Six months ago, before any of this coronavirus mess started, I was working on an article about the Reddit-dubbed ‘most mysterious song on the internet.’ I checked the forums basically every day, waiting for new updates about the song’s potential origins. I even thought I had a lead of my own, but they never responded. However, one red herring stood out to me: an Irish new wave band called Hey Paulette. Ever since this discovery, I’ve been plugging Hey Paulette on every social media I have, recommending them to all of my friends, and constantly trying to find out more about them.
Hey Paulette broke up in 1991, for starters. They’re on Discogs and a million Irish music archive sites from the proto-internet that existed around that time, but there aren’t really any articles on them past 2009. There’s only one video of them on YouTube, an old performance of “my half of the pillow” on a talk show. Hey Paulette’s music is truly some of the cheeriest new wave stuff out there, with optimistic lyrics about being alive, in love, and appreciating the little things, like a day off or streets lined with trees. These lyrics are paired with bright, jangly guitar riffs that play around and intertwine with each other. Cheery, jangly, wonderful: all words used to describe Hey Paulette. Some of the information about the band is blurred, though: while I know the band was made up of Eamonn Davis, Derrick Dalton, and Colm Fitzpatrick, I can’t seem to figure out exactly who did what in the band. Every source says something different, so I guess I should find the band members themselves and ask, but that’s an article for another time. In addition, they had a couple drummers over the years who have pretty spotty information on the archive sites. I want to give credit where it’s due, so I’ll say that at different points in time, Darren Nolan and Stan Erraught were both drummers for Hey Paulette. Band roles aside, no matter who did what in Hey Paulette, they’re talented. Their one-off album, Long Ball Into Nowhere, is on Spotify, iTunes, and a bunch of other places where you can find music, but it barely cracks 300 listens. Like everything I cover on BLIP, I see something special in what Hey Paulette made for us to listen to. So, here are my top five tracks from Hey Paulette:
Anyway, please check out Hey Paulette. Some of the greatest music is lost in blips that we often don’t hear about. I really hope this little article could do them justice, because ever since I discovered them on that fateful day in my school’s art library, I’ve been utterly obsessed. And, during these times of chaos and the exact opposite of chaos, I don’t think there’s anything better to do than to reminisce on the Dublin new wave scene. Be safe, stay inside, and listen to Hey Paulette!
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Hi everyone! I wrote this essay a while ago and it recently was an honorable mention in the New York Times 2019-2020 Personal Essay Contest! I wrote it 90% in real time on the notes app on my phone. If inspiration strikes you, just start writing! Enjoy! The New York subway system is… disgusting. It’s hot, and sweaty, and smells like trash and body odor. Most of the time. But when you’re just as sweaty and disgusting as the subway, it doesn’t matter. You start to move in time with the subway: your body sways with the curves of the tracks as you begin to lose your sense of reality. My friends and I are headed to a trendy new noodle restaurant in Union Square. Aidan says to take the six train, so we wait.
The doors of the subway car open. It’s not too crowded today, being that it’s a Wednesday, after all. As I step inside the car, I’m hit with a blast of warm, sticky air. It’s mid-August on the six. The ninety degrees outside feels like a walk in freezer. My friends and I assume our seats towards the back of the car. A Goldman-Sachs millionaire sits beside a bodega employee just trying to get by. An up-and-coming rapper performs a hit single on the ride from Union Square to Houston Street as the frontwoman of an underground grunge band rolls her eyes and checks her texts. She has a gig tonight. She’s opening for a band she swears sounds just like the Strokes. An ad for the latest installment of the Minions movie flits by. The film critic next to me sighs. Why is this garbage what’s being promoted? A Brooklyn socialite sits beside a mother of five from the Lower East Side. The socialite gives the staring children a side-eye. The elderly woman across from them has a tiny dog in her purse. Oh my god, there’s a tiny dog in her purse. As soon as I sit down on those hard, orange seats (please tell me I’m not sitting in anything), reality begins to dissolve around me. The blue lights hypnotize me as they blitz by. The conversations going on around me buzz through my head. Really? Your ex-boyfriend’s sister’s roommate was fired from her job at the animal shelter? The hipster across from me gives me an odd look. A Mariachi band gets on at Canal Street. DIIV blasts in my earbuds. My friend Sophia starts reading the one dollar story she bought at one of those trendy Manhattan marketplaces. I appreciate her presence, but I’m completely tuned out. What is there to think about today? The little girl across the aisle stares in awe at my big, pink sunglasses as her parents fight next to her. Have I missed my stop? I fantasize of other subways in other countries. Maybe I’ll get to ride them someday, too. Was that Union Square? No, I don’t think that was Union Square. Sophia keeps reading her story. I catch something about the protagonist’s buddy falling off a skateboard and breaking three of his limbs. Who even writes this stuff? Why did I spent fifteen dollars on a tiny ring in that same trendy marketplace? That purchase better be worth it. My mind wanders to that Instagram post I saw this morning. Did he have to post that? Why couldn’t I be there, too? Am I immature? The train stops. NYU. Am I going to go to a good college? Or maybe not some prestigious institution, but the college that’s right for me, as they all say. I think we missed Union Square. My friends don’t seem worried, though. Aidan says he knows his way around well enough, so I decide to trust him. Much like the subway, the thoughts and feelings I have while sitting on those plastic seats or swaying back and forth in the middle of the car are invisible until they are acknowledged. Until you recognize that those feelings are there, they’re buried, discreetly chugging along under the surface, lurking under the Hudson River, buried somewhere under Staten Island. Exiting the subway is like re-entering reality after being in a dream -- it always feels like you’ve learned something, or had some big revelation. It’s kind of like when you leave a movie theater and suddenly it’s light outside and you know some secret that the rest of the world is oblivious to. The subway leaves you with a sense of knowing where you’re going, but at the same time, realizing that there are so many places that you’re not going, and never will be. My body returns so me as I step into the overworld of New York City. My friend Alli says something about a rat running by next to us. I didn’t notice the rat, but I pretend to know exactly what it looks like and where it came from. We keep walking. You can’t even hear the subway up here. If there weren’t any signs, chances are it would be completely invisible. I pause for a moment as I pass the Metronome in Union Square, not sure exactly where I’m headed. Although I was born in 2002, the 2010s were the first real decade of my life. I came of consciousness under drastically changing technology, watching the library at my school become a computer lab, and then watching the computer lab turn into a cart of laptops. I saw the rise and fall of digital cameras. I’ve been through two of the most pivotal presidential cycles in American history. I’ve watched memes and trends rise and fall. The most interesting aspect of the past ten years, though, has been the pop-cultural shifts. For example, songs on the radio in the early 2010s, like all of those borderline-pop-punky-indie-poppy songs such as *checks smudged writing on palm* “We are Young” by Fun, “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic, and that one song about Khloe Kardashian wouldn’t get a moment of radio play on today’s radio. And like I’ve said time and time again, Katy Perry stopped being relevant the moment it stopped being cool to name-drop Radiohead.
The media-emergent internet ruled the charts in the latter half of the 2010s. Stars from Shawn Mendes to Lil Nas X came into the collective pop culture consciousness through short-form video sites -- Vine and TikTok respectively. Brockhampton became a thing through forums. The Goth Boy Clique became a thing via Soundcloud. Cardi B became a thing due to her charismatic Instagram livestreams. Lizzo became a thing, once again due to the viral nature of short-form video. Pop stars were appearing basically out of nowhere -- and there wasn’t a record deal in sight. There didn’t need to be. Tierra Whack and Doja Cat went viral off music videos. Mason Ramsey yodeled at Coachella just months after a shitpost of him singing to a crowd of confused onlookers at Walmart went viral. The internet is beautiful, and it’s changing how media is produced. Think about the last time you watched an artist premiere on a late night show. I’m not an avid TV-watcher, but I’m pretty sure those things are all for dad-rock bands like The Strokes and Weezer. The YouTube algorithm is putting artists out there, and teenagers on TikTok and Instagram are telling the world which artists they want. Anyway, things are changing. And this article is just a glimpse into how they’ve changed for me over the past decade... or at least seven-ish years of it. “We about to boogie, turn it up.” If you know me, you’ve heard these words. Often used as a call and response, with me shouting ‘we about to boogie’ and the audience responding with ‘turn it up,’ these lyrics have shaped my social interactions over the past almost two years. Additionally, instead of saying something that makes sense when faced with a challenge, sometimes I’ll just utter ‘we’re about to boogie’ and dive in head-on. These lyrics are from “Friday Night,” a hit song off the quintessential The Whole Theory, by none other than Bobby. The year was 2018. Sophia, our momager and best friend, had just gotten an Amazon Alexa. We were immediately intrigued by its ability to find obscure songs, and began throwing random names at it until we found something good. This method is actually how we came across Jonathan, our first official interviewees, in December of 2017. Anyway, Sophia and I deliberated, collaborated, and group-thought, and eventually settled on telling Alexa to play songs by Bobby. And Alexa delivered. “Friday Night”, in Sophia’s words, “is uncomfortable” and “urges the listener to turn it off immediately.” (Orem 1) Another friend, upon listening to “Friday Night,” said she felt like she was “listening to two songs playing on top of each other” and asked me if she was dissociating. “Friday Night” is an ode to parties -- bumping and grinding, drinking fourteens (did he mean forties?), smelling that perfume. Bobby proudly proclaims that the weekend is “going to be a good one.” It’s intriguing, to say the least. Funny enough to keep on for the first 45 seconds and then skip. And while Sophia’s Bobby Essay (2018) is incredibly insightful, it leaves out two important questions -- What is ‘the whole theory?’ And who, exactly, is Bobby? I’m your host, Liah A, and this is my deep dive into Bobby. PART 1: The Whole Theory The Whole Theory is an album about nights out. Bobby, along with his bandmates Quiche, Jerry Soto, and David Seape, explore themes of love, lust, partying, and living life to the fullest. Although little information can be found on this album, it has its own Wikipedia page, and was reportedly supposed to feature Ice Cube. Frustratingly enough, the aforementioned Wikipedia page contains no reference articles. However, it does contain a link to the personal Wikipedia page of Bobby. Either Bobby is very media-literate, despite having no media presence, or he has one lonely fan just trying to show the world what Bobby is all about. Two Amazon reviews of The Whole Theory call Bobby “a bad singer, keyboardist, and cartoonist” and “not unique.” The other one tells Bobby to “stick with the [sic] ballots.” For the purposes of this article, we are assuming the reviewer meant to say ‘ballads.’ It’s not looking good for Bobby. His Amazon reviewers are trash-talking him. His Wikipedia page for The Whole Theory is basically a dead end. If you look up DaFont Records, the label that released The Whole Theory, Bobby is the only result that comes up. We must continue the search for Bobby by examining The Whole Theory itself. Bobby has other releases, as listed on his Wikipedia page. However, The Whole Theory is the most essential to this quest, being that it is the most well-known of Bobby’s records. The Whole Theory gives us insights into Bobby’s mental landscape, as well as his relationships with his bandmates. The one question that the album fails to answer, however, is its own title. What is the whole theory? The album can barely be seen as theoretical or philosophical at all -- it’s all about having a good time. The only illusion or conspiracy or moral dilemma is found in the ambiguity of the album cover itself. Bobby, or who we presume to be Bobby, is posed in front of an object that is either an elephant nose or a microphone. It’s hard to tell which, though, considering the block-lettering of the album’s title covers most of the image. Sophia and Alli both consider the object to be an elephant nose, however, Bobby being a singer, I choose to believe that it is a microphone. The Whole Theory opens with an interlude. This is uncommon. It’s a bold creative decision, for sure. On “Crazy (Interlude),” Bobby beckons us into the album by repeatedly asking “where you at, baby?” The rest of the album follows the same theme -- the environment of one crazy weekend out. It’s been done before. I could probably name about ten artists who have written albums over the span of a night or a weekend, telling the events to the audience through songs. Bloc Party did it excellently on A Weekend in the City. Metronomy did it fantastically on Nights Out. Bobby, on The Whole Theory, did not achieve any of the same praise and energy that the above artists did. The popularity bars next to the songs on Spotify, showing how many times the songs have been listened to, are all blank. Bobby is a mere speck of dust in the musical landscape. And this just makes him, and his music career, all the more intriguing. PART 2: Bobby Now that we’ve investigated The Whole Theory, it’s time to take a look at the legend himself: Bobby. According to his Wikipedia page, Bobby’s full name is Robert C “Bobby” Miller. He was born in Chicago in 1966, making him approximately 53 years old. Googling “Bobby Miller musician” leads us to a few interesting sources -- one being a Prince cover band called The Purple Madness. Upon finding this source, I freaked out. Could this be the Bobby Miller? Alli and Sophia both shut me down. However, we might just have a lead. Upon investigating this Bobby Miller, I quickly found that he is not our guy. This Bobby Miller was born in Florida and has lived there ever since. Not our guy. After scrolling through exactly two pages of Google, I found it: a photo of Bobby. Our Bobby. Not the Prince impersonator Bobby. Bobby looks cheerful, leaning against a railing on a staircase on a sunny day outside a building in what I assume is Chicago. This is our guy: happy and carefree, just being Bobby. Bobby has an AllMusic biography. It was written by Jason Birchmeier. This, my friends, is a lead. Jason Birchmeier is a real person with a relatively uncommon name. If we want information on Bobby, this is our man. Now, Birchmeier isn’t a music reviewer anymore. I don’t want to give any more details on this guy out of respect for his privacy, but he’s a businessman, and a successful one at that. So, I did what any good investigative journalist would do. I contacted him. And now we wait. Birchmeier… never responded. So, it was time to try to find Bobby’s bandmates. Jerry Soto passed away in 2005. Quiche would be incredibly hard to find, so I’m not even going to try. That leaves us with David Seape. David Seape turned out to be a dead end, too: the only content that came up about him was directly related to Bobby. Bobby’s Wikipedia. Birchmeier’s AllMusic review. A bunch of weird information sites in different languages: German, French, Turkish, Mandarin. At this point, I felt like I was going in circles. My hands were sweaty. This was all a bit too eerie: why was there no information on any of these people? Who is Bobby? Where is Bobby? After a moment of thought, I went back to the first page of Google and found a LinkedIn profile under the name “BMillerMusicGroup” based out of Chicago. So, I made a LinkedIn page. Don’t follow it. I thought I had done it. I thought I had it all worked out. It turns out, you need LinkedIn Premium to message someone, and as dedicated as I am to finding Bobby, I’m not paying for that. In desperation, I returned to Bobby’s Wikipedia. Lyon and Healy’s School of Music does not exist. Although Lyon and Healy is based out of Chicago, it’s not a music school at all: it’s an instrument manufacturer. Intercept Records, like Dafont records, does not exist, and never did. Chi-Town Ballin’ seems to have never existed as well. Wanda Rash, who Bobby drummed for, passed away in 2014. Marshall Jones of the Ohio Players, Bobby’s greatest influence, passed away in 2016. Ralph Middlebrooks of the Ohio Players passed away in 1997. Googling Bobby collaborator Terry World leads you to an Amazon link for “The Big Butt Book.” It’s all lies and quite literal dead ends. What the hell is going on? And then, I found it. A Lead. S. Torriano Berry. Berry is a filmmaker and a professor at Howard University. He has a relatively active Facebook page. Knowing the elusive, ambiguous nature of the claims on Bobby’s Wikipedia, I take into account that Bobby may never collaborated with Berry at all. Besides, I feel a bit uncomfortable Facebook messaging someone to get information on a long-ago possible collaborator who may not even exist. I looked up The Enbalmer, the S. Torriano Berry horror film Bobby reportedly recorded the music for. He’s not in the credits. The music in the film is accredited to Berry himself. S. Torriano Berry is yet another dead end. I am moments away from concluding that Bobby does not exist, and is merely a figment of our collective imaginations. Conclusion When I started writing this article, I hoped to be a small-scale Shane Dawson with just a 2013 MacBook Air, a Spotify account, and an internet connection. I wanted to find Bobby, interview him, show the world what he’s made of. I wanted to take this blip in the history of music and humanize him, make him relatable, find out what he’s doing today, get some insight on his music. However, all I found were dead ends, showing that a blip in the radar is sometimes just that: a blip in the radar. Bobby will forever be an enigma. The only known information about Bobby is what I have laid out for you in this article. All of the other Bobbys under the Spotify name ‘Bobby’ are probably just the same. Thank you for reading this article. It’s the pilot episode of a series on lost artists like Bobby. Through BLIP, I hope to shine light on artists who, at first glance, appear to be simply specks of dust lost to the grand scheme of the music world. Please listen to Bobby. Or don’t. It’s not like you’re really missing anything. The year was 2013. Sixth grade was just around the corner, and as I sat on the train to Lincoln Financial Field to watch the Eagles game from some ~*fancy box seats*~ owned by a friend of my dad, the cell signal on my shiny(ish) new(ish) iPhone 5 suddenly disappeared. Oh no. My Cody Simpson turned off. (No, seriously, I was listening to Cody Simpson. That’s how uncultured I was in regards to music. Although, hey, I did have pretty brown eyes.) I quickly opened my abandoned iTunes account and clicked on the first thing that looked familiar -- Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. From there, I became entranced by Instant Crush, enraptured by Doin' It Right, and enchanted by Give Life Back To Music. Daft Punk was the first band to ever give me that feeling of truly loving a song, and on that day, I declared them my favorite band. I was… very into Daft Punk. So into them that I was made fun of, a lot, in middle school. My friends said their robot act was weird, my mom wouldn’t let me buy their (very overpriced) merch, and the librarian at school constantly told me off for printing too many pictures of them for my wall and using up all of the ink in the printer. I seriously had a wall of Daft Punk photos in my bedroom for a year. That was bad; I’ll admit it. But hey, you only have one first favorite band, and Daft Punk was mine. I didn’t understand Daft Punk at the age of eleven. I’d heard everyone online referring to them as musical geniuses, pioneers, and legends, but I never understood their musical significance. I treated them just like any other band one would like in middle school, say a boy band or a quirky indie band. Luckily, there was a community online that did the same. Every day, I checked for news of a new Alive tour on my favorite Daft Punk Instagram accounts and laughed at the same recycled cartoon robot memes every single day. It was just like any other band, and any other fandom,but it felt personal. EDM opened me up to a world beyond what was on the radio. Sure, I’d occasionally hear a Skrillex or Avicii song on Hits 1 (it was 2013, after all), but most of what I listened to was relatively underground. Along with Daft Punk and other radio-friendly artists, I listened to a lot of Deadmau5, Justice, and Soulwax remixes of any song you’d care to name. Pandora was my best friend, and I was constantly discovering new artists. Through the French house scene I was unknowingly diving into, Ed Banger Records took Pandora’s place as my best friend, and I started listening to Cassius, Breakbot, Kavinsky, and a bunch of other artists I’ve definitely forgotten by now. For the entirety of sixth grade, everyone thought I was crazy. I constantly tried to explain that they just weren’t getting the magic of Daft Punk’s robot thing, and tearfully convinced my mother not to read the TMZ article which showed Daft Punk without their helmets on. She read it anyway. As I raved about just how good the new Kavinsky single was, I was met with a bunch of confused looks, and when I asked how *no one* at my lunch table had heard Feeling For You by Cassius, I had a feeling they were thinking of ‘voting me off the island.’ Things were pretty bad. That was, until my friend’s hot cousin from France came for the week and I was the only person he talked too because he liked Daft Punk too. All of the girls swooned over him but he just wanted to talk to me about his custom helmet. That was pretty sweet. EDM was suddenly cool because some cute boy from France said it was. Somehow, during the summer between sixth and seventh grade, I was caught in a whirlwind of indie rock and forgot about the EDM and French house artists I had grown to love over the past year. I distinctly remember walking laps around the local pool and telling my friend that I just “didn’t like Daft Punk anymore” and that everything they did was just to scam their fans. "The whole robot thing is a gimmick," I sighed, giving in to what everyone told me. With that, I deleted all of their music from my iTunes library and moved on. … … For two years. And then, I discovered Metronomy. Metronomy brought me back to EDM in the best way possible. Their style combined the indie rock music I knew and loved with the now unfamiliar and refreshing wonky synths of French house and dance music. After listening to their entire discography on repeat every single day of my sophomore year of high school, my Spotify daily mixes finally updated and I was back in the EDM business. Oh yeah. It was always a pleasant surprise to rediscover an artist I vaguely remembered from my days shuffling through Pandora. Throughout my junior year of high school, I rediscovered artists like LCD Soundsystem, The Whitest Boy Alive, and Miike Snow, and felt waves of nostalgia hit me like the bumps of the road as I rested my head against the bus window in sixth grade, all those years ago. One fateful day in mid-winter, I redownloaded Daft Punk’s entire discography, opened up an old Ed Banger playlist, and scrolled through EDM memes for old times' sake. Although it definitely wasn’t perfect, my EDM phase opened my eyes to the wonderful world of underground music and taught me the importance of being just a little bit wonky and off center. Through EDM, I learned to be myself and like what I liked, even if no one understood it. And thanks to those affectionately-dubbed robots and their friends, I found my place in the music world. PS - Here's a photo of my infamous Daft Punk wall: This article is dedicated to Philippe Zdar and Avicii. Thank you for making my middle school experience so awesome and contributing so much to the electronic music scene. We miss you here on Earth.
I have always been imaginative. As a kid I used to write songs about the day ahead as soon as I woke up that morning. Of course, I was no lyrical genius. These songs usually ended up as folky little ditties about “witches and spiders” on Halloween to “you like soccer, and I like karate, and that’s ok” on a day where I had to confront a friend about our differences. Ok, that last one might have been a bit Weezer-y. Maybe I should do something with that. Anyway, as I became a more serious music listener, I realized that these lyrics didn’t fit into any of the songs I heard on the radio or on my iTunes account. To me, there songs weren’t songs, as they didn’t fit what I thought the definition of what a song was.
Obviously, my view shifted quite a bit, but I still felt a bit discombobulated about if there was a genre that defined songs with fun instrumentals and unorthodox lyrics. When I discovered (more like defined) whimsy rock, via a TikTok meme, as all good things are discovered, I was blown away. Wait, this is a thing? I’m not weird after all? Anyway, after googling Tally Hall, the band from the TikTok meme, I found out that they fell under the category of what I like to call whimsy rock: a genre defined by light music paired with strange, nonsensical, or overly sweet lyrics. Oh yeah. This was immediately something I was interested in. Tally Hall wasn’t my introduction to whimsy rock in the slightest. They just helped the genre gain its name through their self-definition of “wonky rock,” also known as “fabloo.” Bands I’d already been listening to for years, like Cake and OK Go, fall under that same category. I mean, you haven’t heard whimsy rock until you’ve heard Cake, which you probably have. Take Stickshifts and Safetybelts for example. Fun, light instrumentals? Check. Strange but sweet lyrics? Check. And regarding OK Go, listen to Back From Kathmandu. Next up are new favorites like the Decemberists and Beirut. If there’s any second example of a perfect whimsy rock act, it’s the Decemberists. Take Calamity Song for example. Fun, light instrumentals? Check. Strange but sweet lyrics? Check. Of course it has strange lyrics, as it’s about an apocalyptic end to society as we know it. Perfect. Beirut is a bit less whimsical, but their music still makes me feel like I’m living in the Balkans during the war of independence from the Ottoman Empire, so… also perfect. Although their lyrics may be a bit too serious at times, their instrumentals fit perfectly into my self-defined vision of whimsy rock. Other artists whose songs I’ve curated as fitting the definition of whimsy rock include: Neutral Milk Hotel, the Shins, Fleet Foxes, Sufjan Stevens, and the Flaming Lips. With time and listening efforts, I’m sure the list might expand quite a bit. Yeah, I’m making this a thing. You can check out my official whimsy rock playlist here. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you guys in the next article! PS - I’ll be on Alli’s radio show on Maker Park Radio this Saturday from 2 PM to 4 PM EDT. Tune in if you have a few minutes to spare on Saturday! Late on Saturday night, as I sat fixing my laptop after it decided to shut down and use up all of its storage on GarageBand sounds, I saw a mysterious, but intriguing, headline gracing the screen of my phone as I scrolled through social media.
"Listen To Elon Musk's Ode To Harambe," it read. "Huh," I said, as I clicked that link faster than anything has ever been clicked in the history of clicking. I still love Harambe, anyway, so why not hear another great song about him? It was as if I hadn't spent the entire summer of 2016 listening to Harambe tribute songs and looking at Harambe memes and making Harambe memes. Honestly, going back to that silly, crazy time in internet history was good enough for me. But let me tell you, this song delivered. I soon found the link to the track, which was released by a mysterious label called 'Emo G Records' and now has over two million listens on SoundCloud. I hate to say it, but I was sincerely impressed. Yes, this song sounds like something my fifteen year old brother could have made in two hours on his laptop, but the upbeat, tropical sounds fueled the relaxed energy of the track and made it a light, easy listen for the long Apple Support chat ahead of me. It's hard to tell who is singing, considering the heavy usage of Autotune throughout the track, but I will assume it's Elon Musk, ex-boyfriend of Grimes, ex-CEO of Tesla, and one-time host of a YouTube series called Meme Review, because that's who I deeply, truly, want it to be. Someone please explain to me why I just had major deja vu writing that sentence. Someone else please explain to me why I have spent so much time researching the credentials of Elon Musk (who was once kicked down a flight of stairs in grade school, has a brother named Kimbal, founded PayPal, and sells flamethrowers, apparently). Musk's melodic vocals transformed the track into one of the most beautiful pieces of music that has ever been heard on Earth. The lyrics "on his way to heaven, amen, amen" stood out as a lyrical masterpiece of the 21st century. This song will truly stand the test of time as one of the greatest pieces of music from the still-young 21st century. Move out of the way, Mozart, because there's a new king of music, and his name is Elon Musk. PS - April fool's! ;) The Colonies are the future of American indie rock music. Seriously. You don't want to miss them.Do you like bands like Real Estate and the Strokes? Would you like some dreamy Washington DC beach rock to propel you through the next few months until it’s finally summer? Do you want to support longtime twicollaborators? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Bound To Be Something Good by the Colonies is the album for you. With its eclectic guitar melodies by guitarist Dylan Trupiano, beachy basslines by bassist Jordan Mullaney, fun, funky beats by drummer Joey Mamlin, and strong, heartfelt vocals by frontman Pete Stevens, this album is perfect for a listen by the Atlantic Ocean or any other body of water on a cool evening in the early summer. The two singles from this album, Bound to be Something Good and Luck (featured on Spotify's Modern Rock playlist!) will leave you feeling energized like you just spent the day at the beach or wandering around Washington DC on a warm, sunny day. The third album by the George Washington University seniors is a perfect quick listen that will be memorable throughout your music listening experiences. And like I said, the Colonies are the future of American indie rock. You'd better listen to them.
Interpol. Madison Square Garden. A frigid February 16th, 2019. Nothing could have prepared me for this concert. Ever.
As we emerged from the subway and faced the front door of Madison Square Garden, it hit me. We were seeing Interpol. The giant LED sign lit up with an oddly dystopian advertisement. We were seeing Interpol. Instead of searching for a place where we could eat dinner, we went straight into the Pennsy Food Hall and enjoyed some pre-gig udon soup. We also played an unhealthy amount of Head’s Up and knew exactly four of the topics per game. Twilight Collective may make a great trivia team, but never invite us to play Head’s Up. We’re that bad. After wandering through the Adam Levine collection in K-Mart (which was, in fact, extremely bland and boring) to kill some time, we arrived back at the Garden, ready to enter. Unfortunately, there was a Sesame Street performance going on, and we were left to wait with the other Interpol fans until it was over, right next to the walled-off pile of strollers. During this time, we airdropped memes to people named Ian and Officer Nasty and worked our hardest to promote the blog. When we were finally let in, we watched as the seats filled with middle aged couples, groups of people in their late 20s, and a few sets of teenagers like us. Let me tell you, the crowd at an Interpol concert in 2019 is a strange one. After waiting for about a half hour, Snail Mail came onstage and gave us a short but sweet set with rainbow lighting and almost-southern charm (they’re from Baltimore!). After that, Car Seat Headrest came on. It was a wild cowbell-infused dance party complete with Will Toledo throwing carrots (yes, carrots) into the crowd. We were the second group of people to get up and start dancing along, after a cute couple a few rows ahead of us who left immediately after CSH’s set. Then, finally, following hours of excitement, Interpol graced the stage of Madison Square Garden. Interpol had comforted me through my teenage sadness, and now they were right in front of me, forcing me to confront my past emotions. With every new song was a new memory, from watching the Paul Thomson Say Hello to the Angels tribute with Alli the day we met to dancing to Evil in my kitchen after school to sobbing my eyes out in the back of my mom’s car listening to NYC to sitting on my bed listening to C’mere and desperately wishing that someone would love me. Oh yeah. It was that kind of night. Despite the fact that Interpol had the stage presence of a lukewarm bowl of oatmeal, they still managed to convey the heavy, tense emotion that the crowd was feeling. I must admit, it must be very difficult to put on a good show when the entire audience is reliving a different memory with every song. But in a way, doesn’t that make it better? Doesn’t it make the concert so much better that everyone in that crowd had a personal connection to the songs being played, whether by Interpol themselves or Car Seat Headrest, who had brought in a large portion of the crowd? Anyway, that side-rant aside, the energy of this concert was more like an ominous storm cloud that hung over the stadium until a banger like Say Hello to the Angels or Slow Hands came on. Combined with the fog machines and the primary light colors spilling across the two spinning disco balls, this heavy, electric energy created a connection among everyone standing (or sitting) in the crowd that night. Whether we were two teenage music journalists seeing our favorite band or a young couple seeing their favorite band or a group of friends reliving some 2000s nostalgia, we were seeing Interpol. Every single one of us. Hello, readers of Twilight Collective, wherever in the universe you may be. Today, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Vice's NOISEY department and invite you all to send *literally anything* into the blog for me to review. Let's begin. Un Misil en mi Placard - Soda StereoThis slaps. Does anyone around here remember my rock en Español phase from the beginning of the blog? Yeah. Anyway, this song is so chill and upbeat and even though I'm quite fluent in Spanish I have no idea what the lyrics are about. Thanks for sending this one in! Still Feel - Half•AliveWhat are the chances you'll end up in a band with three members that can dance? I love this song and the music video is so much fun! It reminds me a bit of the K-pop dance routines I see on Instagram all the time. Always Ascending - Franz FerdinandI’ve been meaning to formally review this one. Soon, I promise! I really liked a few songs off this album but honestly I don't think I've ever listened all the way through it. I think I'll try to do that first before reviewing it. A first listen is always quite biased. Minecraft 1.5.2I think I remember this update. 2013, yeah? This was the Minecraft update Sophia and I played on for most of the summer before 6th grade. I miss that time so much. Minecraft is actually such a great game. I loved being creative with my friends and having little online adventures. I also loved pretending I was some rugged explorer in a distant land and exploring caves for weeks in-game, writing in a travel diary on the side. OK, maybe I was a dramatic kid. Anyway, I've tried playing Minecraft recently and way too much has changed for me to be as into it as I was when I played as a kid. Patrick Stewart {As Poop}Art. ZoodlesIcky. Pasta for posers and people who hate themselves. There is no way on EARTH one can make a zucchini taste good, but if you think you've found one, send it to our P.O. box. (Let me know before you send it so I can pick it up before it goes bad.) Arctic Monkeys Albums, Ranked Worst To BestTBH&C AM Humbug Favourite Worst Nightmare Whatever People Say I Am... Suck It & See I don't think I know enough about the Arctic Monkeys to make this list. This CatOMG!!! Who is she??? Cats, In GeneralI love them. So much. I freak out basically every time I see one, even if it's one of the three that live in my house. I Wish It Was Christmas Today - Julian CasablancasThis is one of the best songs I've ever heard. Honestly, it's an optimistic side of Julian Casablancas that we don't get often (hello, Hawaii) and I wish we would see that more frequently in his music. Happy Julian is best Julian! Super Smash Bros UltimateI already knew this game was going to be better than SSB4, just because of Isabelle (who I haven’t unlocked yet, but GIVE ME TIME). As a firm Kirby main, this game does our super tuff pink puff well. I love Masahiro Sakurai so much and he deserves the world. I'm not too into World of Light, but it's basically a Kirby game, so I'm making my way through it. Also, the multiplayer chat feature is so much fun, as someone who enjoys being yelled at in other languages and the constant screaming of "EVERYONE, MICS ON" in English. YouTube Rewind 2018Ok, I just watched this thing, and I only recognized the Try Guys and Will Smith. Honestly, I don’t think YouTube Rewinds are becoming worse as the years go on. Our generation of internet users is growing up, and of course we aren’t going to relate to the Fortnite Battle Bus and the Baby Shark video because they’re just not Original Internet Things (tm) from our time as impressionable kids who could find entertainment easily, just like the kids who appreciate the new YouTube Rewind videos of their time. But that’s just my take! Thanks for reading.I know I've been *extremely slacking* in the solo tab department, but I'm in a battle with school and school is currently winning. Oh well. I hope you enjoyed this post, and I'll see you in my 2018 recap... If I ever get to it!
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About The AuthorLiah is a high school senior who plays guitar and loves the color yellow. She doesn't post much, but when she does, it's awesome. We promise.
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