03 May 2021 – Miami by Will Smith

May 3, 2021May 4, 2021 kevinisabastardkevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, miami, will smithLeave a comment

At this stage of this incarnation of Kevinisabastard.com I’m trying not to include songs by the same artists. There will be a time when I’m happy to repeat artists but I think it’s important to try and keep things varied right now. With that in mind, I was a bit conflicted selecting a Will Smith song. I’m not a big Will Smith fan. I’m more inclined to think of him as some kind of an alien who studied humans but hasn’t got his imitation completely right. However, he has some songs that are top tier, including Miami.

Miami is based around a great sample from And The Beat Goes On by The Whispers. That’s all you need really. From that point it’s paint by numbers. The chorus is nice and simple, easy to sing along to. There’s plenty of repetition because they knew what people wanted. Will Smith is a decent rapper and Miami is lyrically one of his better songs. Everything is nice and safe and child friendly and as marketable as possible. The video is mad goofy but it was the 90s so that’s the charm. There’s a very nice Bentley and Eva Mendes makes an appearance before she was particularly famous. The video version also has the mad part with the Gloria Estefan samples which is fun but is less relistenable – if I had to listen to the track on loop for the rest of my life, I’d pick the album version to the video version. Hopefully the situation doesn’t arise.

You can listen to Miami by Will Smith here.

30 April 2021 – Beetlebum by Blur

April 30, 2021 kevinisabastardbeetlebum, blur, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.comLeave a comment

For Christmas 2000, Santy brought me Blur: The Best Of. I’d put it on my list and looking back there are 3 clear reasons:

I was 8 and there was an ad on TV and Christmas was coming and I was very vulnerable to advertising at that age.
Song 2 was the theme song to FIFA 98 which I was obsessed with because I loved lists and was an odd little boy.
The album cover is fantastic.

It’s a great album and it had a profound impact on my little brain and inspired years of trying to emulate Alex James’ haircut. I misunderstood the idea of a greatest hits or best of album for years. I assumed that you couldn’t have a greatest hits if you were still making music. It seemed illogical. So I just assumed that Blur finished in the year 2000 and that was it and I still haven’t listened to anything from Think Tank which came out in 2003.

The thing about having a favourite album, especially in CD form, as a small fella, is that you’ll always listen to the first song the most. So Beetlebum became my favourite song. It had great distorted guitar. The vocals are quite lazy, almost a bit too cool which seemed very fucking important at the time. It was class. I was young. I was impressionable and I was obsessed.

You can listen to Beetlebum by Blur here.

29 April 2021 – Love at First Sight by Kylie Minogue

April 29, 2021April 29, 2021 kevinisabastardkevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, Kylie Minogue, Love at First Sight1 Comment

Love at First Sight is a great song and Kylie Minogue, in general, could potentially have one of the most solid greatest hits albums if I was allowed to curate it. That’s a much longer blog post for the future.

Love at First Sight is one of those songs that I will always dance to. It feels like its scientifically concocted to appeal specifically to me. The nu-disco and dance elements, combined with singing that I can’t replicate but will always try to, are perfect.

The mad thing for me is that Love at First Sight has two insane musical features that have no business being in the song but are incredible additions. There’s what I think is classical guitar in the pre chorus that just very delicately appears. This reminds me of DJ Pied Piper & The Masters of Ceremonies’ Do You Really Like It? and once I made that connection it’s impossible not to think about it every time I hear it. Secondly, there’s some insane bongos that appear around the two minute mark out of nowhere. I listened to this song for years without noticing either of those details but they’ve changed my life. Two masterstrokes in one song. What a time to be alive.

You can listen to Love at First Sight by Kylie Minogue here.

28 April 2021 – When Did Your Heart Go Missing? by Rooney

April 28, 2021 kevinisabastardkevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, rooney, when did your heart go missing?Leave a comment

When Did Your Heart Go Missing? is a great one hit wonder. It’s a great riff and the lyrics are sung with a great punchable confidence. There’s some great nonsense talking in the outro:

I don’t know where your heart went
It was here just the other day
Now it’s gone
I’m gonna call the police
Call the investigator, the heart investigator

But sometimes the reason I love a song is the trivia around it. This is one of my best bits of trivia and it’s a spider web of useless information. The lead singer of Rooney is Robert Coppola Schwartzman. His uncle is Francis Ford Coppola so with that you get all the linked madness there. Nicholas Cage, Sofia Coppola and Roman Coppola are his cousins. And his brother is Jason Schwartzman, the actor, but, also very interestingly (if you enjoy this kind of nonsense), the former drummer in Phantom Planet, another band with a classic one hit wonder from around the same time, California.

You can listen to When Did Your Heart Go Missing? by Rooney here.

27 April 2021 – Gay Bar by Electric Six

April 27, 2021 kevinisabastardelectric six, gay bar, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com1 Comment

The terrifying thing about Electric Six is the thought of what they could have been if they’d used their powers for evil. Gay Bar is a perfect example of the pure song writing ability of the band. The opening surf guitar riff is immediately recognisable and the lyrics are surreal nonsense of the highest order.

I think Gay Bar is probably nostalgic for anyone who was on the internet in the early 2000s. For a lot of people my age, Gay Bar was the ultimate teenage boy song. It’s worth going back and re-examining Electric Six though, particularly the Fire album. It’s a bit like what I wrote in the post about Clorox Wipe by Chromeo. These songs are such a song writing flex. To be able to write incredible tunes while also being goofy bastards is something you can only do as a master of the craft.

Listen to Gay Bar by Electric Six here.

26 April 2021 – Ms. Jackson by OutKast

April 26, 2021April 26, 2021 kevinisabastardkevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, ms. jackson, OutKastLeave a comment

Ms. Jackson is an undeniable classic.

It’s a rare thing to have something that crosses over into the main stream but still retains the seriousness of where it came from. Ms. Jackson has huge mainstream pop appeal. There chorus is catchy and everyone knows the words because it’s just a couple of lines repeated throughout the song. At the same time, lyrically it’s iconic from Big Boi and Andre 3000.

Andre 3000 is generally considered to be one of the top rappers of all time but for me, Big Boi is a bit more consistent as a traditional rapper. The reason OutKast work, in my opinion is the solid foundation of Big Boi that allows Andre 3000 to do the more experimental stuff. Ms. Jackson is one of the best examples of that in my opinion.

On top of everything else, Ms. Jackson is a cool song because it’s very real. It’s a real situation for lots of people where there’s a breakdown of a relationship but there’s kids in the middle of things.

Listen to Ms. Jackson by OutKast here.

22 April 2021 – Sleepy Crusader By Falqo

April 22, 2021 kevinisabastardfalqo, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, sleepy crusaderLeave a comment

I drunk messaged Falqo on Facebook in 2015 to tell him he was a legend and he was very polite in his response. My message was inspired by coming home from a night out and listening to Sleepy Crusader over and over and dancing in my kitchen on my own.

Falqo doesn’t have a huge amount of music out in the world but it is consistently incredible. Sleepy Crusader is still one of my favourites. It’s pure disco wizardry with some slick vocals. There are so many levels in the song that come together to make it impossible not to dance to. There are spacy keys and the bass is running all over the place. It’s worth listening with decent headphones to hear how the track fills the space.

I could probably write a blog entry for every Falqo song, but this is the particular track that has the biggest personal link. Sometimes when I sit down to write about a song I get in my head about it and talk myself out of writing a post. Sleepy Crusader was the opposite. I’ve listened to it so many times and every time I become more sure that this is one of my favourite songs of all time.

You can listen to Sleepy Crusader by Falqo here.

21 April 2021 – Hopeless by Azizi Gibson

April 21, 2021 kevinisabastardazizi gibson, hopeless, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.comLeave a comment

Hopeless is a great song because it’s sad and introspective but also kinda goofy. Lyrically, it’s emotional and confessional, accepting blame for a relationship falling apart. It’s backed by simple keyboards and quite sparse beats. Azizi Gibson alternates between singing and rapping with parts of the singing in falsetto and then repetition of the work fuck in a range of voices at the end of the refrain.

The goofiness of the fucks and some of the falsetto is actually part of what makes the song so real. It has the vibe of delirious hopelessness. It feels like how it feels to be desperately sad for a while when you start to slightly detach from reality.

Then on top of it all the song slaps. It’s mad that something so sad makes me want to dance. The outro, in particular, goes hard and has one of my favourite lyrics, “Let’s try again before you get yourself some new dick”. It’s interesting because the idea is that he could be replaced by sex with someone new, but he ruined the relationship by chasing sex elsewhere. It seems to acknowledge questions about what he brought to the relationship in the first place and the need to be better than just not cheating.

You can listen to Hopeless by Azizi Gibson here.

20 April 2021 – Harleys in Hawaii – KANDY Remix by Katy Perry

April 20, 2021 kevinisabastardharleys in hawaii, kandy, katy perry, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.comLeave a comment

Sometimes it just is what it is. Harleys in Hawaii is a trash song. Just not good. The KANDY remix is great. Part of what I love about it is that it’s still super trashy.

The lyrics are incredibly bad. Inspirationally bad.

You and I, I
Ridin’ Harleys in Hawaii-i-i
I’m on the back, I’m holdin’ tight, I
Want you to take me for a ride, ride
When I hula-hula, hula
So good, you’ll take me to the jeweler-jeweler, jeweler
There’s pink and purple in the sky-y-y
We’re ridin’ Harleys in Hawaii-i-i (Ha)

Despite how hard Katy Perry works to make a terrible song, the KANDY remix is a banger. It takes the song back to that weird phase where Katy Perry put out Swish Swish and Bon Appetite which were so good but so strange. That’s what I want though. It’s a solid car tune, turning it up until the bass wobbles the car.

Listen to Harleys in Hawaii – KANDY Remix by Katy Perry here.

19 April 2021 – Losing Grip by Avril Lavigne

April 19, 2021 kevinisabastardavril lavigne, kevinisabastard, kevinisabastard.com, losing gripLeave a comment

Losing Grip is a fucking hardcore song from a bizarre album. Let Go is a really strange. It’s almost a fifty fifty split between a kind of nu metal Alanis Morissette and filler strummy guitar crap with Sk8er Boi as a novelty outlier.

It’s hard to place Losing Grip. It’s probably supposed to be an Incubus song with some Canadian warbling. The pre chorus is one of my favourite examples of creating momentum using vocals. The first three lines build intensity before the last line shifts into the heavy chorus.

“I was left to cry there
Waitin’ outside there
Grinning with a lost stare
That’s when I decided”

I wonder about what the real response to Avril Lavigne was at the time. I’m sure if Reddit had been the way it is now there would have been plenty of toxic commentary on this album because it flirts with being rockier but reigns it in with some lighter forgettable pop stuff. And I wonder if people at the label had a big influence on it, because the end result is a bit all over the place, trying to tick boxes without alienating anyone too much.

Listen to Losing Grip by Avril Lavigne here.

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