thread of miguel

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!

as in, Akon and Stargate were on that album (2008 or 2009?)

yeah Ne-Yo is definitely cut from an MJ/Lionel Richie/Babyface type cloth where leaning pop seems to come so natural that holding him to an R&B purism standard feels pointless

fantastic as ever on letterman

yup. keeps tweaking the arrangement, too.

one thing I've noticed that kind of sux tho, afaict he's never performed "Arch and Point" live?

miguel looks like he finished practicing his dance moves 5 minutes before he took stage

Great performance. Makes me want to go see him again live. Thursday night he's at that Morgan State Homecoming show in Baltimore that Some Dude mentioned: 2 Chainz, Miguel and Elle Varner

Why is the deluxe version of KD with "Gravity" and "All" added, $28.99 from Amazon US? Actually they're calling it "limited edition" so I guess that explains it.

it will only cost 29 dollars for a limited time

what song did he do - adorn?

yep

http://pitchfork.com/news/48163-watch-miguel-on-letterman/

Love the chain.

I like 'Use Me' but it seems kinda out of place on the album to me. Like a Depeche Mode cover slapped bang in the middle of an r n b album.

i don't think of "Use Me" as being an outlier in that way at all! if anything "Don't Look Back" sticks out more as not very R&B.

the D.C. grown folks R&B station, which usually only plays the occasional new joint by Maxwell or whoever amongst 70s and 80s stuff, has picked up on "Adorn"

Funny how "Adorn" actually makes more sense on grown-folks R&B formats

I'm actually starting to think I might like 'Use Me' more than 'Adorn'

I do.

me too

At least a third of the album is as much stadium rock as r&b and Use Me is especially so, but it doesn't seem particularly out of place.

I'll never be able to hear another bit of Coldplay style anthemic falsetto bluster without imagining how much better Miguel would be able to make it sound though.

When he goes for "stadium rock", he goes for stadium rock in the Purple Rain sense tho, tightly wrapped up in r&b. It's not like he's trying to be Coldplay or their ilk.

he makes stadium rock feel really intimate

like, just you & him in a massive stadium