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Back to the Past: “Nevermind”, by Nirvana

NNirvana! One of the most famous bands of all time, who had a massive popularity during the 90′s and still is very popular, 23 years after their tragic end. The band was active between 1987 and 1994 (year when Kurt Cobain killed himself). The members were Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl (who is now the frontman of Foo Fighters) and Krist Novoselic. They released three albums, but in this post, I will only talk about their second and most popular album: Nevermind (no, I’m not leaving. It’s the name of the album).

Nevermind was released on 24th September 1991 and was Nirvana’s first album with Dave Grohl as their drummer (because the band had a fuck ton of drummers before Grohl. It seemed like they were collecting drummer, actually) and had Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come as You Are, Lithium and In Bloom as singles. Before the release of the album, there were not very good expectation about it. But after releasing the single Smells Like Teens Spirit, which is still today considered one of the best songs of the decade, the album quickly gained attention. In January 1992, Nevermind surpassed Dangerous, by Micheal Jackson, on US Billboard 200 and since then, the album never abandoned the ranking, being now in 170th place, which is really fantastic, considering that the album was released 26 years ago.

Now let’s talk about the album itself: Nevermind has 12 tracks. My favourite is the second one: In Bloom (Even though Territorial Pissings and Lithium are not that far behind). I like the “Grunge Vibe” that In Bloom gives us, even though the lyrics don’t really make a lot of sense (but that happens a lot in Nirvana. Don’t worry, I’ll explain it later). But I think I like In Bloom more because it was the first Nirvana song I heard, alongside with Smells Like Teen Spirit. But I don’t really like Smells Like Teen Spirit as much as I used to. Probably because it is popular, so I got bored of it. It still plays many times on the radio and everyone listens to it. Actually, I usually don’t listen to Nirvana, but sometimes I decide to listen to one of their songs and I get addicted to it for a while. A month or so (like now). Meanwhile, my less favourite song of the album is Come as You Are. I find it very monotone and boring, considering the rest of the album. It doesn’t really fit the album, in my opinion. Polemic opinion? Welp, I created the blog to express my opinion anyway, sorry. BUT I don’t find it bad, just not as good as the rest of the album.

The album had many changes, comparing to the previous album: Bleach (Fact of the day: One of the reasons that Tite Kubo had to give Bleach as the name of his mangá was this album), which was more Noise Rock than actually Grunge. But the change was worth it. They gained more popularity with it (even though I personally prefer the first album).

Let’s talk about music videos now. Well, Nirvana’s music videos are very simple, but creative. If they were made today, I wouldn’t say that though. Why? Well, Nirvana influenced many bands, such as The White Stripes, Evanescence and Socotra. And you can actually see that in their music videos. It’s not a copy (except Socotra, who are trying too hard to be the new Nirvana), but it’s very similar. Another example is the music video of Duality, by Slipknot. It reminds me a bit of Smells Like Teen Spirit‘s music video. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that Nirvana were kind of pioneers when it comes to this kind of music videos. My favourite music video of the album? I'm really undecided between Smells Like Teen Spirit and In Bloom. Even though I got sick of Smells Like Teen Spirit, I can’t deny it is a great song and it has a great music video. I understand why is it so popular, and I understand why was Kurt Cobain so pissed off at the song as well. It got too popular. I can’t imagine how popular it was back in 1991/1992. I bet it played a million times per day on MTV.

Now let me point something about Nirvana’s music videos and lyrics. Many, many, many of you say that Kurt Cobain was suicidal (probably was, yeah), and it was visible on the lyrics and music videos. But there are arguments against that. I’ll quote something that Kurt Cobain said back in 1993. “There are some songs that, brother, believe me, they are not what they seem”. Okay, he didn’t say EXACTLY this, but I can’t find the quote and this is what I remember of it. Well, what I want to say it that Kurt pointed many times that, most of the times, he wrote the lyrics with a lot of procrastination, and they ended up not making a lot of sense. I’ll give the example of (now I’m dodging the subject of the post) the song I Hate Myself and Want to Die, from In Utero. The title of this song actually comes from something that Kurt read on the Rolling Stones magazine. What I mean by this is that Nirvana’s lyrics were showing Kurt’s feelings, but overly pessimistically, according to Cobain himself. On the other hand, there’s Kurt Cobain’s suicide, which is itself a proof that Kurt was suicidal, unless the theories telling that Courtney Love killed him or hired someone to kill him are true, which I really have no idea if it is true or not. But let’s not talk about the death of the poor guy! The best way to remember him is by appreciating his art and not by discussing his death or searching for documentaries like Soaked in Bleach. Don’t be like me, kids. Stay just with the music.

Well. In general, the album was pretty great. It deserves the title of “one of the best album of the decade”, and consequently the title of “The band that marked that generation”. I think Kurt Cobain was a very talented man who left way too soon, and I think frequently about the type of music Nirvana would release if Cobain staid alive (he would be 50 years old now!). Maybe one day I’ll make a post about that. Who knows?

#nevermind #nirvana #kurt cobain #1991 #dave grohl #krist novoselic #grunge #music

[listentothismaguro]

Artist to listen: Watsky

I doubt that many of you recognize George Watsky by his name, but there is a good chance you have already seen him around on the internet. If you are subscribed to the YouTube channel Epic Rap Battles of History, then let me tell you that Watsky was featured in 3 of their videos, incarnating William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and the 4th Doctor of Doctor Who; if you used to watch YouTube’s viral videos back in 2011, then you probably know him for being the author of the viral video Pale Kid Raps Fast, where he raps fast as hell; or perhaps you know him because you are great fans of the duo twenty one pilots (Josh Dun was featured on the song Midnight Heart); or you might know him for any other reason. Or not. But anyway, this post was made for those who have never heard of him, or have but never had the curiosity to know more about him. 

So, I’ll start by introducing him. George Watsky is a rapper, poet and writer born on 15th September 1986 in San Francisco, California (USA), alongside with his twin brother: Simon. Watsky has been interested on music since he was very young. In fact,is first hip-hop song, Nosy Clowns, was created back in 2002, when he was in high-school (it is now available on his SoundCloud). But George only started to draw attention as a poet (more specifically as a slam-poetry artist), after winning the Youth Speaks Grand Slam Final, in 2006, and being featured on the 6th season of Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry (HBO), in 2007. After this success, Watsky started his musical career, creating the jazz hip-hop band Invisible Inc. with two friends (Max Miller-Loran and Daniel Riera). On 1st July 2007, the trio released the album Invisible Inc., which actually didn’t get much success. Actually, so far, the album is still goes unnoticed, except maybe the single Mr. Nice Guy. After this brief project, Watsky decides to go on with his career, but this time as a solo artist. Invisible Inc. reunited again in 2016 to record an Anti-Trump song for Watsky’s album x Infinity: Pink Lemonade. There are rumors that there will be a second album in 2017 or 2018.

On 1st November 2009, Watsky released his first solo album: Watsky. This album has two singles: Fuck an Emcee Name and The Girl Next Door. The album ended up on 7th place on the hip-hop category on iTunes. In January 2011, Watsky released his viral video, Pale Kid Raps Fast, on Youtube. Today, the video is non-listed, but it has over 20 million views. Because of this video, Watsky ended up being a guest of The Ellen Show twice! In the same year, he was considered the Big Sound of 2011, alongside with Mac Miller, Kreayshawn and Skrillex. But between these four, Watsky was the less-successful. 2012 was a busy year for Watsky. On 1st February he released a collaboration album with Kush Mody: Watsky & Mody. The album had four singles: Ghost Party, Mrs. Robinson, Kick Monday (In the Nutsack) and Man of Constant Sorrow; on 11th July he released the mixtape Nothing Like the First Time, which has nine singles; and a bit more than a month later, on 1st August, he released a second mixtape, A New Kind of Sexy, which has six singles. But Watsky only started to be closely as popular as he is now after releasing his second solo album - Cardboard Castles - on 12th March 2013. The singles are Strong as an Oak, Moral of the Story and Hey, Asshole. This album reached the 1st place on hip-hop albums on iTunes. 17 months later, he released his third solo album, All You Can Do, with Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Ink Don’t Bleed, Right Now and All You Can Do as singles. Whoa, Whoa, Whoa is his most popular track so far, with 12 million views on YouTube (I’m not counting with Pale Kid Raps Fast, which wasn’t even on an album. It was just a viral video) After finishing the tour of his third album, Watsky decides to have a break in music. In 2015, he is only seen as a featured artists on the singles Nobody and Never Afraid, by Spose and MC Lars, respectively. The hiatus ended when, on 27th April 2016, he uploaded a video on his YouTube channel announcing the release of his book How to Ruin Everything, release that would happen on 14th July of the same year. At the time, there were rumors that a 4th solo album would be released soon. Those rumors intensified when, on 1st July 2016, Watsky released his song Stick to Your Guns. The fourth album, which would be called x Infinity, was confirmed on 8th July 2016, after the releasing of the single Tiny Glowing Screens, Pt.3. The album was released on 19th August 2016, with Stick to Your Guns, Tiny Glowing Screens Pt.3, Midnight Heart and Talking to Myself as singles. This album hit the 33rd place on Billboard 200, being the first time at all to be included on the list, and the 4th place on iTunes in the category of hip-hop. Watsky later promised that he would make a music video for every track of the album. He’s been doing so. The last one to be released was Lovely Thing Suite Part 2: Knots, on 17th May 2017. I also want to underline the fact that Watsky was featured on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mixtape The Hamilton Mixtape, with the song An Open Letter, featuring the beatboxer Shockwave, and the release of his “secret album”, Plane 651, as a secret message on the x Infinity track Don’t Be Nice, leading to the site www.kisswatskysgluteusmaximus.com.

Now, my opinion about the artist: He is really good and talented. Actually, my favourite rapper. I discovered him through the YouTube channel Epic Rap Battles of HIstory. The first songs I listened to were Wounded Healer, Bet Against Me and Stupidass. Time passed, and I found myself listening to more and more Watsky. Today, there are very few of his songs I don’t really like. A thing I love about this rapper it’s his diversity. He has songs about politics (Stick to Your Guns and Pink Lemonade), about philosophy matters, specially death (Wounded Healer, Talking to Myself, the three parts of Tiny Glowing Screens and the four parts of Lovely Thing Suite), motivational songs (Never Let it Die, D.A.N.C.E. and Midnight Heart), or songs that make us laugh (IDGAF, Ugly Faces, Exquisite Corpse and Pauly Shore Saw My Penis). I think that all this diversity shows Watsky’s personality somehow, because his lyrics are very personal. You can go from his problem with seizures to his thoughts about the irrelevance of the human race compared to the universe to his narcissism. Actually, to prove how personal are his lyrics: His book, How to Ruin Everything, talk about many funny stories (or just deep thoughts, but it’s mostly funny stories) about his past. A lot of those stories were referenced, even if just briefly, on many of his songs, like Wounded Healer, Women, Women, Women, Fireworks, etc..., way before the book was released, like the night he spent in prision, or the first time he got drunk, in Europe. Other thing I admire on Watsky is the fact that he is tireless! Since 2006, he performed slam-poetry on more than 150 universities; he released a total of 53 music videos, participating as a guest in other four (Paul Hollens, Spose and MC Lars (and other 8 for the new album are confirmed); he released five solo albums (if you include his “secret” album Plane 651); an album with Invisible Inc.; a collab album with Kush Mody; two mixtapes; many awards for his slam-poetry, specially between 2006 and 2008; he participated in more than 300 shows of slam-poetry and music, being almost impossible to give you an exact number; he published a book; and he co-founded Steel Wool Media alongside with Brad Simpson. Tireless! Respect!

So, the artist to listen is George Watsky. Wanna give him a shot? I advice you to start with Dent in the Moon, Sloppy Seconds, Talking to Myself and Midnight Heart first! I’ll leave you with some quotes of Watsky’s songs and poems.

“I can’t really tell if I’m a good person or if I’m faking really well” - Ten Fingers “Because you know what’s awesome? World peace. And you know what else is awesome? Catapults.” - Letter to my 16 Year Old Self “There are 7 billion 46 million people on the planet and I have the audacity to think I matter!” - Tiny Glowing Screens, Pt.2 “I thought this was a party, but all my friends are leaving and I still wanna play” “Although the thought of paradise is very nice, in my heart I know I don’t believe in magic so I’m thinking death is like an eternal TV static” - Lovely Thing Suite: Conversations “I thought I was an atheist until I realised I’m a God” - Whoa, Whoa, Whoa “I’m not Jesus Chist, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.” - Drunk Text Message to God

#Watsky #music #artist to follow #hip hop

[listentothismaguro]

I found an interesting site where you can make a collage of your favourite albums. You can do a top 50 or a top 100 in here. I did a top 50! If you want to make your own collage, click this link: http://top50.topsters.net/

#albums #favourites #watsky #gorillaz #gerard way #blur #top 50 topster #panic! at the disco #hunter hunted #twnety one pilots #bloc party #none like joshua #incubus #red hot chili peppers #my chemical romance #nirvana #arctic monkeys #ornatos violeta #eminem #against the current #invisible inc #cage the elephant #paramore #mac lethal #music

[listentothismaguro]

“Humanz”, by Gorillaz

I do believe that most of you know this fictional band created by the vocalist of Blur, Damon Albarn, and the cartoonist Jamie Hewlett. In case you don’t know it yet, I strongly advice you to give them a try. Begin with Clint Eastwood or Feel Good Inc. I think it is unlikely that you don’t know any of those. In this post, I am going to talk about the brand new album by Gorillaz: Humanz. 

After the release of The Fall on 25th December 2010 and the single Do Ya Thing on 23rd February 2012, the band announced a hiatus, which allowed both Damon and Hewlett to follow other projects besides Gorillaz (including a new album by Blur in 2015). After this pause, Damon Albarn started to record Gorillaz’s new album, in the end of 2015, while Hewlett made the Phase 4 version of the band’s virtual members and the story of this new phase. On 23rd April 2017, the album was released. This album has quite a lot of singles: Hallelujah Money (featuring Benjamin Clementine), released on 19th January; Saturnz Barz (featuring Popcaan), Andromeda (featuring D.R.A.M.), Ascension (featuring Vince Stapler) and We Got the Power (featuring Camille Barthomier e Liam Gallangher), released on 23rd March; Let Me Out (featuring Mavis Staples e Pusha T), released on 6th April; and The Apprentice (featuring Rag'n'Bone Man, Zebra Katz e Ray BLK), released on 24th April. But Gorillaz only received international attention (again) on 23rd March. Specially with the single Saturnz Barz, which already has more than 30 million views on YouTube. And I kinda get why. Saturnz Barz was a perfect comeback song after a 5 year hiatus. Specially when people were starting to believe that Gorillaz’s popularity was dying. Let’s now talk about the album itself. The Deluxe Version has 26 tracks. It sounds like a gigantic number, but actually there are a lot of Interludes that have 10 seconds of duration in average, which makes the album a bit more than an hour long. In my opinion, these Interludes are actually really, really genius, a really good idea. The transition between an interlude and the next track (a “real” song) is so perfect! They fit perfectly well with each other. It looks like it is the same track! I can only notice when does the track change when I pay attention. I’ll give you the examples of Interlude: Elevator Going Up and Andromeda.

My favourite track of the album is Momentz, featuring De La Soul, who were also featured on Gorillaz’s smash hit Feel Good Inc. And the worst one my less favourite one is Sex Murder Party. I liked the song, but in my opinion it wasn’t as good as Circle of Friendz, Momentz or Saturnz Barz. But all of them were actually good.

Despite all of this, it is undeniable that they changed their style completely on this album. It’s now more Alternative Hip-Hop. But on the other hand, this is quite normal for Gorillaz, who are a very experimental band and never belonged to only one music genre. But this change created something that, in my opinion, is a flaw: 2-D AKA Damon’s voice almost didn’t appear on the album. Ok, it is true that there are a lot of Gorillaz songs where 2-D almost doesn’t sing, such as Clint Eastwood, or songs where he doesn’t appear at all, like Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach (this song is literally just Snoop Dogg rapping with a music video where he simply dances and uses a telescope just because), but 2-D has never been so absent as he is on this album, which can be a bad thing, since 2-D’s voice is one of the things that identifies more Gorillaz. There were song on Humanz where the guest participates more than 2-D that ended up pretty well, such as Saturnz Barz and Let Me Out, but in my opinion, it wasn’t so great on Hallelujah Money. But this doesn’t stop this from the album from being pretty good.

Now, talking about music videos: at the moment (21st May) there were only two of them released: Hallelujah Money and Saturnz Barz. The one I refered in second place was way better than the first one in my opinion. It was more popular (actually, Hallelujah Money’s was released on YouTube as a non listed video), but it was more juicy. In Hallelujah Money we can see Benjamin Clementine singing this anti-Trump song with some pictures and videos of war and revolution on his back, and while 2-D repeats the only sentence he sings on the whole song, you can see a shadow of what appears to be a puppet of 2-D, opening and closing its mouth, “singing”. Now Saturnz Barz has a music video which is, at least, really fucking weird (in a good way). Full of monsters, a haunted house, Murdoc screaming “DA BAFF” and later flying naked in the space and getting hit by a golf ball. Oh! And a talking pizza. The song of this music video featured the Jamaican rapper Popcaan. I only started to understand what the fuck was that guy saying after listening to the song for the 40th time, but it was a catchy rap anyway. And 2-D’s song on this track was really, really satisfying. And that’s why it is my favourite single, after all.

This was my favourite album of 2017 so far, and it shows how creative Damon Albarn is with music. He’s still as good as he was back in 1991 with his first album with Blur, which deserves a lot of attention.

#gorillaz #humanz #album review

[listentothismaguro]

Personal Ranking of the Songs of the ESC 2017

Hello! I think it’s time for me to write the first real post of the blog, don’t ya think? Well, my first post will be a ranking of the songs of the Eurovision Song Contest of 2017. I’ll tell you now that this is simply my opinion and that every 42 songs that will be part of the competition will be included. The Russian one won’t be part of the list since they are not participating on the competition now. If you want me to explain why did i put song *put name of the song here* on *put the classification here* write a comment and I’ll explain my point of view. So, let’s start:

1º - Amar Pelos Dois (Portugal) 2º - City Lights (Belgium) 3º - Historyja Majho Zyccia (Belarus) 4º - Beautiful Mess (Bulgaria) 5º - Running On Air (Austria) 6º - Dance Alone (Macedonia) 7º - Occidentali's Karma (Italy) 8º - I Can't Go On (Sweden) 9º - Time (Ucrânia) 10º - Gravity (Cyprus) 11º - Hey Mamma (Moldavia) 12º - Don't Come Easy (Australia) 13º - Line (Lativa) 14º - Perfect Life (Germany) 15º - Apollo (Switzerland) 16º - Skeletons (Azerbaijan) 17º - Never Give Up On You (United Kingdom) 18º - My Turn (Czech Republic) 19º - Do It For Your Lover (Spain) 20º - This is Love (Greece) 21º - Paper (Iceland) 22º - Blackbird (Finland) 23º - Dying to Try (Ireland) 24º - Yodel It! (Romania) 25º - Requiem (France) 26º - My Friend (Croatia) 27º - On My Way (Slovenia) 28º - Space (Montenegro) 29º - Grab the Moment (Norway) 30º - Spirit of the Night (San Marino) 31º - I Feel Alive (Israel) 32º - In Too Deep (Serbia) 33º - Verona (Estonia) 34º - Flashlight (Poland) 35º - Light and Shadows (The Netherlands) 36º - Keep the Faith (Georgia) 37º - Where I Am (Denmark) 38º - Rain of Revolution (Lithuania) 39º - World (Albania) 40º - Origo (Hungary) 41º - Breathlessly (Malta) 42º - Fly With Me (Armenia)

What do you think? Do you agree with me? I’ll tell you now that the Portuguese one is on the first place not because I am Portuguese, but because the song is so awesome, so calm, so different. The song is pretty good. If you want to tell me something, write a comment. It will make me even feel my blog has been read by someone, which will make me motivate increase.

So, “see you” on my next post. Bye!

#eurovision #eurovision 2017 #salvador sobral #ranking #top 42

[listentothismaguro]

Welcome!

Hello! Welcome to my blog: “listen to this.”. I’m going to start by introducing it.

So, this blog was made with the purpose of criticizing music in general (new albums, new songs and albums not necessarily new albums i’ve heard recently). Occasionaly, I will write posts about “Artist/Band to listen” or a “Back to the *insert year or dechade here*”. I might do Top 10 lists as well (like, top 10 best songs of april 2017 or something like that). So yea, the choices are almost endless.

I started this blog because I am a music fanatic (I used to have 1700 songs on my phone once, but later I decreased that number to 1100 and a few months later I erased them all unintentionally and I still couldn’t download them all again yet) and I am constantly listening to new music and criticizing them, but those thoughts and critics rarely go out of my mind, except when someone talks about music one or another time (sometimes I discuss music on Reddit. I use Reddit a lot), so I wanted to have an “excuse” to be annoying as fuck (oh, by the way, sometimes I use explicit language. Sorry, i guess(?)) and talk about music anytime I want, so I created this blog!

I created a blog on Tumblr, in English, but I also created one on Blogger (basically, a portuguese version of this blog). In the future, I might use one of these two, but for now I prefere to use both simultaneously, with the same posts, only changing the languagues. Visit my portuguese blog, if you feel like it (www.listentothismaguro.blogspot.pt). And also I would be very grateful if you visited my Facebook page, where I basically share stuff about all my projects, including a band with two friends of mine, a videogame that me and some friends of mine have been creating for about a year now and some Wattpad stories. If you search “MaguroKid” on Facebook, it will probably appear, but I’ll give you the link anyway: www.facebook.com/MaguroKid-1858092954457140/?fref=ts

I don’t think there’s much more to say. Please, keep up with the blog. Thanks!