Tag Archives: Kendrick Lamar

Music, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Best Music of 2017

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Jesse
Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse
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It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means: music publications published their year-end coverage approximately one to three months ago. We here at SportsAlcohol.com do not have a list of our 200 Favorite Albums That Came Out Between January and Mid-October, though we will have some individual write-ups of songs we love throughout the rest of the month and maybe into January. But Marisa, Sara, Rob, and Jesse did sit down to talk about our faves (and other opinions) from this year in popular musics. (They also took selfies. See above.)

For our best music of 2017 wrap-up, we decided to take a different tactic and take a roughly chronological trip through the various live shows we all attended, together and apart, throughout the year, and let the discussion spring from there. You’ll find out who we went to see because we’re afraid of death, whose live show exceeded their disappointing album(s), which band(s) Sara cannot deal with right now, and which show got Rob feeling real emotional in a rough year.

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

Music

TRACK MARKS BEST OF 2014: “Backseat Shake Off (Kendrick Lamar vs Taylor Swift)” by The Hood Internet

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Rob
Rob
Rob is one of the founders of SportsAlcohol.com. He is a recent first time home buyer and it's all he talks about. Said home is in his hometown in Upstate New York. He never moved away and works a job to pay for his mortgage and crippling chicken wing addiction. He is not what you would call a go-getter. This may explain the general tone of SportsAlcohol.com.
Rob
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This week, SportsAlcohol.com writers are recounting the best music of 2014. Today’s Track Marks focus on individual songs from albums that didn’t make our individual best-album lists.

I know what you’re thinking, reader: “Rob, a mashup was one of your favorite songs of 2014?! There are less embarrassing ways to relive your college years.”

Fret not, reader. I have so many great reasons to include The Hood Internet’s latest.

I wanted an excuse to post this video.


“Backseat Shakeoff” was released at the tail end of the media’s coverage of the  mutual admiration society between Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift. This appeals to a very particular demographic AND I AM PART OF IT. I wish I had something more insightful to add beyond “I think it’s cool that Taylor Swift is into Kendrick Lamar and vice versa” on this point, but  I’m not sure what to add on this point.

Just Enough T-Swift

 


Maybe Jesse and I are just clueless old men who just don’t get the success of Taylor Swift’s march towards world domination, but we’re totally the type of dudes who love great pop music to the degree people question our sexual orientation. I’m serious. Jesse and I did a radio show during summers in college and we’d throw in some Mandy Moore and Atomic Kitty in between the de rigueur Guided By Voices and Built To Spill. We would sometimes get phone calls full of homosexual slurs.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I really like the idea of Taylor Swift transitioning from country to pop superstardom, but the tunes don’t always grab me. “Shake It Off”, the lead single from her latest album, is a mixed a bag. The Hood Internet take the good parts for their mashup by just using the beat, the first verse, and one chorus. The pseudo-rap, spoken word breakdown and troubling music video get left on the cutting room floor.

Kendrick Freaking Lamar

I was late to the party on Kendrick Lamar, but I am here now. While it works well in the context of the full album, “Backseat Freestyle” is (to me) one of the less interesting songs on his breakout good kid, m.A.A.d city. I know it’s one of the clear singles from that record, but it lacks the nuance and insight of Kendrick at his finest. That being said, “Backseat Freestyle” is the obvious choice to mash up with “Shake It Off”. While most of Kenrick’s songs could be described as downbeat, this isn’t one of them.

Movies, Music

Spider Jam: Which Spider-Man Movie Has the Best Radio Song?

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Marisa
Gripes
Marisa
There are contrarians, there are iconoclasts, and then there is SportsAlcohol.com co-founder Marisa. A contraiclast? Her favorite Springsteen album came out this century, so she is basically a controversy machine.

Also, she is totally not a dude!
Marisa
Gripes
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So, our Spider-Man podcast covered a lot of ground. We talked about how there were a lot of plot threads it didn’t tie up (like this io9 post points out), or how it wasted time tying up plot threads from the previous movie that didn’t need to be resolved (like this Vulture article notes).

We didn’t have time to discuss everything, though, and one major issue fell through the cracks: The soundtracks to all the Spider-Man movies. This was a major topic of conversation at the Mountain Dew-fueled SportsAlcohol.com editorial summit that preceded the podcast, but we just didn’t get to it on air.

Basically, a lot of ink has been spilled about how all-over-place the Batman movie songs have been, but similar consideration hasn’t been afforded to the music “inspired by” Spider-Man.

That is, until we drank all of that Mountain Dew.

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