Hello You
Last week, we were playing with SongDNA, and it has been like that for much of the week.
Then Apple Music dropped Playlist Playground, new designs for albums and playlists, an Ambient Music Widget, and we got Spotify DJ.
Can’t be mad with all of that new fun stuff.
However, with new toys comes great responsibility.
Rabbit holes? We ended up in a few.
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SongsBrew Editorial
Starting with Subvert
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We mentioned Subvert a while ago; it is a collectively owned music platform. It’s cool, and for most of the last year has been pretty empty while they are working on making it the place to be. But here is where the rabbit hole started. Specifically with one song, and with SongDNA in mind for later, at the start of using Subvert, there were a few artists that were really interesting.
Giant Claw is one of them, a song called Pulled Me In Dark.
As we go, all songs will be linked to either Spotify or wherever that artist is.
Pulled Me In Dark has such a specific feel in the opening; it’s glitchy, it’s delicate with an industrial feel. Upon first listen, we assumed that in the first few seconds, the connection to the headphones had been dropped. But nope. Can’t place the sample yet, sounded familiar, though.
Giant Claw is part of and a co-owner of Orange Milk Records. From here, we ended up at Piper Spray and a 2011 album called Omnicron Girls.
A track called Vertical Line. You can get the album on Bandcamp for $5, which is cool.
From there, we head to the Orange Milk Records website, where every album cover is like a fever dream.
The cover of Pascale Project / Be Urself stood out:
It has a distinct feel of the 80s to it, and more specifically (for us) the Dire Straits Alchemy album cover. No, you are right, it isn’t the same, and yet…
source: our own record collection.
The artwork is taken from an Australian artist, Brett Whiteley. It’s a huge piece of art, consisting of 18 panels, spanning over 13 metres. Huge. Aside from his stunning artwork, he was friends with both Joplin and Dylan during his time at Hotel Chelsea.
We know Bob is alive and well, but Janis Joplin isn’t. It got us wondering what her last recorded song was.
Cool, but the album before her Legacy Album? Cheap Thrills. And you know what comes next? Name by association.
Sia ft. Sean Paul Cheap Thrills. Now we are back in territory where SongDNA can help. In total, there are ten contributors, but there is one that stands out to us. Manny Marroquin, with a phenomenal 7,552 collaborators. A mixer with 4,254 songs to their name, probably more - who knows what was lost before the metadata we use now.
Post Malone, Kanye West, Rihanna, Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber, Kendrick Lamar… the list goes on. It includes Diplo, and we learned last week he’s been everywhere.
Following interest now, Manny and Fred again… have three tracks together, one of which has 421.6 million plays and features Chance The Rapper and Ed Sheeran from Ed’s No.6 Collaborations Project. Unfortunately, a very catchy album, so we have no choice but to play it all.
We’re getting ready to close the loop.
Ed Sheeran is pretty inoffensive to listen to, so it is easy enough to just let it play for a while and tune back in after the autoplay has taken over. Stormzy was in rotation, which is expected; he and Ed have a couple of tracks together.
Next up, tuning back in for Body - Loud Luxury, Brando. Which also makes sense, because it is having a resurgence on TikTok. Not expected, but the algorithm picked it, so we continue.
Clicking Loud Luxury, a playlist called EDM Samplings comes up, second track Call on Me - Eric Prydz. A song that had 2004 in a chokehold, and if not everyone, then just us.
Do you know what else happened in 2004? Tenuous, maybe, but we follow where the thread leads us.
Fleetwood Mac remastered the Fleetwood Mac album in 2004.
We know that Fleetwood Mac has indirectly and directly influenced so many artists. But are there any surprising ones? A couple. During a 2017 writing session, Ali Tamposi is quoted as telling Andrew Watt to “Fleetwood Mac it”, meaning to create a folk-pop track foundation in the style of Lindsey Buckingham (the FWM guitarist and vocalist).
They were working on the 2017 Kygo and Selena Gomez hit It Ain’t Me. And do you know whose voice was sampled for Pulled Me In Dark by Giant Claw?
Selena Gomez.
Fun fact: Paul McCartney announced an Andrew Watt-produced album this week. So we could probably go much further down the rabbit hole / six degrees of separation.
So what was the point of all of this? Very little above chasing threads, samples, SongDNA, and seeing where we went. Turns out, in a decent loop. If we had been Selena fans, we probably would have spotted that sample straight away.
Alas, many songs later, we are back where we started.
Tap for the playlist.
Until next time,
