Ah, how I fondly remember when I played in my school orchestra. We once played this truly difficult piece of literature for one of our competitions, one that required a lot of range. Our trumpet soloist needed to hit some pretty high pitches to play along with our oboe soloist during this one passage, but he just couldn't hit those notes. Every rehearsal would consist of the soloist straining for those notes, ultimately failing, and our director just giving him a peeved look before continuing on with the session.
It was another such rehearsal when our trumpet played failed spectacularly to pull off his solo. This time was different, however. Our director put down his baton. "I have an idea," he started. "I know how we can fix this problem."
"You do?" Our trumpeter was surprised to hear this, certain he was going to get chewed out for not practicing that section outside of the rehearsals.
"I do. How about instead of forcing you to jump for those notes, we transpose just your parts down for you and keep the piece as is?" Our director suggested. "Sounds great!" The trumpeter replied. Following the director's key changes, the trumpet soloist could now execute his part, and the piece went off without a hitch.
Oh wait, that never happened. Our director just told our soloist he should get his shit together and practice hitting those notes outside of class, as pieces are written in keys for a reason. That key isn't arbitrary, it's chosen because that's the most comfortable range of notes that the voices involved can hit. If a voice can't hit them, then that's too bad, you can't lower their part to accommodate them for a passage as our ears are used to routine, and the passage you're editing likely isn't optimal for a smooth sounding modulation.
Miss has no less than three key changes in it, which have a transition just about as smooth as its male protagonist's game ("Well I'm totally ready to move on, I just think you're not ready. Plz sleep with me."). It's another one of those ridiculously dull R&B songs that Korea loves to crap out. I'd relate it to Some, but that descriptor would mean nothing as there's a thousand songs that sound just as anonymous as Some put out every week.
17. Red Velvet - Automatic
Automatic, more like autopilot: Song has zero contrast, has the same textures all the way through, starts just like it ends. It's boring. It's unexciting. It's inoffensive. It does nothing to move the pulse. How people can shit on Be Natural but proclaim Automatic as Red Velvet's best song when it's the same song with any jazz leanings ripped out just confuses me. While I'm not a vocally obsessed no-life, I can CLEARLY tell that isn't the appeal here, either: Red Velvet just moans and murmurs over the beat and they sound sedated, not seductive. They look like they've imbibed enough barbiturates to fell a small whale in the video, too. Is the song to blame? Are Red Velvet just as bored with this slop as I am? Seems so, their production crew had to try literally everything from playing the song twice as fast to playing a different song entirely, anything but play the real version of Automatic so that the girls could be lucid enough to film. No exaggeration, I can't even listen to this song without my eyelids drooping halfway through. Luckily, after the complete bombing of Automatic and Be Natural, I think SM's gotten the message that no one is asking for this R&B "velvet" trash from Red Velvet. Here's hoping that The Velvet never materializes! I can't imagine how much worse South Korea's already terrible road safety record would get if their radios started pumping the world's first aurally-ingested narcotics over the airwaves.
16. Norazo - It's Your Destiny
As far as I've researched, it seems like the video isn't an actual attempt at virality, this is just the type of thing that Norazo does usually. Cool enough, the song still sucks balls. If you HAVE to compose your song around a riff from classic symphony, try and dig a little deeper than Beethoven's Fifth, please? Hideous beat with a meandering composition, it's supposed to come off as fun but it's trying much too hard to appear loose. Lack of a real melody isn't helping the song out either. It's not all bad, however: One of the members has a very nice body!
I thought for a second that Selena Gomez was going to put out a decent solo song when the really cool Swing-styled piano riff started, but then that riff just repeated on and on and on and on without doing anything else interesting. Ah, a world where Selena Gomez's music is still awful, that's more like it. Really terrible synth harmony in this song: Did anyone think that grating sawtooth synth was a good fit for this song? There's some good in this song, but every hope spot in it balanced out with an equal amount of suck. Cool swing-styled piano riff? Let's not do anything with that, I'm just happy we could even write anything that decent. Nice Ennio Morricone-type whistling and strings in the second prechorus and bridge? Let's throw some 808s and fingersnaps over it, there's no way that's getting Rhythmic airplay. There's also nothing in the way of a climax in this song: the chorus plods along, rather than bursts. This song is basically a stillborn: Had potential, but potential doesn't change the fact that it was already flat-lining when it was produced.
17. Rhett Miller - Most in the Summertime
This is country music, I think: there's mentions of pickup trucks, but nothing about beer or long legs and tanning on a lake. I guess the lack of stupidity would be a refreshing change, if not for how disgustingly chaste this song is. Those jangly guitars just stink of good loving feeling and sunshine and rainbows. And from what I can tell, this song is about a summer fling, so it's a weird contrast. Speaking of which, that means Most in the Summertime shares the same theme as this song, but that song is much better as it's briefer and has a cool electroswing groove to it. Wow, Leave In Summer, Yet You're In My Fluffoughts is a neat song. Do me a favor and listen to that two times instead of playing the above video once, it's a much more rewarding listen.
16. Ed Sheeran - Photograph
I think it's appropriate that the music video for Photographs is home video of young Sheeran playing the piano as a kid: surely this is a song he wrote when he was a beginning songwriter? Wouldn't be the first time Ed just recycled a uninspired song he made in his youth. Photograph is a crash course in how to arrange your first song:
First you have to build your song. Why not start with a piano intro, and throw in some guitar?
Then for your chorus... add drums!
And finally, fill in the arrangement with some lush strings for your climax! (If you're feeling really adventurous, you can even switch the order of the strings and piano!)
Writing a melody too difficult? No problem! Just take the chord progression of your song, arpeggiate it, a voila, you have a chorus!
I was going to further expound on how mind-thuddingly formulaic this song is by drawing parallels to Taylor Swift's The Last Time and Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars, but it turns out that Photograph and both those tracks were actually all written by Snow Patrol members, so that lessens the impact of that metaphor, oh well. "Don't let Snow Patrol write your song if you want it to be interesting" is the moral here, I guess.
Not a fan of this new "Tropical House" subgenre because it's generally pretty laidback and slow, but this is decent: fast paced and aggressive. The deep brass stabs add a nice texture to the track. We could dig into the lyrics, ("Is he being a douche on purpose in this song?" "Is it supposed to be ironic, or is he being serious?" "Is this song about media and the world in general?") but that wouldn't be very interesting. Also wouldn't be interesting to say "wow I though Justin Bieber sucked but his music is cool now", as I don't associate artists with their work: great people put out shitty songs, shitty people can put out great songs. I'd find it strange if an artist didn't have an ego. All I can say is that Sorry is a well-accomplished pop song, much better than the R&B slop Justin has tried to (and is still trying to) take a stab at. So let's talk a bit about that video: it's really good, colorful and eye-catching, and the dance is executed very well. This dance group has popped up in a few other videos this year, and they always do a good job with selling the choreography.
17. Skrillex, Diplo ft. Justin Bieber - Where Are Ü Now
Just watch the video below to understand just how brilliant this song is.
You can hear the hardships in his vocals. The song makes you feel something. Manipulating vocals makes the song unique. They're very expensive sounding sounds.... LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL what kind of bullshit. Listen here: there's no reason trying to break down a song and explain extensively why it's a hit or something completely subjective as to why it's good, and I pity the musical gifted who try to do so as they're wasting their time, no layperson thinks like that. If it makes you feel good, it's good, alright? Now, here's why I liked Where Are U Now:
The first part of the drop is slow but then it goes twice as fast halfway through which is fun.
Skrillex and Diplo finally put together something that doesn't sound like a fart. Diplo would go back to making songs that sound like a fart, anyways.
There's a deep and vaguely threatening demonic Darth Vader harmony thrown under Justin Bieber's reedy voice saying "WHERE ARE YOU NOW" that is hilarious in contrast and might annoy people/make people think of satanism, so it makes me happy.
That so-called "brilliant" vocal manipulation that makes Justin sound like the offspring of a tea kettle and a porpoise likely annoys people, and that makes me happy.
16. Missy Elliot ft Pharrell Williams - WTF (Where They From)
Remember when popular American hip-hop wasn't 50 BPM, fun, and packed a punch? It's only appropriate that one of hip-hop's last champions of fun dropped this crazy track. It's fast as hell, so kudos to it already. WTF has some neat backing, with the intensity peaking with the crash symbols appearing in random places. Video is good, thanks for proving the West can do decently with MVs if they try, Missy. Most importantly: AIRHORNS, AIRHORNS BITCHES WOOHOO.
As an African-American I have to say that I'm offended that 1PUNCH would appropriate hip-hop culture and use token black people for their music video. The commandeering of dreads and B-boy styling for this song is really gross and... Nah, I don't actually give a shit what people do, we live in a globalized world, it's only natural people are going to start crossing styles that no one's tried crossing before. K-Pop is especially good at taking styles and making them much more polished and just in general better than their original form. 1PUNCH is clearly K-Pop's response to Kris Kross, and Turn Me Back just might be Brave Brother's magnum opus. Groovy new jack swing feeling, tight orchestral stabs, record scratching galore. Punch's bratty vocal tone adds some nice character to the track. The vocoder after the break-beat in the bridge is a memorable touch, as well. The track is surprisingly restrained, too: The chorus is only repeated twice, with so much going on in the backing track, it easily lends itself to repeat listens. All around, really solid, excellent 90s track that other K-Pop acts tried to copy this year but fell short at as they forgot to add K-Pop's bombastic flavor to the sound. Most importantly, "YEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHH BOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII".
17. So Yumi - Shake Me Up
Maybe you recognize this singer, or maybe you don't, as I'm pretty sure people were only pretending to like her group and their crappy Little Mix Wings/Shakira/Crazy in Love hybrid out of pity because someone told them that the group was ugly. They weren't particularly ugly, just interesting looking: I supposed the Kiss&Cry name comes from the image that if you kissed any given member, their ginormous schnozz would poke you in the eye, causing you to cry.
Oh yeah, we're talking about So Yumi. Luckily it doesn't matter what inernational listeners think of a group if they aren't actually supporting them, so they broke up and one of the members got to release this really good song. Shake Me Up is a trot song, not boring trot music to be played in Chinese restaurants, but the cool, electro-infused trot like the kind Hong Jin-Young does. A lot of energetic synthpop lines going on here with a few traditional instruments thrown in for good measure. Wouldn't want to offend Korea's elderly too much by pepping up their trot, would we? Still doesn't stop the songwriters from including a electro drop in the song so strong that you'll need a few pastel-colored tablets of ecstasy on hand.
16. Red Velvet - Ice Cream Cake
Delightful mix of creepiness and cheerleader chants, Red Velvet stepped up to the plate along with D.Holic this year to give us the left-field pop f(x) no longer wants to do. Cool structure shifts in this, even if the mix on this is a little crispy, it makes up for it with the enthusiasm of the performance. Only disappointing thing about this was the rumor being circulated about a vampire concept not coming to fruition. If only people didn't watch teasers, things like this wouldn't happen. Oh well, the girls looked great regardless. I've said enough about the song, let's gawk at the girls, shall we?
Wendy looking super hot
Irene looks so cute and demure here saranghaeyo<3
Woah, Jenny's stare is quite smoldering~
Ummm pretty sure Seulgi's in this picture. I don't think she's the one on the right. I'll call them all Seulgi except the one on the right to be safe!
That was embarrassing! Let's close off with a cute picture of the baby Yeri! Red Velvet Hwaiting!
Sorry and Where Are U Now are my guilty pleasures!
lol the drag to Photograph! That song is trash, finally someone who doesn't like that "song"
Same Old Love is amazing tho
I like Ice Cream Cake and Automatic, just for different reasons. The former is definitely better, but I think I do like them doing R&B, they just need to refine their style a bit and make it more exciting.
Draaaag Same Old Love though, Selena had the second worst album of the year imo
Automatic is disappointing because their other singles are SOOOO good but it's still fine.
Ice Cream Cake is SO much better! Like, a masterpiece. But Dumb Dumb is also a masterpiece.
Is it me or does Shake Me Up sound like the Lizzy song this year??
Is it me or does Shake Me Up sound like the Lizzy song this year??
There's a similarity there with them both being trot songs (A genre which has a common vocal styling/some harmonics and intervals that are recycled a lot) but Shake Me Up differentiates itself by being much more electronic in nature!
Since we're getting close to the finale, I'll be counting down the Top 15 of both lists one at a time.. If y'all could get me to the next page so I don't put too many videos, that would be great. Maybe post about what you think my Top 10 will be, I'm interested to see what you guys think my taste is like
There's a similarity there with them both being trot songs (A genre which has a common vocal styling/some harmonics and intervals that are recycled a lot) but Shake Me Up differentiates itself by being much more electronic in nature!
Since we're getting close to the finale, I'll be counting down the Top 15 of both lists one at a time.. If y'all could get me to the next page so I don't put too many videos, that would be great. Maybe post about what you think my Top 10 will be, I'm interested to see what you guys think my taste is like
Well besides the Trot influence I think the chord changes on the verses... are like exactly the same. Along with some of their enunciation. Whatever Lizzy >>>
I was like "nnooo 8th, that ain't Wendy!11" lol
Very catchy too imo. The bridge >