This Week In Media: Music, Games, and More

  Discussing the Grammy Nominations for 2021 11/28/2020 The Grammy Awards have always been one of the most exciting times of the year for musicians across the world. So naturally, seeing who might win of all of your favorite artists, songs, albums and performances is a very exciting moment. The official list of nominations for next years Grammy's was released four days before this was released, on November 24th, and it's simply more of the same. Every year we've received a few select artists, the albums and songs they were chosen for, and they get about ten nominations each. This leaves smaller indie artists hidden deep within this nominations list and dissolved into obscure awards that never get presented or even acknowledged in the actual event. The Grammy nominations for this year were, admittedly unsurprisingly, the same. A handful artists were even chosen again to be one of the lucky few, which is pretty heartbreaking because so many other artists have had so much bett...

November 24th, 2020: Fanboy Roundup #7 11/24/20 DISCLAIMER: The "more" in the title is implying more mini reviews, not more interesting and important topics of discussion. Topic #1: boy pablo - Wachito Rico (Mini Review) Indie artist boy pablo has been producing hits about teen love with a wonderful and specific style, and despite how controversial this next statement is, it's starting to get somewhat old. His fans haven't seen much of a change in his style or an evolution in a long time, but his fanbase continues to praise his music like he is the literal Messiah. Every modern-day teen probably likes him, or at least this genre, at some point in their younger lives. I did for a while myself, but even I thought his style got old eventually maybe two years ago when I stopped. His past is reflected in the first four singles released from this project, and they're things you swear you had heard before from boy pablo and many artists like him. Though, in a decent majo...

A Very Smurt Retrospective Pt. 5: Back to the Lab 11/21/20 Very Smurt has always been a very interesting personality; one that had a definitive personality, fanbase, and style, but all of which were unique to him. His style had a lot to do with parodies of internet trends, memes, and popular songs, and some of his parodies were more subtle than others. His wide fanbase accepted his style to death, but overtime, Smurt himself did not. He grew tired of making the same kinds of music and the same album structure three times, and he knew he had to rebrand the Very Smurt name. On May 22nd, 2019, just over two weeks after his latest full-length album "Stanferd Dropout", Smurt teased something known then as "a new era". Nobody knew what this means until a trailer was released on Instagram and YouTube after the Kuricha Clan diss track. This trailer detailed the likes of an entirely new album set for the seemingly near future entitled "WOOb". This was shocking to f...

Super Mario 3D All-Stars: The Limited Release and the Problem With High Expectations 11/17/20 DISCLAIMER: This is the first of a couple of essays I'm doing about this game and the morality behind it and games like it. One of the most hot topics in the gaming community is the morality behind re-releases. The question stands to weigh the pros and cons of everything surrounding a company putting one of these out. On the bright side, you have entirely new generations of potential fans to create potential communities exposed to this media via it now being on the newer consoles they own. Aside from this, however, you have lazy companies trying to sell you the same product, occasionally in a worse form, rather than making something new. The reason it felt fit to bring this debate up now is because, within the past two months, we've received the new "XIII" remake and the new "Super Mario 3D All-Stars" pack. The "XIII" remake has warranted far more hate tha...

A Very Smurt Retrospective Theory #2 - The Eras of Very Smurt and What They Truly Mean 2/9/20 - 11/13/20 Throughout the lifespan of commercialized music, we've seen it go through many phases. However, there's only one thing that had stayed consistent for decades, and likely will for decades to come. It seems to many people that, ironically enough, money is a priceless thing, and should be squeezed from artists' work. One of the more well-known ways to do this is radio streams, which has forced genres like modern country to be about as formulaic and boring as it gets. Nearly every popular and mainstream country song starts with a 10-second intro, a 20-second verse, maybe a pre-chorus, and a chorus pushing it just over one minute. It's ridiculous how easily this formula can be noticed while looking at timestamps in so many songs that simply come from one genre. One of the most diverse genres to exist, however, has been rap music. Sure this genre was pioneered by artists l...

  Ariana Grande - positions (Review) 11/9/20 When word was widespread through the music industry that Ariana Grande would be making a sudden return with a new album "positions", and naturally, it seemed like it would be similar to all of her recent outings. Even though she had given her fans no other information, it was already pretty predictable. Ariana has been on this somewhat altered version of early 2010s pop for a while, and many other artists have followed this craze with her; namely Halsey. When I listened through Halsey's January album "Manic" earlier this year, I was somewhat blown away with what she was able to do with this genre. That album held so many special and cool moments, so many dynamic shifts and mood changes, while all staying within the realm of this new style of pop music. Going into "positions", it was difficult to expect much at all from Grande due to the quality of her last two albums "sweetener" and "thank u, ...

I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME - Razzmatazz (Review) 11/5/20 I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME, or IDKHOW for short, has been wowing people everywhere since their mid-2017 single "Modern Day Cain". Their new sound graced the ears of indie, alternative, and emo communities alike since people saw that Dallon Weekes was the lead of the project. In 2018, they released their debut EP which carried three previously-released singles from it, one introduction, and two other songs. This EP was an interesting sound that more closely followed a more indie pop-rock style that was, in many situations, more fast and gritty. It had an interesting sound, for sure, but it wasn't like their more experimental-style of pop-rock that came with their first two 2017 singles "Choke" and the previously mentioned "Modern Day Cain". We hadn't heard anything from them except from a 3-track Christmas project in November 2019; two of which were covers. On September 2nd, howe...

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Review)   11/1/20 DISCLAIMER: This review will not contain any major spoilers for "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" past two paragraphs in. The rest of the review does not include major spoilers, but does encapsulate how things went without going into a lot of detail. The movie does not contain any major direct spoilers that aren't given away within the first thirty minutes (mainly just the general plot). It's not completely radical to assume you've heard of Sacha Baron Cohen's first "Borat" movie from 2006. It was a wild roller-coaster of controversy and got itself banned in two countries. The movie is a comedy and mockumentary that follows Borat Sagdiyev; a Kazakh reporter making a documentary studying what makes America so "great". Eventually, he discovers Pamela Anderson and aims to make her his wife; offending every ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, and country along the way. The movie is something of a masterpie...