Mitski and the Complications of Modern Fandom

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Indie-Pop singer/songwriter Mitski recently embarked on a North American and European tour to promote her sixth studio album Laurel Hell. This is her first tour and album since 2019’s Be The Cowboy, which concluded with Mitski taking some much-deserved time away from the spotlight. Upon release, Laurel Hell received acclaim from music critics, and has done well commercially, charting #1 in both the US Top Alternative Albums and US Top Rock Albums. However, despite the critical praise and commercial success, Laurel Hell has been divisive among fans, which is not uncommon when an artist returns from a hiatus period. The consistent criticisms range from Mitski’s vocal performance sounding “bored” to her songwriting being “trite.” The album also borrows much of its sound from 80s pop hits, which sometimes limits Mitski from committing to the signature dauntlessness that has defined her music up to this point. What sets Mitski apart from her contemporaries in the indie genre is her urgency and ability to channel raw emotions into spellbinding performances. However, the production on this new album makes her delivery feel impersonal and frustrating. 

Beyond the critical scores and fan debates about the composition of the album – there has been quite a bit of discourse surrounding Mitski herself and the way certain fans consume her music. It started with a Twitter thread from Mitski in which she asked that fans refrain from taking videos of the entire set or songs. She said she felt as if she was being “consumed as content” instead of sharing an honest moment with fans. This idea is not a new one – the majority of concerts I’ve been to have a “no phone” policy, in which there are signs in place and aggressive ushers who are more than happy to escort you off the premises if you so much as check the time. The split reaction within the fanbase to this request caused the first in a series of moralistic debates. You were either on Mitski’s side, or you weren’t. The tweets were deleted following an intense weekend of discourse and fan in-fighting.

Mitski’s choice to communicate this sentiment over her management-run Twitter account is unconventional, given that her social presence online is nonexistent. Despite her genuine intention to relay her wishes delicately, it makes sense that the clinical nature of the tweet thread went over the heads of her audience, who have been born and raised in internet culture. Weeks prior, the disconnect between Mitski and her fandom was apparent when she was traveling the press circuit to promote Laurel Hell. In Cracked Magazine’s “Mitski Reacts to Posts About Mitski” video, Mitski reveals how she lives in “blissful ignorance” of what’s happening online while reacting stiffly to Stan Twitter memes about her music. Halfway through the video, she reads a tweet that says: “New Mitski it’s a big day for sad bitches.” Mitski taps her hands on the armrests of her chair and says, “Y’know, the sad girl thing was reductive and tired five years ago, and it still is today.” She pauses to say she appreciates the person who made the tweet, but then follows up by saying: “Let’s retire the sad girl schtick. It’s over.” Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, indeed. 

While this detachment style may allow Mitski to live in 'blissful ignorance,' it doesn't allow for many fans to receive her words with the earnestness she hopes. Mitski appeals to a very online generation, and with the rise of applications like TikTok, where hyper-categorization for oneself is how you appeal to its algorithm (i.e., get views), it is only natural that fans will view her music as a piece of their identity. Mitski asks not to be “consumed” by her fans, but perhaps she needs to come to terms with her life as an entertainer. Mitski’s real name isn’t even Mitski – it’s a stage name, a persona that she embodies as a performer, making entertainment to be consumed. The very nature of a concert relies on the performer to gain monopolized, undivided attention from onlookers. I mean, why else would you be on a stage, a literal platform that elevates you above an audience? 

It’s innate human behavior to connect with art on a level of self-introspection. A defining element of art is that it means different things to different people; everyone consumes art through their own lens, but this isn’t a reality that a subset of fans are willing to accept. Whether they’re a devoted member of the fanbase or not, it seems that everyone is rushing to supply their takes on the situation. However, a collective sentiment has emerged of supporting the artist no matter the circumstance, even if that means turning on others in the fanbase. As if Mitski will personally thank those who protect her image and adhere to her social demands. 

While Mitski wants people not to consume her and reduce her music down to catchphrases, a portion of her fanbase has equated that to other fans disregarding the racial context of her music. This argument is strange to me because the overwhelming majority of Mitski’s music is about, well, love. Falling in love, falling out of love, being in love too much, not being in love enough – you get the idea. The only song explicitly detailing Mitski’s struggles with identity as a person of color is her song “Your Best American Girl.” Perhaps an argument can be made that “Strawberry Blond” is about Mitski’s personal anguish that she is not white enough for the man of her dreams – but then again, Mitski has never publicly said that’s what the song is about. It is not clear how her racial identity or upbringing features in her music. She very well could be singing about alienation, perhaps as a woman, or just as a generalization. Mitski does very little to bring politics, background, and identity as an interwoven factor within her music. This isn’t a criticism – I just find it necessary to address when fans are other-ing each other and gatekeeping, as if only viewing Mitski’s music in relation to her being a person of color isn’t a reduction and exclusion in its own right. 

Whether it’s the desire to control how she is perceived as “sad girl” music or resistance to being recorded while performing, Mitski’s differing attitudes in communicating with her audience showcase her inability to commit to a public persona. Mitski will dish out contempt for her audience regarding how they categorize its lyrical and sonic content, but will approach delivering requests concerning concert etiquette like a kid trying to convince their parents to buy them a dog. In the past, Mitski has demonstrated her fearlessness and conviction. Her obsessive love ballads on Puberty 2 make me think of Nina Simone – this is the artistic height that Mitski is capable of reaching. In my opinion, Be The Cowboy was a step down from her two previous albums, and it’s disheartening to see this trend continue on Laurel Hell. This decline all happening while Mitski publicly conflates her inability to grasp her new life as a performer and entertainer, ultimately failing to define a boundary of what her fans are to her. 

When discussing her song “Nobody” in a Genius Lyric Breakdown video, Mitski explains how the chorus came to her in a real state of anguish, but she thought: “Let me use this pain and exploit it for money.” This, of course, can be perceived with light-heartedness, but it’s difficult not to take it at face value, considering Mitski is currently at the height of her popularity, and her name is equated with producing music to consume when you are in some state of distress. 

Perhaps she is personally tired of the “sad girl schtick,” but Mitski has to decide whether to embrace the description she trademarked or rebel and create a new identity for her music and voice to exist in. You can’t please everyone. If she truly wants fans to abandon labeling themselves in accordance with the themes of her past work, then why would she continue to write songs that have a similar pay-off? What is the difference between “Love Me More” (I need you to love me more / Love me more / Love enough to fill me up) and “Lonesome Love” (Why am I lonely for a lonesome love?) – Mitski is still indulging in the same self-aggrandizing individualism that was evident in her previous records, so why should the content be treated differently than before?

As an artist, you have to recognize that a great deal of effort is involved in rebranding and creating new material that allows your career and the subsequent music you make to possess a longer lifespan. Meaning, Mitski will have to rise to new heights and challenge her fans' perceptions of her through the design and function of her music. If you give your fans work that feels familiar, then they already have a conditioned response. By supplying your audience fresh and innovative ideas, you are by default requesting that they open their minds to imaginative possibilities; sometimes, you have to just let your music speak for you. 

Kaycie is a high school senior and writer. You can find them on Instagram at @boyishblues.

The Slow Cancellation of the Future: 70s Cosplay in Modern Pop Music

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Despite only being two years into the decade, the music of the 2020s has already revealed a trend of artists relying on styles that other musicians have established long ago. In his book Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Mark Fisher described this phenomenon as “The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush.” Our expectations have been lowered and we rely on a formal nostalgia, perhaps, as Fisher speculates, because there’s “an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present.” 

Before Fear of Death was released in 2020, comedian Tim Heidecker had to convince his audience that this was not an elaborate setup — his intention was for this studio album to be taken seriously. “I’m like Dylan,” Heidecker bites, responding to a viewer question during his podcast Office Hours Live. “My name ‘Tim Heidecker’ means Dylan,” he elaborates while his crew chuckle in the background. It’s clear that Tim is not in on the joke. The music video for the titular single on the record is intriguing. In the first 20 seconds, Tim is “showing” the band what cords to play. The camera is directly in his face, but he never acknowledges it. It’s a similar effect to the illusion in documentaries where subjects are aware they’re being filmed, but do their best to pretend to be un-spectated. Shot in 16mm, Tim Heidecker sees himself as a rockstar; one or all of his 70s musical idols at once, a strange showmanship emerges, and it’s a pattern you’ll see throughout the entire record. 

Heidecker has a public playlist on his Spotify titled “Fear of Death,” though it features no songs off his own album. Instead, you’ll find Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” John Lennon’s “Mother,” Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and more. I want to praise Heidecker for wearing his inspirations on his sleeve, but sometimes when an artist says they’re “influenced by” something, what they really mean to say is that they have borrowed from it liberally. If you look up his songs on YouTube, the most popular comments consistently reference other artists. The top comment on “Nothing” compares Heidecker to Harry Nilsson, a prominent singer/songwriter from the 70s. A few comments on “Property” call the album Randy Newman-esque. Did I mention the record also has a cover of “Let It Be”? 

In a Washington Post article, Heidecker said he’s better at sounding like Dylan than himself. “My voice doesn’t have its own character,” he reasoned. Later, the article mentions how Heidecker felt his hair looked similar to “Wings-era McCartney.” In addition to this, reviewers and fans alike had no problem comparing Heidecker’s lyrical ability to that of Paul Simon or Stephen Stills. Is this not a tired precedent? Why are we placing these high accolades onto a comedian whose music career is a hobby, or at the very worst, an after-thought?

Fear of Death promises a pursuit of existential topics, but it has little to no emotional catharsis. Heidecker’s voice is loud, but what it projects is trite lyrics surrounded by equally loud but bland instrumentals. It’s an easy-listening album, but there are no elements that compel you to hear it out. Heidecker fears he lacks a distinct voice, and I believe he uses that as a shield from fully committing to a challenging artistic endeavor, instead settling for something that he can add to his resume, Wikipedia page, or whatever personal book of accomplishments he keeps for himself.

Elsewhere in the music industry, other even more established artists aren't immune to this kind of historical navel-gazing. The most recent albums from Bleachers and St. Vincent both struggle with the same problems. Bleachers lead singer Jack Antonoff also produced St. Vincent’s album, so it's safe to assume Antonoff was juggling both projects at once, and it shows. Both Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night and Daddy’s Home follow the same beats, right down to the album artwork and the costumes. Pop artists are chameleons, shapeshifting into new aesthetics to correlate with the sound of their album — it’s an extra step in branding that’s existed since the beginning of time. However, behind the Bruce Springsteen feature and rogue George Harrison worship, Antonoff reveals his agenda through the yelpy vocals and millennial pop beats. It’s a record tailor-made for alt-pop radio, but it hides behind these distinct influences, pretending to sound bigger than it is.

Antonoff performed some of these songs on Saturday Night Live earlier this year—dressed in cuffed jeans and a leather jacket, he feigns the rockstar aesthetic and sound, without any of the angst or true emotions that fill the songs he’s trying to replicate. There’s a desperation to it. The desire to stand out and be different. Young people don’t notice it because they aren’t familiar with the music it’s referencing. It’s akin to how tweens & teens listen to Lemon Demon and Jack Stauber before they find out who Oingo Boingo and Talking Heads are. Older people are waiting for something better to come along, and with their lowered expectations, they happily take St. Vincent in a Candy Darling wig riffing on a rejected Steely Dan instrumental over another Justin Bieber tune plaguing the radio. 

There’s an issue of class here as well. Both Antonoff and Heidecker come from upper-middle-class backgrounds, growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively. Juxtapose this to Bruce Springsteen (as he is an inspiration to both), who grew up poor in the 50s, which in itself led to a lot of traumas. However, Springsteen tapped into that troubled generational atmosphere as it was in the turbulent process of spiraling down. He earned the title of rockstar by performing with a fearless passion. He believed in what he was singing because he lived it, and the things he didn’t live he observed through the experiences of his peers and fans. He was a natural showman, charismatic, and in the business of projecting a big story. I don’t believe you necessarily have to go through intense hardships in order to write a good song, but in the case of Heidecker and Antonoff, their economic class and shallow life experiences lead to boring records. An isolated life leads to a limited perspective. 

I should also touch on Daddy’s Home a bit more. Annie Clark (St. Vincent) used her father's 12-year incarceration for his role in a $43 million stock manipulation scheme as the crux of this 70s pastiche album. She attempts to be educated about the faults of the prison system and how it affects the black community, but Clark exhibits a clear dissonance when she stumbles through a watered-down reference to Nina Simone and positions black backup singers to sulk about her white father who committed a white-collar crime. Clark, of course, kept this story hidden until journalists forced her hand. “People are flawed, but also are capable of change. We can’t just write somebody off,” Clark said in an interview. To cope, she dropped into a cobbled-together character based on stolen and reappropriated aesthetics. Clark went from a “white-haired, sadomasochist cult leader” to a “dominatrix at the mental institution” to a “Cassavetes heroine” in the span of three album cycles. She attributes this current phase as a tribute to the albums she grew up on, which is the case for all millennial / gen x musicians. There isn’t anything unique about listening to Joni Mitchell and wishing you could be her. 

Artists are perceiving the past as a mythical entity, which is contributing to the slow cancellation of the future. Focusing on aesthetics alone can lead to limited hindsight about an era and its ideals. Through appropriation, these artists are shrinking the possibility for an organic/original sound to emerge. This leads me to the next topic of discussion: Greta Van Fleet. 

Greta Van Fleet is a band from Michigan who is best known for being Led Zeppelin emulators. As this article states: “the music, the costumes, even the backlash against them — is crafted intentionally to appeal specifically to people who are too young to know that they’re derivative and people who are too old to care because they remind them of when they were young. They’re a band designed to be regurgitated by algorithms, worming their way onto “Recommended If You Like…” playlists and nabbing themselves the No. 1 rock album in the country without so much as an original thought. They themselves are still young — but old enough to know exactly what they’re doing.” Greta Van Fleet does not push the world of rock music forward; their art is stagnant and without any new or original ideas, concepts, and styles. There is no authenticity, experimentation, or excitement. They’re gliding into their rising popularity, and with the external increase of 70s cosplay within their peer group, there are no signs of it slowing down anytime soon. 

Whether they're creating rock, pop, or overly-earnest singer-songwriter fare, artists like Greta Van Fleet, Bleachers, and Heidecker take the aesthetics of the 70s and believe that is enough. However, the songwriters of that era implored a strong use of language and narrative. Randy Newman was known for his tongue-in-cheek satires, Harry Nilsson was known for his spontaneous imagination, Joni Mitchell was known for her equally heartfelt and intricate poetry. Excellent writing and a knowledge of how to use figurative language is the core of what makes a song compelling, memorable, and worthy of being passed down to a future generation.

Another hit album of 2021 was An Evening with Silk Sonic. Throughout this release, the duo comprised of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak indulged in a faithful and committed tribute to the R&B genre. Though music videos and lyrical references throughout the album fetishize the 70s, it is clear that their revival of this sound is tongue-in-cheek; they’re aware of how well-worn this aesthetic is. The irony doesn’t absolve the album from fault, but is an indicator of how it was a passion project, never meant to be perceived as anything deeper. However, as Pitchfork mentioned: “any significant level of investment poses the question: When artists invoke music as beloved as Motown and Philly soul, how can anything they create measure up?” 

What is the purpose of 70s cosplay if not to invoke feelings of nostalgia? Even to those of us who were born way after that decade, the sounds and color palates still feel warm and inviting. It’s easier to accept false replications of the past than to conceive of something new. Why should you seek out new genres or singers when you can listen to an established artist that makes you think of being a kid, sitting in the back of your dad's car while he had the classic rock station on? 

What’s worst yet is that this 70s revival refuses to acknowledge the influences artists from the 70s borrowed. Bob Dylan thanks Jimmy Reed and Woody Guthrie for his career, Led Zeppelin wears the influence of Muddy Waters and Skip James on their sleeve, Joan Baez cites Pete Seeger and Odetta as an inspiration. It is true that no one is uniquely individual or without inspiration, but what's different about artists of the 1970s to the ones of the 2020s is that they elevated themselves with these influences while constantly reinventing, experimenting, and being brave enough to let their voice waiver without the clutch of reverb and electronic drum beats.

The culture of nostalgia has reached an evolved form with films, documentaries, and music celebrating pop auteurs. The past already happened. To recreate it is a futile attempt to capture a moment that was never really there. What glamor is there in recycled fashion looks or referenced bass lines? Is there no pride in swallowing your inspirations and channeling a new ambition from them?

It is in my humble opinion that inspiration can be found in idiosyncratic talent and artistic motives. It is more admirable to place recognition in the greatness of creatives before you and try to imbue their philosophy in the voice you project into the world rather than stand in as a cheap knock-off. You don’t have to dress like Marc Bolan and sound like Bowie to be alluring—you just have to possess a relentless passion for performing. Modern artists are so terrified to fail openly, and their music shows it. To do something that hasn’t been done before requires a certain bravery that groups like Bleachers and Greta Van Fleet don’t possess. 

None of these albums will make an impression. They will be forgotten in the same vein of how we remember The Beatles and not the hundreds of copycat bands that came to be as a result of them. These albums are the result of admiration — but it’s not a case of, as Brian Eno stated, "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band" where the energy and attitudes were what was desired to replicate. Instead, this modern crop of albums represents the fetishization of aesthetic, recontextualization of the past in a contemporary lens, and carrying a pretense of leveling on the same heights as the artists they’re replicating. The lack of subtlety is tiring. These musicians assign themselves a self-importance because they are aware of the acclaimed arts of the past. The core issue with all of these projects is that they don’t understand the source material. They don’t understand the context in which the art they adore was made, and this self-indulgence prevents cohesion. What purpose does a referential album or gimmick serve in an age where all of history is accessible in three clicks? 

In the past, writers, musicians, and activists operated under a political sentiment of engagement. This is how counterculture was born. But as it stands today, we have no oppositional culture. We’ve surpassed the end of history in terms of chance for political upheaval or drastic societal change, and no one really knows what to do. Nostalgia, though well-worn and bittersweet, is a type of regression when liberally exerted. If artists keep dipping back into the honeypot, we may never witness the future. In order for the future to exist, we must participate in new thoughts and imagination and rid ourselves of styles we weren’t supposed to hold onto this long. 

Kaycie is a high school senior and writer. You can find them on Instagram at @boyishblues.

Metadata, Alienation, and Music Ownership

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Let’s talk about metadata. That’s right, metadata; the least-sexy part of cultivating your offline media library, even for a geek-ass music nerd like myself. 

For those unfamiliar, metadata is “data that provides information about other data,” which, yes, I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I wrote that. How could you tell? Within the context of your local music library, this includes things like song titles, album names, track numbers, artwork, and everything in between. 

See, I first started cultivating my music library when I got an iPod Mini sometime around 2006. Gradually, my iTunes collection blossomed from a handful of Matchbox 20 singles and Weird Al albums into the sprawling 60k-file monstrosity that it is today. Over time, this library has been corrupted, lost, recovered, converted, moved between computers, backed up, digitized, and, most importantly, edited. 

It’s the closest thing I have to a documented musical history. Sure, I have last.fm, but that just shows what I listen to and when. This collection of MP3 and ACC files sitting in my iTunes feels representative of my entire musical taste and, by extension, who I am as a person. I have music from every phase of my life: Bandcamp rarities from DIY bands, Myspace-era metalcore demos long since lost to time, a one-for-one replication of my childhood CD collection, and screen recordings of Tiny Desk performances that I’ve painstakingly spliced up into individual songs. It’s a labor of love, there’s no other way to put it. 

Aside from the act of obtaining and listening to this music, a seldom-discussed aspect of curating an offline music library is how much work goes into actually organizing it. Not just the structured nest of Artist > Album > Song folders buried deep in my computer’s hard drive, but also the way that iTunes interprets, arranges, and displays these files.

Despite using Spotify almost every day, I’m still hyper-critical of the platform and streaming giants at large. First, there’s the issue of just paying the artists, which, any rational person will agree, is one of the most imbalanced systems in the entire music industry today. There’s also the far more amorphous topic of how streaming has adjusted the way we value and consume music, making it more disposable in the process. It’s also robbed us of things like hidden tracks and any sense of physicality related to our music. This perceived loss is one of the big reasons why vinyl, cassettes, and CDs have all regained popularity in recent years.

Another negative aspect of streaming that I’d like to talk about today is the idea of ownership. The music on your Spotify app is not yours, full stop. That company could go bankrupt, destroy your account, or go down tomorrow, and all would result in the same thing; you losing everything attached to it. All your saved albums, hearted songs, and carefully constructed playlists; gone in an instant. 

That’s standard operating procedure for any digital-based company in 2022. You buy a game on Steam? Sure, you “own” it, but if Steam ever goes away, that shit’s gone for good. This is why companies like GOG and Bandcamp have gained extra momentum over the last decade because they offer the consumer a digital purchase without any DRM (digital rights management). That means when you buy a game or an album from those platforms, you can download it, play it, share it with a friend, back it up to a USB, and generally do anything you want with it short of going off to sell it again yourself. Those files are yours, and you are in control. 

So how does this apply to Spotify and streaming?

Well, one of the recent downsides I’ve been grappling with in regards to streaming is how out of my control my library feels. God knows I’ve spent dozens, if not hundreds, of hours just making playlists on Spotify. For the most part, these playlists only exist on that one platform, and that scares me. By contrast, the playlists in my iTunes library are based on actual files saved directly to my machine, which means they’re in my control. Hell, I can burn those playlists to a CD or export them to Unicode, XML, M3U, or even good ol’ plain text if I wanted to. If you don’t know what all that means, it’s okay. Essentially, even if my computer gets fried and my backups fail, I still have the playlists. This freedom is a massive benefit to cultivating an offline music collection.

This applies to everything outside of playlists too. I can import a CD, download my Bandcamp purchases, or rip a song off Youtube and then craft those files in my image. I can add the album art, adjust the song titles, change the album name, or give the songs track numbers, and all of that is my decision. If this seems overwhelming or doesn’t sound like something you’d do, that’s totally understandable. But when you’ve spent the better part of your life carefully curating and adding on to this collection of files, this freedom means the world. 

If I like the physical cover of an album more than the digital one? I can change that. If I want to add a one-off B-side to the end of an album in order to keep the entire release in one place, I can. If I have a remastered version of an album where all the song titles end in “(Remastered),” then I can take that word out of every track and keep the song titles in their original form. Why would I care about this? First off, it looks nice. I’m a control freak, and it feels good to keep these files as clean as possible. Another very simple answer is last.fm.

See, in a way, my last.fm goes hand-in-hand with my iTunes library. My last.fm account might not be as longstanding as my music collection, but it still goes all the way back to 2010. That platform has recorded over a decade of listening history and statistics that I view as priceless. It’s cool to look back and see what I was listening to on a random Thursday in college, or what my listening habits were like over the summer of 2016. There’s value to be had in that kind of information, especially for a music nerd like me.

This leads to genuine anguish when I look at my music history on last.fm and see that I’ve listened to Nevermind by Nirvana a certain number of times, but those play counts are allocated to two different versions of the album; one simply titled Nevermind and a second one titled Nevermind (Remastered). This is aside from the other versions that exist on Spotify like Nevermind (Deluxe Edition), Nevermind (Super Deluxe Edition), and Nevermind (30th Anniversary Super Deluxe). Guys, what are we even doing? At a certain point, this is just bad stewardship of your own musical catalog, and for what? A twelfth demo version of “Something In The Way” to catch runoff streams? No thank you. 

This on its own is frustrating, but where Spotify gets even more cheesy in this metadata conversation is how little autonomy you have in what you want to listen to. To continue the grunge examples, let’s say that you want to listen to Gish by Smashing Pumpkins. Well, I hope you don’t mind listening to the two-disc 2011 Deluxe Edition with 28 tracks because that’s all that exists on Spotify!

In my mind, this destroys the sanctity of the core album experience as originally envisioned by the artist. Sure, you can still listen to tracks 1 through 10 on Gish and experience the album as initially released, but that’s not what Spotify wants. Most importantly, they don’t even give you the choice. Gish as it originally existed in its 1991 form with its ten tracks and non-codeine-colored album art does not exist on Spotify. 

To keep using this one album as an example, this problem gets even funnier if you want to listen to those bonus tracks like the killer 8-minute version of “Drown” that ends with an alternate guitar solo, which is inexplicably not playable right now for some unknown licensing reason. You can listen to all the other 27 tracks of Gish (Deluxe Edition), but the last song is just… unplayable. 

 
 

Sometimes, this even results in instances where an objectively worse remaster of an album (like Soundgarden’s Superunknown) will be the only version available on your streaming service of choice. Want to listen to the songs as they existed in their original form? Well, you can’t! Examples like this are few and far between but still highlight how little choice we have in the music that’s readily available to listen to on these services. 

This is a horrible way to interact with music. It hurts the “vision” of the original album and poses more problems than it does conveniences. Sure, for the average music listener, these details are negligible, but when you’ve spent your whole life caring about shit like this, it’s hard not to notice. 

At the risk of sounding like a doofus equating music listening with genuine human suffering, I’d like to relate this to Marx’s theory of alienation. For Marx, this theory essentially posits that the further workers are from the end product, the less satisfaction they will find in their work. It’s obviously a lot deeper than that, but that’s the best I got for a one-sentence summary. 

If you’re a cog in a machine sitting on a computer all day and you never interact with the thing you’re actually making (or theoretically contributing towards making), what are you actually doing? More importantly, what do you have to draw satisfaction from in your work? Sure, you’re making money so that you can live, but you’re also making more money for someone further above you who’s even more removed from the process. You lose connection to your autonomy, so you become increasingly alienated from the goods and services produced by your labor, eventually estranging you from your own humanity. 

Now, look at your streaming library through this lens. Your library is not yours. These files exist to play when called upon, but the entire thing could go away tomorrow, and you’d be left with nothing. Owning these files and having them on a hard drive I can hold in my hands is a satisfying feeling. Knowing that I can change these files, edit their data, and load them onto any device I please is a relief. Sure, there are lots of other things that could go wrong that would lead me to lose this data, but it’s my data to lose, not some mega-corporation.

The same day that I wrote the majority of this 2,000-word rant, the awesome Endless Scroll Podcast uploaded an episode talking about Spotify Canvas, album visualizers, and things of the like. One of the most poignant conclusions made about 33 minutes into the episode by host Miranda Reinert was, “Spotify doesn’t want you to have a library; Spotify wants you to use Spotify and perceive Spotify as music.” And therein lies the problem. It felt serendipitous to hear this the same day that I spent hours articulating my own feelings on the topic.

I write this, riddled with caffeine, not to shame anyone for using Spotify but to get you to think about your music collection. If you care about it, you might want to re-analyze what’s actually yours. When music is as integral to your identity as it is for me, it’s easy to spend hours thinking about this type of stuff. I’ve also spent countless hours doomsday prepping for a world without streaming. It’s a world that seems further away with each passing day, but one I’m willing to hold onto just in case.  

Spotify is a bad company for many reasons, and it’s okay to ask for more. I still use Spotify almost every day… that said, if the service went belly-up tomorrow, I wouldn’t lose that much. Would you?

​​BURSTING THE BUBBLE: AN INVESTIGATION INTO BUBBLEGRUNGE

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Wednesday December 1st was a Big Day For Annoying People. If you’re reading this, I can assume that you’re already aware of its significance, but on the off chance that you’re not, it was Spotify Wrapped, the day that good little Spotify users everywhere woke up to find their yearly listening history compiled into a brightly-colored slideshow of stats. Along with some new features (Have you ever wondered which song would play over the opening credits in a movie of your life, or what color your “audio aura” is?) and some cringey, shoehorned-in buzzwords du jour (“While everyone else was trying to figure out what an NFT is, you were slaying 2021 with your main character vibes!”), were the traditional Spotify Wrapped presents we’ve come to expect-- a playlist of your 100 most-played songs of the year, as well as a ranking of your top 5 artists and genres. The latter category is what I want to focus on here. My own Spotify Wrapped raised a notable question-- no, not “did I really listen to 11 episodes of True Anon in one day?” although I did ask myself that. I, like many other Spotify users, took a look at my top 5 genres laid out in that disgusting “graphic design is my passion” font and asked, “What in the goddamn hell is ‘bubblegrunge?’”

My first encounter with the term ‘bubblegrunge’ was about a week before Spotify Wrapped on the application Stats For Spotify. I assumed it was one of those seemingly algorithm-generated music genres like ‘escape room’-- a similarly puzzling item on my top genres list from last year. On the day that Spotify Wrapped came out, it seemed like everyone on my Twitter feed was both trying to pin down a definition of the genre and ripping it to shreds. A quick glance at the tweets from music fans with bubblegrunge in their top 5 genres and those from artists who’d had the bubblegrunge label thrust upon them initially led me (and others) to believe that it was corporate streaming platform-speak for “pop-punk sung by a woman,” but I decided to investigate further.

Tracking “bubblegrunge” as a search term on Google Trends revealed a sharp uptick in google searches on December 1st, peaking at around 11:00 am (presumably shortly after most Spotify users checked their Spotify Wrapped). When I googled the term a few hours after its peak popularity, I found the following Urban Dictionary definition from 2013:

I assumed that this definition was somewhat obsolete by 2021’s standards. I’ve listened to almost no radio-friendly 90s/early 00s grunge-pop of this sort recently, so if this were the definition that Spotify was working with, it wouldn’t make much sense data-wise for the genre to show up on my year-end list. Most of the artists I’d been seeing in the lists of people with bubblegrunge as one of their top genres were bands that blended modern pop-punk with elements of 90s garage rock nostalgia-- think Kississippi, Charly Bliss, and Diet Cig. I wondered if, in this context, bubblegrunge might refer to what illuminati hotties frontwoman Sarah Tudzin has coined “tenderpunk,” defined by its irreverent yet affectionate infusion of DIY punk. “There’s a sweeter vulnerability to it, and then there’s a tongue-in-cheek, give-no-fucks attitude,” Tudzin explained in a 2019 interview with SF Weekly. 

I searched “bubblegrunge” on Spotify. The first result was Spotify’s official Sound of Bubblegrunge playlist. Among the related playlists linked in its description were ones dedicated to Indie Pop, Midwest Emo, 5th Wave Emo, Philly Indie, and a playlist exclusively dedicated to female-fronted bands in the bubblegrunge genre. This did little to disprove my initial write-off of bubblegrunge as just another attempt from the music streaming industrial complex to push “female-fronted” as its own musical genre. 

Returning to the Sounds of Bubblegrunge playlist, I saw that many of the artists featured on it were ones that I’d expected based on previous context clues. Each of the aforementioned artists had at least one song on the playlist, and other artists with overlapping fanbases were featured prominently as well. Generally, it seemed like a convergence of bedroom pop (Cherry Glazerr, Adult Mom, Sir Babygirl), emo (Slaughter Beach Dog, Radiator Hospital, Home Is Where), pop-punk (Pinkshift, Oceanator, Antarctigo Vespucci), and some folk-infused alt-pop (Lucy Dacus, Waxahatchee, Samia). There was also some straightforward guitar rock like Snail Mail, some more experimental cuts from artists like Spirit of the Beehive, and even a few ska tracks from bands like Bomb The Music Industry and We Are The Union. For the most part, all of the songs included seemed to be from the 2010s or early 2020s. Other than that, and the tendency toward the broad umbrella category of “indie,” I saw little cohesion that would warrant grouping these songs into a defined genre or subgenre. A similar algorithmically-generated playlist titled Intro to Bubblegrunge had a link to Sounds of Bubblegrunge in its description and seemed to offer a smaller sample of bubblegrunge highlights, though its content seemed somewhat indistinguishable from one of the algorithm’s standard indie rock playlists.

I decided that if I was going to do a deep dive into the genre, I had to also look into the users’ interpretations of the ‘bubblegrunge’ label. One of the first user-curated playlists to come up was one that mainly consisted of what I might jokingly refer to as “tiktokcore”-- I’d use the term not as a genre descriptor, so much as a means of categorizing music associated with a certain platform, grouping together artists like beabadoobee and girl in red. Much of the playlist also included big-name contemporary pop artists like Solange and Lorde, as well as some 90s shoegaze icons like Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star. Once again, I saw very little cohesion within the genre label; the main commonality tying together all the music I was encountering was that most of it would be at home on a playlist called something like “songs for pretending that you’re the main character.” The bubblegrunge for beginners playlist was a bit more streamlined-- partly by virtue of its brevity, at least compared to the other bubblegrunge playlists that clocked in at 10+ hours with tracklists in the triple digits --and had a focus on late-2010s/early 2020s pop-punk and emo. This playlist, which called bubblegrunge “the best genre!” had a similar blend of emo, indie rock, and tiktok-adjacent alt-pop, with a focus on female vocals. Had there been more inclusion of earlier acts— ones that have influenced the sound of contemporary bubblegrunge —the case could be made for artists like Letters to Cleo, Veruca Salt, and Juliana Hatfield to be called bubblegrunge pioneers.

Though a decent number of non-female fronted acts were featured on bubblegrunge playlists, I was feeling a certain frustration with the “genre,” not unlike the frustration I feel towards the “sad girl indie” movement in music (many of the recommended playlists in featured below the bubblegrunge playlists I checked out were ones along the lines of Spotify’s sad girl starter pack). Much has already been written about the subtle sexism of the “sad girl” label and how it casts a limiting, two-dimensional view of female musicians and their work. Several of the so-called “sad girls” of indie music have publicly criticized the label. In a 2017 interview, Mitski confronted the perception of her as a “fevered priestess,” calling out the ways in which public discussion of female musicians often implicitly strips them of their ownership over their work and disregards their intentionality and technical skill. In a tweet from earlier this year, Lucy Dacus expressed her qualms with “sad girl indie”-- how it often exploits female pain, flattens complex emotional expression by slapping on the vague label of “sadness,” and pushes a harmful narrative that equates womanhood with suffering.

I know that on the surface, it may seem hypocritical of me to point to the inclusion of “sad girl indie” artists like Soccer Mommy and Indigo De Souza on bubblegrunge playlists as my reason for finding the two genre labels similarly frustrating. In doing so, aren’t I feeding into the “women-as-genre” propaganda? Not to mention the various non-female voices included on the bubblegrunge playlists I’ve come across in my investigation. Still, between the cutesy genre name and the algorithmic emphasis on female vocalists, it’s hard not to be skeptical. The other commonalities that make the argument for bubblegrunge to be considered a “real” genre of music paint with a broad brush at best (“post-2010 indie guitar-led pop-rock” is pretty vague criteria). 

This is not to entirely disregard newer music genres as illegitimate-- if someone said the word “hyperpop” to you three years ago, would you have any idea what they were talking about? New genres arise all the time as music evolves-- my issue isn’t with the newness, but with the attempt to put a name to a category that does not exist. What “bubblegrunge” really reveals is how detached corporate streaming platforms are from the artists that they’re featuring (and grossly underpaying). I’m not the first to point out that Spotify Wrapped is essentially a brand’s approximation of personal connection-- they made you a personalized mixtape; look how well they know their artists and users! When they try to put a name to a genre that isn’t really a genre at all, it’s nothing more than a lame attempt to homogenize and generalize a vast variety of artists, disregarding their creative and sonic diversity. Bottom line: corporations don’t define music, musicians do. 

Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. You can find her on Instagram @grace_roso and on Twitter @grace_roso.

My Favorite Type of Song

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I just found out that one of my all-time favorite songs is about jerking off. 

Ever since I first heard the twangy guitar plucks of “My Name is Jonas” pouring out of Guitar Hero III as a teenager, I’ve been enamored with Weezer’s eponymous blue album. Over the course of the intervening decade, the band has been a constant source of edgy adolescent tunes, ironic memes, questionable artistic decisions, and unexpected comebacks. It’s not like I’d never heard of Weezer by 2007 (I’d heard “Beverly Hills” on the radio and “Island In The Sun” in a movie or two), it’s just that I didn’t know the band was actually, well, you know, good. 

Once I gave The Blue Album a listen in full, I “got” Weezer almost immediately. The ever-shifting mixture of Cars-esque power pop, feel-good surf tunes, and pop culture geekery were beguiling to my teenage brain. I got to become familiar with iconic singles like “Say It Ain’t So,” “Buddy Holly,” and “The Sweater Song,” all only my own, devoid of hype, expectations, or over-exposure via radio play. With lyrics that referenced X-Men and idolized (arguably) the least-cool member of KISS, I could tell this was an album tailor-made for a teenaged Taylor. More importantly, I could tell it was better and far more artistic than songs like “Beverly Hills” had led me to believe. 

For me, the cherry on top of The Blue Album came in the form of its final track. After nine songs of catchy hook-filled power pop, the group wraps the record up with the absolutely epic eight-minute closer “Only In Dreams.” This song blew me away the first time I heard it, and it continues to blow me away every subsequent time I listen to it. 

“Only In Dreams”  begins with a solitary bassline and light cymbal taps. An acoustic guitar joins in, then a snare. An electric guitar starts plucking away, and suddenly the entire band has taken up the melody without you even realizing it. After about a minute, a remorseful Rivers Cuomo enters the track and quickly establishes the stakes: “You can't resist her, she's in your bones / She is your marrow and your ride home.” He soon continues, further illustrating how omnipresent this figure is, singing,  “You can't avoid her, she's in the air (in the air) / In between molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide.” Suddenly a whir of distortion kicks up, and the entire group bottoms out into a swaying, distorted borderline-shoegaze riff. 

Over the course of a verse and another couple of choruses, the lyrics paint a picture of romance, dancing, and adolescent clumsiness. Cuomo sings the title seven times, then lets the riff do the rest of the talking. The lyrics wrap up about four minutes into the song, and the back half of the track contains a beautiful, cresting instrumental that rises and falls with the power of a post-rock song. It’s a commanding display of emotion, musicianship, and artistry… Then I found out it was about nutting. 

That’s right, the song itself is meant to depict a dream where our hero is meeting this unnamed woman, dancing with her, then, you know, getting it on. This means the back half of the track; the build-up, the rises and falls, the constantly-beating drum, are all meant to be an auditory depiction of the narrator achieving climax. Hmm.

See, I’ve always liked this song for its format more than anything. It spends the perfect amount of time telling a compelling (if not a little vague) emotional story. Then, the band begins this instrumental jam that flows so seamlessly from the narrative. You don’t even realize how long this instrumental passage is until the song finally comes to a close, and you look down to see that eight minutes have passed. The song is segmented into these two beautiful acts that tell a story and then allow you, the listener, to fill in the rest. It’s about as creative and interactive as music ever gets. 

It took me until very recently to realize that many of my favorite songs share this exact same format. Perhaps two of the most famous examples would be “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by The Beatles and “Transatlanticism” by Death Cab For Cutie. Both of these songs begin with simplistic instrumentals followed by a relatively straightforward bout of lyrics. Most importantly, both pieces are capped off with an instrumental back half that repeats the same measure over and over again to an almost hypnotic effect. In the case of The Beatles, “I Want You” is practically the template for Stoner Rock as we know it today. The song features a sludgy, slow-moving, and distorted riff that could perfectly accompany the slow-paced head bobbing of any given doom metal show. Meanwhile, “Transatlanticism” is a piano-led ode to long-distance relationships that begins with a remorseful delivery and dream-like logic. The song gradually builds underneath a repetition of “I need you so much closer…” before erupting into an instrumental that repeats the riff for four minutes straight because it’s that damn good. 

My point is, this is a style of song that’s more pervasive than we probably realize. It’s not just songs that are “long,” it’s songs that are long and winding and intentionally leave this vast wordless space for the listener to project their own feelings, thoughts, and experiences onto. 

Sometimes they are conceptual like “Maggot Brain,” where an environmentalist spoken-word intro leads to a soul-rending two-part guitar solo. Sometimes they are skillful shows of musicianship like Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun,” where rapid bursts of guitar feedback emulate the sounds of guns, helicopters, dropping bombs, and other Vietnam imagery. 

Sometimes an artist sneaks it into the album in a way that’s subtle yet impactful, like Angel Olsen’s “Sister” or Soccer Mommy’s “Yellow is the Color of Her Eyes.” Sometimes the artist intentionally draws attention to this style of song by having it open an album as Japanese Breakfast does with “Diving Woman.” Other times, the artist will choose to close the record with this brand of winding instrumental stretch like the aforementioned Weezer, or even something like Jimmy Eat World’s “Goodbye Sky Harbor,” where the song’s lengthy 13-minute coda is either loved or immediately skipped over depending on who’s listening. 

Bands like The Antlers seem to craft these kinds of songs effortlessly. Songs like “Rolled Together” and “Endless Ladder” aren’t even that long but still have enough room to properly unfurl. Across the board, the examples are truly countless. There’s “Black Oak” by Slaughter Beach Dog, “Runaway” by Kanye West, “Drown” by Smashing Pumpkins, “Phone Went West” by My Morning Jacket, and hundreds more. These songs are all incredible and often my favorites of their respective bands. I’ve spent the better part of the last two years compiling these types of songs into one long, genre-free playlist on Spotify that I sometimes throw on when I can’t decide what else I want to listen to. This is just a format of song that clicks with my brain, and I really wish there was a term for it. 

One of my first instincts is to call these types of songs “jams,” but that evokes so many images of hairy hippies, tye-dye t-shirts, nitrous tanks, and ganja goo balls that the title becomes unappealing. Bands like Phish and even My Morning Jacket indeed go out of their way to transform their songs into “experiences” when played live, but given the types of songs that I’m talking about, the word “jam” feels almost dirty. I like the idea of following the twists and turns of a live performance; that can be an extraordinarily rewarding and powerful experience, I just don’t like what the word “jam” evokes for me (and I assume) most other people. 

I wouldn’t call “Transatlanticism” a jam song, but it undeniably bears many of the same qualities. Truth be told, what I’m discussing here is some mix of jam band tendencies, post-rock builds, and stoner rock song structures. I know the concept of “jamming” isn’t relegated to any one genre, band, or scene, but hearing it done well on-record is so rare. I can be listening to a random album like At Home With Owen and suddenly, halfway through, get hit with a seven-minute slow-burn like “A Bird In Hand” and be swept off my feet. 

This format is striking because they intentionally stray away from the three-to-five-minute verse/chorus/verse structure that many songs default to. A song like Pedro The Lion’s “Second Best” would never get played on the radio, regardless of what year it came out or how popular the band already was. Similarly, a cut like “13 Months in 6 Minutes” by The Wrens is pretty unlikely to be someone’s favorite track on the album. These songs are simply too long and too unwieldy for standard radio play, streaming binges, or music videos. They don’t lend themselves well to any of those formats because they’re meant to be experienced and taken in with a subconscious part of your mind working to fill in the blanks and flesh out the edges. 

That is what’s so great about these songs. They’re hypnotic. They invite you in and give you time to breathe, listen, think, and feel. They’re also ever-changing. Depending on where you’re at in life, you could take something totally different away from the instrumental as another listener. Hell, give it time, and the way you interpret any one of these songs will change based on what phase you’re at in your own life. It’s a Rorschach Test in musical form. 

Two of my favorite songs of all-time use this exact same format. First, there’s “Like A River” by Sharks Keep Moving (which I’ve written about in detail before), then there’s “Oh God, Where Are You Now?” by Sufjan Stevens (which I’ve also written about in loving detail over here). Shortly behind those two is “Only In Dreams” by Weezer.

You can see why I was so shocked to find out that “Only In Dreams” is about something as bodily and objectively-hilarious as ejaculation. I mean, the band doesn’t exactly play it for laughs, but I feel like that explanation kinda takes some of the mysticism away. Until you hear that exact commentary from the band, “Only In Dreams” could be literal, it could be metaphorical, it could just be weird poetry, but as soon as you know it’s about Rivers Cuomo pounding off, you’re just like “...oh.”

It’s like if you were in the middle of interpreting a deep meaning from an abstract piece of art from someone like Rothko or Pollock, and then the artist themselves came up behind you mid-thought and whispered, ‘this one’s about the time I shit my pants in a Taco Bell parking lot.’ You have no choice but to have reality come crashing down around you upon hearing that. The illusion is shattered, and all you’re left thinking about is low-grade meat, cold tortillas, and diablo hot sauce. While you were once finding some sense of existential peace in the art, now your mind is consumed by thoughts of your own body and its disgusting functions. 

An artist’s intent should not completely override your personal interpretation of the work, but finding out that the song’s creator had such an opposing message in mind is a little conflicting, to say the least. 

“Orange, Red, Yellow” by Mark Rothko (1961)

The doubly-funny part of this is that I know this type of song is not for everyone. If you’ve made it this far, I assume you probably enjoy this type of structure or, at the very least, are interested in where this is all going. See, I know these tracks are just tiring and overindulgent to some people, but what some might call long-winded, I call searching. What others see as boring musical repetition, I see as an empty canvas. What others interpret as masturbatory, I interpret as cosmically-affirming. 

At times, this format feels like the musical equivalent of a long take in film. André Bazin is a famous French film critic who has focused a great deal of his career writing about the realism of the “long take.” The long take is a filmmaking technique in which an individual shot has a much longer duration than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of movies in general. Bazin argues that directors use this technique out of a “respect for the continuity of dramatic space and its duration.” He argues that long takes are closer to how we as an audience perceive reality (i.e., unfolding in real-time) and, therefore, more impactful. It gives the viewer a personal choice of what to focus on, and it introduces ambiguity into the structure of the film. All of these concepts apply to music as well. 

Songs with this structure also have a strong sense of continuity. It feels as if we are being swept into the scenery along with the artist. As the listener, we have the choice to focus on the song as much or as little as we like. We can listen to individual instruments, pick apart the time signature, figure out how this melody flows from the lyrics, or just let our mind wander with the band as our guide. That’s powerful.

Ironically, much like the song format I’m attempting to write about, I don’t have much of a defined ending for this piece. Instead, I’ll opt to do something I never do and close this article out with a quote. I know that’s a bit of a cop-out, but it’s too relevant to this discussion for me not to include. In their recently-unearthed Oregon City Sessions, there’s a section where Portugal. The Man lead singer John Gourley discusses the band’s creative process circa 2008 and how they re-interpret their own creations in a live setting. In it, he simply explains,

“I’ve always really liked that droney… I mean, calling it ‘background music’ is not the best way to talk about it, but I love things like that. I’d love to do a record eventually where we can just go for ten minutes and do what a song needs to do as opposed to culling those points as far as the song structure goes. I think we should be a little bit more loose.”