Monthly Report: August 2024 Albums

Thursday, September 12, 2024

 







1. Lainey Wilson - Whirlwind
I've often said that Jay Joyce is my favorite country producer, my favorite producer in general, or my favorite producer who does the old-fashioned work of putting mics in front of instruments, amps and singers. And while Eric Church has made the largest volume of great music with Joyce, and Joyce has produced great albums by Ashley McBryde, Brothers Osborne, and several others, right now Lainey Wilson and Jay Joyce is the dynamic duo that can't beat. The three albums they've made together have turned Wilson into probably the biggest female star in mainstream country to emerge in the last 10 years, and maybe the best since Miranda Lambert, who appears on the stunning Whirlwind highlight "Good Horses." There's not a single bad or subpar track on this album, from the opening George Jones homage "Keep Up with Jones" to "Whiskey Colored Crayon." One thing I love that I didn't expect is the way the uptempo lead single "Hang Tight Honey" dissolves beautifully into the slow, funky "Bar in Baton Rouge." And I adore the Rolling Stones "Memory Motel" vibe of "4x4xU." Here's the 2024 albums Spotify playlist that I fill with all the new releases I listen to. 

2. Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal
Since signing to Top Dawg Entertainment two and a half years ago, Doechii had released an EP and a bunch of singles. And it was starting to feel like TDE was once again keeping an artist on the shelf for way too long, practically sitting on their hands and doing nothing to capitalize on "What It Is (Block Boy)" becoming a big Hot 100 hit over a year ago. But Alligator Bites Never Heal, nominally a mixtape, is so good that it feels like timing doesn't matter so much, she's once again kickstarted her buzz. I feel like it's a little slow to get going but after the over-the-top but entertaining "Denial Is A River" she's just off and running, and "Nissan Altima" is so fucking good. 

3. Sabrina Carpenter - Short n' Sweet
I like "Espresso," but I'm a lot less over the moon about its being "the song of the summer" than a lot of other people, and have very mixed feelings about "Please Please Please," so I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the album destined to cement Sabrina Carpenter's main pop girl status, or if it was possible I'd like it as much as Emails I Can't Send or Singular Act II. And I'm happy to report that Short n' Sweet is great, even "Please Please Please" works better in the context of the album than as a single. The acoustic track "Coincidence" is my favorite right now, but big shiny pop stuff has a lot of personality too, she's really having fun with words as a lyricist, to a greater degree than any of her top 40 contemporaries besides Taylor Swift. I posted a Sabrina Carpenter deep album cuts playlist last week. 

4. Morgan Wade - Obsessed
I liked Morgan Wade's first two albums a lot, but I think this is really the keeper for me. And it's rare that someone's most downtempo album is my favorite of theirs, but this one just works for me. No songs I think about skipping, great sustained mood throughout with lots of open space and pedal steel, and occasionally she'll just land a great line like "There's two types of people...we hate 'em both." It's a shame country radio hasn't really taken any interest in her since given "Wilder Days" a try a few years ago, I'd love to hear "Walked On Water" featuring Kesha or "Department Store" on the radio. 

5. X - Smoke & Fiction
I ranked X's albums for Spin last month, and I was pleasantly surprised that I wound up putting the band's farewell album Smoke & Fiction in the top half of their discography. Rob Schnapf knows exactly how this band should sound and capture's Billy Zoom's guitar tone perfectly, and it's just better song-for-song that 2020's Alphabetland, really feels like a rare instance of a band wanting to go out with a great album and succeeding. My favorite tracks so far are "Sweet Til The Bitter End" and "Face of the Moon." 

6. Joe P - Garden State Vampire
A radio station I listen to, WTMD, has played Joe P's "Don't Wanna Love U" pretty regularly over the past year and I love it, massively catchy song. I was a little disappointed to find that it's not among the singles Joe P has released over the last year or two that appear on Garden State Vampire -- "Off My Mind" is the streaming hit that Atlantic Records seems to be betting on -- but it's fine, all his songs are pretty good. Joe P self-produces his records in his basement in Asbury Park, and there's a fuzzy slouchy slacker vibe to his lyrics, his vocal delivery, everything really, but he writes big choruses and clearly wants to be a big rock star, I kinda hope he succeeds. 

7. Combat - Stay Golden
I just interviewed this band, so I won't say too much here just to save it for the article, but their 2nd album is really just brimming over with energy and personality and ideas. It's so exciting to hear a bunch of 20-year-olds from Baltimore make a record this ambitious and it feels like they're just getting started. 

8. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Flight b741
I am sometimes wary of bands who do entire albums in a particular style, it can feel like they're trying on musical costumes. But King Gizzard are so prolific that I like that they tend to go off the deep end with entire albums that are all-metal or all-EDM or whatever, because it'd be boring if they made so many records and they all sounded the same. I didn't even notice Flight b741 as having a particular aesthetic distinct from their other records until other people pointed out that it's kind of a twangy southern rock record, and now it seems obvious, I love all the harmonica and big loose southern boogie grooves. "Field of Vision" and "Sad Pilot" are my favorites so far. 

9. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Woodland
I've only ever been a casual fan of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, but I like their latest. Welch's voice is as always the star attraction, but I like Rawlings's voice a lot on their duet "What We Had," very delicate and emotive in a Neil Young way.  

10. Muni Long - Revenge
Muni Long released her first album, under her real name Priscilla Renea, way back in 2009, when she was making more sugary Top 40-style pop. 15 years of kicking around the industry, writing hits for other artists, and reinventing herself as Muni Long with a more overt R&B sound has made her a sharp and adaptable writer. And after she made the beautiful ballad "Made For Me" with Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox and it blew up, she made an album following through on that '90s/2000s slow jam style really nicely, with more seasoned pros like Tricky Stewart, Brian McKnight, Theron Thomas and Tommy Brown. Interpolating "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" on "Make Me Forget"? Sure, absolutely, I'm always going to be happy hearing songs that sound like that. She dips into a clubbier midtempo vibe halfway through the album and it hits really well in that context, the song with GloRilla is fun, there's a little bit of a Baltimore club vibe on "Played Yourself," and the 78-second "Reverse (Interlude)" is extremely fun, she should just go ahead and turn that into a full song. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Polo G - Hood Poet
People talk about how hip-hop moves fast and rap fans are fickle, but we've had so many artists at or near the top for 10 or 15 years now. And the guys who abruptly tumble down the charts after being inescapable like DaBaby or Roddy Richh stand out more because those cases are so fare now. Polo G, on the other hand, seemed to lose popularity so quickly that nobody even noticed. In 2021, he had a #1 album and a #1 single, and he seemed poised for superstardom. Instead, he made a terrible attempt at a crossover single with a Michael Jackson sample, and then nothing he's done in the last three years has caused a ripple, and his new album debuted at #28. Hood Poet checks all the boxes to be a successful major label rap album (Future and Lil Durk and GloRilla features, TM88 and ATL Jacob and Dr. Luke production), but it's all just so boring, Polo G is this sullen melodic rapper who sounds the same on every song and, for whatever reason, doesn't continue to resonate with people with his self-pitying sad songs like Rod Wave. A month after Hood Poet's release, only the Lil Durk feature is in Polo G's top 10 songs on Spotify. 

10:22 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 368: Rich Homie Quan

Saturday, September 07, 2024

 






Rich Homie Quan died on Thursday. He was only 33. 

Rich Homie Quan album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Sleep No Mo
2. Bosses (featuring Mafio)
3. I Go In On Every Song
4. Still Going In
5. Can't Judge Her
6. Investment
7. Glasses Off
8. I Fuck Wit You Girl
9. Cash Money (featuring Birdman)
10. 1000
11. Whole Lotta
12. Make Me Something (with T.I., Young Dro, Shad Da God and Spodee)
13. Money Fold
14. Str8
15. Reflecting
16. Long Enough
17. Skeletons (featuring Boosie Badazz)
18. Thoughts
19. Lies
20. Stressed
21. Bigger Jeans (featuring NoCap)
22. Broad Day (with Mozzy)
23. Pressure

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from I Go In On Every Song (2012)
Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from Still Goin In (2012)
Track 7 from Still Goin In: Reloaded (2013)
Tracks 8, 9 and 10 from I Promise I Will Never Stop Going In (2013)
Track 11 from I Promise I Will Never Stop Going In (Deluxe Edition) (2014)
Track 12 from Hustle Gang Presents: G.D.O.D. 2 (2014)
Tracks 13 and 14 from Back To The Basics (2017)
Tracks 15 and 16 from Rich As In Spirit (2018)
Tracks 17 and 18 from The Gif EP (2018)
Tracks 19 and 20 from Coma EP (2019)
Track 21 from Family & Mula (2022)
Track 22 from Gangsta Art 2 (2023)
Track 23 from Family & Mula: Reloaded (2023)

Rich Homie Quan was a quintessential mixtape rapper in the sense that nearly all of his music was released on mixtapes. His only official album, Rich As In Spirit, arrived a bit after his commercial peak, although it was still pretty good (I particularly like the Zaytoven-produced "Long Enough"). Really, he was very consistent throughout his career, the "I go in on every song" theme of the titles of a lot of his mixtapes was appropriate. 

Given that a lot of 2010s rap mixtapes lived primarily on download sites and never made it to streaming services, I was pleasantly surprised at how much of Quan's catalog is on Spotify. It's perennially frustrating that the masterpiece Rich Gang: Tha Tour Part 1 isn't on streaming services, and neither are a couple of Quan solo tapes I liked, If You Ever Think I Will Stop Goin' In Ask RR and DT Spacely Made This. Still, though, more than enough music for me to be happy with how this playlist came out. And there are a few unauthorized mixtapes on Spotify that contain a lot of those leaks and mixtape songs if you look for those. "Bigger Jeans" has a sweet little sample and interpolation of James Bay's "Let It Go," which I liked as possibly the the only person who had both Quan and Bay on their list of the best albums of the 2010s. 

I've always felt like Rich Homie Quan was underrated and underestimated in far too many ways, far too often. When he first rose to fame, some called him a Future soundalike, which seemed even more off-base a couple years later when real Future soundalike, Desiigner, cruised to the top of the charts. Drake said it was a "toss-up" between remixing Quan's "Type of Way" or "Versace" by Migos in the summer of 2013, and when he went with the latter, it set helped set Migos on a rapid upward trajectory. Quan reached his career peak as a duo with Young Thug, but too many people saw their teamup as Thug and a sidekick rather than two excellent rappers who made each other better. And "Hit The Quan" by ILoveMemphis, a viral hit inspired by RHQ's dance moves in the "Flex" video, charted higher on the Hot 100 than any song Quan ever made. It's sad that sometimes it takes death for people to really appreciate someone's talent. 

11:48 AM

Friday, September 06, 2024

 





I interviewed Odisseo for Spin. 

6:52 AM

TV Diary

Thursday, September 05, 2024

 





I really like FX's new single camera sitcom "English Teacher," tonally, it reminds me a lot of some of my favorite FX comedies like "You're The Worst" or "Legit," maybe a bit of "'Community' if it took place in a high school.' A lot of the storylines in the first two episodes are the kind of "teens are so woke these days and adults don't understand them" situations that are often done in hacky and tonedeaf ways on other shows. But "English Teacher" does a good job of finding something actually funny in those situations without leaning too far into shock value or sanctimonious liberalism. Great dialogue, great performances, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Stephanie Koenig and/or Sean Patton make me laugh in almost every scene. 

"Bad Monkey" is the second time a show with Bill Lawrence as its showrunner has taken place in Florida and has paid tribute to Tom Petty in every episode. "Cougartown"'s episode titles were all Petty songs, and the first season of "Bad Monkey" features 21 Petty covers by people like Eddie Vedder, Jason Isbell and Weezer. That ingratiated me to "Bad Monkey" from the jump, but it's also just a perfect vehicle for Vince Vaughn, he plays a down-on-his-luck cop who's been suspended from the force, and gets to be that charming jerky antihero while he solves a weird mystery involving a severed arm and carries on with beautiful women. And I'm a sucker for shows that are kind of noir in a sunny locale, like "Terriers" or "Veronica Mars."

The ABC sitcom "Happy Endings" is one of those cult classics that endears me to everyone who worked on it, so I was excited to see that "Happy Endings" creator David Caspe and co-star Adam Pally created "Mr. Throwback." It's a mockumentary with Steph Curry as himself and Pally as Curry's childhood friend who grew up to be a broke dirtbag and comes back into his life. Curry is a decent comedic actor who doesn't have to do too much heavy lifting to make the show work. The whole thing was clearly filmed very quickly when Steph Curry had a little time between the end of the NBA season and the beginning of the Olympics (there's a joke about 'Hawk Tuah,' something that went viral roughly a month before the series was released), but that kind of goes along with the whole mockumentary concept of the show. 

d) "Kaos"
This new Netflix series from "The End of the F***ing World" creator Charlie Covell is a high concept thing about gods and goddesses starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus. I don't think the first episode was particularly funny, but the cast is good and I like some of the big swings they're taking with the premise. 

My main impression of the first season of "The Rings of Power" is that it didn't look or feel like the most expensive TV series ever made, and two years later it might as well not have existed. But Amazon is still committed to spending a billion dollars on at least five seasons of this thing, so it's back for a second season, and it feels a little more suitably epic and high stakes now. The beautiful Nazanin Boniadi left the show, which disappointed me, but it didn't really feel like her character's storyline was important to anything going on anyway.  

An increasingly popular trope in TV that I usually dislike is when a character dies but the actor remains on the show as a ghost or hallucination that's only visible to one other character. "Only Murders" is doing that this season with Jane Lynch's character, but so far I like it, I mean this is a comedy, they're just having fun with it. Richard Kind with an eye patch and Desmin Borges are also in the cast this season, which is promising. 

Given the way Warner Bros. Discovery shelved Batgirl and some other big projects, it's pretty fortunate that "Batman: Caped Crusader" actually survived being dumped by WBD and wound up on Amazon Prime. Instead of reviving the classic "Batman: The Animated Series," creator Bruce Timm came up with a new series in the same style that's much more in a '40s and '50s-type world akin to the early Batman comic. Hamish Linklater is having quite a good year, getting to play both Batman and Abraham Lincoln.

Terminator is a pretty good franchise to make into an animated series, this hasn't made a huge impression on me but I like the visual style of it. 

"Solar Opposites" pulled off a big switcheroo of replacing Justin Roiland with Dan Stevens in season 4, and now it's back for season 5 and it just kinda feels like...so what? Is this good-not-great show just going to continue for 20 seasons now? I like that they've serialized it a bit and the Pupa is growing up over the course of the show, but I dunno, I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep watching this. 

"Futurama" is also back for the second season of its second (third?) revival on Hulu, and it just feels like it doesn't need to keep going, but here they are. Last year they did a crypto episode, this year they did an NFT episode. "Futarama" now is a lot closer to the show's peak level than, say, "The Simpsons" now, but there's still diminishing returns there. My wife is the biggest "Futurama" fan I know, and both times I put on new episodes, she wandered off upstairs to read a book well before the end of the episode. 

I remember seeing City of God long long ago and liking it, but not enough that I really can muster a lot of interest in this sequel series, which is well made but has such an awful title. 

A South Korean show on Netflix where a guy starts running a rental villa in a secluded forest area and this strange woman who might be a ghost shows up. I don't know what's really going on entirely here but it's cool and creepy.  

m) "Terror Tuesday: Extreme"
Enjoying this Thai horror anthology series on Netflix, some episodes are way better than others but I guess anthologies are bound to be a mixed bag sometimes. 

This Chinese show is a comedy about cops so I kind of expect it to be like, I dunno, "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," but its tone is often a little darker and more dramatic. Also, it's apparently a spinoff of a show I've never seen called "Marry My Dead Body." 

A few weeks ago here in Maryland, a child died when a bounce house was picked up by a strong wind and I guess hadn't been properly tied down. And I'd never thought about it before, but apparently that is something that happens, a study found 28 deaths and over 400 injuries when wind picked up moon bounces and bouncy castles. "The Accident" is a Mexican series on Netflix which begins with a fatal bounce house accident, and it becomes the catalyst for a whole community to turn on each other with violent consequences. It's the darkest thing I've ever seen where the phrase "bouncy house" is uttered hundreds of times. I'm not going to say it's campy or unintentionally funny like "The Slap," especially since it's about the kind of tragedy that has happened many times in real life, but at some point the show does feel a little over-the-top and soapy. 

A Netflix show from the Philippines that's kind of an old-fashioned star-crossed romance about two people from different socioeconomic strata that fall in love and are pulled apart by their families. 

This Netflix reality show is about a South Korean movie star, Cho Jung-seok, who dabbles in singing and playing guitar and decides he wants to go all-in on music and write and record an album in 100 days between film projects. I feel like if an American movie star did this I'd find it kind of charmless and indulgent, but not knowing this guy, I like how enthusiastic and earnest he is about it, and how he's really determined to become a songwriter and do his best, not just work with hitmakers or whatever. 

I am on the record as not particularly loving the docudrama format of combining a talking head doc with some dramatic scenes with actors. But it's done pretty well here, especially with Ed Harris as the narrator. 

I was in college when the Laci Peterson murder happened, and to be honest I tend to tune out those kinds of cases when they just become a national obsession and blanket the news. So I didn't really know that much about it until I watched this Netflix docuseries and well, shit, I know this goes without saying, but what a bleak story, what a monster Scott Peterson is. 

David Attenborough is 98 years old and still regularly coming out with new nature docuseries, I guess what he's doing isn't that strenuous so it's fine that he's still working, but his shows are always great and I'm gonna miss him when he's gone. The conceptual hook of "Secret World of Sound" is that they use powerful microphones to show you the sounds animals can hear and make to each other that usually go undetected by human ears, which is pretty cool. I also really like that Attenborough isn't just the narrator like usual, he does fun little segments speaking to the camera and interacting with animals. 

James Cameron is a partner in the deep sea exploration initiative OceanX and narrates and co-stars in this docuseries about their expeditions in the Atlantic. Cameron is kind of dry as a narrator, given his gifts as a filmmaker, but it's interesting stuff, I'm always happy to watch watch a doc about obscure ocean life. 

Nebraska has always one of Springsteen's more revered albums, relatively to its relatively muted commercial impact, and it feels like its prominence is only growing lately. Jeremy Allen White is playing Bruce in an upcoming biopic about the making of the album, and PBS ran this special hosted by Warren Zanes, who wrote a book about the album. Emmylou Harris and Lyle Lovett and Eric Church all sound fantastic covering Springsteen's songs, the Lumineers and Noah Kahan are okay too. They kinda cheat by doing the slower demo versions of some of the Born in the U.S.A. songs written during the Nebraska sessions, but that's cool too. 

MTV Live is my go-to music video channel lately, some of its concert specials and performances but it's mostly music videos. And I was surprised to see on a recent Saturday night that they were playing metal and hard rock videos. As someone who watched "Headbanger's Ball" back in the day, it put a smile on my face. I don't know why they didn't just have a host intro the videos and call it "Headbanger's Ball," but this is cool too. They're playing pretty fast and loose with their definition of 'metal,' though, I saw a Turnstile video on there. 
 
Late last year, Disney+ started running "BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star," a moderately interesting docuseries about the biggest K-pop group. Now they've followed it up with a laid back travel show about two of the group's members, Jimin and Jungkook, going on vacation. There's a few funny moments, even through the language barrier and the cultural differences, you can see that these are some good guys that have become good friends, but I also don't really care about their band so this isn't interesting at all to me. 

I guess every streaming service is going all-in on having K-pop docs these days, this one is Apple TV+'s. It's pretty good, you kind of get to see the entire South Korean music industry through the prism of three acts that are at different points in their careers. 

And Netflix has this show that's kind of a "Making The Band"-style show where young women from all over the world compete to be in a girl group that's being assembled by one of the big K-pop companies. It's interesting to see how the sausage is made, and how they kind of methodically place a lot of emphasis on dancing and choreography and don't mind if someone can barely sing if they can dance. It's also a lot more frank and empathetic than "Making The Band" ever was about how brutal this process can be and one of my favorite parts of the show was when one girl got fed up and left. 

4:02 AM

The 2024 Remix Report Card Vol. 3

Wednesday, September 04, 2024

 







Here's Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and the Spotify playlist of all the remixes I've covered so far this year. 

"Act IV: Fckin U (Remix)" by 4batz featuring Usher
I've always done this column in alphabetical order by song title, and I like that system, but I'm annoyed because my last three Remix Report Cards have started with 4batz because all his song titles start with the word "act." Knock it off! I was never too impressed with 4batz, but doing all these remixes with Drake and Kanye and Usher has definitely sanded off any sense that he was a fresh new voice, now he just sounds like another one of those iffy kids that a bunch of aging stars work with to stay relevant. This is the best of those remixes, though, Ursher always sounds good. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"After Hours (Remix)" by Kehlani featuring Ludmilla
I wasn't familiar with Ludmilla, but apparently she's from Brazil and she's got a billion streams on Spotify. Based on this remix, though, I think she's really talented, I enjoyed her verse just based on her flow and vocal ability even though it's in Portuguese and I don't know what she was saying. I think it would've been cool to get Ludmilla and an established American guest on this remix, but props to Kehlani for doing something forward-thinking. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"Altar (Remix)" by Hulvey featuring Ciara
Hulvey is a white Christian rapper from Georgia and "Altar" is the latest in a string of hits he's had on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart. Ciara's never been the kind of R&B singer who has a lot of gospel in her voice, but this isn't really a gospel song anyway and she sounds pretty good on this song, even if it's not the kind of thing I'd go out of my way to listen to. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Bad Bitty (Remix)" by J.P. featuring NLE Choppa
I think a lot of rappers could've had fun on this track but NLE Choppa is a pretty good choice, he already has a lot of experience rapping on these kinds of clap-clap-clap beats and has a nice melodic flow that works as a counterpoint to J.P.'s voice. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+

"Bad Gyal (Remix)" by 450 featuring NLE Choppa
NLE Choppa has been by far the most frequent remix guest rapper in this column the last few years, I don't know if he just loves jumping on records and makes his rate affordable or if he's just in that sweet spot of being pretty popular but not too big to do a lot of features. In any case, it's funny that he's in this column twice consecutively with similarly titled songs. Don't really need to hear him on a Jamaican dancehall song, though. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C- 

"The Boy Is Mine (Remix)" by Ariana Grande featuring Brandy and Monica
It definitely felt like Ariana Grande writing a completely new song under the same title as a famous old #1 hit was done with a wink, but I didn't expect her to grab the artists from that hit for a cameo in the video, and then a remix. It made for a pretty fun moment, though, I'm glad it happened. I don't like to play into the decades of fans choosing sides between Brandy and Monica and egging on their on-again-off-again feud, especially because doing this Ariana video and remix was apparently a really good moment in their relationship. But choosing the best guest verse on each remix is part of the column, and while Brandy is the better overall vocalist, I love how Monica sounds on her best songs, and she fits into this track a little more naturally than Brandy. 
Best Verse: Monica
Overall Grade: B

"Don Who Leo (Anejo Remix)" by Monaleo featuring Rob49
One of the things I continually lament in this column is that rap remixes almost never feature a new verse from the artist who made the original song, usually they just cut-and-paste their first verse from the other version. So I have to give props to Monaleo, she made a new verse for the remix that's arguably better than either verse from the original "Don Who Leo," and also outshines the guest. 
Best Verse: Monaleo
Overall Grade: A-

"Dump Truck 2.0" by Kinfolk Thugs featuring NLE Choppa
I have no memory of the Memphis group Kinfolk Thugs releasing the original "Dump Truck" back in 2008, but I guess it must been a regional hit that got YouTube plays in the low millions at the time -- I never knew that Lil Wayne was quoting someone else's song with the "back it up and dump it" line on his "Every Girl" verse. And apparently "Dump Truck" had a recent viral resurgence on TikTok, and so they've capitalized on it with a remix featuring the same guy who's on a million remixes these days. NLE Choppa does his super horny post-"Slut Me Out" thing on his verse, which works well enough for this song. 
Best Verse: NLE Choppa
Overall Grade: B-

"Girl, So Confusing (Remix)" by Charli XCX featuring Lorde
Back when Brat was released in June, one of the big talking points was that "Girl, So Confusing" appeared to be addressed to one of Charli XCX's musical peers and people started to deduce that it was Lorde. A couple weeks later, Lorde appeared on a remix of the song, and it became Charli's highest charting song in the U.S. since 2014, and one of Lorde's lines, "let's work it out on the remix" became an instant catchphrase. I gotta say, I think this is one of the worst songs on Brat and the remix is a huge improvement, it suddenly becomes a dialogue instead of this solipsistic inner monologue. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"Guess (Remix)" by Charli XCX featuring Billie Eilish
Last year, Harrison Patrick aka The Dare got lots of press and skeptical reviews with a trashy aesthetic inspired by the early 2000s electroclash "indie sleaze" era. "Guess," one of the new songs on Brat and it's the same but there's three more songs so it's not, is produced by Patrick, and co-written by Patrick and one of the members of 100 Gecs, and it's a pretty stupid song. But the "Guess" remix, like the "Girl, So Confusing" remix, improves upon the original by turning it into a duet with another alt-pop icon, although "Guess" is still all flirty provocation, not a therapy session. And the "Guess" remix leapfrogged over "Girl, So Confusing" to also become Charli's biggest Hot 100 hit since 2014. I supposed the only way she can top this is if Taylor Swift does a remix of the Brat blind item song about her, "Sympathy Is A Knife." 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Kehlani (Remix)" by Jordan Adetunju featuring Kehlani
There's a long and interesting history of songs named after other artists, from The Replacements' "Alex Chilton" to Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw." But when I saw that a guy I'd never heard of had a song on the Hot 100 called "Kehlani," I was in no rush to hear it because there have been a flood of semi-unknown dudes who seemed to be gaming streaming numbers by naming stupid songs after famous women like Armani White's "Billie Eilish" or Moone Walker's "Lizzo." So I was pleasantly surprised that "Kehlani" is a pretty good song, and Kehlani's inevitable feature on the remix works pretty well too. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Nasty Girl Remix" by Tinashe featuring Chloe
"Nasty XXX Remix" by Tinashe featuring Tyga
When "Nasty" was first going viral and Tinashe started teasing a remix, people on Twitter told her they didn't want any male artists on the remix and she responded that she might put a guy on the remix just to spite them. In the end, we got two his'n'hers remixes, but both are kind of disappointingly with C-list artists past their prime, when I hoped that maybe Tinashe would team up with some superstar or currently hot artist to take the song to another level. Tyga opens his verse with an on-the-nose Vanity 6 quote, which sounds absolutely awful in his bored rap dude voice, but Chloe Bailey's remix is pretty good. 
Best Verse: Chloe Bailey
Overall Grade: C+

"Okay (Remix)" by JT featuring Jeezy
I joked that the "Okay" beat "sounds like it's been in Jeezy's spam folder in 2006," so I felt pretty prescience when JT released a remix with Jeezy (now, though, I notice that JT is totally doing a Jeezy impression when she says "yeahhh" at the beginning of the song, so it was definitely always a deliberate homage). And Jeezy really does sound perfect on this beat, he's not as consistent as he used to be, but he can still snap on a song. JT released a solo extended mix of "Okay" with a third verse that I like more than the original verses, I wish she had just saved it so that the Jeezy remix had a new JT verse. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+

"Problem (Remix)" by Laila! featuring Cash Cobain, Fabolous, Kenzo B, Big Sean, Lay Bankz, Luh Tyler, Anycia, Chow Lee, Kaliii, 6lack, Flo Milli, YN Jay, Flee, Don Q and Rob49
A few weeks ago, 18-year-old New York singer Laila! confirmed rumors that she's the daughter of Mos Def. And then Cash Cobain remixed her single "Not My Problem" with 14 other rappers who her father probably thinks make good soundtracks for shopping at Target. A 'sexy drill' song that goes on for almost 8 minutes is not a good idea, especially because everyone's doing the same kind of "Oh Boy"-style verse where rappers let Laila! saying "problem" or "not my problem" finish their sentence. There are more bad verses than good ones on here, and the last four verses are particularly dire. And then the drums start to switch up in the last few seconds of Rob49's verse, almost taunting you that this remix could've been a lot less monotonous. 
Best Verse: Lay Bankz
Overall Grade: D

"Shift Change (Remix)" by 1100 Himself featuring Westside Boogie
I always thought the Compton rapper Boogie had a branding issue with so many other rappers with 'boogie' in their name, and he seems to have solved that by renaming himself Westside Boogie. He sounds good on this excellent jazzy drumless track by Oakland rapper 1100 Himself, might have to check out more music by that guy. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Slut Me Out 2 (Backseat Freak Mix)" by NLE Choppa featuring Taiki Nulight
"Slut Me Out 2 (Country Me Out)" by NLE Choppa featuring J.P. 
"Slut Me Out 2 (Extra Slutty Mix)" by NLE Choppa featuring OddKidOut
"Slut Me Out 2 (Wet N Wild Mix)" by NLE Choppa featuring NOIT
NLE Choppa's original 2022 single "Slut Me Out" had remixes with Sexyy Red and Sukihana, and now the sequel, which is really a whole different song that's just also very horny, also has multiple remixes. I think NLE Choppa just loves the remix game, man. J.P. is from Milwaukee so I'm not sure why he's on the campy country music-themed remix, but whatever, it's kind of fun. The other three are dance remixes with new beats but the same vocals from the original, and honestly all these remixes are pretty good. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Trae Tha Truth In Ibiza (Remix)" by J. Cole featuring Trae Tha Truth
J. Cole named one of the songs on Might Delete Later after a lyric shouting out the veteran Houston rapper Trae Tha Truth, and Trae made an unbilled spoken cameo at the end of the track. Unsurprisingly, a few months later we got a version of the song with a proper Trae verse, and I like how he sounds on that beat. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Why (G-Mix)" by Lizzen featuring Moone Walker
"Why (Remix)" by Lizzen featuring Robin Thicke
As I mentioned earlier in this column, Moone Walker's biggest hit was named after Lizzo, so I'm amused that he's now on a song by someone named Lizzen. He sounds kind of out of place on a sad slow jam like "Why," though, Robin Thicke is a much more natural fit. Weirdly, Lizzen released the remix with Thicke in April, and then Thicke released a shorter edit of it as "Why 2.0" that's only 1 minutes and 44 seconds.  
Best Verse: Robin Thicke
Overall Grade: B-

4:01 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 367: Sabrina Carpenter

Tuesday, September 03, 2024

 























I think a lot of people probably heard Sabrina Carpenter for the first time pretty recently when "Espresso" became her first top 10 hit on the Hot 100, or perhaps with the pop radio hits that preceded it, "Nonsense" (my favorite single of 2023) and "Feather." But her new album Short n' Sweet is actually her 6th album, and while I think she's really hit her stride in the last couple years, I think she's been making mostly good and great songs for almost a decade now. So I thought I'd look back at her catalog so far. 

Sabrina Carpenter album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Read Your Mind
2. Coincidence
3. Bad Time
4. Tell Em
5. Mirage
6. Bet U Wanna
7. Right Now
8. Good Graces
9. Lie For Love
10. Mona Lisa
11. Rescue Me
12. How To Go To Confession
13. Looking At Me
14. Space
15. Wildside with Sofia Carson
16. Don't Smile
17. Opposite
18. Diamonds Are Forever
19. I'm Fakin
20. Dumb & Poetic
21. Perfect Song
22. Is It New Years Yet?
23. Don't Want It Back
24. Tornado Warnings
25. Your Love's Like

Tracks 7 and 25 from Eyes Wide Open (2015)
Track 11 from Teen Beach 2 (Original TV Movie Soundtrack) (2015)
Track 15 from Adventures In Babysitting (Disney Channel Original Movie) (2016)
Tracks 5, 14 and 23 from EVOLution (2016)
Track 9 from Sierra Burgess Is A Loser (Original Netflix Soundtrack (2018)
Tracks 3, 10 and 18 from Singular Act I (2018)
Tracks 5 and 10 from Singular Act II (2019)
Track 21 from Royalties: Season 1 (Music from the Original Quibi Series) (2020)
Track 12 from Clouds (Music from the Disney+ Original Movie (2020)
Tracks 1, 6 and 24 from Emails I Can't Send (2022)
Track 17 from Emails I Can't Send Fwd: (2023)
Track 22 from the Fruitcake EP (2023)
Tracks 2, 8, 16 and 20 from Short n' Sweet (2024)

The first Sabrina Carpenter song I heard was the 2016's minor pop radio hit "Thumbs," which I didn't really care for. But I guess I saw her before that on "Girl Meets World," which I watched an episode or two of just to see the old gang from "Boy Meets World" again. Then I got hooked by the Singular Act II single "In My Bed" and really liked that album and Emails I Can't Send, which was the sleeper hit that set Carpenter on her current trajectory after the fifth single, "Nonsense," took off. 

Aesthetically, Carpenter's albums have been all over the place, as if you sometimes couldn't tell if she wanted to be the next Ariana Grande or the next Taylor Swift, but I think at some point she settled on a strong persona that allows her magpie musical sensibility to work for her. Now she's kind of a witty, bawdy blonde bombshell, equal parts Dolly Parton and Samantha Jones from "Sex and the City." I love the goofy fourth wall-breaking moments on some of these songs: "I'm just gonna say it one more time -- for fun!" before the last chorus of "Bad Time" or the amused "that's cool" at the backing vocals on "Good Graces." 

Of course, some of the earlier stuff on this playlist is a little more anonymous and a little more hit-and-miss, but I enjoyed digging through the first couple albums and the many TV and film soundtracks she did in her Disney Channel teen actor/singer era. "Perfect Song" is a very silly song full of song references, culminating in the hilariously bizarre lyric "the baffled king composing, oops I did it again," which I figured should go next to the Leonard Cohen reference on Short 'n Sweet's "Dumb & Poetic." One thing I found when I did my Billboard piece about TV synchs earlier this year was that "Looking At Me" from Singular Act II got a lot of streams after appearing in episodes of "Love Island" and its spinoffs and playlists associated with the show. In fact, "Looking At Me" recently passed "Thumbs" to become Carpenter's most streamed pre-2022 song. 

Julian Bunetta has become one of my favorite underrated writer/producers in the pop world over the last decade or so, with a varied catalog that includes a lot of One Direction and a lot of American pop and country music. He's been involved in some of Sabrina Carpenter's best singles ("Nonsense," "Espresso," and "Taste") so I wanted to highlight some of the album tracks he's done with her, "Bet U Wanna" and "Good Graces" and "Don't Smile." Bunetta doesn't really have a signature sound, you wouldn't necessarily know those songs were produced by the same person, but they're all great. 

4:00 AM