Tag Archives: pop music

Articles

Interview With Rising Young Starlet, KSENIA

ksenia

1. Ksenia is a beautiful name. What is the origin?

Thank you very much! The name, Ksenia, comes from Greece. Xenia translates as hospitality. Fun fact, my name is ranked the 6430th most commonly used name in the world. It’s pronounced Kiss-en-ee-uh.

2. Your voice is beautiful. When did you first begin singing?

Thank you very much. I began singing in the kindergarten. Good times! And then I could not stop. I was singing and singing and still singing. I love it.

3. Tell us about your background in film and comedy as well!

I love film and comedy. I got an MFA in acting for film; In school they taught me how to make a movie from scratch. And that got me started. I made many short films and even one feature film, romantic comedy “THIS MUCH”, I co-wrote, produced, starred in it, and did all the soundtracks. I even won best actress for it, just like I dreamt to. The other thing is I was always funny, not even on purpose. I was doing my singing shows and talked to the audience in between songs, and everyone was laughing. And then I thought maybe i should take a standup class, and I loved doing standup. But then I was too exhausted doing all of it and recently made a decision to focus just on music. I am happy that i’ve had so much comedy and film experience, it only helps my music, i am looking to incorporate it all in my music videos.

4. You have a lot of followers on IG. Do you enjoy being an influencer?

Believe it or not, having lots of followers on Instagram is a lot of work! I do enjoy it I guess. I don’t know, I look at it like at the portfolio of everything I’ve been doing, and I love connecting to my followers; everyone is so supportive of what I am doing.

5. If you could play any stage, anywhere…where would it be and why?

I would love to have a show at the Staple center. I went to see so many shows there, Sam Smith, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Adele, Alicia Keys, Grammys, Cher. It’s time I have a show there 😉

6. What is the new single entitled? Can you tell us a bit about the song?

New single called Let Somebody Love You is about a person who has a hard time letting people in and giving and receiving love. This is how most of us are these days. No one wants to commit to any relationship; we are playing it too cool. We have all been hurt, and we don’t want to get hurt again. Inspired by true events, of course. I think lots of people can relate.

7. Where are your favorite places to go in NYC ?

You know I love comedy, so I love to go to a Comedy Cellar for a good laugh. I enjoy live music shows at places like Rockwood Music Hall, and I love watching Broadway shows. I watched so many already. I also enjoy watching movies by myself. I am a bit weird. I also enjoy long walks in Central Park.

8. Do blondes have more fun?

Nah. With all the work I constantly have to do I feel like I don’t have any fun at all lol. So, I believe people of all hair colors are capable of having the same amount of fun. 😉

9. Please list your links for our readers. Thank you Ksenia.

THANK YOU!!!

Web: www.iamksenia.com
Insta: @iamksenia
Soundcloud: @iamksenia
Facebook: @iamkseniamusic
Twitter: @iamkseniamusic

Reviews

Willow Raye – Deja Vu

willowraye

Pop artist Willow Raye’s new single Deja Vu (part of an upcoming EP) attracts with it’s delicately magnetic vocals and dazzles with its retro electro backing beat. The dreamlike ambiance is enhanced with 16-bit styled sound effects, distinguishing this from standard Top40 pop fare. A tasteful delve into romance and lust, this track has potential to resonate with a wide audience. It helps of course that Willow is a teriffic looking girl. Musically and aesthetically, she has all the ingredients to follow in the footsteps of established indie pop artists like Halsey. A solid music video and some persistence would propel this talented girl to the level she needs to be.

For more info:

https://www.instagram.com/willowraye/

Articles, Reviews

One Week 20 Years Ago

BARENAKED_LADIES_ONE_WEEK

[Fran and Stephen are observing from the roof of the mall]
Francine Parker: What are they doing? Why do they come here?

Stephen: Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.
– Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Hard to believe it’s been 20 years since Barenaked Ladies’ One Week was a popular, chart topping hit. I remember driving around Tempe in the fall of 1998 listening to The Edge 106.3 FM, and it seemed like this song was on the radio every 5 minutes…sometime between songs such as Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta and Third Eye Blind’s How’s It Gonna Be? These songs were heard many times on trips to and from Blockbuster Video (as well as Hollywood Video) to rent and return erotic thrillers, midnight outings to Denny’s, lonely drives to North Phoenix, my job at Abercrombie and all the rest.

One Week was one of those cheesy songs that I would have never admitted to liking but knew the words to and would secretly enjoy when it came on. It wasn’t passionately hated enough for me to like ironically, the way I later did with boy bands and Vitamin C, it was at least preferable to rapcore, a genre which I loathe to this day. In 1998, I would have complained about all the music on the radio sucking except the oldies station. This seems laughable in the context of today, when nearly every pop song is processed gibberish. In hindsight, we didn’t know how good we had it! One Week has the feel of a relic from a much more innocent and carefree era. It might as well be 100 years ago and a different country. The plethora of pop culture references in the lyrics are characteristic of Generation X works made at what Bret Easton Ellis refers to as the “height of the empire.”

Watchin X-Files with no lights on,
We’re dans la maison
I hope the Smoking Man’s in this one
Like Harrison Ford I’m getting Frantic
Like Sting I’m Tantric
Like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy

I remember thinking these lyrics were so dumb, but not because I was opposed to the idea of cheesy pop culture references in songs. It’s just that the particular items referenced weren’t things that I personally was into. I did after all, write a song about Michael from Melrose Place. To revisit and paraphrase that memorable line from 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, such things had an important place in our lives.

I felt as though I owed it to Barenaked Ladies to write something about One Week, given how much enjoyment this jam gave me in 1998. 20 years later I can finally admit it.

Articles, Reviews

Life in Plastic, It’s Fantastic.

aquabarbiegirl2

Ahh yes, I’m driving down Scottsdale Rd in the fall of 1998 in my ’93 Saturn (soon to be totaled while parked in Santa Monica less than 2 years later.) I’m wearing a yellow button down shirt from The Gap and sporting frosted tips. Or maybe I’m wearing a blue Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker semi-ironically. What song is playing on the radio? Well, it could be one of many songs actually. Perhaps it’s Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta. Maybe it’s Barenaked Ladies’ One Week or if I’m lucky, Aqua’s Barbie Girl.

barbiegirllene

Yes I admit it, I loved this song. I was first alerted to it by friends that said it reminded them of my recordings, not that I ever made anything remotely as good as this, but I used to increase the pitch on my cassettes on 4 track to make my voice sound more indie and alternative, which my friends jokingly said made it sound like “that Barbie Girl song.” It brings back so many memories from a great time in the 90s. I used to think pop music was so shitty at the time, but we didn’t know how good we had it! Aqua’s Barbie Girl is actually a masterpiece, artistically, cinematically, aesthetically, musically, you name it.

seahorse

One of my favorite parts of the video is when Lene is getting her hair done and reading a cool looking (but fake) book titled My Little Sea Horse. Whenever I watch the video, I always think about how I wish that book actually existed and I could read it.

Life in plastic, it’s fantastic! Yes it was.

Reviews

Echosmith – Cool Kids

Echomith_coolkids4

As someone who strives to live in as much of a bubble as humanly possible within the modern world (and without  adopting the Ted Kaczynski or Amish lifestyle,) I struggle to block out most contemporary pop music in the moments where I find myself in environments where avoiding it is inescapable (such as the fitting rooms at department stores.) It was some such moment in some such place a year or two ago that I first heard Echosmith’s Cool Kids. I was instantly mesmerized by the synths, which had an unusually authentic 80’s sound at a time when such homage is paid typically in lip-service-surface-level, superficial ways (in pop music anyway, with indie subcultural genres like vaporwave it’s another story.)  The synths in Cool Kids though are not even so much retro,  but retro-futurist, living up to the dreamlike visions of what futuristic pop music would be like.  If this sanguine inter dimensional ambient journey to sanctuary is disrupted by anything,  it’s the lyrics, which are a little too cliche’ to be deserving of an otherwise cerebral song like this. I mean do we really need these tired bromides like “I wish that I could be like the cool kids cause all the cool kids they seem to fit in”? They seem like the lyrics that would play during the contrived emotional scenes on one of those lame, self-important, virtue signaling teen shows like 13 Reasons Why. This is not really a knock on the band’s singer, Sydney Sierota, who’s probably the best thing to happen to pop music since even before Taylor Swift. Sydney’s pretty and unassumingly charismatic without coming off like a tryhard or giving off a lot of phony attitude, and her charming, hypnotic vocals elevate the overall atmosphere of the song in a way that seems irreplaceable. I can’t really tell if she’s a bonafide avant garde “hipster” or one of those basic girls that just looks the part of an American Apparel employee (circa mid-2000s,) but I’m leaning toward the former. As one gets older, it become more difficult to differentiate between teenage social groups, as the previous referential signals become obsolete, and one is no longer privy to the new tells.

Anyway, whenever I was in this particular department store, I would look forward to this jam coming on, and I still do. As I’m perusing the sale racks looking to score some Tommy Hilfiger V-neck sweaters to be worn semi-ironically,  the addition of this song provides the missing piece of the puzzle in completion of the ultimate mall ambient experience. Cool Kidsis one of the best pop songs in recent memory, which I realize may not seem like a very high bar to meet, so let me just emphasize that I think it’s really something else.

Reviews

Lizzy Small’s Music Continues to Defy Gravity

lizzy small

Lizzy Small, a young up and coming pop star that you may recognize from her supporting role in the recent film “Spare Parts,” had a popular song out called “Gravity.” The first thing I noticed about it is that Elizabeth really does have a great voice. Lots of times these pop jams are comically overloaded with auto tune and pitch correction, but in Lizzy’s case the producer wisely left her voice (mostly) alone other than a few subtle effects here and there, and one can tell she’s a good natural singer. “Gravity” is a catchy song, and the part when the chorus kicks in you can visualize it being a club hit.

As a pop song, Gravity manages to achieve its appeal while taking the high road. The highly professional and well edited video comes across as a refreshingly innocent romance tale. It doesn’t utilize anything sleazy or cheap to get a reaction. It doesn’t rely on any of the shock value or preachiness we’ve come to expect in this genre of music. In fact, there is nothing cheap or shoddy about this production.

The same goes for her recently released track, “Always Be There,” which has a slightly more hypnotic feel to it as opposed to a club track. It reminds me of the sort of song a girl would listen to on a late night long drive home or afternoon road trip out of the city. It’s fitting that a captivatingly romantic song like this was released for Valentine’s Day. The echoey chorus can get stuck in your head pretty quickly after a couple of listens, and it’s no surprise  the song currently has nearly 3 million plays on Soundcloud already.

Lizzy manages to achieve a respectable sound without appearing as though she’s “trying too hard.” From watching her videos and interviews, I get the impression that if anything, she is a tireless worker who takes care to consider every detail and genuinely takes her craft seriously. Either that or she just surrounds herself with good people and has terrific innate marketing skills.

Be on the lookout for more exciting stuff from Lizzy. I have a feeling these tracks will be just the beginning. Don’t be surprised if she makes it to the next level, and she does…remember you heard it here first.

Soundcloud – https://soundcloud.com/officialsmall
IMDB – http://www.imdb.me/ElizabethSmall
Instagram – http://instagram.com/OfficialSmall

Articles

In This Town

inthistownblueforweb

For those who were around 18(!) years ago when I released 4-track cassettes like”Birthday Boy,” “Outer Space” and “Rebel Without A Life”(which Oliver Hibert did a drawing of the PV Mall food court for the cover) that I used to unironically send to places like Seventeen Magazine and Sassy for review…. or even 10 years ago when I released that creatively pathetic excuse for an album, “Springtime In Paris,”(which for some reason got me a large feature in the print edition of the Phoenix New Times) I would urge you to consider this and my other new songs as some form of artistic redemption(samples, loops and all.) If not well that’s cool, too. I still have another 6 more songs coming out. Where did all the time go? What can we do with the time we’ve got left, those of us who can foresee inevitably bleak life outcomes in our not too distant future while simultaneously maintaining any youthful energy at all? Think about it. Livejournal styled narcissistic rant temporarily over -B.A.

In This Town – Single – Brandon Adamson

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/brandonadamson9