I’m fairly certain the office motto at Dreamworks Studios is: Quantity, Not Quality! These guys pump out movies like the Duggar woman pumps out babies. They don’t have time to develop silly things like unique characters with individual personalities! Audiences will have to like them based on their hip attitude, represented by the ever present Dreamworks Face.
This isn’t some mind-blowing discovery I made last night while studying the Declaration of Independence. The Dreamworks Face has been well-documented by others for years now: it’s that crooked half-smiling, occasionally snarky expression which just screams irreverence. DID I MENTION THE RAISED EYEBROW??
It’s this fact that makes this even more depressing. You’d think the studio would switch it up a little now that they’ve been caught. Sometimes it seems like they have! How to Train Your Dragon had no Dreamworks Faces in the promotional materials, and neither did Rise of the Guardians.
…But then they throw out shovelware like Turbo, Penguins of Madagascar and the upcoming Home and the Dreamworks Face is out in full force, almost to the point of parody.
Below I have put together a compendium of Dreamworks Faces from nearly every one of their animated films. Here they are, in varying degrees of sardonicism.
WTF DREAMWORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the most Dreamsworkiest Dreamworks Face there ever was!! Tied with Bee Movie and Over the Hedge for first place. And this is from 2015. Of course the movie does star Rihanna so I don’t think they’re taking its success very seriously.
You know, doing this “research” I realized two things:
– I feel kinda bad criticizing the animators’ hard work. Looking at the pictures in high resolution made me realize how much effort goes into the textures and modelling. A pox upon whoever forces them to cram “the face” into their work.
– As aforementioned, How to Train Your Dragon didn’t have any Dreamworks Faces in the posters or banners online. There was this:
Which seems like it might be an acknowledgement of the meme! Hooray for meta humor.
Except not, because a few years later…
DREAMWORKS FACE OVERLOAD. ERROR. ERROR.
Update March 2017: Back at it again with the eyebrow
Despite the intensely frigid weather Sound Academy was packed to see post-grunge veterans Bush take the stage. Supported by Stars in Stereo and Theory of a Deadman, it was a night of hard rock that heated up the winter-weary crowd. Stars in Stereo were the first to take the stage. The L.A. based group recall the hard rock heyday of the early 2000s, complete with high-octane riffage and “pump-you-up” stage banter from frontwoman Becca and guitarist Jordan McGraw. Reminiscent of acts like Kittie and Flyleaf, the band tore through a brief but energetic set comprised mostly of songs from last year’s Leave Your Mark.
Canadian active rock mainstays Theory of a Deadman were on second, playing mostly newer songs in support of ther 2014 album Savages. In fact the only song from before 2008 was the 2005 ballad “Santa Monica”. While their peers Nickelback have opted for a more poppy approach in recent years, Theory have continued with their sludgy, Alice In Chains indebted direction. Frontman Tyler Connolly was full of impish energy the whole night, throwing out quips and good-humoured observations about hockey throughout the scuzzy, muscular set. The band even performed a truncated version of “Sweet Home Alabama”, tailored to an Ontario audience and filled with local references. Bush took the stage to huge cheers and started off their set with their 2011 single, the appropriately titled “Sound of Winter”. This was the single that officially declared the band a reunited presence in the world, meticulously crafted to recreate the sound Bush became famous for. A sound that the audience became reacquainted with over the course of the night. The chunky riffs, the serrated lead guitar and unabashedly big singalong choruses reminded the crowd that frontman Gavin Rossdale has always been a talented songwriter who knows a good hook when he hears one, and has written a huge amount of them. He’s also a very gracious, humble man who repeatedly thanked the crowd for coming out to see the band.
The set was largely comprised of older material, with a few songs from last year’s Man on the Run thrown in. Everything got a good reception but it was the singles from the 1994 breakthrough album Sixteen Stone that drove people ecstatic. It cannot be stressed enough how excited the crowd got when the first of that albums FIVE (!) massive singles, “Everything Zen” was played. 1996’s “Swallowed” also got tremendous cheers, as did its album mate “Greedy Fly” and the 1999 single “The Chemicals Between Us”. The new material was also received well, as it sounded like vintage Bush with a few modern augmentations here and there. “Bodies in Motion” and “Man on the Run” in particular sound like they will fit well on a future greatest hits compilation, with big brash guitar riffs kicking them off.
Many bands save a one-two punch for the encore, but Bush gave the crowd a one-two-thee-four-five punch in the form of the remaining singles from Sixteen Stone, as well as a left-field cover of the Talking Heads new wave classic “Once in a Lifetime”. The set ended with “Comedown” and its snaky bass groove and massive crescendo of a finale. And so the audience did come down from their clouds, back into the cold night but hopefully with a little fire in their hearts thanks to Gavin and his boys from London.
Last year I created a brief guide in order to help non-football fans understand the big game, but it lacked the in-depth analysis the event deserves. This year I’ve expanded upon many of the crucial points you need to “get” Super Ball X-LIX.
This is the title of the article.
The Teams
This year’s teams include the New England Patriarchs and the Wichita Witches.
The New England Patriarchs are coming off a ten-year winning streak and have on their team superstars such as Tom Brady, Eli Manning, Brayden Manning, Phil Manning, the praying man, M’ant’i T’eo, Joe Namath, and Jose Canseco. They are the “favorites” to win this year.
The opposition, the Wichita Witches, are in fact the NFL’s very first all-evil team. Finally society has progressed enough that we can accept an entirely evil team (although some players do identify as half-evil).
The Ball
The object they play with is called a football, or in their terms, a “pigskin“. This is an abbreviation of “pig’s kin”, as the ball in fact IS a pig’s kin- it is a pig egg which has not been fertilized and therefore will not hatch. The unique hard texture prevents it from breaking and leaking yolk.
The footballs have recently been in the news.
The Antennae
On each end of the field there is a large, strange looking antenna. These are television antennae that are positioned this way to serve each coast. This way audiences on both the east and west coast of the continent get the best reception of the big game.
The Gatorade
You may notice that during the game the players pour Gatorade on each other from big tanks. This provides a double purpose:
First, it hydrates the players. The team has undergone rigorous physiological training that has enabled their skin to become extra porous and absorb liquid through it. This way the Gatorade gets through the skin cells and into their system.
Physiological scan of a football player.
Secondly, the excess Gatorade that remains after the skin has become supersaturated creates a membrane which makes the players more slippery and harder to tackle/pin down. Talk about getting out of a tight squeeze!
The Language of Football
One of the football players favourite things to say on the pitch is “hut“. You can hear them say it all the time. This is short for an Old English term, “huttence“, which means “we will conquer”. It is said to strike fear and intimidation into the hearts of the opposing team.
The Coaches
You might notice that every coach looks like Academy Award winning actor Ed Harris. They are actually all related! Ed was the only male member of the Harris clan who did not go into football coaching, the rest of the bloodline have all hit the field to get that football gold. Inspiring.
The Formulas
Many people will tell you that football is very simply but that is not true. Each team hires a Nobel Prize winning mathematician and physicist to assist with the logistics of the game. These brainiacs calculate the weather conditions, wind speed, dynamics, and muscle mass and then tell the players their findings.
A football player’s brain works at 600 yards per second.
Each player then is mentally armed with formulas that they must apply to their throws, passes, tackles and other actions in split second decisions. Wow.
The Announcer
Not much is known about the current announcer of the game, only that he got his start in the Nintendo 64 game “Madden 64”. He impressed the executives so much that they brought him on to voice every game since the late 90’s. He is beloved by fans all across the nation, who have given him the nickname “Madden Guy”. His most popular catchphrase? We all know it: “He shoots he scores!” Unforgettable.
The Camaraderie
If there is one thing that you take away from this report, it’s this: football brings people together– literally! At the end of the match both teams jump into a big pile in celebration, despite the mud and sweat they may be covered in. It is a joy to watch, and it’s the reason that football is known as “the Lover’s Game” across the continent.
Conclusion
So as you watch Super Ball X-LIX, do not watch it in fear any longer. You know your stuff, champ. Good Grief!
Welcome to the Age of Branding!
Talking strictly from a cinematic sense, of course- branding’s been lording over every other market for generations. It’s not like it was absent from movies all this time either, it’s just that now it has become the single greatest asset for films. This proves difficult, however, if there are no brands.
And so somewhere in the mid-late 00’s the executives and corporate brass began mining the past for brands, for familiar properties that would not require pesky things like “establishing plots” or “character development”. It was harder and harder to create cultural touchstones; in turn the nostalgia market blossomed. Suddenly a load was taken off the backs of Hollywood’s thinktanks as they no longer needed to imagine ideas for blockbusters. They just needed to re-imagine them.
Dark and Gritty™
It boiled down to two genres, loosely divided by gender demographics. Comic books for the fellas and the classic fairy tales for ladies. This is by no means a static divider, but from a marketing perspective this is how the trends skewed. Trends that are still healthy to this day, though they’ve required a little augmenting as the decade turned.
Why have one brand when you can have two? Or three? Or ten? All in one property, too! Hollywood was more than happy to oblige and sate the public’s appetite for brands and thus was born the shared universe.
Although crossovers and spin-offs have popped up throughout cinematic and televised history (remember, the Flintstones and the Jetsons live in the same timeline), the roots of the modern incarnation of the shared universe model can be traced to one early millennial franchise: Shrek.
It’s all your fault! All your fault!
Seven years before Tony Stark got a knock on the door from Nick Fury, the green ogre and his postmodern adventures gave audiences the thrill of seeing Pinocchio interact with the three little pigs, the gingerbread man and the magic mirror in the same room, and all the famous princesses walk down the red carpet together. Not only that, but they were all so sardonic and witty! They referenced modern expressions in fairy tale style! It would set the stage for the fairy tale renaissance towards the latter part of the aughts.
It’s also worth mentioning that the early 00’s also gave us Nintendo’s Smash Bros. franchise and the Kingdom Hearts franchise, with Kingdom Hearts also incorporating classic fairy tale characters (Disney versions of course) into their universe.
Disney would eventually become the king of the shared universe. They bought Marvel Studios one year into their epic undertaking and took the reins of what has become the most lucrative franchise in the cinematic world. The Marvel brand at this point is unassailable; a Midas blessing for whatever it’s attached to. Even without the rights to the X-Men and Spider-Man brands, they have a vast vault of comic book characters to use in their properties and populate their one world.
Agents of cross-promotion.
Although navigating a universe where everything is canon is tricky, the payoffs are very literally worth it. With each franchise that rakes in box office dollars they gain another hype generator for any and all crossovers that will happen. Guardians of the Galaxy were virtually unknown prior to 2014, but thanks to the Marvel brand have become just as valuable as the heaviest hitters. They’re now seen as a property that will increase stock of a future project.
As will Marvel’s rapidly expanding ventures outside of the cinema. TV series like Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter are also incorporated in their universe, along with future Netflix series Daredevil and Jessica Jones. All of these will one day tie into one massive project, presumably the two-part Avengers Infinity War movie- a film that is epic in the truest, most literal sense of the word.
aka Desperate Housewives…with magic.
But Disney haven’t forgotten what got them to this point- their fairy tales. Owning the rights to the “definitive”, most culturally accepted variations of fairy tale characters has given them another massive library to cater to those who are less fond of explosions and explosion accessories. Taking a cue from Shrek, Disney created TV series Once Upon a Time and The Descendants with hip new versions of their classic characters. Video game Disney Infinity has access to not only Disney characters, but Marvel and Pixar characters as well. It’s a smorgasbord of familiarity that thrives simply on the fact that people are attracted to all these brands separately, making them even more powerful together in one package.
Disney aren’t the only company privy to public domain properties, however, which has led to films like Into the Woods and television shows like Grimm, both based upon shared universes populated with these same bankable characters. TV series Penny Dreadful attempts to pull off a similar trick with slightly more recent literary icons such as Dr. Frankenstein and Dorian Gray. None of these have reached the same celestial heights as any of Disney’s universes though. In fact, the same can be said about the comic book side of their business as well.
Make no mistake, the Spider-Man, Batman, and X-Men movies have been hugely successful in their own right. When it comes to the shared universe gimmick though, Disney is thoroughly thrashing every single competitor due to a variety of reasons.
* Sony’s Spider-Man series is the least effective. A premature reboot of the series lead to another origin movie, and had the studio rushing to make up for lost time. This gave us two below-average movies crippled by the weight of studio mandated references. Sony wants more movies so badly, they’ll cram in plots and characters unnecessarily just for the sake of hinting at a larger franchise. Which they don’t really have, seeing as the only comic book property they own is…Spider-Man. These limits have trapped them in their own web, forcing them to come up with hilariously bad ideas like an Aunt May movie.
More plot holes than a speeding train!
* DC comics have bungled it up as well. At the time of writing this, they have exactly one movie in their universe (the subpar Man of Steel) to Marvel’s 10. Green Lantern was a flop, the Nolan Batman movies are now unrelated, all DC based television series are unconnected, and the unreliable Zack Snyder has control of next year’s Dawn of Justice. There are bound to be a few more trainwrecks down the road.
Degrassi: The Next Generation
* FOX’s X-Men are the best off. A rebound after the disastrous one-two punch of Last Stand and The Wolverine has led to three decent films. Thanks to time-travel plot devices they can bring the older stars back for a few more rounds while their universe is expanded with the Gambit and Fantastic 4 movies. Although the troubling production tales about the Fantastic 4 film set may mean that world does not get incorporated.
So what’s next? What will bring in audiences once the novelty of shared universes finally wears off?
I control the shared universe…literally
* After Infinity War Part II Marvel will probably do a comic-logic approved soft reset. Messing with time and space along with inevitable tragically heroic sacrifices will lead to a semi-new timeline starting around 2020. Some new actors, some old, but well-established brands still in play. A “boss bad guy team-up” is probably in the cards in Phase IV of Marvel’s plan.
The Force awakens…then remembers the rebellion is TOMORROW, and goes back to sleep.
* Outside the comic book universe, Disney still has a horse in the form of their Star Wars acquisition. Not content with just new sequels, they’ve also begun constructing a Star Wars shared universe with films centred around individual characters that will tie into the main story.
The Boy Who Will Continue To Live
* Warner Bros is doing the same with the Harry Potter books and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a trilogy of movies based upon a tiny sliver of a book. More Harry Potter films would not be unexpected.
Just let him sleep already.
* Verging on the slightly ridiculous is the Universal Monsters universe. Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein, and Werewolfman all adding up to…what? How will this even make sense? Expect this idea to collapse.
If Russell Crowe can’t start a franchise…
* Past ridiculous is the “Robin Hood” universe, which is unbelievably stupid. Robin Hood is no longer a viable brand on his own. What makes the studios think people will come out for a Friar Tuck movie?
Tony the Terminator vs. Trix-1000! Darth Chocula vs. Lucky Skywalker!
* Far beyond ridiculous and into sheer conjecture are these ideas: Avengers vs. Star Wars, cereal mascots universe, board game universe, Pixar universe. Though they might seem impossible now, they just might come to fruition.
The shared universe itself also has an inherent problem: what happens once people tire of the old crowd? If all time is spent on the novelty of old characters interacting and none is spent on creating new ones, what legacy is left for the future? What stories will future movie studios mine? It’s what I like to call the Smash Bros Dilemma. Nintendo has had no memorable characters for nearly a decade; the character roster can’t expand if there’s nobody worthy of putting in there. Smash Bros is a franchise that can’t grow without the success of new franchises, which simply aren’t developing in our stagnant cultural void. Disney’s Once Upon a Time gorged excessively upon the introduction of Elsa, one memorable touchstone in a landscape with fewer and fewer of them. This was a clear sign that our generation is starved for new icons in every field. Executives, take heed, if you don’t start developing new properties now, future generations will have no icons to call their own.
We’re all adults here, right? If you aren’t, what are you doing on my blog, you weird baby? Get out of here! Go back to weirdbabycentral dot com.
For the adults, I’m gonna be straight with you: it’s getting harder and harder to find good music. Aside from the reliable January, May, and September release windows, quality tunes are few and far between. 2013 was particularly dire, and 2014 took some intense scouring to find audio gold.
Basically what I’m saying is, you better appreciate this cuz it took some crazy prospecting to unearth all these.
The Top 25 Songs of 2014
25.A Beginner’s Guide to Destroying the Moon– Foster the People — Their sophomore record was a challenging listen, but ultimately satisfying. The easy, occasionally lazy hooks of Torches are nowhere to be found on Supermodel, but swirling psychedelia and a definite vision are.
24.Action Cat– Gerard Way — Most solo projects nowadays, particularly those of commercially successful rockers, tend to go in two directions: folk-pop and electro. So it was a nice surprise to find that My Chemical Romance’s former frontman went down neither of those avenues and instead went full 90’s with his first solo record. A little shoegaze can be heard in this first single as well.
23.You Got Caught– Kevin Drew — Broken Social Scene frontman’s understated new record is free from that band’s shambolic, raucous clutter, with more heartfelt lyrics to boot.
22.Bells of Paonia– The Fresh & Onlys — A verdant, sprawling track with almost no rhythm section, this song coasts along on a wash of massive, melancholic guitars that buoy the downcast lyrics.
21.Fractals– Keep Shelly in Athens — The Greek duo’s melodic approach to synth-pop has yielded nothing but sterling singles up to now, with this fourth offering featuring an extended shimmering keyboard outro.
20.First– Cold War Kids — A combination of Band of Horses’ cyclical guitar hooks and Imagine Dragons’ stomp-pop, Cold War Kids follow a great 2013 record with another surprise crowd pleaser.
19.Every Other Freckle– alt-J — The fantastically weird UK band tightened their focus on their sophomore release, reining in their every-instrument-ever approach for a more accessible record that at once sounds diverse and cohesive.
18.Got To My Head– WATERS — There’s a rare immediacy to this song, heard particularly as singer Van Pierszalowski launches into a loud yelp by the third line. It’s almost as if he can’t wait to get to the huge finale of the song where all the hooks converge in a giant high-five party.
17.Archie, Marry Me– Alvvays — Toronto’s biggest buzz band of 2014 deserve all the accolades they get, with their power pop style uncompromising in its authenticity.
16.Talk is Cheap– Chet Faker — Australian loopsmith Nick Murphy’s chilled out jams carve their own niche in the indie R&B scene and this one is a great representative of his sultry style.
15.Seasons (Waiting on You)– Future Islands — It was a pretty good year for Sam T. Herring and crew, becoming a meme on Letterman and scoring the #1 spot on Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks of the Year with this song. It seems people have finally caught onto the band’s strong songwriting and Herring’s unique voice, which has only gotten more visceral as the years have gone by.
14.Gimme Something Good– Ryan Adams — America’s most underrated singer-songwriter unsurprisingly releases another great record, with a first single that sounds like a classic rock radio staple.
13.Veto– SOHN — Unjustly shunned by the hipster elite, Vienna-based SOHN is another solid competitor in the indie R&B scene. Smoother than Active Child but not as decadent as the Weeknd, he specializes in cold, sterile atmospheres that evoke strong emotions while remaining sonically chilly.
12.Brill Bruisers– The New Pornographers — Completely unshackled by modern trends, “Brill Bruisers” is a song that could have existed at any time in the past two decades and sounded fresh. It lives up to its name, a muscular alt-rock jam in a climate where most acts don’t dare crank their guitars past 5.
11.I’m Aquarius– Metronomy — A sinister, brooding take on doo-wop, “I’m Aquarius” is a strangely hypnotic throwback that burrows itself into your brain with its two hooks and leaves you wanting to repeat it in order to find more dark secrets in its lyrics and analog hiss.
It’s a criminal offense that in 2014 the most popular “folk” acts are wimps who gently strum their ukeleles and banjos and sing aural pablum about Michelle Pfeiffer. Saintseneca are folk with guts. They’re bombastic and a little off-centre, like a scuzzier version of The Decemberists. “Visions” is pounding folk-punk, and in a just world would be the topmost representative of the genre on mainstream channels.
Most popular EDM songs nowadays get at least one thing wrong; most choruses are boring, or repetitive, or anti-climactic. Sometimes there isn’t even a chorus! This song is the rare exception that gets absolutely everything right. Starting off by taking an already endlessly melodic song, Zedd slaps a full-throttle beat and an even catchier synth hook on the chorus. He then does something rare and doesn’t kill the chorus momentum with stop-start backing synths. He then does something even rarer and puts lyrics over the second part of the chorus! It’s fan service of the best kind, resulting in a song that is a genuine candy-coated rush of adrenaline.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Leisure Cruise are from Australia or New Zealand. The prickly guitars, sprightly vocals, and sun-splashed melody sound like they’ve arrived straight from the Gold Coast. They’re actually from New York, and the band was inspired to form by a HURRICANE. It’s a wonderful ironic contrast to the boundless joy the song exalts.
Critics lambasted Coldplay for “selling out” with this song, produced by Avicii, but the truth is that it’s still essentially a Coldplay song. Tweak it slightly and it would fit on any of their other records; an acoustic version wouldn’t sound out of place on their debut Parachutes. They’ve always had a fascination with the celestial, most evident on 2005’s X & Y, all they’ve done here is dressed up their wide-eyed, widescreen yearning in a hip modern outfit. It happens to fit them very well.
When was the last time you heard a genuine guitar solo in a pop hit? Chances are it was probably Jack Antonoff’s other band, fun. He’s got one in here too and, for lack of a better phrase, it totally rules. Antonoff is the kind of guy who gets both rock and pop conventions and although he leans heavily towards the latter he incorporates as many Springsteen-isms (along with a vaguely Talking Heads-ish chorus) as he can into his craft. It’s an 80’s melody in a decidedly non-80’s song, an unabashed celebration of straightforward kitschy pop with rock sprinkled in at just the right moments.
Leave it to Moroder to effortlessly channel his inimitable style into a low-key indie track and make it sound completely natural, as if this is how the song had always existed. The earth-shaking piano stabs and vocoder are Moroder trademarks but coexist with HAIM’s guitar chug without any problems. The new disco drum track and soaring keyboards filling in the empty space of the sparse original, and the arrangement ends up bringing the melody to the heights it deserved.
Usually when an artist records a song, that’s it. They’re done with it, and it’s up to others to give it a remix. So if the song is good up until a point and then screws up, we as listeners are forever stuck with a disappointed feeling of a wasted opportunity. Dillon Francis himself took control here, realizing that the original “Without You” was good but lacked drive, and recreated it to give us a song that delivers on all cylinders. It’s a full-fledged concise pop EDM banger, better than every other Top 40 dance hit out there. The hook alone puts Avicii’s entire last underwhelming record to shame, and hopefully gets Francis on songwriting and production duty in the upper echelons of the industry.
Toronto’s most popular bands all sound nearly exactly the same: like a jangly, whimsical, upbeat Target commercial. So it’s comforting to hear that there are a few artists in the Big Smoke that break from that tradition. RLMDL is a one-man project that doesn’t really sound like what anybody else is doing. “Wildest Dreams” is simultaneously glacial and balmy, with swaths of deep January synths meeting a voice pillowed in July reverb. It also carries the unmistakeable spirit of Toronto in its blue-hued keyboards and rattling hi-hats. Sure, it’s Toronto 1984 as opposed to Toronto 2014, but it’s hard not to imagine the project’s mastermind Jordan Allen being influenced by the city’s industrial waterfront and flashy entertainment district. Look out for this one, Canada.
The general consensus among the music journalism community: this is, hands down, the best rock song of the year. And that’s an important distinction to make in 2014 where everyone is trying everything and genre crossovers are ubiquitous. This is not a pop rock song, it is not indie rock, hard rock, folk rock, psychedelic rock, or wizard rock. This is unadulterated rock music that contains Adam Granduciel’s heart and soul; a tumbling, effusive celebration of life itself.
After having their 2010 self-titled album critically mangled and losing their bassist, Paul Banks and company took a bit of a breather and dropped out of the spotlight.
They came back this year with the best song they’ve ever written.
A dark, sleek post-punk anthem, it gallops along on an uncompromising rhythm section, powering relentlessly even through the bridge where most songs would reprise a drumless intro. The bass and drums are in lockstep with each other, a tense partnership that proves Paul Banks fills Carlos D’s shoes pretty well. It all culminates with the percussion suddenly getting louder, then ebbing away like the waves in the song’s video, pulling the song out to sea and fading to black. It’s a genial touch and proves that in the end, Interpol were the best band that came out of the early-00’s NY revival.
—————————————–
—————————————–
The 10 Best Albums of 2014 –
Here are the most well-rounded efforts taken into consideration as a whole piece of work:
10. [This Is All Yours]- alt-J (Choice Cuts: “Every Other Freckle”, “The Gospel of John Hurt”, “Left Hand Free”)
9. [They Want My Soul]- Spoon (Choice Cuts: “Outlier”, “New York Kiss”, “Let Me Be Mine”)
8. [Turn Blue]- The Black Keys (Choice Cuts: “Fever”, “In Time”, “Bullet in the Brain”)
[El Pintor]- Interpol (Choice Cuts: “All the Rage Back Home”, “My Desire”, “Everything is Wrong”)
—————————————–
THE WORST OF 2014
What do you criticize when there’s nothing to criticize? As I’ve made perfectly clear, popular music isn’t in the greatest shape. I guess the most annoying trend this year was that there was no trend. A few artists tried to copy Pharrell’s “Happy”, with its 60’s throwback sound (“All About That Bass”, “Shake it Off”, “Bang Bang”), but there was no unifying 2014 theme. There wasn’t even a song of the summer!
There were, however, a lot of blatant corporate attempts at “big events” this year:
– Iggy Azalea’s various squabbles and public image.
– The indie rock Frankenstein that is “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors, a sickening menage of every commercial twee cliche there is.
– Nicki Minaj’s controversial lyrics and videos.
– Ariana Grande’s entire career, but more specifically, the desperate grab at a gimmicky hit song that was “Problem”.
– The engineered “love-to-hate-it” faux-outrage about that “Selfie” song.
– Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift’s hollow re-inventions.
All of these embarrassingly obvious ploys were utterly bereft of any semblance of naturally occurring popularity. It’s a sad display of the industry fumbling to create buzz without anything buzzworthy. They’re shoving these various stories into our faces screaming:
“Whoa! Look how EDGY Taylor Swift is now!”
“Whoa! Nicki Minaj used NAZI imagery in her video!”
“Whoa! Don’t you just HATE that Selfie song!”
There are just no big names anymore. The only legitimate event album of the year was Taylor Swift’s 1989. As far as big songs go, the Grammy nominees for Record/Song of the Year are essentially……the only songs people will remember from 2014. A measly 5-6 tunes, only one of which (“All About That Bass”) reached collective consciousness. Sad.
A few miscellaneous grumpy notes:
– Our Lady Peace tried to channel Modest Mouse/Passion Pit about 10 years too late and made a song so completely out of touch that the drummer left the band. The song was so bad it barely received any airplay. It was a trainwreck!
– Indie powerhouse TuNe-YaRds (or however you stylize it) had a chance for a breakthrough album and……totally blew it. Obnoxious lead single “Water Fountain” instantly killed all hype around the record.
– Pharmakon made what is perhaps the best example of “2 kool 4 skool” noise that people associate with unlistenable hipster drivel with the song “Bestial Burden”. It’s Yoko Ono level bad.
