It's been a while since we featured Phanotgram. We're featuring this because we had a draft of this post already written for such a time like this - when we were too lazy to go hunting for a new song and research it.
Nevertheless, here we are. And, since we forgot to add that research piece, we saved almost nothing.
The band's third single from their great debut album, Eyelid Movies, it wasn't quite as well-known as the two previous singles - but it still got a video and a bit of label backing. The song itself is a bit of a sonic experiment in this format, although it is one of the band's older songs.
Why does it seem like I'm getting all my music from perfume commercials lately?
Mostly because I am.
This song was covered by Miley Cyrus in a Gucci perfume ad, but it's really Shampoo who originally recorded the song. Shampoo, a 90's girl duo who started off more riot grrrl and ended up more Cher Horowitz, had a few hits in the UK but never sit fire on this side of the pond.
It's pretty standard 90's power pop, but it's catchy so I don't care. Let's just enjoy it together.
The only thing I am seeing more than ads for perfume on Hulu these days are ads for this song.
This isn't a joke. There's been a pretty aggressive marketing campaign surrounding this particular song in the last month of the year. I'm sure I'm going to see the ad 100 more times before it's done.
I'm not sure she needs it. You see, "kenzie" is Mackenzie Ziegler, best known for the six years she spent on the Lifetime series Dance Moms with her older sister Maddie. We've discussed Maddie before - but only in terms of Sia.
Now, Sia didn't write this song (she has written for kenzie in the past),- the younger Ms. Ziegler did co-write this breakup song, which was loosely based off a text a friend of hers sent to her - a friend who hated the summer, but broke up with her boyfriend in the winter so she longed for the summer.
Despite the fact that this song made this blog solely off the power of a Hulu ad, it's pretty darned catchy.
I've been hesitant to post any Natalie Merchant music. I found the work she did with 10,000 Maniacs to be more significant and more successful....
However, this, her debut single in 1995 after her split with 10,000 Maniacs, was a top 10 hit, and the accompanying album, Tigerlily, sold 5 million copies, more than any 10,000 Maniacs album. This single made the top 10, which is higher than any 10,000 Maniacs song did (their cover of "Because The Night" fell just short).
So I was wrong about the successful.
And this song is a deep yet lighthearted look at city life, inspired by a trip Merchant took to New York City as a young child. So, maybe this is also pretty significant.
At any rate, it's a great song that established Natalie Mercahnt as a solo artist, and for that reason, I decided it was time.
It's not rare that a song from a Disney movie makes the pop charts.
You can count on one hand the number of songs from Disney movies that topped the pop charts for five weeks.
Actually, you can count them on one finger, and it is this critically-acclaimed densely layered traditional Latin pop song. Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda - the guy who wrote Hamilton, yes - it is a complex and extremely well-constructed song that moves forward the story of Encanto, a movie that Miranda was integrally involved in the development of (and we wrote the entire soundtrack).
So many people - a who's-who of Latin actors and musicians (we will revisit several of them soon) - performed on this dense track - and we listed a lot of them, but there were more. This is probably the longest WGP title ever, but I ain't apologizing.
Of course, for a song called "We Don't Talk About Bruno", they sure do talk a lot about Bruno.
Because I did list out all those cast members and represented them with animation, it's only right that I give you a live performance, with the cast performing the song live at Disney's D23 Expo. Notice how Rhenzy Feliz sings ALL the male parts.
The cast made another appearance at the 2022 Oscars (the song wasn't nominated but c'mon). It was introduced by John Leguizamo, who literally played Bruno. Pay attention at the 1:45 mark. No, Megan Thee Stallion was not in Encanto.
Remember yesterday when we talked about Bella Poarch lipsyncing to grime?
Turns out she has a music career herself. This was her debut single, from 2021 - and it's really good. That's not just me saying that. That's critics, who praised its body positivity message.
The video is some sort of a twisted take on Build-A-Bear workshop, where men could come and pick out the parts on women they might want - which, of course, is the point of the song (love yourself, you can't build a.... well, you can read the title).
So, a lot of you have seen this little viral TikTok video that came out a couple years ago. I know a lot of you have seen it, because it is the most viewed video on TikTok.
Sixty million likes for a little head bobbing. What did I do wrong in my life?
As it turns out, this was part of a series of lip sync videos released by TikTok star Bella Poarch, and this one just took off. The story behind the song is a bit unexpected, though.
You see, Millie B was a 16 year old kid from Blackpool who inserted herself in the grime scene - which was (is) all about freestyle, with a focus on diss tracks. That's right - this song is a complete and total diss track, and if you look at the title of this post - I used the original title and not what it's popularly called on TikTok - it's directed at the queen of the Blackpool grime scene, Sophie Aspin.
You know, to get that information, I had to listen to a lot of grime. Some of it is awful. Some of these artists - including Millie B and, frankly, Sophie Aspin - are really really good. And, let's be clear - none of these children talking about "shitte head" are at all serious (Aspin and Millie B have collaborated on tracks after this was released).
