Music Mondays: "Get It" by Matt & Kim

I’ve been a little busy the last few weeks, explaining my lack of Music Mondays, but I will try and make up for that (this one was actually started on a Monday, at least). To start with, I’m covering “Get It” by Matt and Kim.

I recently got to see Matt and Kim live, and while I’ve liked their music for several years now, seeing them in concert gave me a new appreciation for their music. I honestly have no idea how anyone could keep up that energy night after night of touring.

“Get It” is pretty close to what I would consider a perfect representation of a Matt & Kim song. The duo thrives on its simplicity, with a simple but bouncy and catchy synth riff and drums. For a while, and for some reason I can’t quite articulate, I used to think the simplicity of their music was downside. I can’t see now why I thought that; Matt & Kim’s music doesn’t need anything more than what it is. The keys and drums provide more than enough of a groove to feel lively, and it fits with the lyrics.

The lyrics also gave me that vibe for a while, but like the music, they are exactly what they need to be; super honest and heartfelt odes to happiness, with an infectious catchiness. Again, here “Get It” fills the Matt & Kim idiom, with lyrics about enjoying the night. Matt belts “At 1 AM, oh yeah/goddamn, goddamn/we don’t want to go home”, about making mistakes, and so on.

I suppose that all feels very vague and superficial on paper, but to music, it works. And in concert? Well, that’s part of my new appreciation. For as easy as it may be to assume otherwise, Matt & Kim are totally sincere about all of this. Being able to tour is, to them, quite clearly a rush. This is the pair of them, just making the music they want to, enjoying life and celebrating with other people, putting all of that out there for an audience. Seeing it all together only reinforces how catchy everything about their music really is. 

Music Mondays: "Killer Whales" by Smallpools

I’ve been wanting to write more about music than I have been, and considering my best music of 2014 article (the pop version is here, the full list is still forthcoming) made me think about it several different ways. Specifically, I found it much, much easier to write about what I didn’t like than what I did. I want to work on that. So, I’m going to try and make a weekly feature where I write a little bit about a song that I’m listening to recently and why it specifically out of all the things I’m listening to piques my interest.

To start, I’ll be looking at “Killer Whales” by Smallpools. The song technically came out a few months ago, but I’ve been listening to it a lot again this week with the release of their debut album LOVETAP!

Best Billboard Top 100 Songs of 2014

After some delay, here it is:

I found writing this that writing about good stuff is so much harder to do than writing about bad stuff. With bad stuff, like my “Worst of 2015” list, it was mostly easy to narrow down what bothered me and write about that. With the good stuff, I sometimes found it difficult to pinpoint exactly what I liked. Plus, there was a lot more to talk about. But I tried to at least throw in a sentence or two for each as I went through them in chart order.

Worst Billboard Top 100 Songs of 2014

Now that 2015 is here, I think I can officially look back at all things 2014. And as a music fan, the year’s music seems like a good place to start. I’ve always wanted to write about each year’s music, and now that I have Out of Left Field, there’s a natural place to write my thoughts down.

Let’s start with a more contained list before I move on to the year at large: Billboard’s Top 100 songs of the year. I listened to every song on the list at least once to get a feel for what I liked and what I didn't, and I have to say, it was easier for me to narrow down to the songs on the list that I didn’t like. I mean, it makes sense; these songs got popular for a reason. Even if I didn’t think the best songs of the year made the list, there was still plenty of good stuff out there.

However, there was still plenty of lackluster, disappointing, or just not good stuff there, so we may as well get the negative out of the way. Let’s start discussing the songs on the top 100 that I think were bad before I name my worst of the year. I’ll be going in order, starting at the bottom. Also included a links for reference.

The Contrasting Cases of Guardians of the Galaxy and John Carter

Over the course of Christmas Day, I was watching movies with my family. And by some chance, we decided to cover a double feature of two recent science fiction blockbusters, namely Guardian of the Galaxy and John Carter. I had seen both before (in fact, I wrote my thoughts about Guardians here), but watching them back-to-back gave me a reason to compare and contrast the two.

Obviously, the two films enjoyed vastly different levels of success. While Guardians just became the highest grossing film of the year, John Carter barely made back its budget, likely ending any chance at a franchise. What exactly caused such a

Well, there probably isn’t one simple answer. Or rather, there is: Guardians is just a better victory overall. But that’s not too helpful unless we break it down into the minutiae. And while there are several reasons that Guardians is better, I’d like to focus specifically on one specific storytelling aspect.

How I Would Adapt Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book One)

One of the greatest shows on television is coming to an end this week, and for the second time. And yes, even though Legend of Korra is a cartoon, I will firmly defend its and prequel series Avatar: The Last Airbender’s collective spot as the greatest show on television (I realize I haven’t not seen every show on television, but bear with this hyperbole for a moment).

For that reason, I wanted to write something about the show. I couldn’t think of anything for the current episodes, though. Which is when I turned my thoughts towards the future of the franchise, including possible adaptations.

I realize that the M. Night Shyamalan film exists, and is a large failure. I haven’t seen it myself, but I have reason to avoid it, though. However, I don’t think the failure was on the part of the source material based on its quality, and I am of the opinion that anything could work as a movie if you do it correctly.

So yes, I think a Last Airbender movie could work; however, you would have to do it pragmatically. Something like the Scott Pilgrim movie (the gold standard for adaptations, in my mind; the movie stands out just as much as the source graphic novel) could work, where the changes are all necessary to fit the medium, but make sense in the context of the story just as well. It lost a lot of the detail of the comic, but still made for a fantastic movie by just simplifying a lot of the plot in sensible ways.

With that in mind, what would be essential in a pragmatic adaptation of The Last Airbender? What if we wanted to reduce Book One to a single movie (that was longer than 100 minutes), or possibly even a two-part film? Well, in season one at least, we have these episodes:

Some Belated Thoughts on Big Hero 6 and Interstellar

It took me a while to see these two movies, and even longer to write down my thoughts on them, but I may as well do it. I’ll mark spoilers when I get to them.

It seems weird to think of these two movies as related; they’re about as different as you can get. They were released on the same day, and that’s about it (unless you want to count the fact that I saw them close together as another relation, in case you think my viewing pattern makes them more similar in some way). But I feel like these movies are so different that they almost represent polar opposites in some way.

Setting a "Replacement Level" for Music

Joe Posnanski wrote about a fun concept the other day in a mailbag-type piece. One of the questions dealt with Bruce Springsteen (Poz’s favorite rock star) and jokingly asked for his WAR. For those who don’t know baseball, WAR is a newer stat called Wins Above Replacement that tries to measure the overall contribution of a player. Since this is a pop culture spin-off of a baseball site written by a huge music fan, this seemed like something I should write about.

I love this concept as a thought experiment, but Joe touches on a good point: what is this hypothetical replacement-level musical artist? In baseball, the hypothetical replacement player is the type of player you could just find anywhere in the minor leagues. Your Aaron Mileses*, your Joe McEwings, and what have you. Can the concept hold through in popular music?

*No idea if I pluralized that correctly.

I mean, in theory, it could. There are tons of bands just playing music, filling bars and concert venues across the US and world every single night. Maybe that’s our hypothetical replacement? And it would make sense, to some extent; as in, the replacement band is just your average, run-of-the-mill Beatles/Led Zeppelin/whoever cover band, and you work your way up from there.

But that’s less fun, to just set the bar at some level where there isn’t a famous example to point to. Let’s look for a more notable band to use as a yardstick. Start with Joe’s choices, for instance. He picks Hootie and the Blowfish and Huey Lewis (presumably with the News) as his hypothetical “Replacement Bands”.