Cordavision Music Reviews

Let’s get one thing straight here: I’m a One Direction fan. At one point, I wasn’t because it was a funny trend. The most vivid memory I have about One Direction is in 8th grade when I made a joke about hating One Direction (I don’t remember what I said), and this person in my class locked eyes with me and it genuinely terrified me. We’re all good now, but that moment proved to me that the One Direction fanbase is a truly dedicated one. Since then, I’ve come to like the quintet’s music, and even some of their solo projects since they’ve disbanded. Today, I’ll be covering Four , 1D’s fourth and final studio album as a full group, with Zayn Malik leaving the group a few months after Four’s release. Let’s get into it and see how it is. Four is a pop album with some rock influences. For the tenth anniversary of 1D, I had listened through their five albums because, well, I felt like it. I had intended to review one of their records, but I didn’t know which one. After I heard Four , I decid...

I wish I was more invested in singer-songwriter music. I can appreciate the iconic figures in the genre, but this type of genre has always been hit-or-miss with me. When I love a record, I love it but I don’t tend to go back to it often. Phoebe Bridgers is a good example of this. I loved her album Punisher from earlier this year, but I rarely go back and listen to it. After hearing all the praise that Laura Marling had received over the years, I decided to check out her latest album Song for Our Daughter . Here are my thoughts on it. Not much to explain since this was pretty much an on the whim listen. Song for Our Daughter is a singer-songwriter album with folk influences throughout. The sound for this album is simple but effective. There’s not a lot of experimentation with the sound and instruments, but Marling’s voice is enough to seal the deal. The concept is an interesting one, I’d like to think. All of these songs are essentially letters to Marling’s fictional daughter, akin to...

I’ve been trying to expand my knowledge in genres of music that I’m generally not interested in. K-pop is one of those genres, and while I’ve been looking through Spotify and even Twitter to find some new releases or some that I missed, I came across YUKIKA. The only album listed on her Spotify page was her debut album which came out that weekend, Soul Lady . Since I had already listened to Taylor Swift and Logic for their respective reviews, I figured ‘what the hell’ and I hit play on Soul Lady . Here’s what I thought about it. Soul Lady is a K-pop record with heavy disco influences. Now, the best way to describe this record’s sound is its aesthetic. It’s like you’re walking through the big city on a night out with your friends, maybe in the 80s, maybe in the present (pre-pandemic, of course). Then, you see this certain someone. You don’t know how, but somehow, you feel connected. The chatter of everyone else around you, the thumping bass, everything fades away and all you can see an...

For the latter half of his time in the industry, Logic has been the butt of all the jokes. He started out with a lot of promise with his first two studio albums Under Pressure and The Incredible True Story , but as he became more popular, his music slowly dipped in quality. While Everybody was decent at best and his mixtapes YSIV and Bobby Tarantino II were listenable, his past two records were atrocious. The alt-rock leaning Supermarket (the soundtrack to a book he wrote) and the absolute dumpster fire that is Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was essentially career suicide. When Logic announced No Pressure , he confirmed that this was going to be his final album, at least for a long time. He was retiring to focus on being a father. Many artists have said that they’re retiring for many different reasons, but it didn’t stick. If Logic really was retiring for good, is No Pressure a good note to go on? We’re about to find out. No Pressure is a hip-hop record. I mean, come on. There...

Okay, hear me out. I’m not a giant Taylor Swift fan. While I hated reputation and kinda liked Lover , I believe that 1989 is by far her best record. Along with having hit after hit after hit from that record, it never got old or felt stale. 1989 was (and still is) a very impressive record to me, and I consider it to be one of the best pop records of the 2010s. Now, not even a year after Lover , we have folklore , a surprise release that shook the music industry to its core. With a new sound and aesthetic based on the indie-looking album art alone, I was actually quite excited for folklore and how it would turn out. Let’s get into folklore and see how it is. folklore is an indie rock album with folk, alternative, and dream pop influences. There are only three main collaborators on the album. They are Jack Antonoff (the super-producer that I mentioned in my Gaslighter review), Aaron Dessner from The National, and Bon Iver, the sole feature on the album. As it is with most of Swift’...

D’Angelo is one of the most revered musicians of the 90s and early 2000s. After his classic album Voodoo , his career began to tumble down after entering rehab. Throughout that time, he was dropped from his label and his career eventually came to an end. Throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, he slowly collaborated with other artists while rumblings of a new album were popping up left and right. Then, nearly fifteen years after Voodoo , D’Angelo is back with Black Messiah , one of the most anticipated albums in recent memory. Let’s get into Black Messiah . Black Messiah is a neo-soul album with jazz, funk, R&B, and rock influences. This album is pure atmosphere. While funk and R&B are well-played genres, Black Messiah leans into this sound to a large degree to much success. This feels like an experience that is meant to listen through, and that’s the least positive thing I could say about Black Messiah . I have to compare this to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly beca...

Hear me out on this: I’m not a modern country fan. I just don’t really see the appeal in it, and I like some of the older songs better. These days, country music has become very masculine. Grilling, drinking beer with the boys, and taking rides in big green tractors have been running rampant, but artists like Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert, and Carrie Underwood have been redefining the genre for the past couple years. Now, after being blacklisted by the music industry fourteen years ago for simply stating their political beliefs, country music royalty the Dixie Chicks are back with Gaslighter , a very revealing, raw, and undeniably human album. Let’s get into it. Gaslighter is a country album with folk and pop influences. Jack Antonoff, a production titan, produced nearly all of Gaslighter , and having a name like that on a song is a huge deal, let alone a whole album. This whole album has a vibe of Lana del Rey and Phoebe Bridgers combined and with a country twang. The themes of divo...

Halsey has always been an interesting figure in music to me. I didn’t think that she was all that in the music industry, but once I heard the song “New Americana” from her debut album BADLANDS , I knew that she was going to be a big name. Since then, she’s put out another album in hopeless fountain kingdom , and I just didn’t feel that same artist in that record. She’s had a highly publicized relationship with G-Eazy, and they have since broken up. Now, right before the pandemic, she put out her third album titled Manic , which hopefully will be a step in the right direction for Halsey. Let’s get into it. Manic is a pop album with R&B, hip-hop, and alt-rock influences. There are also many different styles here too like country and, most notably, K-pop with Suga from one of the biggest bands on the planet BTS being one of the features here. Alternative legend Alanis Morissette and BROCKHAMPTON collaborator Dominic Fike are the other two features on here, but this is Halsey’s album....

I’ve covered Childish Gambino, a.k.a. Donald Glover, before, and I’ve been a fan of his. His albums have always had some type of value to me. Camp has the classic track “Bonfire” and I have the monologue at the end of “That Power” near-memorized, Because the Internet is an album that ran rampant during my middle school years, and his most recent release 3.15.20 has actually grown on me quite a bit since writing my review. I forgot to mention one release, though. That is “Awaken, My Love!” , Gambino’s 2016 R&B and funk detour. Yes, you know “Redbone” already, but what about the rest of the album? Let’s get into it and see how “Awaken, My Love!” is. “Awaken, My Love!” is an R&B album with funk, psychedelic, and soul undertones. This album is a sharp left turn from Gambino’s usual rap tracks, and this was a much-needed change. As much as I love Camp and Because the Internet , I was worried that this sound was going to become stale for him. Oh, boy, this sound didn’t get stal...

There’s a lot of music out there that you just can’t get into. No matter what the reason, there’s always that type of music that you just don’t get the appeal of. That was bubblegum bass for me for the longest time. Rate Your Music describes bubblegum bass (or PC music) as taking ‘pop music and amplifying its cuteness and femininity to extreme levels.’ I’ve done some research, and former mainstream artists like Charli XCX have taken this route and has had a lot of success with this sound. Today, we’re gonna be looking at a more recent example of the bubblegum bass genre: 100 gecs debut album 1000 gecs . Let’s get into it. 1000 gecs is an… album with music. I have to admit, this is a very tough album to categorize. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. In the case of 1000 gecs , it’s a pretty good thing. In a strange way, the best comparison I can think of is the Kanye West and Kid Cudi album KIDS SEE GHOSTS . The best way I can connect the two is that they’re both relatively short,...

Juice WRLD was one of the voices out of the new generation. Although I wasn’t the biggest fan of his music, I can see the impact that he’s had on this generation of music, and especially throughout high school. I was a sophomore in high school when he blew up with “Lucid Dreams” from his debut album Goodbye & Good Riddance (along with his mixtape 9 9 9 ), and it was EVERYWHERE. It was crazy, and I dug the song, but it didn’t too much for me. His death this past December was tragic, no doubt, but a good amount of his fame came with his death. Now, in a pretty big year for posthumous releases, we have Legends Never Die , the first for Juice WRLD. Let’s get into it. Legends Never Die is an emo-rap album with some trap influences. Most posthumous albums aren’t that great. Mac Miller’s Circles is currently the gold standard, and most likely will be this for a long time because it was nearly completed by Mac himself before passing away. The same could be said for Pop Smoke’s posthumou...

Griselda has been on a roll lately. A film, multiple albums already this year, and a constant stream of features have kept Westside Gunn on the map. His last studio effort (and a strong contender for Album of the Year for me) Pray for Paris surprised me and I felt bad that I hadn’t heard of Westside Gunn and Griselda before listening to it. Not even three months after Pray for Paris comes Flygod is an Awesome God 2 , the LP sequel to the mixtape of the same name. I adored the first mixtape and coming off of Pray for Paris , I was hoping that this would at least scratch the surface of how great that was. Let’s get into Flygod is an Awesome God 2 and see how it is. Flygod is an Awesome God 2 is a hip-hop record. Like his previous projects, the beats are very minimalist and Gunn’s adlibs are loud and abrasive. Just looking off of the tracklist, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be as grand and a spectacle as Pray for Paris , but that’s not a bad thing. The aforementioned beats ar...

There’s always that one artist that can’t ever be put in a specific genre. Their sound is always changing, and I love that when it comes to an artist. I think that Arca is one of the best artists that can be put in that category. She’s worked with mainstream artists like Kanye West and Frank Ocean but has built up a very eclectic sound in her solo albums like Xen and her self-titled album. I personally haven’t adored her solo projects like her fans, but I can’t ignore her signature sound. Now, KiCk i , the first in a new trilogy, is expanding her sound even further than before. Let’s get into KiCk i and see what makes Arca so special. KiCk i is an electronic album with avant-pop, psychedelic, and deconstructed club undertones. Most of the album is sung in Spanish by Arca herself, but there are also some English vocals from the legendary singer Björk. KiCk i is also Arca’s happiest sounding record, compared to her past albums. Specifically, on KiCk i , I’ve found that there are two ...

Green Day is one of the most iconic alternative bands ever. They have two all-time great albums in the form of Dookie and American Idiot , and are one of the reasons why punk-pop became so mainstream in America. Even with their legacy and impact, everyone has noticed a dip in quality since their 2009 album 21st Century Breakdown . The trilogy of ¡Uno! , ¡Dos! , and ¡Tré! were a big disappointment to me, and I thought of Revolution Radio as the same, but to a lesser degree. Now, four years after Revolution Radio , Green Day is back with Father of All Motherfuckers . Let’s get into it, and trust me, you’ll know right off the bat how I feel about it. Father of All Motherfuckers is a pop-punk album, now with a tinge of garage rock styles. I mean, if you wanna call this absolute dumpster fire that. The best way to describe this record is that one image of a cardboard sign that says ‘Our expectations were low, but HOLY FUCK!’ The singles leading into this like the title track were not gr...

Plunderphonics has always been an oddball in the music world. For the uninitiated, plunderphonics is the use of different audio clips put together to make an original composition. Anything could be used, but most examples are from news reports or very stereotypical educational videos from the 50s. One of the most mysterious groups in this genre is the 90s Boyz. While they have made mixtapes before this album I’ll be talking about like Mikhail Gorbachev: Alive and Kicking and …Meets Tha Gobbernopper , none have been more ambitious than their ‘debut’ album Instant Hero Status . This trio, known only as Oyster Tag, Secular Rhino, and Irony Hog, have presented their opus, and they certainly have no sign of stopping any time soon. Let me guide you through Instant Hero Status , if you can make it, that is. Instant Hero Status is a plunderphonics album. At first listen, it seems like it’s going to be just noises overlapping each other. The opening track starts off with the beginning of a Go...

I have to admit, I never really listened to Pop Smoke until after his tragic death in February 2020. The first time I had heard him on a track was as a feature on Travis Scott’s label album JACKBOYS , “GATTI” being the name of the track. After his death, I went into a little bit of research about Pop Smoke and his projects. He’s widely considered to be one of the first artists to bring UK drill to the Brooklyn rap scene, and since his death, this sound has taken the East Coast scene. I ended up listening to his breakout mixtape Meet The Woo 2 , and it didn’t do a lot for me personally, but I can see the potential that he had. Now, after his death, none other than 50 Cent came in to finish up his debut album and is credited as the executive producer. Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon is the name of the record, and we’re gonna see how it is. Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon is a hip-hop/trap album with UK drill influences. This was going to be a weird review to write. The best...

A Tribe Called Quest is one of the best and most iconic groups of the 1990s. Their two albums The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders are considered classics in the hip-hop community. In March 2016, one of the most versatile members, Phife Dawg, passed away. There have been rumblings about a new ATCQ record for a while, and it eventually happened at the end of that year with We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service , the sixth and now final release by the group. Let’s get into it and see how A Tribe Called Quest’s final album is. We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service is a jazz rap album. Many thought that their 1998 album The Love Movement would be their final outing, having split just before its release, but boy, we were wrong. 18 years after The Love Movement , they’re back. Many people (myself included) were going to consider this a comeback album or a last hurrah to honor Phife Dawg, but they were wrong. We Got It from Here… feels so fresh. It’s like they ne...