ohlessergod

Holy bleh. At points I tried to say to myself that there was merit in her voice, but after awhile it became clear she just sounds like she is belting the same high notes over and over. This was not for me at all. Too showtune-y.

Ah the teen pop days of the Beatles. Before the LSD and Hari Krishna meditation. The boring but catchy Beatles that are obsessed with young romance. A Hard Day's Night is a great album, but I do prefer the psychedelic Beatles more. This feels like the standard early 60's earworms they would play at the sock hop. It's fine. Sounds like a car show your dad takes you to when you're 7 and your parents are divorced and he thinks standing around staring at car engines in the heat is fun for you but really you're just listening to the music that is already old as shit anyway. Anybody else get that vibe from this album? No? Just me? Anyway, it's got some real bangers and a few that I can't say I've ever heard or ever care to hear again. After the 5th song about unrequited young love or how much that love makes you happy, the message runs stale. We get it. Thanks for the catchy tune.

I try to find one song from every album that stands out as the reason the album made the list. I have no idea what song that would be on this album. We're any of these hits in 2006? Did music die in 2006? I can't say I'm a fan of Christina but I know her hits and I was disappointed to not recognize having heard any of these songs. It's almost like this album just appeared on Earth today.

Anyway, I didn't find anything here worth ever listening to again. Some of the hip hop beats were decent on the first disc, but I can't help feeling like Christina's entire repertoire has existed as a rip off of music created by black artists. C'est la vie though when that has been the case for a very long time. White artists exploit and steal the sounds created by black artists.

What if Christina had collabed with Throbbing Gristle? Wouldn't that have been something?

And if anyone knows where I can hear a song Christina sang about oral sex which was supposedly drunkenly recorded for this album and titled "Fuck You, Suck You," I would love to hear that so I can add that song to my playlist as the standout track from this album.

I'm not sure if Throbbing Gristle had ever been on my radar as a band I needed to listen to. The name is familiar as is Genesis P-Orridge, but I had only ever heard single songs if anything and never took the time to listen to an entire album. I am glad I finally did. I love music that pushes the boundaries of music. I may also be a bit contrarian when it comes to music sometimes as I get off on music that makes other people upset or hate it and I often despise the mainstream popular music. Don't get me wrong, I like the hits too, but I really like when people hate something so much and I hear it and think "hey, that wasn't that bad!" That is this album. An obvious "fuck you" to anyone who thinks "music" has to have structure and melody. In my opinion, Donald Trump could record an album of his nightly farts during his second presidency and that may completely change my extremely low opinion of him as a president into a very high opinion of him as a trolling avant garde artist who, thank God, was just fucking with us his entire life. "Farting on Melania in My Gold Plated 4-Post Bed in Mar-A-Lago next to a banker's box of sensitive documents @ 3:14 AM 4/16/25" would have to be played at my funeral. I would eat that shit up. One can dream, right? This is all a joke, right?

Back to Throbbing Gristle. As others have mentioned, this album evokes a mood. I am not sure exactly what that mood is or was meant to be, but it ain't happy. It's the existential dread of life mixed with life's surreal underbelly. Why are we here? Why do we make and listen to these sounds? Do they have meaning or do they exist as a random assortment of noises that someone took the time to record? And how does one find meaning amid the meaninglessness of it all? Throbbing Gristle knows this isn't Top 40 material. They know it is bottom 40 material, but they are sending it out into the universe to ask us to challenge our perception of what "music" is. To be contrarian in a world of yeasayers. I appreciate that. It gets my blood flowing and melts a little bit of the plaque and microplastics in my brain.

Would any of the songs on this album go on a playlist containing my favorite songs that I would want to hear again? Absolutely not. Can you sing along to Hamburger Lady or Hit By a Rock? You can try if you want to. Did this album evoke more emotion from me than Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics? Yes. And what was that elicited emotion exactly? I am not sure, but I felt something listening to this and I am of the thought that feeling something even if it is painful or depressing is much better than feeling nothing at all.

So, as you listen to this, ask yourself what it makes you feel. A lot of music is just someone trying to make a buck by trying to make you happy. Throbbing Gristle said fuck that. We will make no money to make you depressed. Your happiness is not our concern, if you want to be happy listen to Van Morrison or Raffi, but if you want to think and feel something completely different, give us a try.

I don't think I have ever come across Scritti Politti before and if I had I likely would have immediately written it off as some weird 80's boy band of sorts. And maybe that was my initial feeling but then I found comfort in how it both sounded like it was from the 80s and modern at the same time, how it sounded like it was a boy band but also a band emulating and subverting the sounds of a boy band. At times I found it to be a little funny because it sounded so corny. But that is exactly why I also enjoyed the entire album. It's so cheesy at times it feels like an SNL skit. And there is a weird discordance in the music too. Like something is off. Like it wants to be catchy so bad, but it can't, but the lack of catchiness in itself becomes catchy? I both liked this and laughed at this, but in laughing at it I liked it more.