A Grand Celebration: Musical Serendipity, Distant Memories, and the Preciousness of Tradition. Words on Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan

There are 48,193 songs in my iTunes library right now. That’s 5,139 albums, 336 gigabytes, and a little over 160 days worth of music. Amongst this staggering (and seemingly-unwieldy) amount of audio lies my most cherished playlist: a 20-hour-long mix creatively titled “December.”

“December” stands alone as a personal treasure, my crown jewel, and the flame that single-handedly ignites my holiday cheer. Grown and cultivated over the course of multiple years, the playlist is a wide-ranging mishmash of various Christmas albums, years-old podcasts, and even some “normal” music that I’ve simply come to associate with the holiday season after multiple years of repeated seasonal listening. My “December” playlist is a testament to curated obsession, self-enforced tradition, and the beauty of the Holiday season. It’s my Christmas spirit encased in a cold, unfeeling .xml file.

The cosmic joke is that, as much as I care for this playlist and the songs contained within it, it’s just that: a collection of random songs. Nobody aside from me would ascribe any particular value to the ordering of these tracks, but I guess that sense of uniqueness is what makes playlists such a sacred musical concept. The other thing that makes playlists so wonderful is their inherent sense of surprise and randomness: the feeling of discovery that comes with stumbling upon a great mix, or the inspiration a single song can carry that inspires you to create one of your own.

Listening to “December” has become a holiday tradition of my own, and as special as the playlist is to me, the entire thing was started by accident. Inspired by a single group of songs and a random iTunes shuffle, this seasonal institution has now ballooned beyond my control and only gotten bigger each year. This is the story of the inception of this playlist, spurred by an album that has severely impacted me and whose sentimentality has become a foundation of my personality.

Discovery

Back in high school music was my escape… not that I had anything to escape from, but music was (and still is) my reality. My one truth. Every morning as I prepared for the day I would let iTunes run through a never-ending shuffle playlist of my music library. They were my last minutes of absorption. My final escape into the realm of sound before venturing out into the world. It was a ceremony that I relished and grew to hold dear over the years.

One cold November morning six years ago, The Shuffle Gods placed a Sufjan Stevens song at the top of the queue. Back then Sufjan was a curiosity; an artist that I’d heard about and always meant to get into, but perpetually found himself on my musical “to-do” list. Thanks to an overly-eager friend, his discography had been sitting on my hard drive, in full, for around a year at that point. In a way, I suppose seeing the full breadth of his work only made diving into his music that much more daunting.

On this fateful day, iTunes DJ (rest in peace) decided that it was finally time for me to hear a Sufjan track and “Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)” began playing. It was divine intervention. It was exactly what I needed to hear at the moment, and I became transfixed. “Oh God, Where Are You Now” immediately drew me in and hung in my chest like the first deep inhale of a cold winter morning. I was so floored by the song that I needed to hear what came next. I paused the shuffle playlist and embarked upon a search to find the record that this track called home.

This excavation led me to Sufjan’s 2003 album Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State which I promptly queued up and let play out. Turns out “Oh God, Where Are You Now?” was track 13 of 15, so while there were only two other songs that followed, I felt compelled to see this record out to its conclusion.

The two songs that came after (“Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)” and “Vito’s Ordination Song”) ended up forming a trio of incredibly potent and deeply-impactful wintery songs that told one coherent and eerie tale.

If the album and songs titles didn’t give it away, Sufjan is not a man who’s concerned with punctuality. While three songs may not seem like much, this final stretch of tracks that close out Michigan ends up coming out to 19 minutes of music. Back in high school, that gave me just enough time to complete my morning routine and get out the door on time.

I became fixated on these three songs, and for the remainder of that year, they became my morning ritual. The soundtrack for two months of sleepy-eyed morning preparation. A sacred custom that I ended up recreating the next year. And the year after that. And the one after that. In fact, for years these three songs were all that I ever listened to from Sufjan’s wide-ranging discography. This 19-minutes of music came to represent the beginning of the holiday season, a near-daily habit of lovingly embracing three folk tracks from an album I hadn’t even listened to all the way through yet.

Obsession

Several years back I realized how silly it was that these three songs were the only ones I’d listened to from Sufjan in earnest. I repeatedly tried to dip my toes into the rest of his discography, and soon “trying Sufjan” became a yearly tradition as well. Year after year I attempted various entry points: whole albums, popular singles, even the rest of Michigan, but nothing ever grabbed me in the same way that those three tracks did.

Then in 2016, it happened: I became obsessed with Sufjan.

I don’t know how it happened or when it did, but it was as if a switch had been flipped in my head. Suddenly everything clicked all at once, and I found myself devouring his discography whole. I had his 5-hour Christmas catalog on repeat. I read every article with his name in the headline. I purchased enough vinyl to create a makeshift shelter. I couldn’t escape from Sufjan Stevens.

By the end of the year, I had racked up nearly 1,000 Sufjan plays, 82% of which occurred between November and December. Every listen up until that year had been relegated almost entirely to the final three songs off Michigan, but suddenly his entire discography had launched itself into the upper stratosphere of my musical consciousness.

In diving through the rest of his albums last winter I now have a firm understanding of who Sufjan Stevens is as an artist and where he sits on the musical spectrum. It turns out that he’s far from the sad, plucky folk singer that I had initially pegged him as. This year I’ve already exceeded last year’s numbers, and #SufjanSeason has become an official holidayin my house. So not only did 2016 signify a tipping point, it represented the beginning of a beautiful, rabid fandom that has opened the door to a new seasonal tradition and hundreds of hours of beautiful music. At the same time, I feel like I’ve only begun to scratch the surface.

Trinity

Sufjan Stevens has arguably made two near-perfect albums: both 2005’s Illinois and 2015’s Carrie & Lowell are widely considered masterpieces of the indie folk singer-songwriter genre. The former is a multi-instrumental masterpiece that showcases an astonishing array of sounds, topics, and textures. The latter is an instrumentally-bare folk album that finds Stevens meditating on life in the wake of his mother’s death. They’re both impeccable records that are worth diving into and worthy of their status as indie essentials, but neither are what this post is for.

Despite recognizing both Illinois and Carrie as “better albums,” I enjoy Michigan more, and I’m still grappling with what that means. While these later albums either swirl and flutter to life with a flurry of baroque instrumentation, or reserve all musicality behind a single veneer of raw guitar and vocals, Michigan lies somewhere in the middle. Packed with frost-covered horns, intimate acoustic guitars, and tenderly-delivered lyrics, Michigan is a chilly, introverted, and thought-provoking record that gently congeals into a cozy wintery panorama.

Like untamed cresting hills covered by a blanket of snow, the surface of Michigan is calm and uniform; a stark, raw, and silent beauty. However, much like that bed of new-fallen snow, once you begin to dig all sorts of unknowable intricacies begin to reveal themselves. It’s a winter wonderland of crisp sounds, all delivered in a singularly-grand package. It’s an album that’s whimsical and but also grounded in dissolution and the pain of existence. Michigan is what it would sound like if the Charlie Brown Christmas special took place in the 2000’s and the characters were all listless 20-somethings without jobs.

If I were to get someone into Sufjan Stevens, I’d still probably point them to either Illinois or Carrie & Lowell (depending on their taste), yet Michigan stands alone as an understated personal favorite of mine for many reasons. Perhaps it’s just thanks to my personal relationship with the album, but accidentally falling into Michigan’s embrace over the course of multiple years has allowed it to embody every warm holiday memory that I’ve ever experienced. It’s my favorite Sufjan record, a wonderful holiday offering, and one of the best in the entire genre.

The remainder of this post is a profile of Michigan and a (near-track-by-track) breakdown of what makes the album worthy of worship. I also adore this record so much that I took it upon myself to create a bunch of mobile wallpapers, so have at them.

Wonderland

Cartoonishly pitched as the first album in a 50-part project covering every state, Michigan is Sufjan Stevens’ third official LP. Preceded by A Sun Came and the electronic Enjoy Your Rabbit, Michigan was far from Sufjan’s first rodeo, but it marked the first time that he seemed to land on a complete and definitive sound. Especially when compared to later albums, Sufjan’s first two outings are great, but end up coming off like a “first attempt” and a left-field electronic diversion that were merely used as stepping stones to later greatness. The entrees meant to hold us over until this: the main course.

Technically a concept album, Michigan is a love letter from Stevens addressed to the state in which he was born and spent a majority of his childhood. The album is a comprehensive look at The Wolverine State, addressing everything from the common points of reference (The Great Lakes, popular sports teams, and overwhelming poverty) to intimate portrayals of what it’s like to live there. All of these tales are sung from the perspective of someone who has a deep, personal, and profound understanding of the area which makes them feel supremely genuine and heartfelt.

Michigan’s first track “Flint (For the Unemployed & Underpaid)” kicks the album off by tackling the exact issue that the state conjures for most people: joblessness. Beginning with a series of arid, ruminating piano chords, Sufjan soon enters singing from a whispered first-person perspective that depicts a dreary future of sadness and uncertainty. Jobless and homeless, the narrator finds himself “pretending to try” but secretly resigned to dying alone. Halfway through the track, a singular trumpet pairs with the established piano melody as Sufjan repeats his death-defying mantra over and over again until the final line is cut off mid-sentence. Shortly after this abrupt end, a hum of ambient noise consumes the song, and the next track begins.

It’s a haunting piece and a stark way to open a record. Most people don’t want to think about losing their job and dying sad, homeless, and alone on the street, yet on Michigan, these ideas are not only commonplace, they’re scene setting. An introduction. The first taste that transports the listener, giving them a sense of place and, hopefully, a similar sense of hopelessness that allows them to empathize with the remainder of the album. This dark opening salvo is contrasted even further by it’s following track “All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!” which is a jubilant and bouncy stream-of-consciousness song that explodes with a brassy baroque chamber arrangement.

Here we’re introduced to the “concept” of the album as we realize that every song is sung about the state from different perspectives. This framework allows Stevens to show both the good and bad of Michigan, rapidly shifting from broad sociopolitical issues, then zooming all the way down to hyper-detailed illustrations of interpersonal drama.

Mid-album cuts like “The Upper Peninsula” are down-to-earth groove-centered depictions of rural lower class America. Sufjan finds himself tackling divorce, detachment, and the mundanity of day-to-day life in between Payless Shoes and K-Mart name-drops. Similar sounds are later revisited on songs like “Jacksonville” and “Neighbors” off Illinois but end up focusing on much different song topics.

Even a cursory glance at the album’s credits reveal the shocking amount of instrumentation at play on each of these tracks. Sollum banjo plucks serve as the background on “For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti.” Horns and trumpets emerge at unexpected times but are used so precisely that you probably won’t even notice them upon first listen. Instrumental tracks like “Tahquamenon Falls” are jaw-dropping scenic soundscapes that brim with cascading xylophone notes that dance around your head like snowflakes.

Even “traditional” folk arrangements and piano ballads have never been as poignant, soft-spoken, or heartfelt as “Holland” where single isolated piano notes poke up from a whirling frozen mass of sound. Eventually, a backtracked pair of falsetto vocals emerge to echo the song’s chorus, and it paints a vague picture of a couple singing alone in a house with nothing but a guitar, a piano, and each other nearby.

“Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)” is the album’s sprawling ornamental 8-minute centerpiece that begins with a single, rapidly-rung bell. Soon a piano enters the mix, then a guitar, then Sufjan himself. The entire track builds around the beat of that bell until dozens of individual instruments all combine into this massive, extravagant, and decadent force of nature.

Things get personal on the banjo-plucked “Romulus” as Sufjan recounts several strained interactions with his mother even though he recognizes that he would do no better in her position. This dynamic would later be revisited and fully-addressed on Carrie & Lowell, but, “Romulus” is still a striking portrayal of a frayed relationship as well as the joys and frustrations that come along with family.

Finally, “Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie” is an epic, swelling biblical track that escalates in delicate crescendos that all climax into one massive, breathtaking wall of sound. Accompanied by Megan Slaboda and Elin Smith, this late-album cut features an awe-inspiring instrumental mixture of organs, cymbals, and warm brass instruments. A careful and measured track that slows down to nothing then explodes to life.

The entire album sounds like a snow-covered log cabin. It feels like a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold, grey, rainy day. It smells like a freshly-cut noble fir. It tastes like a home-cooked bowl of soup. It’s the warm wool blanket enveloping your body. The cinnamon-sprinkled cookies that just came out of the oven. The glowing lights that dance and twinkle above your head. It’s musical soul food. It’s wholesome and full-bodied music that makes me want to be a better person. It’s absolutely flawless.

Despair and Grace

Circling back to the jumping off point of this post: I still remember hearing “Oh God, Where Are You Now?” for the first time and being struck with a strange sense of deja-vu. The track instantly evoked something deep inside of me. It made me feel everything that I’ve described up until this point and also came with a strange sense of familiarity. It felt like a piece of a past life that I’d lost and now recovered. I carefully studied the album artwork, and it looked like a long-lost Christmas album. The majestic snow-covered pine tree, the elegant deer, the warm red lettering, all captured in Laura Normandin’s beautiful brush strokes over a rich parchment. Everything about Michigan felt picture-perfect.

After 47 minutes of splendor, the most brilliant moment of Michigan comes with its final three-song stretch that winds from “Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickerel Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)“ to “Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)” and “Vito’s Ordination Song.” These three songs stand on their own as a singularly-impactful and world-shaping experience that are intertwined with some of the fondest, warmest, and most intimate memories of my entire life.

“Oh God, Where Are You Now?” begins with Stevens addressing God directly. Paired with a barely-distorted guitar line and a gently-played piano, our narrator finds himself questioning his faith as he whispers the title of the track and begs for God to touch him. Sufjan’s voice intertwines with a hushed group of backup singers comprised of Megan Slaboda, John Ringhofer, and Elin Smith as they collectively ask “Would the righteous still remain? / Would my body stay the same?”

Soon all four vocalists combine into one extraordinary force, all singing over a sparse, mounting piano melody and finger-plucked guitar. Midway through the song, after repeating the same set of heaven-bound lines, all of the vocalists break into a makeshift wordless chorus as they sing along to the now-established tune set by the piano.

All of the instruments all flicker and shimmer as if being played from a distant memory. The piano is patient and carefully tapped. The guitar gleams and quivers, faint and serene. You can hear ambient noise trickling in between the quiet pauses as if the entire of the studio was breathing and coming to life at that moment.

Near the end of the track, Sufjan’s vocals become more prominent and press up against the backup singers as they all revisit the chorus for a third time. Soon a mighty brush of cymbals erupt. Horns emerge from the corners of the mix and play along with the group’s established melody. The piano picks back up, newly energized and boisterous. Soon another pair of horns emerge and add splashes of light to the song’s bigger picture. Every element is working in tandem, taking turns, all adding on to the song’s resounding and soul-affirming chant of “La da da, da da da.”

Then everything quiets to a hum. The horns and cymbals carry the song out with long, colorful streaks. It’s both somber and gorgeous. It’s warm and cozy, a melody that you can slip away into and tuck under yourself like a blanket. A massive tide consuming your soul at a glacial pace. Then, after nine minutes and 24 seconds, it’s gone. Silence.

Picking up exactly where “Oh God” left off, the very next thing the listeners hears are the timbred piano strikes of “Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou).” You can make out the distant wooden creak of a chair or a floorboard, and again, your mind is transported back to a remote snow-covered cabin in the middle of the woods. Far-off vocals echo through the top of the mix like specters haunting the lone pianist. Still, the melody continues, the reflective musician is barreling towards his destination with more confidence and determination than ever before.

In the final seconds, Redford’s piano ceases and the ethereal vocals make their last wail before being claimed by static silence, and then the song ends. “Redford” is a momentary meditation before the album’s final impact. The first part of a one-two punch. A connecting piece that serves as the bridge between the album’s two defining works.

Next, the final track unveils itself. “Vito’s Ordination Song” begins with an elongated and heavy organ chord, as if the pianist from the last song had suddenly been brought back to life. It sounds wholesome and church-like, evoking the feeling of both a funeral and a sermon.

Sufjan returns from the instrumental abyss and quietly recalls “I always knew you / In your mother’s arms.” Swiftly navigating toward noisy imagery of marriage, happiness, and warmth as the organ continues beneath his deliberate vocals. Then after a three-song absence, a set of drums enter the fray. Booming in comparison to the sense of quiet softness we’ve been basking in over the past 15 minutes, the drum keeps time while making way for a subtle horn arrangement and heart-beat-like organ passage.

The album’s cast of backup vocalists rejoin Sufjan for one final time, duetting and echoing the same sentiments as the song’s first verse but now full and exploding with liveliness. The group of singers land gracefully upon a final chorus that ferries us along for the remaining four minutes of the album: “Rest in my arms / Sleep in my bed / There’s a design / To what I did and said.”

It’s soul-crushing, heartbreaking, and beautiful. It evokes such a varied range of emotions in me that it feels truly herculean to into words. It is winter. It is Christmas. It is heavenly. It is transcendental. It is every happy moment that I’ve ever experienced over the past decade. The soundtrack to the warm memories that exist only in my head. It’s the reflection of my entire life.

The same way that you feel when you gather with your family to watch that beloved Christmas movie. The way that you feel in the embrace of a loved one. The feeling you get when leafing through an old photo album of memories now long-past. The people you spent your life with. The recipes you made together. The ones that never got to share them. It is love. It is life. It is loss. It is everything and nothing more.

These songs make me unspeakably thankful for the life that I’ve lived, and the life I’m going to lead. They are truly perfect pieces of art. To completely break the flow, I initially wrote this while listening to Michigan for the first time this year, and teared up as I wrote this… Definitely a first for this blog.

In many ways, this three-song stretch is the reason that I created this website. A location for me to document, wholly and lovingly the things that bring me unimaginable joy. The beautiful thing is, everyone has their own three-song stretch. Some little thing that makes you happy. Maybe it’s something that nobody else knows about. Perhaps it’s so esoteric that it feels silly to share with anyone, even those closest to you. But I encourage you to share it. It’s something that you hold dearer than anything else in life. A genuine treasure. A piece of your soul crystallized externally. For me, that’s Michigan. It’s a work of art, a masterpiece, and my life.

Lil Aaron is The Internet's Last Hope

A bit of a sequel to my recent write-up on the 2017 Soundcloud scene, this post is a markedly more positive look at an artist who is using the same path blazed by trap musicians to create something wholly unique on his own terms.

While the hair-dyed “mumble rap” scene of 2016 paved the way for an unrelenting crop of new artists like XXXtentacion and Lil Pump, it also built a framework that allowed for the emergence of new artists who were able to use the same sound and take it a step further. The anthesis of these aggressive bass-abusing rappers is a long-haired dude named Lil Aaron. Described as one of the music industry’s “best kept (and weirdest) secrets,” Aaron is a 23-year-old rapper from Indiana who grew up with an omnivorous appetite for music. With a diet consisting of equal parts hip-hop and rock, Aaron’s music is the product of two decades of careful study and appreciation. He is the result of unrestrained internet access and becoming musically-conscious in an era where T-Pain and Outkast were as prevalent as Taking Back Sunday and Blink-182.

In 2017, those genre-based barriers are lower than ever, and Lil Aaron has spent the last year building a musical playground in which all sounds are treated equally. He isn’t making the same blown-out trap centered around adrenaline-inducing primordial chants, but he uses many of the same techniques as the Soundcloud rapper greats. From song topics, terms, and cultural idioms, even down to the dyed hair, Aaron takes the traditional signposts of the genre and plays with them until they’re barely recognizable. What emerges is a Das Racist-esque parody that shows immense appreciation for the scene while simultaneously deconstructing the tropes as he’s using them. It’s mercilessly poking fun at the genre in the way that only an insider can, all while making one-of-a-kind music in the process.

103°

I first became aware of Lil Aaron’s existence while browsing the Twitter-sphere on a particularly hot 103° day in Portland. I’d spend the day writing in my backyard, sweating it out and listening to Lana Del Rey in between submitting vaguely-flippant job applications. I’d put in a surprisingly hard days work and figured some mindless Twitter scrolling was a suitable reward.

I stumbled across a video that power user @belatweets2u had retweeted featuring a big white dude with green hair dancing and the caption “im a hot topic.” I’ll admit I was intrigued (and ready to hate it), but I clicked on the video anyway, mainly in an attempt to figure out how this played into my go-to high school clothing shop. When I expanded the video, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Panic! At the Disco’s ”I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and was taken aback.

I had to look away from the phone and catch my breath just to make sure I was hearing this right. To say I was perplexed would be an understatement. I hadn’t listened to the song in years, but the song’s instantly-recognizable opening notes took me back to middle school instantly. The 2005-era orchestral plucks were accompanied by Aaron’s alternating “ayyy’s” and “yeah’s” in between the song’s quickly-plucked pizzicato strings. His ad-libbed additions were on-beat and, while incongruous, fit in eerily well with the song’s original overwrought emo context. As the song’s eighth measure hit, right as you’re expecting Brendon Urie’s vocals to enter at their familiar spot, a catastrophic bass blast enters the mix accompanied by Aaron’s auto tune-drenched voice singing “I’m a Hot topic, yeah.”

I was smitten.

im a hot topic pic.twitter.com/xd4qRS9lIQ

— LIL AARON (@lilaaron911) August 3, 2017

He continued to dance, sing, and ad-lib along with his Disco-infused trap song, and within seconds everything fell into place. It was an instantly-endearing mix of modern trap stylings and middle school nostalgia that melted my heart and made me a fan within the space of a single 37-second Twitter video.

Further Down

From there, I sought out Lil Aaron’s Soundcloud and played his most recent song “Warped Tour” which takes the same approach as “Hot Topic,” this time sampling Paramore’s megahit “Misery Business” for another trap-inspired anthem. Within the song, Aaron toys with a common trap idiom by making a direct comparison between his bands (stacks of money) and the number of bands playing Warped Tour. In the time it’s taken me to write this, he’s since released “Top 8” which samples Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar We’re Goin Down” and acts as a loving, nostalgic ode to MySpace using the name of the site’s notorious friend-ranking feature as a springboard for wordplay which leads to the line “give me top, aye.”

It’s an incredible mixing of genres, sounds, terminology, and humor that I never would have thought possible given all the time in the world. Most of the tracks follow a similar format: lure the listener into a sense of familiarity with the original sample, throw them a curveball with a leaned-out trap chorus, sandwich a quick verse in the middle, repeat the chorus, then end. It makes for a brief but compelling listen that doesn’t overstay its welcome or wear out the novelty. And as short as these songs are, Aaron has since (perhaps jokingly) promised he’s working on “making his songs even shorter.” Brevity is the soul of wit, and Aaron is crafting a song structure that’s unmistakable and all his own.

You’d think the crossover between decade-old emo pop and modern trap wouldn’t be a very wide Venn diagram, but it turns out Aaron’s audience is surprisingly vast. It seems that many other listeners have experienced similar twists and turns in their journey of music discovery. Aaron is uncovering a built-in audience of fans that share a single touchpoint and cultivating a relationship with them as he continues to add onto it. With songs that routinely get hundreds of thousands of plays on Soundcloud and cosigns from Chief Keef, Slim Jxmmi, Bella Thorne, and even Kylie Jenner, Aaron’s audience is massive and only growing.

I’m glad the internet has allowed for artists like Lil Aaron to flourish. It’s such an audacious combination of genres (one that would have never found success or even life in the traditional music industry), and I’m glad that it exists. The ability for an artist to put something out into the universe and have it find an audience is one of the beautiful benefits of living in 2017.

He doesn’t fit perfectly into a box, but that’s fine, he’s not for everybody, and that’s the upside to our ever-splintering media landscape. In an interview with Pigeons and Planes Aaron addresses freedom:

“That’s what’s cool—with the Internet and where we are with media and technology, you don’t have to be selected by people in power to be successful in the music industry. Anywhere I am right now, I did all by myself.”

It’s absolute, unbridled freedom. The ability to mash two disparate sounds together and see what comes of it. Your audience will find you eventually, sometimes you just have to create and see what happens next. As Aaron revs up to drop his next emo-infused track “IWGFU” I find myself anticipating his every move and anxiously awaiting the inevitable collection of trappy-pop-punk bangers. Here’s to innovation, and a long, weird career. Here’s to Lil Aaron.

Heartache, Optimism, and Pop-Punk: How The Upsides Changed My Outlook On Life

The best creations are born of pain. A sad consolation prize for the inflicted, the result of life experience and raw suffering. As listeners, we judge music based on how much life and “realness” bleed through it, but we also don’t experience anything in a vacuum. Art is tainted by our own memories and experiences. It’s the reason that two nearly-identical albums can feel so different. It’s the reason you enjoy A while I prefer B. Memory is where it all comes into play, and it’s what we add to art as humans. In experiencing art we inject a bit of our own story in the listening process and add on to the creation in whatever way we can.

This is how our tastes, perspectives, and very personalities are formed: through interaction with both art and the world around us. While a positive experience, association, or context can improve our perception of an album, the inverse can also ruin something that’s otherwise objectively good. Think about any album, movie, or TV show that you used to recover from a breakup. Hell, think about a restaurant that once gave you food poisoning. Whether it’s well-founded or not, there’s probably a negative association and personal bias at play skewing your opinion.

I’m of the school of thought that traditionally “great” music starts as something you don’t necessarily love on the first listen, but becomes better over time. Music with depth and complexity that reveals itself with each subsequent spin. Challenging its consumer to be better. Most of my favorite albums were records that I didn’t think much of (or simply didn’t like) upon first listen, but gradually kept burrowing their way further into my brain.

And while memories often retroactively color our impressions of art, sometimes there are also individual works that are able to overcome our own mental hang-ups. Art that’s so strong it’s able to break through our negative associations and emerge from the other side, still enjoyable.

This combination of growth over time and overcoming an uphill battle of negative associations is one of the reasons that The Wonder Years’ second album The Upsides is one of my favorite records of all time.

From a South Philly Basement

Before I get into weird personal history: some quick background info on the band. Founded in 2005, The Wonder Years are a pop-punk act from Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Following two years of singles, split and EPs the band released their debut album Get Stoked on It! In 2007. Taking queues from the early 2000’s easycore scene, the band’s first record was a keyboard-heavy form of biting pop-punk. Get Stoked is problematic, but also very symptomatic of the year it was made. It’s not a bad record, but it bears very few resemblances to the rest of the band’s work and has been retconned by the band for good reason.

The biggest point against Get Stoked on It! Is that most of the songs were written about generic late-2000’s pop cultural buzzwords. You got a track about a ninja, one about a cowboy, one about zombies, and much more! This is in direct conflict with the band’s later hyper-earnest heart-on-sleeve meditations that pulled from real life experiences and heartfelt emotions (as opposed to funny songs about astronauts). There are still some tracks like “Racing Trains” and “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong” that foreshadow some of the band’s future stylistic leanings, but as a whole, the record is much more underdeveloped and juvenile than their later work.

The band would later go on to “decanonize” this release, publicly stating their distaste for it both in interviews and even referencing it in future songs. When a remastered version of the album came out in 2012, lead singer Daniel Campbell said “If you like the record, enjoy the new mixes. If you hate the record, I’m on your side” which is something I’ve seen very few bands do.

Within two years of their first album, original member and keyboardist Mikey Kelly left the band. His departure essentially represented a “soft reboot” for the band which allowed the remaining members to pivot the group’s sound and take their next album into a more “honest” direction. A year after Kelly’s departure the band released their sophomore album The Upsides in 2010, and my life would change forever.

B-rate Version of Me

In 2011 I went through a horrible breakup. It was my first real relationship, and it hit me as hard as you could imagine a 17-year-old being hit. I’d recently got my driver’s license, started my first job, and I was embarking on my final year of high school, so overall it was a turbulent time of change for me. One night midway through February I was spurred to purchase a digital copy of The Upsides on a whim based on a Tweet made by Amazon Music. This is something I never do, but I had just gotten off a shift at my job and wanted to fill the void with blind consumerism. The album was on sale for $5, so even for a cheap 17-year-old, there’s not much to lose at that price. I can’t even remember if I even previewed the album, but for whatever reason, that tweet was well-crafted enough to spur me into a purchase right then and there. I was in the mood for something new.

I downloaded the album, loaded it onto my iPod, hit play, and sunk into it.

I don’t know how well I’ll be able to articulate the particular brand of slacker malaise I was engaging in at this time, but most waking hours that weren’t spent school were spent in my room playing video games listening to podcasts and music. I was pretty much distracting all my senses and escaping from reality as much as humanly possible without the use of drugs or alcohol. I wasn’t depressed, but I was in a state. Nothing really cheered me up, so it was more of an ongoing war of attrition with my own brain.

I credit The Upsides with single-handedly lifting me out of this post-dump funk and getting me back to feeling like myself. With years of reflection, I was being far more dramatic than I’m giving myself credit for, but I guess that’s kinda the point of being seventeen. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it felt like it… until this album came along.

A Pop-Punk Oddessy

Upsides begins with a bait and switch. Most pop-punk detractors dislike the genre for pretty specific (and valid) reasons. Maybe they don’t like the genre’s propensity for bitter lovesick lyrics, or they’re turned off by the whiny vocals, but in most cases, they probably have a cartoonishly-exaggerated version of the scene in their head. Thanks to the genre’s explosion in popularity during the mid-90’s, most people just think the music consists solely of whiny Blink 182-types when that’s not the case. While there certainly is no shortage of nasally lovesick songs, that sound isn’t representative of the entire genre.

For better or worse, Upsides begins with exactly what people would expect from the genre. Within the first seconds of the album’s opening track “My Last Semester” a nasally slightly-filtered Campbell sings over a twinkling electric guitar “I’m not sad anymore / I’m just tired of this place.” Within 15 seconds the singing ceases and the guitar strings sustain. An electric whir emerges from the back of the mix and quickly overwhelms the held guitar notes. Suddenly the entire song, album, and band spin to life, energizing the track with a cacophony of brash drum strikes, a biting guitar riff, and a driving bassline. Campbell, now singing at the top of his lung repeats the first lyrics with an angry vitriolic twist, and with that, Upsides has officially begun.

Those first lines of the album sound stereotypical (great, another white dude talking about how sad he is) but upon closer inspection, they’re actually a beautifully-constructed phrase that flips the listener’s expectations on their head by talking about the futility of those sad feelings. It’s a notion that’s devoid of nostalgia, firmly present, and anxiously self-aware. This specific idea of not letting sadness win is a recurring theme throughout the album that the band circles back to frequently. The mantra comes full-circle on the album’s star-studded closer and is even developed further on subsequent releases. But in this first song, the singer articulates this concept by listing all the reasons he could be sad, but then explains that he opted to find the silver lining in his situation: his music. Campbell would go on to address this later in an interview explaining:

“I thought that I had kind of beaten my issues, but when you struggle with depression or anxiety, you never really win. You always carry it with you and the point I learned isn’t to win. The point is to keep fighting. It turned out that ‘I’m not sad anymore’ wasn’t a victory speech. It was a battle cry.”

The opening line pulls double duty by acting as the album’s thesis statement while also serving as the band’s new mission statement. This represents a far tonal shift from what we last heard on Get Stoked. They’re not the same group of 18-year-olds who were singing about pirates and zombies three years ago. They elude to this with the meta line “college hit those dudes like a ton of bricks.” The band did a lot of growing up since we’ve last heard from them, and they are guided by a new creative north star.

Art Imitates Life

The foundation that the band began to flesh out with this record (and would expand upon over the course of a trilogy of albums) is a style of hyper-intricate, self-referential, and pop-culture-obsessed rock that depicts the good and bad sides of a life well-lived. Early on the band used the term “realist pop-punk” when describing the sound of their artistic rebirth. Call it what you want, but it’s still one one of the most refreshingly honest and true approaches to music I’ve ever heard, and it was an absolute revelation to me at seventeen.

There’s beauty in simplicity, and sometimes real life is more compelling than anything you could ever make up. TWY’s music doesn’t revolve around sweeping epics, chasing material goods, or even the other, it’s all music that’s firmly told from one perspective and all bears the insecurities and imperfections that come with it. The focus of the music varies from song to song, but this singular perspective allows for a cohesive vision that the listener can simultaneously empathize with, and project themselves onto.

Throughout The Upsides, singer Dan “Soupy” Campbell flexes his now-well honed writing ability, making it obvious he’d time between albums studying and working on his craft. One of the most under-appreciated aspects of his style is his acute ability to write minuscule details. Small observations and references that add a layer of specificity that makes the album feel more realized and lived-in. Each line adds onto the story that the listener is building in their head until an entire narrative is formed around the character. You’re fleshing out your own universe built on the language of the album and developing a one-of-a-kind relationship with its narrator.

Sometimes The Upsides tackles big psychological issues like post-college listlessness, relationship dynamics, and even death. At other times they zoom down to view life on a macro level and vignette the little scenes that happen in life like a broken down car or going on a midnight pretzel run to the stand behind your house. Sometimes it’s funny and biting social commentary on the Westboro Baptist Church or the shitty fist-pumping people you meet at parties. It’s an album that encapsulates the life of a post-college 20-something from every possible dimension.

To me, the quintessential song on the album is the Deluxe Edition’s penultimate track “Logan Circle: A New Hope.” The song is a stripped-down reworking of the album’s second track “Logan Circle” that echoes many of the original track’s sentiments but also serves as an incremental update on the life of Campbell. “A New Hope” is redone in a slower, more pensive approach that allows the lyrics and instrumentation to shine through and glisten to their full potential, highlighting both the brilliance of the lyrics and the proficiency of the band members.

The first verse of the original “Logan Circle” contains a lyric that hooked me for the rest of the album: “We just can’t blame the seasons / The Blue Man Group won’t cure depression.” The line resonated with me originally because it’s an obvious Arrested Development reference, but it also doubles as a bit of life advice about optimism and outlook. This all circles back to the cliched idea that this album is something I needed to hear at the time. I wasn’t hopeless, but I needed something hopeful. I needed to be told how to handle these feelings I’d never felt before. I needed to be told how to combat them and move on with my life, and that’s exactly what The Upsides did for me. It was musical therapy.

Emergence

Though I didn’t consider it at the time, I’ve only recently come to realize that pop-punk has been the genre that I’ve listened to for the longest in my life. It’s partly a byproduct of when I was growing up (thanks, mid-90’s) but also it just happened to be one of the first genres that I really explored. As a result, there was something comforting about sinking back into the genre after spending some time away from it. I feel like It’s cheesy to admit an album about not feeling sad helped me stop feeling sad, but Upsides was instrumental in my emergence from sadness in the wake of this first relationship.

It wasn’t just the optimistic messages, it’s that the songs found the optimistic messages in the face of everything else. Feelings of sadness are not invalid, but with enough distance, you realize that there’s no reason for them, there’s nothing to be gained from them, only energy wasted. It was a realistic portrayal of exactly how I was feeling then. And more on-the-nose, the album’s breakup song “Melrose Diner” served as both a validation of my feelings and a cautionary tale about becoming the shitty, bitter ex.

My love for The Upsides grew exponentially with each listen, and within a year it became my most listened-to album of all time, a title that it still retains to this day. In fact, my love for Upsides grew with each subsequent album that the band released as future songs would call back to lyrics contained within their earlier works. By fall of 2011, I’d begun my first term of college and the band had released their third album Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing.

The Upsides marked the beginning of a three album “trilogy” that depict the arc of Campbell’s struggles with anxiety and depression, and with the trilogy’s conclusion in 2013, the band cemented themselves as my favorite act of all time. With three releases that were all equally impeccable, I’ve now spent roughly 12 days of my life listening to the band’s various releases, a number I wouldn’t take back if you paid me.

At the end of the day, The Upsides is one of a handful of albums that changed my life, and there’s no higher praise I can hoist upon it than that. It’s a well-crafted and powerfully intricate release that rewards close listens and spawned its own mythology. It engages the listener in a way that few other pieces of art do. There are lots of albums in my life where I can point to a clearly-defined “before” and “after” period, but Upsides is an album that changed my entire way of being. It shifted my world one step towards a more positive existence, and I can’t thank the band enough for that. It’s a radical powerhouse of a record that I still listen to nearly every week, and I can’t fathom my life in a world without it. It’s a beautiful creation, and the world is a more beautiful place for it.

Thank you for everything, Upsides.

The Breathtaking Grace of Sprained Ankle

For years now I’ve seen the cover to Julien Baker’s 2015 album in random flashes across the internet, and it’s perpetually eluded me. It became one of those “mythical” bits of media that I saw everywhere, then suddenly disappeared from my mind.

Aside from the surprisingly-pervasive photo, I didn’t know anything about the record: I didn’t know who Julien Baker was, what genre she played, or if this album was even any good. I assumed it was, but I had zero context to go on, only this cover. It became one of those things that you see so often that you just assume it’s great but never look into. In 2017 I finally sat down to listen to the album and since then I’ve been kicking myself for taking so long.

Sprained Ankle is one of the single most impactful, graceful, flawless, and magnificent records I’ve ever heard in my life. Period.

It’s an album that’s great on first listen, and gets even better with each subsequent spin. Baker’s effortless balance between singer-songwriter folk and finger-plucked emo is an enchanting combination that makes for a grounded and heavy listen.

It’s definitely not a “fun” album in any sense of the word. It’s an album about God, death, and anxiety. On the second track (after which the album is named), she opens with the line “wish I could write songs about anything other than death.” That’s as close to humor as we get in the album’s 33 minute and 33 second running time, and even then it’s still a line about death that hits you like a punch in the gut.

Baker’s voice remains prominent in every song, laid bare near the top of the mix and paired well with her own guitar and little else. It sounds like you’re listening to a girl playing songs alone in her room just for herself. It almost feels invasive to listen to, but you can tell the contents of the album would have come out with or without your intrusion.

It’s a deeply personal album about everything dark in the world. It’s an album of purity in an impure world. It’s haunting and striking. It will stay with you after your first listen like a ghost. It sounds like someone wringing their soul dry into a bucket. It’s one of the most majestic and soul-crushing things I’ve ever heard in my life and remains just as impactful after dozens of repeated listens.

Julien Baker is a woman of few words. Amongst the album’s short nine tracks you’ll find only a handful of topics. You get the sense that these songs were carefully-selected and lovingly-crafted over time until they formed a single honed point. The fact that she’s just now revving up to drop her second album over two years later is a testament to her thoughtfulness.

Sprained Ankle is unlike anything I’ve ever heard, yet it feels immediately familiar. It’s an album about a universal topic delivered in a straightforward way. The universal of pain. It connects right away and doesn’t stop until the vibrations of Baker’s piano are overwhelmed by the dark static surrounding her on the final track. It’s an album that’s easy to grasp upon first listen, but slowly reveals its sublime intensity to those who listen closely.

Julien Baker is a beautiful person with a beautiful soul, and that fact shines through the pain and the sparseness of Sprained Ankle. It’s hard to put the feeling of the album into words, but it’s an experience that has transcended music for me. She has a way with words, melody, and sound that all come together into this perfect package.  

I’m writing this because I feel like I have to. I’ve been so deeply moved and affected by this record that I just need to document my thoughts on it in the best way that I know how. It’s unreal.

It hurts.

It hurts to listen to. It hurts to be away from. And it hurts to be without.

It’s a carefully-constructed album about loss.

About the blunt faceless pain of anxiety.

It’s stark beauty in its rawest form.

It’s Sprained Ankle.

In Defense of DJ Khaled

I’m not one to defend mediocrity. Some things are just aggressively “alright” and DJ Khaled tends to be one of them. He’s not an artist in the traditional sense of the word, in fact putting him in a box is actually kind of hard. He’s a Snapchat-famous DJ, record producer, and meme machine with just a few more catchphrases your average Saturday morning cartoon character. While his musical contributions tend to be nothing more than shouting his own catchphrases in between (or directly over) a rapper’s bars, he also serves an important role as a Nick Fury-like assembler of talents.

In the wake of this year’s Grateful, I’ve found myself reflecting on DJ Khaled’s prior release with a surprising amount of fondness. While I won’t defend mediocrity on an artistic level, that’s not to say there isn’t a time and a place for it. The real problem is most DJ Khaled albums are the musical equivalent of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes you’ll get a Drake-bolstered summer anthem, or strike gold with an unexpected artist pairing. But more often than not you’ll end up with a by-the-numbers hip-hop track that feels market tested as fuck and sounds like six different people all sending verses to each other via email over the course of months.

And I can’t tell if it’s nostalgia for summer 2016 or genuine appreciation, but Khaled’s skill as a musical host has never been more on a more impressive display than 2016’s Major Key. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s a flawless album. Now before you close the tab let me explain myself. I don’t mean flawless in that it stacks up to The Beatles or anything, I mean that every track on it is great and serves a different purpose.

While I usually hate track-by-tracks, I think Major Key is an album that would benefit from this type of dissection. There is honestly an impressive number of sounds being explored on this album. The collaborations feel fresh, and Khaled’s typically-shoehorned catchphrases actually fit into the album unobtrusively. It’s not high art, but it’s an incredibly-varied selection of songs that ends up feeling more like a curated summer playlist than a record by one man.

I guess that’s a point against the album since I’m basically saying Major Key is good because it doesn’t feel like a “DJ Khaled album,” but his skill here wrangling the number of artists and sounds is worth writing about. He’s a host and curator, and this album is the most consistent of his career. It’s commendable, especially when contrasted with the uneven follow-up we just received.

1) I Got the Keys (feat. Jay Z and Future)

Major Key begins with a fittingly-named banger that allows Jay-Z to don his jewelry and flex for the world once again. The track sees Future relegated to the song’s chorus while Jay-Z comes in with two of the best verses we’ve heard from him in years. While the recent release of 4:44 signals a more grown-up and fatherly shift in Jay’s sound and topics, it’s nice to have one (possibly final) send-off to Big Pimpin’-era Hov. Yes the chorus is repetitive, but 2016 was host to a rash of intentionally-repetitiveFuture-led choruses (including a second one later on this very album). I like that these songs are using Future for his unique textured voice as opposed to his tired lean-soaked raps. As a whole, the song has a hypnotic siren-like beat that Jay rides nicely and it ends up serving as a perfect energetic opener.

2) For Free (feat. Drake)

A Drake feature is practically a tradition on DJ Khaled albums at this point. In addition to the pair’s storied history, a Drake feature almost guarantees a song’s commercial success and a nomination for the elusive “Song of the Summer” title. Released as Major Key’s first single, the song did numbers but failed reach the pervasiveness needed to truly become the official song of the summer (despite Khaled’s claims on the song’s outro.) It’s still a nice bouncy Drake track that’s pool-party-ready, and furthered Drake’s exploration of the dancehall-esque sound.

3) Nas Album Done (feat. Nas)

On “Nas Album Done” Nas himself commandeers an entire track simply to spit bars for three minutes straight. With no chorus, and minimal intrusion from Khaled, this is a song of pure hip-hop proficiency that addresses the political climate of mid-2016. The title refers to Nas’ (still-unreleased) forthcoming album which will be his first in over five years. As such, this Fugees-sampling track serves as an appetizer for the bars to come on his next record.

4) Holy Key (feat. Kendrick Lamar, Big Sean, and Betty Wright)

Easily the track I’ve listened to most off of the album, “Holy Key” is a fast-moving and hard-hitting pump-up jam. The song that calls to mind Sean and Kendrick’s previous collaboration, the world-concerning “Control” which was a pivotal moment for the hip-hop scene as a whole. While “Holy Key” doesn’t quite recapture the fire of “Control” (a lot of time has passed since 2013) it does manage to capture a particularly-strong Big Sean verse and one of the most ferocious features of Kendrick’s career.  

5) Jermaine’s Interlude (feat. J. Cole)

After the abject fire of “Holy Key” things slow down a bit for a bit of a breather on the J. Cole-helmed “Jermaine’s Interlude.” It provides some much-needed pathos after the blitz of hyper-proficient verses on the first few tracks of the album. The interlude throws bone to the very specific yet ravenous fan base that J. Cole has cultivated since his breakthrough 2014 Forest Hills Drive. The mellowed-out track injects more of a “conscious” sound into Major Key that breaks up the album’s themes and showcases a surprising amount of well-articulated topics for an interlude.

6) Ima Be Alright (feat. Bryson Tiller and Future)

In the album’s most flaccid track Future and Bryson Tiller trade verses over a dreamy beat that continues the slower late night vibes of the last track. The song showcases a particularly-animated Future verse that’s sandwiched in between two remorseful Tiller hooks that discuss the pratfalls of fame. It’s capped off with a verse from Tiller and a surprisingly funny outro by Khaled.

7) Do You Mind (feat. Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, August Alsina, Jeremih, Future, and Rick Ross)

From there the album continues its stretch of slower tracks with the overtly-sexy “Do You Mind.” The track combines Chris Brown and August Alsina vocals to create an earworm of a chorus that Alsina then commandeers for a short verse. From there the two throw to Jeremiah who adds a third layer of R&B sexiness before another chorus swaggers in. The track takes a hard turn as Future and Rick Ross come in with two short verses, but Nicki caps it all off with an incredibly-sung bridge right before the song’s end. It’s a radio-ready R&B track that sounds different than anything else on the album. With a packed guest list, this is a song “for the ladies” and it does its job well.

8) Pick These Hoes Apart (feat. Kodak Black, Jeezy, and French Montana)

As you would expect from a song with this title, “Pick These Hoes Apart” represents a shift back towards full-on hip-hop within the album. Featuring some of the most objectively-disgusting lines on the entire record, the song still gets some points for bringing together such a disparate group of rappers and shining a light on Kodak Black right as he was blowing up. It shows a lot of foresight on Khaled’s part. It’s also worth noting that the track features a great verse from French Montana who I’ve never particularly cared for, but he manages to utilize his brand of slurred half-sung rap here on a beat that sounds like it was made for him.

9) Fuck Up the Club (feat. Future, Rick Ross, YG, and Yo Gotti)

The album’s hip-hop mode is decidedly back in full swing on “Fuck Up the Club” which features the album’s second supremely-repetitive Future hook, a roster of legit street rappers, and an absolute banger of a beat. The track sees YG and Yo Gotti at the height of their powers after their high-profile releases of Still Brazy and “Champions” respectively. Everyone comes in with heat, and the track’s beat is relentless with little breathing room for anything besides explosive forward momentum.

10) Work for It (feat. Big Sean, Gucci Mane, and 2 Chainz)

Arguably one of the most star-studded tracks on the album, “Work for It” subverts expectations by being a bit of a slower track that finds Big Sean at the helm. It really does telegraph the sound on Sean’s upcoming I Decided. but remains a track that fits its other guests suitably. It’s apparent that the recently-released Gucci and always-humorous Titti Boi were both in “creation mode” on this track amidst a slew of their own 2016 releases. It may not change the Big Sean hater’s minds, but it’s a left turn that I didn’t see when first listening to the album.

11) Don’t Ever Play Yourself (feat. Jadakiss, Fabolous, Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, and Kent Jones)

With a lineup of guests who are all in their 40’s (Kent Jones notwithstanding) I see “Don’t Ever Play Yourself” as the dedicated “oldhead” song on the album. Reminiscent of Compton’s “Loose Cannons,” or “One Shot One Kill” this track sounds like a different generation of rappers who all decided to hop on a track with one thing to prove: that they’re far from “too old this shit.” It’s apparent why these rappers have all stuck around, they all have different voices and at this point, they’ve honed their craft enough to make it all look effortless.

12) Tourist (feat. Travis Scott and Lil Wayne)

“Tourist” had been floating around the internet for about a year at this point as a semi-unfinished Travis Scott solo song. In its appearance on Major Key, we hear a remastered version with a surprise Lil Wayne feature added on and (luckily) little-to-no Khaled yelling. It’s a hazy track that retains the signature Travis Scott sound while echoing 3500’s drowsy unwinding instrumental.

13) Forgive Me Father (feat. Meghan Trainor, Wiz Khalifa, and Wale)

When Major Key’s tracklist was officially released a few weeks before the album’s drop, I remember one thing concretely: the internet’s reaction to this song’s feature list. First off: what a weird collection of people. Second: Wiz is washed. Third: Meghan Trainor? The “All About That Bass” chick? I don’t know why, but I’d like to pat myself on the back for believing that this song wouldn’t be as bad as everyone was expecting it to be. I may just love being a contradictory fuck, and maybe it’s just because I went in with low expectations, but I find “Forgive Me Father” a corny, yet inspirational song that isn’t offensive in the least.

14) Progress

The last song on Major Key sees Khaled ceding Major Key to Jamaican singer Mavado. This is actually the second time this handoff has happened (with the third instance occurring on 2017’s Grateful) perhaps signaling a new inner-album tradition. It’s a tropical island song that calls to mind flashes of Khaled’s snapchat stories watering and talking to his flowers in a sunny yard. It’s a “full circle” song about progress that serves as the perfect conclusion to the album by encapsulating everything we’ve heard up until that point.

Major Key has a little bit of everything. Like most DJ Khaled records you could cherry pick single songs for the right mood, but it also holds together surprisingly well as an album. There’s no “journey” or “resolution” but you could easily sit down and listen to all 58 minutes of this and enjoy yourself. It’s a great summer album and has enough variation to keep you wondering (or excited for) what’s coming next. It’s a “playlist” before Drake did the same thing a year later. That’s not to say all DJ Khaled albums aren’t playlists (because they’re all like this) but Major Key is the first time it crystallized into something substantive that was fully enjoyable from beginning to end.  

In contrast, 2017’s Grateful is overly-long (21 tracks and almost 90 minutes) and released in direct contrast to Calvin Harris’ polished Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 which did the “DJ Khaled thing” in a better, more pointed way. But all this said I do believe Major Key to be a legitimately great hip-hop album that stands on its own. I’m honestly in shock I was able to write 1,000+ words about it, and I guess that endorsement speaks for itself more than my praise ever can.

It’s an interesting dichotomy because Grateful featured songs like “I’m The One” and “Wild Thoughts” which were unequivocally more successful than anything off of Major Key. It ties back to the discussion I carried out earlier this month about the crossroads between commercial success and artistic fulfillment. Major Key was no flop, but by all accounts Grateful is shaping up to be a technically more successful album. I think that Major Key stands on its own better on an artistic level, but there’s certainly a difference between the two records.

“I’m the One” has been an earworm (and chart-topper) since its release as a single in late April, I’ll give it that. But I’d still pick Major Key over it, even if it doesn’t have the “single power” of Grateful. And (to circle back to the original topic) I’m not saying Major Key is high art. This shit isn’t Abbey Road, It’s not Darkside, it’s not even Cat Scratch Fever. For as much as I wrote above, I still think this album is only one step above mediocrity on an artistic level. It will probably age horribly in a few years, it has some questionable lyrics, and as a whole, it’s just a good collection of tracks rather than a compelling vision carried out by one creative force.

The point is, even with all those things weighing it down, it’s great at what it needs to be. Grateful isn’t as good as what it needed to be (which was the same thing as Major Key), but in the end, they both pale in comparison to albums that were crafted with time, care, and artistry. I’m not saying DJ Khaled isn’t those things, I’m just saying Major Key succeeds in every goal that it sets out to do. It doesn’t aim high, so it shouldn’t be judged on that level. Major Key is a stellar collection of incredibly-varied tracks that bring together a wide roster of hip-hop artists large and small. No two tracks sound alike, DJ Khaled plays an excellent role as artistic curator, and everything comes together nicely. On that scale, it’s as far from mediocrity as you can get.