Sarah Brand

Brand(ed) on the brain?

gonna give myself a lobotomy to get the chorus out of my head

There's a massive clue at the end of the video.

Sarah dancing in the church, congregation look amused, etc. But, no soundtrack. Just the ambient noises and some shoe squeaking.

I reckon the video was made without the music playing....

xp, just put this on repeat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll5aPrf2zE0

the women in the drink rum video definitely put Ms. Brand to shame in the posterior category. Oi mates.

xxp I never thought of it that way. Maybe the singing is so strange because she recorded it after making the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtBvCF7P9p8

BTW, did you guys know that ILM favorite MAGIC! (of "Rude" fame) also had a single called Red Dress?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaX64o71vGQ

It features the line "hey you with the red dress on / I gotta find a way to take it off." Which I think arguably makes it a significantly worse song than Sarah Brand's Red Dress.

that "boring version" cover proves that it's still quite a strange song even when sung in tune

it does, and I kind of like it

I'm sure MAGIC! aren't nice people and all but they should all be killed

this makes "Rude" seem like a mere sneeze at the dinner table

Yes, it kind of feels like a Rude b-side. In the worst way.

Red Dress is positively tuneful compared to the acoustic version of Fantasy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbOhYhZiyTI

Taylor Swift cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kfVskTOsWw

She should have taken a little bit more care with hiding her previous videos if she wanted to keep up the idea she can't sing.

Her YT channel has a video of her doing cheerleading practice a few years back with no obvious vocal detriment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RTkyfdXVik

From 10:35

https://www.newsweek.com/sarah-brand-red-dress-viral-music-video-rebecca-black-1614254

Newsweek spoke to Gordon Gronbach, the hired freelance filmographer for "Red Dress", who said that there were no hints of the song being a joke on set, but added that he "was not deeply involved in planning before or since," so would be unable to shed light on it being a social experiment of any kind.

Instead, he pointed to the video and song simply being a tool for Brand to show her directing skills. "I gathered it was an exercise in becoming a video director," he said. "She did say she wanted to be a director and it was obvious she wasn't a great singer, with a few off notes, but it was okay and I guess she did it for showreel purposes, and so I respect that."

"It was funny to have the performer be the director and shout 'cut' but she's very focused and knew what she wanted, and I gave it to her I guess," he added.

that "boring version" cover proves that it's still quite a strange song even when sung in tune

― ufo, jeudi 29 juillet 2021 22:28 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

it does, and I kind of like it

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), jeudi 29 juillet 2021 22:36 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It always seemed to me more like a vaguely postpunk indie take on pop-country than an actual stab at pop-country. Iirc, someone found her Spotify and she mostly listens to contemporary indie.

Also, I think these songs are harder to sing than that cheer, in the register she is singing them in.

Like, it's lot harder for me to sing "Come Sail Away" in tune than to sing "Losing My Religion" in tune.

Her strumming technique makes me almost as queasy as the singing.

also this song rips the chorus of "Wildest Dreams" more than anything else

― cerebral halsey (rip van wanko), Thursday, July 29, 2021 10:35 AM

That's it! The line in Wildest Dreams where TS sings "standing in a nice dress" became the seed of this song, maybe even subconsciously.

📹

Sarah’s from Malibu? Industry plant!

That's it! The line in Wildest Dreams where TS sings "standing in a nice dress" became the seed of this song, maybe even subconsciously.

― enochroot, Friday, 30 July 2021 12:19 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

And, in turn, that part always reminded me of George Ezra's "Are we ridin' shotgun" bit, so..

She loved the nursing home cover.

Ok this all makes more sense to me now. The song sounds just enough like a real pop song that I almost thought she had songwriting skills, but there was something "off" about it. So she ripped it from that song and other songs, and the offness is just the filter of her problem ear. She legit can't sing, as evidenced by the other videos. And the goal was more to show off her video skills, which is believable since those seem perfectly competent. Everything else about her just reads way too normie and sincere for this to be a really elaborate pisstake.

I don't understand the rationale: "I'm going to record a terribly-performed song so that everyone focusses on my video direction?" Instead of directing a video for a competent performer?

Because she's probably blissfully unaware of how bad her singing really is and thought it was good enough?

sometimes a person who can't sing is just a person who can't sing.

I don't really think her songwriting skills are less 'competent' than her video skills.

She definitely demonstrates basic compositional principles of chord progressions, melodic form, phrase structure, and text setting. There's a quote, intentional or otherwise, of "Wildest Dreams" and/or "Shotgun", but it goes somewhere else with it.

I finally realized this morning that her singing reminds me of Odenkirk's. Except that he has very consciously employed his tone-deafness for laffs.

it always comes back to "Mouthful of Sores"

She should have taken a little bit more care with hiding her previous videos if she wanted to keep up the idea she can't sing.

Her YT channel has a video of her doing cheerleading practice a few years back with no obvious vocal detriment.

lol come on. she has two people yelling the melody next to her that she can match, and judging by the dissonance I hear at least one person is off key but two of them aren't, and they're in a comfortable register in chest voice, whereas her songs are in head voice, which is what she seems to have trouble with. the cheer melody oscillates between two to three notes and is barked more than sung.

knowing absolutely nothing about singing i'm going to take this post from the /r/crappymusic subreddit as the truth:

So, I’m a trained singer. Degree in voice, did recitals, etc. Listening to her reminds me of my vocal pedagogy teacher’s mantra: the number one cause of pitch problems is people not knowing how to listen to themselves and other pitches at the same time.

Brand is clearly just untrained. You can hear it in her lack of air support, causing her to consistently go flat on higher notes. She has practiced, but with zero training, she has practiced her wrong things, ingraining them into her style. She’s confident with the guitar, but her right hand style and lack of a pick suggests that she’s entirely self taught.

I’ve taught many singers. This sounds like many of my students who just don’t listen to anything while they sing - they just kinda guess what the pitch is. The overall shape is correct, but it doesn’t match anything else - kind of like watching a 3 year old do a “trace it” drawing of an elephant on the local restaurant’s kid’s menu.

I don’t think it’s a social experiment- she is singing honestly and in a way that I’ve seen dozens of times before - just not listening and matching while she sings. It can be corrected, with a teacher.

this whole thing is really just about increased access to decent cameras right? or the collapsing space between low-end and high-end cameras/filmmaking tools or whatever. this would've been a wehole video if it looked like it was filmed on an iphone 4.

You guys

I finally realized this morning that her singing reminds me of Odenkirk's. Except that he has very consciously employed his tone-deafness for laffs.

― Marty J. Bilge (Old Lunch), Friday, July 30, 2021 8:45 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

sarah brand cover of “i’m the hated milk machine” when

lack of a pick suggests that she’s entirely self taught

...

The line in Wildest Dreams where TS sings "standing in a nice dress" became the seed of this song

I was thinking "You Belong To Me."

whatever is going on here it’s triggered a RAED relapse on my part

Brand is clearly just untrained. You can hear it in her lack of air support, causing her to consistently go flat on higher notes. She has practiced, but with zero training, she has practiced her wrong things, ingraining them into her style.

pffft "wrong" is doing a lotta work in that sentence.

How to play Guitar
by David Fair
I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.
Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But he thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same.
Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide hoe it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. As also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.
The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world.

it's like some of you fucking people have never listened to John Cage or Merzbow or Marissa Marchant or Patty Waters, this snobbery is absurd

it seems more like "people are insisting that is what Brand is going for when there's really a more simplistic explanation for it"

like my thought all along was "she's someone who wrote a catchy song but isn't a singer"

i think assuming she's trying to be the next merzbow is probably as unkind as assuming she isn't hitting the notes she wants to

nothing against merzbow or sarah brand for that matter

other than the clumsy, dumb "stay in your lane" statements about her guitar playing, singer guy was pretty much OTM

It's like some of you fucking people have never listened to John Cage or Merzbow or Marissa Marchant or Patty Waters,

It's ok. Neither has Sarah!

She’s really leaning into a particular angle now

(YouTube keeps showing me these clips, I must’ve “subscribed” to her channel)

this is not good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzIB9ty-Dp0

The song isn’t, but the video’s pretty well done

haven't watched it yet

wow super bad :/
trying too hard

red dress remains a classic

actually a decent parody of how loads of current pop songs sample metal guitars to be edgy