I grew up in the 2000s which means I became a big consumer of music when it was really easy to find and download everything off the internet. As a result I have a lot of homemade burned discs filled with songs I acquired in my teens and early 20s - almost 200, in fact. Today I'm going to be talking about disc #39 which I think I made in about 2009, when I was 16. I've drawn 5 stars on the disc alongside the tracklisting, so I think this is made up of songs I'd rated as such on iTunes at the time. I predict that I will not place the same honour on them in 2020. The songs on this mix bring back potent memories of what it was like being 16 which will probably seep into my reviewing, but I'm going to roll with it.
1. Green Day - Lights Out
This song was beloved by me for its melody, especially the way Billie Joe sings the opening lines. It's one of those songs that sounds like an ending and I've never been able to work out exactly what it is that gives me that feeling but I presume it's something to do with the chords and/or melody - hopefully I'll work it out by collecting them as I work my way through my reviews. I love the drums on this song too but listening to it now, it sounds like a pretty standard Green Day song and I wonder whether I loved it just because it was a b-side. It's definitely better than some of the songs that made it onto 21st Century Breakdown though and deserved to be on the album.
2. Rihanna - Rude Boy
The first of a number of Rihanna songs on this mix. I loved Rated R by Rihanna which came out in late 2009 and which I downloaded from one of those long-gone mp3 blogs (I bought the album later but accidentally got the clean version which is not nearly as good!). Even though it's over 10 years old now, I don't think it sounds dated at all. Rude Boy is risqué but still acceptable to hear on the radio - I wish the DJ had been playing this and not her song S&M when I was last in a club. This song reminds me of summer and hanging out in Subway and gossiping with my best friend.
3. Lil Wayne - I Feel Like Dying
Before I can even say anything about this song I need to turn the volume down because the bass in this is reverberating right through my body. Despite being a drug-free 16 year old, for some reason I was profoundly affected by this song - maybe it was the rumours that Lil Wayne had overdosed which spread round Twitter constantly. I'm not sure how I ended up with this song as I didn't like Lil Wayne's other work and this is from a mixtape from 2004 and not even a current or popular song of his but somehow I managed to download it. I was very averse to the high-pitched sampled vocals that pervaded rap music in this era but this song changed that for me. Lil Wayne speaks rather than raps his way through the song and everything about it sounds incredibly sad and moving.
4. Regina Spektor - Pavlov's Daughter
This song is a whole journey. It's sort of a jazz number, starting with the tuning of a bass, then just percussion and Regina scat-singing over the top before she starts to rap the verse. There are so many elements to this song that it's a joy to just drop everything and perform it. Regina puts everything into this - there's loud and quiet, staccato rapping and long drawn-out singing, and all with a piano, some percussion, and her amazing East Coast USA meets Russian accent. The A and B parts have her rapping and slamming down on the chords, then the C part slows right down to arpeggio chords and languishing vocals which feel like floating down a lazy river after making it through a storm. Then the A and B parts come back even more urgently as if your dinghy has drifted off a waterfall and into the rapids - the piano is more intense, Regina's moans become screams... but then the space between her words gets longer and her voice gets softer and the whole thing fades into the distance. I still adore this.
5. Mötley Crüe - Home Sweet Home
This band were one of my obsessions when I was 16 and it's hard to be objective when I know the song so well. It's a quintessential 80s power ballad and one of those rock songs about how hard it is to be on the road touring while your loved ones are at home waiting for you. It's probably not one of my favourite Mötley songs but the 80s piano and the chord progression in the chorus are both gorgeous so props to Nikki Sixx for writing it. I did enjoy listening to this but mostly because of the nostalgia for my teenage Mötley phase rather than for the song itself.
6. Rihanna - Te Amo
Another song from Rated R. This one has a Latin rhythm which contrasts with Rihanna's Barbadian delivery. The synth part in this song, especially the part after the chorus, sounds very of its time and doesn't translate well to 2020. I think the most interesting thing about Te Amo is that it was given to Rihanna when it sounds like it was written for a man - it's a one-way love story about a woman who has become obsessed with the singer and says Te Amo to them but we assume the woman speaks only Spanish and the singer speaks only English and doesn't understand. There's no acknowledgement in it that Rihanna isn't interested because she's straight, so it's intriguing in that respect.
7. Blood On The Dance Floor - Ima Monster
This song is so bad in so many ways. BOTDF were one of those MySpace-era bands who did the whole 'punk goes crunk' thing, mixing screamo and gore with electronics and explicit sex. The duo was led by Dahvie Vanity who was into that androgynous scene look but is most famous for grooming teenage girls on tour (for some reason this creep is still around, which is horrible). The lyrics include things like "ghetto" and "off the chizzle fo' shizzle" and the r-slur which just sound wrong now - it's like they packed in loads of cliché rap lyrics, plus cliché MySpace quotes like "haters make me famous" and some Jeffree Star edginess about girls with plastic faces on top of it all. The "Ima Monster *giggle*" chorus was cute to me at 16 but it is just creepy to me now. I do understand why I liked this as an edgy scene teen - it reminds me of sleepovers with my friends from this time - but as an adult there's nothing good I can say about it. The only reason I have marked this as red and not brown is because I remember this as their best song and there is definitely worse to come from these guys.
8. Paramore - The Only Exception
This was my immediate favourite upon downloading the leak of Brand New Eyes, the new Paramore album from 2009. Hayley Williams sings softly so I can sing along to this without it sounding like a horrible screech, and I really like to play this on guitar. Paramore don't play it now because the relationship it's about didn't end well, but I still like it. I think it's probably the first Paramore ballad and the first country-tinged song of theirs, both of which they've managed to do better since with songs like In The Mourning and 26 which I'll get to write about eventually. The song is specifically tied to the memory of a particular high school friend I had who loved Paramore, and walking to school together talking about the album and especially this song the day after it came out.
9. Mindless Self Indulgence - Tornado
MSI were another of my teen obsessions although they mostly took up space in 2008 for me and I'd moved on a bit by the time I burned this disc. Tornado is exciting with great samples - I particularly love the piano part which I was sure was a sample but which I can't find evidence of online. This song is all over the place and it is like a tornado, combining industrial and hip-hop and screaming falsetto in a way that's not uncommon now but sounded like nothing else then (and this song was 10 years old when I made this mix). It's short and sweet, like a lot of their songs, and still sounds like a riot to me now.
10. Sixx:A.M. - Life Is Beautiful
I hate this style of US Modern Rock now and to be honest I didn't really like it then either, but I put up with this as a fan of Nikki Sixx. This is the best Sixx:A.M. song, evidenced by the fact that I had the whole album on my iTunes but only backed up this song. It works well in the context of The Heroin Diaries (Nikki's book about his 1987 heroin addition which this album was written as a soundtrack to) but it reminds me too much of my friends from that time and their obsession with that book which became a contest about who could quote the most lines. There's not a lot to talk about with the song - it's fine and it accomplishes what it set out to do, but I don't need it in my life.
11. Rihanna - Rockstar 101 (featuring Slash)
This is the song that made me love Rated R. I think I probably hated it at first because I was 16 and any person claiming to be a 'rockstar' when they didn't make 'rock music' wound me up but this is the one that broke down those barriers for me. It doesn't sound the same now but in 2009 we still cared about genre so the idea of Rihanna collaborating with Slash and making something like this was innovative. The heavy guitars still sound really cool.
12. Panic! At The Disco - New Perspective
Is this the first song they put out after Ryan Ross left? I can't remember anymore as I stopped following P!ATD after they splintered. I do like this song, it's catchy, and I like the way it ends like a skipping record. Unlike the Ryan Ross songs there's not a clear narrative to this, except maybe the idea of wiping the slate clean and starting over as a new band, but I have always been a bit questioning of the lyric "can we fast forward til you go down on me" and where that fits in...
13. Various Artists - Open Happiness
I get this mixed up with New Perspective as I think they came out at around the same time and they both have Brendon Urie on them. Open Happiness is the sound of a certain major corporation trying to recreate the magic of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" and that put me off this song - I don't mind when songs pop up in ads but I hate musicians selling out and recording a song specifically for a brand to use as their jingle. There's lots of stars from the time in here, particularly from the Fueled By Ramen stable - Brendon Urie, Patrick Stump, Travis McCoy - as well as Cee-Lo, I think? I'm not sure who the woman in the third verse is but I always thought that she didn't fit in; she sounds like she should be singing something jazzy and laid-back rather than this peppy pop song. Someone like Hayley Williams would have been better, or alternatively a big RnB singer like Janelle Monaé.
14. The Lonely Island - Like A Boss
This is another one that's hard to review and rate since it's a comedy skit in the shape of a song. It's ridiculous but I think it's one of the best Lonely Island sketches, I love the way that it starts out with regular day-in-the-life-of-the-boss stuff with corporate bullshit speak like "promote synergy" and then the madness starts to creep in and the song goes completely off the rails.
15. Mindless Self Indulgence - Molly
Like Tornado this is just a fun little MSI song that throws everything in there to see what sticks. The stabs at guitar and vocals and synth when they say "good girl" in the chorus is like being punched in the face.
16. Rihanna - Hard (feat. Young Jeezy)
The final Rihanna song of the set. The lyric is just her telling us how bad she is (following on from her previous album "Good Girl Gone Bad") but it works with the heavy bass in this song. I haven't seen it in a long time but I'm sure she's cavorting in a tank in the music video. Young Jeezy's rap verse is pretty good and the Rihanna part that follows it is a precursor to her later song Work in terms of enunciation.
17. Escape The Fate - Smooth
Another of the bands I was obsessed with in 2009. I think this cover came from Punk Goes Pop 2 - the whole thing with alternative bands covering pop songs was big at the time. It's a good cover and Craig Mabbitt delivers a really good vocal. I'm very thankful that they didn't put a screamo breakdown into this, although the backing vocals get dangerously close to that territory at times. I haven't listened to Santana's original version of this song as much as I listened to this cover in 2009 so it's hard for me to say which one I like better and therefore tough to review - I was tempted to go blue on this because it's a good song but I settled for green because I wouldn't choose to listen to Escape The Fate at any other point. I'm going to check out Santana's version again and see what I think.
18. The Dresden Dolls - Night Reconnaissance
The Dresden Dolls were my number one choice of band to soundtrack my burgeoning teen angst in 2006. Amanda Palmer is great at writing a lyric which tells a story and this one has something to do with being a high school outsider and revenge and making a movie about it. I've never been able to work out the entirety of the lyrics but I'm sure she drops a c-bomb in the chorus which is pretty scandalous. I originally knew this song as a live recording from a concert which might be better than the studio version but it's possible that 16-year-old me just thought this song was better than it is. I do love when the song stops though and Amanda whispers "Hollywood!" with her piano twinkling along - you can almost see the stars in her eyes.
19. Mötley Crüe - Down At The Whiskey
Another song that exists as the soundtrack to a Mötley book, this one is about the band's pre-fame days playing the Whiskey-A-Go-Go. The lyrics are pretty good if your aim is to write a musical about your own band and life, but this particular story is pretty Problematic. I loved The Dirt as a teen (and the Netflix movie is what I wanted from an adaptation) but the band's treatment of women was shocking - luckily they manage not to be misogynistic in this song. I do wish they hadn't bothered with this because Vince Neil sounds awful these days, but at least they understand that they're a nostalgia act, both for people who loved them in the 80s and people who discovered them afterwards and wished they'd been around in their heyday.
20. Lisa Mitchell - Neapolitan Dreams
I've never understood what the intro to this song is all about - there's some really quiet old-timey carnival music at the start before a glockenspiel scale leads us into the song. I don't know if it's meant to be there or the result of a YouTube rip or something but it reminds me of the jump into the paintings in Mary Poppins. The song is pretty though; I'm sure it became the soundtrack to an ad for washing powder or something but it had been on my playlist for a while by then. It is peak twee MySpace indie music though - twinkly and dreamy and nice, and by some young girl who was never heard from again. I have no idea what she looked like but I always imagined her to be some skinny blonde in a sparkling white linen dress... but maybe that's the washing powder talking.
21. Will Smith - The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air
The full version with the verses that don't appear in the theme for the TV series, so has Will calling Bel-Air 'bourgeois' and saying 'this is bad!' when he means that something is great. I didn't really watch the show although I remember it being on after The Simpsons on BBC2, but I don't think there are many people my age who don't know all the words to the theme song. Rated highly for crowd-pleasing status and not because it's a song I would want to listen to on repeat.
