Hater's Delight – July 2023
/This July has been the longest, sweatiest, shittiest month of the year so far. Let’s hear it for unending heat, unbreathable air, and unforgivable takes from every fuckwit with a phone screen! The sooner this month’s over, the better; let’s send it out the door with a kick in the pants in the form of this month’s Hater’s Delight.
If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight is a monthly micro-review column brought to you by our team of Swim Into The Sound writers and a guest or two. This is a space where we can vent about the things online and in music that have gotten under our skin this past month. Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, here’s a playlist of all this month’s new releases that I enjoyed (or at least found notable) to help you keep up on everything that’s happened in July.
Spotify UI
Oh, Spotify. I don’t like your artist payouts, and I don’t like your pivot to video. I don’t like your alt-right podcasts, and I don’t like your SEO slop. There’s a virtually endless list of things I dislike about the world’s most ubiquitous music streaming platform, yet I use it every day. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my physical media and a hefty MP3 library, so I am not beholden to Spotify, but I use it because it is synonymous. Because Spotify is some people’s sole way to interact with music, I think it’s worth analyzing, criticizing, and discussing. Earlier this year, I wrote about artists clogging Spotify up with single bloat, but now Spotify is inflicting this visual repetition on itself. On the desktop version of Spotify, the company recently introduced “Now Playing View,” which replaces the “Friend Activity” panel on the far-right side of the screen. Now the space is absorbed by a larger version of the album art, a song title, the artist name, bio, merch, tour dates, and what’s next in the queue. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is! Half of it is redundant information to what is already displayed on the bottom left, and the rest of it is pretty useless to the average listener. I presume this is a way to elevate ticket sales and promote merch, both of which Spotify gets a kickback on, but do we really need all of this info on screen? Especially when you’re paving over my literal friends and family, you better replace that with something just as compelling. While you can still click the “Friend Activity” button to return to the old view, the “Now Playing View” returns each time you click on a new song, so it might as well be there for good. This is all on top of recent changes to the sidebar, playlist organization, and various other changes, all of which make Spotify worse for the wear.
Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG
Apple Music v. Spotify: Dawn of Bullshit
I’m self-aware enough to say that I am an Apple fanboy. It wasn’t on purpose; it just kind of happened, like how I got into the Mission: Impossible movies because my sister likes them, and I want to make her happy. This past week, I purchased an Apple Watch after years of thinking it wasn’t for me. I found enough reasons (i.e., easy access to a timer for teaching, the fitness tracker, and… a watch) to justify the cheapest finance option. Because I am in the minority and sip the Apple Juice (patent pending), I find it frustrating when anyone links music to Spotify as the default. Call me lazy, but I’m sick of searching on Apple Music for something that’s immediately available at Spotify users’ thumbs.
I understand why Spotify has a chokehold on streaming music. Sometimes I wish I subscribed just to experience its superior social aspects and playlisting. Yet, for all of the reasons that Taylor listed above, I still find the company’s actions and policies toward artists deplorable and solely a necessary evil in our current brand of capitalism. :sips Apple Juice: Whenever I share music online, I send a Bandcamp link to support the artist directly. If recipients do not wish to support, then at least the stream is immediately available to Spotify and Apple Music users alike. (Either way, I’m ridiculed for sending Bandcamp or Apple Music links because they’re not Spotify.) Although I’m happy at how Bandcamp has grown, it still does not feel like the default, agnostic streaming service that anyone can use immediately and remains a niche for independent labels and smaller musicians. Perhaps someday, it or another streaming service/online music storefront will be the norm, but that day feels far away. Regardless of which you use, M.A.R.T.H.A. remains: Music Algorithms Revile Trying to Help Artists.
Joe Wasserman – @a_cuppajoe
“I am the one you love to hate.”
In a very meta paragraph here, I’m giving my hate to the haters. Code Orange has been pushing heavy music boundaries their entire career. Their left-of-center approach to hardcore and metal has been celebrated by freaks and questioned by cowards on every album. In 2017, they began incorporating more elements of alternative and industrial music on their album Forever, with songs like “Bleeding Into The Blur” and “Ugly” packed with soaring choruses fit for rock arenas. The most stubborn members of the hardcore community turned up their noses and turned their backs on the band, but they always seem to reappear whenever the band has new music to promote just to give their two cents. Online comments surrounding their latest single, “Take Shape,” are filled with sentiments like “This band fell off” and “Code Orange still sucks.” The first statement is confusing, considering their last album, Underneath, was the biggest of their career, released on March 13, 2020, and helped spawn the livestream music era. It also got them onto 2021 support tours for Korn and Slipknot, undeniably two of the country’s biggest metal acts. Redarding the second point, if Code Orange’s new music isn’t for you, that’s fine. There are a million homogenous California beatdown bands’ demos for you to choose from, only for you to forget about when the next ones come out after those, and so on and so on. But Code Orange is clearly doing something unique; they always have been (cue astronaut meme). It is palpable how much effort and energy they put into this music if you really listen to it. I mean, they got fucking Billy Corgan to sing the bridge on “Take Shape.” Not any bullshit band can do that; only a 1000% dedicated band gets that kind of co-sign. And Code Orange is absolutely deserving of it.
Logan Archer Mounts – @VERTICALCOFFIN
Three Chords and Some Bullshit
A lot of people on the internet are talking about Jason Aldean’s new song “Try That in a Small Town,” calling it racist, White Nationalist propaganda that stokes and cultivates an ever-widening division between rural American conservatives and… everyone else in the country. Honestly, I’m just astounded anyone can hear it at all, given that it is composed entirely of dog whistles. Now, I personally agree that this song is probably racist, but bad-faith actors note how there is nothing particularly racist about the song’s lyrical content, so I won’t try to tackle that. Here’s what I will say instead:
Jason Aldean lives in the city–my city. We both are transplants in Nashville, sporting cowboy hats and making country music (I write my own songs, though). But get this, I’m from a small town of 600 people, while he is from Macon, Georgia–population: 153,095. He’s not afraid of the city. He’s only ever lived in the city. He’s nothing but a right-wing grifter. Aldean knows his fans are bootlickers who are afraid of everything Fox News tells them to be afraid of. He’s a phony who would never want to actually live in the country. But he knows what he’s doing, and it’s given him a #1 country song. The song sucks though, and anyone with an ounce of integrity knows the song sucks. Three chords and some bullshit. I’ll say though–if this song keeps Aldean’s fearful fans at his bar on Broadway and away from all the other parts of Nashville, I reckon it’s doing some good.
Russ Finn – @russfinn
Message to Snail Mail
Snail Mail recently posted an Instagram Story claiming that we must “bring back hating on things”... Miss Mail, I couldn't agree more! For starters, I hate your attitude; I hate that you posted a pretty gracious Pitchfork profile of you years after it happened and called the writer a “huge cunt;” I hate how rude you were when you played Chicago on tour with JPEGmafia and Turnstile last October, snapping at your guitar tech, snapping at the sound guy, snapping at the audience saying “fuck all of this;” I hate that you posted yourself on Instagram posing with a handgun in rural Nevada–Lindsey, you went to private school in Baltimore! My culture is not your costume! But most of all, I think if you’re going to behave like a snotty little irresponsible rockstar, you should at least make music that is good enough to justify that behavior. Because I hate, hate, Snail Mail’s music, not just the most recent record, but all of it, from the goopy insubstantial beginnings to the limp and insipid present, and have no reason to revisit or reconsider unless you undergo rapid character development. Being kind isn’t a rockstar characteristic, but it is cool in its own way. Try it; you might like it. Godspeed!
Elizabeth – @OneFeIISwoop
What’s more important? Your own self-importance or the audience's? (Or "How I learned to hate Miranda Lambert")
I'm very happy to have the opportunity to "go off" this month, but when rattlin' my noggin for what I wanted to write about, I thought of everything I could possibly hate. However, for some reason, the same stupid bullshit continued coming up in every space in my life. People were talking about it at work. My server was talking about it at the restaurant. My mom even asked me about it. By "it," I'm begrudgingly referring to the moment country pop star Miranda Lambert stopped her show in Las Vegas because a group of women in her VIP section started taking a group photo—seemingly a completely unimportant and uninteresting moment in pop music. Unfortunately, parents and grandparents across the corn fields of Ohio (Where I happen to be) took this as a sign of her love for genuine human connection, or as I see it, her hatred of it. I don't have any strong feelings toward pop music in general, and I usually disregard any "news" involving such people. This time was different because of how inescapable it was. Everyone had an opinion. Some of which were kissing her (cowboy) boots.
Aloe Weetman – @aloe_wise
We Will Not Be Rehabilitating Everyone’s Taste For Buckcherry
We’ve been going through an odd resurgence of late. The Will Yip-core edge of every modern punk adjacent band's new release has whet the appetite for 90s grunge/alt-rock sonics and aesthetics. This was inevitable, hell I’d even say understandable as the internet cycles through everything that has come before, as well as people and bands having been unabashed with their inspirations and even deep fondness for everything from Nu metal to Creed in recent years. Has it become a bit rote and tired? Sure. All this I can abide, even though I feel like I’ve been hearing the same album in slightly different fonts all year, but sometimes that's how the green screen background music video rolls. However, we can’t simply roll over and let this spirited go at revisionist history convince both newer music fans and older heads alike that they can feel good about enjoying Buckcherry. Buckcherry is awful. And not in the fun Nickelbacky it’s-kind-of-bad-but-it’s-actually-a-banger type of way. Buckcherry is just downright dog tripe. How far are we willing to fall here? Buckcherry’s primary claim to fame is their boring and repetitive single “Crazy Bitch.” This misogynistic and deeply questionable regaling of sexual coercion isn’t just dog water as a piece of art but also has a dodgy history featuring a minor in their sexually explicit behind-the-scenes short showing the making of the music video. How this band is still around isn’t baffling to me, but seeing the slow creep of rewritten love and acknowledgment of grunge and alt-rock bands like Staind and Creed, leads me to believe we’re only a viral trend away from Ed Hardy hats and Affliction jeans worming their way back into the public zeitgeist. I am begging everyone to just bedazzle their own headwear and denim, and please leave this withered, sunbleached garbage lost to the sepia-tinted wastelands of 2000s hard rock.
Elias Amini – @letsgetpivotal