“New Year’s Eve” by Sherwood, Tuesday, December 31, 2024


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“Dark Paradise” by Lana Del Rey, Thursday, July 7, 2022

Image
  This July, as many American have celebrated Independence Day, I think it's important to look at different versions of the American Dream. Lana Del Rey 's 2012 record Born to Die examines " the dark side of the American dream " at times. While America is starting look more like it's Puritanical heritage with a little too much Flannery O'Connor and Homer Simpson pseudo-religiosity, the Northeastern secular world that Del Rey paints on her debut album seems like a world apart from a neo-conservatism. Del Rey's America is the America of Hollywood. It's New Yorkers who vacation Upstate in the summer and attend cocktail parties on the weekend. If they go to church, it's infrequent and not an evangelical version of Christianity. It's the America of the Jazz Age and the fifties. ALL MY FRIENDS TELL ME I SHOULD MOVE ON. But it's also the America of Mad Men.   Del Rey has been criticized for sometime avowing an opposition to feminism. In 2014, the ...
Read more

“The Last Great American Dynasty” by Taylor Swift, Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Image
On folklore , Taylor Swif t’s essential fall album, the singer delves into the craft of storytelling. While many of Swift’s songs tell stories, until her eighth studio album, most of those stories were about herself. Tales about “ betty ,” James, and Augustine could be a metaphor for the singer but it was quite refreshing to hear about other people in towns created by the singer. With Swift returning to making anthemic pop hits, the lowkey double album cycle has come and gone.  “ The Last American Dynasty ” is a song on folklore in which Swift tells the story about the previous owner of her house. The song tells the story of the wealthy widow to the heir of the Standard Oil fortune, Rebecca “Betty” Harkness. It’s a kind of country song, romanticizing its subject and drawing parallels between Harkness and Swift, setting them up as outsiders unable to fit into the social classes they happened to belong to.  THERE GOES THE MADDEST WOMAN THIS TOWN HAS EVER SEEN. Taylor Swift has b...
Read more

Pictures of Us” by beabadoobee, Friday, July 12, 2024 (repost)

Image
Last year, I listened to a podcast introducing artists who sound similar to another artist to help lesser-known artists expand their fan bases just to hear some takes that the commentators had to say about another artist I was preparing to post about. I didn't actually end up writing about that artist, but I inadvertently discovered a few new artists to add to my AppleMusic library, one of which was Filipina-British singer-songwriter  Beatrice  Kristi Ilejay Laus , better known by her stage name  beabadoobee . BUILDINGS AND RUST.   With over 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify, bedroom pop singer beabadoobee opened for  Taylor Swift  last year on a leg of the Eras Tour. Laus is just one of many artists that Swift was probably introduced to through a rumored ex,  The 1975 ’s Matty Healy .  Born in Iloilo City in 2000 and relocating to London with her family at the age of three, Laus was influenced by indie rock from an early age. At the ag...
Read more