Fluxblog Weekly #255: 80s Surveys on Spotify! • Tennis • Lady Gaga • Westerman • Se So Neon
I passed some time earlier this week building Spotify playlists for the 1980s surveys I made a few years ago. I basically just put everything from the original surveys in a playlist and resequenced it all to be more listenable, but will probably go back through them and expand them to be as thorough as the 1970s versions while living as a shut-in for the greater good of society. Once that is done, I'll transfer it all over to Apple Music too. Here they are for you:
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989
Also, you can find all the 1970s playlists here. Please share them with people you think might enjoy them, especially if they might provide a bit of escapism for people who feel especially distressed.
March 16th, 2020
All This Noise When I Need Silence
Tennis “How to Forgive”
There is a voyeuristic quality to Tennis’ music, in that they are a married couple and Alaina Moore seems to mostly sing autobiographical lyrics about her life with her husband and collaborator Patrick Riley. There’s never anything particularly revealing in the lyrics but a song like “How to Forgive,” which is about letting go of anger built up towards a partner, makes me wonder what it’s like to work in this sort of arrangement. It must be odd to work on a song that’s putting you on blast, right? It’s likely this song was written after a conflict was resolved and a lot of things had already been discussed, but it’s still an interesting form of shared catharsis. I suppose it’s also notable that this is not at all an angry song – the music is deliberately sweet and girlish, as if to sugar the pill of negative emotions, and Moore’s lyrics are mostly just her questioning the logic of dwelling on anger. It’s very very conciliatory, and I wonder if that would be the case if the song was not written and performed with her partner.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 17th, 2020
Freak Out Look At Me
Lady Gaga “Stupid Love”
This is the lady Gaga I love the most – joyous, extremely catchy, and heavily indebted to the pop aesthetics of VERY SPECIFICALLY the late 80s. The last time she hit this mark was on the album Born This Way, particularly on the title track, “Fashion of His Love,” and “The Edge of Glory.” Most people hear the similarities to Blonde Ambition era Madonna, but Gaga goes a lot deeper – I hear Erasure, Debbie Gibson, Roxette, Stacey Q, Belinda Carlisle, T’pau, and late 80s Cher in the mix. As with everything Gaga does it’s the result of internalizing a personal canon and synthesizing it into familiar new things.
“Stupid Love” is a jolt of ecstatic, carefree pop in a moment where escapism has never felt more important. Gaga is no stranger to making supercharged dance records that are engineered to overpower the listener, but this time her repeatedly slamming every joy receptor in your brain with a hammer feels especially welcome. It’s a cliche to say you surrender to a dance song, but it really feels that way here. It’s like she’s force-quitting your brain.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 18th, 2020
I Control The Controllables
Westerman “Think I’ll Stay”
“Think I’ll Stay” is warm in melody but ice cold in arrangement, like a Paul McCartney song filtered through the severity of Wire and the palette of Kraftwerk. Westerman’s lyrics suit the ambiguity of the music, with him sketching out a grim scene of someone struggling with chronic pain, but then sort of shrugging that off in the chorus and deciding life is still worthwhile despite the agony. Given the grey tonality and Westerman’s sober, Eno-ish voice it doesn’t sound particularly affirming – at most it’s a sort of neutral cautious optimism. It’s like running life through a cost-benefit analysis and finding out, yeah, it’s still good to be alive.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
March 19th, 2020
Clear City Lights
Se So Neon “Go Back”
“Go Back” is a smooth R&B song filtered through a restless, genre-bouncing aesthetic that leaves it sounding like everything but also not quite like anything in particular. Their sound is immaculate and lightly funky, sorta like Phoenix in their underrated Alphabetical phase, but there’s a plaintive and sentimental quality that veers closer to mainstream pop. As always, I’m fascinated by the way Korean artists shift between Korean and English lyrics – in this case, the chorus is sung entirely in English but since it’s mostly just the guy singing “where should I go back if I go back?,” you only just get enough to pick up on the general emotional context. I bring this up over and over mainly because I feel like this strategy cuts to the core of how most people hear pop songs: Lyrics are useful for grounding the feeling of a song, but when it comes down to it people mostly just respond to purely musical elements.
Buy it from Amazon.