thread of miguel

like the review, don't like the ELEVEN frank ocean headlines underneath the review

If the Gibbs tape is an 8.2, this is a 9.4 though.

what review?

p4k?

yes

weird quote from that: 'a wonderfully considered album from an artist who was starting to seem a lot like a forgotten gem in the wake of mishandled promotion.'

wasn't Sure Thing a huge huge hit r&b chart hit? do they just mean 'indie people weren't listening until now' ?

his first album could be considered a commercial triumph or totally under the radar depending on what lens you're viewing it through, but yeah that way of phrasing it was pretty false.

yeah that's what i mean, the lens of 'what people in brooklyn/portland are listening to' is pretty reductive

well it could also be viewed as unsuccessful through the lens of "doesn't sell as much/cross over to pop radio as much as Usher or Chris Brown"

The demographics at his Howard Theatre show in DC seemed like 99% African-American (and mostly women) which is reflective of that prior inability to crossover to pop or indie

are they not a pop audience?

is this really the 2nd time this week on this board that i have to explain "pop as genre vs. pop as in 'popular'"

Except that isn't what he was saying.

i introduced the 'pop crossover' subject to the conversation, curmudgeon continued it understanding what i meant, and jamie responded to it seemingly not understanding what i meant.

Right. I think Jamie and Mat may have misunderstood me. I did not think I had to break down for anyone here the difference between industry marketing terms for genre and for radio formats, or to explain that yes r'n'b songs can be considered pop in the US when they reach the Billboard chart that is labeled "pop songs' or "hot 100". If Jamie and you want to complain to Billboard that they have an "r'n'b/rap" category (yes I think they put those 2 gneres together) separate from a "pop songs" one, and that ilx has a rolling R'n'b thread that is separate from a rolling pop songs thread.

Perhaps I should have also referred back to Some Dude's Village voice piece from awhile back regarding the declining number of r'n'b songs crossing over onto the pop radio hits format

miguel is kind of a perfect case study for that kind of thing too -- "sure thing" was billboard's #1 r&b chart song of last year, but #92 on the year-end hot 100

use me
wanna give you control
with the lights on
if I could just let go
forgive me
it's the very first time
that I'm nervous
can I trust you?
trust me
while I take this off
with the lights on
cuz it turns me on
if you're nervous
just let me show you
how to touch me
I can teach you

^^^^^^^^the realness from opposite ends in this chorus, the way he elides both. incredible

like a lesser song would have made that a duet but miguel makes them the same thing

i moved down south pretty much exactly a year ago and 'sure thing' has been on the radio consistently the entire time

Lex otm

yes

this record is great, finally got around to it.

The first five or six songs so is such an astonishing run of greatness.

letterman tonight iirc

am i the only one who likes the title track? didn't see a lot of love for it.

i know a frank ocean comparison is probably boring/facile, but god listening to this highlights how restrained and lacking in variety that record was.

The title track was the first I'm warmed to when I heard the full sequence.

yeah same, replayed it 3/4 times.

i'm still trying to figure out the comparison he makes in that song to piano keys

Miguel is touring, along with Elle Varner, as an opener on the upcoming Trey Songz tour (which I have mixed feelings about, b/c I really don't need to see Trey Songz three times in less than two years, especially when he's touring behind a sub-par album, plus I'd rather see Miguel headline). But it's an interesting pairing.

songs like "don't look back," "use me" and "the thrill" were heavily influenced by him being on the usher/trey songz tour a few years back

Yeah, there's way more overlap between him and those artists than most writeups of him (or even this thread) would suggest. Trey Songz has become lazy shorthand for "R&B status quo," which really doesn't do justice to some of his bolder experiments, and it's probably not a stretch to cast Kaleidoscope Dream as a much more successful/committed/realized version of what Usher was trying to do on his last album.

All three artists are, to some extent, advancing or experimenting with the genre from the inside, which is a narrative that needs to be better told in the wake of last year's overstated "outsiders are reinventing R&B" thinkpieces

Funny – I love the Usher album, warts and all, because Miguel's EP's taught me to earlier this year.

i haven't listened to that usher album since early summer and i think it's mostly a "pick 5 songs and delete" kind of thing

evan is right tho about narratives

All three artists are, to some extent, advancing or experimenting with the genre from the inside, which is a narrative that needs to be better told in the wake of last year's overstated "outsiders are reinventing R&B" thinkpieces

― Evan R, Tuesday, October 9, 2012 9:39 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Please go on. I think you're right but haven't really been able to develop any rational argument around this myself. I also believe there must be another and more interesting way of framing this "r&b has gone eurotrash on us, wave goodbye" narrative that's circulating a lot right now. Just not sure what it is.

i think the Miguel/Trey/Usher thing is pretty right, for three guys whose careers all started at least 5+ years apart from each other they've all ended up at pretty similar spots at the moment that don't feel entirely due to chasing the same trends or whatever. and all 3 are pretty high caliber vocalists and radio killers, which is not so much the case w/ all of the people driving the recent thinkpiece narratives.

usher, really? he's always chased trends and his latest album is just trying to chase every trend at once. it's usually a good look for him.

also ahem my dawn/nina sky/miguel/wynter piece was about (almost) this exact thing

trey is not really interesting enough for me to want to cover in this narrative

eh i said not 'entirely' -- usher's latest definitely has that problem for me, but if anything the whiff of desperation is stronger in his haircut than the album

big homie sold 69k this week

I also believe there must be another and more interesting way of framing this "r&b has gone eurotrash on us, wave goodbye" narrative that's circulating a lot right now. Just not sure what it is.

It's probably way to early to posit this wishful theory, but I'm beginning to wonder if the eurotrash R&B trend is on its way out. Chris Brown saw less return on his latest round of dance singles than his last round, and it's telling that Usher's "Climax" outperformed "Scream," which didn't do as well on the pop charts as Usher's previous dance singles either. (Chris Brown in particular got a lot less urban radio play for his new album than he did with his last one, so he saw diminished returns across two formats). Meanwhile, Trey Songz has had a nice singles run appealing primarily to urban formats, and Ne-Yo seems to be slowly but surely returning back to reality. I wouldn't be surprised to see all these artists trend a bit more urban and a bit less pop on their next records. But again, could be wishful thinking.

well, a year ago Ne-Yo was saying his next album would have no dance pop, now he's saying that's 50% of the album. and also the pop single's doing better than the urban single.

I've definitely noticed EDM-pop in general getting a bit less dominant. Nothing in the style has hit #1 since January.

xp Ah, didn't know Ne-Yo said it'd be 50/50. Most of the advance tracks I've heard from R.E.D. have been better than expected and decidedly urban-leaning, so I was hoping "Let Me Love You" was just a "Beautiful Monster"-ish outlier. But Tim McGraw is on the album so who the hell knows; it could be a Nelly record

It's probably way to early to posit this wishful theory, but I'm beginning to wonder if the eurotrash R&B trend is on its way out. Chris Brown saw less return on his latest round of dance singles than his last round, and it's telling that Usher's "Climax" outperformed "Scream," which didn't do as well on the pop charts as Usher's previous dance singles either. (Chris Brown in particular got a lot less urban radio play for his new album than he did with his last one, so he saw diminished returns across two formats). Meanwhile, Trey Songz has had a nice singles run appealing primarily to urban formats, and Ne-Yo seems to be slowly but surely returning back to reality. I wouldn't be surprised to see all these artists trend a bit more urban and a bit less pop on their next records. But again, could be wishful thinking.

― Evan R, Tuesday, October 9, 2012 10:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'll take it.

the Ne-Yo track on McGraw's own album is...interesting. He plays Faith Hill for all intents and purposes.

i'm sort of excited about that song not even in a train wreck way because the one with nelly is so fucking good

yeah i'm curious about it for the same reason i mostly don't mind Ne-Yo's pop stuff -- he has such a clean, adaptable vocal style that he can go outside R&B without as much inherent strain as most of his contemporaries.

on the McGraw album he's clearly exploiting memories of Lionel Richie-Kenny Rogers collabbs

didn't he write some songs for Lionel?

and Akon!