Sad Moth Smackdown: Alice In Chains' Facelift vs. Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger

Sad mothsters discuss, compare and contrast the relative quality of two grunge albums sung by dead guys.  How the fuck is eddie vedder the last one left? How???

Sad Moth Smackdown: Elvis Costello's "This Year's Model" vs. Tom Petty's "Damn the Torpedos"

Back by no one's demand.

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Hug it out fellas!

Hell Yeah I Listen to Country, Why The Fuck Don't YOU????

You should listen to country music.  You really should.  I wrote this article because most people I know would absolutely, never, not EVER listen to country music, and I think that is lame and stupid and counterproductive.

To be very clear right out of the gate, I am NOT talking about country music in the vein of 70's outlaw country, or earlier country-western, or roots music, or even 80's-90's Garth Brooks style power country.  I'm talking about the here-and-now of country.  I'm talking Florida Georgia Line and Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton and Sam Hunt and Morgan Wallen and on and on.  This is a genre that a large swath of the American population listens to almost exclusively, and is never listened to by anyone else.  Why not?   Why not at least give lip-service to checking out what is going on in the most successful surviving branch of the music industry?

So, here's a bunch of reasons why you should listen to country music.

YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO
You're reading this article.  Admit it.  You don't have anything better to do.  You might as well listen to some country music.

YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN COUNTRY BUT YOU'RE NOT
Oh hello, nice to meet you Mr. and/or Ms. "listens to everything but country".  Fuck off.  Why do you think you're too good to listen to a certain style of music?  Because people you don't respect listen to this type of music?  Why don't you respect those people? Because you're a huge prick? Yes? O.K.

IF YOU'RE A SELF-IDENTIFIED 'POPTIMIST' AND YOU DON'T LISTEN TO COUNTRY YOU'RE A LIAR AND A HYPOCRITE
Rock-based pop has completely disappeared from the top-40 mainstream music scene.  Hip-hop is the dominant pop form, and trap is peaking in its popularity.  But, for all intents and purposes, rock-based pop hasn't gone anywhere.  It's just called country now.  Listen to this song.  This is a song that can be found on the spotify "Hot Country" playlist.  In what way is this a country song?  What elements of this song distinguish it as 'country'?

I can't hear anything that distinguishes this as country.  Can you?  What, stylistically, is separating this from late-00's adult contemporary pop rock?  Nothing!  All the elements we associate with the country idiom -- the bass lines and the steel guitar, the way the licks work with the chord progressions, the topics of the songs and the southern accents, none of that is in this song, and yet this is still considered country.  Now listen to this:

Hold on, are those trap flavoured high-hats I hear?  If you didn't see the music video, would you have been able to identify this as a country song?  What does this song have in common with Willie Nelson?  What does this song have in common with Garth Brooks, even?  My point is that what gets labeled as country music today has very little to do with the style of the music itself.  The only thing that defines a country song in 2018 is if it originates from the country music industry.  And the country music industry in 2018 is moving quickly away from most of what makes country music stylistically distinct from pop rock, EDM, contemporary R&B, and hip-hop.

So if you like pop, if you're into Ariana, Mayer, Beyonce, Bleachers, the Weeknd, Drake, Migos, Nicki and on and on, there's very little reason to spurn country.  The difference, stylistically, is paper thin.  An "I like everything but country" opinion is getting increasingly impossible to justify as country continues to shed its distinctions from other forms of popular music.  If you're into pop and have never given country the time of day, give it a shot.  I have no doubt you're gonna hate some of it, but there's enough there for you to make it worthwhile.

IF YOU'RE INTO GENERICALLY HOT WHITE DUDES WHO ALL LOOK THE SAME, YOU'RE IN LUCK

ummm... CHECK PLEASE!

IF YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO COUNTRY YOU'RE SLEEPING ON SOME HOT-ASS TRACKS
I've you're going to buy one argument that's being made in this bullshit rant, here is, I think, the best that I got.  See, the country music industry is huge, and there's just so many songs getting pumped out all the time, and most of those songs are getting written and recorded with the same objective -- to be radio pop hits.  Add to this environment the singer/songwriter dichotomy that still exists in Nashville, and you've got a whole industry designed to funnel the best songs to the most popular artists and give those artists the most exposure.  So, like, c'mon, every one in a while all those blind squirrels are gonna find a nut, right?

Right!  See, I will never argue that mainstream country music is really good, or usually good, or even good a lot of the time.  What I will argue is a thesis I have spent months crafting, refining, researching and proving.  Here it is:

The Fundamental Law of Country Music:

Contemporary mainstream country music is pretty good, every once in a while.  Most of the time it kinda sucks though. 

See?  I'm not overstepping my bounds there, am I?  This gets to the core of what I'm arguing here.  Just take the cream and leave the rest.  That's what most actual country fans do anyway.  Just throw yourself together an hour long playlist, and pop it on at an opportune time.  Maybe when you're day drinking with some friends, or drivin' around in the country, or having a backyard barbecue.  You don't even have to put together a playlist yourself if you don't want to, I've got one put together for ya right here!




TAYLOR SWIFT MADE COUNTRY MUSIC ONCE AND IF YOU DON'T LOVE TAYLOR THEN FUCK YOU

Before she turned into a lying snake who tried to manipulate us all into thinking she was a bad girl now, Taylor Swift was an impressively proficient singer-songwriter who made a number of fantastic country pop albums in the 2000s.  To this day, Fearless remains the only thing that can melt my cold, dead heart.

Come back old Taylor, we love you.

COUNTRY RADIO IS STILL RELEVANT AND IT'S A TOTAL TRIP TO LISTEN TO A MEDIA FORMAT THAT YOU FORGOT EXISTED
Recently I've listened to a good bit of country radio, and it's really strange.  The zany DJ's, the local ads, the same 20 songs over and over.  It's all still there, just like it was 10 years ago when I stopped listening to commercial music radio.  And country radio still has a robust audience, despite the myriad of astronomically better options for listening to the exact same music.  It really is an interesting experience to listen to commercial radio if you haven't in a while.  At the very least it'll make you appreciate your spotify subscription a little bit more.

IF YOU WANT TO HEAR WHAT'S HOT IN COUNTRY MUSIC RIGHT NOW YOU ONLY NEED TO LISTEN TO LIKE 20 SONGS, SO JUST GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO IT
Related to my last point, a by-product of country music still being controlled by commercial radio is that only like 20 songs are popular at a given time.  Radio stations format their programming to give you all the hit songs of today for exactly the interval of time the average listener will have the radio on.  This means you can listen to the local country station for like 45 minutes and you're pretty much caught up with everything that's hot right now in country music.

EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY ALBUM HAS DOGSHIT COVER ART THAT LOOKS LIKE IT WAS EDITED IN iPHOTO IN 2006

This is something that genuinely baffles me about country.  No matter how popular a country album is, no matter how much money is being put behind a project, every single album's cover art looks fucking awful.  Some of the albums pictured above were huge selling LPs.  Why did they hire the guy who took your high school senior pictures to do the cover art?  I have no explanation.

LISTENING TO COUNTRY GIVES YOU INSIGHT INTO HOW THE COUNTRY MUSIC INDUSTRY PANDERS TO ITS FANS
I've always been a little split on country lyrics.  Because most country lyrics are about of one of three things -- drinkin', girls, or bein' proud of where you're from.  And that great!  That's what so much great music is about.  The problem arises when there's nothing but that going on.  There's a lot of hip-hop about drinkin' and fuckin' and where you're from, but there's also hip-hop about other things to, and these other topics -- poverty and violence, politics and institutional racism, are addressed by mainstream artists.  There are country artists out there who are singing about living in poverty, drug addiction, racism and many other problems that are serious issues in America today.  But they are unequivocally not in the mainstream.  These artists -- Christ Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Kacey Musgraves, Colter Wall -- are not part of the mainstream country music machine, full stop.  And that's when mainstream country turns into pandering.  The problem is not what it is on its face, but the diversity of perspective and ideas that it lacks.

Listening to country can help you get inside the mind of someone who listens to this kind of music all the time.  It can help you consider how doing so might affect your worldview, if this kind of messaging was all you were getting from your entertainment.   I know a lot of people who listen to country, watch Fox News, and go about their lives.  Listening to this music is an opportunity to look inside their bubble.

SOMETIMES IN LIFE YOU GOTTA GIVE A LITTLE TO GET A LITTLE.  MAYBE IF WE ADMIT COUNTRY MUSIC IS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD SOMETIMES, COUNTRY FANS WILL ADMIT DONALD TRUMP IS A PATHETIC DISGRACE TO OUR COUNTRY.
Donald Trump is the current president of the United States of America.  I doubt there is any hard data to corroborate this claim, but if I were a betting man I'd make a sizable wager that country music fans as a demographic voted very heavily for Donald Trump.  The problem with this is that Donald Trump sucks and is a bad president.  The other problem is that people who voted for Donald Trump don't seem to want to admit that he sucks.

Maybe if you put in the work, turn on the local country station, find a couple songs you like, you'll be emboldened to step across the isle, find a country music fan and tell them something along the lines of, "hey pal, y'know what?  Florida Georgia Line is actually pretty sick, sometimes".   And maybe, just maybe, he or she'll come back with a, "honestly it's really fucked up how they're treating immigrants right now," or a, "yeah, it does bother me how beholden to Russian interests this administration seems to be," or even a, "maaaan, I just voted for Trump because Kid Rock told me to".  Which would be so wonderful, wouldn't it!  And in the case of the last guy, you've finally found a buddy to go to Kid Rock concerts with!

Sad Moth Smackdown: Green Day's "Dookie" vs. Blink-182's "Enema of the State"

Real-life teenager SHIG joins the guys to talk seminal pop-punk LPs from the late 90's.

Sad Moth Smackdown: The Fray's "How to Save a Life" vs. Train's "Drops of Jupiter"

The east side kidz from the bay dissect two seminal alt-rock LPs from the mid-00's, The Fray's "How to Save a Life" and Train's "Drops of Jupiter".  Is Over My Head (Cable Car) a certified banger?  How does the rest of "Drops of Jupiter" hold up after it's stand out track?  Is Napa Auto Parts a nice place to work?  Answers to those questions in more in the audio that follows!

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Sad Moth Smackdown: R.E.M.'s "Out of Time" vs. Teenage Fanclub's "Bandwagonesque"

Things get a little ~~heated~~ as our intrepid Sad Moth Podcasters Noah and Patrick go toe to toe over the relative merit of Out of Time by R.E.M. and Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub.  **Warning** This one is VERY LONG and goes off the rails about halfway through as things get contentious over the quality of "Losing My Religion".  Listen with caution!

 

Sad Moth Interviews: the boy

Sad Moth asks the hard hitting questions with Andy Lewis of the boy.  We get down and dirty, discussing the Shangri-Las, lo-fi, how to write songs and other cool shit.  Listen to Andy's music at theboy.bandcamp.com.

Sad Moth Smackdown: The Cure's "Disintegration" vs. The Smiths' "The Queen Is Dead"

Sad Moth sits down to explore the merits of The Cure's Disintegration and The Smiths' The Queen is Dead, and debate which is superior. 

Sad Moth Interviews: Indigo Trip

The guys from Sad Moth sat down with the dudes from Indigo Trip to pick their minds about influences, origins, band philosophy and big weed.  Check 'em out at https://soundcloud.com/indigo-trip. Do you like the new ~lo~fi~ direction Sad Moth is taking?  More of that in the coming days!

Sad Moth Smackdown: Radiohead Vs. Lana Del Rey Vs. The Hollies

Woah! Look at 'em go!  Today we resurrect the Sad Moth Radio Network with a new series we like to call "The album grate debate except this time it's a song but usually it's going to be an album" or "Sad Moth Smackdown".  Normally, we'll debate the merits of two comparable albums, but in this one, we rundown the controversy over the Lana Del Rey/Radiohead beef.  They're fightin' alright, mostly about the similarities between Radiohead's Creep and Ms. Del Rey's song Get Free".  We also discuss  Radiohead's past legal issues over the similarity between Creep and the Hollies' Air that I Breathe.  We then argue over which one of these three songs is actually the best.  Who wins?  Listen on to find out!


Here's some links to the songs discussed:

Radiohead: Creep

Lana del Rey: Get Free

The Hollies: The Air that I Breathe

Hey Gals: Here's What Your Tinder Anthem REALLY Says About You!

On tinder, you have an option of list an "anthem" on your profile.  One song that you hope will attract exactly the type of person you're looking for.   The choice can say a lot about you.  What most women don't realize is just how much their choice of song can say about them.  Below is a list of common choices for tinder anthems, and short outlines of the kind of signals that these song choices are sending to me, the guy.  At the end of each, I'll tell you how I expect our relationship to go.

Are you sending out the right signals? Read on to find out!

Me, Myself & I -- G-Easy
You're bubbly and fun and looking for a guy to go on adventures with.  You have a dangerous Chipotle obsession and work part time while you're in college as a barista.  You are a little crazy ~~ hahaha ;) ~~ especially when someone gets you talking about the need for sustainable fishing methods off the Florida coast in order to keep the stone crab population stable.  Two years ago you ate ten Warheads extreme sour candies at once, and ever since you've had an eye twitch.  We'll match, I'll message first and we'll have an idle 3 message conversation and never talk again.

Somebody Else -- The 1975
You're not looking for anything serious and have changed your hair color so many times you've forgotten if you're a blond or a brunette... lol.  You're a devoted fan of Scandal and are 420 friendly.  Your older sister just went into the Peace Corps before she goes to med school and that just about sums up how you've lived your entire life in her shadow.  You have a 4.0 in college and it still isn't good enough.  It'll never be good enough, will it mom?  Your mom is right though.  You do have mannishly-wide shoulders and you better be funny with that face.  We won't match.

Holy Grail -- Jay-Z
You're mysterious.  After all, if you're gonna pick a Jay-Z song, why the hell would it be one off of Magna Carta/Holy Grail?  No one knows.  What we do know is that you can't get enough of cheesy pick up lines, or travel.  We'll match, go on three dates and things will go well, at which point you'll try and convert me to the Church of the Latter Day Saints and propose marriage.  Really needing to get my nut, I'll consider it in a recklessly serious way, but ultimately turn you down because I've taken you to Denny's three times now and every time you get the all you can eat pancakes which is just way too intense for me.

rockstar -- Post Malone
You like Post Malone so you're probably trash.  Every single picture on your profile is you with a snapchat filter.  You like Life cereal and maple-flavored oatmeal, both of which are huge red flags.  You have orange juice, grapefruit juice, and apple juice in your fridge, and no one knows why you need that much juice but they're all certain it can't be a good sign.  You take three mints after you eat at Chili's because you think if you take more than one it's considered stealing and it gives you a rush.  I'll swipe left.

Low Life -- Future
You're a sassy girl not looking for anything serious.  You're just trying to drop it low and party, and what's wrong with that?  Your profile has three pics and all of them are group selfies, forcing anyone who wants to figure out which one you are to flip between them and use process of elimination.  You say that you're a sagittarius.  You don't believe in astrology you just thought it's sexy to say you're a sagittarius.  You have a bad habit of scarfing down sour cream and onion chips right before you have sex, and keep telling yourself you need to stop because you smell like sour cream and onion chips for the rest of the night, but you keep doing it anyway because you fucking love sour cream and onion chips and don't have the self-control to stop.  Your dad listens to "Rumors" by Fleetwood Mac every day while getting ready for work and, while you acknowledge that it's a classic, at this point you've listened to it so many times you kinda just out-and-out hate it.  We'll match, I'll message you but you won't respond.

After the Afterparty -- Charli XCX
I dunno. This one it's hard to tell.  We'll go on one date to the movies and you'll leave halfway through.  You say your roommate just texted you saying your apartment burned down and your cat died in the fire.  I'm suspicious you're making up an excuse so you can ditch me.

Gucci Gang -- Lil Pump
You're bio is just emojis.  You have one picture and it's of your tits.  hehehe.  You're a straight up ho.  You smell like ramen all the time for some reason.  You left your last boyfriend after you sucked him off so well his asshole prolapsed and you realized he didn't deserve you.  You've seen every episode of Baywatch ten times and can quote every episode from memory.  You wear a velour sweatshirt and sweatpants every day, all year long.  In the winter that becomes a problem because you can put old people into cardiac arrest with your static shocks.  We won't match, but I'll see you on the local news one day after you get arrested with a pound of weed stuffed inside a jumbo bag of Werther's Originials in the trunk of your car.

Snapback -- Old Dominion
A country girl!  You're looking for a man who drives a truck, hunts on Friday, drinks on Saturday, and gets up for church on Sunday.  You own cowboy boots and an Eric Church 2011 North American tour t-shirt.  One time you went to the lake with your girlfriends, came back in the afternoon and went to Pizza Ranch for dinner.  You were really dehydrated but you straight up inhaled like 12 slices of that apple-strudel dessert pizza.  On the drive home that shit started settling into the bottom of your stomach like a rock, and you had to pull over and run into a Wal Mart, but you didn't make it to the bathroom in time, and ended up puking your guts out into a handbag in the women's section.  You looked around and no one seemed to have noticed, so you just bought some milk and eggs and went home.  We won't match.

Closer -- The Chainsmokers
You're a foodie, and a bit of a rich girl.  Your profile pics are all in different exotic locations.  You're an anthropology major and aren't looking for hookups.  Guys seem to really like you until you show them your Big Mouth Billy Bass novelty singing fish.  You understand you could be catching way more dick if you didn't carry around a plastic singing fish that sings "Don't Worry, Be Happy" when you press a button, but you know if a guy stays around after you show him your Big Mouth Billy Bass, he's a keeper.  One time you wanted to dump a boyfriend, but you were too scared to end it, so you fed him some Haribo sugar-free gummy bears and left quietly while he was locked in the bathroom taking loud, explosive shits.  You like to randomly tickle people in inappropriate social settings.  We will get married.  I will fall in love the minute I set my eyes on that Big Mouth Billy Bass.


Did your anthem say about you what you thought it did?  Leave your reactions in the comments below!