Cordavision Music Reviews

Shoutout Hivemind. Right off the bat, I’ll say that I didn’t expect this from Quadeca. The section of YouTuber-turned-musicians that are on my radar are pretty big, especially since I upload on YouTube. Of course, there’s Joji who successfully made the jump, but there are other YouTubers that happen to make music like KSI that really just don’t hit hard to me. Quadeca’s last album, From Me To You , really set up some potential for Quadeca to be a pretty successful YouTuber-to-rapper jump and I still enjoy that project today. His latest release, I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You , leans into a much more experimental and ambitious project. I plan to watch the accompanying visual album too, but it’s just been busy. So, let’s just get into it. So, if I didn’t make it obvious, this project is a whole different beast compared to the other Quadeca projects I’ve heard. This is much more of an art pop album with some alternative R&B, experimental rap, and even a little tinge of industrial thrown i...

Every musician’s gotta have that butterfly on the cover moment, yeah? It’s no mistake that Post Malone’s one of the more recognizable voices in mainstream music right now. If I’m being honest, he’s been on a pretty decent streak recently. His last two albums, beerbongs & bentleys and Hollywood’s Bleeding , are some of the best pop-rap albums of the 2010s and most of his hits have aged pretty well over the past couple of years. Even if it’s been oddly silent on the marketing front, we now have his new album Twelve Carat Toothache , a first-world problem if I’ve ever heard one. Because of his track record, I’m actually pretty excited about this, so let’s just get into it. Let me just get the cat out of the bag: This is pretty easily Posty’s worst project, in my opinion. A lot of the songs in here just felt very uninspired and borderline lazy in some cases. However, I won’t say that Posty doesn’t have the range to pull off the pop and rap songs on here because he’s done it in the pas...

Why is there no blur on the tomatoes? Aren’t they being thrown at him? I’m not gonna get into the Machine Gun Kelly discourse because if I’m being honest, I really don’t care about it. MGK’s time as a musician has been genuinely weird. From pop-rapper to pop-punk rocker who claims to have brought guitar-driven music back, it’s certainly been an interesting timeline for him. When it comes to his last album, Tickets to My Downfall , I’m actually in the minority in the music-nerd space when I say I kind of liked it. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it seems like MGK tried to justify this new direction. He’s now giving it another go with Mainstream Sellout , so let’s get into what I thought about it. This might be considered a hot take, but I don’t think this is all that good. Then again, I really don’t know what I expected either. Even if Tickets to My Downfall seemed somewhat genuine to me, this just all seems fake. Even if some people can’t accept it, MGK is the biggest rock musician in the...

Pretty sure I gotta learn how to skateboard to listen to this now. The 2000s were truly something else. I was too young to remember a little of it, but there are a couple things that stand out. Since nostalgia typically goes back for two decades, it seems like 2000s style is coming back, especially in the music. We have the good stuff like WILLOW’s last album, and we have the bad stuff like nearly everything Machine Gun Kelly has done within the past two years. One artist that seemed prime for a *huge* career resurgence is Avril Lavigne, where her songs like “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” have been etched into the style so much that it’s become that style. Lavigne seems to know this since we have her return to that 2000s pop-punk sound with Love Sux . I haven’t heard any of the singles beforehand, but with MGK and blackbear as features on this, it’s not like I have that high of expectations to begin with. Let’s just get into it. If you’ve been living under a rock, pop-punk is mainstream...

I mean, calling one of your first big projects ‘too perfect for this world’ is pretty huge. Alright, I really don’t have an intro for this review? I think $NOT’s last album, 2020’s Beautiful Havoc , was pretty cool and I liked the direction he was going in. I always knew that his newest album, Ethereal , was set to release at some point, but what really got me interested was his hard-hitting single with A$AP Rocky, “Doja.” Either way, it got me very excited to check out Ethereal , so does it live up to the hype? Let’s see if it does. I’d say that the biggest improvement here is $NOT’s vocals, which seem much more accomplished and confident on this album. Along with that, the features here are fantastic too. The aforementioned Rocky, Kevin Abstract, Trippie Redd, and even Joey Bada$$ lend some good features to $NOT. The production here is pretty nice too, even if it’s sometimes rough around the edges. $NOT’s lyrics are alright too, but it’s mainly used to hold up a good melody. However,...

I just wanna play Shadow of the Colossus now. For obvious reasons, I’m not the biggest fan of posthumous albums. They usually end up being cash grabs. Yes, we have rare exceptions like Life After Death , The Shining , and Circles out there, but we also have Faith , Bad Vibes Forever , and Duets: The Final Chapter . Since Juice WRLD tragically passed away in 2019, it seems like his label has been exploiting him and his music. It’s not as obvious as XXXTENTACION’s estate, but it’s still there. The first posthumous release, Legends Never Die , was admittedly a grower on me, yet it’s still plain as day that they’re just putting out music for the sake of using his name. Now, with Fighting Demons, it seems like it’s going to be the same. Let’s get into it. I have to admit, I’m very surprised at the minimal amount of features on this. Posthumous albums like this tend to be loaded with features, so in a way, I appreciate this for just mainly being a Juice project. That being said, I do think...

Oddly enough, this is the first split album I’ve reviewed. I’ve been getting into shoegaze quite a bit recently, and one of the first and newest artists I’ve been into is South Korean musician Parannoul. Even if I didn’t get the chance to formally review it, his last solo album, To See the Next Part of the Dream , was released back in February and is one of the best albums of the year. Now, for his second release of 2021, he’s done a split album with up-and-coming shoegaze acts, Asian Glow and sonhos tomam conta, titled Downfall of the Neon Youth . Let’s get into it. I can’t say what I’ve heard of Asian Glow and sonhos tomam conta because this is the first I’m hearing of them, but they’ve all at least put out one project on their own this year, and to my knowledge, this is the first time that any of these artists have worked together. This is 10 tracks overall and just under an hour long. Both Parannoul and Asian Glow get three tracks each, but sonhos tomam conta gets four tracks. It’s...

Who puts out a damn-near 30 song album that isn’t for trying to hit that number one spot? Like, seriously. Ah, yes. The Kid LAROI. He happens to be one of the biggest artists in the world and I haven’t heard a single song from him. Funny enough, he’s a big name and I had no clue. I looked at the landing page for this album, FUCK LOVE 3: OVER YOU , on Apple Music and I saw something genuinely horrifying: This is 29 songs. After listening to it, I learned that this was his other two EPs combined with a brand new album. So, I might as well try to review all three of the FUCK LOVE entries while I’m at it. So, how does FUCK LOVE 3 stand? Let’s find out. Let me just say right off the bat that this is an awful way to release an album. I’ve done my research on this. Some outlets are calling this a deluxe with 15 whole new songs. Some are calling this a new album with his other EPs tacked onto it. Some are just even calling it a new ‘project.’ Whatever this is, it’s a horrible attempt to capi...