Quick Hits, Vol. 82 (Gwen Stefani, The 1975, Ghost B.C., Yo Gotti)

Woohoo!  Over 10,000 views of the blog!  I'll be retiring soon to join the ranks of the big time blogger guys who are super popular and never even have to work anymore because they just get paid! Y'all are the best.

Before I get to album reviews, I have to provide you with this, a mix of metal and J-Pop that is absolutely required to make you smile.

That video has 45 MILLION views on YouTube.  The world is kind of awesome and hilarious.  Like a metal video game soundtrack.  I may need to review a whole album.

Gwen Stefani - This is What the Truth Feels Like.  I have a confession to make, and that is that I very much enjoyed Love Angel Music Baby from about a decade ago, even though it ended up being a long, drawn out ad for Stefani's new clothing line.  But I absolutely jammed "Hollaback Girl," "Harajuku Girls," and "Bubble Pop Electric" despite the lack of substance or cool in those tunes.  I had that album on my laptop in school and would jam it while I edited law review articles.  My taste in music is IMPECCABLE!
Anyway, while this is not LAMB, it still has that pop/ska/rap/vamp-y singing thing going on just like that album.  Other than a new set of lyrics that concentrates pretty hard on Stefani's break-up and then more recent hook-up, these tunes sound pretty familiar in sound.  As expected, the hit song is "Made Me Like You," since that was the song that had the live video rendition/Target commercial air during the Grammy's this year.

Pretty catchy, only slightly annoyingly breathy.  The best part of the video is when she is roller skating and eats it.  But the content of the song is annoying, especially when she pauses the just THANK GAWD that she found you.  I get it, you're happy now.  Gavin was apparently a chump who couldn't croon bro country platitudes.  But that moment makes me cringe.  And there are plenty of other annoying things on here - super breathy stuff (see "Me Without You") and less breathy but still annoying ("Red Flag" and "Naughty") on this album.  I don't feel like she recaptured the magic of LAMB, and I can't get on board with this album.  I'll let it go.

The 1975 - I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it.  If that album title doesn't make you want to vomit, then the music most definitely will.  Spotify calls these guys alt-rock, but that is entirely and unequivocally not true.  This is bad 80's electronic pop.  Falsettos and synths and sax.  Here is the top song right now on Spotify, "The Sound," with 31 million listens.

It isn't awful, but it is so very derivative of a bunch of music we heard back in the 80's - music that I don't care to go back and listen to again. Sounds like some spare band who had one popular song because it was on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack.  Or a Rick Astley b-side.  Gag me.

Ghost B.C. - Meliora.  This band won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance this year, so I threw this album into the new music playlist to check it out.  First, check out the award footage from the ceremony:

A) Nice job staying in full character and masks despite your moment in the sun; B) how weird, that the Grammys played some strange muzak stuff as the band took the stage instead of, you know, actually playing the winning track?; C) what is up with the redneck guy behind them?  Was that the presenter for the award?  Why do other awards get hot chicks in slinky dresses and the metal award gets Bocephus?; and D) that speech is awesome, like he was either extremely stoned or had no clue what to say other than "GO PARTY!"

As for the actual tunes, this is pretty darn good music.  It is definitely heavy, but it never veers down into the shrieking, shredding morass that some metal panders to.  In fact, I'm not sure I'd even say this is metal, more like hard rock or classic rock.  And more importantly, that lead singer really keeps a nice harmony and never gets screamy.  Pretty cool stuff.  The Grammy winning track, and by far their most-listened to track on this album, is "Cirice."

Kind of funny video, although I wish the girl could have lit people on fire or something instead of just making them scared and jiggly.  Bring fiery death or go home, eight year old.

I wanted to see if they were a Christian metal band after my first listen, which is funny now, since the references I was hearing are not about God, but about Satan.  They are very tongue in cheek about their worship of the dark lord.  In trying to research the band though, it is very odd that some publications just call them Ghost, while others call them Ghost B.C. Sounds like it was a copyright or trademark thing.  Further, apparently, no one actually knows the identities of the band members, it is just the lead singer (named Papa Emeritus) and the other dudes in masks known as the Nameless Ghouls.  They also apparently fire Papa Emeritus after each album and name a new one for the new album?  This seems complicated.  I just spent way too long in that rabbit hole.  But notwithstanding all that, they are pretty darn good at harmonies, and their English (for a Swedish band) is damn solid. Cool tunes.

Yo Gotti - The Art of Hustle.  Yo Gotti is yet another of the dirty South guys who popped up in the 90's, and I have trouble recalling which one he is compared to Jeezy or Thug or Young or Yung or Jizzy. This disc has some pretty tight beats, check "Bible," even if the lyrics are typical of the current rap state. Well, I say that, but I kind of like: "Hand on my gun, hand on my bible, praying to my gun it be my bible," but then that tune devolves into the usual tropes of banging hoes and selling dope.  I'll also admit that Lil Wayne made me smile on that track when he asks "show me where the Bible say though shall not ball."  I also dig the classic sound of "Art of the Hustle."  The top track, by far, on this album is "Down in the DM" with over 41 million streams.

Actually kind of a good song - "the DM" is the direct message on social media, and the video is pretty funny as well.  And it definitely helped to watch that video, because the version of this song available on Spotify is clean, meaning that a word or two is missing in each line.  I had fully planned to pan this album after the first listen, but the more time I give it, the more I feel like I enjoy it anyway.