Episode 62

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

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, my name is Mark, I’m your host and every week I wade through the sewage that is new music playlists on Spotify to find a few newly released songs that I think are worthy of your ears. This week I’ve got a handful of songs to share, but before I get into that, I gotta get into something else.

So I had a viral moment on TikTok this week and it’s rather hilarious. So for anyone who has found the podcast from that TikTok moment, welcome, appreciate you checking out the podcast. If this is your first time listening or your 61st time listening, regardless of how you found the podcast, I really appreciate your time. So this post that I had on TikTok, it was basically me geeking out over being able to sink dark side of the moon with the eclipse that is happening. The reason this is going to be really cool, at least for the geeky music guy like me, is the last lyric on the album says, and everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon, which is what’s happening on April 8th. So I figured out the math to basically get the starting time of the album based on when the totality of the eclipse happens in different areas. So based on the city that you’re in, everybody is going to have a different start time. So if you want to do this, if you want to play along, and I encourage you to do that because the truth of it is, North America is not going to see another total eclipse until 2099. I am pretty much going to be shuffled off my mortal coil at that point. So this is my prime opportunity to do it, and chances are it’s yours too. So if you want to play along, here’s how you do it. You’re going to go to Google and you’re going to search for eclipse climax and then your city and state. You will find the time that it reaches totality or whatever your maximum coverage is. You can play along wherever you are. You don’t have to be in the line of totality. Then basically you’re going to take that time and subtract 42 minutes and 14 seconds, which is the point when that last lyric happens. And that is the exact moment that you need to start either streaming dark side of the moon or you press play on your CD player. So go have some fun on April 8th with the eclipse. It’s going to be a blast whether you sink dark side of the moon or not. You’re welcome.

So speaking of other odd things, Spotify, I feel like it’s a really interesting place to work at times, especially if you’re in the customer experience department. Because sometimes as you just kind of search through Spotify, you find some unhinged shit and you know that it started as somebody’s wild idea in a meeting one day. If you are a Spotify user, next time you’re bored, type mix in the search bar and then filter it to playlists. This is kind of the thing that I do each week is I’ll search for different playlists to find music. I typed in mix and here’s where I landed, right? The first playlist that came up for me was Pirate Metal Shanty Mix. That one was followed up with Strange Mix, oddly enough. Then it gave me Spooky Evil Gay Mix. And then I just morbid curiosity clicked on that one to see what the playlist actually looked like. The first song was called I Fucked Yr Mom. And then there was some more, you know, probably some more mainstream songs, but anyway, there was some other ones that are kind of quote unquote more normal, fast mix, driving mix. There was an anti-anxiety mix, which I thought was pretty cool. And then it veered off the rails again, bubblegrunge, breakfast mix, lit shower mix and murder ballad. More? Oh God, yes. There was so much more goblincore, angry whistling mix, farm emo, princesscore and angry happy. Now I only recently discovered these, so I haven’t had a chance to listen to them to see if they fit their clever moniker or songs that I ve listened to that fall into these weird categories. I don’t know. But I ve got about 10 hours of windshield time coming up this week. So next week’s episode I m going to have a full report, I think, on a couple of these because it s just too weird to not really kind of dive into. So come back for that. And if you have some of these mixes, which I m guessing it s pretty standard, but check them out and let me know what you think, I m curious if it s the names in common or the tracks in common, if it s songs from listening history, who knows, but we ll figure it out next week.

And then I guess lastly, yeah. So AI music for everyone is apparently here. There s a company called Suno that allows anyone to put a chat GPT styled prompt into their system and it will spit out music with vocals and lyrics. It s crazy. This is not the automation that I wanted AI to be doing. We re supposed to be automating shitty jobs and monotonous bullshit, not art. And in the article, I found that one of the creators was being interviewed and he was quoted as saying, we re trying to get a billion people much more engaged with music than they are now. We re not trying to replace artists and then they continued saying, if people are much more into music, much more focused on creating, developing much more distinct tastes, this is obviously good for artists, the vision that we have of the future of music is one where it s artists friendly. We re not trying to replace artists, they said again. Now in the absence of strict rules against AI creation, there s also the prospect of a world where users of models like Suno s, they start flooding streaming services with these kind of robo creations. I saw an article recently, somebody in Scandinavia was kind of unearthed as a fake Spotify artist, had like 50 different aliases and had been streamed 15 billion times. So what happens next, right? The TV theme music, ad jingles, background music in movies, there s an entire sector of business that I think could completely be decimated and crushed and any type of music like that that is low hanging fruit is in danger. Let s get into the new music while there s still some worth listening to, created mostly by humans. It was honestly pretty slim pickings this week, three songs and I decided to pull one from my personal vault that we ll end up with, so let s get into it.

The first song this week comes from Saint. Luca and it s called Revolver. These guys are mixing a few different things together genre wise and it works. These guys are from San Diego so there s a bit of a surf influence, there s a lot of indie rock and there s a little bit of punk that you can feel. As I m listening to this, I really dig the fuzzy guitar tone on this track and the guitarist is doing some really intricate like flourishes happening throughout these little runs and little harmonics that are tossed in here and there which make it really interesting to listen to. I highly recommend headphones to pick on some of that. Another thing you re going to notice in this song which a lot of times new music tends to miss is dynamics. Things get soft, things get loud, they come up, they come down, it s fantastic. It gives the song a really nice shape as you re listening to it. Overall, really punchy track and definitely a band to watch. They formed during covid so we ll see how things develop as time goes on.

The second track this week is from Augustana and it s called Carry the World. If the name Augustana sounds familiar to you, you might remember their hit Boston which came off their 2004 album All the Stars and Boulevards. The one thing that I ve always loved about Augustana is Dan Leis’ vocals and in my research I come to find that he s actually the only original member left in the band so basically it s Dan Leis recording under the moniker Augustana which is kind of sad but as I m listening to it explains that there s a little bit of stylistic change musically comparing to that early album. Carry the World walks this really fun line between wanting to be a ballad and injecting an indie rock edge to it and when I think about bands that did that really successfully like Journey was the first one that popped into my mind. You could take any one of their songs and twist it a little bit and it could be a ballad or it could be a rocker. All in all, it s really good to hear Dan again and really like his voice and we ll see what happens with Augustana.

The third track this week is from Chris Helms and it s a song called Sailing Home. The beginning of this track, I thought it was Dust in the Wind but very briefly, just very very briefly, this song is probably my favorite of the week. Chris has a phenomenal voice and I m a very very huge fan of indie folk singer songwriters and that s really where Chris lands. In this track in particular, there s some really sparse instrumentation that s happening. It sets a very lovely and dark tone as you re listening to it. Nice acoustic guitar, there s some strings in the mix. I m guessing it s an upright bass like a fretless. You can almost hear the notes moving and some light percussion stuff going on. Both a little bit of what I m going to guess is drum kit and some hand percussion stuff going on. It s really cool. Just a really beautiful song to close out this week s finds.

And since it s a light week, I went into the vault to figure out what I wanted to share just to kind of fill out the episode and I m in the process of prepping to be on another music podcast soon as a guest, the Chuggy radio show. He reached out to me and asked me if I want to come on and talk music. I was like, absolutely, it ll be cool. If you haven t checked out his show, go check it out. It is exclusively on Spotify just for your listening pleasure there and I m coming up with songs that I want to talk about. And I wanted to share something on the podcast from Sarah Harmer. So it was like this song and another song that I was kind of debating between the two and this is the one that I chose not to share on his show. So I m going to share it here. And it s a song called Basement Apartment. If you re unfamiliar with Sarah Harmer, she is an effortless singer-songwriter. She’s still putting out great music today. If you want someone with an enormous catalog, Sarah s your gal. This song comes from her 2000 album, it was called You Were Here. And the whole album, top to bottom, is amazing. I listened the wheels off that album, it s fantastic. This song is just so lyrically masterful. She paints such a vivid picture of living in what one can assume is an early apartment that someone would live in as a young 20-something. She captures the sights, the sounds, the smells of those types of apartments. And I think most people experience it at some point, kind of on your path to becoming a full-blown adult. But definitely check out Sarah Harmer s Basement Apartment.

Alright, that is it for this week. As always, spread the word to your fellow music fans. Follow the show on social media, because apparently I m doing really cool things. I m on all of them. Check out the website at songsthatdon t suck dot net. Check the show notes for links to all the songs on all the platforms so you can listen where you want and support these artists, because supporting these artists is important. Have a great week and we ll catch you next time. Thanks for listening and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don t suck. If you re still here, I ve got a surprise for you. Here s the AI song I made on that app that I was talking about. I asked it to create a theme song for the podcast.