New Kota the Friend Album, New Green Day Singles, and More: Fanboy Roundup #1

May 24th, 2020: Fanboy Roundup #1


I want to make content. I want to have an excuse to write five-paragraph essays whenever I please, but recently, there hasn't been much to write about. I look at these new songs and rumors from various artists and I want to write about all of them individually, but I can't simply because there's not enough news to cover. At least not enough that I care about. So we find ourselves here; at a roundup of the little things that I care about. I know this will happen many times in the future, so here is an inconsistent series about things that I care about. One paragraph for every new thing. Today's general section; music.


Topic #1: New Kota the Friend Album
I have yet to decide on where I stand on doing a full review for this album. Until then, while this album is still very relevant, I wanted to make a sort-of first impressions talk about it. I first discovered Kota when I found "Colorado" on YouTube, and found his style of more upbeat and jazzy trap. My first impressions are that this album is just yet another really good Kota album. I haven't really gotten a big chance to dive in yet, but it's very good from what I've heard so far. I'll wait to give my official number rating until I do the review.


Topic #2: Oliver Tree Screwing With The Fans
Oliver Tree is a musical artist brought up by YouTube and Vine comedy fame. His music meshes elements of pop, EDM, and punk music to come together and make some legendary bangers. Back in December, he announced his debut album he's been working on for over five years now and was ready to put it out into the world on March 27th, 2020. Two days before this date, Oliver claimed that his album was "pushed back due to COVID-19", and nobody believed him. It was obviously just another meme thing that Oliver was doing, but on March 27th, when the album never came, fans were confused. Oliver never posted about anything for a while, until he dropped a new single and music video "Let Me Down" on April 7th. The general consensus on this song was that it was great, me slightly begging to differ. A few days before today (May 24), Oliver posted an Instagram post with the official album cover saying that if the post reached a certain amount of comments, he'd give us the release date. I believe the number was originally 500k, but then was moved to one million. After a million was reached, Oliver came through and promised the album on June 12. Then, he said that he would release a new song and music video when the post hit two million comments. As of writing this, it has not yet reached its goal, but I'll keep updated.


Topic #3: Thoughts on the New Singles from Phoebe Bridgers
Starting with Bridgers, I really got into her solo music after I'd heard Better Oblivion Community Center; her album with Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes fame. Bright Eyes stands one of my favorite bands to date, but Phoebe took their edgy and raw style of folk and blends it with elements of more modern music. Overall, I don't like her as much as Bright Eyes, but I still really like her music. When her single Garden Song dropped a few months ago, I thought it was good, but not as good as most of Stranger in the Alps. Then, she dropped Kyoto, which I instantly fell in love with and have been listening to nonstop ever since last month. Finally, we come to "I See You", her latest single. For me, Kyoto was an 8 to an 8.5 out of 10, and Garden Song was a 6.5 to a 7. I think this latest single falls perfectly into 7.5; directly in between the other two. 
I was going to also go over the new singles from folk band Mt. Joy, but I decided not to because I have a lot of thoughts on how they're releasing singles from this new album. I plan to structure these thoughts into a bigger topic discussion in a later essay.


Topic #4: Thoughts on the New Singles from Wallows
Starting with Wallows, I thought they're new single "OK" was a piece of dog shit. Somehow, they turned their exciting rock and pop energy and formula into just a pop song that sounds like One Direction trying to be edgy, but still meeting their quota of inauthenticity. The song was bland, and the lyrics and vocal performance was terrible and depressingly generic. The instrumentals were polished, but to a degree where it feels fake and somehow uninspired. The song makes me scared for the future of Wallows. They also covered a Beatles song very recently, and it felt kinda dumb and uninspired, but not that terrible. I give "OK" a 2 out of 10, and their cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends" a 5.5 out of 10, mainly for disrespecting the Beatles.


Topic #5: Thoughts on the New Singles from slowthai
Speaking of formulas, we've recently received three new singles from the King of England himself, slowthai. I first got into him very recently, at around December, and even more so after his song with Gorillaz, Momentary Bliss, was released. I loved his passion and energy, particularly throughout his amazing 2019 album "Nothing's Great About Britain". These three new singles follow the same type of energy we saw on Doorman from said album; loud, angry, and trap-y. These songs, though, are all basically the same. If he combined them all and stuck the lyrics over the same beat and dropped an eight-minute banger, I'd feel like they all fit perfectly with each other. In these songs, he just talks about rage and killing over beats that follow an amazing formula, but can get old. This is kind of reminding me of my review of the recent Hayley Williams album "Pedals of Armor", though these songs aren't nearly as bad. Before I end this, I feel like it's worth noting the absolutely amazing bars in this song, which bumps the mean up at least a point. I give these singles as a whole a 7 out of 10.

In conclusion, I plan to never do a conclusion for these roundups. I want them all to simply be a handful of paragraphs not connected to each other at all. So that's the end, I hope you look forward to seeing more of these because they will be coming, and have a nice day.


Listen to these songs and albums (YouTube):
Oliver Tree - Let Me Down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxG-7AsbjeI
Phoebe Bridgers - Garden Song, Kyoto and I See You: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkh6-0ObdRcONRLxoePE7N47ipAlqPn18
Wallows - OK and With a Little Help from My Friends: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkh6-0ObdRcOLFvE3gmGflfT-OQvVBR4w

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