(Wrote this months ago and never posted it)
About 8 years ago I started "reviewing" popular music on here. It was a way to express my love for music and also my frustration with the direction pop music was going in at the time. My opinions on music have changed a lot in the last 8 years and I think a part of that is because of this blog. Listening to more pop music because I wanted to review it actually got me to listen to a lot of stuff I probably wouldn't have listened to otherwise and now I love pop music more than I ever have. I've also been able to get into more genres I didn't really like too much back in the day. So with that, I thought it would be interesting to go back and read my first-ever post about music on this here blog and see how much I agree or disagree with my past self from 2016. So I'll post the original review and then follow it up with my updated thoughts afterward in brackets. Hopefully, my writing back then wasn't too bad... is it any better after 8 years? I hope so. This is the Top 10 songs list from back in September 2016. (I'm leaving my old typos in there too lol)
(2016) Closer by Chainsmokers ft. Halsey: Just okay, boring lyrics, generic modern music, feels lifeless, Halsey is okay i guess. feeling sleepy now. must change song. Seriously though, songs like these are why I can’t take the pop music charts seriously. It’s all boring and repetitive dance music that feels lifeless strangely enough. Nothing feels special here- and this is the number one song in the country right now. I know pop music isn’t always amazingly creative or groundbreaking, and it’s okay to have this kind of music in the world. I just don’t understand how something like this can be the NUMBER 1 song in the world. Just my taste I guess. Again, I don’t hate it! It’s listenable for sure, just pretty boring.
(2024) [Remeber the Chainsmokers? I barely do. They never did get much better at making music, though I have to admit I grew to like this song a lot more than I did in my original post. Halsey definitely carries this song as the vocals by Chainsmoker guy are barely passable for a big song like this. You don't have a great voice, my dude, just get someone else to do that part for you. There was potential here for a great pop song without the weak vocals, maybe getting a real male singer here to match Halsey. I think I gave it a little more hate than it deserved. It's not a bad song but certainly could be better.]
(2016) Cold Water by Major Lazer ft. Bieber: Fun riffs and pretty good music, boring Justin Bieber singing and cliche boring lyrics. Overall if feels very repetitive after a while and gets boring to listen to. You know I didn’t think this song was even bad until I heard another song called “Let Me Love You” by DJ Snake. These two songs sound so similar I though I was listening to the same song again. Okay not really… BUT, seriously these two songs are so similar it makes me wonder how they got away with it. How are two songs that sound this similar allowed to be so high in the charts at the same time? Do people think it’s the same song? I don’t know, but I hope I see more creativity in the next songs.
(2024) [I think I focused way too much on the fact this song sounds like another Bieber-featured song "Let Me Love You". There are certainly similar aspects, but it's not as bad as I seem to have thought 8 years ago. I like "Cold Water" more than "Let Me Love You" anyway, so there's that. "Cold Water" is a pretty good song actually, I'll give it more credit than I did in my first review. I like the production and the music choices and I don't even hate Bieber's vocals at all. The cool use of guitar in the song gives it this nice tropical vibe. The only thing I don't love is the music for the hook is a letdown. Feels a bit generic for the time, but nothing bad.]
(2016) Heathens by Twenty One Pilots: I really love Twenty One Pilots. The last two albums they released were great and I can listen to them from front to back easily. This song though… it just feels so boring and lifeless. The lyrics are interesting at least talking about trust issues and letting people in. Still the rest of the song feels slow and boring, not the kind of song i’ll be listening to very often if at all. Hopefully the next music they release won’t be anything like this.
(2024) [Yeah, I still don't like this song. I still think it's pretty boring musically and the lyrics aren't enough to save this. It picks up a bit during the end, but it only makes me sadder seeing the potential the song actually had. It probably doesn't help that the song is from one of my most hated movies of all time Suicide Squad.]
Cheap Thrills by Sia: Rich artists singing about not needing money to have fun and party is kinda my new pet peeve. I do love Sia’s voice, but I feel like they are being wasted with yet another boring song in the top 10. It’s not a bad song, it’s just incredibly meh. I think someone with Sia’s talent should be making much better music. Much like most songs in the top 10 right now, it’s another decent song with nothing special about it.
(2024) [My hatred for rich people has only grown in the last 8 years, but I think I get this song a little more. I guess the idea of famous celebrities trying to make a song relatable to normal people isn't going away ever as even Beyonce made one not too long ago. While they might not understand the struggle of not having money to have fun and go out anymore, there might have been a point in their lives where that was true and that's what they are channeling. Just trying to be positive here I guess. It's interesting to hear a lot of the tropes that were being used in the mid-2010s pop music and this song has a lot of that. A lot of the production elements sound very similar in a lot of these songs (the overuse of tropical/reggae vibes in a lot of these songs is pretty notable). This is yet another song I quite like here and I feel I was a bit too hard on it 8 years ago.]
(2016) Ride by Twenty One Pilots: The best of the top 10 for sure. A fun song with fun vocals and music and interesting lyrics about a person’s thoughts. It’s nice to see a song with originality and some life in it reach the top 10. Of course it makes it more annoying that a good song like this can make it to the top 10 and yet we still get mostly boring generic music up here. Hope to see more songs like this in the future.
(2024)[Well clearly I loved this song 8 years, but I guess anything that wasn't pop music on the charts always got me excited. I still think this is the best song on this list, but I think it's closer than I thought back then. I mean "Cheap Thrills" isn't that far off from this. It's funny how I just talked about the overused reggae vibes in pop songs back then and here's another one that uses that too. I guess even the alternative artists fell into that trap. I still enjoy the music in this one with the great percussion and interesting lyrics presented in quick rap verses followed by a very catchy chorus. Twenty-One Pilots have always had interesting storytelling in their songs, though it doesn't always make for great music. It's more hit than miss for sure and this song is still one of their best.]
(2016)This is what you came for by Calvin Harris and Rihanna: God this song is annoyingly catchy, I kind of hate that I like this song. It’s everything I dislike about pop music of today, but somehow it just works in it’s own way. I’m not sure if it’s Harris’ music or Rihanna’s catchy vocals that get stuck in your head. I guess it’s a bit of both… It’s all so wonderfully catchy and I enjoy all the oohing. Good job Rihanna. Good job Harris. Never thought i’d say those words ever.
(2024) [I don't know why I had some kind of hate towards Calvin Harris, cause he actually has a lot of good music out there. He's certainly way better than the Chainsmokers. I still like this song after all these years though. It's not the best thing either artist has ever done, even with each other ("We Found Love" is the standout). It's still simple, catchy, and it doesn't get old with multiple listens.
(2016)Don’t Let Me Down by Chainsmokers w/ Daya: This song almost worked for me, it was so cloooooose. I love the music and vocals in the intro, verses and pre-chorus and even the bridge. BUT that chorus just kills the whole song for me. The chorus just feels so out of place with the rest of the song, it’s all peaceful and charming and then comes the annoying breakdown with the annoying music and vocals. What’s more annoying is the last chorus fixes that and is a little more simplified with more focus on the vocals. If it had been that way the whole song I would have actually gave this one a pass. I can see myself listening some more times, I do enjoy a lot of the parts. One of the better songs in the top 10 for sure.
(2024) [Honestly, I still feel pretty much the same about this Chainsmokers song. I enjoy a lot of the song, but that chorus is so awful it really brings the whole song down. I didn't mention how awful the bridge also is in my original review so throw that in there too. I also mentioned how I thought the final chorus fixes some of the issues, but no I was wrong about that. The final chorus is also annoying with random sound effects that feel out of place. I guess I actually dislike this song way more now than I did back then.
(2016)One Dance by Drake w/ WizKid and Kyla: Interesting opening with piano sounds and 1st verse is pretty good. Wait no… the whole song is the same exact thing? never mind. Go away Drake.
(2024) [Ah yes, reggae vibes song number 214291. Over the years on this blog, I've pretty much had nothing but negative things to say about Drake. He's had dud after dud after dud the last 8 years and this song was one of the first in his long stretch of disappointing hits. Drake's energy in this song is just so lifeless I have no idea how anyone can dance to this without extra help... drugs, I'm talking about drugs. He also can't help but insert his whiny boy lyrics into this "club banger". If a girl doesn't reply to his text the second she gets it she's now his ex. Normal behavior that. I'm writing this the same day Kendrick released 4 diss tracks destroying this "man". The funny thing is Drake made the best song he's made in years this weekend only to be completely destroyed just a few hours later. Anyway... this song still sucks and the album it came from is trash too.]
(2016) Send my love by Adele: I honestly don’t know how to feel about this song. Just like most songs on the top 10 it feels….boring. I know Adele is capable of some powerful work or at the very least I’ll be WOWed by her voice. This song just feels like she wasn’t really trying to hard.
(2024) [I was too hard on Adele back then, she's certainly trying in this song. That doesn't really change the fact that I still don't enjoy this song very much. There's something about the chorus in this song that just doesn't click with me. The way she sings the hook just feels a bit annoying in the way she stretches out certain words. The lyrics are fine, but it's basically just a song meant for her ex, basically just saying how much better she is without him.]
Treat You Better by Shawn Boredes: Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but it just doesn’t sound different at all from his last big hit Stitches. It’s a little slower i suppose, but the lyrics are pretty cliche like most pop songs. It doesn’t bring anything new or exiting to music and really doesn’t deserve any special recognition or fame. How many artists out there can do the same thing if not better things than Shawn Mendes. He just seems very vanilla, and it’s weird to me that an artists like this can beat out so many other bland artists for some reason. Anyway, it’s another mediocre song. Nothing truly bad, but nothing special here, it’s the kind of song that any decent artist or singer can pull off. I find Shawn Mendes so boring that I left his name unbolded in the song title. He doesn't deserve Bold.
(2024) [I was way too nice to this garbage song 8 years ago. This song is a dumpster fire of awful lyrics and shitty music by an artist who has no idea what he's doing. I ended up putting this as my worst song of the decade when I did my list of worst songs of the 2010s a while back. Honestly, when I listen to this song now I just feel nothing, maybe I'm just numb to it now. I should probably note that Shawn Mendes is probably a cool person, but I just find his music to be really boring and generic-sounding pop music. I mean this was 8 years ago, I'm sure he's grown as an artist right? His last album was a decent step in making his music better, so maybe there's a chance the next one could actually be good?]
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