TC Superstar

One Liner: Synth dance party collective

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, 80's synth wave dance pop
Home: Austin!

Poster Position: 21
Weekend One

Sunday at 2:15pm on the Tito's Stage.

Thoughts:  The bio from their record label pretty much sums up the whole thing:

"TC Superstar is the solo project of Austin based songwriter Connor McCampbell. He wrote a collection of synth wave songs over the summer of 2017 and released TC Superstar's first album, Masc, in September 2017 through Austin based label PorchFire Records. Fans and critics have described TC Superstar as "bloopy 80s revivalist synth pop" with "congested vocals" and "pretty good beats." McCampbell's influences include Talking Heads, Chairlift, Arthur Russel, and Alex Cameron."

I'm curious which of those quotes is from a critic and which is from a fan. Not sure I can tell the difference.  Another article about the band calls it a synth pop collective made up of UT graduates, so maybe it isn't quite as "solo project" as the label thinks?  I dunno.  I just know that when he sang "toyota corrola superstar" I grinned despite myself.  The group has eight members, and four of those are dancers.  And not just like a girl dancing off to the side to hype up the crowd, they are like classically trained legit dancers who majored in dance.

Two albums on Spotify - 2017's Masc and 2019's R&D, as well as a handful of singles in 2021.  They all hew to the same bouncy pop synth attack.  The top track is "Into You," from the 2019 album.  930k streams.

Trying to place what the song reminds me of from the 80's.  It's kind of plodding.  The Human League came on the radio this morning, which made me think of the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.  That was such a great game - and the radio stations you could get in the cars was a big draw of the game for me - made it so much more immersive and interesting.  So, while my brain is like "compare this to the Human League" I don't think that is correct.

"Toyota Corolla" is the song that contains the name drop.  Sounds like it is a song about a sad person with a sad job who nonetheless digs his sweet Toyota Corolla that he gets to drive home in.

And for the second tune, I'll give you the most recent single.  Just came out, so less than 10k streams, but definitely keeps with the same vibe of goofy dance music heavy on the synth and a video full of dancing action.

I like the sentiment - blue light is blowing me up all night is definitely a thematic issue in my household.  The song is fine - all of these songs are fine, I feel like we left the 80's synth pop wave behind for a reason though.  But, catchy dance music is much more welcome to my brain than any more pop stars singing about empowerment though.