Fake Stacys – Halloween
Genre: Pop Punk, Alternative Rock
There’s a swift change occurring in the pecking order of the holidays and celebrations in the Western world’s occult-Christian calendar. With little in the way of the spiritual to tie most people to any of these beliefs, and with the advertising world failing to deliver viral new content to support their Christmas and Valentine’s Day campaigns, people look for their jolly elsewhere.
Halloween is fun, not in spite, but because of the gruesome undertones. The holiday has now been embraced globally, not as a guilty pleasure, best discarded, but as an activity with which most people engage. Halloween is a lot like power-pop. Serious-minded folks try their best to avoid embracing it. But, the guitar hooks and pleasant vocal melodies wear them down eventually.
Fake Stacys’ Halloween song, picks up on that. This is not a tune meant to terrify, nor a quirky novelty song. This is a guitar-driven pop song with a mission. Its aim is to deliver cute, sweet, melancholy melodies to those for whom Halloween doesn’t seem to arrive quickly enough. It sounds juvenile and proud of it. Looking back, it might well turn out at the holiday celebrating ghosts and ghouls offered the very best kind of togetherness. One can’t but feel a sincere measure of gratitude about that.
Beauty Pill – You Need A Better Mind
Genre: Indie Rock
In the movies that still praised heroism above everything else, the hero usually gets a bullet through the chest the minute that they manage to complete their mission. Has rock music achieved its goals? If its mission was to spread throughout the world and make buckets full of gold for the people making, or peddling it, then, yes, it has done everything that it was looking to do.
While most pop-rock music continues to be obsessed with reminding people of the good old days and asking for their money in return, there are some that remember why the likes of Elvis Presley, or The Sex Pistols really managed to gain international attention. They were responsible for a few good tunes, sure. But, really they made most folks feel uncomfortable. That makes for good press, which in turn helps build a community.
Beauty Pill’s You Need A Better Mind is inspired by the short film Rachel in which a young woman joins a party, proceeds to actively annoy everyone, and refuses to leave. It’s a lot like rock music’s own story. The synth-heavy tune develops like a post-punk love letter to existentialism. In the end, the songwriter makes a bold claim. We’re all Rachels, forced to put ourselves through awkward scenarios in the hopes of building some kind of meaningful relationships with those around us. In the words of the poet Iggy Pop In searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self-respect took second place.
Much like that, pop music and ourselves ought to get used to being uncomfortable if we’re to thrive.
