Ok. I know this is going to sound really, REALLY weird, but I still listen to albums. Actual, full-length, albums. And in one sitting.
And even weirder? I still buy them. Not just singles. But whole albums.
I know. I KNOW! I think it is in part because I am a child of the 80s. You know, back when albums actually meant something and they weren't just really two or three strong singles with 7-10 filler songs thrown in for good measure.
Not that I'm bitter or anything.
For this reason, I strongly resisted streaming services for music. (That, and the whole Napster thing back in the late 90s. When it was a file sharing service? The thing that only gets two lines in its Wikipedia entry, which is just weird, because it was this big huge scandal... I'm digressing. Amazing that my parenthetical aside ends up longer than the point I was making in the first place.)
I mean, yes, I was an early Pandora adopter. And an early Pandora abandoner (sorry, Pandora). I just didn't get that with these streaming services you could actually listen to whole entire albums, and it wasn't illegal, and you could do it as much as you wanted, and you could actually download the songs to your phone to play while you were underground on the subway, and that it wasn't just a stream of random shitty songs that you didn't want to listen to in the first place and you didn't have to sit through hours of ads, and you had unlimited skips, etc.
Consequently, it wasn't until this year that I finally signed up for a streaming service (Google Play, to be exact. Mostly because I am an all Android girl, (woman. adult female human. person. whatever) and because it was convenient), and started using the heck out of it.
I've been using my streaming thingy as a way to further my education in country music. Because I don't know jackall about it, and while I have enjoyed it from time to time over the years, never really got around to listening to anything because I didn't know what CD to buy. And everything they were playing on country radio at the time was kind of crap. (to be fair, everything that is ever played on the radio is kind of crap. I HATE not having control over what I'm listening to. I may like a song, but if I'm not in the mood to listen to it, then I hate it at that moment, and it ruins it, and oh my god, I'm a whiny little bitch sometimes. jesus)
Which is how I discovered that Eric Church's album The Outsiders is one of my favorite albums. Like, ever. It's a thing of beauty. Even if you don't like country, you'll probably dig this one.
And, apparently I am a huge Jason Aldean fan. Which is honestly not something that I ever in a billion years thought I'd say about myself, but there you go. According to that unassailable, and completely reliable source, the internet, Church and Aldean are in a sub-genre called "Bro Country."
Why I'm connecting with "Bro Country" is a bit of a mystery, as sitting around in pickup trucks drinking beer with hot, tanned girls in cutoffs, under the moonlight by the railroad tracks after spending a day bailing hay is pretty much the opposite of any of my current life experiences. I think we need to have a country song about drinking locally produced artisanal whiskey after spending a long day in your cubicle, and being crushed against strangers' bodies on the subway... ok, so that isn't as romantic. Maybe if you add combing your beard while looking wistfully into a mirror while listening to your neighbors thump around in their apartment above you... probably not. Plus, I'm still female. And mostly straight. So hanging out with hot country girls in cutoffs is probably not going to happen anytime soon.
Today, reviews of Nicki Minaj's The Pinkprint, D'Angelo's Black Messiah, and Charli XCX's Sucker came out in the New York Times. I read the reviews, and then I listened to the albums. Without spending $45 to buy all of them. Which rocks, because I really didn't like two of the three. (that would be Nicki and Charli's albums. D'Angelo is beyond reproach. Pretty much for all time)
And because I'm awesome at getting lost in clickholes, I stumbled across RL Grime's stuff, and will be going to see him in concert. (ok, not to be an asshole, because I really do enjoy techno, or dubstep (which I honestly can't figure out why it's a sub-genre), or EDM or whateverthefuck it is that kids call it these days, but does it count as a concert if they aren't actually playing any instruments? I guess there are some performative aspects to this type of event... fuck if I know. Anyway, I heard his stuff, I liked it, I bought tickets, I coerced my friend into going with me, and I will actually get to see some live(esque) music this year, which is exciting.
I bet THAT's the first time RL Grime and Bro Country have ever been referenced in the same damn piece. Heh.
