Haze

As if the music she makes has anything to do with those country messes topping the charts now. Lana's streaming stats are actually the biggest mystery in modern music for me, since she has done everything to block her commercial appeal since her first album (thankfully so!).

X Factor I get, because she has that in spades. The Voice ... well. I actually adore her tone of voice, and she sounded great (it surprised me) when I saw Girls Aloud on their latest tour, but she needs exactly the right song and her range is incredibly limited. It's just a weird fit for this format.

Don't speak looking at the rest of the tracks on that album:

This is frying me, I'm becoming so old I always feel like Florence was true reason of maximalism finding its way back in pop music. Everybody and their mother was inspired by her at some point.

HTG is very flawed, but also an album with a beating heart so I think the backlash was a bit much. She just needed to find a way past the earnestness of it all, needed a bit more time in the cooker like she says. I love Imagining though.

Going by the past rates, I can probably give you them by inverting mine.

I loved Screen Violence, can't believe it has been five years

Love this write up! I think the backings is the smartest thing she could've done at this point in her career, because it allows her voice to rest more as well. Last time when she toured America (after the European tour iirc) her voice was shot on a few dates, because it is simply too much. She does so many dates, and she clearly lives for it, so I'm happy she found a way to keep both the intensity and the quality. I hope, hope there will be a live record from this tour. And I wouldn't be opposed to hearing the backings on further studio records, albeit a bit more sparingly.

This tired old discourse and it's not even pride month. Anyone who has actually gone to cruising areas knows it's never completely out in the open (unless a space is designated for it, like in Amsterdam iirc). It's always a bit of the beaten path, and requires you to look for it. No children are there ffs.

I cannot open a single thing via notifications across two browsers. Site is becoming nigh unusable atm for me. Is there any update about the verification thingy?

You mean things you stop doing once you learn to read fluently?

'Black imperialism' is awful and should not have left her mouth, but the point she's trying to make is a bit more nuanced and for it you have to read the article. I'm not making excuses for any of the words she used here; there are ways to say things and this is not it, but the point she makes here (in horrendous fashion) is precisely an intersectional one, namely that the true country experience is one of poverty and destitution, of having lived that very life and your voice be a reflection of it, and that Beyoncé's reclaiming of the genre as a subversion of white supremacy fails to cut to the heart of the subject of country music. Beyoncé chooses to view country music through the lens of race and while I don't think its wrong for her to do so, and she makes valient points and beautiful music along the way, it paints a politically black and white picture (quite literally so). It's hard to listen to Texas Hold 'Em and not think it's a caricature, and I don't think Beyonce would even disagree: it is a spoof of a typical white country radio song, that is the very point! She made the pop machine take notice of a black woman singing country, but that precise movement of power, money, reclaiming, repurposing etc etc (which, again, isn't in itself something bad) is antithetical to the nature of country (as someone who musically appreciates it -- I don't think, or at least I hope so, Galas has any more time for the Morgan Wallen's and other superstars of country pop). But in any case, I don't think viewing Cowboy Carter as a country album is a very fruitful endeavor; it plays too much with genre for that. But I also think Billionaire Beyoncé who has spent years cultivating a goddess like image, trying to subvert working class tropes was always going to hit a nerve with people. If it reads as phony, that's because it inevitably is for someone like her -- she's a megastar, whatever hardships she knows they aren't the same as the ones whose lifeblood run through that very music (white or black!).

Hide your coworkers etc

Such a heartfelt closer. Great winner, great rate, fantastic host @conatus . Had a lot of fun!

The Boy best song on the album winning, I know that's right