In 2021, I listened to more music than ever, both because I had more time to and out of pure necessity. Though the pandemic rages on, that hasn't stopped musicians from putting out material, and this year brought on a deluge caused by so many artists hitting the pause button last year. I consumed way more EPs this year as a result, since some bands still hedged their bets and are waiting until touring is fully back to release an album. Others tided over fans by releasing rarities or re-recordings of old work.
But no matter what shape or size it came in, music was great in 2021. Rap produced a wealth of gems after a slow start, emo music continued its rise in respectability, and even the supposedly dying genre of indie rock had some works that revitalized the form. Let's take a look at the best of what this year had to offer.
The rules: Everything is the same as usual. The window of eligibility for this list is anything released between January 1, 2021 and now. This list can include albums, mixtapes, EPs, and anything in between. As always, I'm praying that nothing substantial comes out in the twilight hours of the year.
Honorable Mentions (25-21)
Everything and the kitchen sink gets thrown into America, Online, the whirlwind power-pop EP from Barely March. Camp Trash is a real band and their debut EP Downtiming is an excellent collection of winsome, wistful emo tunes. Almost 20 years going and The Hold Steady are still a top-tier band, and they even add some new tricks to their bag on Open Door Policy. Fellow long-tenured band Tigers Jaw aren't reinventing the wheel, but I Won't Care How You Remember Me is all killer, no filler rock music. Teen sensation Olivia Rodrigo isn't going away anytime soon, so thankfully Sour has some sharp songs that foretell a bright future for her as a songwriter.
By now you probably know Pi'erre Bourne from his Jamie Foxx Show-sampling producer tag that chaotically crashes into the middle of the best songs on albums from the likes of Playboi Carti, Young Thug, Young Nudy, and Lil Uzi Vert. But he's also been making solo work in the Life of Pi'erre series, where you get to hear nothing but beats from one of the best to currently do it. He's crafted an intoxicating signature sound: Candyland beats that make heavy use of woozy synth pads and flute notes. And in a world where many trap beats are simple and formulaic, Bourne's production is an intricate dance between hypnotizing topline sounds and the infectious counter melody running underneath. As a rapper, he's not the most adept, but there are enough forehead-slapping lines ("Spongebob Spongebob, my nigga Patrick," "I just want your body like anatomy") that their idiocy becomes endearing. Thanks to its trance-inducing sonics and clever transitions between songs, The Life of Pi'erre 5 is one of the most engaging start-to-finish listens in a genre that's typically not album-oriented anymore.
Highlight songs
1. Retroville
2. Butterfly
3. Couch
After being stuck on the 90s for what felt like an eternity, the 20-year nostalgia cycle may have finally arrived at the early 2000s, the period when I first got into indie rock. It's so great to hear an album like The Dance, which is a throwback to the days when indie music consisted of bands with six or more members where the frontperson couldn't really sing but it didn't matter because the music was so loud and cathartic. Opening song "The Funeral" is a real statement of purpose in that regard, a flurry of guitars, strings, horns, and crashing drums. There's just so much sound on this album. It's hard to even trace the individual instruments because they all mix together into a beautiful fog, with the anthemic melodies fighting their way to pierce through. If you were a fan of Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and Wolf Parade from 2002 to 2006, then you'll most likely find alot to enjoy here. "The Right Thing" literally sounds like it could have been on Arcade Fire's Funeral. NATL PARK SRVC only has 336 monthly listeners on Spotify as of writing this, so who knows whether this is the start of a wave or not, but I sure hope it is.
Highlight songs
1. The Dance
2. The Funeral
Suburban indie rock star is a pretty lofty title to choose for one's debut EP, but it turns out snow ellet is good enough to get away with it. Over the course of its short runtime, the record synthesizes disparate influences that come together in a way that sounds like nothing in the current DIY music space. The sunny guitar on "to some i'm genius," the rubbery bassline on "brick," the buzzsaw riffs on "casualty" -- you'll find some of the coolest and most invigorating sounds out there on this EP. Even though the production is a little lo-fi, the hooks are fully formed, showing off the songwriting skill of someone who's been doing this much longer than he has. On top of that, he released a deluxe version a few months later where the two new songs were even more assured than the five songs on the standard version. If snow ellet can fulfill the boundless potential on display here, then the full-length album is going to be scary good.
Highlight songs
1. casualty
3. brick
If you didn't know Home Is Where were from Florida, you'd quickly be able to tell from their music. You can almost sense the humidity in their lyrics, which often conjure up imagery of overgrown wastelands, the kind that make up vast stretches of the state. If you've ever lived here, you can feel lines like "Preservative sun showers trickle down" and "Sunday school in a bug spray June" in your bones. Another topic of interest on I Became Birds is the human body, succinctly summarized with the lyrics "Oh the treachery / of anatomy." Elsewhere, Brandon MacDonald presents this gnarly imagery: "Let's trespass vacant properties / We claim as our bodies / There are birds on telephone lines / Where your heart's supposed to be." That sense of eerie unease runs through the music as well. At only 18 minutes, I Became Birds is quite brisk, but it packs so much variety into that time. They can give you something softer like the folky "The Old Country," and a more thrashing song like the splenetic "Assisted Harakiri." Sometimes that swerve occurs in the middle of a song, as it does on "Sewn Together..." Home Is Where is just one of the many examples that shows how wide the Overton window of what classifies as "emo" has become, since they often sound more like Neutral Milk Hotel than Sunny Day Real Estate. No matter how you define it, however, I Became Birds rules.
Highlight songs
With an artist as prolific as Sada Baby, 2021 was considered a light year for the rapper, whose only release was a collection of loosies meant to hold over fans until he finally puts out his "real" album. Since he records so much, it's hard to even tell whether the songs on The Lost Tapes were all from the same cluster of time, in order to try to pick up on whether what we're hearing is an indication of trends he's gravitating towards for his full length. But if there is anything to be gained, it appears that he's finding new ways to play around with his voice and flow. On many of these tracks, his distinctive high-powered bark has given way to a raspy whisper. He also often get into bouts where he'll stop a line halfway through, start over, and repeat it to completion. Those techniques have the effect of requiring you to lean forward a little bit more to hear things, but the bars are still there. As always, his best songs are the ones where he just cuts loose and raps nonstop for two minutes or more, allowing you to bask in the full glory of his off-the-wall imagery and the spins he puts on standard gun talk. The Lost Tapes takes a few songs to rev up, but once it reaches the "Black Harlow"/"Brazy Taxi"/"2055" stretch, it's off to the races. "I ain't even hit the NOS yet," he raps at one point, which is a pretty apt description of the heights he's still capable of.
Highlight songs
1. Brazy Taxi
2. Black Harlow
3. 2055
If there's a band in the current emo world that could be considered a phenomenon, it's Washington D.C.'s Origami Angel, the fiercely beloved duo who finally followed up their debut Somewhere City with Gami Gang earlier this year. They've got an energized and dynamic sound, rocketing you from supercharged riffs to soaring choruses to nasty breakdowns, and then throwing extended guitar heroics at before you can even orient yourself to the previous passage of the song. Their second outing doubles down on that method of giving you a sugar rush of radical positivity. Their whole deal can scan as corny: the punny titles; the naked sincerity of it all; the lyrics about getting acne, watching Nickelodeon cartoons, and eating Taco Bell. And 20 tracks that total 60 minutes does seem like way too long to sustain their energy and optimism, but somehow it works because the songs are so wonderful and catchy. If you never had a pop-punk phase as a teenager, there's no better way to make up for lost time than with Gami Gang.
Highlight songs
1. Mach Bike
2. Noah Fence
The War on Drugs are sort of like Beach House, in the sense that they both have an extremely specific sound that nobody else is really doing, so they get accused of making the same album all the time, even though that couldn't be further from the truth. And just like Beach House, Adam Granduciel and the gang have been refining and slowly shifting their sound, and I Don't Live Here Anymore morphs the band's heartland rock into something more closely resembling widescreen 80s pop-rock. The results are fantastic, delivering on production that's textured and rich, really giving each instrument the space to shine. Granduciel is a master arranger too, tucking tiny flourishes into every crack, sometimes so subtle that you don't notice until your 10th listen. And even though there aren't as many of his reality-shifting guitar solos here like there were on A Deeper Understanding, these songs are streamlined and surging in a way that makes this arguably their most accessible album. Maybe this whole "dad rock" thing isn't so bad after all.
Highlight songs
2. Victim
3. I Don't Live Here Anymore (feat. Lucius)
Mach-Hommy is a rapper cloaked in mystique. He keeps most of his face obscured behind a folded up Haitian flag, he famously doesn't allow his lyrics to be posted on Genius, and he used to sell his albums at exorbitant prices before making them available on streaming. He's like Griselda's weird cousin, doing that same Buffalo strain of hard-nosed rapping over quiet, damp beats, but Hommy's style is more insular and nomadic. It's fitting that he quotes MF DOOM on one of Pray For Haiti's songs, because the metal-faced villain is the closest comparison given their shared sense of mystery and playful word-stacking. You could write a whole review consisting of the album's best quotables: "Oh word, your rap's braggadocious? Well put this .38 in your mouth. Go ahead and spit your magnum opus." "Thought you was the best on the drums? Meet Ringo." "How many more rappers will my 'K swiss?" Pray For Haiti is like an invitation into a separate world -- the fragments rapped in Creole, the grimy Taxi Driver samples, the heavily coded rhymes -- and it's supremely satisfying to make yourself at home in it.
Highlight songs
1. Makrel Jaxon
3. Kriminel
EPs tend to be seen as inessential in an artist's oeuvre, but Perfect is anything but. It might be the perfect format for Mannequin Pussy, whose music is such a shock to the system that it works best in short blasts. And thus, Perfect contains some of their best work. These five songs feature the band's signature blend of sweet and sour, alternating between down-the-middle rock anthems and punk rippers. In the former category lies "Control," which gives "Drunk II" a run for its money as the band's catchiest song, building steadily until the drums kick in. On the other end of the spectrum is the anti-cop stomper "Pigs is Pigs," which operates like a bull in a china shop, thrashing ferociously over its sub-two minute runtime. Mannequin Pussy is more than the Mare of Easttown band. They're also one of the most exciting rock groups working right now.
Highlight songs
1. Control
2. Pigs is Pigs
3. To Lose You
There's something about the sound of Any Shape You Take, the sophomore album from Indigo De Souza, that feels classic. Like so many albums in the last 10 years, it's indebted to 90s alt rock, but there's a distinctiveness that De Souza brings to it that doesn't make it seem like mere pastiche. This is some of the best guitar music of the year, the six-string sounds she produces are so crisp and impactful. And her voice has a dreamy softness to it that contrasts perfectly with the jagged, grungy instrumentation. That vocal quality translates just as well to songs like "17" and "Hold U," trying on poppier sounds and wearing them naturally. Nothing ever feels forced on the record because she imbues everything with a raw and personal touch, where phrases like "I'd rather die than see you cry" and "Was it something I said?" get repeated like anxious mantras. All of the best elements of the album come together on "Real Pain," a frayed song whose instrumental build matches the disorienting feeling of experiencing pain, until it comes apart in a wall of various recordings of people screaming, only to glue itself back together for a sticky hook. It's one of the best songs of the year, and just one piece of what makes Any Shape You Take one of the year's best records.
Highlight songs
1. Real Pain
I like to think I'm pretty funny. Sometimes I'll say things for the sole purpose of making myself laugh. Why I don't just keep those thoughts to myself if they're only for my own entertainment, I'll never know. Faye Webster strikes me as a kindred spirit in that regard. I Know I'm Funny haha is not a "funny" album in the traditional sense, but alot of her lines play like jokes you tell to make yourself laugh and nobody else. A line like: "The last words he said: 'There's other things out there to see.' And then he left me for someone who looks just like me." That's funny! "There's a difference between lonely and lonesome, but I'm both all the time." Also funny, at least to people like us. All of the songs on the album are sincere -- even the one about having a crush on Atlanta Braves player, Ronald Acuna Jr., I think -- but there's also a wryness and sense of surprise to her songs about love and domesticity that's endearing. When she says "Wonder if we'll get married before my brother" on "Cheers," there's a little jump in her voice, like even she's surprised at what she's feeling. Musically, the album exists at an intersection between R&B and alt-country that only somebody from Atlanta could achieve. The arrangements are lush and her backing band plays the hell out them. Almost every song has a portion where they patiently jam out, and those are often the best moments. Faye Webster made an incredible album, but she probably already knows that too.
Highlight songs
2. Kind Of
Lush, Snail Mail's debut album, received so much press and acclaim that it would've been enough to break anyone, let alone a 19 year old. But after a three-year layover that included a brief stint in rehab, Lindsey Jordan was back and better than ever this year for her follow-up. Valentine is bigger, cleaner, wiser, and ironically more lush than its predecessor. It may be a less showy album, but multiple listens reveal interesting guitar lines and textures. Jordan's a sharper lyricist this time around too, lacing "Madonna" with clever double entendres and religious allusions. She writes about love, loss, and longing with a powerful intensity. When she sings a line like "Some nights I reach for you like you're beside me," the phantom pain stings you too. Most of all, she's improved her voice, making it an instrument of its own here, as it wails on "Valentine," saunters over "Ben Franklin," and even snarls towards the end of "Automate." This is an album of little choices, small things that linger in your mind long after the song has ended. The outro of "Forever (Sailing)" comes to mind. On it, she intones "So much destruction / Look at what we did / That was so real / And you don't just forget," but the way she holds the first syllable of "forget" slightly longer than you expect her to is so good. It was a difficult road to get here, but Valentine is a shining success that reaffirms Lindsey Jordan as one of the brightest talents in the new indie rock class.
Highlight songs
2. Valentine
3. Automate
There's nothing better than when a rapper links up with a single producer to make an album. And while Boldy James has done this with different producers for various albums, the best results always come from his work with The Alchemist. (The two of them also worked together on The Price of Tea in China, which made this list last year.) The latter's production is haunting and full of negative space, employing a minimalism that looks easy but requires a gifted ear. Effortlessness is a running theme on Bo Jackson. It's there in Boldy's rapping as well, where a patient, unflashy delivery hides the fact that he's dropping an endless string of mesmerizing rhymes. You may be so engrossed by "First 48 Freestyle" that you don't even notice that every single line in the song rhymes. He even manages to rap circles around Earl Sweatshirt and Roc Marciano, two of the knottiest rappers working right now, on "Photographic Memories." Bo Jackson feels like one of the rare rap albums where the features are superfluous -- Boldy James and The Alchemist are all each other needs.
Highlight songs
1. Flight Risk
2. Steel Wool
3. Speed Trap
Nowadays it's rare that I'm won back over by an artist that I checked out on. While I was never a huge Tyler the Creator guy -- Bastard and Goblin are pretty good, but my 2010 rap craze of choice was Das Racist -- I definitely hopped off the train the further he got from the stuff he was making when he broke out. It all felt like music for white hip hop fans who only started liking rap when My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy came out. So the fact that CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST is this good came as a real surprise. He's got one of the greatest sounding voices, and that menacing rasp was wasted on the sensitive, respectable music he was doing for a while, so what a relief it is that he's back to making pure rap music. CALL ME is the perfect blend of rap traditionalism (DJ Drama drops, superstar guest appearances) and sounds that are out of step with the current melodic trap/grimy boom-bap binary. The production is so expansive, featuring flutes ("HOT WIND BLOWS"), Neptunes-esque accordion synths ("RISE!"), and Lovers Rock grooves ("I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE"). If you're one of those people who abandoned Tyler the Creator, just know that he's back in a big way on this album.
Highlight songs
1. HOT WIND BLOWS (feat. Lil Wayne)
2. WUSYANAME
3. RISE!
It's been 10 years since Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan started making music together in a dorm room at Notre Dame University. In the time since, Ratboys has blossomed into a full four-piece band, and to celebrate their decade of musicmaking they surprise dropped re-recordings of rare songs from their early days. Happy Birthday, Ratboy is more than just an odds and sods collection for superfans though -- it feels like a full-fledged album and can be easily enjoyed as such. In the first half, the expanded lineup serves to highlight how keyed into something special the band was from the start, adding tiny bits of color and whirrs of sound to already winning songs. It's in the album's louder second half where they show how much they've grown over the last 10 years. Like all of the band's music, the songs on Happy Birthday, Ratboy have a coziness to them that make them feel like you've known them your whole life. It's a lovely feeling. Ratboys are allegedly the nicest band in all of indie rock, and they make some of the nicest music as well.
Highlight songs
1. Key
2. Collected
3. Have a Heart
Typically artists release their post-fame freakout record on the next album after they become a breakout star, but Lorde was a bit of a delayed detonation. After taking a four-year break in the wake of Melodrama, she returned with Solar Power, the kind of album nobody expected and many didn't like. And though the album artwork, the promo cycle, and the sun-baked sound of the songs may make it seem like a happy album, Solar Power reads very much like an expression of existential pain. Many of the songs are about contending with the passage of time and the rotting of the world, and how being rich and adored isn't enough to help get through those things. Even when she dispenses wisdom, it's followed by unsure qualifications like, "I don't know, maybe I'm just stoned at the nail salon." Lorde's writing is so vivid and emotionally attuned that she can take trite subject matter, like her desire to leave fame behind on "California," and give it an ache that feels fresh. It's also overflowing with beautiful melodies, keeping songs interesting with the lovely turns she's able to make. Sometimes it can feel like you're listening to a completely different album than everyone else, and for me that's Solar Power. I'm deeply moved by this lovely struggle to find peace and contentment in a roiling environment.
Highlight songs
3. Big Star
Rosie Tucker wastes no time getting down to business on Sucker Supreme, blasting off with "Barbara Ann," which isn't a Beach Boys cover but might be as catchy as that band was at their peak. Things don't slow down from there either. This is an album of perpetual movement, never staying on one idea for too long. Between the laser-focused indie rock jams like the aforementioned album opener and "For Sale: Ford Pinto," they keep you on your toes with quick sketches of songs and loose interludes. Listening is an unpredictable, exuberant ride that works because it always grounds everything in the hooks at the center of it all. Tucker's writing is tight, lacing their lyrics with lines that are smart and poetic without being overly clever. Songs like "Habanero" have a neat structure to them, with verses building off each other and twisting previous lines. Every year, there's one record that you can't stop returning to, and Sucker Supreme was the undisputed champion of relistenability for me.
Highlight songs
1. Barbara Ann
Bands releasing old material was something of a trend in 2021, most likely as an effort to hold fans over until they could release an actual album when touring started back up. Cult heroes Los Campesinos! did so this year with Whole Damn Body, an EP of songs recorded during the sessions for their 2011 album Hello Sadness. On some days Hello Sadness sounds like the band's best album, so it's a joy to hear more from that era, when they began to shed the twee signifiers that made them popular and started writing songs that were tinged with a little more darkness, both lyrically and sonically. This seven song collection is a head rush of high drama, sugary riffs, and quotable lines like "writing sleeper hits for all these weeping dipshits." Part of the reason the band has accumulated such a passionate fandom is their willingness to write these exposed-flesh anthems that have an everyman vulnerability, with just enough humor to keep things from getting lugubrious. Hopefully they give us a full album soon, but Whole Damn Body is more than enough to keep everyone satisfied until then.
Highlight songs
3. Dumb Luck
Most rapper-producer hyphenates are pretty clearly better at one over the other, but JPEGMAFIA is one of the few cases of somebody being amazing at both. As an emcee, he's got a slippery flow, finding unconventional pockets to worm his way into. His lyrical style is an unholy barrage of antic energy, trolling provocations, and hilariously left-field references ("Love screwin' with the cops, I'm Lana"). As a producer, he's in a class of his own. The off-kilter synth sounds, the disorienting mixing, the distorted bass blatts -- listening to the beats sound like learning a new sonic language. And he's got a versatility that's unmatched, capable of making a sinister hell-gurgle of a beat like "END CREDITS!" as well something as beautiful as the crystalline "THIS ONES FOR US!" His records are almost draining in their disruption and willingness to throw any sound at you. With the release of EP2! and LP! -- not to mention EP! released late last year -- he's been on an absolute tear.
Highlight songs
1. REBOUND! (LP!)
2. THIS ONES FOR US! (EP2!)
3. BMT! (LP!)
I hate modern post-punk music. Every year, it seems like there's two or three new (typically British) bands that get hyped up even though they're just making boring music with gloomy-sounding basslines and icy guitars. I'm sick of it. We're at the point where I often see the phrase "post-punk" and not even click on an article about a new band. Don't make the same mistake I almost did with Dry Cleaning, whose debut album New Long Leg should be an exception to anyone's "no post-punk" rule. What helps is that the band's instrumentation is a thrilling jolt to the genre's now-staid formula: a straight-jacket tight rhythm section where the bass lays out deep, incessant grooves and the drums lock-in with no frills while the guitars shred all over the place. And that white-hot interplay is perfectly countered by vocalist Florence Shaw's talky delivery, never raising above the level of a cool musing. Her lyrics are entrancing, feeling like half-conversations, secret observations you're not supposed to hear, or transmissions from a crossed frequency. She can be funny ("the last thing I looked at in this hand mirror was a human asshole"), weird, and inscrutable over the course of a single verse. It all accumulates into a general sensation of being overwhelmed by the world, of doing everything and feeling nothing, of smiling constantly and constantly being stepped on. Hearing those waves of low-level dread over pressure cooker songs that feel like they can pop at any moment is what makes New Long Leg such a thrilling listen.
Highlight songs:
2. Unsmart Lady
3. Leafy
Well, that wraps things up for my best albums of 2021 list. I love reading other lists, so feel free to share yours in the comments. Or if you want to share your thoughts on my list, then you can do that too! Most of the highlight songs contain Youtube links if you want to listen to them, but I've also created a Spotify playlist if that's your preferred method. You can find it below. And if you want a complete ranking of all the albums that were in consideration for this list, along with some other data you might find interesting, you can find them on this Google Doc.
Tbh I forgot these were on the way... but here I am to say my favorite albums of the year were Jubilee, Call Me If You Get Lost, Home Video and Ep2! (LP! I had a surprisingly hard time listening to considering how major I was on the JPEGMafia EPs)
ReplyDeleteI def agree on the Swift redux criticims of the last post. Personally, I found 10 minute All Too Well, while impressive, kind of the detrimental to the superior first one. It zeroed in a little too much on Jake Gylenhaal, and turned something much more anonymous and universal and powerful into maybe something a little less. And I also think the "keep me like a secret but I kept you like an oath" is a great example of a cute line that was right to cut.
I also am glad to see someone else kind of disassociated from the Kanye release. The only tracks I've listened to were "Life of the Party" with Andre 3000's verse as well as "Hurricane", but that was in December. It felt so gross and just like Kanye went a little too far this time. I don't know how to describe it. I was shocked to see Drake to high up... but my friend loved that record so whatevs.
I was never into the band Low but their new record... I kind of really dug it.
Fav song of the year: Kiss Me More by Doja Cat
Oh and I really admire your enjoyment of Solar Power. I kept circling around that album, wanting to enjoy it to the upmost possible, but never could :( maybe now's a time to revisit.
DeleteI liked Jubilee and Home Video but I think they were hurt a little in my mind because I liked Historian and Soft Sounds From Another Planet more.
DeleteI'm glad I finally got to hear the 10 minute All Too Well, but yeah, she made the right choice cutting what she did.
I haven't even listened to "Life of the Party" and I'm a huge Andre 3000 fan! I think I'll at least check that one out.
Low is one of those bands that I tried to get into when I first started reading Pitchfork as a teen and they bounced right off of me. I should try again. The bits of their album from this year I heard sounded cool.
It's truly so lonely in the "loving Solar Power" club. Come join me! The water is warm!
Did you listen to the Olivia Rodrigo album or did you sit that craze out?
Also re: the Drake album, I'm just as shocked as you are that I enjoyed it so much. I went into it with crossed arms but I honestly think it's one of his better albums (for reference on my Drake takes, I'm a Nothing Was the Same > Take Care guy). There's a version of this album in my head that's 16 songs instead of 21 and it's a banger.
DeleteMy brother is a huge Drake fan and he co-signs this opinion so I feel good about it.
I did listen to Olivia Rodrigo, the buzz was good enough I figured I was not above it, and I think it's a good album, but there's some quality in it that makes every song sound not quite hollow, but there's something missing in it all. The production is solid to very good, she's definitely a strong lyricist, but it felt so nothing to me. I think maybe she lacks the charisma to pull it all off? That's kind of a mean critique but I just don't hear a star I guess.
DeleteTo connect that back to another person on the list... Lorde has always had that charisma, and it's what kept me connected with the new album even though I wasn't loving it. I do love the title track though the further I get away from the album the more I feel that song did a ton that got lost in the rest of the record.
Back to Ridrigo, but unrelated to what was talked about, I'm sick of the "omg she's 18" of it all. Like, yes, she's very talented, but a TON of people that are 16-18 are also very talented. It's actually super common, teenagers are creative and introspective despite hormones or whatever, they just didn't star on Disney Channel, which isn't a fault on Rodrigo but just how warped a view people have of like art and stuff.
You can honestly just peep the Andre verse and ditch the rest of the track. The Kanye verse isn't terrible, but I also may just have lowered my standards for Kanye verses to the point I give it a pass.
It's a tough decision whether I like Historian or Home Video more. But yeah HV sounds more "writery".
I think that's a valid critique of Rodrigo and I definitely think the more ballad-y her album gets the more it gets into what you're talking about with her lacking charisma. But there's something I see in her that makes me feel like she's got alot of potential. Like when I think back to a world where Taylor Swift's only record that existed was her first one, she was pretty much at the same quality level that Olivia Rodrigo is now (Swift still had more wit and charm back then, but roll with me here). So for me it's easy to imagine her progressing in a similar fashion.
DeleteAlthough my take a few years ago was that I wasn't crazy about Billie Eilish's first album but I thought her second album would probably be incredible, and now we've got her second album and I thought that was just fine. So I could be completely wrong again lol
Ay I buy Rodrigo getting better with age. Her music is already good. It's interesting to me that Rodrigo is a swiftie to the point of needing to credit her on her songs. As I type this I realize "Good 4 U" is basically her "Forever and Always" (though no way was her teenage ex as buzzworthy as Joe Jonas). Swift was writing at 18 a song like "Fifteen" which i am impressed to this day that an 18 year old wrote that. Like artists I like that are my age, who I love, don't have that level of dimension created on "Fifteen". Like I heard a song by someone my age where I was like "how the fuck do they write something with that much perception" and turns out its a cover by someone in their 40s. And that isn't the wisdom level Swift was at with "Fifteen", or even close to it, but still impressive an 18 year old wrote it. That's what has set Swift apart from like Rodrigo and others for me. It's what made Lorde so fascinating when she debuted at 16 (and if I'm joining the Solar Power crowd, I'd say the album is kind of about her recognizing "maybe I'm not as wise as people think, and that is okay"). Rodrigo is definitely a smart songwriter but its more in the spot of "smartass" than wise. Which is still good but I'd like to see depth I just honestly don't see coming from someone on a Disney show.
DeleteNever been into Billie Eilish much either, and yeah I heard a song or two of the new one and thought "yeah she has talent" but wasn't in love with it or anything.
Anyways be on the look out for my upcoming debut EP... Max Metyko and Sabrii...