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girlsbtrs · 4 years

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Lia Menaker on her music, inspirations, and teaming up with Melanated Social Work

Written and edited by James N. Grey. Graphic by Moira Ashley.

Lia Menaker wants to support Black lives, specifically within the mental health sphere. So she donated the proceeds from her album, I am Kyrøs, toward ending the stigma around mental health in those communities. Girls Behind the Rock Show connected with her to get her perspective on her music, her identification with the cause, and how she feels it all ties together.

How did you find Melanated Social Work and how did you identify with their cause?

I actually know one of the founders personally, Marvin Toliver, so I’ve been following their social media and learning about the organization from him. We are talking a lot about police reform and the justice system now, which is great and important. But we often forget about the health component. And these guys, in their focus on the liberation of Black and Brown people, are working to end the stigma around mental health in Black and Brown communities, and working to make sure mental health professionals are truly culturally competent. I realized that they were the best place to dedicate my resources and time to.

What inspired you to donate your Bandcamp proceeds to them?

George Floyd was killed just weeks before my EP was set to release. And when the riots started, and the country started waking up to the level of police brutality threatening people of color, and the injustice of our institutions, it felt very strange to release the EP. The intersection of everything—COVID-19, the racial disparities and economic inequalities thus heightened, and the slew of unjust murders of POC—all became this giant traumatic thing our country was experiencing. I felt Black voices should be heightened, and in many ways, felt that it wasn't the right time to share the music. But on the other side of things, I also knew the world needed as much art as possible, of all kinds. Since the songs dealt with identity and the self, they could relate to what was going on in many ways.

I decided the best thing to do would be to release the music as planned, and in between the sharing and promoting of the album, to highlight as many Black voices and resources and information as possible. I wanted this to incorporate a donation and some awareness of solid Black-run organizations.

How has being Kyrøs allowed you to be more creative and free?

The word “kairos” is an ancient Greek concept referring to that perfect melding of space and time when it’s the opportune moment to act. It was a way of measuring time in moments (versus “kronos,” which was their concept for chronological time). When I came across the word, it felt like it described my change as an artist to a T. And once I took on the name, all that history that comes with one’s name—the feelings, memories, habits and obstacles that came with 30+ years of being “Lia Menaker”— dissolved. I think I subconsciously felt the freedom to try new things.

I started producing, and getting super creative on my live streams. I was improv-ing with no idea what I was doing, but it didn’t matter. I just kept doing it and didn’t feel the same self-judgment I’d had before. Approaching music with a sort of reckless abandon allowed me to be the best and boldest version of myself.

But what’s interesting is even the things that free you can start to take control of you. That high you get from being in such an open, creative space…you can only ride that wavelength for so long. At some point, you get stuck again, and you find yourself chasing that high. It can become an addiction, you know?

In a way, I ended up clinging to that identity of who I was when I was kyrøs, and I didn’t realize it until I was literally releasing the songs. It’s a big reason why it became the album name instead of my new artist name. I realized it was really more of an alter ego all along. That it didn’t replace Lia Menaker as an artist. So it turns out I was still learning lessons on identity as I was releasing the songs!

How did your childhood in theater and pop music inspire you?

While kids watched shows like Sesame Street and Barney, I was watching Annie, The Sound of Music, [and] Peter Pan… I was always drawn to it and felt like I could see myself in the characters. I begged my mom to do a musical at age 6 (Oliver), and then I was hooked doing musicals the rest of my childhood and most of my young adult life. So I think it felt like a language I understood, a form of expression I connected to on another level. There was always a story to the songs, an arc, [and] often, deep emotion and expressive vocals. I think the way I approach music—my soulfulness and the way I connect to it—comes from years of growing up with that. Also, I think a lot of my phrasing and how I articulate words comes from the musical theatre influence.

I think it was later in life that pop music began to really inspire me. Discovering Joni Mitchell was a huge one. Her incredible use of lyrics (in my opinion, she’s one of the lyrical greats and extremely underrated), and her 100% unabashed authenticity and womanliness was captivating. Her music is poetic, moody, unique—filled with so much complex emotion and story. Lyrically, I think my first album (Animal Behavior, in 2015) shows some of her influence on me. Especially the opening track, “Holding My Space.”

But pop aside, some of the great jazz vocalists were a big influence on me as well. It started with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. It was an easy segue because they sang a lot of Gershwin and musical theatre covers, but then I delved deeper into their work, and eventually found (and fell in love with) Nina Simone too. The raw, warm, raspy, bold voice filled with more soul and both joy and pain than I could imagine. And I always found that type of music so beautiful as a kid. I just found that part of people to be equally as beautiful as the lighter side, and found expressing pain through art to be the most incredible thing. So when I heard music that captured that, I think I was always intrigued.

What storylines in your 30's did you find that you were shucking off?

I had this limited view of myself my whole life as a singer/performer. Since I was 6 years old, that was my life: community theatre as a kid, studying musical theatre at Penn State, tours and regional theatre, then songwriting, music and singing in every fashion. It was the way I saw my value to the world, and I basically lived for my dreams and goals—this is how I saw whether or not I was successful. And the thought of not reaching them consumed me…

I always felt I wasn’t measuring up to whom I could be. This was a huge storyline I had to face: this idea of not being enough right now. And then it got me thinking about all this living in the ego… and “if I’m not my dreams, my goals, or even my job, what am I?” This inspired the song “Some Kind” because I realized if I wasn’t those things I most identified with, I was still me. A lot of the lyrics to that song express the storylines I grappled with, and also how I made sense of them: “We measure all that’s left with time - a calculated art. The things we do that give us pride, we hold up high as if it’s all that we are / All the stories give us meaning - keep us moving on… make it real. Run our choices, our bodies - keep us fused to what we feel.”

I would look back periodically at my life and think things like “What have I even done? My tour wasn’t successful enough, not enough people are listening to my music, I don’t make the money I should be making at this age, I’ll never amount to anything.” [I used] whatever metrics I thought would show me proof of a valuable life. I still struggle with them sometimes. Realizing the storylines is just the start. You have to keep checking yourself [and make sure] that you’re not caught up in them again. They were ingrained in my head for years, so it takes time to rewire the brain.

Ultimately, in my 30s, I’m finding so much more joy in the process and the creation itself, and trying to practice looking at what I have in my life as “enough.” The older I get, the more I see life passing quicker, and the more I just want to take it all in. To bask in love and music and the feeling of living with versus without. The 30s are a great time, because I think it’s the decade where a lot of us start to realize these things. Though, of course, some of us go our entire lives without feeling like we are, or we have enough. And new storylines will always be created, so we have to just keep checking ourselves. Especially when we’re all so obsessed with social media. Social media is literally a collection of storylines.

What inspired you to meld together eclectic sounds? Why a soulful, jazzy voice with a minimalistic background?

I’ve always loved warm, jazz vocals. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up engrossed in musical theatre, and that included a lot of standards by singers like Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. About four years ago, I also re-fell in love with Amy Winehouse and started really listening to her vocals and her style, pinpointing what it was that I loved so much. There’s a mix of this warmth and authenticity, but with a modern edge that just hits you in all the right places. So that’s what’s inspired my sound vocally.

But at the same time, I’m a big fan of using unconventional sounds and challenging people’s ears. A lot of what I’ve listened to over the past few years has strong electronic elements. SOHN is one I’m really drawn to, and he’s brilliant at the mix of pure/simple and unconventional. He has this way of putting a simple, soaring, haunting vocal over a backdrop of complex, evolving electronic elements. It’s a sound that you can’t produce with conventional instruments. When I first heard him, it blew my mind—it was like a spiritual experience, and I thought “I want to do THAT!” Susanne Sundfor’s Silicone Veil album was a big game changer for me too.

I loved the idea of marrying the two worlds—this classic, timeless feel with an electronic modern sound that reflects the times—to create something authentic to me and my influences. With so much of our world being digital now, it felt right to experiment with electronic elements. And when I started playing around with new software, and some samples, beats, and different gear, it just all slowly started to meld together into a sound that felt right.

What were some favorite ways that you experimented with sounds and techniques to achieve your sound? Anything that you might take over with you into the future?

A lot of the experimentation happened (and continues to happen) during my weekly live streams on Twitch (@liamenaker). It’s sort of the place where I have permission to work through songs, try stuff out, and honestly just have a lot of fun and engage with others during the creation process. The community there is also so incredibly supportive and open. The last song I wrote for the album, “Imprinted,” started out as some improv loops and just fooling around on my Twitch live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xWjEAYAa7w. And I have at least four others waiting in the queue to finish that also began the same way. One of which I sent over to a jazz funk band in Paris to collaborate with me on. So I’ll definitely keep this as part of my approach.

Aside from that, my process is always changing, to be honest. So I’m trying to remain open to new techniques and approaches, and to keep allowing myself to be inspired by other artists and sounds. I’d like to explore more synth sounds and recording techniques, and just keep improving as an artist and producer as well. One thing I’ve noticed, too, is if I zero in too much on one writing approach or technique, I start to cling to it, relying on that as the way I “should” write everything. And then things just start to feel stale for me, or I run out of juice or hit a writer’s block. Then I find a new technique or gear or collaboration. I guess that’s why my approach keeps changing. We’ll see how long the current one sticks for, ha!

Which track on the EP is your favorite and why?

I think it keeps changing. But at the moment, the opening track "All My Life" is my favorite. I’m really connecting to the meditative and tribal nature of it, and I think the chorus is the catchiest of the songs. It has that "nobody's gonna bring me down!" feeling too, which feels extra relevant now, as many of us in the country feel like we're just pushing forward, doing everything we can to make things work during this difficult time.

I constantly imagine songs in other places: are there any movies/TV shows or any other places where you'd imagine your songs would play?

I can see some of these in crime and murder mystery-type shows. I’ve had people tell me “Imprinted” has a Twin Peaks or James Bond feel to it. So maybe a show or movie with a kind of slinky jazz lounge vibe. There’s definitely a meditative, tribal feel to some of the songs too, so I think they could work in a movie/TV show with that vibe. But honestly, I think less about music in terms of specific movies or TV shows, and more about fitting themes. So, for example, “All My Life” is perfect to capture that theme of being unstoppable, or a character finally going after their dream. “Stranger” would work well for a theme of not feeling like yourself or acting out of character. I think a lot of the songs on the album fit clear, universal themes, and so I’m hoping that I can find some success pitching these to music supervisors, production companies, etc.

For all us young'un's out there: How much of our identity is actually wrapped up in our dreams? Do you think it's important to separate our dreams, identity, and realities?

Uh oh… you’re going to get me on a soapbox, ha!

So I think it’s different for everyone, but I think it’s fair to say that for most of us, yes, our identity is either wrapped up in our dreams and/or in our work. Think about it. When we meet people, how often do we ask, “What do you do?” as if the answer will give us an accurate idea of who they really are. And how often do we judge people based on their careers?

But the truth is, achievements DO NOT define who you are, and do not define your worth, value, or potential. And while dreams can shape us, they can also limit us. They can keep us from seeing other sides of ourselves. And when we’re hyper focused on them, we miss out on so much beauty! I find the most memorable moments of life are actually quiet, behind the scenes, and not at all the result of working towards a dream or goal. [Goals] are not as great when they determine your ultimate view of yourself and control your amount of suffering.

I think I’m just realizing now too, that I hate the term “dream.” Dream sounds like an “all or nothing” approach. “Ideal” feels more flexible. For some reason, it feels healthier for me to look at it as “my ideal situation” version “my dream.”All around us, we’re being told we need to “dream big” and “you can do whatever you set your mind to” and “live up to your potential.” We love to dote on famous and rich people or take courses on how to be like them. Those who never “make it” (whatever that awful phrase even means) are looked at as failures, less successful, not as worthy or talented or smart. It’s. All. Bullshit. And the song on the EP “Imprinted” basically revolves around all of this.

So do I think it’s important to separate our dreams, identity, and realities? I think it’s probably unrealistic to try to. I think it’s all intertwined. Our dreams (or “ideal situation,” ha) will probably shape a bit of who we are (our identity). But I think the key is to understand [that] it’s a very small, ego-driven piece of who we are, and doesn’t ultimately define us. And I think it’s important to see our identities (and dreams for that matter) as constantly shifting. To, as one of my favorite spiritual teachers Pema Chödrön talks about, get comfortable with the fact that the ground beneath us is always shifting. I think it’s healthy to incorporate the stuff on the ego-level (dreams, identity) and the stuff underneath, the non-ego (that pure essence of who we are underneath the dreams, underneath the identity perceptions, underneath all judgments and experiences). Because while the stuff on the surface doesn’t define the essence of who we are, it’s still a reality that we take the train into work, or have to cook dinner for the kids, or need to make money to survive, right? These are still very real; they’re just not the full picture. And that’s the important part.

I think it’s especially important for the younger generations to pay attention to all of this in the age of social media. [Social media has] made understanding the truth of who we are and the idea of living in the non-ego so hard. Social media is all ego, storylines. I’m not saying it doesn’t have a lot of good aspects to it too. But it make[s] it very hard to feel and see the layers of a situation. Things are often black and white on social media, and we are sold specific messages on what it means to be successful and happy. It’s a system based on instant gratification (likes, comments, followers), and we have the tendency to add it up to calculate our value. If we’re not careful, it can drive us further from the whole truth, and deeper into the storylines.

Lia Menaker’s album I am Kyrøs is available now on https://liamenaker.bandcamp.com/.

All proceeds throughout the month of July benefit Melanated Social Work [https://www.instagram.com/melanatedsocialwork/?hl=en].

#james nida grey

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calteahood · 5 years

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Killer Queen {Luke Hemmings}

Rating: M — Please be 18+ to read!

Warnings: SMUT! Includes daddy kink, spitting, spanking, light slapping (very light), & degrading terms.

Word Count: 2.6k

Author's Note: Hi! So, this is my first one shot for 5SOS. Starting with a bang. Here's some filth featuring our good man Luke, completely inspired by the photo above. Started writing this as soon as they posted it, and now this is finally being posted! Please please please share and give feedback! I look forward to hearing what you think! Thank you, enjoy! xx

It was no secret how sexually active you and Luke were. The number of times the boys had walked in on a backstage blowjob was astounding, and you were positive the tour crew members were tired of hearing you through hotel walls every single night. But hey, you couldn't help it. With your life back at home keeping you there it's not like you could visit your rock star of a boyfriend often. It's not like he was physically there all the time to give you all the orgasms you craved.

Plus, as you two furthered your relationship in general, your relationship in the bedroom only seemed to get more.. interesting. What started with missionary position and only doing it tangled in your bed sheets or laying on his couch turned into a whirlwind of kinks. From a position such as doggy style to openly calling him daddy, despite who could hear you in action, you wanted it all. And Luke was more than happy to give it to you whenever, and wherever, you pleased.

Being on the road with the boys didn't just mean great parties and amazing shows. It wasn't only seeing incredible views with your incredible boyfriend. Their band photographer has his camera rolling constantly, capturing moments 24/7. When the American leg of the tour came around, the tour you could actually come to visit for a few days, there was a poster for every show. Sometimes it was cool artwork, but other times the boys posed for the poster.

You were lucky enough to be on set during one specific shoot that drove you wild. With the new album came a new aesthetic, one where the guys happened to feel free to express themselves, even if it seemed a bit feminine at times. You loved it. The photoshoot set was simple, just a white background with a king's throne. The stylist did amazing with the boys, especially Luke, and you couldn't take your eyes off him. A burnt orange flowy button-up covered his torso, tucked into his white pants, and of course he had to wear his sparkly golden boots. Of course. He sat down in the throne, claiming his spot as frontman. It would only fuel his ego more, but he was confident and glowing, and you didn't mind a bit.

All throughout the photoshoot you couldn't help the pool between your legs. Luke really did look like a king, and you were living for his cocky demeanor as he sat on the throne.

Once the shoot was done the set crew began to put things away and the boys went to change out of their outfits into something casual until the concert later. Before following Luke you watched as two men set the throne into a storage room. You wouldn't be surprised if people could literally see the light bulb that popped up above your head, a mischievous grin forming on your lips.

Before Luke reached the dressing room you reached out for his hand. "Hey love, what'd ya think of the shoot?"

You smiled. "I'm sure Andy got some great shots. You guys looked good."

Luke chuckled, of course he looked good. He's worked so hard on being happy and healthy, he's proud to admit that he thinks he's hot shit after years of not knowing who he was. Really, you were thankful. You'd rather have a confident Luke with a hint of cocky instead of a boyfriend who felt lost and ugly in his own skin. "Thanks babe. And what'd you think about me?"

"Best looking one up there."

Kiss ass.

He smiled. "Thank you. I'm gonna head to the dressing room, get changed and chill out for a bit. Are you coming with me or gonna stay out here and wait?"

Now was your chance. You knew the tour team the band has wouldn't care if you two went off for a few (or more) minutes as long as you didn't take all day. Plus it was better than fucking on the bus where everyone could hear. All you had to worry about was Luke. You had to hope he would be down for your evil scheme. "Actually," you began, "I was wondering if you wanted to have a little fun with me?"

This made Luke's brows raise with curiosity, but he caught on to your naughty grin. He knew you were up to no good, and he loved it. "Depends. What kind of fun, little girl?"

Little girl… oh fuck. It felt almost pathetic. He had you in the palm of his hand with a simple pet name. You had to regain at least a bit of dominance, so you stood tall and confident. "Let me show you." He allowed you to lead him into the storage room, which was luckily unlocked, where the throne was placed. Other props for different photo shoots surrounded it, but the chair sat in the center of the room, basically asking to be used. You were definitely going to show him what kind of fun you had in mind. You carefully closed the door, making sure to lock it. Nodding your head to the center of the room, you quietly said, "Sit back on the throne, baby."

His smirk matched yours, proud to know that his girl had something so raunchy up her sleeve.

As he sat on the throne, untucking his shirt and setting his arms on the beautifully detailed armrests, you stood before him. The damn smirk could not leave your face. Without saying anything, you gently grabbed ahold of your lace panties through the fabric of your thin dress, tugging them down your thighs until they were visible and falling down your legs. Without taking your short heels off, you stepped out of the underwear, kicking them off to the side, before moving forward.

You straddled Luke's thighs, your legs slipping through the open arms of the throne so your feet could touch the ground. Thankfully you chose to wear a dress with a more flowy skirt, so it easily rode up, allowing your soaked core to rub against him. You rub your hands up and down his chest, feeling the soft fabric of his shirt. "You looked so good during the photoshoot, daddy.. still do," you mumble. He whispered a quiet thank you, then you spoke up again. "But you'd look so much better on this throne without anything on."

Before he could stop you, your hands gripped the front of his shirt, the part that should be buttoned up, but the boy loved showing off his chest. Without hesitation you pulled your hands apart, yanking open the shirt while little buttons went flying. His grin immediately turned into a frown, and with a low gasp he reached one hand up to roughly grab your jaw.

"Little girl, what is wrong with you? Ripping my shirt like that? I'll have to pay the stylist for that! Are you asking to be punished?" Luke growled, slightly shaking your head with his grip on your jaw.

You moved your hips, grinding against him. "Mmm.. maybe I am, daddy." Despite how mad he seemed at your little stunt you still let out a small giggle and gave him an innocent smile.

"Oh baby, you're in for it. Bet that's just what you want, though." The hand that wasn't holding you moved down to his belt, quickly unbuckling it before moving to undo his pants. He expertly pushed his pants down a bit, pulling his boxers along so his hard cock could spring out. He let out a deep groan at the feeling of freeing his cock from the tight confinements he had on. With the hand that was on your jaw he moved his thumb up to your bottom lip, pushing it against your mouth. "Suck," he demanded, "'m too pissed with you to hear you say anything else."

You happily obliged, allowing his thumb to slip between your soft lips. You moaned around it, swirling your tongue as if you were on your knees sucking him off. Suddenly he pulled his hand away, lifted your dress with his other, and placed his wet thumb roughly on your clit. "Fuck," you breathed out. Your hands slipped down, one wrapping around his cock while the other lightly caressed his balls.

His fingers slid down to your slit, his thumb never stopping its rapid motions, before pushing two fingers into you. The sudden feeling surprised you, but you would be lying if you said you didn't want him to go even harder on you. With both of your hands occupied on each other's bodies you whined. "Daddy, please, more."

A dark chuckle escaped his lips as he pushed in a third. His rings felt cool against the heat between your legs. The hand that held your dress up moved to your cheek, gently caressing it before giving you a couple light taps on the cheek. "You want to be punished so bad, wanna be fucked on this throne like a little slut," his fingers began to move in and out of you faster, bringing you closer to an edge that you so desperately needed, "I'll give you what you want, but don't be pouty when I make your pussy sore from how much you'll be cumming."

"I promise I'll be good daddy, just punish me!" You begged him, and he fell right into it.

Luke moved his hand out from under you, leaving you gasping, wanting something to fill you up. He grabbed onto the end of your dress, yanked it up to pull it off of you and throw it somewhere in the room. He reached behind you to undo the clasp of your bra, which quickly followed the dress. He took this time to caress up and down your sides, squeezing your tits a couple times before moving his hands down to your ass, gripping tightly. You leaned forward, spitting down onto his cock as lube so you could continue jerking him off. He groaned and pulled you closer to him, attaching your lips in a fierce kiss, clashing teeth and biting lips. With him pulling you closer it allowed the lower half of your body to rub against him. You moved your hands to wrap your arms around his neck, placing your pussy against his cock to grind down. Luke moved his hands from the soft flesh of your ass to your hips, grabbing at you roughly.

With both hands squeezing your hips he settled you right above his cock, his tip grazing against your slit, teasing you. It was as if he read your mind, because before you could beg him to put it in he was pushing you down, allowing your pussy to take him until your ass was pressed against his thighs. You both let out a moan, yours a bit more shaky due to how good his big cock felt in you. His arms slipped around you, holding you so you fell into his chest. Your head rested right under his chin as he bucked his hips up once, twice, him hitting it deep in you.

You began to bounce, the soft echo of your ass slapping against his pant-covered thighs. Your arms wrapped around his neck as you moaned into his chest. "Fuuuuck.. oh my— fuck, daddy," you mumbled out.

He reached a hand up to yank on your hair, pulling your head back so that he could look down, directly looking at you. His blue eyes were clouded over with lust as his lips pulled into a devilish smirk. "Open your mouth, princess."

You did as you were told, poking your tongue out. Your hips never faltered, continuing to ride him. He leaned his head down slightly, his grip on your hair getting stronger. When he was no more than two inches away from you he spat into your mouth.

"Close those lips, slut. Swallow like a good girl and maybe then I'll let you swallow my cum too." He yanked your hair once more as he gave you your order. His hands slipped to your hips against, forcing you down on him harder than before. One moved to graze your ass before slapping it. "Count, slut." He slapped your ass again.

"That's two, daddy," you whimpered out. He continued his assault, loving hearing you whine for him. The words, how shaky you sounded. "Three, f-four… five!"

You felt his fingers move to your pussy, thumbs slipping in between your moving bodies to grasp onto your lower lips, spreading them apart and allowing him more access to you. You couldn't help but moan out, only wanting to feel him deeper and deeper.

He chuckled. "Desperate for me in your tight cunt, huh?"

You nodded vigorously. "Yes daddy! More, please more!" You begged and begged, forehead resting against his. You felt him readjust the way he was sitting, making sure his feet were planted firmly on the ground before quickly thrusting up into you, hitting your spot perfectly. "Oh my— fuck! Daddy!"

"Cum on my cock, little girl. Hurry so I can cum down that pretty throat of yours, or else I will take you across my knee and spank you till you can't sit," he threatened. While the ladder sounded amazing, knowing how much you both loved spanking, you wanted him to fuck your face a bit. Really punish you, because you knew damn well that you deserved it after acting like a brat and ripping his shirt. Or maybe you just wanted to be treated like his little slut. Both options sounded spot on.

You bounced faster as his thrusts grew stronger, meeting your center each time snapped his hips up. "Yes daddy, fuck I'm gonna cum. Fuck fuck fuck!" Like that, you feel yourself release, cumming all over his cock. You slowed down your movements, breathing heavy. You couldn't help it, you just had one of the best orgasms of your life. Each time with Luke was amazing, but when he was bossy and dominated you, treating you like a little whore… You knew you shouldn't admit to it, but it turned you on more than you could ever imagine. You loved being daddy's little slut.

He suddenly pulled you off of his lap, staying in his seat but pushing you down onto your knees, grabbing your hair with one hand to push your head towards him. "Open your mouth, little one," he ordered. Of course, you complied. You open your mouth wide, sticking your tongue out, allowing him to shove your head down onto his cock. Instead of thrusting up into your mouth, he used his grip on your hair to move your head up and down, controlling how much of him you took. He gave you a few seconds to catch your breath and suck on the tip, before you heard him give an animal-like growl and shove as much of him down your throat as he could. He did this twice more before groaning and cumming into your mouth. Once he was done you pulled off of him, swallowing then opening your mouth to show that you took every last drop.

Sighing, he leaned back into the throne as one of his hands caressed your cheek, slipping his thumb into your mouth for you to gently suck on. "Little girl, you make me feel like a damn king sometimes, you know that?"

You giggled, moving back up onto his lap. "I'm happy to, daddy. As long as I'm your queen."

With that, he gave a playful slap to your ass. "Of course you are baby, daddy's little queen." He brought you in for a kiss, much sweeter than before, sealing the promise that though he's the one on the throne, he'd do anything for his girl; his queen.

That's for damn sure.

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recommendedlisten · 4 years

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A lot of the types of music that defined the 2010s went missing in 2019. There were definitely event albums from pop icons and its Twitter cult heroes as well as rap egos whose fingerprints helped define the game this decade, but most of it kept on brand and didn't chance changing the shape of their own sound. Similarly, the country music scene will probably always survive for better or for worse even if it doesn't have artists like Kacey Musgraves pushing its borders outward in colorful directions. This, however, was actually the best thing that could happen to independent music as we turn the corner into the 2020s. If there is one takeaway from the artists who put their best work forward in 2019, it's that now is the time to take risks, ignore algorithms, and let your sonic truths fly, as it rendered the most intersting new sounds we've heard outside of the poptimist eyeview in quite some time. Least surprising? Leading the way among the best of them is an artist whose career has been a narrative of constant innovation and reinvention, and has used our culture climate as her canvas. The 30 Best Albums of 2019 were simply put, fascinating exporations in music.

30. Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs [Mexican Summer]

When so much of today’s music is influenced by a constant need to improve on production methods and recording innovation, an album that comes along like Jessica Pratt’s Quiet Signs feels like the true alien in our sonic spectrum. Pratt, a bonafide Californian singer-songwriter whose voice sounds more wiser and worn than that of the 30-something odd years she’s walked this earth, has a mystical ability in crafting human folktales. When she sings among soft-strummed nylon and gentle arrangements of pianos, synthetic reverb, and flutes, it feels like you’re hearing a memory come through the airwaves at a distance of somewhere between recent history and another life light years away.To hear Pratt share reflections on memory and occurrences anew is to find yourself webbed within her cosmic plane, however, where the enigmatic nature of her voice, sound, and storytelling transcend any timeline.

29. Field Mouse - Meaning [Topshelf Records]

Part of adulting is growing to accept that we don’t have all of the answers as to why life happens as it does.Meaning is an important album that reminds us of that, but also what it represents for Field Mouse as artists and where we stand collectively at this point on the indie rock timeline. Rachel Browne alongside guitarist Andrew Futral, bassist Saysha Heinzman, and keyboardist Zoë Browne deliver what is to date their most consistent collection of subterranean rock at a moment within the independent music scene where it’s value is becoming more and more rooted in what it gives back to us emotionally rather than fleeting style statements. Though these songs are rife with self-doubt, anxiety, and personal wishes to recovery that may not be your own experiences, the album acts as a mirror for them. Channelling every inkling of ensuing emotion into hooks constructed and compressed in both whirlwind and comedowns, earthly life lessons toiled in infectious choruses, and an engaging pace showcases the Brooklyn four-piece’s strongest side at all corners.

28. American Pleasure Club - fucking bliss [Run for Cover Records]

Sam Ray would have either preferred for American Pleasure Club’s latest effort fucking bliss to have never come out at all. It’s technically not even the project’s second APC effort, as it was recorded back in 2015 just as Teen Suicide was dissolving while Ray found himself in the throes of “manic, terrified, paranoid burst of energy.” That’s very much the best way to sum up American Pleasure Club’s long-overdue rough gem of an album, though, and despite its ugly exterior and disturbing background stories referencing French writer Édouard Levé’s final book and death premonition Suicide, it prevails as being one of the most sonically astounding compositions of art Sam Ray has created in his career. Listeners sorely missing the unabashed abrasiveness since the name change have plenty to indulge in here, with ghostly pianos and vocals submerged in fog being rattled by high voltage static bursts. This constant battle between the light and dark is motif throughout the album, with moments of beauty upheld just long enough to admire for their purity before being temporarily mauled away by grizzly impressions from corners unseen.

27. CEREMONY - In the Spirit World Now [Relapse Records]

If it weren’t for change and the audacity to take creative risks, CEREMONY may not have become one of the most interesting and influential punk bands out there of this past decade. With In the Spirit World Now, their sixth studio effort, the five-piece has returned from a break charged up and more certain now than ever as to what kind of band they want to be. The listen is transcendent in both its style and energy, making for arguably one of the most fascinating punk albums released all year. The Rohnert Park band moves through the listen in a way that takes you through doors of an altered dimension without resistance. There, frontman Ross Farrar finds his voice in its digital breakdowns and short jabs of electrocution. This is no mere state of reincarnation either, as In the Spirit World Now has simply found CEREMONY venturing to a time and space where the rest of the punk world has not caught up with their shape-shifting energy yet.

26. SPELLLING - Mazy Fly [Sacred Bones Records]

Mazy Fly, SPELLLING’s sophomore effort, is Tia Cabral’s first effort being positioned toward a wider net of audiences through the dark music tastemakers of Sacred Bones. Where its debut predecessor in 2017′s Pantheon of Me served as an entry point to her supernatural electronic pop-R&B aesthetic crafted with a Berkeley bedroom fixtures, Mazy Fly is the listen where her ideas are being colored in with bolder lines and a bliss of neon to compliment the ambient waves stirring throughout. Cabral’s capacity to take us on an odyssey that passes through a multi-universe where we experience everything from hypnotic enchantment, existential mysticism, and the horrors of our own history with the same thread of magical lift carrying them through makes Mazy Fly altogether transcendental, even if a trip being full of unexpected turns are the intended direction of her sonic space ship.

25. Wicca Phase Springs Eternal - Suffer On [Run for Cover Records]

As Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, Adam McIlwee’s mopish vocals that once emoted their way through bright textures of post-hardcore riffage with an eased shrug, as the former lead singer of Tigers Jaw has discovered a seamless sweet spot in transcending that same sedated energy over 808s and a murky post-trap atmosphere that aligns with the morbid fashion statements of today’s Soundcloud rap scene. Suffer On, his proper debut full-length, finds Wicca Phase Springs Eternal ambitiously setting out to connect scenescapes from his past and the fleeting present. Vapory, synthetic beats and Wicca Phase’s macabre persona have arrived to conjure themselves within while also stirring up self-haunted ruminations using barebones guitar strums and billowing instrumentals accented by synesthesia. The listen ambitiously connects scenescapes from McIlwee’s past and the fleeting present in a way that stylistically shouldn’t add up, but cohesively does.

24. Girlpool - What Chaos Is Imaginary [ANTI-]

There was a time when Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker’s sights were merely set on their world getting bigger, but with Girlpool’s third studio effort, the duo have ventured into an expanded universe of promising new patterns in their continuous evolution as artists and individuals. What Chaos Is Imaginary is the natural progression forward from what their 2017 sophomore effort Powerplant generated in melancholic electricity. Tividad’s songwriting blusters in dreamy swaths of reverb, and although the stories told only become more opaque in their synthetic texture, it’s fitting for the outer body experiences they indulge. Tucker on the other hand is becoming comfortable with their hands, with LP three being the first release since they began transitioning and discovering their own sure footing in brittle indie rock honesty. We’re witnessing both Girlpool members come into their own elements here, and having each other’s backs every step of the way only reinforces that growth.

23. Jamila Woods - LEGACY! LEGACY! [Jagjaguwar Records]

Chicago’s contemporary R&B scene is shimmering thanks to the creative wisdoms being shared by Jamila Woods within her sophomore effort LEGACY! LEGACY! The songwriter, poet and activist, whose breakout debut HEAV scribed a sense of empowerment as both a woman and a member of the black community in a body of art that doubled as her tribute to her Chi-town roots and identity as well its potential, pays it forward in reverse on her masterful sophomore follow-up through songs inspired by the heroes who helped pushed boundaries in the right direction. From their vantage point, Woods acknowledges her own platform she’s been gifted due to their efforts, and fully embraces the moment to shine. Embellished by a sparkling, future-proof production crossing the live energy in its instrumental arrangements, Woods voice is the vessel for a higher power in gratitude and self-love. LEGACY! LEGACY! lifts her every being -- as well as those who came before her -- to a new level up with it.

22. Blanck Mass - Animated Violence Mild [Sacred Bones Records]

If this is the apocalypse, then Animated Violence Mild is the dance party on our way out of existence and into oblivion. The third studio effort from Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power and his experimental electronic moniker Blanck Mass exits the grizzly decay of its predecessor World Eater and opts for celebrating the destruction of humankind by way of its ignorance in gross capitalist agendas, toxic consumer culture, and climate threats with bright, movement-based compositions that usher the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight with anticipation. From Powers’ vantage point, the countdown is akin to a New Year’s ball drop. Stardust confetti and a fully edged energy build their way towards this climactic end. Perhaps the album was intended for the Earth alone, as it rids its surface of humans once and for all, and accordingly gives good reason to rejoice in our defeat.

21. Weeping Icon - Weeping Icon [Fire Talk Records]

The self-titled debut full-length from New York City’s Weeping Icon not only avoids regurgitating past noise – It becomes its own culture-consuming meta monster, and does so in a bout of irony in turning a shattered mirror on so many of the communication errors we hold today that neutralize individuality in the Internet void. Essentially, guitarist and vocalist Sarah Fantry, drummer and vocalist Lani Combier-Kapel, bassist Sarah Reinold and now-former guitarist Sarah Lutkenahaus have weaponized their facetious cynicism in their wash of static to the effect of making the world look as twisted as it really is upon realizing how mindless we’ve become with our modes of communication and self-projection. When we are not part of the problem, Weeping Icon reminds us that we are often complicit to them as well. Solutions are available, but realistically, Weeping Icon accept that the world best lived in is the one we make in the dark.

20. Glitterer - Looking Through the Shades [ANTI-]

Ned Russin is moving on from Title Fight, and yet, even he can’t tell you what the final destination is. On his debut album Looking Through the Shades as Glitterer, the undefinable, experimental hardcore and synth-pop band from the presumed former Title Fight bassist and vocalist, no one idea of his sounds truly etched in stone yet, and often, what you hear can be subjective to the listener’s interpretation of it based around their own individual experiences as much as they’re born out of his. Russin makes it a point to make listeners second guess his intentions with a dichotomy of first person narratives and those that explore the extensions of the self. In his sonic vessel, he stylistically shifts from poppy heartbeats in Casiotone to reverb-drenched melodics that in a very faint way resemble a natural progression of where Title Fight were moving sonically on 2015′s Hyperview. Propping up Glitterer’s weirdness as far up to the surface as possible are Alex Giannascoli, b.n.a. (Sandy) Alex G, and heavy music engineer Nate Rizk (known for his work with Code Orange and Power Trip.)

19. Solange - When I Get Home [Columbia Records]

Solange’s 2017 soul-baring standout A Seat at the Table was a contemporary R&B pop masterpiece that demanded a voice for women of color amid the white noise of a volatile world, and executed within pristine songwriting precision that made her undeniable to ignore. With her fourth studio effort When I Get Home, Solange is setting her soul free, however, as she escapes into an experimental sonic revelation obscured by the pieces of its many Houstonian fingerprints pieced together in mosaic fashion that feel fittingly reactionary to its predecessor. Here, she crosses a 19-song-long universe in just 38 minutes time through production locally sourced and rooted in chopped and screwed samples, cosmic jazz free flows, and futuristic hip-hop. Appearances by the likes of Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler, the Creator, Steve Lacy, and Pharrell are masterfully complimentary, yet barely visible against the backdrop of her black energy. The listen wholly beams even when refracted in the light.

18. Charly Bliss - Young Enough [Barsuk Records]

The charm in Charly Bliss’ 2017 breakout debut Guppy was in how the Brooklyn band catapulted a dizzy of emotions into buoyant, bite-sized, sugar-coated electric riffs. Where those kinetic bursts ultimately landed next was part of the wonder. Young Enough, the band’s sophomore effort, provides that answer in tongue-in-cheek delivery with their sonic palette being decidedly adulted into pristine pop-rock. The blinding radiance and waxed production of alternative maximalist Joe Chiccarelli is Charly Bliss’ defense mechanism to process tough pills to swallow out there in the real world. Where Guppy was sweet even when it had its candy hearts smashed into pieces,Young Enough is a growth spurt not only for Eva Hendrick as a songwriter, but a person as well, as she steps out from behind the character sketches that preceded it, and opts to confront heavy darkness without stumbling over her own two feet. The light is there to thematically guide the LP down rocky paths of healing, and by the end, Charly Bliss find a way to the end of the tunnel using their own unconventional creative wisdom.

17. Great Grandpa - Four of Arrows [Double Double Whammy]

As the tarot attributed in the LP title suggests, a period of rest and relaxation has reinvented the dynamic of Great Grandpa, as Four of Arrows is beyond the basic guitar rock energy of the Pac-Northwest band’s debut album Plastic Cough, and instead spills over with more than enough creative risk in their newly uncovered layers that there’s no way one word can box this listen in. Guitars unspool grief and growing in picks and knots, as co-vocalists Carrie Goodwin and guitarist Alex Menne’s presence sands and softens against one another thhrough a strange teetering of raw emotion on the edge of anthemic post-rock, melancholic harmonies and spry multi-instrumentals filled with country-chorded crackles, and ruminative Sufjanisms expanding the air around them. The album is sonic justification for every human’s need to process, reinvent and evolve not just for the sake of moving forward, but to become the best version of themselves as well.

16. Boy Harsher - Careful [Nude Club]

Boy Harsher vocalist Jae Matthews has likened their sound to that of David Lynch Lost Highway, and with the arrival of their sophomore effort Careful, it’s easy to hear why: The album is the Western Mass duo’s strongest representation of a sonic thrillride through the dark of the night where reality and surrealism merge onto the same lane, each exit along the way, revelling in uncertainty through human vessel form. Boy Harsher’s collective’s strength in embodying a centripetal energy with their sound from Careful’s start to finish acts as their own highway. It was a formula they experimented with on 2017′s Country Girl EP in short story form, and is one that gets an expanded view here as we’re presented through an obscured lens in tales of passion, loss, and escapism that are vaguely autobiographical, and informed by Matthews and Gus Muller’s own personal brushes with death, illness and the decay of their own romantic partnership. Channeled across Careful’s storyboard of 10 tracks using compressed EBM currents, pulsing beats, and the bare minimum of lumens necessary to see through the pitch black and icy pavement which Boy Harsher race,

15. Jenny Lewis - On the Line [Warner Bros. Records]

On the Line confirms what we’ve already know about Jenny Lewis, and that’s how she’s a songwriter treasure beyond just the Los Angeles indie rock diamonds in the rough which her crystal powers originally were unearthed. Four albums into her second chapter as a solo musician following her years fronting Rilo Kiley, Lewis’ songwriting craft only continue to polish itself clearly in the Laurel Canyon breeze and the stony-eyed sunshine glares. As with her past journeys, On the Line is marked with travel stories of poets, romantic vagabonds, boys named Bobby, girls named Caroline, and plenty of drugs. Each comes to life vividly as if they were her own to live (perhaps they even are…) and though backed by an ensemble of rock virtuosos such as Don Was, Benmont Trench, Beck, and Ringo Starr, Lewis holds the spotlight all her own.

14. Russian Baths - Deepfake [Good Eye Records]

To be a noise rock band of today, survival is dependent on separating yourself in the dark. Though Brooklyn duo Russian Baths have breathed in every ounce of oxygen of EVOL era gore, a Loveless gaze, and channeling the unrelentless energy of Drive Like Jehu’s rome plows, their debut album Deepfake turns the page on the grizzled corners of modern “heavy” music toward a polymorphic point singed with synthesizers and elegiac pianos, scattered in a space where no other matter yet exists. Throughout the album, the duo of Jess Rees and Luke Koz toy with the pull of gravity to supply that pressure, with mixing by Ben Greenberg of Uniform incisively making every directional turn razorlike. The band’s multi-faceted approach to personifying in a discordant beauty the most internalized, self-manufactured emotions of modern human terror. Deepfake sees through this disconnect, and uses the fear it births as their instrument to create a new kind of noise.

13. Control Top - Covert Contracts [Get Better Records]

The modern post-punk landscape was in danger of becoming a reductive cliche of itself as it softened its spikes, but Philly trio Control Top are razor-sharp and full of fire in their delivery with their debut full-length Covert Contracts. It’s an extreme case of the personal, political and technologically terrifying converging at the forefront of the conversation as well as attacking your senses, with lead singer and bassist Ali Carter acting as the live wire mouthpiece with a maximalist current from drummer Alex Lichtenauer and guitarist Al Creedon downloading a surge of dark truths from their secret server. In the age of information overload, Control Top are here to tear down capitalist walls and the algorithms set up to pocket millions off of it one piece of the hate machine at a time. When it’s over, Covert Contracts has hopefully hacked a staying power in your brain as well.

12. Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue [Pure Noise Records]

A Different Shade of Blue is landmark album that will define the modern metalcore scene for years to come in the same way Converge’s Jane Doe did nearly two decades ago. With an insatiable hunger to destroy and reconstruct the scene in their own shattered mirror, Knocked Loose’s sophomore breakout aspires to bring a new kind of intensity as well as raw emotion to the forefront of the latest wave of thrashers such as Code Orange and Jesus Piece who are fully feeling the futility of these times in their heaviness. Most noticeably on their greatest leap of faith into themselves is how the Kentucky five-piece are not only refining their rage, but controlling it without coarsing down its knife-like edges either. Every breakdown and growl exorcised from Bryan Garris’ throat is laid down with purpose, making their blackened and blued hues impossible to ignore.

11. FKA twigs - MAGDALENE [XL Recordings]

FKA twigs’ sophomore effort MAGDALENE sees Tahlia Barnett handedly pushing all dalliances in the dark even further out in a recorded document that captures a specifc kind of heartache with shape-shifting formation. Looking back at how far she has come as an aritst over the last half of this decade, twigs’ influence is again heard redesigning today’s experimental pop formula all the way from the underground up into the commercial pop kingdom in a way where every drop of blood, sweat and tears make their way into the canvas despite the artificial assistance. MAGDALENE does not withhold any part of Tahlia Barnett’s emotions spilling their way into its recording, and the way she merges of the most purely devastating human experiences with compounds of electricity, light and sound makes her second and best work to date something the rest of her peers now have the daunting task of aspiring to replicate in their own reflection.

10. Club Night - What Life [Tiny Engines]

These days, pop music has become synonymous with indie music, and being weird not for fashion’s sake in your style of rock couldn’t be any more refreshing. On Club Night’s debut full-length effort What Life, the Oakland experimental five-piece are joyous in that realization without needing to be as obtuse about it as some of those past gen influencers. Frontperson Josh Bertram is deep in his ruminations and uses his position for advocacy in varying degrees despite his band’s far out mix of spastic yelps, fidgeting time sigs, and hints of post-hardcore and Pac Northeast riffage compressed kinetically that could have easily gotten away with leaving an impression through vague imagery. He and Club Night strike with their intentions in lightning bolt striations from the personal to the political (or both at once, in some cases,) and to experience their art is to feel enough of a jolt of electricity moving through you in he same way it does through their music that reminds you of why you’re alive.

9. black midi - Schlagenheim [Rough Trade]

The UK four-piece black midi display a level of perfectionism in the abstract that makes it easy to hear how we could be on the verge of the next chapter of post-punk’s future. With Schlagenheim, their debut album, they give us more than an open-ended conclusion. It questions any labeling of the band whatsoever, and repeatedly challenges the notions even when you think you’ve figured at least part of it out. Their sound is beyond concrete form categorization, as it pieces together a revolving assembly of limbs made up of aforementioned post-punk influence as well as industrial, noise rock, art rock, hardcore, experimental jazz, and even country. Splattering noise across the canvas forces the listener to draw interpretations of the quartet’s merger of sensory induction and intention in gallery form. It’s on the path of the best adventures in avant rock at the turn of the millennium as heard in classics by Boredoms, Black Dice, and Lightning Bolt, and in today’s safer musical landscape, it’s exactly what’s been missing.

8. Elizabeth Colour Wheel - NOCEBO [The Flenser]

There really aren’t any concrete shapes or sounds in the heavy music world to describe what Elizabeth Colour Wheel are creating. Regardless of that, the Boston five-piece’s debut full-length NOCEBO pulls in a whirlwind onslaught of harsher elements from the post-hardcore, black metal, experimental noise, and shoegaze soundscapes, and siphons them through the tour de force that is their frontperson Lane Shi. As the album title – a nod to a medical term to describe a detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic factors – might suggest, Shi and her bandmates master the art of devastation through cataclysmic eruptions and momentary elegies for what’s been lost in their wake. Nothing’s left without ruin in this listen, and that could very well be the key as to why Elizabeth Colour Wheel leave no corner of the heavy music world untouched with their path of destruction.

7. Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell [Interscope Records]

It’s been a long, weird. eyebrow-raising way to the present with Lana Del Rey, but as modern times have only gotten worse, her pop shock has only proven to be a reflection of our reality. On Del Rey’s modern morbid opus Norman Fucking Rockwell, she preaches to her choir of listeners who have accepted that there is no happy ending in this lifetime.This hour-long collection of songs is not only just that, but Lana Del Rey in her most astonishing form as well. Plenty of prose-on-point Lana-ismsare woven throughout that serve to solidify her self-made mythology and give listeners a deadly, vicarious rush in their veins. Its cohesive career-peak of songwriting exists with contemporary shades of blue and fashion-forward cool built into its structure by producer Jack Antonoff as well. Together, the tandem stylistically mediate Del Rey’s elegy noir by mourning a generation who’ve never really had anything to live for, because it’s always been gone before they had a chance to hold onto it.

6. Big Thief - U.F.O.F. [4AD]

Entering the atmosphere like an unidentified flying object is Big Thief’s U.F.O.F. We’re familiar with the four-piece, of course, having given the world two ornately beautiful modern indie-folk offerings in 2016′s debut Masterpiece and their 2016 listmaking breakout Capacity, but with the Brooklyn band’s third studio effort, the four-piece of lyricist and guitarist Adrianne Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek, bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia have pushed a sound, that at its foundation could be construed as “simple”, into the outer limits where strives in consideration and a risk-born hunger to evolve have redefined not just what they are, but what esoteric rock music made with fundamental instrumentation can be when it lives inside its own universe. Pay attention to the smaller wonders in Big Thief’s songcraft, and it’s really that which is hiding in plain sight that makes U.F.O.F. an awe of a listening experience, throrugh rippled arpeggio, shrill screams, and looped tape samples threading around Lenker’s character sketches. They’ve expanded the sky and widened their eyes beyond what we see before us. Big Thief simply sound like their own adventure.

5. oso oso - basking in the glow [Triple Crown Records]

A positive outlook doesn’t come natural to all people. In a world where the macro and the micro of bad things happening can whelm easily, putting into practice looking at the glass half full eats a lot of energy especially. oso oso mastermind Jade Liliitri is confronting that time in his life where he needs to do just that. With his third studio effort basking in the glow, he’s gracious of the good time while they’re here, and giving them justice just as well in a technically tight outing in emo-pop precision. Truly, there hasn’t been an album as vivid and picturesque in spite of grim realities as this since Saves the Day’s criminally underrated power-punk-pop crossover classic in 2002′s In Reverie with both its form and texture, and go big or go home personality, which in this case also serves the greater good of, er, trying to see the good out there in your life despite. The struggle to get there is real, though, as Lilitri puts it a few times, yet he knows how to twist life’s misfortune in a way that let’s both souls coexist in the same spotlight peacefully.

4. (Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar [Domino Records]

Hodgepodging indie rock, pop, country, electronic and even noise and hardcore in some instances within his music, not knowing where (Sandy) Alex G will veer next on the course of his prolific body of art has been half of the delight of taking a dive into the unknown with the Philly songwriter. With his eighth full-length effort House of Sugar, (Sandy) Alex G formally graduates from wunderkind status to pure songwriting genius, as the collection of tracks abstracted in open barn country, warped post-R&B rhythms and his gussied up version of indie rock formalities is proof positive that there isn’t a style that doesn’t fit Giannascoli’s world of whimsical and terrifying wonder. Though his 2018′s critical breakout Rocket had no faulty parts attached to it, House of Sugar is as if you took all its best ones and decided to double down on its bittersweet and stickiness, and use that to construction what amounts to (Sandy) Alex’s most inviting collection of songs intricately designed on his vast sonic map yet.

3. Empath - Active Listening Night On Earth [Get Better Records / Fat Possum]

Empath softly wink back to a bygone noise pop era in a way that rekindles it with a different kind of magic for these times. For those who’ve no prior relationship with it, then their debut album Active Listening: Night On Earth will sound spectacularly refreshing compared to modern day standards of what indie rock and pop music has devolved into since. The Philly punk four-piece would probably reject any notion that might compare them to the past, but what makes Active Listening: NIght On Earth its own true sonic marvel is in how Empath move their version of noise pop into one that travels beyond its compressed indoor limits. Emily Shanahan and Randall Coon’s zoom through dense air with woozy keys as vocalist and guitarist Catherine Elicson and drummer Garrett Koloski batter impressionistic detail into the canvas. It’s as if the four have found a secret door to escape the natural plane altogether for some kind of after hours unknown. It’s reprieve from time’s hands in that regard where the only constant is motion and Empath’s ability to turn every physical sense inside out.

2. Angel Olsen - All Mirrors [Jagjaguwar]

Across this past decade, Angel Olsen has taken us on one of the most adventurous songwriter journeys of any kind, her nomadic origins rustling in lo-fidelity kindling in her early work before her storytelling began to flourish almost into a spiritual experience as she adorned prose and her vocal power with intricate details of synth-pop and string symphonies beyond the traditional finger-picking and electrical currents on 2017′s My Woman. Now that she’s achieved cloud status, she controls the forces of nature on a greater scale with her fifth studio effort All Mirrors. With this effort, Olsen challenges her creative being to become something greater than it already has proven of itself to be. It’s the arguably the first album for that reason where both sound and her composed fury are equally capable of pushing one another into directions far beyond where she’s been rather than the focal point of her voice being the sole bearer of carrying that weight along her travels. In short, this is the place where Angel Olsen has at least found her truest sense of self in sound.

1. Kim Gordon - No Home Record [Matador Records]

Though her influence can be heard within the work of practically every artist on this list, Kim Gordon has managed to elude putting out any music under her own name throughout her iconic career as the co-founder of Sonic Youth as well as her other projects like Body/Head, her noise-drone duo with Bill Nace, or her psychedelic freakout Free Kitten alongside Pussy Galore’s Julie Cafritz. What’s most impressive about how she finally has done so after all of these years with her debut solo effort No Home Record is through her continuous immersion of culture and feeding it back to us in a raw and conflicted form, Gordon’s timing of doing so could not have been any better. As the presentation of our current times by her hands as well as that of producer Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Angel Olsen), Gordon captures the decay of modern pop culture in all of its prematurely decaying parts. Across the listen, the corrosion of culture is evident as each track crumbles from gloss until it is eventually left spread as particles between a growing voids of disconnect. Consumerism, technology and social conditions, for better or for worse, are fodder for Gordon’s avant pop analysis. This is not a self-portrait of Kim Gordon, but it’s very much an accurate depiction of her world as our world – That strange place that resides between chaos and complacent comfort, with her art being the disrupter in each of their patterns to reveal their intersect.

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ghoulboyboos · 6 years

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Inspired by doppelgangers i saw on my cruise. Ryan is a performer in the musical shows and shane is one of the photographers on board

Oh boy, nonnie! I have never been on a cruise ship in my life, all that I have is Google and my imagination. I hope I can get the scenery across

Thestage of the Calliope isbigger than any cruise ship’s Ryan has ever been on. He and thetroupe get a little lost in blocking and re-blocking the show for thenew venue. The director has already slipped out for his seventhcigarette break and it’s getting a little concerning. Ryan looks athis co-star who just shrugs. She is twisting in the cute blue dressthat is part of her costumes and Ryan snorts and pulls her into aspin. Somewhere behind the stage, “The nicest kids in town” isplaying and everyone else seems pretty chill with the new place.

Theyeventually figure all of it out. Hairsprayis still well liked, because it’s bright and happy and positive.Ryan isn’t sure if the rich and mighty are the crowd who gets mostexcited about the show, but they definitely seem to like it. Whenhe’s not on stage, he glimpses out through the curtains and frombehind the backstage door. Most of the guests are dressed in allkinds of expensive outfits, but they keep it pretty tasteful. Ryanswipes the lock that is half-plastered to his forehead to give himthat I’m trying to keep my hair in linelook Link Larkin is rocking outof his eyes and looks around. The waiters and waitresses are prettybusy and Ryan knows alcohol is flowing on these cruises like mad. Hehears a click and looks to his left.

Aman is standing nearby. He’s dressed in dark chinos and a blackHenley with a jean jacket over it. Apart from that, he has severalbags and pieces of equipment strapped to him, all of which seems tobelong to the camera he is holding in his hands. They’re nicehands, Ryan notices. Long fingered and lean. The man isn’t exactlywhat he would consider conventionally attractive, but in a weird way,he’s sort of cute. His face is long, his nose is big and his eyeskind of droopy. But he has soft, fluffy brown hair and a nice stubblecovering his chin and jaw. He’s also tall. Really, really tall andRyan licks his lips thinking about someone that height pinning him tothe next wall to kiss him senseless.

OkayRyan, chill your bi little brain. It’s just a photographer.

Saidphotographer stands up to his full height – and Ryan can’t helpbut gulp a little at that – and removes the lens of his camera,swapping it for another one with quick, practiced movement. When helooks up, his gaze brushes Ryan and Ryan can’t help it, he lifts ahand in greeting and smiles a bit. The guy pauses and then grins andwaves back.

Somewherebetween high school and college, Ryan has learned to always followwhat’s happening on the show even if he was paying attention tosomething else. He knows he’s going to be on stage in five, so hejust smirks at the tall guy, gestures towards the stage and shrugsapologetically. The photographer seems amused and just nods and giveshim a thumbs up. Ryan chuckles as the thumbs up turns into fingerguns and a wink. He pretends to swoon and sees the guy’s earspinken. Interesting.He smiles at the man before he ducks backstage and gets ready for hisnumber.

Afterthe show, he finds the photographer again. He is ambling about,offering people at the tables to take their picture on the Calliopewith the show’s scenery in the background. From what Ryan can see,the guy is joking a lot, making people laugh genuine laughter whilehe is taking pictures. Afterwards, he shows them the tablet he iscarrying in a bag under his arm, probably showing off their pictureson a big screen. He hands out business cards and Ryan can see himcollect the odd tip, always humble and grateful. Ryan is hanging outat the bar and buffet. He normally focuses on buffets and stacks hisplate with a bunch of fried food, but tonight, he is distracted. Ryanisn’t sure what exactly draws him to the guy. He is neitherparticularly hot or charming, but there is just something about himthat seems friendly and comforting and, as embarrassing it feels,Ryan could use someone who is just supportive and nice.

Luckily,his interest doesn’t seem as one-sided as he has feared, becauseeventually, the guy passes the bar and just quickly grabs a sausageroll to stuff his face with before he is heading straight for Ryan.Ryan knows he should probably fall into a pose that makes him lookaloof and charming, but he is sick and tired of all the flirting tipshe has gotten over the years. He feels a genuine attraction to thisman, so he decides to be genuine in return.

“Uh.Hey.” The man smiles down at Ryan and Ryan feels his stomach flip alittle. “I saw you earlier, remember me?”

Ryanchuckles. “Yeah, uh. I do remember. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Thephotographer smiles thinly.

“Itdepends on the person. There are some who consider the staff kind of…replaceable. They don’t recall our names or faces. Not that yourcrew did that, but some other show folk have done that. Sorry.”

Ryanwaves him off.

“Noworries, you’re not insulting me or anything. I know some peoplehave huge egos.”

Theman nods.

“Isit okay if I hang out here a bit?”

Ryanblinks.

“Ofcourse! You don’t have to ask that.”

Theguy leans against the wall next to Ryan and he seems to relax alittle as he looks over and smiles. He has a nice smile and Ryanfinds himself mirroring it.

“Iguess I got in touch with too many… uh, complicated people.” Theman says and laughs. “There are some people who don’t want to beseen with me.”

Ryanfrowns.

“Whythe fuck not?”

Theguy shrugs.

“Classicism,I think? I’m just a dudetaking pictures of people who deserve having their picture takenbecause they are rich and beautiful.” He sounds a little bitter andRyan feels himself nodding.

“Yeah,I get it. The kind who wants entertainment but treats entertainerslike dancing monkeys. I know what you mean.”

Hecatches the guy shoot him a look, measuring and unsure.

“I’msorry you get that shit, too. If it helps, I thought your show wasreally amazing.”

Ryansmiles.

“Itdoes. Thank you.”

Thephotographer laughs and it sounds of relief.

“I’mShane, by the way.”

Heholds out his hand and Ryan shakes it.

“I’mRyan.”

Shanesmiles back at him and Ryan could swear he sees a sparkle in thosehazel eyes.

“Well,Ryan. I took a bunch of pictures of your show… wanna help me pickthe best ones?”

Theyend up at a table in the back where they go through the picturesShane took. Ryan is impressed. Whatever Shane did to take and editthem, the colors are popping wonderfully, which has always beensomething that was very important to him in this show. Shane alsoseems to be able to capture movement very well without causing thepicture to blur. Ryan smiles down at a picture of the main actressand him and he feels great.

“Isthat your girlfriend?” Shane asks.

Ryanknows that tone. That actively by-the-by behavior. The question thatwas really a different one: “Are you single or are you taken?”

Hedecides to go easy on the guy.

“No,no. She’s a great friend but we could never fit together likethat.” He laughs.

“Ihad a boyfriend a while ago, but it didn’t work out so I’ve beenliving the single life ever since.”

Shanelooks over at him, eyes widening and Ryan smirks at him.

Theydon’t push anywhere that night. Instead, they talk about picturesand Shane explains to him what adjustments he made to capture thecolors so well. Ryan listens intently but still instantly forgetshalf of it. He admits it to Shane, who just laughs and promises toteach him again and again if he wants to.

Afterthat, they are sort of glued at the hip. Some of Shane’sphotographs are just for Ryan. Moments during the show where Shanehad zoomed in to take a picture of Ryan looking especially good. Ryanfeels flattered, but he also is worried. He doesn’t want this guyto believe that he is just talking to him so he gets the bestpictures.

Hemakes a plan. On one of the nights they don’t have a show, he hangsaround the dining room until Shane is done taking pictures. He wavesat the other man to catch his attention and his heart flutters whenhe sees that face split into a smile. They hang out in the kitchen.The cook lets them, because they are technically staff and each ofthem is sitting in the back with a filled plate while talking.

“Iwas wondering.” Ryan starts, pushing himself to continue. “Do youmaybe want to hang out at my cabin later? Each of the actors got abottle of Champagne as a gift from the captain. But drinking alonesounds like a stupid idea.”

Heis laughing for good measure, but the way Shane’s eyes widen almostmakes him laugh even more.

“Uh,I mean. Are you sure you don’t want to keep it for a betteroccasion?”

Ryanleans in, not too much, but enough to insinuate something.

“Ican’t think of a better occasion than sharing it with you.”

Thereit is, the clear breach from fun flirting to serious flirting and hedoesn’t miss Shane swallowing.

“Imean… I feel really honored…”

Ryan’sheart starts to beat faster and faster as he is waiting for the“but”. It doesn’t come, however.

“Areyou sure?” Shane asks, eyes wide and stunned. Ryan frowns at him.

“Ofcourse I’m sure! Why wouldn’t I?”

Shaneblinks and actually blushes.

“Imean. You’re a pretty popular actor and singer and dancer. I’mjust a dude who takes pictures.”

AndRyan understands. His heart melts a little as he looks at Shane.

“Youwere never just a dude who takes pictures to me. I would love to hangout with you whichever way you want, Shane. Okay?”

Shaneonly nods, face pink.

Theyshare the Champagne and talk about shows and pictures and filming.Shane explains a bit about his camera to Ryan. He picks throughsome adjustments and talks about exposure and light with Ryanslouching on the bed next to him. Ryan doesn’t quite understandwhat Shane is getting at, until he catches a certain sentence:

“See,most people on these cruises are rich, privileged white people.Photographing them is easy because many cameras are made to taketheir picture. But when someone has brown or olive or black skin, youhave to fiddle with exposure a bit.”

Ryanwatches him with interest. They are about half way into the bottleand Ryan has taken off his blazer. He is still wearing the pink shirtand maroon pants after discarding the tie. Shane picks a lens andsits up to point the camera at Ryan. Ryan looks up, champagne flutein one hand, eyes wide and the flash goes off, less blinding than heexpected. Shane takes his tablet and swipes across the screen a bitand Ryan sits up to look over his shoulder. He sees himself, leaningon the bed, slightly surprised… and his skin glows.The brown tint fits the reddish outfit so well he feels his breathstop.

“See,babe?” He hears Shane say. “I told you. You’re a sight tobehold. Living, breathing art. I’m just some dude who takespictures.”

“Ah.”Ryan empties his flute and puts it away. He is familiar with thefeeling of inadequacy.

“Youthink I’m just hanging with you because you take good pictures?”

Shane’seyebrows twitch upwards.

“Uh…I don’t want to sound like I have a bad impressionof you- It’s just-”

Ryansmiles.

“Iget it. A bunch of people in the business have seduced you for you totake nice pictures of them?”

Shanechuckles.

“No,it never actually gets to the seducing. They just hang with me a bitand I take a bunch of pictures and then I leave.” He seems to sigh.“It’s okay. I’m doing it for the art. Not justso someone… I don’t know.Owes me affection, I guess.”

Ryanchuckles.

“Clearlythey don’t owe you anything. But in return, you don’t owe themeither, okay?”

Shaneseems to frown.

“ButI’m not an actor. My job isto take pictures of people like you.”

Ryansmiles softly.

“Andthat makes you a great person. You put so much thought in what you’redoing. Your photographs are beautiful. And you put so much work intothem. Work you really don’t have to put in just for a couple ofshow photographs.”

Hesmiles softly at Shane and it seems to work, because the other man isflushing and moving in his seat.

“I’m…I’m not doing it for attention.”

“Iget that.” Ryan whispers. He reaches out and runs a hand throughShane’s soft hair. “I guess you just caught mine. Do you… notwant it?”

Despiteeverything, Ryan wants to make sure. Shane could simply beintimidated by sitting next to someone who is kind of a “celebrity”,even though Ryan never saw himself that way. He doesn’t want Shaneto go along with something, just because Ryan is popular. Butapparently, his fear had been absurd.

Shaneblinks and laughs and leans in a little.

“Ofcourse I do. I have to admit, I kind of felt drawn to you from thesecond I saw you at the backstage door. But I’m just- And you are-Ryan are you even aware of how gorgeousyou are?”

Ryanchuckles.

“Well,that’s convenient. Because while I’m not sure what about youradmittedly strange face is so interesting to me… I have to admitI’m pretty smitten with you.”

Shane’seyes widen. Ryan sees him swallow hard and shuffle back a little.Ryan feels a sting of pain and discomfort.

“Imean… I’m sorry if that was too forward. I guess I just wantedyou to know that I’m not just some celebrity who wants nicepictures or is bored. I actually like you. And I’m happy to havemet you.”

Ryanmeans it. They have talked about a lot of random things and duringthat time, Ryan has realized that he and Shane fit togetherperfectly. Almost all of their interests overlap, they have the sametype of humor and the same taste in movies. The only thing theyreally disagree on is the existence of the supernatural, but their“fight” had quickly melted into an excited talk about theirfavorite Horror films.

“Ryan…you don’t want this. Me. You don’t want me. I’m a hugemess. I wanted to be someone and now I take pictures of richpeople on cruises, sucking up to them so they will leave me a nicetip. I’m a fucking failure. You have seen me. You know it.”

Ryanalmost laughs, but he doesn’t because Shane seems honestly upset.He takes the man’s hands.

“Listen,Shane. I really don’t have a negative opinion of your job. I’m abit upset about how little confidence you have in it, because I thinkit’s cool and you are really good at it. I still hope you will sendme that picture you took earlier. And if you don’t like me thatway, it’s cool. But if you are interested, I would like you to…well, stay here. Tonight.”

Shane’seyes seem huge in the low light of Ryan’s cabin.

“Really?”He finally manages.

Ryansmiles and leans in to press a kiss to the corner of the other man’smouth.

“Iknow you’re sometimes around a bunch of douches with too muchmoney, but just because I work on a stage doesn’t mean I sharetheir views on things.”

“No.”Shane says softly. “I mean… I didn’t think you would.”

Heglances at Ryan. It seems like he is trying to get across an apology.

“Iguess I was just worried that someone as magnificent as you wouldsettle for someone as average as… well, me.”

Ryan’sbreath stops for a second.

“Please.”He whispers. “Please don’t think you’re ever less thanperfect, okay?”

Shanechuckles a bit as Ryan leans in.

“Aren’tthose song lyrics?”

Ryansmirks, their lips almost touching. “Maybe?”

Shane’ssmile widens and Ryan feels a huff of laughter.

“Iwould love to stay with you, if you let me. And I will allow you totry and proof to me that I am nice to look at.”

Ryansnorts and cups the other man’s face in his hands.

“Ipromise I’ll do my very best, love.”

Shaneblinks and stares at him and then his tongue darts out to wet hislips. Ryan can hear the sound of Shane’s camera turning off as theman puts it aside.

“Okay.”Ryan feels the whisper more than he hears it. Shane’s breathtickles his lips. “Show me.”

Ryandoesn’t let him ask twice.

#shyan #skeptic believer #ask #anonymous #prompts #this was a cute prompt and i hope i did it justice #i'm sorry for writing so much insecure shane #i guess it's a coping mechanism #ffffff

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monaedroid · 6 years

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On a hot December afternoon, the sky hazy from wildfires that raged just beyond the Los Angeles city limits, a handful of people gathered outside a nondescript Super 8 motel off Sunset Boulevard. Nearly all were dressed head to toe in black: elegant crepe shirts, fitted leather pants, wide-brimmed hats. The group made their way inside to the Girl at the White Horse, a discreet bar nestled in the space below the motel. Here, the air was still hazy — the synthetic kind, from a machine — and lights tinted the room pink and red, colors of the heart. Low vibrational tones, not unlike those coaxed out of Tibetan singing bowls, droned in the background. Most of the invitees worked for radio stations, record labels or awards shows, and while they waited, they ordered cocktails created for the event: “Pynk” (rosé, gin, aperol and grapefruit) or “Screwed” (pineapple-infused tequila, lime, agave with a touch of pepper).

As the sounds faded, the guests turned their attention to the eight women marching into the bar. Each wore aviators, leather jackets over black bodysuits and brightly colored tights. They struck dramatic poses — an arm flung over an eye, a hand on a cocked hip, a leg held askew — and paused as the singer Janelle Monáe strolled into the room and took her place in the middle. She was dressed in a studded motorcycle jacket over a white crop top, black palazzo pants, suspenders, a derby wool hat and mirrored sunglasses. A navel-length ombré rattail snaked over her shoulder. For a moment, she stood perfectly still, letting the room drink her in.

Monáe was presenting a preview of “Dirty Computer,” her first solo studio album in five years, and the anticipation was as palpable as the smoke filling the room. On an indiscernible cue, an apocalyptic electropop bop about partying in a dystopian world began to play: “I hear the sirens calling, and the bombs start falling, but it feels so good.” The women broke into choreographed moves — toe stands, neck rolls, Michael Jackson spins, footwork that summoned the Charleston and James Brown. Many artists now share new music via encrypted downloads, but Monáe insisted on introducing her songs live. After watching her for a few minutes, it became clear why. The room was mesmerized, feeding off the energy emitted by Monáe and her backup dancers. An oversize man in loafers aggressively played air guitar. Others bounced their shoulders, nodded their heads, shuffled their feet in a two-step. Few stood still.

The performance reached its peak on a song called “I Got the Juice.” During the chorus — a percussive trap riff that will be best appreciated blasting out of an expensive car stereo — Monáe dropped to her knees below a disco ball as her dancers swarmed around her, fanning her with large exaggerated motions, less to cool her off than to emphasize the white-hot intensity of her moves. While she gyrated on the ground, the women danced around her in a circular “Soul Train” line: They did the Milly Rock, spun in tight twirls, snapped their fingers, fanned themselves and their own behinds. As the song trilled its last few beats, Monáe and her dancers slowed, laughing and wiping their brows. The room burst into applause.

Monáe took a bow and picked up a microphone. “I just had a lot of fun,” she said. “I’m very excited about where we’re going this time.” Then she took a beat to breathe. Her body was still heaving from the dancing, but she suddenly looked grim, transformed from artist to activist. “This is the first time I’ve felt threatened and unsafe as a young black woman, growing up in America,” she said. “This is the first time that I released something with a lot of emotion. The people I love feel threatened. I’ve always understood the responsibility of an artist — but I feel it even greater now. And I don’t want to stay angry, but write and feel triumphant.”

Monáe released her official debut EP, “Metropolis,” in 2007, when she was just 21. The cover showed her head topped with an elaborate pompadour, attached to a robotic female torso in disrepair — frayed wires snaked out of arm sockets and beneath a breastplate. This was Cindi Mayweather, a time-traveling android whose story the album tells: After falling in love with a human named Anthony Greendown — a union forbidden by the legislation of their time — Mayweather is marked for disassembly, and a bounty is placed on her head. The album ranged from poppy dance songs like “Violet Stars, Happy Hunting” — which cleverly evokes the history of black fugitives with lines like “I’m a slave girl without a race” — to symphonic ballads like “Sincerely, Jane,” which begs for compassion for Mayweather’s plight, urging “daydreamers, please wake up.” “Metropolis” was “West Side Story” for the cyberage — instantly earning fans among R. & B. and psychedelic-rock listeners, not to mention young black girls like myself, who saw themselves equally in Pink Floyd and TLC and were hungry for narratives starring women who weren’t hypersexualized and perhaps even a bit nerdy.

The album earned Monáe a Grammy nomination for the song “Many Moons.” She would go on to collect five more nominations across two more albums, both of which starred her alter-ego, Mayweather. For years, Monáe remained safely cocooned within the character. “Cindi helps me talk more,” she said; through Mayweather, she could address things she didn’t feel comfortable talking about directly. “You can parallel the other in the android to being a black woman right now, to being a part of the L.G.B.T.Q. community,” she said. “What it feels like to be called a nigger by your oppressor.” Mayweather was a proxy for all the things about Monaé that made others uncomfortable, like her androgyny, her opaque sexual identity, her gender fluidity — her defiance of easy categorization.

But then Monáe shifted her attention to acting. She made her film debut as the de facto surrogate mother of a young black boy in “Moonlight,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture last year; she starred, with Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson, in the blockbuster “Hidden Figures,” about early black female mathematicians. Fans wondered if she would commit to films, where she could attain a level of fame that can be elusive in music. But part of the reason she was slow to return, she told me, is that her mentor, Prince, died unexpectedly. They were working together closely on what would become “Dirty Computer.” “This was the person that I would literally call and talk to about sounds or: ‘How should I say this? Is this saying too much?’ I just never could imagine a time where I couldn’t pick up the phone or email him, and he’d contact me right back and we’d talk about all these things that I was unsure of.”

The music Monáe introduced on that dusty afternoon in Los Angeles marked her highly anticipated return. “Dirty Computer,” a celebratory ode to femininity and queer people, seems to signal a new era in her career: If in the past she seemed distant, using Mayweather to stand in for the real Monáe, she now seems ready to present herself to the public. “Right now I’m escaping the gravity of the labels that people have tried to place on me that have stopped my evolution,” she told me. “You have to go ahead and soar, and not be afraid to jump — and I’m jumping right now.”

‘I knew I needed to make this album, and I put it off and put it off because the subject is Janelle Monáe.’

Two months later, in February, I was in the back of an Uber, riding southwest toward a subdivision of Atlanta. After a pause at a security gate, the car drove through an upscale, predominantly black community, past typical suburban scenes — teenagers shooting hoops, people taking out their garbage, men working on their cars. I was heading to Wondaland Arts Society, Monáe’s creative headquarters. Its inspiration is Paisley Park, the elaborate compound outside Minneapolis that housed Prince’s rehearsal space, recording rooms, concert venue and countless parties. Several years ago, Monáe established the Wondaland label — one of the few black women to have a label of her own — and signed several acts, including the band St. Beauty (one member, Isis Valentino, was a backup singer for Monáe) and the singer and rapper Jidenna. The Wondaland artists often practice together and appear on one another’s albums. And the compound, where the artists often crash, has become a center of black culture in Atlanta. Much of “Black Panther” was shot in and around the city, and the cast held impromptu gatherings at Wondaland. At one, Chadwick Boseman whaled on the drums and Lupita N’yongo was hailed as the best dancer. They were among the first to hear “Dirty Computer,” and their approval gave Monáe’s confidence a boost. “I felt understood,” she told me. “I felt like, Man, these are people I admire and I respect, and they love this album. I have to finish it.”

Outside Wondaland, eight cars lined the long driveway, and staccato bursts floated from an open window upstairs. It sounded like band practice, a score being workshopped. I recognized the music from “Dirty Computer.” A Wondaland staff member named Kelly greeted me at the door and gave me a quick tour. From the outside, the house looked like any other Southern McMansion, but the entryway immediately suggested something different. Thick, leafy palm trees crowded the foyer so densely that I had to wrestle them to get through. A handwritten note asked guests to slip off their shoes. An archway was decorated with a dozen or so clocks, in different shapes and colors, their hands frozen at various times.

Before I went down to the sprawling lower level where Monáe and I would talk, I poked my head into a few of the rooms on the first floor, all filled with recording equipment and more luscious tropical plants. People seemed to be having casual meetings in many of them. There was a large wraparound kitchen, where a woman was chopping army quantities of vegetables. On the dining-room table, there was a chocolate cake surrounded by red and blue balloons, a bottle of sparkling rosé and a laserjet printout that read in block caps: “CONGRATULATIONS, YOU DIRTY COMPUTER.”

The stairs to the basement were covered with green turf, so that even as my eyes adjusted to the dimming light, my feet were receiving the pleasantly disorienting sensation of outdoors. Downstairs, there were tropical plants everywhere; brilliant orange-and-white fish swam in an expansive tank bathed in purple lights. I counted at least five keyboards, eight guitars, two drum kits, a piano, a cello, a trumpet and a saxophone. A stack of books piled on an end table included “Writing Better Lyrics,” “Sapiens,” “Zen Guitar” and “Built to Last,” a book on business management. There was a desk crowded with sound mixers and synthesizers, and a box set of Jimi Hendrix CDs. A minifridge was stocked with seltzer, wine and water, and a bottle of absinthe stood on the desk.

Monáe soundlessly padded into the room, clad in a velour caftan, gold earrings and rings to match. She was barefoot, her toes painted metallic silver. She had arrived from Los Angeles that morning, and tried to take a nap, but Jidenna, who was in town, woke her up with his practicing. Though she apologized for being tired, she was buoyant. It had been 24 hours since her first two singles — “Django Jane” and “Make Me Feel” — were released, and both were trending on social media. “I’m still nervous, obviously, but I’ll enjoy this moment,” she told me, as she arranged herself more comfortably on a chair next to the couch where I was sitting. “But I won’t drive myself nuts trying to preplan what people are going to say, what they’re going to think, even though it terrifies me — I just have to put my energy into finishing.”

Monáe, who is 32, told me that she has been circling the themes explored on “Dirty Computer” for at least a decade, but that earlier it felt safer to package herself in metaphors. “I knew I needed to make this album, and I put it off and put it off because the subject is Janelle Monáe.” She’s still having a conversation with herself, she said, about who she wants to be when she’s in the spotlight. The sanitized android version felt more accepted — and more acceptable — than her true self. The public, she explained, doesn’t really “know Janelle Monáe, and I felt like I didn’t really have to be her because they were fine with Cindi.” When Prince died in April 2016, she started to rethink how she would present herself. “I couldn’t fake being vulnerable. In terms of how I will be remembered, I have anxiety around that, like the whole concept about what I’ll be remembered for.”

At its core, “Dirty Computer” is a homage to women and the spectrum of sexual identities. The songs can be grouped into three loose categories: Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation. “The first songs deal with realizing that this is how society sees me,” she said. “This is how I’m viewed. I’m a ‘dirty computer,’ it’s clear. I’m going to be pushed to the margins, outside margins, of the world.” “D’Jango Jane” is an ode to black power and pride that is also a dirge about the struggles that come with that heritage. The middle half of the album is a raucous party. “It’s like, O.K., these are the cards I’ve been dealt,” she said. These songs include “Make Me Feel” and “Pynk” — the sizzling, sex-drenched songs that titillated the internet when they were released earlier this year. The album winds down with an anthem about being an American, whose sound evokes Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” with lyrics like “love me for who I am,” and “cross my heart and hope to die, I’m a big old piece of American pie.”

Monáe will release an extended musical film with the album that illustrates and complements “Dirty Computer.” The 50-minute “emotion picture,” as she calls it, follows a young woman, played by Monáe, on the run from an authoritarian government that hunts down so-called deviants and “cleans” them by erasing their memories. Those memories serve as the musical interludes (the videos) amid the drama — “Handmaid’s Tale” meets “San Junipero,” set in a desiccated “Mad Max” landscape. It follows a crew of young kids, mostly black, dancing and dodging capture. Longtime fans will recognize the parallels to Mayweather — which Monáe expects — but instead of focusing on a fictional male human lover, the object of her affection is the actress Tessa Thompson, with whom Monáe is frequently photographed in real life. A beautiful man whom she occasionally hugs and kisses makes appearances, but he feels like an afterthought. Plausible deniability. The star-crossed romance between Thompson and Monáe, and whether they will be separated or reunited, is the true narrative of the film.

Most popular music is so determinedly centered on heterosexual dynamics that any hint of same-sex interactions can feel revelatory, even radical, upon the first encounter. That’s the way it felt to me when I first watched Monáe’s film. The queer sexual interactions are refreshingly explicit — miming digital and oral sex — and images throughout celebrate women. The video for the song “Pynk” is an extended appreciation of the female anatomy, with neon signs screaming, “[Expletive] Power,” and pink-frilled jumpsuits that wouldn’t look out of place in a Judy Chicago installation.

Already much of social media has speculated on the nature of Monáe and Thompson’s relationship, and this film — especially with scenes like Thompson poking her head from between the legs of Monae’s pink vagina pantsuit — is certain to only inflame those rumors. The first time I saw the video for “Make Me Feel,” months before its YouTube release, I found it so sexually suggestive (Thompson appears throughout the song, fawning over Monáe, dancing with her, almost kissing her) that I immediately texted the woman I was dating at the time, “omg janelle might really be gay.” It felt as declarative as a coming-out could. And yet in person, Monáe would say only that she felt this was her coming-out as an advocate of women and queer issues. “I want it to be very clear that I’m an advocate for women,” she said. “I’m a girl’s girl, meaning I support women no matter what they choose to do. I’m proud when everybody is taking agency over their image and their bodies.” She told me that she wanted the album to be especially relevant to black women and queer women, for them to feel seen and heard in this album. “I felt that way when I listened to Lauryn Hill, as I was trying to find myself as a young woman, I felt that way when I listened to Stevie Wonder when I was trying to understand God more.”

I asked Monáe what she thought of the internet’s speculation about her romantic relationship with Thompson. Watching her as she decided on a response was like watching a mathematician working out Fermat’s Last Theorem. Gears were churning; calculations were being made. Finally, she laughed, raised her eyebrows and deflected: “I hope people feel celebrated,” she said. “I hope they feel love. I hope they feel seen.” It was late into the evening, and I was conscious of how long we’d been talking — at least two hours — and let it drop. But the issue lingered for me, especially the more times I watched her film.

These days, the culture seems more accepting and welcoming of queerness: Young actors and pop stars like Amandla Stenberg and Lady Gaga are identifying publicly as bisexual. Lena Waithe and her fianc��e were recently photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. And yet, nonheteronormative sexuality remains the last taboo. Monáe is media-savvy enough to protect herself from becoming tabloid fodder for publications that want to turn her personal life into spectacle or reduce her art to her sexuality. She told me repeatedly that she worried what her early fans and very religious and very Southern family would think. There’s little precedent for a black female celebrity at her level living openly as a lesbian in a gay relationship.

Monáe has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of being a pop star who isn’t a sexual object. Discretion is a survival strategy, a coping mechanism especially useful for black women living in the public eye. But she has now made an explicit album about sexual expression and identity that is somehow still shrouded in ambiguity. In 2018, empowerment isn’t a color — it’s a call to action. It’s Cardi B talking about how much she loves her vagina, not holding a neon sign explaining that she has one. On “Dirty Computer,” it still feels as if Monáe is deciding which version of herself to show the world — or that this is the tentative beginning of a larger reveal.

Monáe grew up in a large yet tightknit family in Kansas City, Kan., the kind with relatives in the double digits. Money was scarce, but they made do. Her parents worked in the service industry, her mother as a janitor and her stepfather as a postal worker. Her mother was a Baptist but didn’t mind when Monaé listened to racy R. & B. songs by groups like Jodeci or rappers like Tupac. Her great-grandmothers played organ in church and taught piano. Her biological father sang. She thinks he could have gotten a record deal if he hadn’t battled an addiction to crack. Her mother left him when Monáe was a toddler and remarried. He was in and out of prison Monáe’s entire childhood. “He’s sober now,” she told me, and the author of a memoir in which he writes about Monáe: “She always had this distinctive look in her eye that said: ‘I’m going to make it! No matter what!’ And I believed that she would.”

As a teenager, Monáe was enrolled in a young playwrights’ program and performed in talent showcases on the weekend, where she sang Lauryn Hill songs a cappella and usually won. She watched movies like “The Wiz” but struggled with the same question that all black children weaned on American pop culture eventually reckon with: Is this all there is?

After high school, she moved to New York to study musical theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She couldn’t afford to live on campus, so she shared a room at 140th and Amsterdam with an older cousin, who worked nights at the Post Office. They each took a shift sleeping while the other was at work or school and saw each other on the weekends. Her congregation supplied some funds, and Monáe did some work as a maid to make ends meet. She spent the rest of her time in libraries, reading plays and practicing monologues. Her best friend was studying in Atlanta and regaled her with tales of wild parties and the camaraderie of black Greek life. “It was just more exciting than what I was doing,” she said. She liked the rigor and discipline of her school but worried she would lose her edge: “I didn’t want to sound, or look or feel like anybody else.” She made the decision to leave New York after a year and a half.

Monáe eventually settled in a boardinghouse that was directly across from the university center that contains all four of Atlanta’s historically black colleges: Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College and the Morehouse School of Medicine. She went to Georgia State University’s Perimeter College to save money and began to write her own music. Atlanta in the early 2000s was a hotbed for musical innovation, with artists like OutKast spinning their eccentricities and distinct Southern identity into record deals and national fame. Monáe began experimenting with her own sound, performing around campus — in dorm rooms, at school events and, once, on the steps of the library. She made a CD called “The Audition” and sold it out of the trunk of her Mitsubishi Galant. She worked at Office Depot and during slow moments updated her Myspace page with new photos and music.

During this period, she met Mikael Moore, her longtime manager, and his classmates Chuck Lightning and Nate Wonder, who would eventually became close collaborators and form the backbone of all her creative efforts — writing songs with Monáe and directing her videos, which they continue to do. At an open-mic night, she met Antwan Patton, otherwise known as Big Boi, from OutKast. He invited her to contribute to “Got Purp? Vol. II,” a 2005 compilation album that featured artists of Dirty South rap like Goodie Mob and Bubba Sparxxx but few other women. She also appeared on the soundtrack for “Idlewild,” the 2006 musical film starring Patton and André Benjamin, or André 3000, Patton’s partner in OutKast.

Sean Combs, the producer also known as Puffy at the time, reached out to her after her work with Big Boi put her on his radar. Monáe had already taken a few meetings with record executives, and was disillusioned by those early encounters. They criticized her style, which then involved, sartorially, androgynous suits, and musically, operatic odes to her character Cindi Mayweather. During one performance, she noticed midsong, breathless and sweating from the effort of dancing and singing, an executive casually reading a magazine. “I cried,” she said. “I mean, I cried.” She made Puffy a deal: She had just finished “Metropolis.” She’d hear him out if he came to see her perform. “It was important to know if he was serious, that he was going to appreciate me and not try to change my live show or my music.” Combs halted filming on his reality show, “Making the Band” and flew down. He loved what he saw. “He said, let’s meet tomorrow and let’s talk,” Monáe recalled.

Combs told Monáe that he wanted to introduce her to a larger audience. “I knew I had to work with her,” he told me via email. “It was immediate. I just knew she was going to be important to music and culture. It was the same sort of feeling I had when I first heard Biggie or Mary J. Blige, and I wanted to help introduce this artist to the world.”

In 2008, Combs announced the signing of Monáe to his label, Bad Boy Records. They rereleased “Metropolis” and then followed up with “The ArchAndroid” in 2010 and “The Electric Lady” in 2013 (as well as “Dirty Computer”). Monáe went on tour with No Doubt and Bruno Mars and collaborated with Solange Knowles and Erykah Badu. She landed an endorsement with CoverGirl. She was being sent movie scripts. None moved her until she read the one for “Moonlight.”

Yesi Ramirez, the casting director on the movie, had flagged Monáe for the director Barry Jenkins, and they scheduled a screen test over Skype. When she appeared, her hair filled the frame, even more than her face. He was startled. “I wanted to call her Auntie. I was used to the pompadour, and this larger-than-life entity, the outer-space person that I’d seen live in Oakland with Erykah Badu, and I had to reconcile that person with this person before me,” he said. “We started talking, and it was very clear that she got it.”

During the beginning of production, Monáe lost a relative to gun violence. Jenkins felt that the story of Chiron, the boy whose life the movie follows as he matures, spoke to her because she knew young men like him, lost and struggling to make sense of their sexuality — and understood the way strangers can raise you as much as your biological family can. “She felt it was important that someone like that be centered in a narrative,” Jenkins told me. “And whatever she could do to bring it to larger light, she was down for.”

For Monáe, “Moonlight” and then “Hidden Figures” were a way to convey the message she has striven over and over to convey: recognition and validation for people overlooked by society. “I was, like, this is just another way to get out the message I’ve been trying to talk about for so [expletive] long that I feel like I don’t know if anybody is listening,” she told me. “You can show people better than you can tell them.”

Rain is Kryptonite to social outings in L.A., but bad weather could not touch the mood in the room at Catch LA in early March. There were a few men — Jay Ellis from “Insecure,” as well as Monáe’s team of male collaborators — but women were everywhere: Ava DuVernay, Rosario Dawson, the director Dee Rees accompanied by her partner, Sarah Broom, Debra Lee, the president of the BET network. The actresses Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o arrived together. Geena Davis watched the scene approvingly from a nearby table. The former editor of Teen Vogue, Elaine Welteroth, held court at another. The New York DJ Kitty Cash played songs, mostly by female artists. Tessa Thompson bounced around in a gorgeous yellow-and-pink feathery coat and leather pants, occasionally at Monáe’s side. The women had gathered for a brunch that Monáe was hosting for her “Fem the Future” project to support women in the entertainment industry. Monáe had chosen three female filmmakers to make short films funded by Belvedere vodka that answered the question: What does a beautiful future look like? The event was nominally to celebrate them but more largely to gather in one room actors, writers, directors and producers Monáe admired.

Monáe, dressed in a Bella Freud ice-blue velvet suit, matching glitter eyeliner and perfectly matte red lips, walked to the front of the restaurant and picked up a microphone. “This room looks good,” she said. “You inspire me and encourage me to be a better woman and artist.” Earlier in her career, she said, she asked some label reps to recommend other female producers and creators she could work with. The list they provided stunned her. “It was so tiny,” she said. “I was upset.” To channel that anger, she said, she started her initiative to help women “cross-connect and open doors,” as she put it. “It gives everybody a seat at the table.”

Throughout my conversations with Monáe, she talked about her dedication to lifting up women. Some of that didn’t quite square with me — most of the crew that supports her creatively, spiritually, administratively seem to be men. But Monáe’s event felt like a mild insistence that she got it. This brunch seemed like a woman-centric version of a few rounds on the golf course — a space that emphasized the importance of networking, beyond film sets, parties and premieres as a means to lay the groundwork for future collaborations. Seeing her in that capacity reminded me that she’s still evolving into the woman she wants to be in the world and the role she wants to play.

A few years ago, the singer and actor Harry Belafonte was asked by a reporter for The Hollywood Reporter to comment on “members of minorities in Hollywood today.” Belafonte, a prominent civil rights activist who helped organized the 1963 March on Washington where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, took the opportunity to express frustration about what he perceived as the political malaise of celebrities. “I think one of the great abuses of this modern time is that we should have had such high-profile artists, powerful celebrities,” he said, “but they have turned their back on social responsibility.” Until recently, few publicly stepped in to fill the hole he named. In the past, Monáe shied away from anything that could potentially derail her career. “I used to be a lot more afraid of going off script,” she told me.

She emerged as an activist in August 2015, at a demonstration in Philadelphia she led in support of the local Black Lives Matter movement. There’s a photo of Monáe surrounded by most of the artists in the Wondaland collective: Jidenna, St. Beauty, Roman GianArthur, Chuck Lightning and the producer Nana Kwabena. Their mouths are open, midchant, and the look on their faces is determined. They are holding drums, signs, one another. For Monáe, the times were too urgent to ignore. Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland had recently died following controversial encounters with the police. She realized she had a voice that she could use. That she needed to use. A few days later, Monáe released the anthem “Hell You Talmbout,” which is less a song than a chant. At nearly seven minutes long, it calls out the names of black men and women who were victims of police brutality, followed by the urging to say their names. It was a significant moment in her career: She would no longer be cautious when it came to social responsibility. The song came out almost a year before Beyoncé’s breaking-chains “Freedom” or Solange Knowles’s primal scream on “A Seat at the Table.” A few months later, Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler gave a benefit concert in Flint, Mich., to raise money for the clean-water-deprived city that was also a boycott of the Oscars. Monáe performed alongside Stevie Wonder, Vic Mensa and Hannibal Buress. Monaé told me that in the past, she tended to write anthems for other people. “I don’t always live them, I don’t. And I’m learning more and more to live them, to make myself live them.”

Her highest-profile moment came with the 2017 presidential inauguration. Monáe was invited to speak — as well as sing — at the Women’s March by Ginny Suss, a member of the organizing committee in charge of music. Suss wanted artists whose music reflected their personal politic. “When you look at the arc of her career, there has always been a moral core and ethical center to her music, that breaks down constructions of race and gender in our society,” Suss told me. “It’s a tool to imagine the world we want through the accessibility of pop music. Having her stand up and have that voice at the march was amazing.”

Monáe had heard that Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis; Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin; and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, were going to be there, too, and she wanted to offer support. She herself was still reeling from the election, she added. “I just wanted to come and not only uplift, but I wanted to be uplifted, too.” As she made her way backstage, she got a sense of the crowd for the first time. “I saw, like, tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands of women and men and people from all around the world, babies and Muslims and trans and L.G.B.T. folks,” she recalled. “I was like, Oh, my God.” She hadn’t expected such a tremendous turnout, for so many people to care about what happens to women. The importance of the task hit her. But there was no privacy backstage, no place to prepare or gather her thoughts — just a communal room where the speakers were chatting and taking photographs. Monáe had no choice but to wing it. “That was just one of those moments where I was just, like, It might not come out right, but as long as your intentions are pure, as long as you’re honest,” she told me. She drew from the mixture of emotions stirred up by her recent role in “Hidden Figures,” about female African-American mathematicians suffering from discrimination even as they performed pivotal jobs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the American space race of the 1960s. “Everything that was going on in January felt like that era, when we’re talking about a blatant war on women’s rights.”

She appeared calm as she addressed the enormous crowd. “Women will be hidden no more,” she said. “We have names. We are complete human beings.” For many people, the speech cast Monáe in a new light: she became more than a psychedelic Tim Burton character. The response galvanized her. “I just had to speak from my heart,” she said. “Not a lot of artists do it.”

This January, she took the stage at the Grammys, where she delivered a short speech to introduce the singer Kesha, who’d had a legal battle with her former producer Dr. Luke. A member of TimesUp, a Hollywood initiative to fight sexual harassment, Monáe wore its pin proudly on her black suit as she called out the music industry for its epidemic patterns of sexual harassment and assault. “We come in peace, but we mean business,” she said to the crowd. “Just as we have the power to shape culture, we also have the power to undo the culture that does not serve us well.”

In Atlanta, after our conversation at Wondaland, Monáe seemed to get a second wind. The band upstairs had resumed practicing for her forthcoming tour, and she wanted to check in on their progress. She invited me to join her. If the basement was where ideas began to gestate, then the room she led me to was where they were polished before leaving the house. It had a ballet barre and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. She disappeared for a few minutes before returning in black leggings and the same cropped moto jacket from the presentation in Los Angeles.

Monáe greeted everyone in her band — the drummer, keyboard player, guitarist and two backup singers — hugging them and taking a few moments to inquire about their health, their families, their side projects, before taking her position in front of them. She patted her pockets, searching for a missing item, which she spied on a speaker: mirrored sunglasses. She put them on and nodded to the band. They launched into “Make Me Feel” and then “I Got the Juice,” and she ran through them a few times, losing herself a little more in the music during each performance.

Despite the accolades and Grammy nominations, Monáe has yet to achieve significant commercial success. If there’s a moment that her entire discography has been building toward, it is right now, with this release. Her desire for a win shone nakedly. She sneaked coy peeks at me to see if I was paying attention. It was impossible to tear my eyes away, not to want for her what she so clearly wants for herself. At the completion of each song, Monáe would grin, breathless. “That’s going to sound so good live,” she said, happily. But then the perfectionist came out again. She asked the band what else they had prepared. The sheepish answer came: Nothing. She paused, letting her displeasure seep out for few moments, just enough for them to know that they’d need to step it up. “Well, all right, then,” she replied. “Let’s go through them again.”

In all our encounters, Monáe seemed as if she was bracing herself for anything, including the worst — harsh reviews, irrelevancy, dismissals. But all that carefully maintained composure fell away as she twirled and dropped to her knees. Earlier, I asked her what she ultimately wanted: awards? Album sales? Money? She referred to Prince again: He was in that “free [expletive] category,” she said. “That’s where I want to be. That’s where I want to ultimately be.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/magazine/how-janelle-monae-found-her-voice.html?smid=pl-share

#rap and hip-hop #janelle monae #janellemonae #new york times #newyorktimes #dirty computer #dirtycomputer

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misssophiachase · 6 years

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Prompt: Caroline goes viral for drunkingly covering Rockstar!Klaus’ song while at karaoke with friends, Klaus sees video and just needs to get this incredibly sexy blonde who turns his alt rock song into a sultry masterpiece to sing backup for his next album.

Nonnie! This is inspired!I adore me some Rockstar!Klaus. I always imagine the Original brothers in aband like Kings of Leon, so the title is my favourite of their songs. Hope you like itas much as I enjoyed writing it!

Use Somebody

“Niklaus!” Klaus groaned,holding his pillow over his face in order to ignore her incessant whining fromdownstairs. He thought he’d revoked her house key a few months ago but she’dobviously made copies. Just because she was his sibling and his band’spublicist she thought it was her god given right to be able to burst into his house at anymoment.

“Nik, get your stubbornass down here!” Instead of his sister’s whiny voice, he could now hear hisbrother and fellow Originals bandmate instead. Just bloody great. He threw off the pillowin frustration and climbed out of bed, only stopping briefly to throw on a pair of discarded boxersand white t-shirt before lazily moving downstairs.

“Well, I’m certainly nothungry for brunch now,” Rebekah drawled pushing away the take-out coffee andmuffin from her vantage point at the kitchen bench. “Seriously,could you be wearing any less clothing, Niklaus?”

“And could you seriouslybe any more annoying, Rebekah,” he scoffed, swiping her coffee and taking along, needed sip. He was fairly certain he was still drunk from the nightbefore. “Anyway, you both deserve it for breaking into my house thisearly. What if I had company?”

“It’s 11:30am and also wouldn’tbe the first time I found you with unsavoury company,” Rebekah deadpanned. “And Ican’t believe I’m going to say this but even Kol managed to be up and dressedby now.”

“I hate to burst yourbubble but I haven’t technically been to sleep yet, Beks.”

“Well, at least I know whyyou smell so bad,” she huffed.

“We’re rock stars Rebekah,it’s what we do,” Kol insisted smugly. “Now, please tell me why yousummonsed us here and I had to leave the confines of Bambi’s warm bed?”

“Urgh,” shemuttered. “At least that explains why you smell of cheap perfume.”

“Rebekah, I’d really likeit if you could get the point sometime this century?” Klaus sighed, running hishands through his knotted locks.

“This is why I’m here,”she explained, opening her laptop and hitting play on a YouTube video.

“You got me up for someterrible, karaoke video…” Klaus trailed off, his eyes locking onto thebeautiful blonde mid-stage clad in tight, leather pants and a fitted, RollingStones t-shirt her waves cascading like liquid gold over her shoulders.

Klaus felt his breathhitch in his throat at just how stunning but refreshingly vulnerable, at thesame time, she looked. She was swaying slightly, no doubt a little inebriated, before thefamiliar opening chords filled the background and she began to sing.

“I’ve been roaming around, always looking down at all I see.Painted faces, fill the places I can’t reach…”

Singing was anunderstatement, she was an absolute angel and her voice was breathtaking, evenfrom only a few sung lyrics. He was mesmerized, barely registering his brother’suntoward commentary about her general appearance.

Her particular choice ofsong was also messing with him, especially given it was supposedly deeper and notyour usual karaoke choice. It was something he’d written at a low point in hislife mid tour. It was about being restless and desperate to find something tobelieve in and for someone to love. Something and someone he was still yet tofind. The vulnerability in her voice teamed with those expressive blue eyes wasmessing with his usually strong resolve.

As the final notes soundedout, Rebekah closed her laptop and looked at them expectantly. “Well?”

“She certainly is sexy,”Kol offered, helping himself to a blueberry muffin. “But not sure what that hasto do with us.” She rolled her blue eyes in Klaus’ direction in response.

“Did you see how many hitsthat video got?” She asked incredulously. “It’s gone viral over night,apparently seven million people want to watch someone else sing your song. Thisgirl has talent; in fact I think we should….”

“Right, let’s set up ameeting then,” Klaus suggested before she could even continue with her plan. “Whereis she?”

“Austin.”

“And her managementcompany?” Klaus asked, every fiber of his being still attempting to beprofessional even if she was across the other side of the country.

“She doesn’t have representation,” Rebekah added. “She’s a graduate college student at UT, majoring inpsychology.” Klaus was momentarily taken aback, a multitude of thoughtscluttering his head wondering if by singing that song she was psycho analyzinghim.

“Why exactly are wewasting our time on this again?” Kol complained.

“Shut up Kol,” he growled.“Given just how long you take to do anything you might want to start packingfor Austin.” He’d left the room before he could hear any further objections.

One week later…

“Remind me why I’m in thesticks again,” Kol whined. Klaus was tempted to beat his younger brother uplike when they were younger but decided to refrain given his nerves.

Klaus Mikaelson didn’t getnervous but for some reason this mystery blonde, whom he only knew as CarolineForbes, was playing with his emotions. He’d watched her video on loop for days. Kol would say he was just checking her out physically but Klaus was interested in the raw emotions she displayed as she recited his lyrics over and over again.

“And on that false note, you arebanned from this meeting,” Rebekah drawled. “Don’t want any law suits. As foryou Niklaus, tell her how much you want her in the next video.” Klaus had tostop himself from rolling his eyes, he didn’t know her but he was certain shehad no interest in playing some groupie in a video but decided not to tell his sister that just yet.

“Where are we meeting anyway?”

“Rainey Street,” she explained. “Its going to be low-key and I’d appreciate you check your arrogance at the door.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” she scoffed. “We’ve known each other since birth so don’t try and play innocent, Niklaus.”

He was gone, albeit muttering choice words as he left. Klaus was nervous, something he hadn’t felt in years but stilled himself on approach.

What he wasn’t expecting was for the girl in the video to look so casual than that video but she was even more beautiful in person than he’d expected. Golden waves falling freely, pink lips, creamy complexion sans makeup and attired in jeans and a simple black Ramones t-shirt. One of his favourite bands too.

He held back, watching her intently as she studied the books laid out on the table, biting her bottom lip as she did it. Now he wasn’t quite sure what to say but let his legs do the walking.

“You’re looking very serious, love,” he murmured, kicking himself for being so obvious. She looked up regarding him curiously with those big, blue eyes but not responding immediately.

“I’m Klaus,” he offered, his confidence slipping away under her gaze. What was happening to him, Klaus had no idea.

“I’m studying, Klaus,” she replied. He couldn’t miss just how lovely his name sounded rolling off her tongue. “Hence the serious mood. Finals are in three weeks.”

“I wouldn’t really know,” he admitted, taking a seat opposite her. “I left school in eleventh grade.” It was a regret he’d carried with him for years, their surprise success as a band the only thing keeping it from gnawing away at him completely.

“Honours and degrees aren’t the be all and end all,” she said, her blue eyes capturing his across the table curiously.

“I think that’s the diplomatic answer from the almost Doctor,” he grinned, losing himself in her glance.

“Says the rockstar,” she smiled. “Apparently I was summonsed to this meeting, my best friend Kat threatened to disown me if I didn’t come. She was the one who took the video and posted without telling me first.”

“Ouch, love,” he chuckled. “Way to give a guy a complex.”

“I’d prefer that then to stroke that ego of yours, Mikaelson.”

“Who told you I have an ego?” He responded, defensively. When the media labelled him that way he didn’t care but staring across at this natural beauty who smelled like an intense combination of strawberries and vanilla for some reason made him want to be a better person.

“Your sister.” He baulked, expecting her views to come from the press not his nosy sister. “I think she’s trying to save you between you and me.”

“Is that your professional opinion, Dr Forbes?”

“I’m not a doctor yet and would prefer to keep well out of your head once I am, Mikaelson,” he could see the conflict in her eyes as she uttered it.

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“It’s not my place to say, I barely know you,” she murmured, playing with the corner of her notebook and ignoring his gaze.

“Fine,” he conceded. “Would you consider playing back-up on our next album instead? That rendition was breathtaking and we’d love to have you, Caroline.”

“I sing for myself, so I’m going to have to respectfully decline,” she mused. “But thank you for the offer.” She began to collect her things before his hand found hers comfortingly.

“I understand, but can I ask you something?” She merely nodded by way of response. “Why did you choose that song?” She paused momentarily, Klaus searching her face.

“It spoke to me I suppose.” She admitted.

“How?” He asked, the thick desperation the last of his worries in anticipation of her response. Being a rockstar didn’t guarantee you happiness and for some reason this graduate student could see right through him and it intrigued him like nothing else.

“I’m not here to explain lyrics to the songwriter last time I checked,” she smiled cheekily. “But if you buy me a coffee I might reconsider.”

Caroline didn’t star in their next music video, she didn’t sing back-up either but turns out she stole the rockstar’s heart.

#ask #answered #use somebody #klaroline drabbles #thanks anon #great prompt #misssophiachase

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lokirupaul · 3 years

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Lokiru Paul : Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

He got famous playing a certain kind of funny guy on SNL, but when Jason Sudeikis invented Ted Lasso, the sensitive soccer coach with the earnest mustache, the actor found a different gear—and a surprise hit. Now, ahead of the show’s second season, Sudeikis discusses his wild ride of a year and how he’s learning to pay closer attention to what the universe is telling him.

BY ZACH BARON, GQ

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HILL & AUBREY

July 13, 2021

Shirt, $188, and tie (worn at waist), $125, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

On the day that he wrapped shooting on the second season of Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis sat in his trailer in West London and drank a beer and exhaled a little, and then he went to the pitch they film on for the show—Nelson Road Stadium, the characters call it—for one last game of football with his cast and crew. There's this thing called the crossbar challenge, which figures briefly in a midseason Ted Lasso episode: You kick a ball and try to hit not the goal but the crossbar above the goal, which is only four or five inches from top to bottom. And so Sudeikis arrived and, because he can't help himself, started trying to hit the crossbar.

Jason Sudeikis covers the August 2021 issue of GQ. To get a copy, subscribe to GQ.

Shirt, $228, by Todd Snyder. Shorts, $480, by Bode. Sneakers, his own. Socks, stylist’s own. Watch, $6,300, by Cartier.

Confidence is a funny thing. Sudeikis has been riffing on it, in one way or another, for his whole professional life—particularly the comedy of unearned confidence, which he is well suited, physically, to convey. Sudeikis is acutely aware of “the vessel that my soul is currently, you know, occupying”—six feet one, good hair, strong jaw. He's a former college point guard. On Saturday Night Live, where most of us saw him for the first time, he had a specialty in playing jocular blowhards and loud, self-impressed white men, a specialty he took to Hollywood, in films like Horrible Bosses and Sleeping With Other People. He became so adept at playing those types of characters, Sudeikis said, that at some point he realized he'd have to make an effort to do something different. “It's up to me to not just play an a-hole in every movie,” he said. In conversation he is digressive, occasionally melancholy, prone to long anecdotes and sometimes even actual parables—closer, in other words, to Ted Lasso, the gentle, philosophical football coach he co-created, than any of the preening jerks he used to be known for. But he can definitely kick a soccer ball pretty good.

So he's up there trying to hit the crossbar, and he's got a crowd of actors and crew members gathering around him now, betting on whether he can hit it. And he's getting the ball in the air, mostly, but not quite on the four-to-five-inch strip of metal he needs to hit, and the stakes are escalating (“I bet he can get it in three.” “I bet he can get it in five”), and after he misses the first five tries, Toheeb Jimoh, the actor who plays Sam Obisanya on the show, says, “I think he can get it in 10.” Then Sudeikis proceeds to miss the next four attempts. But, he told me later, “there was no part of me that was like, ‘I'm not gonna hit one of these. I'm not not gonna hit one of these.’ ”

Like I said, confidence is a funny thing. You have to somehow believe that the worst outcome simply won't happen. Sometimes you have to do that while knowing for a fact that the worst outcome is happening, all the time. “It's a very interesting space to live in, where you're living in the questions and the universe is slipping you answers,” Sudeikis said. “And are you—are any of us—open enough, able enough, curious enough to hear them when they arrive?” This sounds oblique, I guess, but I can attest, after spending some time talking to Sudeikis, that everything is a little oblique for him right now. He had the same pandemic year we all had, and in the middle of that, he had Ted Lasso turn into a massive, unexpected hit, and in the middle of that, his split from his partner and the mother of his two children, Olivia Wilde, became public in a way that from a great distance seemed not entirely dissimilar to something that happens to the character he plays on the show that everyone was suddenly watching. “Personal stuff, professional stuff, I mean, it's all…that Venn diagram for me is very”—here he held up two hands to form one circle—“you know?”

Shirt, $195, by Sid Mashburn. T-shirt, $195, by Ralph Lauren. Vintage pants from The Vintage Showroom. Belt, $2,500, by The Row. His own sneakers by Nike x Tom Sachs. Socks, $18 for three pairs, by Nike. Pendant necklaces, $2,100 (tag), and $3,000 (bar), by Tiffany & Co. Jacket (on bench), $498, by Todd Snyder.

Anyway, Sudeikis hit the crossbar on the 10th try. “It's a tremendous sound,” he said of that moment when the ball connects with the frame of the goal. He'd done what he knew he would do. Everyone on the pitch was cheering like they'd won something. It was, for lack of a better way of describing it, a very Ted Lasso moment—a small victory, a crooked poster in a locker room that says Believe. “There's a great Michael J. Fox quote,” Sudeikis told me later, trying to explain the particular brand of wary optimism that he carries around with him, and that he ended up making a show about: “ ‘Don't assume the worst thing's going to happen, because on the off chance it does, you'll have lived through it twice.’ So…why not do the inverse?”

Watch Now:

10 Things Jason Sudeikis Can’t Live Without

Ted Lasso. Man—what an unlikely story. The character was initially dreamed up to serve a very different purpose. Sudeikis first played him in 2013, in a promo for NBC, which had recently acquired the television rights to the Premier League and was trying to inspire American interest in English football. The promo was the length and shape of an SNL sketch and featured a straightforward conceit: A hayseed football (our football) coach is hired as the football (their football) coach of a beloved English club, to teach a game he neither knows nor understands in a place he neither knows nor understands. The joke was simple and boiled down to the central fact that Ted Lasso was an amiable buffoon in short shorts.

But Sudeikis tries to listen to the universe, even in unlikely circumstances, and for whatever reason the character stuck around in his head. So, in time, Sudeikis developed and pitched a series with the same setup—Ted, in England, far from his family, a stranger in a strange land learning a strange game—that Apple eventually bought. But when we next saw Ted Lasso, he had changed. He wasn't loud or obnoxious anymore; he was simply…human. He was a man in the midst of a divorce who missed his son in America. The new version of Ted Lasso was still funny, but now in an earned kind of way, where the jokes he told and the jokes made at his expense spoke to the quality of the man. He had become an encourager, someone who thrills to the talents and dreams of others. He was still ignorant at times, but now he was curious too.

In fact, this is close to something Ted says, by way of Walt Whitman, in one of the first season's most memorable episodes: Be curious, not judgmental. I will confess I get a little emotional every time I watch the scene in which he says this, which uses a game of darts in a pub as an excuse to both stage a philosophical discussion about how to treat other people and to re-create the climactic moment of every sports movie you've ever seen. It's a somewhat strange experience, being moved to tears by a guy with a bushy cartoon mustache and an arsenal of capital-J jokes (“You beating yourself up is like Woody Allen playing the clarinet: I don't want to hear it”), talking about humanity and how we all might get better at it. But that's kind of what the experience of watching the show is. It's about something that almost nothing is about, which is: decency.

In the pilot episode, someone asks Ted if he believes in ghosts, and he says he does, “But more importantly, I think they need to believe in themselves.” That folksy, relentless positivity defines the character and is perhaps one of the reasons Ted Lasso resonated with so many people over the past year. It was late summer, it was fall, it was in the teeth of widespread quarantine and stay-at-home orders. People were inside watching stuff. Here was a guy who confronted hardship, who suffered heartbreak, who couldn't go home. And who, somehow, found his way through all that. Someone not unlike Sudeikis himself.

“If you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Sudeikis likes to say, in homage to his background in competitive sports, that there's no defense in the arts. “The only things you're competing against, I believe, are apathy, cynicism, and ego,” he said. This is a philosophy of Sudeikis's that predates Ted Lasso by many years, though you wouldn't necessarily have known it until recently. He grew up outside Kansas City, in Overland Park, Kansas, a “full jock with thespian tendencies,” as he once described himself. His uncle is George Wendt, who played Norm on Cheers. “He made finding a career in the arts, in acting or whatever, seem plausible,” Sudeikis said. But mostly he was drawn to the camaraderie of athletics. When Sudeikis first tried his hand at professional improv, in the mid-'90s, it was through something called ComedySportz, a national chain with a fake competition angle, teams in sports uniforms, and a referee. Brendan Hunt, who co-created and costars on Ted Lasso, initially met Sudeikis in Chicago, he told me. Sudeikis had traveled the eight hours up from Kansas City to do a show: “Suddenly there's a beat-up Volvo station wagon, like an '83, and this is '97, I think, and these two guys get out, all bleary-eyed, and wearily change into their baseball pants. And one of them was Jason.”

Sudeikis had gone to community college on a basketball scholarship but failed to keep up his grades, and he eventually left school to pursue comedy. For a while, he said, his sincere aspiration was to become a member of the Blue Man Group. He got close. “They flew me out to New York,” he said. “That was August of 2001, right before 9/11. And I got to see myself bald and blue.” (In the end, he wasn't a good enough drummer.) By that time, he was living in Las Vegas with his then partner, Kay Cannon, doing sketch comedy at the newly formed Second City chapter there. “Ego,” Sudeikis told me about this time, “that gets beaten out of you, doing eight shows a week.”

Eventually he was invited to audition for Saturday Night Live. “I didn't want to work on SNL,” Sudeikis said—he'd convinced himself that there were purer and less corporate paths to take. “At a certain point in your comedy journey, you have to look at it as like McDonald's,” he said. “You have to be like: ‘No. Never.’ ” Then he got the call. “It was like having a crush on the prettiest girl at school and being like, ‘She seems like a jerk.’ And it's like, ‘Oh, really? 'Cause she said she liked you.’ ‘She what?!’ ”

Suit, $4,860, by Tom Ford. Vintage t-shirt from The Vintage Showroom. Suspenders, stylist’s own. Shoes, $1,535, by John Lobb.

Sudeikis auditioned, of course, and was hired, in 2003—but as a writer: “It was like winning a gold medal in the thing you've never even trained for. You just happen to be good at the triple jump, and you really love the long jump.” He wrote for a couple of seasons, but he was unhappy—Cannon was still in Las Vegas, and Sudeikis missed performing. Finally he went to Lorne Michaels, to ask for a job as a member of the cast. “He had the best line. I go, ‘I had to give up two things I love the most to take this writing job: performing and living with my wife.’ And on a dime, he just goes, ‘Well, if you had to choose one…’ ”

At Saturday Night Live, Sudeikis often channeled the same level of cheerful optimism and forthright morality that he'd later bring to Ted Lasso, but audiences didn't necessarily notice it at the time. One of Sudeikis's most famous and beloved early sketches on SNL as a performer is 2005's “Two A-holes Buying a Christmas Tree”—Kristen Wiig and Sudeikis, chewing gum, oblivious to their surroundings, terrorizing Jack Black at a Christmas tree stand. It's a joke about a very familiar form of contemporary rudeness; it's also a riff on a certain kind of man who speaks for the woman next to him, whether she wants him to or not. And people laughed and moved on to the next bit, but to this day Sudeikis can tell you about all the ideas that were running through his head when he created the sketch with Wiig. “That scene was all about my belief that we were losing touch with manners,” he told me. “And yet it's also about love, because he loves her, and that's why he interprets everything for her—she never talks directly to the person.” But, he said, sighing, “once you start explaining a joke or something like that, it ceases to be funny.”

Sudeikis brought this type of attention and care to the movies he began acting in too, like the workplace comedy Horrible Bosses, even if it was lost on most of those who watched them. “That movie, Horrible Bosses, is riddled with optimism,” he said. “The rhythms of that movie, of what Jason Bateman and Charlie Day and I are doing, are deeply rooted in Ted Lasso too. But people don't want those answers. They want to hear the three of us cut up and joke around.”

So that's what Sudeikis did. He got used to a certain gap between his intention and how it was understood. During his time at SNL, his marriage fell apart. “You're going through something emotionally and personally, or even professionally if that's affecting you personally, and then you're dressed up like George Bush and you're live on television for eight minutes. You feel like a crazy person. You feel absolutely crazy. You're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're just like, ‘Who am I? What is this? Holy hell.’ ”

For a time he became a tabloid fixture. He remembers “navigating my first sort of public relationship, with January Jones, which was like learning by fire. What is the term? Trial by fire.” In a 2010 GQ article, when confronted with a question about rumors that he was dating Jennifer Aniston, he sarcastically responded that she should be so lucky. “And obviously I'm fucking joking, you know?” Sudeikis said. But back then, he treated interviews like improv—Yes, and—and that could create misunderstandings. Asked once on a podcast about what people tended to get wrong about him, Sudeikis responded, “That I was in a fraternity—or maybe that I would be.”

To that point, Hunt told me, “He's much less the assumed fraternity guy than you'd think.” But Hunt said he also understood where the impression came from: “I don't know where he learned it necessarily, whether it was from his parents, or his basketball coaches, but he exudes an easygoing confidence. And it's easy to hang with a guy like that. But some people are also like, ‘Fuck that guy,’ intrinsically.”

Shirt, $188, and ties (worn at waist), $125 each, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Shoes, $782, by Alden. Socks, $15, by Smart Turnout. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

When he won the Golden Globe, Sudeikis gave a dazed speech while wearing a hoodie, sparking glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” he said.

Shortly after Sudeikis and Wilde got together, near the end of his SNL run (he left the show in 2013), Wilde made a joke during a monologue that she read at a cabaret club about the two of them having sex “like Kenyan marathon runners,” and Sudeikis spent years answering questions about the joke. “The frustrating thing about that is that Olivia said that in a performance setting,” Sudeikis said. “It wasn't like she just was saying it glibly in an interview.” He described the experience of growing into celebrity, and confronting other people's misperceptions of him, as a disorienting one. “You're just being tossed into the situation and then trying to figure it out,” he said. The picture of him that was circulating wasn't exactly the one that he had of himself. But he didn't fight it, either. “You come to be thoughtful about it,” he said. “But also try to stay open to it. I don't ever want to be cynical.”

So he tried to stay open. But it wasn't until Ted Lasso that people really saw the side of him that comported with the way he saw himself. Last year, as it became clear that the show was a hit, he found himself answering, over and over, some version of the same question. The question would vary in its specifics, but the gist of it was always: How much do you and this character actually have in common? Sudeikis told me that over time, in response to people wondering about his exact relationship to Ted, he developed a few different evasive explanations. Ted, Sudeikis would say, was a little like Jason Sudeikis, but after two pints on an empty stomach. He was Sudeikis hanging on the side of a buddy's boat. He was Sudeikis, but on mushrooms. Sometimes, in more honest moments, he would say that Ted is the best version of himself. This, after all, is how art works: If it was just you, then it wouldn't really need to be art in the first place. And so Sudeikis learned to separate himself from Ted, to fudge the distance between art and artist.

Except, he said, after a while, every time he tried to wave off Ted, fellow castmates or old friends of his would correct him to say: “No.” They'd say: “No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.” It's not you on mushrooms, it's not you hanging off a boat, it's just…you. One of Sudeikis's friends, Marcus Mumford, who composed the music for the show, told me, “He is quite like Ted in lots of ways. He has a sort of burning optimism, but also a vulnerability, about him that I really admire.”

Hearing people say this, over and over again, Sudeikis said, “brought me to a very emotional space where, you know, a healthy dose of self-love was allowed to expand through my being and made me…” He trailed off for a moment. “When they're like, ‘No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.’ That's a very lovely thing to hear. I wish it on everybody who gets the opportunity to be or do anything in life and have someone have the chance to say, ‘Hey, that's you. That's you.’ ”

And if he's being honest, that's the way he feels about it too. “It's the closest thing I have to a tattoo,” Sudeikis said about Ted Lasso. “It's the most personal thing I've ever made.”

Sweater, $398, and shirt, $95, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore.

On the first Saturday in June, Sudeikis flew with his children, Otis and Daisy, from London to New York, where he owns a house in Brooklyn. “Brooklyn is home,” he told me simply. While filming the first season of Ted Lasso, he'd had the house renovated—there was black mold to get rid of and other changes to make. “So Olivia and the kids had to rent a lovely apartment in Brooklyn Heights. But it's not home. It's someone else's home.” Saturday was the first time Sudeikis and his children had set foot in their own place in two years. “The kids darted in,” he said. “Last time Daisy was in that house, she slept in a crib. So now she has a new big bed. It was hilarious. I walked up there after like 15 minutes and both rooms were a mess.”

He and Wilde, he said, no longer share the house. They split up, according to Sudeikis, “in November 2020.” The end of their relationship was chronicled in a painful, public way in the tabloids after photos of Wilde holding hands with Harry Styles surfaced in January, setting off a flurry of conflicting timelines and explanations. Sudeikis said that even he didn't have total clarity about the end of the relationship just yet. “I'll have a better understanding of why in a year,” he said, “and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it'll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.” Right now he was just trying to figure out what he was supposed to take away, about himself, from what had happened. “That's an experience that you either learn from or make excuses about,” he said. “You take some responsibility for it, hold yourself accountable for what you do, but then also endeavor to learn something beyond the obvious from it.”

In the first season of Ted Lasso, the comic premise of the show is revealed to be a tragic one: Ted is in England, far from home, doing something he doesn't know how to do and probably shouldn't be doing at all, in order to give his failing marriage space to survive. When the character's wife and son visit, in the show's fifth episode, his wife tells him, “Every day I wake up hoping that I'll feel the way I felt in the beginning. But maybe that's just what marriage is, right?” It's a wrenching moment that also gives new meaning to the show: Ted Lasso's heart is big, but it can also be broken as violently and as easily as anyone else's. By the end of the season, Lasso is divorced and renegotiating his relationships with his now ex-wife and son.

The first season of Ted Lasso had already been written—had already aired—by the time Sudeikis found himself living some aspects of it in real life. “And yet one has nothing to do with the other,” Sudeikis told me. “That's the crazy thing. Everything that happened in season one was based on everything that happened prior to season one. Like, a lot of it three years prior. You know what I mean? The story's bigger than that, I hope. And anything I've gone through, other people have gone through. That's one of the nice things, right? So it's humbling in that way.”

And in fact, the seeds of Ted's heartbreak, Sudeikis said, went all the way back to a dinner he had with Wilde around 2015, during which she first encouraged him to explore whether Ted Lasso could be more than just a bit on NBC. “It was there, the night at dinner, when Olivia was like, ‘You should do it as a show,’ ” he said. They got to talking about it. Sudeikis asked why Ted Lasso would move in the first place, to coach a team he had no real reason to coach: “ ‘Okay, but why would he take this job? Why would a guy at this age take this job to leave? Maybe he's having marital strife. Maybe things aren't good back home, so he needs space.’ And I just riffed it at dinner in 2015 or whenever, late 2014. But it had to be that way. That's what the show is about.”

I said to Sudeikis that I thought that while it was common for artists to put a lot of their lives into their art, it was less common that they end up living aspects of the art in their lives, after the fact.

“I wonder if that's true,” he replied. “I mean, isn't that just a little bit of what Oprah was telling us for years and years? You know, manifestation? Power of thought? That's The Secret in reverse, you know?”

But…if we're being honest, is that a thing you wanted to manifest?

“No. No. But, again, it isn't that. It wasn't that. And again, that's just me knowing the details of it. Like, that's just me knowing where it comes from, where any of it comes from.”

But he acknowledged it had been a hard year. Not necessarily a bad one, but a hard one. “I think it was really neat,” he said. “I think if you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Is that easier said than done? To land like an Avenger?

“I don't know. It's just how I landed. It doesn't mean when you blast back up you're not going to run into a bunch of shit and have to, you know, fight things to get back to the heights that you were at, but I'd take that over 412 bones anytime.”

He paused, then continued: “But there is power in creating 412 bones! Because we all know that a bone, up to a certain age, when it heals, it heals stronger. So, I mean, it's not to knock anybody that doesn't land like an Avenger. Because there's strength in that too.”

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In February, Sudeikis attended the Golden Globes, which were being held remotely on Zoom. He had his misgivings about the event—the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes on the awards, had been in the news for a series of unflattering revelations about its organization, and also the show was taking place in the middle of the night in London. Tom Ford had sent over a suit for Sudeikis to wear, and he tried it on, in his flat in Notting Hill, but he felt ridiculous, there in the middle of the night, and so changed out of it and into a tie-dyed hoodie made by his sister's clothing company. “I wore that hoodie because I didn't wanna fucking wear the fucking top half of a Tom Ford suit,” he said. “I love Tom Ford suits. But it felt weird as shit.”

“With kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’… All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it!”

The rest of this story you know: Sudeikis ended up winning best actor for Ted Lasso and gave a dazed acceptance speech while wearing the hoodie, and this in turn sparked glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. For the record, “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” Sudeikis said. It was just late at night and he didn't want to wear a suit. “So yeah, off it came and it was like, ‘This is how I feel. I believe in moving forward.’ ”

Lately, Sudeikis told me, he had been trying to pay more attention to how he actually felt about any given thing, to all the various signs and omens that present themselves to a person during the course of living their life. Even in his past, he said, there were moments that were obvious in retrospect, in terms of what the universe was trying to tell him, messages he missed entirely at the time. In Vegas, where he was living with Cannon before Saturday Night Live, he developed alopecia and his hair stopped growing, and he didn't know why. And then, at the end of his 30s, “during the nine months before Otis was born and the nine months after he was born,” Sudeikis developed extremely painful sciatica. “I went and got an MRI and was like, ‘Oh, yeah, the jelly doughnut in my L4, L5, is squirting out and touching a nerve.’ ” But why? When he had his second child, this didn't happen at all. So: why?

“I mean, since last November,” Sudeikis said, “the joke that feels more like a parable to me is a guy is sitting at home watching TV and the news breaks in to say flash flood warning. About an hour later he goes outside on his porch and he sees that the whole street is flooded.” You've probably heard the rest of this joke before: While the guy is praying to God for some kind of help, a truck, a boat, and a chopper come by, offering aid, which the guy turns down. God'll provide, he says. Sudeikis finished the joke: “Two hours after that, he's in heaven. He's dead. He says, ‘God, what's up, man? You didn't help me.’ God goes, ‘What do you mean, man? I sent you a pickup truck, I sent you a speedboat, I sent you a helicopter.’ ” So, Sudeikis said, “you can't tell me that hair falling out of my head wasn't—I don't know if it was the speedboat or the pickup truck or the helicopter, but yeah, man, it all comes home to roost. What you resist persists.”

He went on. “That's why I had sciatica,” he said. “That's the speedboat. That was like: ‘Hey, you gotta take a look at your stuff.’ ”

And this is another way that Sudeikis and Ted Lasso are alike, because both are always learning and relearning this lesson, which is: Be curious. Both are philosophical men whose philosophies basically boil down to trying to live as decent a life as is possible. Not just for the sake of it but because to be curious—to find out something new about yourself or someone else—is to be empowered. “I don't know if you remember G.I. Joe growing up,” Sudeikis said, “but they would always end it with a little saying: ‘Oh, now I know.’ ‘Don't put a fork in the outlet.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you could get hurt.’ ‘Oh, now I know.’ And then somebody would say, ‘And knowing is half the battle.’ And I agree with that—with kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. That's the other half. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’ Oh! Well, knowing is half the battle. All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it! Get better at names. Show up five minutes early, make it a point to do it. So, I'm still learning these things. But hopefully I've got plenty of time to do something about it.”

Sudeikis smiled a little wearily: “I mean, at the end of that joke, the guy still got to go to heaven, you know?”

Zach Baron is GQ's senior staff writer.

A version of this story originally appeared in the August 2021 issue with the title "Jason Sudeikis Paints His Masterpiece."

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Photographs by Hill & Aubrey

Styled by Michael Darlington

Grooming by Nicky Austin

Tailoring by Nafisa Tosh

Set design by Hella Keck

Produced by Ragi Dholakia Productions

0 notes

auskultu · 6 years

Text

Disks Wear Art on Their Sleeves to Woo Buyers

Richard F. Shepard, The New York Times, 12 March 1968

There, in riotous profusion, are the album art covers that employ graphics, sculpture, lithography, etchings, paintings, abstruse photography and combinations of all to grab the customer's eye and reach into his pocket. The stodgy photo of a Beethoven bust that once gave “class” to an album has given way to mad splashes of color and irreverent illustration designed to attract the young buyer.

There is no single school of album art. It draws from baroque stylings, art nouveau of the fin de siècle, San Francisco posters and the Inspiration of performers themselves who are spending more time than ever on their covers, often to the despair of record companies interested more in sales pull than in ego.

The album art “revolution,” in the making for several years, has provided classical and pop records with a visual veneer of sophistication, simplicity, wit and creativity that brooks no distinction between Rachmaninoff and Ringo. But so quickly do styles change that some in the trade.already see the,waning of the “psychedelic” art of last season's covers, although its lurid colorations, multiple exposures and fuzzy movement are still a powerful influence.

Powerful Vibrations The expanding emphasis on the look of record covers has been inspired by the sound inside the new thumping rhythms of electrically generated pop that has been dominating music to an extent that hot jazz, swing and bebop never did. It is a style of music for a type of generation that demands action and innovation in what it sees and hears. The static art of romantic mood is out. The trend to the new look has influenced classical albums sold to youthful customers who also buy pop and it has eyert affected the “middle of the road” music that appeals to the older, more sedentary crowd.

In the rush for uncommon attraction on the outside as well as in the grooves, cover art flows in all directions.

For example, the Beatles commissioned, through their own designer in England, the hydra-headed cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, issued here by Capitol Records. It shows the famous four at a burial plot against a background of dozens of heads, photographs and drawings (there’s even an album credit for wax figures of the old Beatles by Madame Tiissaud).

Among those who show up in the crowd are Fred Astaire, Clarence Darrow, Marilyn Monroe, Laurel and Hardy, Edgar Allan Poe, W. C. Fields, Karl Marx, Marlon Brando, H. G. Wells and Sigmund Freud.

An RCA Victor cover for a Boston Symphony recording of a Brahms work has a piece of classical Greek statuary painted over with strikingly colorful abstract art.

Home Movies Leonard Cohen, the folk singer, insisted on taking his own picture for a Columbia album. He went to an amusement arcade, spent a quarter in the automatic photo machine, and brought the result back as the cover picture. Bob Dylan, in search of simplicity, chose his latest album cover from an assortment of black-and-white snapshots.

Ironically, Columbia is blazing a new trail that could influence the entire design industry. The latest record of the United States of America, a rock group, went on sale last week with the disk enclosed in a plain manila envelope, identified by the rubber-stamped name of the band on the outside.

Although psychedelic art is still a major influence, Victorian and old English typefaces are appearing more frequently on pop album covers.

“The youngsters were brought up in the Bauhaus form-follows-function tradition,” explained Robert Jones, art director of RCA. “This trend toward the ornate is part of their rebellion.”

Art nouveau, particularly the flowing lines of the Beardsley style, is also showing up more strongly on the rock albums, although this is probably part of the psychedelic scene. But .the photograph is the stock-in-trade of albums that are selling personalities. The difference is that the art does more than depict; it tries to express a whole mood.

“We ran sex into the ground before the personalities took over,” said Mr. Jones, noting that the bosomy girl that decorated mood-music albums went out with the popularity of rock and blues.

Allan Steckler, London’s art director, who sends his opera stars to high-fashion photographer’s for carefully informal portraits, said: “Two nude chicks on a piano won't tell you anything about the Mendelssohn concerto, inside.”

Elektra uses photos on its pop albums, but has taken to irreverent baroque-style cartoons on Its classical Nonesuch label. “Baroque was a bawdy, fun period,” said William S. Harvey, vice president in charge of advertising, promotion and publicity. “When we started this in 1964, we went for the young college student and intellectual. I thought it was wrong to put classical music on a pedestal, with Beethoven busts. Baroque gave us impact.”

Do album covers sell records? Not to the buyer who comes into a store for a particular record; perhaps to the customer who has bought what he wants and is just thumbing through the counters. The cost of making a cover is relatively small, averaging $1,500 at one large company, lower at others and more for albums made by big stars who can turn down covers they don’t like.

“There can be a lot more ego than trade when you work with a big artist,” observed the art man of one small company.

#1968 #the beatles #sixties #Leonard cohen #album covers #album art #sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band #LPs #albums #graphic design #1960s #60s

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Birds of Prey: DC Comics and DCEU Easter Eggs Guide

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Harley Quinn and the gang deliver a romp through the seedy underbelly of the DCEU in Birds of Prey!

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This article contains nothing but Birds of Prey spoilers. We have a spoiler-free review right here.

Birds of Prey is the latest entry in Warner Bros.' sprawling DCEU shared universe of superhero movies. It's not just any superhero movie though. Birds of Prey offers up a female-led, female directed R-rated action romp through the grimy streets of North Gotham. Like any good comic book movie, the Cathy Yan helmed flick includes a whole bunch of impressive Easter eggs from deep cut DC Comics references to ridiculous Batman '66 nods all the way through some awesome homages to Harley's origin.

As always we're trying to catch all of the Easter eggs and secrets that Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn has to offer but despite our hard work there's no way that we've spotted them all! That's where you come in, if you caught something that we didn't then jump into our comments or hit us up on Twitter and if we update the piece with your spot then we'll give you a shout out!

Harley Quinn

- Easily the most deep cut reference in the entire movie, Birds of Prey features the first appearance of Harley Quinn. But we're not talking about Batman: The Animated Series. During Harley's prep for the final battle, a clip from Days of our Lives can be seen on the screen of Renee Montoya's TV which shows Arleen Sorkin as a Harlequin on the popular soap opera. It was this sequence that inspired the character and that led to Sorkin becoming the first person to voice Harley Quinn on Batman: The Animated Series!

- Harley's necklace says Bruce, the name of her Hyena who in turn is named after Bruce Wayne (in the film she apparently doesn't know that he's also Batman). Harley keeping a pet hyena is also a nice riff on her pet hyenas from Batman: The Animated Series. Only those two were named Bud and Lou, after famed comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.

- We get to see Harley chopping it up on a Roller Derby rink which comes from Amanda Palmer, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Chad Hardin's popular New 52 Harley Quinn run.

Black Canary

- At the Black Mask club, a drunk Harley accidentally calls Dinah "Bianca" in the club... now we're probably reaching with this one, but in the comics Helena Bertinelli has a daughter called Bianca Bertinelli...Could this be another deep cut reference to the classic comics?

- When Renee Montoya and Dinah first meet, the cop references Dinah's mother who was apparently the first Black Canary. This is a really interesting note as in the comics Dinah was the first Black Canary and her daughter Laurel later took on the mantle, so who was Dinah's mom? We'd love to know more, especially as the pre-Man of Steel history of the DCEU has only been explored in brief teases so far.

- Black Canary’s costume at the very end incorporates her traditional fishnets, but as part of her sleeves in a smart reinvention of her iconic look.

Huntress

- The Helena Bertinelli version of the Huntress has been kicking around DC Comics since 1989. But there was an earlier version of the character, Helena Wayne, who was the daughter of Batman and Catwoman! The Helena Bertinelli Huntress was created by Joey Cavalieri and Joe Staton.

- The rival mafia don who kills the Bertinellis is Don Galante. In the comics the Galante family are one of Gotham's five mob families that make up the city's La Cosa Nostra.

- That Huntress costume at the end looks pretty cool, we even get a classic domino mask. We're excited to see where the Birds of Prey go next... now they're a real team could we possibly see the appearance of one Barbara Gordon?

Renee Montoya

- Renee is the first canonically gay character in either a Marvel or DC movie and when we're introduced to her ex-girlfriend (played by Ali Wong) it's a nice nod to the queer history of the character who once dated Kate Kane's Batwoman.

- In the comics Renee Montoya quits the police and becomes the Question. Considering that the film ends with Renee retiring to become a full time crime fighter, with the Birds, maybe there's a chance we could see something like this happen on screen. We'd love to see her put on the iconic mask if Birds of Prey gets a sequel.

Cassandra Cain

- One of the first things that we noticed was that Cassandra Cain mentioned she was in foster care. Now that might not seem too out of the ordinary for a street kid, it's important in regards to Cass and her comic book origin. In the DC Comics, Cass is the daughter of Lady Shiva and David Cain who train her to be an assassin. Now it doesn't look like Cass got that training here (although she is quite good with her hands). But the fact that she's fostered means that we could learn more about her real parents going forward...

- When Cassandra Cain is initially unable to respond to Montoya’s question in the precinct, it’s a nod to how the character couldn’t speak in her early appearances. This was due to her brutal training by her father which put the ability to kill above the ability to communicate.

- This probably isn't the direction they're going to take her in the movies, but in the comics, Cassandra Cain wore the mantle of Batgirl for a number of years, and rocked one of the coolest costumes in the Bat-family while doing it!

Black Mask

- The Janus Corporation gets several mentions and background appearances in the movie, notably in a "Janus Cosmetic" billboard. In Black Mask's comics origin, Janus was the foundation of the Sionis family fortune, and Roman made a fortune on flawed cosmetics that ultimately ended up scarring its wearers. The appearance of Janus here is another tie to the wider DCEU as well, as we had previously seen a Janus sign all the way back in the Justice League movie.

- Roman’s “fuck family” rant is the closest this character feels to his earliest comics appearances, where he resented his parents and actually created his mask from the wood of his father's coffin. Roman is a weird guy.

- Roman keeps an extensive collection of exotic masks, as he did in the comics, even before he adopted his villainous alter ego.

- Later in the movie, Roman's goons all wear strange and exotic masks which works as a rad homage to his crew in the comics who were known as the False Face Society.

Gotham City

- During the third act of the movie we see Harley take on Black Mask at the so-called "Founders Pier" though that isn't a location we know from Gotham City, it seems like it could be a mashup of Founders Island in the Arkham series of games and Gotham Pier in various Batman movies and comics. That's not the only landmark familiar to gamers, as Amusement Mile, the location of the Funhouse is a key location in the North East of Gotham in both the Batman comics and the award-winning Batman: Arkham games.

- Harley mentions Robinson Park, a landmark in Gotham City which is named for classic Batman artist Jerry Robinson. It's a regular fixture in the comics and has been mentioned in Joker as well as other DC movies.

Suicide Squad

- During that epic evidence room fight we caught a glimpse of what looked Katana's iconic sword from Suicide Squad.

- In the third act when Harley and the gang are battling the gangs of Gotham they're in the top of a funhouse and the windows are covered with Joker-style "ha-ha-ha" graffiti. When she looks for her weapons stash it's all gone revealing that it was clearly an old safe house for Harley and Joker.

- The building that Harley crashes the truck into is ACE Chemicals which is historically where he first turned into the Joker. In Suicide Squad this is also where Harleen was turned into Harley, this destruction is a key part of her titular emancipation! What's more, when Harley is reminiscing about her origin story, the movie reuses footage from Suicide Squad meaning that it's definitely in canon with past DCEU efforts.

- Some other nods that Suicide Squad is 100% in continuity focus on Harley joking about the events of the film, cutting her Squad hairstyle off, and the infamous “Daddy’s Little Monster" shirt that she says has "sentimental value."

- Something that is interesting here though is that any and all references and footage of the Joker are definitely not Jared Leto and seem to be almost aggressively generic and more of an implication of the Joker rather than any specific representation of him.

Miscellaneous Cool Stuff

- The "famous Gotham artist" who made Roman's statue could be the Bat-family villain Grotesque or in a more deep-cut and silly reference it could be a Batman '66 villain known as the Clock King who pretends to be an artist when he isn’t committing bizarre time-based crimes.

- Harley mentioning that she once stole "Eleanor Rosevelt's nudes" for the Joker is especially funny because the first lady was actually introduced in to the DC universe canon as a character in 1981's All-Star Squadron #3.

- Harley and Cassandra are watching a Tweety and Sylvester cartoon, and there’s a Porky Pig VHS tape on top of the TV, this is not just a cool Warner Bros. animation nod, but also pays homage to the fact that the film really feels like a live action Looney Tunes cartoon, which is exactly what Harley Quinn should be!

- Though we couldn't find anything about the Golden Lion crime family in the comic we were wondering if the name of Mr. Keo's organization could be a nod to the similarly named award that Joker took home at the Venice Film Festival last year.

- This might just be us living in a dream world but we think that one of Roman’s goons in the funhouse near the end was dressed like almost-forgotten DC Comics character, B’wana Beast!

Birds of Prey Post-Credits Scene

There isn't a post-credits scene in Birds of Prey, but we DO get a post-credits voiceover. Harley says “I hear Batman f…” before it gets cut off. This is likely a reference to the excellent Harley Quinn animated series on DC Universe where Harley refers to Batman as “a guy who fucks bats.”

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Books

Rosie Knight

Feb 6, 2020

DC Entertainment

Birds of Prey

Margot Robbie

from Books https://ift.tt/387ZHLg

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j-watched-something · 7 years

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J Watched Netflix’s Death Note 2017 [SPOILERS]

Introduction

When it comes to adaptations, viewers for the most part fall into two groups: fans of the original source material who want to see the adaptation do the original justice and viewers who have either no or some passing knowledge of the source material and are there to enjoy a movie. With Netflix's Death Note, the recent American film adaptation of the Japanese manga of the same name, I find myself in the second group.

Now, I'm not a complete Death Note virgin. I've been in fandom circles for the past 12 years now and with a series as iconic as Death Note, you can't not know at least a little about it. Personally, I've seen the first two episodes of the anime and the first Japanese live action film that came out. I saw these probably when I was fourteen or fifteen which dates my exposure to this series by about nine or ten years (I feel old...). The rest of what I know comes from the billions of internet memes, listening to one of my mega-fan friends talk about the series (these conversations also taking place nine or ten years ago), and whatever I happened to come across on my dashboard while scrolling through Tumblr.

I'm writing this introduction part out before I watch the movie. I wanted to jot down what I knew about the series and my position in relation to it so that everyone could know where I was coming from when I gave my review. So to establish a starting point for myself, here's what I (think I) know about the Death Note series (potentially inaccurate spoilers up ahead):

Death Note is about a genius high school student named Light Yagami who comes across a book, the titular Death Note, that has the power to kill a person if you write their name down in it. The book will even allow you to specify the time and details of the person's death and you can plot out their actions for quite some time leading up to their demise. Light sees the Death Note as a way to become a god and starts using it to rid the world of those he deems evil. Multiple deaths start occurring and somehow people come to the conclusion that a person is behind it and this person becomes known as “Kira.” A task force is organized with the purpose of bringing in Kira and Light's father is one of the people on this task force. Enter L, a detective who is very reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. His mental abilities far surpass the people around him, he displays strange quirks (a love of sweets and the strange manner in which he holds his body and how he sits), and his social skills are lacking and perhaps unimportant to him. L and Light are equally matched intellectually and a cat and mouse game begins to take place as they try to outsmart one another. Light's ego and increasing paranoia from being pursued by the police leads him to sometimes stray from his original intentions with the Death Note as he tries to destroy the people in his way.

Other characters I know about are Misa Amane and Ryuk. Misa has feelings for Light and has a Death Note of her own. She has an ability linked to the Death Note that Light finds useful and he treats her as a pawn in his bigger plan, keeping her around only because of this ability and not because he returns her feelings. Ryuk is a Shinigami, or Death God, and is connected to the Death Note. Only people who've touched the Death Note can see him and he spends a lot of his time snarking at Light and his plans. Also he really likes apples.

There's a scene in which L manages to trick Light into revealing his general location by limiting a news broadcast to a specific area and another scene where Light uses a potato chip to throw off the police and that's about all I know for plot points.

As you can see, I know probably about as much as one would get by reading a summary slapped on the back cover of a book, and I'm not even sure if some parts of my information is accurate. I'm pretty removed from the source material as I head into this movie. I've noticed that a lot of the fans of the original are very unhappy with the movie (to put it lightly) and I'm curious as a non-fan if I'll enjoy it. Are the problems with this film strictly as an adaptation or does it fall flat as a standalone as well? My review will look at the film first and foremost as a movie, but I will set aside some time at the end to reflect on it as an adaptation as well (though I'm not sure how much I can contribute to that conversation).

I'll see you all on the other side!

Review [Spoilers Ahead!]

There is so much to talk about.

This movie is bad. The lead is atrocious, the leaps in logic are ridiculous, and the movie can't for the life of it figure out what tone it's going for, but damn if I did not enjoy every minute of this movie.

I watched it with my dad, who knew absolutely nothing about Death Note going in, and we laughed our asses off. I'm reminded of the first time I watched Maximum Overdrive, and how the over the top ridiculousness of it just made it even more fun. It felt as though at every moment where they should have taken things seriously, someone in production tripped and dropped cheese onto the project.

There is a part in this film where, during what's supposed to be a serious and tragic moment, everything goes into slow-mo and “I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love” by Chicago starts playing in the background. That is all I need to tell you for you to understand what kind of movie you're getting yourself into.

Let's start getting into the specifics of this beautiful disaster.

Everything about this film is over the top. A lot of the deaths are super gory in the film. Everyone's head has to explode, or their body has to explode. Human beings in this universe are one hard push away from gooey destruction. One guy in the film has a heart attack, but he couldn't just have a heart attack, he also had to fall down a flight of stairs. Mia's death at the end of the film wasn't gross, but it was still over the top. Homegirl fell down onto a display from a flower shop, petals erupting from her crash site in slow motion as an 80s love ballad played on in the background. Good lord.

Speaking of slow motion, there's a lot of it in this film, or at least it feels like there is. I wouldn't say that they use slow motion more in this movie than what is typically normal these days, but it's how they're using it. There aren't any complex choreographed action scenes in this film, the only times they use slow motion is to enhance a serious moment or to show off the aforementioned gore, and in the case of the former, it really doesn't work out. The use of slow motion to make things more dramatic reminds me of slow motion in 90s movies where I'm sure everyone at the time thought it was really enhancing the impact of the serious moment but in hindsight it's unintentionally funny.

The over the top nature of the film really hurts it. Everything is taken a step too far and because of that, what's supposed to be taken seriously becomes comical. Yes, I'll say that it's because of this that I really enjoyed the film, but that wasn't the intention here. This film wasn't supposed to entertain me in the way it did.

There were some good ideas in this film that never went all the way through. The soundtrack has a lot of 80s soft rock in it and even the score seems 80s inspired with its use of synthesizers. A lot of the important conversations and confrontations between characters take place with the actors lit up by a nearby neon sign. The chase scene towards the end of the movie where the characters are running through alleys and across construction sites, through a diner, also features a lot of neon lighting. It felt like the film was trying for an homage to 80s detective thrillers but they never fully committed to it. While I'm not sure an homage to 80s detective thrillers would have worked out, they shouldn't have just stopped halfway through the concept. Another good idea that went nowhere was the possible moral dilemma that naturally comes along with the nature of something like the Death Note. Being presented with the power to kill anyone with a low chance of getting caught is an Ethics professor's wet dream. We get some talk here and there of whether or not Kira has the right to do what they do, but it's in passing conversations that never go anywhere important.

There are certain things that I will say were genuinely good in this movie aside from a couple of the actors. I thought there was a lot of well shot scenes in this film, I thought the lighting at certain moments was good and as a fan of 80s music, I liked the soundtrack and score.

On to the characters. The ones I'll be focusing on are Light Turner, the person who receives the Death Note at the beginning of the film, Mia Sutton, Light Turner's crush, then girlfriend and partner-in-crime as the serial killer Kira, Ryuk, the Death God who gave Light Turner the Death Note, and L, the FBI detective determined to bring Kira in to answer for their crimes.

Light Turner. Dear God. First of all, besides Ryuk and L, all of the other characters from the series that I'm aware of got westernized names and honestly they should have done that for Light, because “Light Turner” is way too ridiculous for me to deal with right now and I'm probably going to say it as many times as I can in this review just because it makes me laugh. I guess the creative team thought that the fans might be mad if they changed Light's name, but man that is probably the last thing they should have been worried about and I'll get to that later.

I honestly have no idea what they were going for with Light Turner, because nothing they try sticks its landing. I haven't seen the actor, Nat Wolff, in anything before this, so I can't speak about his talents as an actor in general, but this didn't seem to be the right role for him. Most of his line delivery fell flat, there were times when Light Turner was supposed to say something sarcastic and he never got the timing or the tone right, and it seemed to me that every time he had to say a swear word, he'd fumble over it like he wasn't comfortable with saying it. It doesn't help when he has to act alongside established actors like Willem Dafoe and in general, a lot of his costars outperform him.

There wasn't any charisma or intensity to Light Turner. There's a part at the beginning where he's trying to defend his crush from a bully and his “threat” to this bully is telling him that because he was held back in school and is 18, if he hit Light Turner, it would technically be child abuse and he could get in tr-*punch* And yes, it was funny, but it was also kind of lame and it doesn't help Light Turner's character when added to what I have to believe is the now infamous “screaming scene” where he spends a full minute screaming like a goat and hiding under desks after seeing Ryuk for the first time. He's never able to shed that image of him during the rest of the film, making his more serious moments hard to take seriously.

Throughout the film, there are times when other characters will speak about how smart Light Turner is, but we're never really shown anything to suggest that he's smarter than the people around him, in fact, he does things that are very, very stupid. I'm not kidding when I say that this guy is probably the worst serial killer I've ever seen, and it's kind of troubling that I know I'd be able to pull it off better than he does. Right off the bat, he shows the Death Note to Mia the day after he kills his first two victims and goes as far as to kill another person to prove it to her that it actually works. This is stupid for many obvious reasons and he doesn't stop there. He and Mia decide to use the Death Note to rid the world of evil, he chooses the name “Kira” then acknowledges that in some languages Kira means “Light.” When Mia smartly points out that that would make it easier for people to connect to the killings to him should they look hard enough, he tells her that it's okay because Kira also “kind of means 'killer' in Japanese,” and then uses that point to throw people off but even that is seen through eventually (by L, but the fact remains that he saw through it). His father, James, is investigating Kira, and Light Turner is cartoonishly suspicious whenever he tries to get information on how the investigation's coming along from his dad. At the end of the film, Light Turner pulls off some genius plan using the Death Note, but let me tell you, nothing in the movie leading up to that point led me to believe that he was smart enough to do that. This point actually brings me to Mia.

Mia Sutton starts out as Light Turner's love interest but then becomes, in my opinion, the head of the operation when it comes to their activity as Kira. She's more cold and calculating than Light Turner, and enjoys the god aspect of being Kira more than he does, referring to the people of the world as sheep. Mia would go as far as she needed to go to keep Kira a secret, which is something Light Turner wouldn't do. She's so ruthless that I honestly found her a more interesting character than Light Turner, she definitely made a smarter killer than he did and sometimes I felt as though L should have been pursuing her rather than Light Turner as the person behind Kira. At the very least, L, as smart as he's supposed to be, should have been able to deduce that Kira was not one person, but two. The script pushed so hard for it to be between Light and L (probably because they had to, but that's a point for later) that even though Mia's doing a lot of the driving as Kira, her involvement is basically ignored by the plot at certain points. I will say that as much as I enjoy her character, this is still Netflix's Death Note, and she doesn't escape the fate the other characters suffer. She doesn't do anything ground breaking, and really, it's hard not to outshine Light Turner in this movie. She also falls victim to the idiocy that plagues most of the characters in this film, like using the testimony of random people on the internet as good enough evidence that a person deserves to die (though honestly I'm not sure if she particularly cares about the guilt of the people she kills, but we're not allowed to learn anything about who she is and what drives her), and eventually getting outsmarted by Light Turner, which is super embarrassing.

Ryuk is...fine? I mean he's just sort of there. Willem Dafoe does a good job with his voice work here but the character honestly isn't given much to do. I liked how they presented Ryuk in the film, always keeping him partially in the shadows. His glowing eyes peeking out of the darkness was really cool, and judging by the effects on him that I could see when he moved a little further in the light, I do think the shadows help make up for the limitations of what they could do. He looks more real this way, and yeah it's bad that the CGI's quality requires this sort of trick, but honestly it's better than parading poor effects around in the light.

L was pretty interesting in the first half of his screen time. Lakeith Stanfield is a good actor and he played his part well. His obsession with candy, how he carried himself, and his weird way of sitting in chairs fit well into the movie, but I'm not sure if this was a good thing. It was definitely ridiculous to watch and at times it was hard to take him seriously, but when I think about it, Light Turner was hard to take seriously so it kind of works out fine in this ridiculous movie. One thing that bothered me about his character is the insane leaps in logic he had. He jumped to conclusions quite a bit in this film and he doesn't really explain himself very well if at all. Yes, most of his deductions turned out to be right, but that doesn't excuse the writers for cutting corners. There's a point in this movie where L's associate and father figure, Watari, is in danger and is ultimately killed, and after that L's character goes off the rails. He becomes angry and reckless. He ends up getting his hands on a gun and the final confrontation between him and Light Turner is a chase scene. I'm honestly very split on the shift in L's character. It's obvious from Lakeith Stanfield's performance earlier in the film that he did some homework and tried to stay true to the L from the anime. He nailed his idiosyncrasies to the point where it's hard to view his performance without thinking about the anime. With everyone else so divorced from the characters that they're supposedly playing, he was the one character that was still pretty faithful and it's hard not to take note of that. So then comes the character shift. From what I know about the anime I don't think L would act like this, but just looking at the L that appears in this film who's under the control of a different creative mind, maybe he would. It's also hard to deny that there are moments when Lakeith Stanfield does a good job of getting across the anguish, anger, and grief his character is experiencing. I guess ultimately what disappoints me about the turn L takes in this film is that I wanted more of an intellectual confrontation between him and Light Turner, and then what follows that is the deeper disappointment of realizing that Light Turner doesn't seem smart enough for that kind of confrontation. Maybe they had to make L into a last minute action character to make the confrontation with his adversary work.

One scene I just have to talk about in full is the chase scene which has to be my favorite scene in the movie as well as a perfect example of everything wrong with the film. The chase starts off with L in a police car armed with a gun and driving like a maniac through the streets trying to catch Light Turner, who's currently escaping on foot. At several points, L nearly runs down pedestrians and at one point crashes through an ironic sign about safe driving because this movie can't help itself. Eventually, L leaves his car and begins to pursue Light Turner on foot and I swear to God these two run through specific places just so that they have people to push out of the way and stuff to knock over. The movie is so convinced that watching them push people over is super cool and action-y and wow that at one point they show Light Turner running through a back alley that just happens to have a group of twenty people standing there and positioned so that they block the entire way through and Light Turner has to push them aside. The boys take a turn into a stereotypical action diner, entering through the back so they have to run through the kitchen and then they go out to the seating area and through the front door. Again, because this movie just can't help itself, as L runs through the seating area of the diner, he bumps into one of the patrons and accidentally shoves the man's face into his bowl of soup. The whole way through this, L is shouting after Light Turner and Light Turner is letting out little high pitched yelps. It's so dumb, so cheesy, and so beautiful. I love this scene.

For the most part, I've tried to avoid talking about this film in comparison to the original source material, but the rest that I have to say about it only makes sense if I talk about it as an adaptation so I'm going to head into that now.

Light Turner's character is a really dramatic departure from his anime counterpart, and in some respects I feel like this is kind of insulting to the western audience this adaptation was made for. Light from the source material was a mastermind, a megalomaniac, a genius. Light Turner is a stereotypical high school loser edgelord with a crush on the popular girl. The only thing the two Lights really have in common is that they're high school students and their fathers are in law enforcement. None of the original Light's character traits were carried over. It makes me think that the creative team or the marketing team didn't think we could be invested in a story with a complex character like Light Yagami, that our dumb western minds weren't ready for the intense intellectual cat and mouse game of the source material and that's why we got the lazy Hollywood trope for our lead and ended the movie with a chase and a sequence on a collapsing ferris wheel. Not to mention the changes they made for Light Turner really reminded me of how they adjusted Goku for an American audience in Dragon Ball Evolution. It's just about as lazy as you can get when westernizing a concept. The westernization is so predictable that they jammed a school dance into this. Really.

Mia, from what I can gather, is supposed to be the American version of Misa Amane, and the difference is even greater in this case than it was for the two Lights. It's funny how in this adaptation, the relationship dynamic between Light and Misa seems to have completely flipped. By the end of the film, Mia seemed more like the Light from the original than Light Turner did.

One of the thoughts that I came out of this movie with was that this might have been better off as a spin-off of Death Note rather than an adaptation of the original story, and my reasoning all comes down to the nature of Kira. Light as Kira in the original was an egotistical, calculating killer, taking careful steps to not get caught. Light Turner and Mia as Kira in the adaptation was more reminiscent of teenage couple spree killers. They make reckless mistakes, killing people too close to home, they seem to make a date night out of choosing their next victims, and the killings fuel their romance, especially from Mia's side. These different types of killers with different motivations will naturally make for different types of stories, and it feels like the creators in the adaptation's case really didn't want to make it. With how dramatically they changed Light and Misa, it seems to me that they liked the concept of the Death Note, not the story, but the book itself.

This movie focuses on the “what if” scenario of two dumb, jaded, pretentious kids suddenly having the power to kill whoever they want and what happens afterwards. That's not what the original Death Note was about, true, but it's still a story that could have been interesting. It's just that it wasn't the story the adaptation was supposed to tell, and I don't think it was right to try to tell that story with characters that weren't theirs. Even with original characters, this film still doesn't work, but it's not as insulting.

Final Thoughts

In the end this is a really bad adaptation, and possibly an entertainingly bad movie so long as you don't have any strong feelings for the source material. I feel kind of bad for enjoying this film as much as I did, especially when I think back on all the horrible comic book adaptations I've seen in my life, but I can't help but recommend this movie to the So Bad, It's Good crowd, so long as you don't know anything about Death Note. To all the Death Note fans, I'm so sorry.

(And a final tidbit I couldn't find anywhere else to bring up: The calculus book that plays a crucial role in this film is the same textbook my dad used in college back in 1972, and he got very excited about it. This book has been out of print for a long time, so I have no idea why Mia has it.)

#netflix's death note #death note 2017 #american death note #nat wolff #lakeith stanfield #margaret qualley #willem dafoe #adam wingard #j watched something #spoilers #j's reviews #death note 2017 review

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brendonuriesource · 7 years

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Death of a Bachelor, Birth of a Billboard-Topping Broadway Badass

Brendon Urie got pretty sick a few months ago. Three days before the Panic! at the Disco frontman’s Death of a Bachelor tour was set to hit Oracle Arena, he lost his voice and his temperature soared to 103 degrees. But he was slated to perform for 11,000 fans at Oregon’s Moda Center that evening.

“Still gonna have fun on stage tonight,” he tweeted before the show. “Fuck a cancellation. Let’s do this, Portland.” The next day, he informed his followers that he’d received a steroid shot in the ass so as not to miss his sold-out Vegas hometown show. Then it was off to the Bay Area.

If there were any Oakland concertgoers unaware of Urie’s social media play-by-plays (unlikely), they would’ve had a tough time deducing that the Panic! frontman felt like anything less than a rock star. He belted out over 20 songs during the March 25 show, including covers of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Billy Joel’s “Movin’ Out.” He took over the drums to bang out a Bruno Mars/Rihanna medley, killing back-to-back renditions of “24K Magic” and “Bitch Better Have My Money.” He nailed his signature backflip during the band’s 2013 song, “Miss Jackson.” Then he packed up, hit the road, and completed 15 more stops around the country (including one in Duluth, GA on his 30th birthday). And then, one month later, he made his Broadway debut.

This is how Brendon Urie gets shit done. And this unrelenting energy and passion have made him one of pop-rock’s biggest success stories. Panic! at the Disco currently counts over 3 million and 2.29 million followers on Instagram and Twitter, respectively, and Urie’s amassed nearly identical numbers across his personal accounts. Panic!’s 2005 debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, produced the instantly recognizable, irresistibly catchy earworm, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” which became a top 10 hit, peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Not bad for a group of recent high school grads who got their start as a Blink-182 cover band. A year earlier, Urie, along with pals Ryan Ross, Spencer Smith, and Brent Wilson formed Panic! and sent a few of their demos to Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz via LiveJournal. Within months, he’d signed them as the inaugural band under his Fueled by Ramen record label imprint, Decaydance.

Phoenix, AZ resident Sarah Fingold discovered the group early on. “I was a Fall Out Boy fan, and they did a tour in 2005 and Panic! opened for them,” she recalls. “It was one of their first tours and no one knew who they were. I just remember them being all flamboyant with their outfits and what I remembered as the ‘Shotgun Wedding’ song [officially known as “Time to Dance” from Fever].”

Fingold has attended 15 Panic! shows over the past 12 years and has, along with other early adopters, stuck by the group through a tumultuous decade. In 2006, Jon Walker replaced Wilson on bass. But two years later, Walker and guitarist Ross both left the band following the release of their sophomore album, Pretty. Odd. Urie and drummer Smith then recruited bassist Dallon Weekes while recording their third album, 2011’s Vices & Virtues, and the trio went on to create 2013’s Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! But in 2015, Smith bowed out of the band and Weekes later downgraded his role from permanent to touring member.

And then there was one.

At that point, Urie had a choice. He could have retired from the music game altogether, content with the band’s solid decade together. Or he could’ve put the Panic! brand to bed and reinvented himself as a solo artist. But instead, he soldiered on alone under the Panic! moniker, writing and producing new tracks from his Los Angeles home studio. And while he recruited Weekes, guitarist Kenneth Harris, and drummer Dan Pawlovich for live performances, Urie himself recorded every instrument on the new material, aside from the horns (he’s mastered guitar, bass, keyboard, percussion, and synthesizer), and he even provided his own background vocals (courtesy of a four-octave range). In January 2016, he unveiled the band’s fifth studio release, Death of a Bachelor. As a one-man act, Urie earned Panic! its first No. 1 album and a Grammy nomination.

“Brendon Urie is an anomaly,” says producer and collaborator Rob Mathes. “He’s a young man who is an incredible drummer and singer with extraordinary range, but also a truly great bass player and a guitarist who can shred along with the best of them. Not only that, but he can do backflips and cartwheels on stage and perform seven shows a week with his voice remaining as powerful as ever.”

According to Mathes, Urie’s musical talent is just the tip of the iceberg, and this absurd amalgamation of attributes makes him an industry exception.

“Add to this no ego whatsoever — none,” he says. “It doesn’t really make sense. He was raised by Mormon parents, and though he has drifted from that tradition, I believe his kindness, politeness, and complete lack of pretension probably comes from that religious upbringing. He never thinks he is the most important person in the room. He’s one of my favorite people.”

Los Angeles-based host and long-time KROQ radio DJ Ted Stryker has supported Urie since his early days. “I’ve been listening to Panic! and interviewing Brendon since close to the beginning — he was never off my radar,” he says. “The dude is a superstar. His stage presence, energy, vibe, work ethic, attitude, style, writing — he does not want to fail.”

And he hasn’t, despite the fact that Panic! could have easily succumbed to the fate of other pop rock acts of the MySpace era, written off as a one-hit wonder. Considering the young group’s quick and sudden rise to fame and the members’ gradual departures, it would have been understandable if Urie had felt entitled to coast on his early success until fans lost interest. But the musician has pulled off a rare feat, artistically experimenting and evolving enough to continuously attract new fans, but never veering so off course as to alienate his original supporters.

“Amazingly, the band has amassed a massive cult following, and in essence, are actually bigger now than ever before in their career,” says Live 105 music director Aaron Axelsen. “They sold out a show at the Oracle in Oakland back in March and continue to generate insane sales and streaming numbers here in the Bay Area.”

“You have this [older demographic] of generation-MySpace who nostalgically love Panic! and have been there since day one in 2004, fused with a new wave of younger millennial fans, basically creating an ideal band for soccer moms and their daughters,” Axelsen adds.

That universal appeal hasn’t just kept Panic! afloat: it’s catapulted them toward greater and greater success, even as the band members themselves have dwindled down to just one. That may be why Urie, while lacking the name recognition of an Ed Sheeran or a John Mayer, beat out both artists by having the highest-grossing tour of 2017 thus far.

It’s the combination of unconditional old-school fan loyalty and newbie devotion that’s kept Panic! thriving. “When the new songs came along, the younger audience took ownership of them,” Stryker says, noting that Blink-182 and Weezer have experienced similar sustained success thanks to the support of a millennial audience.

Case in point: 15-year-old Panic! fan Eva Goldthwaite from Boston. She became a dedicated fan a few years ago after discovering Urie’s outspoken support of the LGBTQ+ community in his lyrics and press interviews. “I’ve grown up in a pretty accepting environment,” she says. “I never realized the true, horrible things that were happening in the world.”

After launching the Instagram fan account @brendon.urie (which now counts 31.5K followers), Goldthwaite was shocked to read comments describing followers’ experiences with homophobia and prejudice. Moved to take action, she and a friend decided to pay tribute to Urie’s message of acceptance by distributing paper hearts in all the colors of the rainbow through the crowd at the band’s July 1, 2016 show in Mansfield, MA. Printed on the cutouts were instructions for attendees to shine their cell phone flashlights through the hearts to create a stadium-wide wave of rainbow colors. Audience members were instructed to start the spectacle once the band launched into the equality anthem, “Girls/Girls/Boys,” which includes the refrain “love is not a choice.”

Urie and his team were blown away by the grassroots effort, sharing their appreciation on social media. Fans in other cities took notice, like 20-year-old New Yorker Raquel DiGiacomo, who co-manages the Twitter and Instagram accounts, @PanicUpdating (16K fans and 17.8K followers, respectively). As Urie prepared to kick off the Death of a Bachelor tour, she and a team of fellow fans spearheaded a national effort to replicate the rainbow.

“We spent hours getting people’s information for each stop on the tour, writing our their handles, Tweeting templates of the hearts, telling people where to buy paper,” she says. “It got so big, the people in Houston managed to turn the entire arena into the pride flag.”

The nightly tradition became a testament to the loyalty of Urie’s fans, and he acknowledged the spectacle in a speech at each tour stop.

“The last tour we just finished was the most inspiring I’ve ever been a part of,” he recently wrote in a letter to Billboard commemorating Pride month. “Thank you to all of you for being who you are. You’re beautiful and I love you.”

Fans love Urie right back — so much that they’re willing to traverse the country to see him fulfill his lifelong dream of starring on Broadway. On May 26, Urie kicked off a 10-week run as Charlie Price in Cyndi Lauper’s Tony Award-winning musical, Kinky Boots. It’s a definite departure from his comfort zone, but the production is, in many ways, a perfect fit for Urie. Lauper’s rock-tinged numbers are reminiscent of Panic!’s theatrical influences, and one eerily prophetic lyric from Death of a Bachelor’s “Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time” kind of says it all: “I lost a bet to a guy in a chiffon skirt/ But I make these high heels work.”

If the numbers are any indication, he definitely does. In the first week (during which he only performed four of eight shows), Urie boosted Kinky Boots ticket sales by 40 percent (or $315,000) and raised attendance by 22 percent compared to the previous week. His seamless transition from rockstar to thespian has wowed critics and colleagues alike.

“Brendon has been like a sponge soaking up everything-Broadway and putting it into his work,” says Urie’s Kinky Boots co-star, Taylor Louderman. “For someone with such a huge following, you might expect an equally huge ego, but this guy is as sweet as they come.”

Mathes says the new endeavor is an ideal outlet for Urie’s talent and enthusiasm. “He has never had more fun in his life than in Kinky Boots,” Mathes says. “He’s over the moon for it and has never been happier. We know he’s at home making blistering modern rock music, but he sure is loving Broadway.”

Urie’s temporary departure from Panic! hasn’t deterred fans. Goldthwaite’s mom will drive her six hours to see Kinky Boots in July and Fingold will make the trek from Phoenix that same month. DiGiacomo has seen the show twice already and plans to see it two more times before Urie’s final performance on August 6.

Each night Urie has appeared in the show, the stage door has been swarmed post-performance, with fans of all ages pouring onto the West 45th Street sidewalk and coming uncomfortably close to oncoming traffic. And each night, Urie has shown up for fans, smiling for countless selfies, signing an astronomical amount of Playbills, and expressing sincere gratitude for their support.

The fan devotion isn’t simply idol admiration; supporters say the musician’s unwavering commitment to his craft, his community, and the causes close to his heart have motivated their own personal growth.

“Brendon has really inspired me to be a better person,” Goldthwaite says, noting that many of her 31,000 Instagram followers are in search of solace or support. “I do mini-projects where I’ll have people compliment the person above them in the comments, which spreads a little bit of positivity to a lot of people,” she says. “Brendon’s positivity inspired me to become a better person and be there for his fans, just like he is.”

Source: sfweekly

#brendon urie #Panic! at the Disco #article #p!atd #kinky boots

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daleisgreat · 5 years

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

I hope you all are as ridiculously amped up as I am for the opening of Avengers: Endgame this evening! It marks the primary conclusion of all major story points from nearly every Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film going back to where it started with the original Iron Man from 2008. It is a cinematic event 11 years in the making and is being forecasted to break all kinds of box office records. This week I have been preparing by watching the latest two MCU films in my video backlog to refresh me with the latest story arcs. I will begin by first covering 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (trailer). Marvel Studios and James Gunn wasted no time jumping on a sequel to the surprise breakout success of the first GotG. As I detailed in my entry covering the first GotG, I still recall being blown away by how won over I was by an unorthodox crew of larger-than-life characters that came together to rescue the galaxy. That same gang returns in an awesome opening piece that sees Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) take on a mammoth of a gelatinous octopus-esque creature while the now fun-sized ‘Baby’ Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) dances away in the background to the requisite 1970s pop-rock soundtrack. It is a goofy dumb sequence that I took gleeful joy in jamming out at home to with a pair of surround sound headphones.

The primary hook in GotG2 is that after vanquishing said blobby monster, the Guardians run into a jam when collecting their reward from the golden skinned race of beings known as Sovereign. They high tail it out of there with Sovereign right on their tale when a mysterious being assists the Guardians in escaping. They meet up with this being who introduces himself as Ego (Kurt Russell) along with his servant Mantis (Pom Klementieff). Ego breaks the big news to Peter that he is his dad and invites the Guardians to join them on his home planet to clear his origins up and catch up on the past. Of course there is more than meets the eye to Ego’s claims, and there are periphery matters happening with Yondu (Michael Rooker) and his Ravagers once again meddling with the Guardians throughout and Gamora and her sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) quarreling out decades worth of family disputes too. There are a ton of lighthearted jokes and gags throughout GotG2 like its predecessor. A lot of them hit and crack me up throughout, but the opening half hour Marvel Studios went overkill with them. I could not help but think that even though I was enjoying the heck out of the opening scenes that Marvel Studios could have dialed it back a smidge or two. I have to struggle with this criticism however because ultimately I am talking about a cast of bombastic figures such as a talking CG tree and raccoon and a whole host of colorful, galactic species waging war to a killer ‘70s soundtrack so in the end it may be wise for me to give GotG2 the benefit of the doubt to get away with double-to-triple the gags of the average MCU film. I also settled on giving this qualm a pass because I convinced myself for all future GotG viewings to go into them two beers in and that will help put that nitpick I have at bay and take in the ride that is GotG. I am also 100% down with any film that gives the Zune some love, being an avid Zune user myself to this day much to the ridicule of several podcast hosts over the years.

There is so much in Vol 2 that I loved. I will highlight a few of my favorite takeaways while doing my best not to go into too much detail. Drax had a few nicely timed dry humor moments originally, and Marvel Studios went all in with Drax’s dry wit being peppered throughout with lots of priceless exchanges with Mantis. Baby Groot is over-the-top adorable in his naiveté and cute facial expressions. The in-house faction wars in the Ravagers between Yondu and the astutely named Tazerface (Chris Sullivan) was a fantastic periphery arc that climaxed with a unforgettable exchange with Rocket and later Yondu going all out with another dazzling display of his arrow skills. I would be remiss if I were to forget to mention how spectacular the CG is here. It is in a class of its own with the already high bar established by the rest of the MCU films. Aside from the stunning space dogfights, Ego’s planet is a literal marvel and features some breathtaking use of CG to showcase flashbacks. The final act blows away the already-stellar final act of the first GotG with everything coming to a boil between Peter and Ego in a near half-hour long epic battle to get the hell off Ego’s planet and escape his wrath. Props again to James Gunn hand picking another star studded ‘70s pop-rock soundtrack along with an accompanying heroic original score that kicks in at all the right beats and combines for easily the best aural experience of all the MCU films.

The GotG2 BluRay has the ideal amount of extra features I want on a BluRay. It has a five star gag reel like most of the other MCU home video releases. There are a few minutes of deleted scenes with my standout being more extended love for the Zune. There is a 37 minute behind-the-scenes feature split up into four parts highlighting the soundtrack, visual effects and cast and crew love for director James Gunn, which was quite fascinating to see now in hindsight after the whole James Gunn Twitter controversy that temporarily removed him from the upcoming third GotG until the cast and crew fought vehemently to bring him back. Finally, James Gunn has a solo commentary track for the feature. Minus an occasional lull, he was pretty entertaining and a few quick highlights from it was Gunn referencing his work on the Lollipop Chainsaw game for inspiration for special effects in the movie, getting one of Quill’s big speeches mostly from a dream he woke up from in the middle of the night and Gunn justifying the use of five post-credit bonus scenes and how they all came to be. It is rare for superhero films to meet and surpass expectations, especially sequels. Re-watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 only assured me that those expectations were righteously knocked out of the park. I loved the first film, and somehow James Gunn found a way to make the sequel far better. I am intrigued in how Gunn stated in the commentary how he feels the Guardians films are like independent movies with a big budget because of the near-limitless creative freedom Marvel Studios allows him. It is because of that freedom that these films are in a class of their own and find a way to standout amongst themselves in the constantly rising number of unique MCU properties and I cannot wait to see what awaits the Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend in Avengers: Endgame! Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed Deck the Halls Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Hercules: Reborn Hitman Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Man of Steel Man on the Moon Marine 3-6 Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

#random movie #marvel #guardians of the galaxy vol 2 #james gunn #dave bautista #batista #zoe saldana #vin diesel #Bradley Cooper #Chris Pratt #michael rooker #chris sullivan

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