If a new music review service were to come out, what would it need so it can feel better than whats out there? Services like MusicBoard and Album of the Year seem to be the top of the market, but I want something that feels more personal and focused on friends like Letterboxd. What exists out there definitely works for most people, but I feel like more could be done to make you feel like you have some connection to the reviews you're seeing. What's missing? What's too much?

As a native Spanish speaker, growing up a lot of the music played on the radio were songs in english, and being a child I obviously could not understand what they were saying but despite this I still enjoyed the songs and even tried to sing along, even if I was just saying gibberish.
Now that I’m grown, I noticed that I still listen to a lot of music in languages I do not speak at all, mainly russian and japanese. In my opinion, this does not take away from the enjoyment of the songs since there is the instrumental parts and I can still feel the emotion in the singer’s voice and I even like to try guessing what the songs are about.
I know the choruses to a lot of post punk russian songs and a lot of japanese jazz too, and I know I’m not singing them correctly but it still is something I very much enjoy.
I feel like the majority of people just listen to music in the languages that they speak and this is very sad to me because they all are missing out on so many amazing artists and records.

Edit: Any recommendations for non english and non spanish music are welcome!

Sorry if this isn't the right sub for this, but I was wondering if you guys had any type of an experience similar to mine.

I was born in the mid 80s, and "Jesse's girl" by Rick Springfield had come out a little before I was born, and was apparently a huge radio hit, but I had never heard it anywhere. Just by some random chance, I had always been tuned into something else or in a different place, somehow missing it until it showed up in a Pandora playlist of mine back in 2014.

I ended up looking the song up, and it actually boggles my mind that I had somehow never heard the song before that.

Every now and again I hear it in the background when I'm in stores or something, and it might just be frequency illusion, but I swear I never heard that song before 2014.

I mentioned this to a good friend of mine, who happens to be a big Madonna fan, and she told me that she had never actually heard Material Girl played on the radio prior to last year.

Do you guys have any experience similar to this? If so, what song was it, and was it an artist you were familiar with? Do you have any theories as to why you somehow missed hearing the song?

Whether it's the male loneliness epidemic, the concerns surrounding the manosphere, or the desire for positive role models, I've found myself thinking a lot about contemporary masculinity these days. As someone very passionate about music, I've thought a lot about it from that standpoint as well. But today I was thinking about positive masculinity and its reflection within music. It was quite an enlightening experience as it made me realize how it feels like an anomaly of sorts. It doesn't seem to be in a lot of top 40 pop hits for example compared to, say, love songs. Nonetheless, they do exist and paint quite the interesting picture.

The catalyst of sorts for me was remembering The Rolling Stones demo “I’d Much Rather Be with the Boys”, a Richards/Oldham composition (an already eclectic combo) that was allegedly axed by the rest of the band for being too homoerotic. I can see that angle, but I nonetheless find something wholesome about its "bros before hoes" mantra. A lot of Stones originals that followed were similar complaints of women who'd done the narrator wrong, but finding strength and peace with one's friends is a different direction, one that I'm sure many boys and men can relate to.

Here I am
With the gang, I don't care where you are
Because I'd much rather be with the boys
Than be with you

To get the inevitable out of the way, yes, “The Boys are Back in Town” is probably the gold standard for this. You could argue semantics about elements of hooliganism that could be considered toxic ("The drink will flow and the blood will spill"), but there's a pure joy to the camaraderie that's inexplicably infectious. Phil Lynott at some point considered calling it "GI Joe is Back in Town", picturing the returning hero to be a soldier returning from the Vietnam War. It makes the desire for a night on the town with your pals all the more alluring. Though anachronistic to this interpretation, I always found that this passage...

The nights are gettin' warmer, it won't be long
Won't be long 'til summer comes
Now that the boys are here again

...absolutely nails the excitement of summer vacation nearing the corner, more time to spend with your grade school mates. Cool stuff. But Lynott was no one-trick pony. He himself is an interesting yin-yang when it comes to masculinity, the leather-bound tough guy champing at the bit for a fight juxtaposed against a guy who'd write mellow odes to his baby girl. He was an illustration that both of these sides can coexist. But particularly as a black man myself, I always loved that Phil went out of his way to explore black masculinity as well, whether it's upping the brothers in Thin Lizzy's ethereal "Fight or Fall", or penning the wonderfully anthemic "Ode to a Black Man".

As I said earlier, I've been fascinated by how music can be helpful for young men, whether it's providing a sense of community or just blowing off some steam. And The Replacements succinctly write about this in their song “Something to Dü”. I wouldn't be surprised if Paul Westerberg had himself and the rest of the others in mind when he wrote it.

Delivering noise
Real tough boys
What else have I got?

Half-priced drugs
Stolen guitars
What else is new

Oasis's “D’yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?” continues one of Noel Gallagher's favorite leitmotifs: the end of innocence and the tension between dreams and reality. This time around though, he examines this from the standpoint of old friends, reminiscing over what was then and what is now...

I haven’t seen your face ’round since I was a kid
You’re bringing back those memories of the things that we did
You’re hanging round and climbing trees pretending to fly
Do you wanna be a spaceman and live in the sky

It's worth noting too that Noel's favorite line in "Live Forever" is "we see things they'll never see" which to him evoked a secret shared between one and their childhood friend. I find that quite lovely. Oasis themselves remind me of other bands like The Who and The Beach Boys who had a notable male contingent in their audience and thus had plenty of material that addressed them.

There's an unofficial tradition of "riding around with the boys killing time" anthems. “Me and the Boys” by NRBQ, "I Get Around" by The Beach Boys, "Back of a Car" and "In the Street" by Big Star all come to mind here. In terms of big-upping the homies, there's "With a Little Help from My Friends" by The Beatles and "Me and My Friends" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Songs about men also being in awe of men are their own kettle of fish: "David Watts" and "Johnny Thunder" by The Kinks are two fun examples, particularly as both figures are both on opposite ends of the spectrum, but each of their tributes are just as genuine.

I hinted at this earlier, but the analysis and deconstruction of masculinity color a lot of The Who's discography, but I think a fitting example here would be their song "Tattoo", about two brothers trying to figure out where they fit in ("What makes a man a man?") and deciding to get tattoos as a means of seeing where that leads them. I find the dynamic between the brothers quite lovely and there's many other little details that make it fully dimensional, like "Our old man didn't like our appearance, he said that only women wear long hair", illustrating the generation gap between boomers and their parents, the latter utterly baffled by the former's flirtations with androgyny, thus circling back to that initial question: what makes a man a man?

I'm curious to hear any other artists or works that others pick up on! As usual, thanks in advance.

That shared experience. The internet was supposed to bring us together. But it divided us even more. Yeah it paved the way for smaller creators and gave everybody a voice. But at what cost? It’s not even the internets fault. It’s the algorithms. Now we don’t have big cultural events anymore. I was born in 2003 so the monoculture I remember is Gangnam style & Pokémon go. The last big event that really seemed the deal for monoculture is avengers endgame. Yes there’s been monoculture moments in the 2020s but it’s far and few. Like squid game & Barbiheimer. It felt like a sense of togetherness. Everybody was going to the theater/watching squid game. Everybody was talking about it the next day. I feel like we can have both. It’s just algorithms ruined everything. We will never have another Elvis or the Beatles. Not because there won’t come somebody more talented but because we don’t habe that shared experience for somebody like that to rise. I feel that’s what we need right now a. Unifier. We’re so divided by our algorithms I hope something, someone comes along the way where we seperate our differences for a moment in time and unite on this one particular thing. And that makes me sad. I could talk with somebody and they ask me “have you heard of XYZ?” Never heard of it. Only to find out they have millions of people who know about them. Our true last gripe with it is Taylor Swift. Love her or hate her most people know of her. But even she isn’t a unifying force. I know people say this gave a lot of peoples voice but cmon now? That’s revealed that humans are a bunch of idiots. Because these influencers and what not did not need a voice. I just wish we could have both you know? The only thing that I can think of that everybody knows is sports and politics. Which is ironic because they divide us even more.

Let me specify - I am not talking ambient music; something you play in the background, I mean the type of music you need to experience without distractions

It took me becoming a University student, learning my privilage and reaching class consciousness, to finally find pleasure in the more difficult pieces of music, slowly I found myself listening to longer and longer songs, stopped making my own albums and started consuming music more as an experience.

I found myself jumping from Pink Floyds Dark Side Of The Moon and my favorite Animals to the amazing Yes albums such as Close To The Edge and Relayer, but I still feel like I am quite a normie when it comes to experiencing music.

What I have been leading up to this entire time, is that I am not sure how long will it take me to develop enough to fully enjoy masterpieces without vocals. One of these would be Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to The Heaven. I tried giving it a listen and I fucking love it, like it is so good. But I am unable to listen to it casually like to the many progressive rock albums I do everyday. Then there is Atom Heart Mother from Pink Floyd, which I again love, but was unable to listen to more than few times.

This is really frustrating, because I know I am missing something and I know my path is leading up to this. I feel like music without vocals is the natural step forward to me. In my head I see it as something much more complex, because of how hard the meaning is to grasp compared to albums with vocals.

I've realized I organize my Spotify in a way that I don't see many people doing. Instead of making playlists based on moods or genres, I have one huge playlist that contains every song I like. Then, I also have individual playlists for each artist, named after the artist where I keep only the songs I like from them. So if I want to listen to everything I play the main playlist. If I'm in the mood for a specific artist, I just open their playlist.

I think this works well because I'm much more of an artist listener than a mood listener. I usually decide who I want to hear rather than what vibe I want.
Does anyone else organize their Spotify like this? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of this system? Have you tried it before, or do you prefer mood/genre playlists? I'd love to hear how other people organize their playlists.

I was thinking the other day how a subgenre would pop up, have a big influence on the greater culture at large and then quickly "die." And by "die" I mean that mass culture left it behind and it was left to the diehard fans.

The easiest example for me is '77 era punk. For many people "punk" began with the Sex Pistols and died with them. Of course, this is not really what happened at all and please don't derail this into a talk about punk origins in the comments. But punk never "died," it just wasn't popular anymore and then post-punk happened. Post-punk didn't stay popular for long and was kind of forgotten about until bands like Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes revisited it.

Post-punk led to goth and gave us New Order, which gave us the Stone Roses and other awesome UK music. Here in the US, punk led to hardcore. HC never was commercially viable but punk and HC both gave us "college rock" (best example is Husker Du for that turn) which was later dubbed "alternative." Then along came "Grunge" which was an extremely short-lived genre when you go back and look at it.

The point of all that, is that these subgenres of rock did not stay popular for long in the grand scheme of things. Sure, we'll never stop hearing that mopey Pearl Jam song about Jeremy on the radio, but there aren't new headlining grunge acts.

You can also apply this to thrash. It took nearly a decade for thrash to peak out, only to be killed off in popularity by grunge, other alternative music and the 90s punk revival. Nu Metal was also very short-lived as far as mass appeal.

You can apply this to other music, but I'm writing about what I know to not sound ignorant. Even with my limited knowledge of rap, I can tell that styles of rap have come on gone. I no longer see threads complaining about mumble rap. I don't think the Master P style of rap has any prominence anymore.

Anyway, the Internet in its current state has changed the dynamic a bit. There's not much mass music consumption as there was in the past. People are siloed in their niches. Radio stations are not looking for the next big thing, they are stubbornly force feeding us old music or trying desperately to convince us that new corporate sounding schlock is worth getting excited over. They are not looking for the next Nirvana or Dr. Dre, they are going to play the same shit forever.

Even if a genre is generally unpopular, a global audience that is super into it exists and can support a genre in ways not thought of possible in the past. If punk started today it's doubtful that it would ever "die" but it likely never hit the charts anyway.

How is this going to shape music going forward? Will we have more or less innovation? Is there now way too many genres for anyone to pay attention to? Does this mean that there's going to be more bands that mix up genres and don't stick to anything because maybe that puts their band on more playlists? Will new genres rise and fall without most people knowing? Does this mean bands can stay static and not change with the times like in the past?

Released on this day in 1987. Everybody cites grunge for the demise of hair metal, but the writing was on the wall with "Appetite For Destruction", I remember what Neil Zlozower once said in a documentary "There was pre Guns, and after Guns". With their raunchier, street savvy attitude, suddenly all the hairspray was toned down, the party anthems suddenly shifted,.

Then you have the music, which is basically sleazy hard rock, lyrics about debauchery, drugs, life on the streets, etc. Nothing glossy about these guys. 80s hair metal had run its course. Which makes you wonder why the past 25 years of pop/rap hasn't run its course, but anyways. But that album is a reminder of the sense of danger, irreverence, sleaze, authenticity, etc, that we once had...and we can use more of right now.

This album remains my absolute favorite album on grief, and it came up in conversation last night because my partner's estranged mother passed away a few weeks ago.

In May of 2015 my amazing, driven feisty, well traveled, tiny 96 year old Jewish grandmother was dying. My mom, who lived near her in Connecticut, called me while I was on the bus headed home from work and told me it was time to come while she's still lucid.

I was Bubie's only grandchild. When I got off the bus I had a panic attack. Death has played an interesting role in my life, and at the time the thought of losing her, even though she was so old, was overwhelming.

Luckily for me, I had this album as a balm to help me walk through the grief.

Carrie and Lowell came out March 31, 2015, and I fell in love with it from the moment I heard those first whimsical notes on "Death With Dignity."

I was once a local music writer in Minneapolis, and I was introduced to Sufjan's music by a fellow writer who saw him at the now defunct and beloved 400 Bar. And while I enjoyed Seven Swans and Illinoise, this album was something that just enveloped me fully, like a preamble for Bubie's passing.

Every song is exquisitely done, so gentle, childlike and lonely. Sufjan's mother abandoned him along with his siblings when he was only one year old, and she also struggled with schizophrenia, alcohol and drug use. He did reconnect with her before she died, but it breaks my heart that he considers the album a failure because there was no resolve for him when he was finished.

For me, it was pure medicine. Songs like "All of Me Wants All of You" and "Eugene" were right there with me as I walked around my neighborhood in South Minneapolis, mentally preparing to say goodbye to someone who was such a force it was impossible for me to picture a planet without her.

"Fourth of July" is perfection, but so heavy that sometimes it's hard for me to listen. It perfectly illustrates this dark, finite edge of grief that swallows us up in those intimate moments where we don't really know what to do with ourselves once someone dies.

While I made it in time to say goodbye to my Bubie, my partner didn't get that chance. Her mother went downhill fast and lives far away. There were wounds that were never healed, of course, but they spoke on the phone, exchanged pictures and texted for a few months when she was still cognizant.

I had to write this morning on the beauty of this album before I even start my workday. I'm listening to it now, and it somehow sounds even better than I remembered.

One of my favorite parts of music history is discovering future stars hiding in plain sight on someone else's records. Here are a few of my favorite examples.

Did You Know…that some of music's biggest stars appeared on hit records by other artists before they became famous themselves?

Let's start with a great story that's either absolutely true (according to the record producer) or maybe not (according to the piano player).

In 1964, a 15-year-old pianist was sitting in a Hicksville, Long Island recording studio. Session producer "Shadow" Morton was wearing sunglasses and a flowing cape, loudly demanding more purple on the record.

When the nervous young pianist finally asked, "How do I play purple," the guitarist leaned over and whispered, "Just play louder, kid."

And that's how a pre-fame Billy Joel came to play the dramatic piano chords on "Remember (Walking In The Sand)" by The Shangri-Las.

Shadow always insisted Billy was there; Billy's memory was hazier. Still, Billy is certain of one thing: he never got paid.

By the summer of 1969, Hollies founding member Graham Nash had teamed up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, and his former group's chart performance had begun to cool off. Their last US Top 10 had been "Carrie-Anne" two years earlier.

In 1966, four of the five Hollies had recorded with The Everly Brothers, where they met a 19-year-old session pianist named Reggie Dwight.

According to EMI engineer Alan Parsons, The Hollies rarely used keyboards on their rhythm tracks, unless Reggie happened to be around.

Reggie was in the studio on June 25, 1969, when The Hollies recorded "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother."

It went all the way to #1 in the UK and #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Like Billy Joel, Dwight's contribution was uncredited. Unlike Billy, Reggie was paid £12.

But don't feel too bad for him. In a year, he'd begin a decades-long run of hits as Elton John.

And now a couple of quick takes...

In the summer of 1962, Sam Cooke scored a #2 gospel-tinged R&B smash with "Bring It On Home To Me," featuring an echoing, call-and-response backing vocal from Lou Rawls, several years before Rawls became a star himself.

Jerry Butler's solo breakthrough, "He Will Break Your Heart," featured Curtis Mayfield on guitar and backing vocals. Within a year, Mayfield kicked off his own string of hits leading The Impressions and later as a solo artist.

These are just a few.

I've always found stories like these fascinating because they show that many legendary artists spent years honing their craft behind the scenes before becoming household names.

Which future stars do you think made the most interesting or surprising appearance on someone else's hit record before they became famous?

Do you think spending time as a session musician or uncredited contributor helped shape artists in ways we don't see as often today?

To start this off, I already love Maroon 5, especially Songs About Jane. But recently I found out about their true debut album The Fourth World. I love the album so much which led me down a rabbit hole of finding out why they rebranded, where I found out it’s because the album absolutely flopped at the time. I found this appalling because I like this album so much more than anything they’ve recently released and was wondering if anyone else agreed or for anyone who can give a good answer on why the album flopped so badly for them to rebrand.

One of the most significant things about Christina Aguilera as an artist is how radically she alters her aesthetics and sound across albums, if you look at the run of Stripped, then Back to Basics, and then Bionic, all three albums are different in ways that are quite huge.

Now for a lot of Christina fans, this is a net positive because it allows each album to stand out and have its own unique identity, giving Christina room for heavy experimentation throughout her discography (I myself am one of those people), however others believe that Christina's shifts between albums border on being too much, which leads to her not having a consistent identity she can be known for in comparison to other Popstars.

So I thought this could be an interesting idea to discuss and explore, let's say her debut remains as is, no changes there, which era after that would you want to become Christina's defining style from there on out?

This would mean her music style would remain that, and it would simply be her evolving said style across albums rather than switching to something completely different each time, this also applies to the visual aesthetics of that album becoming Christina's mainstay look with less drastic changes across eras.

You're free to pick anything, Stripped, Back to Basics, Liberation, whatever you like, just make sure to explain why you believe that specific vibe both visually and musically would be the best fit for Christina long-term.

For example, what makes you think Back to Basics aesthetics fit Christina better than other eras? Or why do you believe the feel of songs on Liberation was stronger identity wise? Stuff like that.

Just to be clear, this isn't me asking what's your favorite Christina album, the question here is what era of Christina could work in the long run and why.

Recently(on top of throughout my entire life)

One question musically has been bugging me for the longest;
How do you music heads find songs similar to another.

I’ve tried hundreds of websites but more often then not songs in the same genre show up rather then songs that actually sound similar to another.

Now maybe here and there you’ll get lucky and an artist will just stick with an extremely specific sound but a lot of the time some of their best stuff is a one and done type of thing

There’s also the method of just looking up the song on plats and seeing what kinds of pl’s people make around it but I can’t say that’s worked for me either.so I’m opening the discourse here…How do you find a song that sounds similar to one you like ?

I've been periodically reflecting back on the topic of "Artists we name-drop over and over." I don't want to mention them all the time, but they embody concepts too well to completely ignore them.

And I realized that there are certain artists that became practically synonymous with particular concepts. Maybe they were the first, maybe they were more the popularizers. But in any case, if you mention a certain concept or idea in music, this artist will likely come up first.

I also want to be clear that these initial examples are not the sum total of important artists or necessarily the "greatest" examples either as that tends to be more subjective. I'm sure there's an aspect of marketing that goes into why we identify certain artists over others.

Some examples:

• Elvis Presley: Represents the Rock Star.
• The Beatles: Represents "the band": a group of friends who play together, sing, and write their own songs. Could also throw in "getting rock music to be taken seriously".
• Bob Dylan: Represents songwriting and serious themes in pop music.
• Jimi Hendrix: Represents electric guitar and its sonic possibilities
• David Bowie: Represents change and evolution. Madonna could be seen as a successor to this as well.
• Velvet Underground: Represents the alternative band, the idea of influence building over time outside of commercial success.

Who are other artists who you feel have become synonymous with a certain concept? What is the criteria that usually makes an artist reach this status?

I really enjoyed the Love album, and thought The Cult had a very interesting take on hard-edged gothic rock that was quite evocative and mysterious. I heard Love Removal Machine and Fire Woman on the radio from Electric and Sonic Temple and thought it was an interesting progression, but only recently listened to all of Electric and had a pretty negative reaction. The mix of gothic style with AC/DC style riffing just rubbed me the wrong way. I know there's a lot to be said for bands reinventing themselves, but I feel pretty strongly that was a wrong move for them. As in a loss of identity.

I do need to go back and listen to Dreamtime and compare, but that switch from Love to Electric is one of the strangest left turns I have come across in music.

I was at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival yesterday. I started going over 30 years ago and have likely attend over 15x. Each time I am amazed that such a festival exists.

We started the morning at 1030am with a group of young women who had just arrived from Ukraine at 1am that day. They were so upbeat and endearing and their music was riveting. Next up was a young woman from the Isle of Skye in Scotland who played the small pipes. She was quiet and shy but her music was ethereal and put us into another world.

The greatest part of the festival is always the workshops where bands from all over the globe jam together. On one stage we had bands from Spain, Quebec, Ukraine and Mexico - at least 20 musicians. One group would get things started then they would all join in. They got everyone up and dancing.

On the main stage we had a blues band from New Zealand, then an Irish folk trio, a political Brazilian group led by bold, black lesbian, followed by Billy Bragg, then a local indie pop group.

We staggered out at 11pm completely saturated.

I think it is more common for people to still enjoy summer vibe music on winter, but are there people who listen winter songs, especially holiday season ones any other time of the year not just December-early January? Is it important for you, when it comes to seasonal music what time of the year you play it? Will fall season song hit different on spring or if you like the song you can listen it any time?

Repost cuz the first one was removed due to formatting.

Recently I stumbled upon an all-female rock trio of sisters from Mexico called The Warning, and they completely caught me off guard. Their sound is so strong that I quickly stopped thinking of them as a female band and just heard, a great rock band. (Nothing against the traditional female-fronted rock band model it just wasn’t the comparison that came to mind.)

They blend pop sensibilities (they even have the look of modern pop artists) with hard rock, metal, and punk in a way that’s incredibly accessible without feeling manufactured.
Watching them live made an even bigger impression, their energy, talent, musicianship, and stage presence are exceptional.

https://youtube.com/@thewarning?si=Qxprsszcmt1IZxU0

That discovery led me to another all-female band, Die Spitz. Completely different style, but equally compelling: raw, aggressive, controlled chaos with an unapologetic attitude.
From there I started digging deeper and realized that, over the past several years, more women than ever seem to be entering the rock and metal scene not just as singers, but as guitarists, bassists, drummers, and complete bands.

https://youtube.com/@diespitzz?si=jpLkztlkWM1rtinq

Another good one is Last Dinner Party, they have great musical chemistry, lush and theatrical sound, the list goes on and on.

https://youtube.com/@thelastdinnerparty?si=4Rl9PYFZO9yTBowA

All this got me wondering:

What’s historically prevented an all-female rock band from achieving the same level of global, long-term, household-name success as bands like Foo Fighters, AC/DC, or Guns N’ Roses?

And with bands like The Warning along with many other talented all-female bands emerging today, are we getting closer to seeing one truly break through into that level of mainstream, cross-generational success?

More broadly, could this wave of all-female rock bands be one of the ingredients that helps bring rock back a little closer to the collective consciousness? Not the ingredient, I’m aware rock’s future depends on many factors but perhaps an important one.

Edit: I'm putting this at the top because it'll catch people quicker, what the post is asking is why do people not consider it music, not why do people not like it, I know it's not accessible that's beyond obvious. But the line of thinking is if I don't enjoy it then it's not this thing. That's like if I said I don't like tomato soup (I really don't but that doesn't matter) so tomato soup isn't food, why do they think that way about the music?

Deathcore vocalist here, I'm wondering why people are so hysterical about screaming vocals on songs, it never made sense to me that people are so willing to call it not music because they're just screaming out noise instead of words even though there are fully comprehensive and understandable lyrics being said. I wanted to get some opinions on it because I'm extremely confused about why people are willing and wanting to hear rap and country about heartache or tragedy, but then they'll write off other music about heartache and tragedy because it has screaming to further push the emotions out.

This came to my mind because I was talking to my grandma about music that's been helping me deal with the emotions (grief, depression, loneliness) from my daughter's passing, and I brought up Earthen - Ov Sulfur, Eiley - Too Close To Touch, and Death Is The Beginning - Mors Principium Est. These are 3 of the songs that have helped a lot for me, but she told me it wasn't music and asked me how could I listen to it when they're just screaming to make noise.

I'll start by saying I like them. But I actually saw an Angine de Poitrine "type" band every week in my local music scene about 15 years ago (not to mention Primus and Battles) so it's almost surprising that "Math Rock, microtonal" sound has come full circle and created a buzz with people. Rock duos aren't exactly new either, even just a guy with a loop pedal and guitar, I've seen my share of that also.

I get it, the clown/polka dot costumes is a big part of their schtick and appeal (especially in the social media age where you need some hook) to draw people into the quirkiness of the music. A refreshing alternative.. But I'm just curious what else is going on here. I can think of other examples of erratic, unconventional, pretentious, music creating a buzz, eg, 70s prog, No Wave, Miles Davis fusion jazz period, so maybe the bubble may be bursting? People are craving something else?

Not sure of the answer of my own question, but there are movies/TV series with already pre-existing songs used based on the vibes of the scenes, but there also lots of movies/TV series were all of the music originally made for that production. Do you even notice those type of things & do you have any preferences or it depends of the music quality and ability to fit the right emotion in the particular scene?

Has anyone else noticed that JVKE seems to have changed "this is what slow dancing feels like" on YouTube Music?

I know this sounds incredibly nitpicky, but hear me out because I swear I'm not imagining it.

The music video version and the standard YouTube Music version are not the same vocal take. The lyrics, instrumental, and overall song are the same, but the vocals have definitely changed. The biggest differences I hear are:

• The first standalone "slow motion" starts a little lower than the original. • The "slow motion" leading into "ya-da-ba-ba baby" feels like it gets cut off just a little sooner. • The biggest one for me is the standalone "slow motion" before "darling, don't let go." In the original, he climbs noticeably higher, and that little vocal peak is honestly one of my favorite parts of the song. In the newer version, it feels more restrained.

I know that probably sounds insane to anyone who hasn't listened to this song a hundred times, but once I get attached to a specific recording of a song, tiny changes like that stand out immediately. It's not even that I think the newer version is bad. It's just... different, and I can't get used to it because my brain expects the original every time.

Has anyone else noticed this, or am I genuinely losing it? 😭

(For clarity, I love his music and again, don't mean this to nitpick. I simply noticed a slight variation in the songs and wanted to know if anyone else had noticed. I've looked around and no one else has mentioned it and just want to know if I'm alone on this. There is also the rest of, but overall kinda follows similar trends to the things I just stated so to keep it short, I'm gonna let you determine that.)

Original (music video): https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=VVRXyZ6B0Qw&si=l0DBS1sghxQhx-6K

Newer YouTube Music version: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=HTwB-x4nJLg&si=mBBr0iwgMrhZY_i2