The Weeknd - “The Hills”

I often see people mourn the pop music of the 2000s and early 2010s. When pop music was bright, huge, carried by inescapable celebrities and music was all about the biggest emotions and experiences of your life. And then something changed, something made pop music less fun and more drab. Maybe it was pop music trying to integrate other genres in order to catch up with the growing alternative and trap wave. Maybe it was the trap wave in particular where Rae Sremmurd and Migos ended up making bigger hits than Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. If you live in the United States, it was tempting to even blame the negative vibe shift that came with electing Donald Trump as our 45th president. How can we have fun when we follow up the charismatic, hope-driven Obama with the flagrantly corrupt and racist Trump?

Those are all fine theories, but to me, the vibe shift had started early in 2013 when the club boom suddenly ended and EDM rapidly faded from relevance. 2014 and 2015 had a lot of hits, but they were a bit unsure of where the industry was going. We had “Uptown Funk” and “Shut Up And Dance” making a case for retro-inspired dance anthems, we had “Radioactive” ushering the new era of rock music that’s built for the booming stadiums, EDM started going for less bombast and more bops as shown on “Where Are U Now” and “Lean On”, and then “Trap Queen” was the weird fluke that might just be getting by off of that Vine thing that will definitely not be ground zero for an even more powerful social media platform. But none of those really determined the future of pop music as we know it now. In retrospect, I don’t think there was a bigger sign of the darker years of pop music than when The Weeknd released a Max Martin-produced, Michael Jackson-inspired disco funk jam that went to #1… and then was dethroned by his own horrorcore, bass-blown, toxic villain song, “The Hills”.

I hated “The Hills” at first. As someone who grew up with that aforementioned “bright, huge, big emotion” understanding of pop music, a song whose eerie string melodies are drowned out by a blaring bass peaking in the mix as The Weeknd yells about being numb to everything except sex and drugs over this ugly vocal filter was the complete antithesis of what I thought pop music was supposed to be. I was more than ready to accept The Weeknd’s more conventional pop song in “Can’t Feel My Face”, but “The Hills” was crossing a line to me. It took a differing perspective from a colleague, who enjoyed the song for reveling in its misery and ugliness and refusing to hide it from the audience, for me to give the song another look. Gradually throughout 2015, I just kept coming back to “The Hills” and really letting it sit with me. The more I listened to those shrieks in the background lead to the speaker-shattering bass, the more I started to get the appeal of it. It was dark, horrifying, downright sinister in its apathy for The Weeknd’s partner and the acknowledgement that no one in this situation looks good here. Not The Weeknd for constantly being under the influence and using this girl for joyless sex, nor the girl who’s using The Weeknd to cheat and then getting mad at him when this clearly self-destructive affair isn’t worth it anymore. It’s a miserable song for miserable people. And yet, like the relationship in the song, there’s still something so darkly compelling about it that keeps you tuned in. And I think that curiosity in the darkness is a major reason why this song defied expectations for a #1 hit and since then lead an era of pop music where the music was dimmer, the stories weren’t as clean, and its central artists were compelling in spite of, or maybe because of their glaring flaws. 

Thomas Rhett - “Crash and Burn”

Some history for you; My first blog which I called “Musical Meanderings” was kickstarted in late 2015. It was a blog I kept up for about five years until I retired it and moved on to a different blog on Substack (which in itself retired this year but for uh different reasons). Musical Meanderings was more of a written version of what you see from pop music YouTubers like Todd In The Shadows and Diamond Axe Studios. Song reviews, Top 20 rankings, and loooots of Top 10 hit songs lists. You can tell if you read through my writing in the earliest days of the blog. Really forced humor and over the top reactions that I can’t bring myself to read these days. “Crash and Burn” by Thomas Rhett was the first song I ever covered on Musical Meanderings, and as such, is the song I credit for getting me into music writing as a passion project. Which is a little weird, right? Some dorky bro country twerp making a retro-infused song that was way more pop and R&B than country in the time when country music was completely irrelevant? Yeah it was a pretty solid hit, peaking at #36 on the Hot 100 and was the fifth biggest country song of that year, probably would have made the year-end with just a few more weeks, but why was that the song to get me into music writing?

Mostly because it’s a really weird song in retrospect. It’s a strange mix of doo-wop, pop funk, and R&B twang that even now doesn’t fit into any one genre very naturally. There’s a really blatant lift from Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” that makes up the clap-stomp rhythm and the “hoo! ha!” chanting. Thomas Rhett himself is also a strange presence in the song. His voice is so braying and nasal but he’s trying so hard to carry the swagger of Bruno Mars as he shrugs and accepts the complete failure of his relationship. He’s kind of insufferable actually. It almost sounds like he’s mocking this girl describing all the ways he’s miserable and crying about the relationship being over. I remember at the time being particularly irritated by this lyric:

“I know you could probably tell me right where I went wrong

Some guys can't have all the luck if others don't sing sad songs”

It’s a flagrantly douchey thing to say to an ex. Outright admitting that you don’t care about bettering yourself and would rather wallow in your own shit under the guise of “doing it so others don’t have to suffer”. The attitude of this song and its obnoxious braying was enough for me to conclude that I didn’t like it. But even at the time, I was still fascinated by it. Fascinated by its bizarre amalgamation of several different influences all the while trying to pass itself off as “pop country”. Plus, even if it’s lifted from a classic song, that “Chain Gang” interpolation is really catchy. Over the years I had to conclude that I was really fond of this song and all of its weird, obnoxious decisions. The whistling went from annoying to endearing, I found myself singing along to this clunky, obnoxious chorus, even some of the douchiness grew on me as I recognized that a lot of my anger towards this kind of attitude came from projecting over personal issues and being too afraid to indulge in or even endorse otherwise unpleasant behavior. Can’t exactly call it good, I think if you hear about this for the first time from me you’re probably gonna listen to the song and think I’m insane. But I’ve grown to really love the song and my history with it. And eventually I would become invested in the country music industry for years to come, especially when one of this song’s writers would go on to perform with Justin Timberlake later that year, release his debut album, Traveler, and begin the genre’s gradual comeback in the mainstream. Yes, Chris Stapleton wrote this! You can even hear him in the background vocals! Crazy, right?

Ed Sheeran - “Photograph”

Five years ago I made a list of my favorite hit songs of the previous decade (2010-2019), and in it, I declared Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph” to be my absolute favorite. The reasons why are very sentimental, but ultimately it’s a song that reassures me about the passage of time and how love fades, but never leaves you. “Photograph” in a vacuum is meant to be a promise to a now ex-lover that Ed will still be in her heart even as he’s out touring, but the song always felt much bigger to me than that. “We keep this love in a photograph, we made these memories for ourselves” can apply to anyone who misses the love of the past. Whether it’s a past romantic partner or long lost friends, just the reminder of where your heart was in that moment can either make you smile or make you wonder where it all went. 

There’s a song on Ed Sheeran’s newest album, Play, called “Old Phone”, in which he finds his old phone and scrolls through conversations with people no longer in his life. Whether they’ve passed away or broken his heart. It taps into a similar yearning that made “Photograph” so resonant for me. A form of nostalgia that tends to hurt more than it warms you. It’s a feeling I’ve felt pretty often throughout the past ten years. When “Photograph” came out, I was in my sophomore year of high school. Accustomed to the friends and teachers I saw every day, as well as my parents whom I still lived with. Eventually, I graduate high school, and my new norm is living near my college campus, away from my parents and with friends moving away to other universities. Before I knew it, the friends I made there in Boulder became a thing of the past, as I moved to Vermont for grad school. There I found a community that really made me feel loved and accepted. It was the happiest and most emotionally fulfilled I’d ever been. And then I graduated again, and now I’m in the work grind. I only see my grad school friends in person once or twice a year. Soon enough, I work job for long enough that they become my community, and recently I’ve switched jobs and have to do the same process of finding new communities, making new friends, and creating new memories, all over again.

“Photograph” is a good reminder that those snapshots in time, the moments you cherish and capture forever in a single image, will always hold the love you felt in that moment, even when things change and you’re not that same person anymore. Ed Sheeran describing these moments in his own life, kept safely in the pocket of her ripped jeans, is so deeply sincere that you can tell those moments mean the world to him. Especially as the song slowly swells with these beautiful string arrangements and choirs. In a way it feels like soft snowfall, gently falling to the ground and disappearing when they hit the floor, but still becoming part of the beautiful scene in front of you. The last stanza especially gets me, as Ed gets very specific about a kiss he shared under a lamppost in Denver. One brief moment, one with someone he supposedly is no longer in contact with, but one still important and special to him. I have many moments like that. Those photographs are in my heart forever.

Tomorrow: Carly Rae Jepsen - “I Really Like You”, Twenty One Pilots - “Heavydirtysoul”, and Mariana’s Trench - “Wildfire”