#don't know why every artist in the west is so obsessed with this genre

[erikisser]

i was kinda excited for conan gray's new song but istg can singers STOP with the 80s synth music?? i'm so sick and tired of it, it's been years, we get it, heard it before, in fact we heard it for generations and there's no need to STILL make 80s synth instrumentals in 2023. MOVE ON

#this annoys me to no end in western music #the weeknd cursed every release ever bc everything sounds the fucking same bc it's all 80s synth now #i'm so tired of it we all have heard it a billion times be creative be innovative FIND SMTH NEW FOR JESISMS SAKE #don't know why every artist in the west is so obsessed with this genre #i was hoping more for a checkmate or maniac vibe but no #my man thought he was the weeknd #don't even get me started on ava max btw she literally cheated her way to the top by just remaking 80s songs #000

[cleoselene]

nine favorite albums in no particular order,

tagged by @an-ivy-covered-summer (thank you I love to ramble about music)

Portishead - Dummy - This is probably my favorite album of all time? It's perfect to me. It makes me feel so good, physically and mentally. It's the quintessential 90s album, the definitive trip-hop album, and always makes the list of "25 Albums You Should Own On Vinyl" for a reason. It's immaculate and it spawned a slew of imitators who never ever got close to this kind of quality. I think people also don't appreciate hop much trip-hop/downtempo has influenced today's pop music. SZA's latest album especially felt super trip-hoppy, so did elements of Midnights.

Massive Attack - Mezzanine - if there's one other trip-hop album you should pick up, it's this one. This album benefits greatly from Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins' ethereal vocals. Every song on this is amazing. When I was playing this album for a friend about a decade younger, he said "oh this is the album with the music from all the movies." lol. Indeed It's been licensed to hell for a reason!

Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk - Okay I set a rule for myself that each artist would only get one album in this list to avoid putting up nine Tori Amos albums, but Scarlet is my favorite. This road trip across America immediately after 9/11 is one of the first albums to... if not criticize the US response to 9/11, because it was really too early for that, but to be very, very wary of what the response would be. It's an album that expresses sympathy for a wounded nation, while also acknowledging the nation's sins. I think this is one of a few Tori albums that was too high concept for the mainstream audience, but Tori has never been for the mainstream audience, anyway.

Taylor Swift - evermore - Of all the Taylor Swift albums, it was reputation that brought me to the dance and Red that made me fall madly in love. But evermore is her best work. It's perfecting upon the formula she came up with in folklore. Which, don't get me wrong, I love folklore, but with Taylor's obsession with being "sonically cohesive" it's kind of a bummer of an album? I appreciate how the vibes of evermore are more varied. Also, "ivy" is the most beautiful song she's ever written.

Green Day - American Idiot - This album doesn't need much description, it's so well-known, but nothing really compares to how hard this album hit during the height of Bush Era Hell. As a 26 year old when this came out, it felt like my generation was getting our mainstream protest music, finally.

Paul Simon - Graceland - This album won the Grammy for Album of the Year for a reason: it's soooo good. I know there's a lot of drama/controversy surrounding it, but I always felt Paul approached his love of African music from a genuine place. It's such a good midlife crisis album, I understand it now more that I am in midlife than I did when I discovered it at age 12. And the bass line for "You Can Call Me Al" is fucking legendary, isn't it? PS - Paul Simon is the greatest songwriter of all time.

VNV Nation - Automatic - Why was it so hard to pick a VNV Nation album? I really kind of wanted to put last year's Electric Sun in the mix, but I need to let that sit with me before I add it to a list like this. This is the album that brought me to the dance: "Gratitude" is an all-time fave VNV song of hopefulness. "Control" is the dance club banger to end all dance club bangers. I loooooooove this band. I wish there were more futurepop bands out there, tbh, it's SUCH an excellent genre.

Lana del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell! - This is Lana's best. It's not really even close. This is one of the best albums of the 21st century. The way "The greatest" so perfectly encapsulates the Trump-era nihilism... I DO want shit to feel the way just like it used to. Kanye West IS blond and gone. We DIDN'T know that we had it all. :( The ache of nostalgia in our current very painful times hits perfectly on this record (WHYYYY don't I own it on vinyl yet??)

Puscifer - Existential Reckoning - So hard for me to pick a Maynard project and not pick TOOL, but Puscifer has become my favorite of his three bands. Existential Reckoning is similar to NFR! in that it captures the political moment. Maynard has never seemed particularly political in his music until this record, which is pretty interesting. ER seems to be advocating for a return to rationality over ideology, of moderation over extremism, of science over faith. It takes a very humanist approach to looking at life in 2020. "Apocalyptica" is probably the craziest song because it sounds like it was written about COVID, but it was not, in fact was written just a few months earlier. "Bedlamite" is the coda to the album that promises hope: It's gonna be all right. When they did this album Live at Arcosanti and sang this song while the sun rose behind them, four days before the 2020 election and Maynard crooned that it would be all right, I looked at my roommate, and I said, "it really is, isn't it?" And we both got kind of overwhelmed. And then a few days later, it was. Trump lost.

I went into way detail >_> told you I like rambling about music

tagging: @swiftzeldas @emmaswanned @brightnshinythings @mariacallous @ouijawaydidhego

#meme