Evaluation of a selection Popular Albums released from March-May18th 2024
To preface, I apologize for my lack of publication the past two weeks; at the initial time of writing, it was finals week, which took priority. I listen to music whenever I study or work, as I don’t like working in silence. On that note, today’s topic is my opinion on my favorite albums, or notable albums that were released between the publishing date of my previous post and today. One thing to note is that Hinds Hall is a single and not an album, but it was an important release and was included. All albums were listened to on Spotify, but due to links showing up as embeds that use significant bandwidth, I have chosen to not include the Spotify links; I apologize for the inconvenience.
Disclaimer: Some songs mentioned include covers or releases of music that I physically or digitally own. This includes physical ownership of “Black Bird” on The Beatles “White Album” and “Start a Riot” on the “Into The Spiderverse” OST which featured Shaboozey in one of my favorite songs, mentioned in Beyonces section, and “Red Leather” in Metro Boomin’s section, which I had followed and had downloaded months prior to release.
Kacey Musgraves: Deeper Well
This album was relaxed, and that may be a turnoff for some. For example, my mom was bored from listening to this album and told my dad to turn it off; this album is great background music while studying and doing work, but it is not the album to choose if you want something exciting. Musgraves is a country singer, and her voice is excellent throughout, with the songs having simple compositions of only four or fewer leading instruments. My personal favorites are “Anime Eyes”, “Dinner with Friends”, “The Architect”, and “Lonely Millionaire”. Her use of metaphors and symbolism was interesting, and my favorite aspect of her lyrics is the frequent use of parallelism.
Metro Boomin: We Don’t Trust You and WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU
Metro Boomin is an incredible producer, his compositions are extremely well balanced considering he produces rap music, otherwise known to be muddy (pronounced bass). Additionally, ‘Heroes and Villains’ , another album produced by Metro Boomin, is one of my favorite albums in terms of production; I remember listening to ‘Superhero’ for the first time, and being amazed with how well he used a siren as the backing track for the villain section and a softer one for the initial hero section, with them switching places in the second verse, acting as juxtaposition to show the blurring of who was a superhero or villain. I initially listened to it on my closed-back Shure’s which has more bass than that of my open-back Beyerdynamic’s which I regularly use; the sirens were sweeping and menacing sounding on the Shure’s, and eerie on the Beyerdynamic’s.
Now, how did he fare in “We Don’t Trust You”?; I believe he lived up to his name again in both “We don’t trust you” and “WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU”. Some of the most popular songs from these albums were featured as part of the Drake and Kendrick drama, but such premises are irrelevant to this post and future evaluation. The albums were on opposite sides, with “We Don’t Trust You” having ‘bassier’, heavy tracks in “We Don’t Trust You” making it a more exciting album, while the composition was more lyrically focused in “We Still Don’t Trust You”; both have their merits, however “We Still Don’t Trust You” has grown on me to become my favorite of the two through further listening. My favorites from both were their titular tracks; however, “Young Metro” and “Type S**t” were my favorite from “We Don’t Trust You”, and my favorite from “We Still Don’t Trust You” were “Red Leather”, “Show Of Hands”, and “All to Myself”. I was excited for “We Still Don’t Trust You” because I had downloaded “Red Leather” when it was initially leaked as a sample on Sound Cloud months prior to release; additionally, I haven’t seen a ‘sequel’ album in quite some time, or at least one that had this level of hype.
Shakira: Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran
This is the album I listened to the most between these, as I enjoy Shakira’s voice, and this album was fairly varied in composition; some songs had the same tonality as “Dia de Enero”, which is the song that made me follow Shakira. Unfortunately, I can’t say much about this albums lyric as it is in Spanish, and I don’t have enough comprehension to understand the lyrics; however, I don’t think there are any objectively bad song on this album, and I enjoyed listening to the album throughout. On that note, my favorites were “Acrostico- Milan + Sasha”, “Ultima”, and “Tiempo Sin Verte”. I did find a reliable translation of the first song, and it is essentially Shakira singing to her children, her struggles as a mother, and her optimism for them. I found that to be profound, and a detail that elevated this song was that both of her children provide vocals in the song.
As an aside, another time I have seen the artists children providing backing vocals as seamlessly as Shakira’s was in Pink’s “Cover Me in Sunshine”, which featured her daughter Willow as backing vocals. This song made me realize that the alternate main theme song of “The Greatest Showman”, sang by the main characters childhood friend had Willow as the main vocals; “The Greatest Showman’s” soundtrack is still one of my favorite American movie soundtracks.
Beyonce: Cowboy Carter
For this album and Taylor Swift’s, I only listened to them because of their sheer popularity; on that note, I prefer this album to Taylor Swifts (explanation in next section). My favorite tracks on these albums were covers of songs I already enjoyed, notably “Black bird” and “Jolene”, which were originally sung by The Beatles and Dolley Parten respectively. Please see the disclaimer regarding Black Bird and Shaboozey for the next statements; additionally, my physical and digital ownership of albums I own inadvertently make me more interested in albums that cover the songs or albums that I physically own. Refocusing, two songs on “Cowboy Carter” were produced by Shaboozey, who was one of the main vocals on “Start a Riot” from the “Into the Spiderverse” soundtrack, which is my favorite American movie OST of all time; when I found out he was producing two of the songs on this album, I pre-saved it, but was disappointed by the lack of the elements I enjoyed of Shaboozey’s featured and self-produced music that I enjoyed in Beyonce’s album. This trend followed in the original songs on the album, which did not have many memorable points, and I haven’t relistened to them since.
Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets department
I want to pose a disclaimer for this section: I am not a ‘Swifty’ by any means, however I enjoyed her older music, notably “Lover”, “1989”, “Evermore”, and “Folklore”; additionally, I digitally own “Lover” and “1989”, which are currently being stored on my iPod.
I want to preface this album’s review with a summary of my opinion: I was bored, and frankly annoyed with this album. The entire album is composed so similarly, except that of Fortnight, that it seemed like every song was a different version of each other; Fortnight was different in nature as Post Malone worked on some aspects of production, but Jack Antonoff, whom is a frequent producer for Taylor Swift, was the main producer for every song on this album. Some lyrics on this album were frustrating because she claims to be a victim of circumstance, when her situation was not that endearing; one such lyric was “you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylums where they raised me”; she is from suburban Pennsylvania, not the trenches of Detroit, Michigan. Honestly, most of my complaints of this album arise from my pettiness, and generally disliking Taylor Swift due to the nature of her fans, which is unfair in evaluating the music, but considering how hard they pushed the advertisement for this album, I expected more from it. Twitter was immediately flooded with fans crying saying “it’s so sad, she’s in her sad song era”; I don’t think they’ve listened to sad music of the past (blues, jazz, ensembles) as this album felt superficial to me in comparison to well established sad songs/albums. Furthermore, “Florence The Machine” had a feature on “Florida!!!”, who makes music and lyrics that I enjoy, but was disappointed of the lack of emotional depth that her music normally has that was not present on this song.
Macklemore: Hinds Hall
Disclaimer, specification, and motivation: I am including this even though it’s a single as I am an outspoken Palestine advocate, which is the main theme of the song, and Macklemore’s support by contributing 100% of sales of this song to support Palestine leads me to have bias in critical evaluation of the song. However, I found it interesting that he didn’t victim blame the other side like some rappers do in disses of their competition, but rather by singing the facts and history of the conflict, and why you should support it; this approach is one I agree with, and I am thankful he took this approach for a topic as sensitive as the Palestinian genocide in todays socio-political landscape. Due to my bias, it would be dishonest to further evaluate it, as I would be looking at it with rose tinted glasses.
