Episode 6 – “Woke Up to a Different Ceiling”

Welcome to Songs that Don’t Suck, with your host, Mark Bradbourne.

Thank you very much, Zach. And welcome to Episode 6 of Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you to everybody who sent in feedback on last week’s format changes. Apparently, people liked it better, thought it liked the flow better. So we’re going to stick with it for a while. As always, if you have feedback about the show, you can send that through the website at songsthatdontsuck.net or via any social media platform that the show exists on.

Now, if this is your first episode, this is how it works. Each week, I listen to three to five hundred songs and these are all coming from new music playlists on Spotify. I listen to about thirty seconds of each song, the crap gets tossed, the good ones end up on a review playlist, the great ones end up right here for you to discover each week.

Now, this week is very diverse musically. We’re going to build to a high-energy finale with the featured song, so strap in and let’s go.

Hold your ears, folks, it’s showtime!

The first song this week is from Lizzy McAlpine and it is called Hold On.

That was Lizzy McAlpine with hold on. Now that song comes from a new apple tv plus show called Dear Edward that I am curious to check out. Pretty song overall, just really nice to listen to, really airy vocal and it’s such a common trend right now in music, but there’s something about doing it well that escapes the masses quite honestly. Lizzy nails it. Well, I should probably say her producer nails it because what she’s done or what the producer has had her do is create a very nice vocal layer and one of the things that I learned through the years being in recording studios is that nobody will harmonize better with you than you. On a side note, I personally love soundtrack finds. You would be surprised the number of great songs and artists that go undetected on soundtracks, so I’m really glad to have found this song.

So this week, I got to go to a show. I’m a big broadway fan. I love musical theater and over the weekend we went and saw Hadestown and it was amazing if you haven’t seen it. I had not heard any of the music from it. I did not know what the show was about. I just kind of went and every time I see a broadway show, I’m reminded that despite the new music that is flooding out into the ether that is just garbage. There is a wealth of talent in the way of singers and musicians who tour with these fantastic shows and it’s the one place that autotune hasn’t destroyed the integrity of the performance. So if you are a broadway fan, like I said, if you haven’t seen Hadestown, I highly recommend it. Some of the other great shows that I’ve seen recently include Beetlejuice, which was fantastic if you love the movie Beetlejuice, I thought the show was great, and of course Hamilton. You got tickets later in the season to see Six, to see Come from Away, and I think I’m going to go see Dear Evan Hansen again.

The second song this week in our build to the finale is from Tobe Nwigwe, and it is a cover of Lauren Hill’s that thing. Check it out.

I first learned of Tobe Nwigwe through johnny swim. He’s collaborated with them on a couple of different things. Desmond’s song is the one that pops to mind first, but toby has such a smooth delivery. If you are into hip-hop, rap, whatever moniker you throw it under, I suggest you go out and check his other music. Really smart rhymes. He is on a mission, as he says, to make purpose popular. He will be at Coachella this year if that’s on your calendar of musical events, so do not miss him. This is such a great song. I don’t really need to dissect it. Lauren Hill is the goddess of R&B and Soul and whatever. She’s just amazing. Miss her, actually, on the scene. What I really love is Tobe’s fresh take on it. It’s just jazzy. It’s sparse. So tasty. Tobe Nwigwe’s cover of That Thing. Fantastic stuff.

I’m now for something completely different, a man with three buttocks.

So a little bit of housekeeping. If you’re a regular of the show, you’ll know all of this. But I want you to make sure you like, you follow, and share the podcast. Mondays, the full version comes out that has all the music embedded. On Wednesdays, the cliff notes version comes out, and that comes out on all the other platforms. So the exclusive one comes out on Spotify, and the cliff notes comes out everywhere else. I appreciate you listening to both. But obviously, if I have a preference, I want you to go listen to the full show.

We are in the middle of collection of our top 5, which we’ll be sharing in late February, early March. And we are looking for the top 5 drinking songs. And we’ve had a bunch of great ones submitted so far. Thank you if you’ve been on the ball and submitted those. To submit those, you’re going to go to songsthatdontsuck.net. There’s a form there. Thanks in advance for sending those in.

For social media, I’m everywhere. I highly recommend you follow me on Twitter. That’s probably where I’m most active. But I do post on Instagram, on Facebook, and on TikTok occasionally.

Okay. Third song this week that I wanted to share is from Fritz Hager. And it is called Caroline.

Not that I’m encouraging this type of behavior, but if you have ever had a drunken evening of fun, these lyrics might give you a bit of a flashback. The song is, I don’t know, it’s quite endearing the way that it’s delivered. Like it starts out and you’re kind of like, oh, what kind of regretful situation is this? But as you follow the story through the verses, it’s like, ah, you know, that’s kind of cool. The song reminds me a bit of Weezer from like the vocal delivery and kind of the clever lyrics of it. Chorus, great hook. It’s honestly kind of what really hooked me to the song. I just enjoyed this find overall. And I hope you do too. I will say nothing really like grabbed me by the throat this week except for the featured song. So stay tuned for that.

Now last week, I took my professional skills to Bowling Green State University here in the great state of Ohio. And I got to talk to some classes there about analytics, which is what I do professionally. But that’s not the interesting part. It was a lot of fun. But afterwards, I had a couple of different conversations with people. And I was honestly a little bit surprised when we were talking about music that people in younger generations have the same problems that I seem to have finding decent new music. And it’s honestly kind of refreshing to hear they aren’t settling for the crap that is being pushed to them. Honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some new listeners this week from BGSU. So if you’re listening from BGSU, thank you so much for having me. And thanks for listening.

Okay, continuing with new music. The fourth song comes from The Sherlock’s, and this is one called Sirens.

I’m not sure what my ears are picking up on, but I seem to be gravitating towards bands from the UK. It’s either that or the really good rock music right now is the majority coming from the UK. I should probably track that and just kind of see. But anyway, this is just a great straight-ahead rock song. The one thing that I really enjoyed about it is there’s this fantastic active bass line that runs through the song in the verses, super active. And then when the chorus hits, it’s just like quarter note or eighth note, depending on the way that it’s notated, just kind of driving through the song along with the drums. Love this big chorus. Like I can totally see a crowd singing along at a live show. Apparently a band that I want to check out a little bit more a little bit deeper and potentially see them live. They apparently are doing a lot of touring in the UK and Europe. So we got to get them over here.

I’ve got a little milestone coming up. So we’re six episodes in this is the sixth episode. And I want to thank everybody for the early support. So I’m going to be doing a giveaway. And the trick is that you’re going to need to follow me on Twitter. The Twitter id name, whatever is STDSPodcast. And once I hit the milestone, I will tweet out the message with the instructions on how to participate. Everybody who is listening is obviously eligible to win and it’s going to be super easy.

All right, feature track time. Super excited about this one. This is Black Orchid Empire and the song is called Deny the Sun.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but I’m a huge fan of progressive rock or progressive metal depending on where you throw it. So think about bands like Rush from kind of early days, Dream Theater, Fates Warning. There’s a lot of what I would kind of classify as kind of progressive. And when I heard this during the music scan this week, I was like, wait, what is that? Because that’s just not something you generally will hear in a, call it a mainstream playlist. And it was like one of the first times that I have, instead of just kind of putting it on the playlist to review later, I ended up listening to it like two or three times before I kind of continued with the review vocally, super clean vocals. Sometimes when bands get heavy and progressive, like they feel like they got to go into that cookie monster vocal, not this guy. I hear Incubus, like if you’re a fan of that 90s-era band, that’s where the vocal immediately tossed me to. But musically, I felt like they were fairly in line with dream theater. Some of their not as heavy stuff, but still thought-provoking from a musical standpoint. If you are a prog rock band fan like me, check out some of their other stuff as well. The new album will be coming out later this year, and I’ve put this band on my watch list. Hopefully, they’ll come to the states and I can see them live because yet it is another UK band.

That is it for this week, overall, not a bad week musically. I’ve got a few extra songs that didn’t make the cut for the podcast, but I’m still going to share them on Twitter. Again, I appreciate you listening. Like subscribe, follow the podcast, review it if you can. Follow on Twitter, especially for that giveaway coming up. And until next week, Zach, do your thing.

Thanks for listening. Until next week, keep searching for and listening to Songs That Don’t Suck.