["The View": Week of 12/09/2019]

1 hour ago, blondiec0332 said:

While I agree with Meghan (and the rest of the table) that it was wrong for Gaetz to bring up Hunter Biden's substance abuse problem the other Congressman had every right to bring Gaetz's own past issues.   The Congressman wasn't shaming Gaetz. He was saying those who live in glass houses and all that.

I mean, I think what Meghan would’ve said if she didn’t suck is that there’s a difference between getting a DUI and having a long-term drug problem. I’m not a fan of pulling receipts like that either, but apples and oranges. And really, they were there debating impeachment. That’s not the time to get people together who said something slick. Both sides indulge in a fair amount of moralizing.

["The View": Week of 12/09/2019]

I love when lawyers forget how 2 lawyer. Sunny quoted the IG report as saying, “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions.” This is not a commentary, this is a statement of fact. Meaning, Horowitz didn’t find anybody stupid enough to write down or say on record that they investigated Trump’s campaign in service to the Democrat Party or because they hate Trump and want him to get impeached. But the numerous instances of inaccuracies and omissions in FISA applications is what people are referring to as “damning” evidence of wrongdoing.

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

I’ll be honest, UYI. Whenever I see you post I call you Uli in my head. Uli was that German designer on Project Runway who made it to Fashion Week and loved making dresses with prints. So I’m usually going, “oh Uli made another post”. Pay no attention to me, I’m weird.

[Country Music, Y'all!]

Have I mentioned how much I love “I Hate This” by Tenille Arts? Seriously. I guess she was a contestant on the Bachelor, but she’s also a damn good Country singer-songwriter. To me, this is what many people see in Taylor Swift that I never really saw. She comes off open-hearted, sentimental, vulnerable, honest ... like a woman going through a break-up she really didn’t want. And I love that it is a Country tune they could easily work as an adult contemporary song if need be. It’s refreshingly lacking a lot of percussion. Just...a great contemporary country song:

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

Anybody remember Savage Garden? They had a few minor pop hits in the 90s (I think their most well known one was “Truly Madly Deeply”, but I was a fan of “I Knew I Loved You”, long title and all). Well, the lead singer struck out on his own and released a solo album in 2002. It was alright, I guess. I liked the guy’s voice, but the songs were kind of forgettable. Well, except the lead single, “Insatiable”.

I feel like he works the post-MJ falsetto loverman thing here better than most who have tried. He sounds like a classically-trained first tenor who’s just entering into the realm of pop singing. Even though it’s been years and years since I’ve heard this song, I still hang on to every word. His breathy intensity actually elevated what is actually a pretty by-the-numbers mid-tempo pop ballad.

I think a keen sense of drama and romance goes a long way in pop. We have plenty of women to look to for that, but it’s a little harder to come by in men. So when I hear it, I remember it.

[The Taylor Swift Topic: Teen Country Sensation to World-Dominating Pop Star]

Dude, isn’t Cats coming out in a few days or something? Why isn’t Taylor promoting that film instead of releasing annoying Christmas music? I haven’t heard her say one word about cats. She hasn’t said she likes cats, she knows cats, she needs some kitty litter, she can be catty, one of her friends got catfished, she smells cat food, she wants a Kit-Kat bar, nothing. Instead she’s just out here singing Shake It Off with Ashley Frangipane and Cameltoe Cabezo or whatever her name is.

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

5 hours ago, UYI said:

...And then there's Linda Ronstadt's version, if we REALLY want to throw everyone for a loop. #TakeaThirdOption

Aww, Linda Ronstadt. 
 

Remember that time they got Jojo to play a younger version of her on “American Dreams”? I remember watching that thinking, “Now y’all know damn well...”

[The Taylor Swift Topic: Teen Country Sensation to World-Dominating Pop Star]

Yeah, I’m good.

[The Sounds of Our Lives (formerly General Music Discussion)]

7 hours ago, UYI said:

I love Todd and I always will, sorry not sorry. And yes, I'm a woman. 😄 (Also, the song by John Legend is called "All of Me", and while yes, "Nice for What"'s music video does have a majority of black women in it, Olivia Wilde is in it, too, just saying. But yes, Todd had it at #2 on his Best List last year.)

And just to clarify: If Drake was trying to specifically have a black woman anthem with "Nice for What", that's awesome! But I don't know if Olivia Wilde would have been in the video if that were his explicit intent. It DOES stand out that she is the only white woman in the video though (that I remember, anyway), if that WAS his intent. Mileage varies, I guess, but OW's presence in the video seems to suggest a more general theme of women's empowerment, at least to me. I could always be wrong, though. 

I actually was going to post his review of "Someone You Loved", which he, indeed, called the worst number one hit of the decade. ("I will not be taking questions at this time.") For what it's worth, here's the complete list, with the caveat that we may still have one or even a few more before this month is over. 

The list of number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 from 2010-2019:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number-one_singles_of_the_2010s

And here's Todd's review of "Someone You Loved", which I personally thought was a righteous, hilarious thing of beauty. To each their own, I guess. (ETA: Damn it! I originally typed "Someone Like You", the similarly named but FAR better song by Adele! Sigh.)

Eh, I’m not fooled by Drake. There are several indicators: the Big Freedia feature, the Lauryn Hill sample (that particular one), struggle lyrics about bills, Hittin’ angles like Fabo (millennial dance reference), confronting women who don’t act the same way in person as they do online, nice for what to these ___. It just seems like a pitch right up the middle. I understand he had more than just black women in the video, but that’s just for the video. I don’t think it had anything to do with the song. That’s partially evidenced by the fact that he did a whole reunion with his DeGrassi cast mates for the “I’m Upset” video (after he got thoroughly trashed by Pusha T).
 

There’s nothing wrong with the song in theory, or even in execution. It’s just really manipulative, so of course Todd liked it.

[The Sounds of Our Lives (formerly General Music Discussion)]

This is slight off-topic, but it needs to be said. Toddintheshadows is a Youtuber who does music reviews. He’s been mentioned here several times. He just did a video reviewing Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” and he not only hates it but seems to dislike Capaldi as well. 
 

First of all, I’ll say I’m not crazy about the song. It’s okay, but I see how it works as product more than being moved by it, if that makes sense. It’s not unlike my opinion of bad guy by Billie Eilish del Rey. I get why it works. It’s the kind of song that works for the soccer mom crowd that still listens to the radio with their kid in the car. I also think Capaldi sounds eerily like James Arthur, someone I am a fan of, who also had a big hit with “Say You Won’t Let Go”, which also worked for the same crowd.

Anyway. His video got suggested to me so I watched it and he wastes no time bashing this guy. It made me realize Todd has a pattern. Here’s a partial list of songs over the last decade that he hasn’t liked:

John a Legend - All of You

Ed Sheehan - Thinking Out Loud (and you can add in most his catalogue apart from “Don’t” and “Sing” from that one year)

Passenger - Let Her Go

Hunter Hayes - Wanted

Lukas Graham - 7 Years

Maroon 5 - Girls Like You

Virtually anything by Shawn Mendes

Virtually anything by One Direction

I could do some digging and find a few more, but that’s enough to make my point. What do those songs have common? They’re songs for women performed by men who have either a sensitive singer-songwriter image or just a good-guy image. 
 

Todd has said before that he had a lot of female friends in high school and he seems like it. Dudes who hang out with a lot of girls get this weird kind of resentment to other nice guys. Like, “no, only I can be the nice guy who wants to hold women’s hands and not make out with them. All other guys are pretending!” It’s such a beta male trait. It’s like a heavy set woman calling thin women stuck up and skinny you-know-whats without even knowing them.

What seals it is if you watch his best songs of 2018 video, he puts “Nice for What” by Drake fairly high. The pro-black-woman anthem he came out with right before it was exposed that Drake had a love child by a white porn actress who has used some racially charged language on Twitter and called him a deadbeat dad and had to hire an attorney to get Drake to accept paternity. That song.

Not only does Todd put that song on his list, but he features this lengthy sequence of him walking to a karaoke party and doing that song for a room full of women who seem to be into it. It’s gross just typing that out. I’m getting douche chills. 
 

Todd’s a “nice guy” who hates nice guys, in other words, he’s a hater. He’s the kind of guy who pillow talks about other men to women. 

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

20 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I was highly annoyed by how many people thought it was an original song when Whitney's version came out, but I knew Dolly was laughing all the way to the bank (and seemed to genuinely like Whitney's take on it).  That It's not new! frustration colored my reception of it, I think, and the movie was awful, so it took me a while to let everything go and just appreciate Whitney's version in a vacuum, but I did come to really like it.

Of all Dolly's versions of the song, I like her Best Little Whorehouse in Texas rendition best.

I wonder if they’re going to ever do remake of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. As crazy as it sounds, I could see it being even more controversial now than the original. We’re in the “that’s not funny” era. It would be a great diva vehicle for Carrie Underwood, but she wouldn’t do it. 

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

1 hour ago, truthaboutluv said:

Except art is subjective. Just because Dolly's original intent behind the song was a farewell to a friend/mentor, doesn't mean that's how everyone else should interpret the song and what it should mean to everyone.

IMO, to think that way is limiting to Dolly's talent and not appreciating how amazing her songwriting is. That is to say that a song she wrote and intended for one thing, could be reimagined and interpreted in a whole other way and still resonate and be so powerful.

I just think it's funny how almost resentful some are by how successful Whitney's version was, as if it was almost an insult to Dolly. And yet the woman in question herself, has never had anything but great things to say about the song, about Whitney's performance and more importantly, those big, fat royalty checks she gets because of the global phenomenon the song became. 

Everyone doesn’t have to interpret the song the same way, but it not being intended as a straightforward love song is only half of the issue. The other half is, they’re nowhere close to being Whitney Houston. Whitney was an interpreter; she imbued all of her songs with passion, a mix of drama and seduction. In hindsight many of her songs have an almost regal quality because of her delivery. She sang that song how she would sing it. They jazzed up the arrangement but Whitney sang it how she knew to sing. 
 

So that’s why so many renditions of that song sound like karaoke to one extent or another. Because they’re not singing the song in the spirit that it was intended. 

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

I think the more annoying thing is that because Whitney’s version is so iconic that everybody automatically associated it with being this epic love song, like a kissing cousin of My Heart Will Go On, and that’s not really the initial vibe of the original. It’s a simple song saying goodbye to an old friend, a mentor. 
 

I hate to be a hater 😁, but this reminds me of the night Whitney died right before the Grammys. And they got Jennifer Hudson to sing IWALY to open the awards show. I remember not liking it for that exact reason. Jennifer, whose voice is better suited for gospel and gospel-tinged soul music from decades ago, who also has little finesse in her singing, trying to do a serious , stirring rendition of that song and it just...didn’t work. I remember somebody on the old TWoP board saying it should’ve just been Dolly with a guitar singing that song. 

[The Sounds of Our Lives (formerly General Music Discussion)]

I’ve said before that I’d like Abel a lot more if he were gay. As weird as that sounds, this song kind of illustrates that. 
 

He sounds, well, gay. And I don’t say that as an insult, but he just does. He sounds like a gay guy doing an approximation of modern day R&B. When he says, “I been running through the pussy/need a dog pound”, my first thought, “suuuure you have. Please stop saying pussy.” The gauche lyrics are why I can’t just say he sounds fey. 
 

That said, I do like the song. Sounds like an album cut more than a single, but I like it. There’s a deep groove to it that gives me an 80s vibe, and his voice seems less indebted to MJ than it does to El DeBarge, which I think is more his speed anyway. I do kinda wonder if he’s able (...heh) to do this song live. It’s so fast and I don’t know if he’s a nimble enough vocalist to pull it off in a live setting. 

 

[The Sounds of Our Lives (formerly General Music Discussion)]

Tina looks great! Congrats to her. 
 

I just came to post The Weeknd’s newest song, “Heartless”. Your thoughts?

["The View": Week of 11/25/2019]

Meghan needs to stop with her obsession with showing “respect” to veterans, especially because I think it has more to do with her lionizing her late father rather than some principled belief about veterans. They’re people just like the respect of us.

Thst said, I think she saw this stunt for what it was. His being a veteran had nothing to do with his opinion about Trump. And especially with everything going on right now, nobody has time for antics. So I think that’s why Lindsay bailed. Of course it looks like he was “disrespecting” a veteran, but I think the guy was probably on some bullshit and just wanted to have a moment on camera. 

[The Taylor Swift Topic: Teen Country Sensation to World-Dominating Pop Star]

4 hours ago, Cranberry said:

I don't think a celebrity (of any gender) is at fault when they tell their fans, "Let these guys know you want them to allow me to perform my songs" and one or two fans take that to mean, "Send these guys death threats," no.

Eh, they kinda are. Not in a criminally negligent way, but Taylor has been at this whole public figure thing for awhile. I’m sure she’s dealt with crazy people and the need for security. Maybe a newer artist wouldn’t, but Taylor knows better. You don’t  tell your legion of impressionable fans to go tell the mean white men to stop being mean to you. You’re just asking for smoke at that point. 
 

But that’s still kinda not what I’m saying. Had this been a man directing his fans to give Taylor or any woman a piece of their mind, what you said would still apply, but it wouldn’t be treated that way. More than a few people would say that constitutes a line being crossed. Shoot, there were people saying Scott Borchetta was being spiteful and petty when he responded to Taylor’s Tumblr rant a few months ago.

[So What Are You Listening To?]

Believe it or not, the acto—er, people on Love & Hip Hip actually make music sometimes. Well, some of them. My favorite song from anyone who’s ever been on that show is this one by Margeaux. She’s Canadian, biracial, and actually came off normal-ish on the show (well, she divorced her husband Nikko, who went on to make a sex tape with another woman with a young daughter and sold it, and started dating a woman. Point still stands.). She released this song a few years ago about her breakup with Nikko, but it’s a nice slice of sleek, progressive pop. It sounds very current even after a few years. Kinda wish she would re-record it with more dramatic vocals, but lyrically it’s very good for a pop song. 

[The Taylor Swift Topic: Teen Country Sensation to World-Dominating Pop Star]

On 11/22/2019 at 5:45 PM, shantown said:

Scooter made his own choices and they were bad ones. No one deserves death threats, but him trying to write these monologues on instagram or wherever about how he's an innocent angel are beyond ridiculous.

Exactly what did Scooter do to Taylor?

On 11/23/2019 at 1:31 AM, Cranberry said:

Show me a celebrity who doesn't receive a death threat every other week and maybe I'll feel bad for this rich guy.

I agree, but that makes me double down on my point: if the roles were reversed, would we just shrug it off if a man sicced his fans on a woman an subsequently she received death threats?

["The View": Week of 11/18/2019]

Meghan and Abby both wear their biases on their sleeves and it’s a little...I don’t know.

Meghan’s dad was a veteran and POW, so of course veterans can do no wrong. Abby’s dad was an ambassador to China, so everyone from the diplomatic cloth can do no wrong. 

Meghan was right that Sunny was going after a cheap applause line, because that’s all she does. Sunny said Rep. Hurd was complicit by not condemning Trump as if he couldn’t possibly have a different impression of the testimony he’s heard than her and Joy, who have been angling for impeachment since like 12 hours after Trump got elected. 

[The Taylor Swift Topic: Teen Country Sensation to World-Dominating Pop Star]

Scooter Braun says he’s been getting death threats and whatnot as a result of Taylor siccing her fans on him. They have also doxxed him and Scott Borchetta. 
 

How do we feel about this? As weird as it may sound, I’m halfway thinking Taylor didn’t want all that. I think she wanted them to succumb to public pressure and do what she wanted, not be in any danger. That said, for someone who plays the Girl Card all the time, imagine a man telling his fans to go harass a woman he had a legal/professional falling out with like this. Think people would so sanguine about it?

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

On 11/16/2019 at 1:16 AM, Annber03 said:

Aw, yeah, I loved that song, too. I never really followed BBMak's career in general-I know I heard another song or two of theirs, but that's about it. But that's a good song. 

Coincidentally enough, upon doing a YouTube search for that song, I saw a bunch of videos from shows they’ve done as recently as May, so I guess they got the band back together and went on a reunion tour. Good for them.

You know what would be kinda cool? You know how CMT has that Crossroads series where they take a Country artist and pair them with another artist from a different genre and have them do a concert? I’d love to see something like with BBMak and maybe like a Boys II Men. That would be cool. I bet Boys II Men would do a great job on a song like Ghost of You and Me

But yeah, here they are performing acoustic. They still look and sound good even though it’s been twenty years. If I had been there you would’ve seen a guy that kinda looks like Drake if you squint except with way less money standing right in front, hands crossed on his chest, swaying and singing along. 
 

I’m kidding. Kinda. Probably. Maybe.

[The Taylor Swift Topic: Teen Country Sensation to World-Dominating Pop Star]

1 hour ago, Cranberry said:

This article is a good roundup: https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/taylor-swift-scooter-braun-and-borchetta-feud-explained.html

This is like a contest between Tom Petty and Petti Labelle.

On one hand, I don't understand why Taylor cares this much about her back catalog that she has to go rerecord six albums worth of material. With JoJo -- whom the artist mentions -- basically her whole career has been ruined because she was signed to a label who shelved her and it's taken her virtually a decade to release commercial music. Taylor will still get paid royalties and have her say in how those songs are used even if she doesn't rerecord her back catalog. Plus, she's rich as hell. The thing about them stopping her from performing on the AMAs is a little different, and I think she should be able to do that, but I don't know why she needs to rerecord her back catalog and I don't even know why she's telegraphed that that's what she wants to do.

On the other hand, Scotts Borchetta and Braun are obviously ticked at her and are doing this just to spite her. I think they're pretty pissed at her siccing her fans on them earlier this year, and now she's back at it. I'm not saying that the way they're going about it is right, but instead of being professional about it, she decided to pick a fight over it. Publicly.

[The Taylor Swift Topic: Teen Country Sensation to World-Dominating Pop Star]

So Taylor was alleging that Big Machine was stopping her from performing her songs on the upcoming AMAs and also using her songs in a Netflix doc. Well, I knew upfront the first part was bullshit as they couldn’t stop her from performing those songs even if they wanted to. The Netflix doc is different as Taylor’s people went to the NYT and gave them emails saying Big Machine wouldn’t allow the use of those songs. So yeah, round two.

I will say, I don't like Taylor playing the "those mean old boys are picking on me" Girl Card yet again. Why can't Taylor just be righteous in her argument? Why does she have to incorporate the sexism subtext? That's what makes her seem like she's kinda full of it. I hate how normal it's become for celebrities to play identity politics whenever they don't get their way.

Edited to reduce text wall and confusion.

[Unpopular Opinions about Music]

I might have said this before, but I think of all the boy band songs, the best one was by little known UK boy band BBMak, "Ghost of You and Me". Seriously. "I Want It That Way" is looked at fondly, but aside from the fact that that song makes no sense -- I heard it's because the writers had a tenuous grasp of English at the time, no shade -- "Ghost of You and Me" should be the song people try to nail on singing shows and whatnot. The lead parts and harmonies on it are beautiful, and the lyrics are beautiful. Like, for a song that was written and given to a boy band that had a teenage girl fan base, the lyrics almost sound like they could've been written by a woman. But yeah, best song of that era in my opinion:

You know a song is good when it sounds better in stark settings, like with just a guitar in a cave in Vietnam: