I just really can't put up with Sia, she's just one of those artists that leaves me sia-ing red when I listen to her, you know? I really did enjoy reading the write-ups for your songs though.
Glad you enjoyed!
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Originally posted by madonnas
Chewy
What's wrong with My Way?
Too repetitive, in short. And the section they repeat doesn't sound good to me.
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Originally posted by Truth Teller
Someone showing love to Focus I love you for that
Good For You, Y&Y and Charli All amazing
I did give your K-pop songs a chance and they were enjoyable too!
ddddd you might want to read the actual write-ups, TT
The video for this is graphically violent but I'm pretty sure my head hurts more from the phaser layered over the entirety of the chorus than whatever multiple concussions the abductee in this video surely sustained from being bludgeoned by a pipe. This is another menacing, ugly sounding Korean hip-hop song (They're all either that or elevator music so.) where the performer is slamming swag-lords and ballad rappers, who would be acceptable targets if not for the hilarity the phaser and the delivery of Defconn. The beat was already pedestrian, but their performance just makes is crappy. I just can't get behind it. However, if I'm interpreting this video correctly, Defconn wants to abduct all swag-lords and rapper-balladers, kindly introduce them with a brick to the face, and set them on fire. I can wholeheartedly get behind this message.
23. Bernard Park, Park Jimin - Busan Memories
I already knew that this song was part of some sort of series called "Sing The Road", but I couldn't figure why literally all of the songs in this series are so shit. Just when I went to grab the link to the MV for this, it was THEN that I figured out why these songs suck so badly:
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Uploaded by:
Hyundai
These are fucking car commercials. And pretty awful ones to boot. 1:30, 2:31, and 3:30 are the only shots of a damn car in this video, with those shots at longest being 4 seconds long. While that might've raised my suspicion in another context, K-Pop is no stranger to placing cars in their MVs to cover for their ridiculous production values. Not only is the product rarely seen, the visual barely equates to cars. It's just Mr and Ms Park wandering aimlessly around Busan, wiping their surely oily hands over walls and walking up endless sets of stairs as if they're trapped in some M C Escher-inducednightmare. I mean, I ASSUME the connection the director made to this product was that Busan is a place, and we travel to places, so we can assume they used a car to get to Busan. (Unless they already lived there, or used a plane, or maybe they used a boat, in fact that's pretty likely, this MV taught me that there's a lot of coastline in Busan, but don't think about it too hard.) Also, Park Squared seem to cover a lot of ground in this MV, and never once are they shown using a car to get from destination to destination.
But wait, maybe there's a darker context to this MV? Not a single person is seen in this music video outside of the performers, and Jimin wanders by a perfectly good guitar next to a stool, clearly abandoned by someone in a hurry. The two Parks are never seen in the same scene. The shot of the distant twin lighthouses at 1:44. The strange black and white stills at 1:47. All these factors only leave me one possible theory: Apocalypse and mass extinction of the human species occurred, vaporizing 98% of life and ripping a rift in the space-time fabric, hurdling the two Parks into alternate realities. At the end however, the couple find a tie between the two worlds and unite, using the resilient and hardy Hyundai Sonata™ to escape to better lands.
...Oh and the song doesn't compliment the brand in sound and is boring ballad trash. This was the only way I could make it entertaining. Probably would top my list of Worst Advertisements of 2015, but it'll just have to settle here for this list.
This MV employs that cheesy "dead person watching over the ones they left behind" trope ("Love is a ghost you can't control", they didn't put very much thought into this, did they?) which sounds sweet until you realize it's taking dependence to a preternatural level. Want to spend the night alone by yourself? Can't, ghost wife is moaning like a... well, ghost. Want to jerk off? Sorry, ghost wife might be watching, these things are better done alone. God forbid if you want to start dating again and bring a partner back to your place. Clearly the ghost hasn't moved on, and is likely to possess them and pull this on your dick while they're trying to go down on you.
Then your ghost wife has an annoying habit, one she took with her from life: She likes to sing. Sing very overwrought, overly-sappy ballads that make you want to rip your eardrums out. I can only assume that the guy in the MV can still hear her, as he went for his temples at the same time I did at 2:44.
In that context, this song lends itself more to a gaslighting scheme and torture, rather than just benign spectral guardianship. Is this a guilt haunting? I'm guessing he wasn't expecting to deal with her not only being around, but omniprescent when he chopped her up with that hatchet and used her interred body as fertilizer for his botany business.
23. Fifth Harmony ft Kid Ink - Worth It
Sorry, but Harmonizers have to be the biggest pack of imbeciles I've ever encountered. Let's count the ways they've annoyed me this year:
From thinking they have a modicum of managerial experience ("omfggggggg 5H's management CANCELED there performance there such trash and 5H b-tray'd us ufgggggggh"), not getting the implications that Billboard did them shitty by springing this performance on them and they simply didn't have the resources at the time to perform on late notice. (Lighting and sound cues, sets, costumes, etc. Performing is a BIT more complicated than "Just show up on stage with a mic in hand", y'all.)
Thinking that the group is stealing parts from one another (They get no say in who sings what, they each sing through the song and the producer puts together what HE feels is the best mix.)
Acting as if they have psychic abilities and can tell that the girls HATE each other because "Dinah is facing the left in this group shot while everyone else is facing the right, and JUST BECAUSE and ughhhh, she's such a fucking bitch, that's how girls are." (Wow, that doesn't sound very feminist, does it? Isn't that Fifth Harmony's entire brand?)
Thinking that they own the group and that the group is indebted to them ("WE gave you your career, 5H, never forget!!!")
Harmonizers are possessive, irrational, verbally abusive assholes, no wonder the group can't stand their own fans anymore, I wouldn't either. Any tension that is in the group probably wasn't even real until Harmonizers started seeing it in literally everything. ("Oh, Camilla has friends outside the group, oh she's with her family, oh she's doing a duet, she hates the girls and wants to ruin MY group", while simultaneously not being bothered by Diana and Normani's activities outside the group.) While it's totally possible there's in-fighting in the group, at the end of the day only Fifth Harmony will ever know this, outsiders can only speculate. (Watch this really good vlog about fighting within pop ensembles, it's about K-Pop bands but it's completely applicable here.)
Anyways, let's talk about this song: It's crap. Empty, overly-sparse and vapid instrumental. The sax sample is hilarious with how anemic and weak it sounds, couldn't the producers have come up with anything better? The chorus is just another one of those increasingly popular non-choruses that just have the girls chanting one line over and over again. The song features none of the titular harmony that Harmonizers love to boast about (Not like it actually exists in the studio, generally it's just the producer using a single vocalist's overdubs to produce harmonies when you're recording a group, sorry to tell you.). Originally Sledgehammer, a really excellent song, was going to place very high on my Best of list but I found out it didn't meet the criteria of that list by having most of its chart run occur in 2014, oh well. Just thought I'd say that to soften the butthurt of any possible Harmonizers in attendance.
22. Janelle Monae, Jidenna - Yoga
It's interesting how this song uses an exotic practice as a prop for a sexualized dance and is based entirely around a kitschy ("Get off my areola", anyone?) novelty topic, yet it didn't get called out for any of that. Actually it's not a intriguing question at all, I can tell you why it wasn't called out, because it was barely a hit , how is any site going to get clicks by sensationalizing this? Not like I give a damn about cultural appropriation or a song's lyrical content ("This is OK, but is it novelty??!?!!?"). Song is still pretty bad either way. Another non-chorus with just one line repeated. Really hollow arrangement with JUST a kick drum carrying most of the song. When we hit the prechorus Janelle screams for a ridiculously long time (Clearly an in-studio manipulation.) like she just bent something a bit too far. There's this really annoying vocal inflection she does at the end of every line in the second verse where it sounds like she just got her areola caught in a mouse trap. Oh and then during the bridges between the chorus and the verse there's that same lazy kick drum arrangement with this sound at half speed layered over it.
Untouchable were notable because the released one of the worst AND best rap songs of the year. Very aggressive, with a reasonable walking tempo. (Better than whatever 10BPM trap songs are running this year.) It's menacing like most rap but it's appropriate here to add to the malaise the lyrics project. And oh boy, those lyrics: Untouchable say "fuck" no less than 18 times in this song. (An intentional number: as I hinted in their worst entry for Crayon, the Korean word for 18 is a near homophone for the word.) Naturally this made K-Pop fans run to their nearest phone or elevator so they could hear some of the latest pussy-asssmooth listeningslop Korean hip-hop artists churn out every other hour in Korea. I however enjoyed it: some roughness is necessary for the kind of hip-hop Untouchable are going for, and the hook is actually purposeful and catchy.
23. Nine Muses - Hurt Locker
Drama's shock and awe ends in approximately the first 10 seconds of the song, and Sleepless Night was a bit too dreamy. Hurt Locker proved to be another welcome addition to Nine Muses's increasingly solid discography. The chopped guitar is summery without being cloyingly so (Ahem, SISTAR), and the chorus is simply cathartic. One of the greatest examples of tension and release in 2015. The only part I'm not too fond of is Euaerin's rap section, but she looked hot on top of that car so I won't hold it against her too hard. All three singles Nine Muses released this year still measured up to be superior to that other "used to be nine but is now eight" group's singles, the one that they're so often compared to. And speaking of that other group...
22. Pocket Girls - Bbang Bbang
Oh BOY, how embarrassing it must've been for the TOP girl group in Korea to release their crappy electro song on the same day as some nugu group also dropped their debut electro single, and it ending up being better that theirs, against all odds. Pocket Girls had one-sixteenth of the budget, one-thirty-second of the production values, and half of the group looked like they had just been assembled from Bom's second-hand parts.Yet I still much preferred this to Catch Me If You Can. To say it's a competent song would be an understatement: Bbang Bbang is composed well, with a good amount of melody and a great build to the drop. It's basically the spiritual successor to Delight's equally trashy-yet-fun-as-hell electrostomper Hate You from last year. Also I heard that the "bbang bbang" sound in the drop annoys people so that means I love this song more because it's spreading suffering.
This song was a nice surprise, I was shocked to learn that more "indie" bands weren't biting off psychedelic surf-rock with the hundreds of similar sounding songs I heard. The intro riff is really great, but the real fun begins at 2:50 with the cool and conservative washed-out guitar solo, leading to a final chorus with a different arrangement (Thanks boys for not just 'CTRL-C+CTRL-V-ing' your chorus take three times once you finished it.). The video concept is perfect too, it looks great. Watch it all the way through if you don't want to lose your Chinatown pass.
23. Lunchmoney Lewis - Bills
I'm not one to complain about songs not being big enough hits but WAAAAAAAAH, THIS SHOULD'VE BEEN A BIGGER HIT. The piano sample is fucking fantastic. The compressed bass in the verses adds a great texture and contrast to the mix. The chorus is so much fun and has a great muted trumpet added to it at the end of the second iteration. Just an all-around great slice of electroswing, easily one of the best instrumentals of the year. My only theory as to why this didn't blow up is because the subject and performer was probably a bit too goofy for audiences to get behind. That, and American taste sucks.
22. Kelly Clarkson - Heartbeat Song
Remember the halcyon days of pop music when songs were expected to be fully written with tons of melody and bombast? It's so long ago now that that era might as well be a million years in the past, but Kelly Clarkson certainly longs for it. Heartbeat Song has great forward momentum, contrast and melodic penning. Naturally her fans and most of the public hated it because we've been acclimated to songs sounding like stale, hideous pieces of utter dung where you have to insert some gang of bafoons yelling "HEY" every two beats, no matter how inappropriate it is ("ABBA's Dancing Queen? Maybe it was nice in the 70s, but what it REALLY needs to compete today is this layered on top of the chorus."). Heartbeat Song doesn't get anywhere near Dancing Queen, of course, but it might as well be in today's musical environment, and I guess I'll have to appreciate it alone. Speaking of appreciation, I heard Clarkson fans where upset with her not even wanting to show up to her own damn video. I for one can clearly see and appreciate Clarkson's true intentions of giving amateur actors some of their first work, SAG-AFTRA must've been really excited to hear about that. What a sweetheart!
SIS you did not praise Heartbeat song and drag Yoga!! NO!
Sorry
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Just learned the hard way you should wait until the year actually finishes before making year-end lists, a latecomer has JUST made me rearrange basically ALL of one of my lists.
"Outta My Mind" was okay, and "Heartbeat Song" was a thing, but BY FAR the best part of this update was your longform essay on "Busan Memories". Obviously, I have not listened to the song, but based on your blurb alone, I will never even attempt it. Car commercials are my kryptonite, the commercials that just never fail to bore me to catatonia.
"Outta My Mind" was okay, and "Heartbeat Song" was a thing, but BY FAR the best part of this update was your longform essay on "Busan Memories". Obviously, I have not listened to the song, but based on your blurb alone, I will never even attempt it. Car commercials are my kryptonite, the commercials that just never fail to bore me to catatonia.
Glad you enjoyed it, probably my favorite writeup yet!
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Alright I rearranged one of the lists and I'm working on the next set right now so stay tuned!
I love you for that 
All amazing 
