Episode 24 – “Harmony is a Bullet in my Hand”

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

Welcome to Episode 24 of Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you for checking out this episode. We’ve got a brain bending cover, we’ve got a bunch of new music, but first, before we get into any of that, we’ve got a little bit of something special.

If you follow the show on social media, you’ll have noticed that Jenna and I went to Detroit and saw Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, and I’ve invited Jenna to join me this week for the episode to talk about the show.

Hi Jenna.

Hi Dad.

How are you?

I’m good. How are you?

Good.

So for you, Taylor Swift has been a longtime fixture in your musical universe, and for me, got more into her with folklore and evermore during the pandemic, but I’ve always appreciated her as an artist, and we actually saw Taylor on the 1989 tour, what, nine years ago or so. So this was a second show for Taylor Swift, for Jenna and I. So Jenna, let me know what you thought of the show.

I mean, it was, it was pretty amazing, like it’s, I screamed the whole time, like it was, it was so much of a concert experience at that level, at that scale is about being with the other fans and like being able to scream, sing 44 songs for three hours was, was just, it was, it was amazing to be with people who love something as much as I do. And I cried four times.

Okay, let’s recap the four, four, four, four, the four emotional breakdowns.

The first one happened when we actually walked in the venue. Yeah. So I hadn’t even like hit the stage yet. Two hours before the opener even started, their tears as we get through security.

Yeah. Okay. Well, to be fair, it was just super overwhelming to again be in this place with so many people who are like all out and just like shamelessly loving every moment. And to be fair, we bought these tickets months ago. So we’ve been talking about this show for months about going to see Taylor Swift. Yeah. And as a Swifty, and as a Swifty by association, a lot of the time for like the album Easter Eggs and like I’ll tell you all sorts of what’s happening in the Swifty nation, like it was the culmination of so much that has happened for her personally, for the personal that, you know, we know musically and just like the person that we were the last time that she toured, we as a collective Swifty nation because clearly I am the spokesperson.

Yes. Let the record show that I am not a Swifty. I am Swifty adjacent. But I am by no means looking for Easter eggs on her social media.

Okay. To be fair, I don’t look for the Easter eggs. I wait for other people to find them and then I’m like, oh my gosh, guys, look what’s happening in Taylor World.

Okay. So that was the first emotional breakdown is actually walking into Ford Field. What was the second one?

The second one was when we walked into our seats.

We got to our seats, right?

And I dropped an F bomb, which the security guy laughed at me for, like, I just like, I’m staring at a pretty amazing view. We had great seats. We had fantastic seats. Fantastic seats. And yeah, like I, I was shaking and so I was crying for that. Like I was just like massively overwhelmed just in general, which I kind of didn’t expect to happen. Like I don’t really know. Did you expect me to cry?

Not at that point. No.

But then again, I’ve been surprised by your tears at concerts before. The first one being Johnny Swim when you met Amanda and Abner. I wasn’t expecting that one. All right.

So that was the second one. Those two.

The third one was like a brief, cutesy little like two-tier moment during the archer, which I had had a moment with earlier that day. We were driving to Detroit and like just one of the lines hit me in a different way than I had heard previously. So I wasn’t really surprised to hear that line again in concert and get a little teary.

The fourth one though.

The fourth one, that surprised you.

Surprised me.

Surprised you. But like I was still confused my tears were a cachet. That’s right. My Tears Ricochet which is off of the Folklore album. So I’ve had time with this music. I know this song. I’ve heard it dozens of times, never had an emotional reaction to it. Like we made, we had a, we didn’t make bets, but we were like, which songs are Jenna gonna cry during and that was not on the list. That was not even close. But I think part of it was the visual, which I know we’ll talk about in a little bit, but for this song, it was kind of a funeral procession moment happening. And without going into too much detail to bore your socks off, I had kind of a rough senior year, friendship wise, and it kind of felt like a funeral for that friendship and for that kind of stage in my life that didn’t totally give everything that I wanted from it. And yeah, it just, it hit me in a really weird way. And I also just overall think that emotions were heightened at that point. I mean, we were probably two hours into the concert. So that was part of it, but the other part I think was just the combination of the visuals with, I think me personally, just needing that kind of closure. But All right. So overall, it was a very emotional experience. It was a great show.

So let’s talk about kind of the stage and the production. So if you’ve not followed kind of the pitchers of the tour and, and honestly, I don’t think most of the audiences are, that’s listened to with this podcast fall in the Taylor Swift fan category. Yeah. I take no shame in it. I enjoy her music and thoroughly enjoyed the show, but it’s a huge stage. I mean, it basically went from one edge of Fordfield to the other, and then it came out probably 70 yards from the stage to kind of the secondary stage, I’ll call it, because that’s where she did kind of the random secret songs. Because it is a set, kind of set list, like it’s the same every night because the production values are really high.

There’s video, there’s pyro, there’s lights, there’s smoke. I mean, there’s a lot going on in this show. And as I was kind of watching the show as I do, because Jenna’s like, are you enjoying this?

Well, okay. Y’all have to understand because he’s standing there, like arms either at her side or arms crossed. And like anyone who knows, my dad knows that like a smile isn’t necessarily his most natural state of his face, he is joyful and he does, you know, smile. But like when he’s focused on something, when he’s enjoying something, particularly music, like he’s really focused. And I just couldn’t tell if he was liking it or not. Like I just, I don’t know, I was having a ball and I didn’t ask him till the end. Like I was just, you know, dancing and screaming.

I had a ball. It was a great show. And what I was kind of thinking about was, I was thinking about some of the bands that I kind of see regularly, which are more what people would consider to be in my genre, kind of the rock, metal genre. So like most recently, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Rush, Genesis, these bands that have these huge kind of stadium, you know, light, smoke, pyro thing. And you know, they’ve got video and everything is in sync. You know, so there’s a level of production. But I’m watching Taylor Swift do this and I’m just like, it translates, right? Like it’s all about the experience for the audience. And there was 60,000 people in Ford Field just going absolutely nuts. At one point with the music and the audience, the decibel level actually hit 120 decibels, which is insane. So I was very thankful that I had my earplugs. Jenna had her earplugs, although she didn’t take them out every once in a while.

Every once in a while. If I had like a song that I like absolutely loved, I just, I needed to hear again, the whole like Ford Field stadium of these people who love Taylor. I needed to hear that experience. And I understand that was bad for my hearing and I’m gonna read that article. Shameless plug for that because I’ve read part of it and I’m already fascinated. If you want to.

I was going to say, it’s not out yet, but a friend of mine, Steve Wexler, is writing an article about the decibel levels at live music and explaining how decibel systems work. It’s more like the Richter scale. It’s not a linear scale, but anyway, nerdiness over. But yeah, so it was, it was crazy. It was crazy. 44 songs, three hours and 20 minutes plus two openers, which play, they played for probably a combined hour and a half with the set changeover. But in fact, Owenn, the first opener, his drummer plays for Shad, who was on the last episode of the podcast doing a song called Sad But True turns. So the lead singer of Shad had sent me a message after the last episode and was telling me, like we ended up chatting all day, which was super cool. Like I, as a music fan and just like nerd in general, like the fact that we had this like prolonged conversation, he was telling me about his drummer, because his drummer actually plays for Extreme and then is doing this thing with Owenn as well. So it was like, oh, well, kind of fun fact. So I got to see him kind of do his thing and they sounded great. But I mean, you know, but everybody was there to see Taylor Swift. So you’re kind of in that mindset. But anyway, wow. But yeah, like I was just kind of thinking about the length of time that she performed. 44 songs is a lot. And to remember all the choreography, all the lyrics, it just and like placements and placements. That’s the amazing thing because like obviously there’s big screens and there’s cameras. And the fact that she’s got every move memorized down to what camera she’s looking at to make sure that the entire audience can kind of see what’s going on. Like, like you want to talk about getting your value for your dollar. Like, you know, those aren’t the most expensive tickets I’ve ever bought.

No, but we also got really cheap tickets for the concert. Yeah, but they were fantastic. They were great seats, but we were an anomaly, to be quite honest. Yeah.

But yeah, it was, yeah, I mean, overall, it’s probably in my top five shows. I don’t know where I’d really have to think about it. But it was really, really good. And I think it was better than the 1989 show. I don’t I know you don’t have the memories of it that I do. But it was it was very, very, very well done. But to that effect, and we’ve talked about this even before the concert, the the planned element like to a tee every word that comes out of her mouth is planned. And I had, you know, the last time I saw her in concert was almost a decade ago, which is weird that I’m old enough to say that, but that’s another issue. But it was it was like, she’s not a she’s not real to me, like half the time, like she is so blown out of proportion as a human and like with her fame, that we talked about like, I love JohnnySwim. And the intimacy that you get from a concert that small has a different level of love and experience for that concert and for that band compared to Taylor Swift, like it’s they are both some of the best concerts I’ve ever seen, best nights of my life, but they are like for that for different reasons.

Right. And but Taylor Swift has to fill that room with her persona, where if you put Abner and Amanda in that arena on that stage, they would get swallowed up. Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s a. But I will say my favorite moment of the concert. So everything is very much scripted and produced. And the two songs that she does as the secret songs, the surprise songs, it’s stripped down and it’s just her and the acoustic guitar or her and the piano. And those two songs, when it’s just her, there’s no screens on. Well, the screen is on the screens on only to like magnify her right so that we can see that. Yeah, there’s no like scripted thing that’s happening because there was a lot of really cool effects that are kind of happening between the stage and the screens. But yeah, in this moment, there was nothing and she had all 60,000 people in the palm of her hand. And I could have stood there for three and a half hours just having her do that because she is that much of a musician and artist, just super talented and the fact that she is able to do that in a 60,000 person show and not lose a soul is just so impressive. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s also a testament to her growth as a performer. Like when I think about like the 50 haters who kind of have this, they’ll bring up old videos of her performing. And it’s clear that, you know, she was a child like she was Jill’s age. She was my age when she released her second was writing her third album like that’s unreal.

So she has to grow as a performer. Her voice has to develop. But like she put in that work and like not just for, you know, this show because we talked about the musical, emotional, physical endurance that it takes to do a show this long. But like her investment into music is what makes us as a collective Swifty nation love her so much, I think is because even though she’s a fantastic songwriter, you can be a fantastic songwriter and then just leave it at that. And we mean, you see that all the time now with new artists these days where you can write a good song, but if you can’t perform it, you can’t bring what’s needed. It’s not going to hit. It’s not going to mean something to people longer than, you know, the six week cycle.

Yeah. And to your point about growth, she did a strip down a couple of songs in the 1989 tour. I think you have a vague recollection of that. Yeah, she was on that raise. Yeah, she was on kind of this raise cherry picker kind of thing and kind of floating around the audience, which was fun. But even like comparing that stripped down performance to the one from the era’s tour, it’s night and day. Like she has grown and matured so much as a performer and it’s just, it’s just phenomenal to see, honestly. And I’m just kind of curious where she’s going to go next. Yeah. All right. To wrap things up, in one kind of moment, what was your favorite moment of the show? That’s hard. I know. Asking me to pick my favorite book as a rude. I think Speak Now is my favorite album and I can say that was my whole heart and devastated is kind of a strong word. But I was pretty sad that there was only one song on the set list, but Hearing Enchanted Live and, again, screaming that with 60,000 other people was probably, it was fantastic. Plus, I didn’t do this during the song, but the Be Real went off and I feel like I thought that was just meant to be. I was like, this is the moment. I am being so for real right now.

And for me, I think, so my favorite song off of Folklore is Betty, and while it wasn’t a super overproduced part of the show, yeah, I’m working on it, that was, I think, seeing that live was kind of my favorite moment and kind of hearing how she thought about writing that song and how Folklore in general kind of came off, but yeah, it was a fantastic experience. I would do it again. 10 out of 10.

10 out of 10. Awesome. All right. Thanks, Jenna.

Thanks again to Jenna for joining me to talk about the Taylor Swift show. It really was fantastic. All right, let’s get into the rest of the episode, shall we? Let’s start by talking brain bending cover. And since we’re talking about Taylor Swift, I figured let’s go ahead and see what I could find as far as artists who had covered her. And I checked out a few things and I actually found a cover of The Archer, which was one of the songs that Jenna mentioned, where she kind of got emotional, so I figured this might be a good one to throw in to let people know exactly what she’s talking about. This version is by Maddie Wilson. Maddie Wilson comes out of Nashville and she’s been doing music for a while now. Really nice voice and really not a whole lot to say about this cover. I don’t know that it was actually brain bending. It’s fairly true to the original and it was just a really nice cover of The Archer, so I hope you enjoyed it.

All right, let’s get into new music this week. There’s some really cool stuff I want to share with you. If this is your first time listening, welcome. Short and sweet. I listen to a bunch of music. Most of it’s crap. If it’s not, it ends up on the podcast. The first song I’ve got this week is by Dirty Blonde and it’s called Run When I Tell You. Dirty Blonde is a duo from Northwest England and appear to be very new to the music scene from what I can tell. This is the second song they’ve released to Spotify. Both of them were released this year in 2023. So a few things to note here for me. I love the guitar riff. It reminds me a bit of Muse. Like it’s got that kind of feel to it. I think in some ways at least. I love the vocals. It actually reminds me of another band that I got into a few years back called Dorothy. And with them being new, I guess we’re going to have to wait and see. Where Dirty Blonde ends up. But so far I’m really digging the sound.

The second song this week comes from The Sheratons and it’s called Mystic Pizza. When I read the title of the song, I was immediately reminded to a movie that has the same name. The songs are completely unrelated. Anyway, The Sheratons are from Leeds in the UK, which happens to be a town I’ve actually spent some time in when I was younger. But they have a handful of releases that are dating back to around 2018. And I actually went back and checked some of those early releases out and it’s got a lot of the same energy. So if you dig this track, you’ll probably dig this band as a whole. Musically it reminds me a little bit of Arctic Monkeys, which they’re from the same area if I recall. But musically they remind me of the Arctic Monkeys. Musically I think it’s definitely unique here. So really, really kind of dig that. So check out The Sheratons if you like that one.

Third song this week comes from Skies Behind and it’s called Call It What You Want. Skies Behind are from Ireland and another band fairly new on the scene from what I can tell. Things that stand out to me here, really super clean vocal quality. The production of this track is top notch. And so I don’t know if they’re just going all in or they’ve got some backing or what’s happening here, but really, really good stuff. In this track, I really love the little musical hook that happens inside the chorus. I thought that was kind of a really cool composition quality that they had put in this song. And when I’m listening to this, I’m not really hearing any of the influences they actually list on their website, and I can’t put my finger on exactly who I would compare them to as an artist, which I find that to be a really good thing a lot of the times because sometimes bands tend to really sound like people they list as their influences. And I’m just drawing a blank as far as who I could actually compare them to. But I’m sure there are people listening who will absolutely tell me that I missed it. So I look forward to hearing that.

All right, a little bit of housekeeping. Talk to your friends about the podcast. Make sure you’re telling them to check it out. If you enjoy the show, hopefully they will too. You can always like, follow, share, review the podcast on your platform of choice. There are two versions that come out on Monday is the full version that has the music embedded and that’s exclusively on Spotify. On Wednesdays you get the Cliff Notes version, which lands everywhere. Website is songsthatdontsuck.net. You can send me music recommendations, brain bending covers that if you want me to check something out, that is always welcome. You can find show transcripts and links to all things, including social media. I exist primarily on Twitter, but there is a Facebook page as well as an Instagram page. And every now and then I post something to TikTok, but it’s just a platform I don’t get. And if you want to support the show, there’s merch. So there you go. That’s available through the website.

All right, fourth song this week comes from Cold War Kids and it’s called Double Life. Cold War Kids come to us from LA and they’re honestly a band that I’ve been familiar with for a while. You may know a couple of their songs. They had a big hit with a song called First, as well as Hang Me Up to Dry. And honestly, the new song continues kind of that strong pedigree of really catchy hooks, really good songwriting, you know, from a lyric and music standpoint. And it’s funny because like I kept running down through their catalog, I’m like, oh, I think I remember this song and sure enough, I’m like, oh yeah. And I had forgotten that it was Cold War Kids who were performing it. So I don’t know if that’s a Spotify problem, like when I’m listening to stuff, if their songs are on a playlist and I just don’t see it, or in the odd moments where I’m listening to like Sirius satellite radio or like terrestrial radio, if they’re playing the song and they just don’t announce the artist. Like I think it’s like a blind spot that I just don’t hear it. But I mean, the vocals here are so distinctive and, you know, musically it’s just good. So you’d think it would be recognizable, but for some reason it’s like a, it’s like a weird blind spot for me.

Anyway, the fifth and final song this week comes from Super Bloom and it’s called Pig. As I was listening to this song, there are moments where I imagine that if Nirvana was still creating music and Kurt Cobain was still with us, they would sound something similar to this, not vocally, but there’s definitely a strong Nirvana influence in some of the guitar work, especially in the chorus. Like it feels definitely influenced by Kurt’s guitar tone, if nothing else. Super Bloom are from New York City. Their first release was back in 2020. And it’s funny, anytime I see kind of first release being in 2020, I wonder just how the pandemic affected their momentum. If they had a bunch of momentum and all of a sudden the world shuts down, it’s like, how many bands who would have been huge got crushed by that global pandemic? And yeah, it’s just interesting. There’s been a lot of artists in the first six months of the show here that I’ve noticed that 2020 release and it’s just like now the momentum is starting to pick up. But anyway, I really dig this track by Super Bloom and it’s not the first thing I’ve heard from them, but it’s by far the thing that I have liked the most. So really, really nice vocal. Obviously, I relate to the guitar tone and just kind of the guitar sound overall. So I hope you dig that one. That is it for this week. Thank you for checking out this episode and…

Thanks for listening. Until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.