But in this song, 21 Savage and ESPECIALLY Cardi B steal the show. Between the two of them, there is not a single low moment - no down time, no pause - in this song. And yet, the song does not feel rushed.
To his credit, Khaled is happy to give the spotlight to artists he clearly respects. This is the second time he had collaborated with each of them.
The three featured artists co-wrote the song with producer Tay Keith. "Wish Wish" peaked at #19 on the US pop charts.
I felt like this excellent tune, from the Phantogram album Eyelid Movies, is an appropriate post in a week when Derek Chauvin is currently on trial for his part in the death of George Floyd in police custody.
That's as political as we are going to get with this post.
Clearly, the protagonist in this song - sung by Josh Carter and not Sarah Barthel - is not a fan of the cops. Neither is the guy who made the video, Naje Lataillade, who very much thought through the imagery used. In Naje's words:
"...a sexy police woman comes into frame and gives chase to the crowd. The hipster wearing the PHANTOGRAM shirt is scared for his life. As we watch, we think, "Oh I get it, the song is called 'Running From The Cops'", but there is only one cop, not plural cops. Well, here in Brooklyn, cops equal pigs. So the next character to come out is a freak with a pig nose, dressed in all pink, carrying a bottle of swine flu. He looks angry and like he wants to raise hell. This explains why the people in the beginning were wearing medical masks, as he's spraying the swine flu everywhere. Even the cop is running from because swine flu kills 'pigs'."
The video is mostly in black in white, but there are splashes of blue and red/pink in the black and white. Those two colors are what are required to make a phantogram, the technology you may have seen in your 3D glasses of the 1980s.
It is interesting to watch the performance of this song from 2009. It is a song that is not only performed, but constructed and looped, synthesized to the nth degree to create something noisy and chaotic and beautiful. Second note: they're both multiinstumental.
With a fuller band, like they had in 2014, the song is still chaotic, but less electronic and looped, and more direct. If you happen to have one of those old pairs of 3D glasses, now might be a good time to put them on.
Even though we've featured Annie Clark here before - yes, Scott beat me to St. Vincent just like he beat me to Lights - it's likely none of you know who she is.
Or, at least, until you watched Saturday Night Live this weekend, right? Full disclosure, I'm writing this the day BEFORE she's scheduled to appear, and I didn't know about it until I started doing research for this post. In fact, because I discovered that fact, I moved this post to Monday. You deserve instant gratification.
It's a shame it took SNL to bring her to your attention, but here we are. Her music is poppy yet dark. Her 2017 album MASSEDUCATION is a revelation of sorts. This song, the second single from that album, is a commentary on the culture of Los Angeles, purposefully layered on top of distorted guitar and synth lines.
It's somewhat easy to lose the message in the synth of the song, but in 2018, St. Vincent released an piano version of the album, calling it MassEducation - see what she did there? She also performed the song live in an acoustic guitar version - here's an example of that. Notice how she retains the desperation of the third verse, even with a sparser accompaniment.
If you are here to hear the song St. Vincent performed on SNL this weekend, here it is. Her new album, Daddy's Home, is due to be released May 14th, and, since it's the first since MassEducation, we're pretty excited for it.
I promise you I didn't intend to wean you off of a month of Canadian music with back-to-back 1993 songs by Chicago bands.
It just happened this way.
What also just happened on the whole Saturation album was that Nash Kato, who wasn't the band's normal lead vocalist, sang lead vocals. I wasn't a huge fan of the band before this album, so it was a good thing for me....
As your reward, here's the power ballad 2nd single from the Smashing Pumpkins' epic 1993 album, Siamese Dream. I remember sitting with my girlfriend (at the time) watching them perform this song on SNL. They were becoming a big deal then. I didn't think I'd be talking about this band nearly thirty years later.
But here I am, and it remains one of my favorite song by the band.
Good evening. This is Wicked Guilty Pleasures, an owned and operated blog of the Wicked Guilty Pleasure Broadcasting Corporation, with a picture signal strength of 77,000 watts and a sound signal strength of 7,500 watts. Our principal transmitter is somewhere inside a Google datacenter, which broadcasts to metropolitan Toronto and areas throughout the world. Repeat transmitters extend our broadcast area to include Wawa, White River, Hornepayne, Manitouwadge, Beardmore, and Geraldton. If you have any comments or suggestions about our programs, please address them to info@wickedguilty.com. We hope you've enjoyed this month's programming.
And now, our national anthem.
Bonsoir. Il s'agit de Wicked Guilty Pleasures, un blog détenu et exploité par Wicked Guilty Pleasure Broadcasting Corporation, avec une puissance de signal d'image de 77 000 watts et une puissance de signal sonore de 7 500 watts. Notre émetteur principal se trouve quelque part dans un centre de données Google, qui diffuse vers la métropole de Toronto et des régions du monde entier. Les émetteurs de répétition étendent notre zone de diffusion pour inclure Wawa, White River, Hornepayne, Manitouwadge, Beardmore et Geraldton. Si vous avez des commentaires ou des suggestions sur nos programmes, veuillez les adresser à info@wickedguilty.com. Nous espérons que vous avez apprécié la programmation de ce mois.
Et maintenant, notre hymne national.
(Special thanks to CLBT-TV, whose sign-off from the 1990s we shamelessly lifted)
We are closing this month of nothing but Canadian music the same way we started.
Not just with a band the American audience here had never heard. I mean, yes, that.
Wait. You did figure out the Canadian music thing before now, right? Every artist I posted in March was Canadian - even the covers. I was explicitly clear in every post. EVERY post contained the word "Canada" or "Canadian" - except for the one that contained the word "canadien" and was all in FRENCH. I spelled the word "favourite" several times. I pretty much beat you over the head with the damn maple leaf.
Which also brings us back to ending this month exactly like we started. You see, Armistice was a group - a duo, really, comprised of a man from Toronto band Bedouin Soundclash, named Jay Malinowski, and his girlfriend at the time, a Montreal musician named Béatrice Martin.
This collaboration was very much has a 60's mariachi band feel, which is very different than the reggae/ska sound of Bedouin Soundclash and the sound (although not the lyrical depth) of the chanson française of Cœur de Pirate (are you happy that I had to write the œ AGAIN?!).
Jay and Béatrice, while on tour together in 2011, performed a couple of songs on the streets of Paris. For reasons that will become clear in a minute and you can already guess, I decided to feature their song "City Lights Cry", which also tells a story in mariachi. The couple clearly had a lot of fun doing this.
And they were a couple - meeting at the Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver - but when that relationship ended, Armitice persisted long enough for some promotion of their EP, and then they went their separate ways. Thankfully, the songs didn't die with the relationship, as they have been performed by Cœur de Pirate regularly. Granted, they don't sound quite as mariachi on a piano.... but the songs still work.
