#Everyone can define 'great debut' for themselves | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

girlreviews · 17 days

Text

Review #438: Parklife, Blur

In some ways this review is going to be like the antithesis to the one I wrote for Pulp’s Different Class. In that, this album features songs that are so important to British culture, and individually to my formative years, that I can’t ever be mad to hear them. However, unlike my ongoing and steadfast admiration for Pulp as a band, I have way more complicated feelings about Blur, and about this album in particular. Okay, so some context and education first. Blur had success in the UK with their debut album, Leisure, but had really dug themselves into a financial hole through poor management. They owed the taxman a lot of money. As such, they were essentially forced to go on a long, arduous tour of the US to promote their successful album. In theory this would be great. But it wasn’t great. They were touring tiny towns and venues that had never heard of them. The grunge scene had just exploded out of the Pacific Northwest and literally nobody Stateside had any fucks to give about Blur, British Music, or what they were doing on this tour. The band themselves have described the space and time immediately preceding the creation of Parklife as pretty bleak. Miserable. Oppressive. They felt backed into a corner, exhausted, downtrodden, underappreciated, and homesick.

Where they sort of lose me on this is where they express feeling as if they were shamed for being British and they were resistant to just create a record that adhered to the current trend of music. They returned to the UK with a concept in mind: a quintessentially British album, about British culture, that makes a statement: British music is a thing of its own, and it’s worth your time. I mean, I don’t disagree with that. I just fail to see how grunge being a popular genre at the time meant that they weren’t able to be proudly British, and proudly produce whatever music suited them. Artists make art for the art, and if someone likes it, that’s great. But they were young men at the time and I imagine egos and the lures of chart success influenced their feelings about it. You don’t get into a tabloid frenzied ongoing rift with the Gallagher brothers because you’re a really chill bunch of guys that only care about the music. There’s an irritating overtone of testosterone and national pride that has an icky vibe to it. It’s too easy for it to be co-opted. And it was! And it still is!

So let me just get the following points off my chest and then I’ll work my way through them:

1. Parklife is and was an important record in British music

2. It’s also not Blur’s strongest album by a BIG margin, but it’s managed to persist as somewhat of a defining album for them. I’m glad they shook it off, and we didn’t just get record after record of Parklife from them. That’s honestly how a lot of people would have done it and I can respect their commitment to art as a band: we’re going to do something different than what you just loved, and if you don’t like it that’s a you problem. People did like it.

3. Parklife also paved the way for an obnoxious marketing/PR ploy from the music industry surrounding British Indie/Rock artists, that created a ridiculous craze and wave that was surfed by bands ranging from incredible and deserving, to absolute dogshit. Ladies and gentleman, I give you: Britpop. If you were there you know what it was like, and you understand all the nuance and resentment surrounding it as a “genre”. We’ll get into this more later. In hindsight it all worked out okay and we live in a world where – at least to my knowledge – you can appreciate and criticize both Oasis and Blur for their talents and their fuck ups without it representing some massive class and cultural divide. This was absolutely not always the case and it was, for some reason, a really big deal, and it mattered to everyone, a lot. Blur or Oasis? I was 7 turning 8 years old at the height of this manufactured-turned-real rivalry, and it genuinely caused me stress. As a child! I loved them both. But I felt forced to choose. I chose Blur. I understand how ridiculous it sounds, but I wish I could go back in time and refuse to choose. It mattered, and it also really didn’t. They don’t sound similar enough to compare or compete? So why did we have to? But WE DID. It was on the news. It was the biggest thing going on at the time. It dominated the papers. Bookies were taking bets on who would be #1 between the two of them. Blur won that battle with Country House. I don’t think anybody won the war. I think everybody got bored, gave up, and went home.

So Blur kicked off Britpop with their return from this grinding US tour and they made a full blown concept album about being British. And it was good. But all of a sudden there was just this… Overwhelming influx of bands who were banking their success solely on this “being British”, thing. It had a look, it had a sound, it had a style, it had a location. The same thing happened with the Indie wave in the early/mid-2000s. It’s so annoying to me though. You end up just having to sift through a whole bunch of fucking garbage to find the stuff that is legit, and would be legit with or without the “scene”. Parklife is legit. It’s just responsible for the aftermath and onslaught of bullshit. Is that their fault? No, but they definitely participated in it all for a bit. There was a lot of great music that technically fell under the Britpop genre, but essentially looking back most of it isn’t Britpop – because that was just made up. It was just good music from various genres, and they all happened to be British artists. That’s not the same thing. It was just a music industry scheme and boy howdy did everyone buy-in.

The song Parklife, is pretty genius, still. Damon Albarn, unable to commit to the concept with a cockney accent, enlisted well-known British actor, Phil Daniels (of Quadrophenia fame) to deliver the lyrics. This was both creative and super novel. People went pretty nuts about it. They still do. It’s got the same pull as Common People. If you want to see an entire nation lose their shit over a song – you might stick on Parklife. It’s just deeply entrenched into the fabric of British culture and it’s as if it was from the moment it was released. It just is. I actually saw Parklife live at Reading Festival when I was 16 or 17, and they brought Phil Daniels out. The most memorable thing about the whole thing, was that Damon Albarn fell off the stage. I guess the most surprising thing about the wider record, is that you expect it to be more of Parklife the song. And it actually isn’t. It’s just a Blur record, and a not bad one at that.

It's just so weird how a regular album took on this entire life of its own, turned into a cultural phenomenon, and produced this era of music that for better or worse is part of history now. Some of the subsequent singles from subsequent albums honestly seem like they were more “Britpop” than a lot of the tracks on Parklife. Maybe they were running with it for sometime to bank on its success, but ultimately they grew tired of it too and changed directions. I’m glad.

I guess the other thing about Blur, is the individuals its made up of. They’ve been indie darlings forever. Graham Coxon was a nerdy little weirdo, he left and came back. I think Britpop almost killed him if I’m being honest. Damon Albarn was a pretty-faced front man and has gone on to produce some absolutely insane albums for other artists and with other bands. He’s got something, that’s for sure, but it’s not always good. Some ego and misogyny always sort of leaks out and it would make my life easier to enjoy his creative output if he just kept his mouth shut. He seems to have a problem playing nice with successful women and insists on tearing them down publicly, only to be forced to admit that he hasn’t actually worked with them, met them, talked to them, or even listened to the music that he is loudly criticizing. That’s fucking annoying, but, is also par for the course regarding male opinions being inexplicably important and accepted even absent of any actual valid perspective or input. Damon, you have a lot of great things to say with your music. That doesn’t mean you have to say something, about everything, all the time.

Alex James, floppy-haired and handsome bassist, for a time was the biggest darling of them all – attracting praise for being so quirky and unique by establishing a cheese farm. Over the years, I have come to suspect he’s really just hidden in plain sight and really what you get with him is a basic man, with basic opinions, who loves some attention. I can’t ever really quite put my finger on it with him but there’s something deeply off putting about his whole persona. I’ll just say it. Whatever image he puts out and however quirky and cool he makes himself out to be: he’s just a fucking Tory, man. With that comes everything else: classism, racism, misogyny and fucking over everyone worse off than you, so long as you get yours. But hey everyone, who cares right? He makes cheese! Isn’t that so weird and kooky? He’s gotta be a cool guy! It was this exact fucking line of thinking that allowed Boris Johnson to take advantage of the comedy panel show circuit for years and years and years, elevating his reputation among liberal young voters. Everyone thought Boris was a funny joke, so let’s vote for him! He goes from MP, to London Mayor, to high-ranking cabinet member, to the fucking PRIME MINISTER. And it wasn’t a funny joke then, was it? So let’s pay attention to the things people actually say and do, and not just the music that they make and the cheese they produce. The other guy in the band, whose name I can literally never remember – Dave Rowntree – he’s just the drummer, who brought nothing to the band visually, and was just sort of along for the ride. Seems like a nice enough guy, it’s just that nobody cares.

If you’re interested in making more sense of this review, I will recommend that you turn your attention to Netflix series This Is Pop which does a pretty decent overall rundown of Blur, Oasis, and the Britpop era. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good, and I appreciate that it gives a voice to the women in that music scene at the time, who were treated like shit and had to deal with all of the masculine national pride shit that came along with it all. It’s pretty clear from listening to them: Oasis, literally didn’t give a shit – about anything – and that was pretty hilarious. Blur, despite being genuine talent with good music to offer, bought into the hype and acted like a bunch of pricks publicly. They were all pricks, it’s just some of them were more authentically pricks than others. Ha.

I guess all I can say is this: I love Blur, and I hate Blur. I don’t know that I’m inclined to agree with Parklife’s inclusion in the Rolling Stone Top 500, but I can also appreciate that I’m talking from the inside and the majority of listeners didn’t also absorb the cultural moment as it was happening. If you happened to be there, you know it was all kind of nonsense. It’s kind of wild watching documentaries or reading write-ups of a particular time in music that you were actually present for in real-time. Like how I imagine people who were at Woodstock, or when Bob Dylan went electric, or the original British Invasion of America with the Beatles. It was a whole thing, and if you were there, you remember.

#album review #music #music review #rolling stone top 500 #blur #parklife #britpop #oasis

7 notes · View notes

struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor · 1 year

Text

@mykkjae asked me to rank my top 10 BTS songs, so I'm thinking of doing 2 rankings: my 10 "best" and my 10 favorite.

My 10 best BTS songs:

First Love: I think this song is a masterpiece - a brilliant showcase of storytelling - and it's not even Suga's best song. I love that it has a narrative: Suga is telling us the story of his first love, and the way his rap gets more intense and expressive until the song reaches its climax, like he's sharing something personal to him and his feelings build up until they overflow and spill over before naturally resolving themselves as the song reaches an end. I love the violin. The piano is Suga's first love but the violin is more predominant in the song. I just think that the song is totally brilliant.

Tear: This song is another masterpiece. I love Suga's part the most, the one that goes "Yeah yeah yeah, burn it [...]" and then he goes into an iconic, autotuned rap. But everyone sounds great and the lyrics are great too.

ON: This song has both everything that is great about kpop and everything that is missing in kpop. The performance is dramatic, on a whole other scale from Western pop, the song has amazing vocals (Jungkook's bridge,, and his best adlibs ever) and amazing choreo (so original and memorable). It also has super meaningful lyrics ("find me and I'm gonna live with you" -> "find me and I'm gonna bleed with you" = me mindblown), a choir, good and diverse rap, and a performance that are above the average for kpop songs. This song is just so grandiose and fun and everything that is great about pop in general. This is BTS's Bohemian Rhapsody imo.

Black Swan: This is one song everyone loves (like Spring Day), and it was game-changing: the lyrics are meaningful and relatable, the concept is so artistic and honest, the choreography is unbelievable and took them to another level (it showed Jimin in a new light and really allowed him to shine too), the song itself sounds so different, pretty and elegant yet snappy, the MV is simple yet gorgeous, etc..

Idol: This is my song. I love everything about it: the crazy rhythm, the lyrics, the choreo, the performance. To me this is their hypest song and I feel each beat in my soul. I also believe this is the song that captures their love yourself theme the best. Imo, the answer to "how to love myself", in LY: Answer, is Idol: first, you acknowledge the reasons you don't love yourself (in BTS's case, the stigma and stereotyping that comes with being an idol, and how RM and Suga in particular always felt they were less as artists because they were idols), second, you choose to be kind to yourself: you realize that what others think of you doesn't define you (you can call BTS idols, artists, whatever you want, but they know who they are, what they want and you can't stop them for loving themselves), and that you are more than your perceived or real flaws - everyone has qualities, and recognizing them and all the reasons you are worthy of love, is a huge part of loving yourself (like JK says, he loves himself - his fans, his dance, and his what, and like V says, there's a multitude of Vs inside of him but all of them are him and he can embrace them and be his fullest self); third, you need a fierce, aggressive attitude, because loving yourself is a long-term commitment and you need to force yourself to change your way of thinking (this attitude is best represented by Jimin yelling out "You can't stop me loving myself." throughout the song).

Fake Love: Amazing lyrics, amazing choreo, a turning point for BTS.

No More Dream: One of the best debut songs ever. Apart from their rap/singing which has improved a lot, the song is timeless.

Fire: Maybe this is an unconventional choice, but I think this song is amazing. Hype songs can be just as good as sentimental ones.

Go Go: Is it a satire? Are BTS criticizing or embracing consumerism (both?), I'm not sure, but the lyrics are still super clever, the choreo is refreshing and fun, and overall Go Go is just a fun, catchy song with a bite to it.

Spring Day: This song actually isn't one of my favorites, but it's so beloved by BTS and by the fans that it ended up being meaningful to me too. Its longevity shows that the song has something unique and special about it. The lyrics are comforting, the MV is beautiful, the song is pretty and magical...

Now, my top 10 favorite songs, kinda:

Idol

First Love

Black Swan

Tear

Fire

Fake Love

Go Go

Butter

Mic Drop?

I'll include my top 10 bsides, because that might be more interesting:

First Love

Black Swan

Tear

Go Go

Dope

Mic Drop

Airplane Pt. 2

Baepsae

Spine Breaker

You Never Walk Alone

Honestly, there are a lot more songs that I like just as much as those (My Time, Run, Your Eyes Tell, Film Out) but those were the ones I remembered... This got too long, sorry!

#bts #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #suga #jungkook

5 notes · View notes

clickvibes · 2 months

Link

0 notes

kingstylesdaily · 4 years

Text

Harry Styles — ‘It’s about bringing more music to Manchester’

The One Direction band member and solo star on launching into his first substantial business venture.

But the star hasn’t joined me on a Zoom call to discuss traumatic haircuts. Instead, we’re discussing what’s being billed as his first venture into the world of business. Styles is the public face of a new arena to be built in Manchester, which will be one of the largest indoor venues in the UK when it opens in 2023.

It’s being built by the US entertainment company Oak View Group at a projected cost of £350m. The capacity will be 23,500. Following a link-up with the Manchester-based business The Co-operative Group, it will be called Co-op Live.

“It feels like full circle for me to be doing this,” Styles says, speaking in what looks like the stainless steel confines of his LA film trailer. He grew up near Manchester, in a village in the neighbouring county Cheshire. “My first job was with the Co-op, it was delivering papers for them,” he recalls.

Manchester was where he went to gigs with friends. It was also where he auditioned for the television talent show The X Factor in 2010 when he was 16, singing an unaccompanied version of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”. It led to him joining the boy band One Direction. Transcending their talent show origins (they came third on The X Factor), Styles and his bandmates became a global phenomenon. They were the first band in US chart history to have their first four albums debut at number one, outdoing even The Beatles. With his newly shorn hair, a green jacket with big stitching, a T-shirt with blue palm trees and a cross dangling from his neck, Styles manages even on a visually unflattering Zoom call to look the part of the teen heart-throb. But, whereas other boy band singers have struggled to establish themselves as individual acts, Styles has made a handsome success of it. He launched a solo career in 2016 and has released two accomplished hit albums. In 2017, he made his acting debut in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk. He’s currently shooting Olivia Wilde’s horror-thriller, Don’t Worry Darling.

Diversification from the evanescent world of teen-pop continues with his involvement in the Co-op Live arena. It links him with two big names in the US entertainment industry. Tim Leiweke, former CEO of the concert promoter AEG, and Irving Azoff, former CEO of Ticketmaster, run Oak View Group, the company building the arena. Azoff’s son Jeffrey Azoff is Styles’s manager. “This is a big project and it would be a lot scarier if I was with people I didn’t know,” the singer says.

He has a financial stake in it as an investor. “I didn’t get into music because I wanted to be a businessman,” he says. “I got into music because I love music. That’s always going to be a first for me. But when an opportunity like this comes up, for me it feels so much about what I can bring to it as a musician, and also as a fan.”

Construction of the arena is due to begin in November. Styles has a vaguely defined role as an adviser in its design and decor. “Obviously I’m not an expert architecturally, in terms of building an arena,” he says. “I guess the weight of my involvement falls into the idea of what you want backstage as an artist. People operate in different ways after a show. Some people like a quiet space, some people like a place where you can invite all your friends.”

Arenas have a reputation as soulless venues, the kind of interchangeable setting where a forgetful star can get the name of the city wrong (as happened to Bruce Springsteen in 2016 when he cried, “Party noises, Pittsburgh!” during a show in Cleveland).

Even at the tender age of 26, Styles is a veteran of these cavernous spaces, which he refers to as “rooms”.

“There’s a lot of cold rooms that you can play in,” he says. “You definitely remember being in the ones that sound better, the ones in which you can create some sort of feeling of being at home.

As an artist, it’s rare to find that if you’re touring for months at a time, to go in these big rooms and feel that comfortable.” Manchester’s new arena is being designed to maximise sightlines between performer and audience. “That’s usually the first thing that you miss when you go into big rooms,” he says. “There’s a point when you’re doing shows and you can see the whites of people’s eyes and you can have that connection with people. It’s easy to lose that if you can’t see people’s faces.”

The first time he sang in public was in the canteen of his Cheshire school, for a music competition. He recalls the feeling of exhilaration: “You’re so used to sitting in the classroom and looking up at your teachers. All of a sudden everyone’s down there and the teachers are looking up at you.” He gets the same sensation when performing for tens of thousands of people. “It’s obviously on a different scale but that feeling is very much the same,” he says. “I think it’s the same chemical. It’s just like such an unnatural thing. It’s kind of like — this isn’t supposed to be like this, this isn’t how life works. That kind of adrenalin I think is just something that you wish you could share with people that you know. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s a really special moment.”

The coronavirus pandemic poses an existential threat to venues. “It’s such a strange time to be talking about live music, because right now it just doesn’t exist,” Styles says. He insists that the Co-op Live is designed to enhance Manchester’s live infrastructure, not overwhelm it. (The city already has one of the UK’s largest indoor venues, the AO Arena.)

“The purpose is not in any way to try to monopolise the city in terms of music,” he says. “It’s about bringing more music to Manchester, wanting to bring more artists there, to use this building as a reminder of why it’s such a great music city, not trying to wipe out other venues.”

After its projected completion in 2023, Co-op Live will be able to welcome its celebrity investor on stage (“If they’ll have me. I’ll have to speak to someone and ask about that”). In the meanwhile, Styles is due to embark on a world tour next February, although the pandemic has cast it in doubt.

“It’s one of those things of just seeing how things go,” he says. “I don’t think anyone wants to be putting on a tour before it’s safe to do so. There will be a time we dance again, but until then I think it’s about protecting each other and doing everything we can to be safe. And then when it’s ready and people want to, we shall play music.”

via the Financial Times

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: financial times #hs: article #October 2020

566 notes · View notes

hldailyupdate · 4 years

Text

Two weeks ago, the stark phrase “HE CUT HIS HAIR” began trending on social media. I can confirm its truth: the One Direction member turned solo star Harry Styles has indeed cut his hair. The usual curly tresses are gone, scissored into a tousled, swept-back look. It’s for a film role he’s currently shooting in Los Angeles. But the star hasn’t joined me on a Zoom call to discuss traumatic haircuts. Instead, we’re discussing what’s being billed as his first venture into the world of business.

Styles is the public face of a new arena to be built in Manchester, which will be one of the largest indoor venues in the UK when it opens in 2023. It’s being built by the US entertainment company Oak View Group at a projected cost of £350m. The capacity will be 23,500. Following a link-up with the Manchester-based business The Co-operative Group, it will be called Co-op Live.

With his newly shorn hair, a green jacket with big stitching, a T-shirt with blue palm trees and a cross dangling from his neck, Styles manages even on a visually unflattering Zoom call to look the part of the teen heart-throb. But, whereas other boy band singers have struggled to establish themselves as individual acts, Styles has made a handsome success of it. He launched a solo career in 2016 and has released two accomplished hit albums. In 2017, he made his acting debut in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk. He’s currently shooting Olivia Wilde’s horror-thriller, Don’t Worry Darling.

Even at the tender age of 26, Styles is a veteran of these cavernous spaces, which he refers to as “rooms”.

As an artist, it’s rare to find that if you’re touring for months at a time, to go in these big rooms and feel that comfortable.”

Manchester’s new arena is being designed to maximise sightlines between performer and audience. “That’s usually the first thing that you miss when you go into big rooms,” he says. “There’s a point when you’re doing shows and you can see the whites of people’s eyes and you can have that connection with people. It’s easy to lose that if you can’t see people’s faces.”

He gets the same sensation when performing for tens of thousands of people. “It’s obviously on a different scale but that feeling is very much the same,” he says. “I think it’s the same chemical. It’s just like such an unnatural thing. It’s kind of like — this isn’t supposed to be like this, this isn’t how life works. That kind of adrenalin I think is just something that you wish you could share with people that you know. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s a really special moment.”

Financial Times about Harry being the new face of a new arena in Manchester. (26 October 2020)

#harry styles #harry update #article #financial times #hldaily #october 2020

201 notes · View notes

liunaticfringe · 3 years

Photo

(via Lucy Liu's Independent Woman - Interview Magazine)

There have been many great sidekick pairings in the history of modern literature. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet…the list goes on. Yet, it seems there has never been a delightfully tumultuous relationship that comes close to echoing the one embodied by rogue detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend and assistant Dr. John Watson. Written in the form of short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the opium-den loving Holmes would terrorize London with his intellectual, astute, and stubborn prowess, with Dr. Watson providing medical expertise and chronicling their entertaining exploits along the way.

Doyle’s works have now long been entered into the public domain, with many film and television adaptions cropping up every few years. Still, when CBS announced in 2012 that it would be turning Doyle’s works into an hour-long crime-drama series titled Elementary, it elicited an unusually high response—this was mostly due to the news that a woman would, in fact, be portraying Watson. Her name would be Joan, not John. And she’s now a fallen from grace surgeon-turned-sober companion and private detective, forfeiting her “Dr.” title in the process. The woman chosen to take on this exciting, contemporary role of Joan Watson was none other than seasoned actress Lucy Liu.

Liu, who’s best known for her roles as a fierce and ill-mannered lawyer in Ally McBeal, an ass-kicking “angel” in the rebooted Charlie’s Angels, and an equally ass-kicking bad girl in the Kill Bill series, certainly provides the yin to the yang of Jonny Lee Miller’s gritty portrayal of Holmes. Elementary chronicles the duo’s relationship as they consult for the NYPD on various criminal cases while living in a shared brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. Initially starting off in Season One as a substance-free friend to the fresh-out-of-rehab Holmes with a keen interest in solving crimes, Watson quickly transformed into a sharp and observant right-hand woman who now clearly has the aptitude to work on her own. And it appears she’ll be doing just that—the end of Season Two left viewers witnessing Watson’s decision to move out of the brownstone and start a new career as a solo private detective, seemingly fed-up with Holmes’ erratic behavior.

The warm and delightful Liu recently called up Interview from her home in New York City to discuss Elementary’s upcoming third season.

DEVON IVIE: Were you on set today?

LUCY LIU: I was running around like a maniac, yeah. It’s beautiful today, it started getting a little bit cooler again. But of course I’ve been bitten by the two mosquitos that are still alive in New York City.

IVIE: I know you were recently at New York Comic Con. How was it?

LIU: It was amazing. It’s such a spectator place. Not only do you get super fans, but you also get people who are curious and inventive and imaginative. It’s fun.

IVIE: Did you run into any cosplayers dressed as Joan Watson?

LIU: Oh, no, I don’t know about that. That’s funny! We did a panel with a huge audience so I couldn’t really see if anyone was wearing anything specific, but it’s an excuse for kids and adults to get dressed up and just be crazy. You know you’ve made it when you have super-fans out there.

IVIE: When you first read the scripts for Elementary, what was it that attracted you to the role of Joan?

LIU: I liked the fact that it was going to be about [Joan and Sherlock’s] relationship and their friendship, and bringing that into modern times. And I thought it was wonderful to change up the gender.

IVIE: Did you immerse yourself in Arthur Conan Doyle’s work as preparation at all?

LIU: I did, I did! I started reading the short stories. I never read them before so it was a really great excuse to read them. I can’t believe it was written so long ago, because it’s so current. The characters are so colorful, which is why I think there are so many incarnations of Watson and Holmes.

IVIE: Do you have a favorite story? I love “A Scandal in Bohemia.”

LIU: There were some pretty amazing stories. The one that stood out to me, which was a Watson story that I got to know him a little more through, was “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” He really is on his own in that. Of course it turns out that Holmes has been there all along, but it’s interesting looking into his interior.

IVIE: Yeah, the entirety of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is narrated just by Watson. And his diary and letters, too.

LIU: Yeah, I think it’s really cool. We started incorporating that into the show, too, the letters and journals.

IVIE: Has this detective genre always appealed to you? Did you grow up watching or reading detective whodunits?

LIU: I remember more of the old school Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys sort of thing. I also grew up with the Scooby-Doo mysteries. Remember when the villain would go, “I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you rascal-y kids!” Those were the kind of the things I immersed myself in. I have to say that my mother has always been a huge fan of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, so this show was her dream come true. I don’t think she totally understood what was going on with Ally McBeal. [laughs]

IVIE: I’ve enjoyed witnessing Joan’s evolution throughout the course of the show, starting off as a sober companion and eventually ending up as a trusty sidekick and confidant to Sherlock. What can we expect from Joan in Season Three?

LIU: When you see them in the third season, you see some friction between the two characters. Joan is now on her own, she has her own detective agency, has a boyfriend, and has been without Sherlock for eight months. She’s got her own apartment, she’s settled, and he shows back up. I think she’s a little bit hurt by what happened and how their relationship and partnership ended, which was basically his decision and his choice, and he left it all in one little note for her. I think she felt that their relationship was much deeper than that, and that he was dismissive in the way that he handled that.

IVIE: How would you define the relationship between Joan and Sherlock?

LIU: I think that it’s a really positive and good relationship, overall. They really have a good chemistry together, work really hard together, and understand each other. They acknowledge each other and respect each other, which is a really important way to have a friendship. And they can learn from each other, you know? She’s very curious about him and I think he sees that she’s a very smart person—that’s vital for him in having respect for someone, having them be intelligent and thinking for themselves.

IVIE: Do you see any of Joan in yourself?

LIU: I do to a certain degree. She’s a lot more measured and patient, for sure. She’s a very curious person, which I think I am, and I think she isn’t afraid of change. She was a doctor, and then became a sober companion, and then jumped off and became a detective. I think sometimes it’s good to make big leaps.

IVIE: You’ve probably been asked this question many times, but do you think a romance between Joan and Sherlock could ever fittingly happen?

LIU: It’s a question that’s often asked and I think it’s really up to the executives. Rob Doherty, the creator [of Elementary] really feels incredibly strongly about keeping their relationship platonic. He has already taken great strides to keep the relationship as clean as possible according to the literature, but he has also changed so much of it by changing the gender of Watson. To have them have a romantic involvement would turn the whole thing upside-down in a way that might really jump the line. [Doherty] felt really strongly about it and I think that’s the one thing he really wants to stay true to.

IVIE: I totally agree. Even on the BBC’s Sherlock, there are campaigns to get Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and Martin Freeman’s Watson to become romantically involved. It’s like, enough already, no!

LIU: No way, that’s so weird! People do have that level of friendship oftentimes, but it doesn’t mean it’s physical. I think that everyone just assumes because there’s chemistry the next thing should be happening. I would vote “no” for a romance. I think for sure the creator would vote no on that, too.

IVIE: I’ve talked to both women and men who watch Elementary, and they all consistently mention how well dressed and fashionable Joan is. Do you collaborate with the wardrobe department on styling decisions at all?

LIU: That’s awesome. Yes, I collaborate with Rebecca [Hofherr], who’s the costume designer, who’s wonderful. She’s very easy to work with. One thing we try to maintain about Joan and her style is that she’s a bit wrinkled, you know what I mean? Sometimes it looks like things are really put together, but we always want to make sure things aren’t too tight and are comfortable, kind of like she throws things together. We don’t want it to seem so business-y, so we go away from suits. Chic, but not corporate. Also just to make her seem like her outfits aren’t so put-together all the time. But I’m glad that people really seem to like it, it’s a relief! We don’t splurge a lot on the show, we try to do cheaper things, like things Joan would wear a lot. She wears the same white jacket and shoes frequently.

IVIE: Will we be seeing more of the infamous Clyde the Turtle in the upcoming season?

LIU: Clyde will indeed be in it again. We have to share custody of Clyde.

IVIE: Is it true that Clyde is actually two tortoises? Pulling a Mary Kate and Ashley in Full House on us?

LIU: Yes. It’s just like having twins on a show. Just in case one is crying and screaming and passed out or something.

IVIE: You made your directorial debut for an episode of Elementary last season [“Paint It Black”]. Do you have plans to direct an episode again soon?

LIU: That was so exciting. I’ll be directing another episode again very shortly in December, so you’ll be seeing it in a month and a half.

IVIE: Where did your interest in directing come from?

LIU: I guess I was curious about it. Having been in this business for a while, you kind of see and get a glimpse of everything doing film and television. I think it seemed like a natural progression to go into directing, and I hope to explore more of it, because it’s very exciting and a really good way to collide all the things that you’ve known and experienced in the business and put them all into one.

IVIE: Is there an ideal guest star that you’d like to see on the show in the upcoming season?

LIU: I would love to see Mycroft come back. I really think there was a wonderful tension for Mycroft and Sherlock as well as the triangle that occurred when Joan became involved with him. There’s something very deep about that relationship, and I also think that Rhys Ifans is a fantastic actor. He commands the screen, but off-screen he’s incredibly lovely. A real treat to have on the show.

IVIE: I remember the first few episodes that I saw Rhys in, I was like, where have I seen this guy before? So I looked at his Wikipedia page and it became obvious: he was the crazy guy from Notting Hill!

LIU: Yes, the roommate! So good! Everything he does, he just kills it, no matter the role.

IVIE: And it’s always good to have some MI6 action on the show, which Mycroft provided. Some international flair.

LIU: [laughs] International flair, exactly, some added spice. Just throw some spy stuff in there to throw people off their game. You just don’t expect it, you know? It came out of nowhere.

IVIE: That whole three-episode arc at the end of the second season…

LIU: That was awesome. I was lucky enough to direct one of those episodes, which is more narrative in tone. It’s more fun in some ways, too.

IVIE: You’ve done a range of acting work for both television and film. Do you now find yourself preferring one to the other?

LIU: I love both of them equally. The lack of predictability with television is something that’s constantly changing what your perception of who you think your character is. Suddenly I have a father that’s schizophrenic, or I discovered something else, or I have a relationship with Mycroft. The things that pop up and change the game for you and always keep you on your toes. The wonderful thing about film is that you have something that has a beginning, middle, and end, and you have a concrete amount of time to shoot it. And the process of that can be longer, like editing and advertising and testing the movie, so it’s very different. Television you just continue going, no matter what’s happening outside of your world. You get lost in that vortex a little bit.

IVIE: It’s interesting that America is now embracing the “mini-series” format that has already been so heavily utilized overseas, where there are a set amount of short episodes, and that’s it. In a way, it’s kind of like a cinematic experience.

LIU: I like that, too. It allows you to have a freedom of creativity and at the same time you don’t feel like you have to be contracted to something for that long; you’re really working on a piece of art. And then you’re done and you move on, or it comes back, like Downton Abbey. You don’t know. Those things become little masterpieces. The thing about television is that you see a range of actors now that you may not have seen five years ago even, 10 years ago absolutely not, and I think now there’s no wrong about doing television. There’s no definitive category for what kind of department you fall into anymore.

IVIE: What’s a fun, secret fact about your costar Jonny Lee Miller?

LIU: A fun fact about Jonny Lee Miller is that he oftentimes does handstands on a wall before he does a take, sometimes with pushups, to get blood to his brain and get him geared up for a long monologue that he may have. He stays there, hangs a little bit, and then turns around and does the scene. Most of the time in the brownstone more than anywhere else. He’s in full costume and everything. That’s trivia!

IVIE: I wish I could do wall-handstands by myself.

LIU: Oh my god, I need someone to push my legs up and then hold me there. I’m a cheat!

ELEMENTARY PREMIERES THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30 ON CBS.

#Lucy Liu #Interview #2014 #comic con #jlm #mycroft #wardrobe #directing #third season #joanlock

39 notes · View notes

dailytomlinson · 4 years

Link

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

The Best Face Masks For Running and CyclingHere’s how to stay covered up while on your bike, on a jog, or for your next workout outdoorsAd By Rolling Stone See More

The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

#rolling stone #ROLLING STONE SAID ROCK BAN SO ITS A ROCK B AND PERIDOT #220720 #10years1d #one direction

376 notes · View notes

natromanxoff · 3 years

Text

How prog were Queen?

By Dave Everley

On 9 January, 1971, Kevin Ayers and Genesis played a show together at the Ewell Technical College near Epsom in Surrey. Ayers was 18 months out of Soft Machine, and making a name for himself as a psychedelically-inclined art-folk rake. Genesis had released their second album, Trespass, a few months earlier, and were carving out a place in the vanguard of the burgeoning progressive rock movement.

There was a third band propping up the bill that night, a bunch of transplanted Londoners calling themselves Queen. In contrast to the wilfully artful approach of the headliners, their music was more straightforward: a heavy, if ornate blend of Led Zeppelin’s earthiness and the flights of fancy of Yes.

Not everyone in the small crowd watching them was impressed, but they caught the attention of one person. After the show, Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel pulled Queen’s blond-bombshell drummer Roger Taylor to one side. Gabriel’s band were about to dismiss their own drummer, John Mayhew, and were looking for a replacement. Was Taylor interested in joining Genesis? The reply was instant: thanks but no thanks. Taylor was utterly dedicated to Queen – there were gigs to play, places to go, and many musical adventures to embark on.

Had Taylor accepted the offer, the course of music – and specifically prog – would have been very different. Genesis would have flourished with Gabriel upfront, though whether they would have survived and prospered as they did without a Phil Collins to step into the breach after their talismanic singer’s departure was another matter.

The knock-on effect on Queen would have been greater. Taylor was an essential part of their carefully balanced four-way chemistry; a chemistry that would go on to throw up some of the most ambitious and game-changing music ever recorded. While Queen weren’t a capital ‘P’ prog band, they were infused with the spirit of the movement, combining its forward-looking values with its absolute disregard for the existing rules. Taking their cues from the likes of Yes, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator and even Pink Floyd, their flamboyantly cavalier approach would go on to inspire such modern masters as Dream Theater, Queensrÿche and Muse. And, in Bohemian Rhapsody, they ensured that one of the biggest-selling singles in history was, at heart, a prog song. Forget the luxuriant moustaches and sawn-off mike-stands that would come to define them: if the prog ethos meant avoiding the expected, then Queen were definitely a prog band.

“Diversity was probably their greatest asset,” says former Dream Theater drummer and confirmed Queen devotee Mike Portnoy. “From song to song, they could be so different. You could have something that was folk followed by something that was rockabilly followed by something that was metal. And that’s one of the biggest things about prog, having that open-mindedness.”

Queen’s schooling in prog came early on. Brian May’s very first band, 1984, played a 4am slot supporting Pink Floyd at the Christmas On Earth Continued all-nighter in 1967. A year later, his next outfit, Smile – also featuring Roger Taylor – played with Floyd again, this time at London’s Imperial College. By the time of their gig opening for Kevin Ayers, Smile had changed their name to Queen and recruited Freddie Mercury. Collectively, they admired Yes, Van der Graaf Generator and especially Genesis. “Foxtrot is a prog rock classic,” Roger Taylor later wrote in the sleevenotes to Genesis box set 1970-1975. “Arrangements were highly complex in these early days, setting a benchmark for the style of the times.”

When it came to finding someone to produce their debut album, Queen’s first choice was John Anthony, who had worked with both Genesis and Van der Graaf. With Anthony and co-producer Roy Thomas Baker behind the desk, the eponymous album trod heavily in Led Zeppelin’s footsteps. But there was another, altogether more visionary band straining to spread their wings: My Fairy King was a filigreed slice of flamboyant rock’n’roll, while Liar metamorphosised through several different time changes and timings.

Those wings were fully unfurled on the follow-up, 1974’s Queen II. The title was the most prosaic thing about the record: the music inside was as fevered and baroque as rock gets, informed equally by Zeppelin, Yes and crazed Victorian artist Richard Dadd, whose 1864 painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke inspired one of the album’s most prog-leaning tracks. It may have been rooted in the heavy rock of the times, but its cavalier approach and sheer sense of scale pegged Queen as a defiantly progressive proposition.

“Queen weren’t like Yes, who had a dualistic role of guitar and keyboards, where both shared the terrain,” says Yes guitarist Steve Howe, supported by Queen at Kingston Poly in early 1971. “Brian had the terrain to himself. The remarkable thing was that he was the front and the back man. It required him to come up with more than guitar solos… He had to come up with a semi-thematic approach to play the guitar. And what he did was keep colouring.”

Queen’s prog inclinations would be deeply woven into the fabric of their early albums, from the audacious multi-part theatrics of Queen II’s March Of The Black Queen to the schizophrenic attack of the two-part Lap Of The Gods from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack. Even in their more commercial moments, they marched to the beat of their own drum. What other band would have dared serve up something so unusual as Killer Queen?

“It was their diversity,” says Mike Portnoy, who first heard Queen as an eight-year-old in the mid-70s and covered many Queen songs while in Dream Theater. “Their albums took the prototype that The Beatles laid down with the White Album, where you had four different artists bringing in very different styles. Every song was so diverse. You get to A Night At The Opera, and you had this giant multi-layered epic like Bohemian Rhapsody next to something like Seaside Rendezvous or Love Of My Life.”

A Night At The Opera was Queen’s grand artistic statement and their most unashamedly prog album. Pitched around the epic twin tentpoles of The Prophet’s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody, it married their far-reaching vision to a distinctly British barminess. Taken on its own, the eight-minute The Prophets Song, with its incredible ornate a cappella middle section, would be enough to grant Queen access to the Prog Hall Of Fame. But even that sits in the inescapable shadow of Bohemian Rhapsody. Time and success might have lessened its impact, but that song remains the most dazzlingly unique piece of music ever to sell five million copies.

“There are epic things that come along every so often,” says Steve Howe. “There’s Sgt Pepper, there’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. And there’s Bohemian Rhapsody. I don’t know when I first heard it, but once it was there, it was such a formidable thing. You’re thinking: ‘How many tracks did they need to do those vocals? How did they write it? Who invented it? It really was astounding.”

Bohemian Rhapsody encapsulated one of the key things that gave Queen such a distinct identity. Like The Beatles and Beach Boys before them, they used the studio as an instrument – not least when it came to their vocals. And Bohemian Rhapsody raised the bar about as high as it could go.

“They sang each of those parts and triple-stacked them,” says Mike Portnoy. “You heard all three of their voices singing in all three vocal ranges. That’s what made the depth of their music so complex. It wasn’t the instrumentation, it was the vocals. That’s unusual for prog music. When I think of my favourite prog music, it’s always the musicianship that draws me. But with Queen, it was the vocals. It was so deep.”

For all its success, A Night At The Opera would be Queen’s grand kiss-off to their prog roots. Later albums streamlined their sound into a more conventional format. Much like Genesis, the 80s found them swapping experimentalism for chart rock.

It wasn’t until the end of their career as an active band that Queen would again sound so adventurous. During 1989 and 1990, the band began work on their penultimate album, Innuendo, in London and Montreux. In the summer of 1990, Yes guitarist Steve Howe paid a flying visit to the Swiss city, where a chance encounter with a former guitar tech found him being invited to Queen’s studio to hear the album as a work-in-progress.

“Inside, there’s Freddie, Brian and Roger all sitting together. They go: ‘Let’s play you the album,’” says Howe. “Of course, I’m hearing it for the first time: I Can’t Live Without You, I’m Going Slightly Mad. And they saved Innuendo itself until last. They played it and I was fucking blown away.”

If that was surprising, then what happened next was utterly out-of-the-blue. The members of Queen asked if Howe wanted to play on the title track. The Yes man politely suggested they’d lost their minds. It took the combined weight of Mercury, May and Taylor to persuade him.

“They all chimed in: ‘We want some crazy Spanish guitar flying around over the top. Improvise!’” recalls Howe. “I started noodling around on the guitar, and it was pretty tough. After a couple of hours, I thought: ‘I’ve bitten off more than I can chew here.’ I had to learn a bit of the structure, work out the chordal roots were, where you had to fall if you did a mad run in the distance; you have to know where you’re going. But it got towards evening, and we’d doodled and I’d noodled, and it turned out to be really good fun. We have this beautiful dinner, we go back to the studio and have a listen. And they go: ‘That’s great. That’s what we wanted.”

Released as a single in January 1991, Innuendo gave Queen their third Number One single. Like Bohemian Rhapsody 25 years before it, it was as unlikely as hit singles get: a six-and-a-half minute musical jigsaw, complete with flamenco runs, classically-inclined orchestral overloads and maverick 5/4 timing. Queensrÿche covered the song on 2007’s Take Cover album, while you can hear its echo in Radiohead’s Paranoid Android and Muse’s more elaborate sci-fi epics.

“In the world of rock, Queen stands out as a good example of the clash between guitar and piano in songwriting,” Muse’s Matt Bellamy has said. “I think that’s where you stumble across those more unusual arrangements and chord structures.”

Today, Queen have left a bi-polar legacy. They’re arguably best known for their pop hits – Radio Gaga, I Want To Break Free and of course, Bohemian Rhapsody, that ultimate prog Trojan Horse. But their spirit of adventure remains unmatched by all but the boldest of their peers.

“There was no rulebook for Queen,” says Mike Portnoy. “They broke most of the rules that existed, and then they wrote a new set.”

#queen #queen band #roger taylor #freddie mercury #brian may #john deacon

102 notes · View notes

hlupdate · 4 years

Link

Even at the tender age of 26, Styles is a veteran of these cavernous spaces, which he refers to as “rooms”.

As an artist, it’s rare to find that if you’re touring for months at a time, to go in these big rooms and feel that comfortable.”

#harry styles #articles #261020

134 notes · View notes

stylesnews · 4 years

Link

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

The Best Face Masks For Running and CyclingHere’s how to stay covered up while on your bike, on a jog, or for your next workout outdoorsAd By Rolling Stone See More

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

#rollingstone #july20 #10years1d

279 notes · View notes

klaineaddictsfanficrecs · 3 years

Text

Unmasked

By Gleeful Darren Criss Fan

Covid sucked. It had totally ruined 2020. First, he had landed his first major role in a Broadway production. Ok, it was an understudy role, and it was a revival of Wicked. He was Fiyero’s understudy, even though he was better than the guy cast to play the role, some cocky kid named Brody that slept his way to the top. Unfortunately for the promiscuous boy, he had pissed off the director and was fired during the pandemic, allowing Blaine to step in and fill his shiny, polished shoes.

Unfortunately, Covid had other plans. The governor called for the emergency closure of all nonessential businesses, which meant the show and the theater was mandated to stay closed to the public until further notice. Initially, he had been optimistic, thinking that they were only going to close down for a couple of weeks. Now, almost a year later, there was finally a date set for opening night. It was finally time for his debut. He had finally gotten to walk back through those doors and step back on stage. But that wasn’t the reason that he had been so elated.

This morning when he was told that everyone would be allowed to congregate and rehearse together, he had practically jumped for joy. Yes, it would be amazing to see his costars again. Rachel, although a diva at times, was fun to be around and immensely talented. And his friends in the ensemble, like Sam, Tina, and Mike were a blast to be around. And even Santana, Rachel’s understudy, was even becoming his friend, even though he did not want to get on her bad side. But the person he was most excited to be around wasn’t even on the stage. And because of that, he only had the opportunity to see him sporadically, only when the costume director needed to take measurements or do adjustments. Yep, that’s correct. His favorite person to see in the whole production was the lead designer for the show, Kurt Hummel.

When he was first told that Brody was out and he was in, he was ecstatic because that meant that he’d get his chance to shine. Unfortunately, it had caused Kurt to flip out because Brody and Blaine were very different, especially in the height department. Blaine was also told that he was not as defined in a few areas, like his arms, but he was much more defined in other areas, such as in the crotch area. Blaine had never blushed so much in his life as when Kurt had to take his measurements that day.

And since then, Blaine’s outlook for his day seemed to improve as soon as Kurt walked into the theater. It hadn’t happened much at first, because they staggered days that they worked at the theater so that they could socially distance themselves. Kurt had said that he could do much of the sewing at home, so he seldomly graced them with his presence until the virus finally started to get under control.

And when Kurt was there, he would always do the responsible thing and distance himself and wear an impeccably designed and completely original mask. Of course, all of them were encouraged to wear masks. Blaine had his on currently, although he was permitted to take his off when he was singing because it was hard to sing with them on. However, since Kurt was a costume designer that didn’t have to perform or sing, his mask stayed in place the entire time that he was there. And Blaine absolutely hated it.

Yep, he hated that little piece of fabric so much. Stupid covid. Because of you, Kurt’s face was concealed. His luscious lips, his adorable button nose, his strong jaw, his rosy cheeks, and that adorable cleft in his chin were being touched, caressed even by the fabric instead of his own fingers and lips. Now, Blaine had to imagine what Kurt’s face looked like when he laughed or when he got irritated and said something fiery and sarcastic. It was just so unfair. And what made it worse was that everyone had to bring attention to them.

Kurt never seemed to wear the same mask twice, unlike most of the rest of the crew. Some of them obviously only owned one and never bothered to wash it. Kurt, however, always walked in with the most stunning, unique masks that Blaine had ever seen, which became the immediate topic that everyone had to talk about. Sam, Mike, or even Santana would comment on how amazing the mask was. Blaine thought back to the first time that Kurt had walked in with the accessory that Blaine now detested most of all.

“Oh my God, Blaine,” Tina exclaimed as she embraced him. “Did you see Kurt’s mask yet?”

tin man mask

Blaine nodded. “Yeah. It’s neat.”

“Neat? Blaine, it’s the tinman’s face, in exact detail. It’s incredible. I’ve not seen anything like it, and I’ve searched like crazy for the coolest designs and fabrics when I was making mine. I bet he made it. He has the skill, obviously. I wonder if he’d make me one.”

“I’m sure he would,” Blaine said softly, though he was really trying not to roll his eyes.

“Don’t you like it? I thought you liked the wizard of Oz. If it wasn’t for the popularity of that story, Wicked wouldn’t have ever happened.”

“I love the wizard of Oz. You know that.”

“Then, what’s the reason for that face. When I brought up the mask, you looked almost as irritated as you were when Rachel tried to make “As long as You’re Mine” a solo because she had the strongest voice. Do you not like Kurt?”

Blaine bit his lip. “No, no. Of course, I like Kurt. I was just thinking of the show and everything. Sorry. It’s a great mask.”

“Cool. I’m going to ask him to make one for both of us then,” Tina said, ignoring the look of horror from Blaine as she frantically started waving the brunette over. “Hey Kurt! Come here for a minute!”

Kurt smiled as he stepped up to the two friends. “Hi, Tina. Hey Blaine. Did you need somethi-?”

“Yeah,” Tina interrupted, shaking Kurt’s hand, neglecting to let it go so that Blaine could do the same. “We were just talking about your mask, and how cool it is, and Blaine and I thought it would be neat to have one. Where did you get it?”

“Oh, I made it actually,” Kurt replied. “During the pandemic, I had to do something to earn money and keep my sanity, so I designed and sewed masks. It was also a way that I could do my part to help. My dad was at risk, since he’s a cancer survivor and all, so it started with me trying to convince him to wear a mask. He kept fussing that he couldn’t find any that were comfortable and fun to wear, so I started designing them for him to wear.”

“He’s a Wizard of Oz fan?” Tina asked.

Kurt shook his head. “Nah, not really. This one was completely my idea. No. I designed him some masks with his favorite car models or the Buckeyes.”

Blaine did a double-take. Could Kurt be more perfect? “You like the Buckeyes?”

Kurt laughed. “Oh Heck no. But my dad does. He loves football, and he’s all about supporting the local team, you know.”

“Oh ok,” Blaine chuckled. “I didn’t take you for the type that liked football.”

“Hey, now. Don’t put me inside a box, Blaine. I was on my high school football team.”

“For like two games, and you were the kicker,” Rachel interjected, popping up behind them as if from nowhere. “Hey, Blaine, Tammy.”

“Tina,” Tina said with an eye roll.

“So, are you ready to finally get to practice together? I bet it’ll be a total disaster since I highly doubt that the rest of the cast rehearsed daily as I did to stay in optimum shape both vocally and physically. Kurt, have you put on some weight.”

“Why, yes, Rachel, I have, or to phrase it more accurately, I’ve gained muscle mass, because unlike, what you suggested, I’ve kept up with my aerobics and exercise routine daily, and I’ve actually watched what I’ve eaten better. Have you?”

Rachel’s eyes flashed. “No, I have not. I’ve actually lost weight, thank you very much,” she said, stomping away angrily.

“Thank you,” Tina said graciously. “I can’t stand her sometimes. We’ve worked together for a while now, and she still calls me Tammy.”

Kurt shrugged his shoulders. “She just feels threatened because she’s not used to sharing the spotlight much. So, you want a mask like this?”

Tina nodded. “Yeah. It’s incredible. Actually, could you make two? Blaine wants one as well.”

“Is that right? I think that I still have enough fabric at home to whip one up for both of you. Or did you want a different character? I even have couples’ masks if you’re interested.

“No, no, uh uh. No couples masks. Blaine and I aren’t a couple. I’m seeing Mike. Blaine’s gay,” Tina corrected.

“Oh, is that right,” Kurt replied. Blaine wished that he could see the rest of Kurt’s face when he had said that because if he didn’t know better, Kurt seemed to be smiling, maybe even blushing, but Blaine couldn't be sure because of that damn mask covering his face.

“Uh yeah, totally gold star gay,” Blaine responded, feeling his own cheeks grow warm. Thank god he had on a mask to cover the bright red hue painted on his cheeks. “I thought it was obvious.”

Kurt laughed, his nose scrunching up under the fabric. “Nope. and I thought my gaydar had improved since I moved here. Good to know,” Kurt said with a wink.

A wink. What did Kurt mean by that? Was he blushing too? Smiling at him? Could Kurt be interested in him? Blaine was usually good at reading people’s expressions, but with that stupid mask, he wasn’t getting the full picture. And unfortunately, every conversation after that was just as cryptic.

“Hey Blaine,” Kurt said as he stepped into Blaine’s dressing room. “Do you have a minute?”

“Yeah sure. What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to see if you got your mask, and you obviously did because it’s right there. Does it fit right?”

“Oh, I haven’t tried it on yet since I haven’t left my dressing room yet. I wore a different one here today, but it looks good.” He fitted the elastic over his ears. He smiled, but then quickly realized that Kurt couldn’t see it anymore. “Yeah, it’s perfect. Yours is interesting today.”

Baby Yoda mask

“Thanks. I think baby Yoda is adorable,” Kurt replied.

I think you’re adorable, Blaine thought. “Yeah, he is. Did you need something else?”

“Um, yeah. Actually, I noticed yesterday that your costume is a little snug in a few areas, specifically around your arms and other areas and I didn’t want it to be uncomfortable so I thought I’d take your measurements so I could make the needed adjustments.”

This was mortifying. Kurt noticed that he had put on some weight during the pandemic. He tried to keep up a healthy diet, and he still exercised every day. He also indulged more in sweets though, especially since his favorite bakery started offering delivery. He and Steve, the Door Dash delivery guy, were now on a first-name basis. “Yeah, I guess that I started eating less healthy since this whole pandemic thing started and I discovered cronuts. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Kurt said as he started measuring Blaine’s triceps. “If anything, I just thought that you had increased your workout regime while you were stuck at home. Your sleeves have definitely gotten tighter, along with some other things,” Kurt remarked, his eyes shifting down his body. “I thought at first that you just started dressing up in tighter clothing until I saw you in the costume. Not that I mind.” Kurt said as he turned his head up and looked directly at Blaine, and were his pupils larger?

“Oh, um. Yeah. It wasn’t intentional. I can’t pull off the look as well as you do,” Blaine replied.

“Debatable,” Kurt answered back quickly, and was that a giggle? That stupid piece of fabric on his face muffled his voice a little, so Blaine couldn’t be sure. Was he flirting? “Anyway, I’ll adjust the shirt for you,” Kurt said as his fingers worked his way down to Blaine’s thighs, “although I think I need to take out the pants a little as well. You’ve clearly gained some definition in your thighs as well.”

Blaine was thankful for his mask at that moment because it hid how his mouth dropped open in shock. Was Kurt complimenting his legs? Or was he just doing his job and noticing that his pants had gotten tighter.

“Do I need to take them out in other areas? Turn around and let me get your measurements in the seat of your pants.”

Did Kurt just ask to measure his ass? “Are you trying to imply that my ass has gotten bigger?” Blaine laughed, again a blush rising on his cheeks.

“Not at all. It’s actually the opposite. You’ve obviously defined certain areas, and so your trousers are ill-fitted in some places and too tight in others. I just didn’t want you to have an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction on stage. Plus, I know how uncomfortable it is to squeeze into a pair of pants that are too tight.”

“Your pants are really tight. Why do you wear them that way if they’re uncomfortable?” Blaine questioned, thankful that Kurt was behind him and not able to see how embarrassed he was by the question.

“It’s fashionable. Plus, I have long legs. My skinny jeans accentuate my assets,” Kurt answered as he moved the measuring tape along Blaine’s butt.

“Yeah, they do,” Blaine blurted. “I mean, you obviously know what looks good on your body type,” he quickly added. Change the subject, before you pop a boner, Blaine. “So has my ass has gotten smaller.”

Kurt laughed heartily. “Are you trying to insinuate that I committed the size of your ass to memory, Blaine?” Kurt said, rising up, and resting the tape on his arm.

“Um, no, but you said my pants no longer fit right,” Blaine mumbled. “So it must’ve gotten smaller, right?”

Kurt chuckled again. “Not necessarily. Like I said, your thighs have gained definition and you have gained some muscles in your glutes as well. Therefore, it changed the fit of your already tight trousers. And since they’re white, they’re showing some things that may not be appropriate for the kiddos in the audience to see.

“Oh, um, then, by all means, let’s fix that.” Blaine laughed.

“Well, then, I’ll kinda need your pants.”

Blaine ran his hand through his curls as he turned his head from the brunette. “Wait, right now?”

“Not this exact second, Blaine. I’m not telling you to drop ‘em right this instant.” Kurt chuckled. “I’ll leave, and you can change. Then, I’ll tailor them as quickly as I can so that they are ready for the dress rehearsal Thursday.”

“Oh, ok. Thanks, Kurt.” Blaine smiled, even though he knew Kurt couldn’t see it with his mask covering his face.

“No, thank you, Blaine. It’s been my pleasure. Kurt said with a wink. Then, he turned and shut the door behind him.

What the hell? Was Kurt flirting or was he just doing his job? He had to be flirting. He had noticed that Blaine’s body had changed, and he had even commented that the changes were nice. Was Kurt trying to hint that he liked what he saw? Or was it really an issue of a wardrobe nightmare waiting to happen?

Damn that mask. Blaine had missed all the signs. The shy smiles, the blushing cheeks, the sly, confident smile he’d usually look for when he read another guy’s expressions. The signs that he had read on his former hookups or boyfriends before he felt confident to ask them out. Hell, some guys made it extremely easy, like Sebastian, who basically called him sex on a stick and gave him a room key to his dorm. Covid had already complicated his life on so many levels, and now it was messing with his love life. Not that he had a love life. Blaine sighed and unbuckled his pants. Yep. He hated those stupid masks.

The next encounter was even more confusing.

“Hey, Blaine. Are things inside your pants better now?” Kurt asked, making Blaine nearly spit out the water he had just taken a sip of. “Oh God. I meant, do they feel better.”

“Wanky,” Santana laughed. “You been lettin’ Hummel get into your pants, Anderson?”

“What? No. He had to make some adjustments yesterday.”

“Some adjustments? Is that what we’re calling it now? Santana laughed again, raising her eyebrows and perching her hand on her hip.

“I had to tailor his pants, Santana. Just like I had to make adjustments to your costume as well after you decided to get some adjustments of your own,” Kurt replied.

“Hey, just because Berry’s captain of the itty bitty titty committee doesn’t mean that I have to join too. Now, I’m ineligible, thanks to some silicone and a team of surgeons. Anyway, Blaine, you didn’t answer Ladyface’s question. How are things inside your pants? Growing uncomfortable, are we?”

“No, they actually are fine. Thanks for your concern. Don’t you have some lines to review, Santana?”

“Yeah, but they aren’t going to be as fun for me to study as the ones that Kurt studied on your ass.”

“Leave him alone, Santana. Blaine can’t help that his body changed during the pandemic, even though he looks great. Getting into better shape and taking care of your body is a positive thing, especially since Blaine didn’t have to get the help of a doctor and a scalpel to do it.”

Santana flipped her hair, “Whatever, lady face,” she sassed, stalking away.

“Thanks, Kurt.”

“For putting her in her place? She lived with me for a little while. You just have to call her out when she gets bitchy,” Kurt replied.

“No, I meant for the alterations. I don’t feel quite so obscene now.” Blaine laughed.

“No problem, Blaine. That’s my job. Although I kinda liked the view,” Kurt said quietly. “Besides, it reflects poorly on me as a costume designer if anything appears ill-fitting.”

Blaine smiled. “Well, still, thank you. I can actually breathe in my costume now. Did you make that mask as well?”

“Yeah. Do you like it?”

Chewbacca mask

Nope. Not at all, Blaine thought as he visualized how even more gorgeous Kurt would be without it. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

“Fine? Do you not like Chewbacca, Blaine?

“He’s fine, I guess. I’m more of a Han solo guy myself.”

“Oh, I like him too, but I didn’t know how to make a Harrison Ford face,” Kurt laughed. “I don’t think they sell that at Mood.”

Blaine chuckled. “No, I guess not. But does that mean that they do have Chewbacca Fabric?”

“No, I had to order it from a specialty shop online. They use a special program to put the design on fabric. My customers really seem to like them.”

“They really are unique,” although I wish you’d take yours off so that I could see your gorgeous smile again, Blaine thought. “I think that it’s great that you make them, even though I can’t wait for the day that they lift the mask mandates.”

“And why is that, Blaine? I really like seeing the different designs that people wear, and they’re fun to make.”

I really like seeing your whole face, and I haven’t gotten to see it since this stupid pandemic started, Blaine thought. “I just don’t like trying to breathe through the fabric, I guess, and I kinda miss seeing people’s facial expressions.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Especially for an actor. I guess it’s hard to react to your scene partner’s expressions when you can’t see them. And I guess it’d be difficult trying to sing with one on,” Kurt replied. “But, safety first. I wouldn’t want anyone to get sick because of my negligence.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It is the responsible thing to do.”

“Being responsible sucks sometimes, though,” Kurt said. “I don’t particularly like them either.”

“You don’t?” Blaine asked in surprise.

Kurt shook his head. “I miss people’s smiles too, some more than others,” Kurt said as he turned and walked away.

What did he mean by that? Did Kurt mean him? Was he talking about someone else? He had never been so puzzled in his life.”

__________________________________________________________________________

The next few weeks continued to puzzle Blaine. The days that Kurt was at the theater were few and far between, and when he was there, he was bombarded with the task of fixing a burst seam or making alterations to the rest of the casts’ costumes. And since the CDC and the governor were still suggesting that every one social distance, Kurt seemed to take that to heart, barely speaking to him at all.

“Blaine, what did you think of Kurt’s mask today?” Sam asked as Sam exited the stage and Blaine prepared to enter.

“Oh, I haven’t even seen it yet. I wasn’t aware that he was here today.”

“Yeah, the CDC finally lifted some of the restrictions, although they are still recommending masks,” Mike commented. “You didn’t notice that everyone was here today?”

Blaine shook his head. “I’ve been running lines in my dressing room. With the opening night being just a week away, my nerves have been a mess,” Blaine admitted.

“Then you should definitely check out Kurt’s mask. It’s just your style,” Sam said, smiling.

“I’ll check it out,” Blaine said with a nod, stepping on the stage, and then spotting Kurt sitting front and center in the center of one of the front rows, and Sam was right. It was definitely his style.

Han Solo mask

Blaine flubbed several of his lines as his focus was pulled from Rachel and directed to Kurt countless times. It was Han Solo. Kurt was wearing a Han solo mask. What did that mean?

“Blaine? Cut? We need to try that again. That line isn’t even in this scene. Where’s your focus? We have opening night in a week, and you can’t just be dropping the wrong lines. It might throw me off. If you’re going star opposite of me, you have to match my level of talent and enthusiasm. I don’t want my opening night to be lackluster.”

“God, Rachel. It’s not just your opening night. You do realize that hundreds of people all have a hand in making this play come together. You aren’t the only person that people are coming to see. I need a break,” Blaine sighed, storming off the stage in frustration.

“Hey, Blaine, are you ok?” a sweet melodic voice asked behind him.

Blaine turned to see Kurt standing in front of him, his Han solo mask still in place. “Yeah, I just get a little flustered by her sometimes.”

Kurt nodded in understanding. “I get it. We used to be roommates. I couldn’t take it anymore. I moved in with Elliott during the pandemic.”

“Elliott?” Blaine had never heard Kurt mention that name before. Did Kurt have a boyfriend? Of course, he did. There was no way that a man as gorgeous and sweet as Kurt was single.

“Yeah, we met when he auditioned for my band shortly after I moved to New York.”

“Your band? You’re in a band?”

Kurt nodded. “Yeah, but we haven’t played anywhere with a lot of the venues we play not having shows this past year. I really miss it. We still practice sometimes, but I miss performing in front of an audience. We have a gig coming up, though. You should come.”

“Sure. When is it?”

“Friday at Callbacks. It starts at 8.”

“I have rehearsal, but I’ll try. By the way, your mask is great.”

“Thanks. It was inspired by you. You said that you liked Han. and I’ve already sold several on my Etsy page. But I saved one for you, if you want it.”

“Of course I want it. What makes you think that I wouldn’t.”

“You said that you don’t like masks,” Kurt answered matter of factly.

“It’s not that I don’t like them. I just miss seeing people’s faces.” Especially yours, Blaine thought. He had never been so jealous of a piece of fabric in his life. Those masks got to be right up close to Kurt’s smooth skin, his perfect, luscious lips, and it wasn’t fair. “I’ll try to be there Friday. I can’t wait to hear you sing.”

“I can’t wait to be back on stage again myself. I’ll see you then. And here. This is yours. Kurt placed something in his hand. It was a mask just like his own.

“Thank you,” Blaine said, squeezing Kurt’s hand as if to discourage him from moving it away from his.

“No problem. I made one for Sam and Elliott as well. They’re both Star Wars fans like you. And hang in there. Rachel does not use to sharing the spotlight, but one of these days, she’ll realize the importance of a team effort. See you Friday.”

“See you then.” Although Blaine was really tired of the fact that he still wouldn’t get to see Kurt’s beautiful smile. But then he realized that Kurt would be singing and it was hard to sing with a mask on. Kurt would have to take off the mask. There’s no way that Blaine would miss finally getting to see his face once again.

____________________________________________________________________________

Blaine was a nervous wreck, pacing back and forth in front of the little club. He debated going inside. On one hand, he’d get to hear his crush sing. On the other hand, Kurt would be there with the man he lived with, that probably got to kiss his lips and touch his face and strong jaw.

After about five minutes, he finally gathered the nerve to step inside the club, only to see the man of his dreams, maskless, and wrapped in the arms of a gorgeous, taller man with eyeliner and a leather jacket. He turned around and abruptly left the club without looking back.

_______________________________________________________________________

It was opening night, and Blaine’s nerves were on edge. He was excited. His parents and Cooper were both going to be in the audience tonight to watch him perform. His parents had already seen the special showing the night before, and then they took him out for dinner at a swanky place that Blaine could probably never afford. It was a nice evening, but it had been plagued by a feeling of frustration. Kurt hadn’t even tried to talk to him since that night that he stood him up at Callbacks. And Kurt would be at the show. He’d have to be, to make sure that everyone’s costumes were in perfect shape. In fact, he had seen Kurt running around and checking with everyone to make sure that they didn’t need anything. Except him.

Kurt hadn’t even turned around long enough for him to see his mask today. And suddenly, Blaine collided with someone hard, almost falling backward as a strong arm gripped his and prevented him from hitting the hardwood beneath him.

“Are you ok?”

“Kurt, hey, I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was goin-”

“Are you ok? Kurt asked again.

“Your mask. It’s me.”

Blaine Anderson Mask

Kurt nodded. “It is. I broke my rule to wear it tonight.”

“You have a rule? I mean other than to never take it off.”

Kurt nodded. I don’t usually wear the same mask twice. But I wore this one again.

Blaine shook his head. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“I wore it at Callbacks. I guess you couldn’t make it that night.”

“I was there, but I-I had to leave. I’m sorry.”

“Was there an emergency or something?”

“No, I just couldn’t handle it. I’m sorry.”

Kurt shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. You’re going to have to explain it to me.”

“How does Elliott feel about that mask?”

“He’s fine with it. He actually helped me find a picture of you to use so that I could draw it accurately.”

“And he wasn’t jealous?”

“No, why would he be. We’re just roommates and bandmates.”

“He was holding you quite tightly the other night. I didn’t want to intrude.”

“Oh, that? He needed a friend. His boyfriend of two years broke up with him the day before and we had just rehearsed a song that Elliott wrote for him. I was being supportive.”

“Wait, so Elliott isn’t your boyfriend?” Blaine asked.

“No. I just needed a place to stay when Rachel became an even bigger diva than she already is. Elliott and Danny offered to let me stay at their place. They never seemed to mind me. That is until Danny accused Elliott and me of sleeping together. Which would never happen because I respected their relationship too much, and I’m not really attracted to Elliott. I’ve been hopelessly head over heels for someone else for over a year now.”

“Wait, you have? Do I know him?”

Kurt smiled and pulled his mask off and handed it to Blaine. I thought I made it pretty obvious. I mean, I wouldn’t just put anyone on my face.” Kurt facepalmed. I mean, I wouldn��t just wear a mask with just anybody on it.”

“You had Han solo’s chest on one of them.” Blaine objected.

“Because he was your favorite,” Kurt countered.

“And you wore baby Yoda.”

“Because Sam said that you liked Star Wars a lot. He told me that you thought Yoda was adorable.”

“I think you’re adorable,” Blaine blurted, and then blushed profusely when he realized that he said that out loud. “I mean, especially now, since I can see your face.”

“Well then, if you like seeing it, then how about you make plans to see it again, tonight, after the show. Dinner. You and I.”

“My brother’s taking me out tonight. But we can do something afterward.”

“Will you show up this time,” Kurt pouted.

“I showed up last time. And I am truly sorry about that. I really did want to see you perform. I just was caught off guard when I saw you and Elliott holding one another so tightly. It just seemed like I’d be intruding.”

“You can’t intrude if I want you to be there. And he was comforting me because I thought that you weren’t coming.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions,” Blaine said dropping his head down in shame.

“Make it up to me?” Kurt asked with a timid smile.

“Anything.”

Kurt cupped Blaine’s jaw and closed the distance between them, their lips finally meeting in an electric kiss.

“God, I’ve wanted to do that for ages. But I couldn’t because of these things.” Blaine said, referencing the mask that was still in his hand.

“I knew you didn’t really like them.”

“I hated them at first, because I didn’t actually get to see you smile anymore. I didn’t get to see your nose crinkle when something irritated you, and I didn’t get to see your cheeks redden when Santana said something distasteful. But then, I realized that I got to see another part of you that I hadn’t got to see before. I think I fell head over heels for you when I saw you in a mask for the first time. That tin man mask. It just showed so much personality. And then, you made one for me too. I still have it. I wear it all the time.”

“I have mine in my keepsake box. It was the day I realized that I didn’t just have a crush on you anymore. It had grown into something much deeper.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Blaine asked, staring intensely at the gorgeous man in front of him.

“It depends. What is it that you think I’m saying?” Kurt smirked. Smirked, and it was adorable and so freakin’ hot.

“I think you’re saying, Mr. Hummel, that you want me to be your boyfriend,” Blaine smirked back.

“And I think that’s pretty accurate,” Kurt replied as he pressed his body into Blaine’s and kissed him firmly on the lips.

“It’s nice to finally get to do this,” Blaine whispered against his boyfriend’s lips.

“Do what?” Kurt prompted, lightly kissing Blaine’s lips once more.

“To get you unmasked,” Blaine replied before deepening the kiss.

8 notes · View notes

iamacolor · 3 years

Note

fashion queen! which nct era has the best fashun in ur opinion?? and if u were a designer which neos would u pick as ur models?

I was so excited to answer this that I wrote several pages and it basically turned into a style analysis for each unit so I sure hope you have some time on your hands to read everything I’ve just written! (I did not reread so sorry for any typing mistake)

NCT is known to be experimental in their music and that’s also the case in their styling so there’s a lot for me to get into even though sometimes it’s a miss. One thing I will say though is that when it comes to the styling in mv/teasers, what’s around the clothes is super important because if you have a very specific styling concept, your set design or graphic design needs to complement that and give the audience more clues on how to read all these elements together (the cherry bomb era is a great example of that with all the added graphic elements and the predominance of the colour pink) and recently I’ve found that the creative team has not really gone further than just putting nct in an outfit in front of a basic background so it makes for a pretty underwhelming result

But let’s move on to my favourite styling eras. I’m going to do this per unit (I’ll finish with NCT U) and define an era by its teaser pictures and the mv (and not go through all the performance looks during the promotion period)

I’m putting this under a read more because it’s reaaally long (I put pictures so that it’s not just one big chunk of text)

NCT 127

Easily the most experimental unit when it comes to fashion, especially in their first years where they would wear mix of sportswear, grunge references, avant-garde fashion and a lot of layers. When it comes to their debut “Firetruck”, I think it fitted the song really well but that it didn’t fit all the members equally (especially the younger ones, for me Taeyong and Taeil pulled it off the best – it’s expected of Taeyong but I also think that Taeil always stand out when they go for edgy/unconventional look, I think it really suits him).

Anyway, just to say that they were off to a very strong start and then I’m just going to kindly ignore the Limitless styling and move on to Cherry Bomb!

One thing nicely done for CB is how when you look at a group picture they’re clearly all following the same concept but they’re not necessarily matching or giving off the same vibes if you take them individually. I love the use of the colour pink which brings a) a great visual impact (you don’t ever see that much pink at once – especially on men) and b) an harmony despite the shapes and styles of their outfits being so vastly different, you’ve got ties, tousled, shirts, little frilled collars, stripes and all-over prints, sportswear and formal wear… (ex: taeyong’s short jacket is reminiscent of something a little luxurious, even maybe historical/noble with the little added embroidery-like details, it reminds me of these boleros jackets worn by toreros that are often red/gold VS doyoung’s overalls is an outfit that has a much more recent origin as it was first worn by factories workers, it’s usually blue or grey and is meant to be practical rather than pleasing to the eye -> here it fits very well with the general setting of the mv in what looks like an empty industrial storage space)

This second look is more of a game on how to deconstruct formal wear (there are less prints and no bold colours, their hair is less messy…) but they don’t just add sportswear like the bomber jacket, you can find rock or more “modern” elements with the leather jackets or the jean jackets. All in black and white so great contrast with the previous looks, although that mix and match concept is still there. My favourite elements are the checkered ones (worn by taeyong, taeil and haechan) as it reminds me of the strategy element of the chess game which fits pretty well with all the weapons and other arms visible in the mv (a bit like a nod to the game battleship)

This one I love that they developed their own print, especially since it’s another graphic element used elsewhere (see their album cover), because it’s a great way to really introduce their identity as a group, through the different visual elements they put out in a comeback, it’s like a logo but as a print. And all the teasers and the mv did a great job at mixing 2D/3D contents so that’s another nice way to be cohesive. It’s not my fave look out of the 3 (especially because I do not approve of that belt-suspenders-bag they gave Johnny, it’s like everything you don’t want to put a dancer in and it’s ugly as well) but I still like the fact that’s it’s another nod to the battle/strategy aspect of this comeback, like they’re on a mission to hit the stage and conquer it

Then fast forward to my other favourite one, Simon Says! (No teaser pictures here because they don’t show anything or they show not enough lol)

First of all THE MASKS

Oh how I wish they could’ve been shown more (imagine teasers with the members wearing them!!! I would’ve loved individual teasers based on each of the masks concepts) Once again, a great to have group concept without making everyone wear the same thing. They’re all super different and full of details. Haechan’s is the only one from what I could who’s mask is actually a mask and not a fully covering hood. The materials and techniques used on these are either evocative of “fragile” things like glass and flowers but theses elements have their own hidden strength. Some others are covered in lace, pearls, fringes or fur…all these things are usually considered to be precious or even luxurious but it covers their faces and their identity and they throw it away in rebellion (and I think it’s also super interesting how Taeyong who takes off his mask first has the least ornamented one)

Then the outfits themselves. Simon Says in an interesting MV because unlike most others they wear one outfit for most of the MV (the second one appears quite late in the mv and is lit and staged in a way that makes it less visible). It’s a mostly grey/white set of outfits which is usually a colour combo for office wear or maybe factory workers, it’s not something that can seem very exciting or edgy. The styling in these outfits reminds me of the works of Japanese designers who came to Paris in the 80’s and kind of shook the whole high fashion system by bringing a different type of shapes, aesthetic and purpose to fashion (Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto…). These designers went on to become super successful and inspired another wave of “avant-garde” designers nicknamed “the 6 of Anvers” (Anvers is a city in Belgium), this group includes Martin Margiella, Dries Van Noten…And to me the outfits in Simon Says really fit into this aesthetic. Unconventional fits, various layers, it’s not so much mix and match than a work on contrast between structure and fluidity (Yuta’s half skirt with un-trimed edges, Haechan’s long shirt with the long bow and the fitted jacket, Mark’s top with the various see-through layers of different lengths…).

An other interesting details (which to me calls back to the mask and that tension in the song/concept of letting go/being free of expectations), is the way they all have thick strings tied on their feet/ankles. Not holding them back because their feet aren’t tied together but there’s still this clear restriction of the garment itself, a reminder that there are tied to something and not completely free (also an interesting choice when dressing dancers who would need to have no added weight or discomfort in their outfit to dance but visually something is holding their ankles)

Honorable mentions:

Kick It– they managed to create very memorable outfits while taking inspirations from already well known elements (both for the fighting/training outfits and the bomber jackets). The black and white outfits especially are very original as performance outfits/dancing clothes since the og garment they’re inspired by has already such a strong identity outside of the performing arts and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it be used as a stage outfit? Or concept? It’s a nice exemple of how you can take inspiration for something designed to be useful and to be efficient (in fighting) and turn it into an aesthetic.

Truthfully, martial art training outfit was already an “aesthetic” on its own but they made it a performance costume and now I do feel like it’s one of these looks that everyone will remember (like if there was a “most memorable kpop outfits” list it could easily have kick it’s black/white fits). The rest of the outfits for that concept weren’t as memorable/original to me although I feel like it showed a new approach to the styling of nct 127 as a group since they all had very similar outfits this time (especially when wearing the jackets).

Also, interestingly, that shot of Jaehyun that had everyone go “wow” ? Well it’s impactful because it’s him and he looks like that and it’s shot in a very specific way, but it’s also even more impactful because he’s the only one who gets to wear that kind of outfit in the mv. Everyone else has 3 sets of outfits (black and white, shiny black, red jacket and black pants) but he has 4 and that suit is only used in that shot which makes for a greater impact!

And I feel like Kick It in terms of styling opened a new era for NCT 127 has it kind of broke their usual mix and match/edgy concept. This time they were clearly referencing something already well known (either martial arts, the 90s…), and the members were all matching and they kept on doing that with the military jackets in punch, the other 90s concept in nct 2020…

Touch – for the way the outfits match the sets (in all their individual sets their outfits have a detail in a matching colour), the focus on colours !!! You can see that this whole concept was designed with this colour game/colour progression between the outfits and the set in mind. It’s just very pleasing to the eyes and a great contrast to their usual stuffs (also I wrote my graduation paper on colours so I am really into creative use of colours like this)

OK now moving on to Dream!!

The interesting thing about Dream compared to NCT 127 is that from the beginning although their outfits had to match the song an the concept of the comeback it also had to match their age. Dream’s a group that had to look young when debuting (to the point where they wore outfits that made them look even younger than they were which is rarely done for boy groups) and then they had to transition into adulthood, and all of that had to be made visible. In that aspect, I really like the styling for We Young and Boom (especially when you look at them at the same time).

For We Young, the styling is meant to be reminiscent of school/boy scout uniforms but with a marine vibe. It makes for playful outfits that aren’t too childish but that also aren’t grown up. I prefer the “seaside” outfits as I don’t really like school uniforms as a concept for styling and I think it’s really a choice that suited them and the song so well, it really fitted their energy. It’s playful but it also has a vintage touch to it as these outfits with their stripes and their squared flap at the back date back to the XIXth century (I just found out that it all started with the queen Victoria dressing up her kid in an outfit inspired by the royal navy uniforms for a painting after a cruise ).

Boom on the other side is their first proper “grown-up” concept. We go up was already more grown up but still very “teenager-ish” and although they were mostly teenagers when they did Boom it was clear that this was supposed to be their first entry into “adulthood” as a group at least. And although they did wear a sportswear/casual outfits which is something that isn’t related to age (and I really like the black and white “skeleton” set which already feels more grown-up and more “stylish” than the other casual outfit) , they wore two other “grown-up” elements: suits and all-jean outfits.

And yeah teenagers, and kids wear jeans too but a full jean-on-jean outfit is more of a “grown-up” fashion choice and it makes them look like young men rather than boys. As for the suits, I just really love when stylists play with the codes of that garment (length of the jacket, tightness of the pants, the way the shirt is tucked in…).

Notice how Renjun has a really short jacket, Chenle’s pants are wide, Jeno has a tail…Once again, a really interesting aspect of Kpop is the variations of the same concept based on the members. In the mv, there is a tension between their more grown up selves (the one in suits, the one with a craft/a path) and their young selves (the one running around in the field, the one laying down in the flowers and eating a cake). And there is also in these outfits and the contrast between them this tension, this contrast…which path should they go? The jeans are the more laide back, innocent outfits, whereas the suits come with responsibilities and status (and you’ll notice that in the scene where jisung is left alone to blow his candle it’s when he’s wearing jeans not when he’s in the suits).

Now on to WayV!!

WayV are different from the two in the sense than when they debuted they couldn’t have an “age” concept or an edgy concept because 127 and dream had already taken those and I feel like for that reason they’re still looking for what makes them stand out visually from the others (and in my opinion it’s not in whatever they were wearing for turn back time!). WayV’s concept is space and time travel, it’s building a new life, a new worl, going beyond anything! In my mind, they’re either supposed to feel a bit “otherworldly” (either spectacular or literally like they’re from another world/another universe, a little bit futuristic maybe?) or to look like explorers/travellers (they have a lot of travel/transportation “gears” references in their outfits). Their MVs also have a very different production than the other nct mvs (the scale and the way it’s filmed, the sets…it’s a different approach and it’s usually much more “grand” for their title tracks). The great thing about WayvV styling is usually that they match the outfits well with the world that the mv is set in (like in Moonwalk for example you get a sense of the world they’re in and the fact that it’s not ours or at least not as we know it now through the way they dress – you can’t really say oh it’s inspired by this era or by this or that because -at least- to me it immediately gives me a vibe of something that could be worn in a sci-fi movie, almost like a costume) or that they allude to travel in their styling.

When they debuted with Regular they went for a very sleek and high fashion look which worked really well for them! Even their more “casual” looks were a bit striking and I think that’s very “wayv-like” to me.

Same goes for Take Off where they mix the individual styles (and I don’t like ten’s leopard fur sleeveless jacket at all) and the group concepts – the “flying” outfits and the “racing” outfits (that last one is my favourite! I love the silhouette it creates with the tight pants and the larger tops with an emphasis on the waist).

There’s something a bit extra to WayV - which is why some of their outfits remind me of costumes more than fashion while at the same time they’re the most “high fashion” unit– like the “flying” outfit in Take Off are recognizable as “flying gear” but you can’t really tell what they’re flying, it feels once again like something that they could wear in like star wars or a similar kind of story.

Imagine a movie about 7 men on another planet trying to come together to overcome the dark forces or whatever’s bad on their planet in a futuristic society with a mix of “traditional” and “trendy” outfits? That’s WayV. The movie the 5th Sense? That’s WayV but on steroids. They’re also the only group with actual characters in their mvs, they’re all supposed to have a backstory or an individual setting and find a way to get together in their mvs.

Anyway all that to say that it’s hard for me to pick an era for them because they’ve only had a few and they still feel like they’re looking to solidify their concept, and since moonwalk and turn back time really set the styling in different worlds than ours, you have to look at how they fit in that world rather than ours and I think Moonwalk does it best since it’s the most cohesive one visually. But then I think Regular had the best individual styling!

Okay this is super long but we’re finally getting to NCT U!!!!

Number one favourite:

The Year Party outfits!!!! I’ve already talked about this but I love when they say we’ll put them in suits and then since they have to make a different one for each of them they cut bits an dpieces of the suits here and there, play with lengths. It’s not a revolutionary concept but in terms of searching for a shape, searching for variations of an already so famous, so well-known garment (everyone has seen a suit, and so many designers have already deconstructed it and then put it back together and so on) it’s so nice, it’s almost like a full collection given how many members there are and it’s just a good tailoring work.It almost feel like an exercise of how many variations of an outfit can you think of? And it looks fun to do! It’s all about the details and the way the layers are set together.

The accessories add to the “formal attire” aspect of it. It almost has a ceremonial look to it. A bit of royalty with the futuristic vibe usually associated with WayV. The dark blue suits were pretty classic, the most interesting details (for me at least) were on the light blue ones. Especially since it’s a rare colour to find in formal wear or in ceremonial wear. In general, I feel like it’s a pretty rare colour in fashion outside of like shirts and baby clothes? I think it was a great styling choice for a content like the year party although I do wish they (either NCT or WayV who’ve touched upon this kind of outfit a bit already) would do a full comeback with this kind of styling (like the lighter version of the black and green outfits in SuperM’s One). It’s not revolutionary but it was something new for NCT and I really hope they use that elegant/futuristic concept once again.

Also in these outfits, the jewelry is super important and adds to the “grand” aspect of these outfits. The concept is that these aren’t ordinary outfits for ordinary men, we’re witnessing something “special” and so they aren’t wearing their usual jewels either (of course the big chains are still there but differently look at that necklace jaehyun is wearing)

Honorable mention:

Boss & Baby Don’t Stop (they’re different but they go together in my mind lol). Look at them in their uniforms! And also they had doyoung wearing these sunglasses

Ok I think I’m done, if you’ve made it this far thank you so much and I hope it was a nice read!!

As for who would I chose as my models…it really depends on what I’d make them wear tbh for menswear the things I’d like to design would either be something like formal wear or knitwear – I’d pick Lucas, Taeyong and Doyoung (I think they’re the most model-like members and could pull off pretty much anything even my non-edgy concept because I can’t do that lol and they pose very well) and then depending on the concept I’d pick between Winwin, Jaehyun, Kun, Jungwoo, Taeil, Haechan and Shotaro (the way I struggled to remember all the members at once…there are too many really)

#this is soooo long omg I didn't know I had that much to say wow #I hope you've managed to read it all and that it was somewhat coherent and clear #now it's time to eat #nct #nct 127 #nct dream #wayv #nct 2020 #fashion #leemarx #I've got mail #vinformation

34 notes · View notes

bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 3 years

Text

Press/Gallery: Elizabeth Olsen Is Ready to Lead the MCU

An ambitious new Disney+ series might just give the strongest Avenger the happy ending she deserves.

GALLERY LINKS

Studio Photoshoots > 2021 > Session 001

ELLE: We can’t keep meeting Elizabeth Olsen like this. By “this,” I mean in the throes of catastrophe or bereavement, or, to put it plainly, when she’s an emotional wreck. In the 2018 Facebook Watch drama Sorry For Your Loss, Olsen assumes the role of Leigh Shaw, a young widow grappling with the unexpected loss of her husband and all the painful nuisances that come with death: the unbearable waves of sadness, the clichéd condolences, a grief support group that runs out of donuts. At one point, Leigh says through a cracked voice, “I’m just mad all the time.” It’s hard not to draw parallels to Olsen’s other angry character. After all, “mad” is exactly how 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron introduced us to Wanda Maximoff.

Defined by tragedy since her Marvel debut, Wanda (aka the Scarlet Witch) is an orphan with telekinetic powers. When not saving the world, she spends most of her time onscreen grieving the deaths of her parents, twin brother, or lover. Wanda’s never been allowed to fully exist outside the confines of her grief and anger, but with the launch of WandaVision—Marvel’s foray into serialized content for streaming—she may just be getting the happy ending she deserves.

Partly inspired by The Vision comic book, which follows synthezoid superhero Vision and his family as they move to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the Disney+ series is an ode to the TV sitcoms we’ve come to love, with Wanda and Vision (Paul Bettany) basking in newlywed bliss—except Vision’s been very dead (killed twice, in fact) since the events of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. It’s unclear exactly how these starcrossed characters got to suburbia, but for now, it’s a delight to see the typically solemn duo sink their teeth into slapstick comedy.

“The show is like a blank slate for them,” Olsen tells me over Zoom, her light brown fringe a departure from Wanda’s red waves. The Scarlet Witch’s doleful glare is also long gone; in its place, Olsen’s eyes are wide with excitement. “Wanda and Vision’s journey to this point is a story of pure, innocent love and deep connection with another person,” she explains. “It was also very traumatizing. Tragedy has always been their story. In our show, we kind of wipe that clean and start fresh.”

But Wanda’s complicated past looms over WandaVision. Age of Ultron saw her and her twin brother, Pietro, initially opposing the Avengers (the siblings volunteered for a series of experiments with Hydra—a super evil organization within the MCU—after the deaths of their parents at the hands of Tony Stark’s Stark Industries) before switching sides to help save the Earth. The movie ends in victory for our superheroes, but yet another tragedy for Wanda when Pietro dies in battle. She finds comfort in the arms of Vision, an android created from the remains of Tony’s J.A.R.V.I.S. program, but even that bliss is short-lived. You see, Vision can only live with the help of the Mind Stone, which Mad Titan Thanos needs to take over the universe. In Infinity War, Vision asks Wanda to sacrifice him, and Wanda reluctantly agrees—but Thanos reverses time to gain control of the stone, killing the robot for a second time. Wanda’s pain is palpable: Imagine sacrificing the love of your life to save everyone else, just to watch him brought back to life and killed again—by the very villain you’re trying to defeat.

Though the thrill of playing a character with superhuman abilities is enticing for any actress, Olsen says it was Wanda’s internal battle with mental health that attracted her to the role in the first place. “[Joss Whedon] explained to me that Wanda Maximoff has always been this pillar of the struggle of mental health, from her pain and depression and traumatic experiences to how she completely alters the reality of the comics,” Olsen says of her early conversations with the Age of Ultron director. “The thing I held onto after reading the initial script was that she was not only powerful because of her abilities, but because of her emotions.”

In fact, MCU theorists would argue she’s one of, if not the, strongest Avenger. She can infiltrate the others’ minds to reveal their biggest fears (Age of Ultron). She can overpower Vision and send him plunging through several floors to break up a fight between warring superheroes (Avengers: Civil War). She can even bring Thanos to his knees, snapping his sword in half and forcibly removing his armor piece by piece (Infinity War).

Still, “they keep slapping her over the head with more grief,” Olsen quips.

As phase one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe began with the sound of clanging metal on May 2, 2008, phase four kicked off on January 15, 2021 with a kitschy 1950s sitcom theme: “She’s a magical gal in a small town locale / he’s a hubby who’s part machine / How will this duo fit in and pull through? Oh, by sharing a love / like you’ve never seen.”

With WandaVision, Marvel steers clear of the typical superhero trappings: no destructive battles at a Berlin airport or across the streets of New York City; no blonde-haired god time-traveling to other realms; no tree-like alien fight alongside a raccoon. Wandavision takes place after the events of Endgame in a fictional suburban town called Westview, and the biggest problem the newlyweds face in the show’s opening moments is creating a convincing backstory to get nosy neighbor Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) off their backs.

“They are just trying to fit in,” Olsen explains. “They’re trying to not be found out by their neighbors that they’re super-powered beings.” Now, if only we can figure out what the hell is actually going on. Olsen remains tight-lipped: “The reason it’s a sitcom shows itself later in the show,” she hints. “When Kevin [Feige] told me, it didn’t feel so bizarre. It felt like a great way to start our story.”

“With our show, you don’t know what the villain is, or if there is one at all.”

So, is Wanda stuck in the first stage of grief, denial? Has she altered reality as a coping mechanism for Vision’s death? Is she being held hostage by a terrorist organization (ahem, Hydra!)? One thing we do know is that someone is watching the couple and taking notes. At the end of episode 1, the camera pans out from a retro TV playing an episode of WandaVision (meta!) to show a hand jotting down notes. There’s a strange sword symbol on the notebook and a nearby control board, and in episode 2, the same sign appears on a toy helicopter lodged in the couple’s front yard. Later, when a mysterious beekeeper crawls out of the sewer on the couple’s street, the symbol is seen on the back of his suit. In its 20-plus movies, Marvel villains have always existed in plain sight. But with a new, less obvious darkness lurking at every turn, Wanda may have to return to her world-saving roots.

“Someone said to me when you watch any of these hero movies, you know when the villain’s about to show themselves, and you also have an idea of who the villain is,” Olsen says. “With our show, you don’t know what the villain is, or if there is one at all.” For now, WandaVision allows for glimmers of hope and optimism for Wanda and Vision, despite what darkness tries to threaten their happiness. “Wanda is trying to protect everything in her bubble, protect what she and Vision have and this experience,” Olsen says. “I think everything she does is in response to keeping things together.”

In addition to exploding the concept of the superhero onscreen, WandaVision toys with a different era of TV in each episode. The pilot takes viewers to the ‘50s with an episode filmed in front of a live studio audience, and Wanda dresses up in the quintessential housewife garb, not a hair out of place in her voluminous bob. By the time we click on episode 2, she trades in her apron and kitten heels for a more pared-down ‘60s look, while episode 3 gives a nod to the ‘70s, complete with a Brady Bunch-style staircase and a shag haircut for Vision.

While dressing up was the fun part, time-hopping through the eras required a lot of binge-watching old sitcoms to get the mannerisms down right. Olsen studied series like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Brady Bunch, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Bewitched to “understand the tones of each era” and get a grasp of how Wanda and Vision should act as a couple. (One of her favorite TV pairings was Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston from Malcolm in the Middle.) She was fascinated by the way female characters evolved through the decades: “You have to learn appropriate manners—what’s considered being polite or proper. That coincides with women’s voices changing,” she explains. “I enjoyed challenging myself to match the syntax and the lyricism. I live in a very chest-register kind of deep voice. I had to remember not to bring it up at certain moments.”

For so long, Wanda served as a supporting character to Marvel’s biggest names, and the formulaic mundanity of the major theatrical releases made it easy to get comfortable. WandaVision offered Olsen a much-needed challenge. “I’ve only been working for 10 years, but there is this feeling where you start to get comfortable,” she says. “WandaVision was the furthest thing from comfortable for me. It felt intimidating. The character is a completely different thing.”

And fans hoping for a little Marvel action won’t be disappointed. “We still live up to what Marvel does,” she promises. “We just tell the story in a completely different way. It’s a very emotional, female story and it’s a story they haven’t told yet for either of our characters.” Whatever your theory is, keep the cliché condolences to yourself. No one will be uttering, “Sorry for your loss” in Wanda’s world.

Press/Gallery: Elizabeth Olsen Is Ready to Lead the MCU was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #WandaVision #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Wanda Maximoff #Sorry For Your Loss #Avengers Infinity War #Avengers Age of Ultron #Captain America Civil War #Ingrid Goes West #Godzilla

17 notes · View notes

x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 3 years

Text

To Make A Hero – Maria Brink and Andy Biersack ‘Dark Nights: Death Metal’ Interview

Countless iterations of Batman have been created since the character’s DC Comics debut in 1939. He’s been a detective, a Dark Knight and a key member of The Justice League. Of course, the crime-fighting anti-hero also leapt off the page and onto the screen for TV shows and movies such as the 1960s Batman live action TV show, the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series, and even a 2018 Batman Ninja animated film. Now, fans can see — and hear — their favorite action hero in a completely new way with Dark Nights: Death Metal motion-comic series and soundtrack.

The multi-medium endeavor is based on the comic book mini series of the same name written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Greg Capullo. The official soundtrack was produced by Tyler Bates (Guardians of the Galaxy, Watchmen), who recruited over a dozen musical artists to contribute to the songs. Two such artists are Andy Biersack (Black Veil Brides) and Maria Brink (In This Moment), who came together for the song “Meet Me In The Fire.” Both Biersack and Brink also have speaking roles in the motion-comic.

“I got a call saying that they were doing this series,” Biersack recalls, “and asked if I wanted to do the voice of Batman. For me, not only was it a dream come true, but it was huge to have a creative outlet in a time where there was nothing that could be done.”

Biersack is, of course, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic that kept non-essential workers home for months on end.

“It was this weird period where we couldn’t do anything creative. So to be able to, in some cases, record the audio here in my home studio and pretend to be Batman for a few hours a day was awesome.”

Biersack’s undying love for the anti-hero is well-established, but In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink also professes to adore comic books.

“I’ve always loved them and been fascinated by them,” she says. “I actually got into them more when I was older ⁠— I like all fantasy stuff. I got to have the voice of The Hand, which was so cool. In the middle of COVID, all of us were looking for creative outlets to keep our minds occupied, so it felt like a blessing for sure. To me what was so exciting was to bring in all the musicians and have all of their voices taking on this new storyline. I really loved the creativeness of converging both of these worlds.”

The storyline of the mini series is based on the concept of a dark multiverse, which sees multiple alternate realities and alternative versions of Batman. Told through visuals, dialogue, and music, this project is complex in both content and form.

“What I really liked about this project,” Biersack continues, “is that you have an opportunity to see those iterations individually and how they play into the same storyline. To have every version that you love in the same story is a pretty exciting thing. Especially if you watch the series that they made, you get to see the whole history of this character.”

For the Black Veil Brides frontman, it speaks to the greatness, versatility and longevity of Batman as a whole.

“As someone who enjoys comic book character creating and world-building, I love the idea of having a character that can stand the test of 80 years and have all of these variations, and the validity of one is the same as the other. You can have the Adam West chummy, joke-y Batman and you can have the Frank Miller angry, grumpy, murderous Batman — and they’re both valid versions of the character.”

For Brink, collaborating with Biersack and producer Tyler Bates on their cinematic track “Meet Me In The Fire” was about much more than Batman.

“When I was writing it,” she explains, “I wasn’t just thinking about it in terms of the comic book, but the world in general. That give and take, the struggle, the fight and the power; people wanting to stand with each other and having to go through hard times together — especially where we were all kind of at [with COVID] when we were writing this song. There’s gonna be hard times and you might have to walk through some flames and get your feet burnt.”

Biersack adds, “The idea of Batman, or any character, is there’s some initial injustice that causes them to become the hero that they ultimately become. In those ways, there’s so many parallels to the idea of those moments of absolute darkness or sadness that we all face. And in a year where not only was the world changing on a literal level — a virus that’s traveling everywhere and putting people in danger — but also socially, there were so many changes and important things that occurred last year. The best value that you can have in life is to not just have something difficult to occur, but to learn from it and grow from it.”

So in a time when lives are literally on the line every day, how do these two prominent rock musicians define what it truly means to be a hero?

“I guess a hero to me is someone who really stands up for others,” Brink says. “Someone who really cares about other people and who will risk themselves and whatever it takes to empower other people. It’s selfless. The doctors risking their lives to help these sick people — they’re heroes. They could die.”

“Also just on a more personal level,” Biersack adds, “anybody in your life who inspires you to be a better version of yourself is tremendously heroic. I think if you can find it in yourself to be a hero for yourself and for everyone around you, that is the most important virtue possible. If you aren’t trying your best to be better than you were yesterday, ultimately I don’t know that you’re spending your time that wisely.

“I think at the end of the day,” he continues, “the message that rock n’ roll has always been about is to not put everyone else up on that pedestal. Rise to the challenge yourself and be the hero that you want to see.”

You can catch Black Veil Brides and In This Moment on tour with Ded and Raven Black on their North American The In Between Tour starting Sept. 17.

#maria brink #in this moment #Andy Biersack #Black Veil Brides #2021 interviews

4 notes · View notes

duhragonball · 3 years

Text

Hellsing Liveblog Ch.4-6

This arc is called “Sword Dancer”, and I have no idea why, since they never call Anderson’s weapons anything other than “blades”. Are they swords? Maybe, but you never see him dance.

The story starts at an orphanage, where Alexander Anderson is a priest there, settling a fight between two boys. He sounds gentle and patient at first, until he tells them that the only thing they should be fighting are demons and heathens. That pretty much sums up the character. His mercy and compassion are almost entirely confined to the membership of the Catholic Church.

Then another priest shows up and informs him of all the vampire incidents going on in the U.K. Anderson doesn’t much care, since it only means more dead Protestants, right? Except this latest incident is happening in Northern Ireland.

So this neatly sets up one of the major conflicts within Hellsing. Kouta Hirano took the vampire lore from Dracula and expanded it into a sort of 20th Century Cold War thing. Instead of a single vampire hunter using crosses and holy water, we have an entire government agency, a secret service steeped in religious imagery. But that religion isn’t a homogeneous thing. Christendom has splintered a few times over the centuries. Most notably, there was the East-West Schism of 1054, which saw the Eastern Orthodox Church separated from the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant Reformation that began in 1517.

I’m not sure how much research Kouta Hirano did into this topic, because he seems to have distilled the whole thing down into two major vampire-hunting groups, the Catholic “Section XIII” also known as the “Iscariot Organization”, and the Protestant Hellsing Organization. Hellsing only bothers with vampire stuff in the United Kingdom, while Catholic Ireland is under the protection of the Iscariots.

Presumably, the Iscariots are tasked with protecting other Catholic nations as well, and maybe other Protestant countries have their own vampire-hunting sqauds to mirror Hellsing, but this overlooks the bigger issue: Catholics and Protestant populations don’t just fit neatly inside of political borders. There’s plenty of Catholics inside Great Britain, for example, so it’s kind of glib for Anderson to write off British casualties as “not my problem”.

And I think Hirano recognizes this, which is how Northern Ireland ends up in this story. All of Ireland was British territory until 1921, when it was partitioned. Southern Ireland became an independent nation, while Northern Ireland wanted to remain in the U.K., so it did. This has caused no small amount of conflict in the decades since, and Hirano uses it here rather effectively. There’s a treaty between Iscariot and Hellsing, one that recognizes Northern Ireland as their territory, but Iscariot still sees a duty to protect the minority Catholic population.

So Anderson is sent to deal with the vampire attack at Badrick (or “Patrick” depending on who’s translating, and if he runs into Hellsing, well that’s too bad for them. Despite the treaty, Iscariot considers themselves to be the morally superior group, so they won’t back down if confronted.

From all of this, I get the sense that the normal relations between these two groups sort of depends on the rarity of vampire attacks. There’s a lot of unsettled issues between them, but as long as nothing happens in disputed zones like Northern Ireland, everyone sort of minds their own business.

Anyway, it’s now August 15, and Hellsing is indeed intervening in Patrick. I never understood why Alucard had Seras sitting outside while he fought the ghouls in this house, especially when he was just going to call her in later. But now it makes more sense to me. He went in expecting to kill the vampire inside, and she’s outside to shoot down anyone who tries to escape, just like in Chapter 3. Except Al found more ghouls inside than he bargained for, and he finds this dull, so he’s calling an audible and bringing Seras in to handle them instead.

And this marks the debut of Seras’s Hellsing uniform. In the anime, she gets this look pretty much from the start, so it’s weird to see her wearing pants in Chapter 3. I assume she’s wearing pants in Chapter 2, but we don’t see her lower body in that. My head canon is that she was still wearing her old police gear up until Chapter 4, while this uniform was still being tailored.

I have mixed feelings about the design. My first time seeing Seras was a cosplay photo, and I dug the idea of a vampire soldier. Once I found out Hellsing was all about weaponizing vampires, I got into it pretty quickly. And I found out Seras started out as a police officer, and that seemed really cool. Like Alucard would handle all the spooky blood licking stuff, and she would dust for fingerprints and use pencils to pick up guns. The uniform implies a professional discipline, the sort of thing that would set it apart from the almost casual villainy I find in vampire shows like Buffy or what-have-you.

But, the artwork tends to make this look ridiculous, because Hirano keeps drawing it like it’s skin-tight around the boobs. I don’t understand why he keeps doing this, since you don’t normally see it on the other women characters in this story. Unless the idea is to set Seras apart from the others, which I can sort of understand. Seras is the sidekick, and to a certain extent, she’s supposed to look kind of silly. Even in this heroic pose, there’s still something goofy about her, like she can’t quite achieve full dignity yet. Maybe this is supposed to be like Robin wearing the short pants until 1991, but I never really cared for that creative choice either.

So she starts going to town, and Alucard takes a lunch break while she’s at it, which is a cool moment that didn’t make it into the anime. He reminds her that the ghouls have to be killed expediently using shots to the heart or head. That one who fell down the steps was still moving, you see, so Al had to finish him off.

And this is where Seras first addresses Al as “Master”. This was one of the first scenes I found when I started trying to find out more about the character. At first, it seemed like Seras was all business, but then you get stuff like this, where she’s doing the creepy vampire bit as well. I like the way Hellsing approaches this. Seras is gradually adjusting to being a vampire, and she isn’t always aware of that adjustment as it happens. It seems like combat helps her get into that zone. Early on, Seras would seem to change into a berzerker state, then snap out of it. Except she never snaps out of calling Alucard “Master”.

This is the start of that hard-to-define relationship between the pair. Remember, the Cheddar Priest said she would have free will as a vampire, but she defers to Alucard anyway. Before, that just seemed to be a practical matter. She recognized Alucard as a superior officer, and as a mentor figure. But now it seems more fanatical.

Watching the anime, I was suspicious of Alucard’s intentions, because... well why wouldn’t I be? He’s fucking Dracular for pete’s sake. I thought maybe he was angling for some chance to escape from Hellsing’s control, and maybe Seras was part of his plan. Scenes like this didn’t exactly dissuade me from that notion. Seras got some ghoul blood on her, and she finds herself compelled to eat it, and he’s looking on very excitedly. But then she gets impaled through the neck, and that puts an end to that.

Back at headquarters, Integra gets word that the Iscariots have send Alexander Anderson to Barick, and she realizes that this could escalate into a major incident. No one at Hellsing seems to know much about Anderson, except that he’s powerful, and if he runs into Alucard it could be a major battle.

This page marks the first appearance of Walter C. Dornez, whom she calls for consultation. I find it odd that Walter has already received the same report, and has already taken steps to deal with it. Almost like he expected something like this to happen...? 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔

As it turns out, Anderson’s already there. He’s the one who impales Seras with a bunch of blades/swords/bayonets/whatever, and he already killed the vampire that Alucard was sent to find. As far as Anderson’s concerned, the only thing left to do is kill Alucard and Seras, but Al shoots him in the head before he can really get started. But as he goes to remove the holy blades from Seras, Anderson gets back up for Round Two.

Alucard calls him a “Regenerator”, like this is a thing he’s encountered before. Anderson’s not just a priest with blessed weapons, he’s got special powers that the Vatican gave him for the purpose of hunting vampires. Then he stabs Alucard a bunch of times and prepares to cut off his head for good measure, until Polnareff jumps in and... no, wait, wrong story. Yeah, Andy just chops his head off, then goes to finish off Seras.

Except Seras got away. Somehow she got up and lumbered off while he wasn’t looking, pulled out all the knives in her back, and then managed to double back and fetch Alucard’s head. Trouble is, she still can’t get out of the house, because Anderson set up a mystical barrier using sheets of paper. Boy, that’d suck if you touched a wall and it shocked you. Seras probably won’t forget this moment....

Then Al’s head is like “Ight Imma head out,” and melts into a puddle of blood.

The blood then arranges itself into words, which tell Seras to drink the blood, as this will make her into a “true” vampire, instead of a “servant” vampire, which I guess is what she is now. And this is also the first time we learn Seras’ true name. Everyone had been calling her “Police Girl” up until this point.

Although, one might argue from this scene that this is not her original name, and perhaps it’s a brand new name Alucard invented for her, one that she has to earn by willfully drinking blood. I’m pretty sure this was disproven by later flashbacks to Seras’ childhood, but it’s fun to think about. Maybe we never knew her human name. Maybe she doesn’t even remember it.

But before Seras can make that choice, Integra shows up with a couple of guards and tells Anderson to stand down. He kills the guards, and promises to finish her off as well, but she tells him that Alucard can’t be killed with a simple decapitation.

Also, Seras is back up. She hasn’t consumed Al’s blood, but she does pick up a gun to defend Integra, which is pretty cool. See? She looks badass here, maybe because you can’t see her anime boobs in this shot.

Anderson still likes his chances, until Alucard starts to reassemble his body. Unlike other vampires, stabbing Al through the heart and cutting off his head aren’t enough to kill him. This is because of... something the Hellsing family did to him over the past century. I don’t think it gets spelled out in this story, but it’s heavily implied that the Van Hellsing from the Dracula novel defeated Dracula and then enslaved him, and his family line has been modifying him ever since to turn him into their anti-vampire weapon. And a big part of that involves making him stronger than the typical vampire.

So Anderson withdraws, but only because he now sees he’ll need a bigger boat. Alucard tells Integra that Seras’s performance was “the usual”, which is funny considering how pleased he was with her before. Also he scolds her for not drinking his blood, and calls her a coward when she asks to be addressed by her name. One way or another, the theme here is that Seras has to earn a name. The way she is now, Al doesn’t seem to think she needs one.

Volume 1 ends with some notes by Kouta Hirano, including the part about how Alucard and Anderson never seem to run out of weapons. Cosmoguns? Fourth dimensional priests? I’m beginning to think this manga about super-powered vampires may not be entirely realistic.

Since chapters 1-6 aren’t quite big enough to fill out a collected edition, Hirano also includes a backup feature called “Cross Fire”, which he produced for “a defunct comic master”. He calls this a “springboard for Hellsing”, which isn’t hard to see, since it features the Iscariot Organization, including Enrico Maxwell, Heinkel Wolfe, and Yumiko Takagi, who show up later in Hellsing.

This short helps me understand these characters a lot better, because when I watched the anime, Wolfe and Yumiko just seemed to show up out of nowhere, with no explanation given. I think it was assumed that you would have read the manga collections first, and would know who they were. Anyway, they’re both nun assassins. Heinkel dresses like a man and uses guns, while Yumiko weilds a sword, but only when he “berzerker” personality, named “Yumie” is activated. In this story, she’s actually among the hostages that the duo were sent to protect, but Heinkel shows up and knocks her unconscious, which prompts her to wake up as Yumie and they killerize everyone.

I’m not sure if the Cross Fire stories are considered canon or not. The characters show up in Hellsing later, but not quite the same as before. So maybe these are prototypes rather than the real things. Maxwell, in particular, looks a lot like Integra here, to the point where I thought he might be a woman in this version. But the Heinkel/Yumiko team bears a strong resemblance to Alucard and Seras working together in Chapters 4-6, so it’s not hard to see the connection.

#hellsing #2021hellsingliveblog #sword dancer #alucard #sir integra hellsing #seras victoria #walter c dornez #alexander anderson #heinkel wolfe #yumiko takagi

18 notes · View notes