One way or another, the end is coming. But if you truly, deeply engage here, you can live more life in a week than most people live in an entire lifetime. By that I do not mean that you can have more experiences, I just mean that you can experience far more moments with far more depth and clarity than someone who’s just drifting through life on autopilot. One week fully and consciously appreciated contains more lived life than an entire stay in this world from cradle to grave when it is taken for granted.
According to Tribe Dynamics, the top influencer driving the conversation on luxury products is the popular — and controversial — singer-songwriter, model and make-up artist Jeffree Star, who has over 500 million views on YouTube and almost five million followers on Instagram. “[Star] is talking not just about the beauty brands, but also the fashion apparel and accessories products,” says Begley, recalling a meeting in which representatives from one luxury house told him they didn’t want to be associated with Star, although he was already driving more conversation about the brand than anyone else.
“[Star] is shaping the perceived messaging. [Luxury houses] don’t have to make him the face of their brand, but this is a new wave of publishers that you have to manage and work with….Think about this as PR,” he continues. “How have you treated editors in the past? You got product into their hands pre-release. You built relationships with these people and created experiences that shaped their view of the brand.”
» The Jake Paul story never ends. Good at sales, or just manipulative? Knowing that Gary Vaynerchuk is an investor in the Jake Paul brand changes the story quite a bit, for me at least. Listening to Shane Dawson talking to him about “how he doesn’t know what he’s doing is wrong” is like watching a rabbit explain to a shark how eating grass is better than snacking on surfers.
Not saying that Jake Paul is right, necessarily, but the discrepancy in worldview is large. Shane “I FINALLY HAVE MERCH!” Dawson comes from an entirely different place from Jake “yo” Paul.
When I sat down for my first listen to NCT 127’s first full album, Regular-Irregular, I got about 30 seconds into the first song and paused. What was a hearing? Did this song sound suspiciously like EXO’s “Unfair”? (Yes it did.)
I was concerned. In fact I was so concerned that I quit Spotify and walked away.
It wasn’t until later that I gave the album a fair shot. But, like other books that I started a few times before getting invested in their plot and characters, Regular-Irregular just needed a little bit of time.
Unlike many k-pop albums, Regular-Irregular is arranged around a concept. The “dreamlike” concept has been with NCT the whole way through, so that’s nothing new, but I was not expecting 127 to come out of the gate with a fully-formed concept like this. It took EXO years of “singles” albums to refine a sound that worked for them enough to build a whole album around it.
This album is fantastic. It takes everything great about NCT 127 and remixes it into something new and utterly fun to listen to.
The first section is “Regular,” in which most of the songs sound like much of NCT 127’s earlier mini-albums. There’s the rap track (City 127), the bright pop song (Replay/PM 01:27), and the ballad (Knock On). None of these are unfamiliar, and once I pushed past my initial reluctance to the first track I breathed a sigh of relief. This is the NCT 127 that I know and love. Good rapping, smooth vocal harmonies. They’re good songs with some interesting moments, but nothing overly memorable.
Then we come to “No Longer.” This is the gem of the album. It’s a ballad, but in the style of an EXO winter album: the exact opposite of what NCT 127 usually does. (Seriously it would fit in perfectly with Universe.) The instrumental is acoustic, rather than synth-heavy. There is no urban or rap influence anywhere. This is a song that gives the vocalists time to shine, and they take advantage of it—especially Haechan. It immediately rocketed onto my unofficial list of k-pop songs to fall asleep to, it’s that soothing and complex and delicious.
Now that you’ve floated off into the land of vocal harmonies and upright bass, it’s time for the turn. This album is helpfully bisected by an “Interlude” that takes us from a sedate, classical beginning (regular) to a dark, distorted ending (irregular) with spoken-word poetryish stuff in between. Parts of this piece sound a horror movie, so I’m never sure if the IRREGULAR part of the album is supposed to be merely dreamlike or more like a nightmare. It’s a little bit unsettling, I won’t lie.
The journey is worth it, because it takes us to another of my favorite songs on the album: “My Van.” It’s very playful and all over the place, overscored by a metallic chiming synth and underscored by very deep distorted voices. This is another song designed to showcase rapping, giving some of the other members a chance to chime in even though Mark and Taeyong dominate. That’s okay though, they’re really good at it. (And Mark finally got his turn at vocal fry with a very well placed “Ahhhhhh yeah.”)
The second half of Regular-Irregular follows the same structure as the first. After the rap track (My Van), we get the bright upbeat pop song (Come Back), and the ballad (Fly Away With Me). Unlike the first half, however, these songs are more sonically interesting to me. Maybe it’s the distortion, maybe it’s a willingness to use chords that aren’t “regular,” but they’re very satisfying songs for someone like me who is a complete sucker for complex pop music. I particularly like “Fly Away With Me,” which is somehow light and heavy at the same time, with a four-on-the-flour beat that somehow never gets old.
If you’re more interested in the chords and rhythms, I highly recommend React to the K’s “First Listen” video, where Umu and Kevin react to and break down the album.
Technically “Fly Away With Me” is the last song on the album but much like “No Longer” was a complete left field surprise, we get a bonus track in the form of “Run Back 2 U.” If you need some NCT nostalgia, this is an expanded version of “Bassbot,” a dance video they released as undebuted rookies. It’s a gonzo song that jumps all over the place, has a female vocal sample, and ends abruptly—but I really like it. Something about k-pop has given me the ability to love and appreciate these songs that are just completely all over the place.
At this point, if you’re at all familiar with the album you might be wondering why I haven’t talked about the title tracks—the English and Korean versions of “Regular.” The short answer is, I don’t like it.
The long answer is a bit more nuanced. “Regular” reminds me a lot of the Twice song “Likey.” They are both very understated, and seem designed more to be played in shopping malls (and sound good) than for fans at concerts or at home streaming with headphones. Both songs are earworms, full of ear candy—Twice’s in audio effects, NCT 127’s in vocal color, think “splash” and “brrrrah.” It seems to me that SM Entertainment is more interested in laying the groundwork for future NCT 127 recognition than they are in providing a song that is immediately interesting to listen to. I respect that decision, even though I dislike the song. “Likey” grew on me. “Regular” has not.
With that said, I’m super-happy with Regular-Irregular as a concept and as an album. I like the back half a lot better than the front half—usually I start with “No Longer” (because I’m addicted) and carry through to the end—but it’s still a solid album from front to back. There are no bad songs, and it will integrate well into an all-NCT 127 playlist. (Except for maybe “Interlude” but that’s okay.)
Highly recommend, will be listening to on repeat, etc.
Just the tiniest tease of Spacebunny in the intro?
GOOD AUDIO??
The Dark Lord is upping his game, and got himself a YouTube lackey.
I gotta be honest here, this is about the last thing I would have expected from Vox Day. The details are refined. It’s clear that he took time to set up and film it. Everything about it is finished—except I wish that he would have turned the wine label toward the camera at the end so we could have seen it.
There are so many questions in my head right now, but I’ll just say thing: I’m glad to see attention going to refinement and style. A deliberately presented appearance goes a long way toward saying “I’m serious about what I do,” which obviously Vox is.
I’m curious as to how much Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich have influenced Vox as of late, and how much the timing of this has to do with the release of Hoaxed later this week.
Winestream Vox is great. Can’t wait for more, even though I don’t even drink wine.
I would have watched it yesterday, but my internet wasn’t set up yet. Gotta love moving.
Shane Dawson—who has been on a tear recently with his recent documentary series on Grav3yardGirl and Jeffree Star—is also someone I don’t really know or care about. (Sorry, Shane—but I did subscribe!)
I love internet culture, and I love it when interneteers get introspective on what makes the internet so weird and so great. Shane is investigating that kind of stuff right now, and I can’t dislike it.
One of the driving questions behind Shane’s documentary is shaping up to be “Are there sociopaths on YouTube?” with the obvious follow up “And is Jake Paul one of them?”
From my perspective, the answer to the first question is “DUH.” Yes, of course there are sociopaths on YouTube. There are also narcissists and people with depression. YouTube is great because it lets all sorts of people produce content, many of whom have alternate mental or physical states.
I once started playing “spot the sociopath” at work. When it becomes clear that there are low-level sociopaths in normal, everyday places (hint: they don’t always act the way you see in movies), it’s not surprising at all that some of them would gravitate to YouTube.
One of the problems of doing business online is that the stuff that gets clicks—out of curiosity, or outrage, or shadenfreude—is not the stuff that leads to long-term virtue and happiness. The most perverse of incentives.
If someone isn’t firmly grounded in themselves or some form of truth, I could see how a huge audience, lots of positive reinforcement, and wads of money would lead you down a path of delusional self destruction.
It’ll be interesting to watch how Shane’s series plays out, mostly because these things are just as much about Shane as they are about the actual subject. Literally half of the Jeffree Star series was Shane being self-conscious about how poor and inadequate he felt. Jeffree was super-gracious about everything, and I don’t know if Shane played it up for laughs, but it did not add any value to the series.
Either way, I’ll be watching the Jake Paul series.
Maybe by the end of it I’ll know the difference between Jake and Logan.
It’s not often I’ll admit in public that I like this band, but I’ll make an exception for a 9/11 post.
My Chemical Romance is a band that was born on 9/11. Not the lineup or even the concept, but the emotion that was driving Gerard Way through the whole thing:
“I didn’t see the planes hit. I did see the buildings go down, from I’d say fairly close. It was like being in a science fiction film or some kind of disaster film—it was exactly that kind of feeling. You didn’t believe it. You felt like you were in Independence Day. It made no sense. Your brain couldn’t process it. And for me it was a little different. I’m very empathetic and I’m kind of a conduit emotionally, so I pick up a lot of stuff in that way. There was about three- or four-hundred people around me—and I was right at the edge. All these people behind me, they all had friends and family in those buildings. I didn’t. So when that first building went, it was like an A-bomb went off. It was like just this emotion and it made you nauseous.”
The thing about MCR is that their sound so perfectly encapsulates a certain feeling, and articulates it in a way that makes sense. I’m sure there were a few kids who were drawn into a dark path from their music, but for the most part people started listening to them because MCR accurately represented how they felt.
This was the first song that Gerard Way wrote for MCR, btw:
Steel corpses stretch out
Towards an ending sun, scorched and black
It reaches in and tears your flesh apart
As ice cold hands rip into your heart
That’s if you’ve still got one life left
Inside that cave you call a chest
And after seeing what we saw
Can we still reclaim our innocence?
And if the world needs something better
Let’s give them one more reason, now
The weird mix of innocence and gore that twists through all MCR songs was there at the beginning.
9/11 wasn’t the only thing that influenced Gerard Way. It was just the catalyst. He was into horror movies and comic books, one of those weird hulky goth kids in high school. Horror pop music (or “kiddie emo” according to the music snobs) was a natural fit for someone with his emotional sensibilities and dramatic flair. And he took that flair to the extreme.
There are a lot of things surrounding MCR that you can take issue with, but sincerity is not one of them.
The reason that I posit that MCR is a 9/11 band is because of this song:
It was one of the lead songs from their last full album. I listened to it for a weekend solid (no lie). At this point. Gerard Way is married, has a kid, kicked alcoholism and has written and recorded an album that failed to capture the “emotion” that MCR’s first three albums did.
This album was more like a message to the future, like what he would tell his daughter as she grew up.
Anyway, the lyrics go:
Where, where will we stand?
When all the lights go out
Across these city streets
Where were you when
All of the embers fell
I still remember there
Covered in ash
Covered in glass
Covered in all my friends
I still
Think of the bombs they built
His hope is in his daughter, in the children of the future…but it’s still hope.*
Between these two bookends lies the bulk of MCR’s career. Much like fiction, there’s the inciting incident, and the epilogue. The turn at the end that shows that the emotional journey is over–the true end of the story.
MCR’s last album, Danger Days, isn’t quite like the other albums. It’s still story-driven, like an auditory comic book, but this time the story is cartoonish, full of color and energy. When you listen to “The Only Hope for Me is You,” you know why.
At some point, Gerard ran out of on-brand stories to tell. The darkness that had been driving with him fell away.
We all have points in our lives that change everything, especially regarding death and destruction. Mine came a few years later, when I was in college, but I can only imagine what it would be like to be even mildly empathetic or intuitive and be around NYC that day. I can understand why someone would react like this.
Overactive imaginations R us.
*That’s not to say there wasn’t hope in any of MCR’s other albums. Bruh have you listened to “Famous Last Words“?
NCT’s signature WTF-meets-urban styling made a comeback with NCT Dream’s recent performance of “We Go Up” on KBS Music Bank.
It’s the kind of styling that’d delightfully weird and off-kilter: just deliberate enough that you know it was on purpose–but very rough around the edges.
All the members wore some sort of sweat suit or loungewear, topped with a black blazer and a ID badge lanyard. It all seems mismatched, like something you or I would wear on our day off when we’re doing laundry, until you realize that each member has a color scheme. The continuity of the color gives a certain level of formality to the sub-casual sweatsuit style.
It’s almost like a mismatch of genres. The decor motifs of the sweats and tops are mismatched (casual), but the color scheme is monochromatic (formal). The blazers are rendered in black (formal) but cut in a loose style (casual). ID Badge lanyards scream both work (formal) and conventions/fun (casual). They also flop around a lot and make it impossible for an outfit to look completely pulled together.
Chenle wore an all-white outfit with a contrasting jacket in the “Go” video, and it looked out of place because the level of formality was higher than the rest of the styling for that video. Here, though, it works (thought it’s Renjun who’s wearing the all-white outfit) because of the contrast principle.
I love it when “official” things also have a sense of humor. Little details like this are why we all love NCT Dream a little bit more than all the other NCT units.
Update:
We got a live one. Matching white pants and jacket with a different colorful rugby shirt for each member. Similar concept as the sweatsuit/formal jacket combo, but a different execution.
Gordon Ramsay’s at it again. Not to imply that this is new, or that he ever stopped.
And no, he didn’t go full carnivore. (At least that I know of.)
What he did was make eggs benedict with crispy parma ham.
I myself would also like to make eggs benedict with crispy parma ham.
Or, since I don’t eat English muffins, drape the parma ham over the bottom of some muffin tins that I then stick in the oven to crisp up into little parma ham baskets. That way I can contain the goodness of hollandaise sauce and poached eggs inside the crispy parma ham.
Lemon juice is also off the table for me at the moment, so I’d probs just leave it out of the recipe and deal with a hella rich hollandaise sauce. *shrug* There are worse things.
(Super-citrusy hollandaise sauce is rly delicious, to be fair. Lemon juice positively sparkles up against high-quality butter.)
The fat content in this thing will be off the chain, but who doesn’t need a little fat in their life every now and again? Gotta have something in your back pocket for feast days.
Realistically speaking, all of this will be balanced over a ribeye.
Because it isn’t a carnivore recipe without some steak. 😉
Here’s an idea: instead of calling this posts “linkshame,” I’ll rebrand and share what has caught my attention long enough to want to capture. Positive and helping-focused instead of negative and self-focused.
» A Brief Introduction to Meme Therapy: If the meme strike notes are good, looking at fifty will save you from reading half a dozen books. They might not equip you to defend or attack a position beyond that, but that isn’t the point. The point is either carving out a space for certain ideas to be heard, or closing off a space and booting certain ingroups or positions outside of the sphere of acceptable public discourse. [Scott Adams would call this “directional truth” rather than “exact truth.” -eds.]
» I’m intrigued by SocialMatter. Gotta love a neoreactionary website with a dot net address.
I want to escape into a misty forest at dawn and run toward the light that spills through the trees. I want to cloak myself in velvet and swim into a glittering nebula. I want to discover the truth of God and the universe.
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