much. And then it becomes its own two and a half remix version for a total runtime of seven minutes that feels much longer and inconsequential. The extended outros on over half the songs hear aren’t strictly speaking bad ideas, but they come in right after each song reaches its natural conclusion, and adds surprisingly little. In fact, in some cases (looking at you, “Mirrors” and “Strawberry Bubblegum”), they cripple an otherwise solid tune by needlessly adding a few minutes. The 20/20 Experience is only ten tracks, but feels like fifteen songs including filler.

There’s a small redemption in Timbaland’s varied beats on each song. Even if he repeats himself multiple times, each song still sounds singular. There’s the bounce of “Pusher Love Girl”, the vastness to “Strawberry Bubblegum”, and frantic instrumentation to “Tunnel Vision” that, even if each song is bloated beyond recognition, at least makes for intriguing listening. Then there’s the soul band sound of “That Girl”, which is dangerously cheesy, but kind of adorable anyway, and the late-period Michael Jackson worshipping stomp of “Let The Groove Get In”.

And, of course, Timberlake himself is in fine form on The 20/20 Experience. He’s charismatic, vocally talented, and able to sell the album’s cornier moments, of which there are plenty. As mentioned, “That Girl” might be the single corniest song I hear all year with a sing-song group chorus of “I’m in love with that girl/And she told me/’cuz she’s in love with me”. Even when they lyrics aren’t that simple and silly, they’re not great. Cute charm and likeability have been long selling points for JT, but he sets a landspeed record for number of “I wanna get with you” metaphors over this album. Your his mirror, his cocaine, his heroin, he’ll be your blueberry lollipop if you’ll be his strawberry bubblegum, and he’s got that tunnel vision for you. JT makes it bearable, but lyrics like those to “Spaceship Coupe”–about driving in his spaceship and making love on the moon–are near cringeworthy on paper.

Also cringeworthy is closer “Blue Ocean Floor”, an attempt at programmed, forlorn, arty balladry that sounds pretty for about a minute until you realize that there are six and a half formless minutes ahead. The album succeeds most when it knows what it wants; “Pusher Love Girl”, “Suit & Tie”, the first half of “Mirrors”, and “Strawberry Bubblegum” are the stronger cuts. The rest are plagued to some degree by formlessness and directionlessness (“Don’t Hold the Wall”, “Spaceship Coupe”, and despite the fun, “Let The Groove Get In” are all prime offenders); there just aren’t enough moving parts to justify seven or eight minute songs when they have four or five minutes worth of ideas. I guess there’s something to be said for the artistry and the audacity to try something this big, but The 20/20 Experience ends blurry and muddled with only a few bright spots. Two and a half stars out of five.

tl;dr: Justin Timberlake’s back, but in need of some focus on The 20/20 Experience. 2.5/5.

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Album Review: Various Artists – The Great Gatsby Soundtrack

Posted on May 12, 2013 by bgibs122

From the opening of the first trailer, it was evident that music was to play a major part in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone familiar with Luhrmann’s past work; one of the stronger features of his most famous picture Moulin Rouge was its anachronistic soundtrack that meshed modern music with traditional styles such as cabaret and tango.

Something similar can be said of TGG. The establishing music in both the trailer and the movie comes not from a jazz composition of the 1920s, but Jay Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne project. Adaptation purists used the film’s use of “No Church in the Wild” and Jay Z’s status as executive soundtrack producer as strikes against the film, but they’re actually smart moves. In Fitzgerald’s book and Luhrmann’s movie, Gatsby’s overblown New York parties aren’t about jazz, they’re about mindshattering wealth and absurd opulence. If The Great Gatsby was set in the 21st century, Gatsby’s DJ would be spinning remixes from Watch the Throne and the new Justin Timberlake album, and the luxurious tastelessness of the movie reflects that.

Like the movie, The Great Gatsby‘s soundtrack enlists big names that go for even bigger sounds. Whether the artist in question is bringing an original song or something from their back catalog, the tone is stylish, elegant, dark, and romantic. And there’s plenty of anachromism, as well; jazzy horns, jaunty pianos, and even an on the nose “Charleston” sample make their presence known among the more modern numbers.

A number of tracks have received heavy promotion, but they’re still satisfying on record. Lana Del Rey’s sweeping, utterly gorgeous, and dramatic ballad “Young and Beautiful” is a genuine standout, and one of her best songs (this is a good thing, especially given that you could make a drinking game out of how often it plays in the movie). Florence + the Machine bring “Over the Love”, a haunting, echo-laden, piano and drum heavy song that features some of Florence Welch’s trademark belting, and ends on a chant of “I can see the green light, I can see it in your eyes”. Jack White covered U2’s “Love is Blindness” a few years ago, and it’s still a serviceable cover that fits the tortured romance of the movie. “Together” by The xx runs a little long, but has an eerie atmosphere that works.

Jay Z steps out of the producer’s chair to spit on opener “100$ Bill”, and gives a spirited performance that manages to be self-referential, reference/sample the subject at hand, and still be a killer opener. Andre 3000 and Beyonce’s dubstep-tinged cover of “Back to Black” is a noble experiment, but ends up too strangulated and inconsequential to be successful. Yet it’s still preferable to “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)”, Fergie, Q Tip, and Goonrock’s offering that sounds like if David Guetta in hit-maker mode contributed to Moulin Rouge. The chorus is catchy, but not enough to justify a four minute runtime. 

Things reach their nadir with, who else but, will.i.am, who inflicts his original song “Bang Bang” on a soundtrack that was otherwise moving at a good pace. “Bang Bang” features that painfully obvious “Charleston” sample I mentioned earlier, dropping it in between club beats, wailing synths, and abysmal verses. It’s an attempt to synthesize the jazz of the book and the music of now that falls flat. Oh, and will.i.am scats over the bridge. Gatsby’s bright yellow car isn’t as garish as this.

Much more successful at the past-meets-future tactic is Emeli Sande and the Bryan Ferry Orchestra’s jazzariffic cover of Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love”. It’s fun, a little kooky, and sounds like it could have been in Bioshock Infinite. “Where the Wind Blows” by Coco O. doesn’t blend as seamlessly, but the soul vocals meet piano meet programmed drums song bounces along a little hookless, but not bad. Bryan Ferry’s own throwback sounding “Love Is the Drug” is almost a little too deliberate in its evocation of the past, but makes for a nice period song.

Much like the film itself, the soundtrack is a little too maximalist for its own good, and even some of the lesser quality songs get swept up in the pomp and size of the tent pole tracks. There are a few great songs that are worth revisiting, but there’s plenty to take or leave, and some real duds in the mix as well. One of the soundtracks’s saving graces, though, is that is sounds better taken as a whole than as parts, and despite its flaws, manages to be rewarding on every listen. Three and a half out of five stars.

tl;dr: The Great Gatsby‘s soundtrack has the dramatic spectacle of the film, complete with its hits and misses. 3.5/5.

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