Rants
On Pointless Effort
By Ethan Zack, Music Editor
Trying to make a good playlist has to be one of the most excruciating things you can subject yourself to. You’re up at 3 a.m. again, thinking you finally have it. You’ve found the perfect vibe to base a playlist on. “It’ll work out this time,” you tell yourself. For a short while, it does. Those first few added songs are banging, all complementing each other and linking together flawlessly. You feel like a goddamn composer. The high of creating such an impeccably beautiful compilation of music is unreal. But inevitably comes the downfall. The more songs you add, the shakier the focus becomes. Lots of songs sound too different to work together as a uniform body, but if you only include songs that sound similar, the playlist gets too generic. You’ve got to keep adding songs though. You can’t stop. No one wants a playlist that ends too early, leaving you to try and set the mood on the fly with a haphazard queue of songs. The pressure builds. You’ve lost the spark. With a resigned sigh, you private the lost cause so no one will ever see your failure. It’s pointless though. You’ll delete it within the next few days and try again, in pursuit of that unattainable masterpiece. You can try all you want, but trying to make the perfect playlist is masochistic.
On Aubrey Graham
By Lauren Gruber, Deputy Culture Editor
In my humble (read: correct) opinion, Drake, beloved by frat boys across the country for his co-invention of Sicko Mode, has not put out a decent album since 2011’s “Take Care.” Every single song off “Take Care” is a masterpiece: crying to “Marvin’s Room” and “Doing It Wrong” truly hits different, “Cameras” and “The Ride” are criminally underrated and “HYFR” is a banger. Generally, Drake’s rhythm and blues songs are far superior to his monotone, boring rap. I am sick and tired of men trying to convince me that “Jumpman” and “I’m Upset” are remotely decent songs. Drake has a total of three decent non-feature rap songs that aren’t on “Take Care” and they are as follows: “Headlines,” “The Motto” and “Over.” Drake, If you’re reading this it’s not too late to start making sadboi/sadgorl bangers again. #MakeDrakeSadAgain2020
On The Haters
By Abby Hofstetter, Opinion Editor
I’d like to consider myself a reasonable woman. I like things that are good, and I dislike things that are bad. I think it’s a pretty simple dichotomy. But what I cannot stand are people who hate popular music just because it’s cool. I used to be one of those girls — the ones in seventh grade who very vocally hated Justin Bieber. But secretly, I loved his music. It was good! (It still is!) But hating Justin meant that I was part of a very niche counter-culture, so I pretended that I didn’t like “My World 2.0,” even though it killed me. My life was very hard. Reader, if I may leave you with a word of advice: don’t be a hater.
Raves
On Patti Smith
By Anna-Dmitry Muratova, Senior Reporter
Until I discovered Patti Smith, I never understood when people would say, “I heard this song and had goosebumps.” I’d just be like, “Oh, you must’ve been cold when it started playing.” Right? Then I heard “Paths That Cross.” In one way or another, this song changed me and my perception of a billion things, from emotional and physical distance to the importance of coincidences and accidents in life. Long live Patti Smith!
Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.
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