A Year End Retrospective: 2016

Good Riddance, 2016!  I think everyone can agree that 2016 was a terrible year, and I've seen people on social media (Facebook, mostly) trying to lighten the mood by sharing videos highlighting all the good moments of 2016. Let's be honest, the year was still terrible. True, there have been good moments throughout the year but the bad outweigh the good. SPECIALLY when it comes to the music.

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Since I started this blog, I forced myself to pay more attention to the pop charts and the radio. While doing that, I still listened to songs on the internet and playing in public spaces. I can confidently say that in 2016 I've heard hundreds of songs that were released this year. MAYBE 3 of the ones popular in US were good. I chose a terrible year to start reviewing pop music and feel extremely sorry for all the magazines and websites that have to do a Top 10 Best Songs of the Year. The problem with all these songs was that they all seemed "Song-less". Rather than music, a lot of it sounded like Ambiance with a beat. The songs that had some sort of riff and/or melody usually followed the writing skills of Eiffel 65's "Blue (Ba Da Dee)" which is basically repeat a riff from the beginning all the way to the end. Repetition is important in music, I get it. However, it's hard to explain when it's done right without listening to it. The minority of songs that slipped into the Top 100 that sounded like ACTUAL songs had major problems like bad lyrics, singing or subject matter. The other "song-less" songs had the additional problem of sounding like nothing or barely something. "Sorry" by  Justin Bieber is a terrible song with god awful lyrics and a sense of smug arrogance that you know he doesn't mean anything that he is saying. Not to mention that his delivery is not necessarily bad, it's just weird. I'm not a fan of his "under his breath" singing. Zayn's "Pillowtalk" however had a better vocal delivery, the writing was ok (just cliche), and subject matter uninteresting. "Sorry" is still a better song than "Pillowtalk" because at the very least, it sounds like A song.

I'm sure Billboard will do a Top 100 Best Songs of the Year list (if they haven't already) so I'd say just take a look at that and you'll see pretty much everything I hated about this year. The list may include, but not limited to, "Work" by Rihanna (ft. Drake), "Panda" by Desiigner, "Sweatshirt" by Jacob Sartorius, "Work From Home" by Fifth Harmony (ft. Ty Dolla $ign), "Pillowtalk" by Zayn, "7 Years" by Lukas Graham, Meghan Trainor (anything she's in, really), "Treat You Better" by Shawn Mendez, etc. These are songs I absolutely despised. They literally made me sick when I heard them (no, I'm not using "literally" for emphasis. My body really felt nauseous while hearing these songs). However, the grand winner has to be "Work" by Rihanna (ft. Drake). This song sounds awful, she sounds awful, everything is awful in it. It is beyond words. How can people even like this? This is the worst singing I've ever heard, and this includes drunken karaoke. How can you be autotuned out of key? And one thing that pisses me off is that I know Rihanna can be a good singer, so I usually put the blame on Drake because it does sound like more of his song than Rihanna's. You want an example? Listen to Calvin Harris's "This is What You Came For". The worst part of it all is how catchy it is. That chorus will drill into your head just by thinking of it. How did it even get release? Were the producers drunk or high when they gave this song the thumbs up? They were definitely on something.

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It wasn't all hate and sickness, though. A lot of the year was simply "meh", mediocre, ok, indifferent, or forgettable. Again, there's a LOT of songs in this category considering that most of pop music in 2016 sounded like people abusing sleeping pills. Some of them are "Black Beatles" by Rae Sremmurd (ft. Gucci Mane), "This is What You Came For" by Calvin Harris (ft. Rihanna), "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake, "24k Magic" by Bruno Mars, and "Ride" and "Heathens" by Twenty One Pilots (I will most likely get myself crucified for these last 2 but save your energies. I might do a Band Overview on Twenty One Pilots later so at least hear me out before you kill me). Again, these songs are not particularly bad, I simply didn't like them, because they were bland, boring, uninteresting, or served as nothing more but background noise. Basically, I don't mind these songs if I'm forced to listen to them. "Closer" by The Chainsmokers (ft. Halsey) is kind of in a gray area for me because I DESPISE this song, but it's entirely for emotional reasons. I can't find a single problem with it when I think about it musically and objectively. I feel the chorus is the only real good part of the song. It's well written and it's a nice melody that carries the emotional climax of the song, as it should. The verses, however, are pretty forgettable as they seem to serve as backstory and nothing more. "Closer" is getting an emotional response from me so it has to be doing something right.

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Where there good songs? Yeah, a couple. "Cheap Thrills" by Sia is probably the first one that comes to mind when I think of this. I hated The Weeknd but his song "Starboy" is growing on me, and so did "One Dance" by Drake (ft. Kyla & Wizkid). Another song that I wasn't sure about but now I really like is "I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb Remix)" by Mike Posner. "Girls Talk Boys" by 5 Seconds of Summer had it's problems but it's still an amazing song. "Kiss the Sky" by Jason Derulo, I heard it in a movie theater and surprised that it didn't even chart in the US (it hit number 9 in New Zealand). WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, USA!? This song should've made AT LEAST the top 10. This song SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING. I love the beat, the bass, the groove. This song makes you feel good, makes me want to dance (and I'm terrible at it). It's just a great song that apparently none of my peers ever heard. So what's the best song in 2016?  "Kishikaisei" by Wagakki-Band. Were you expecting a song from an artist previously featured in the Billboard Hot 100? Well, the songs and artists that make it into the Hot 100 are a "good product" but not good art. There's nothing wrong with commercial art, which is what I think pop music is, but there has to be some sort of quality. I've been rambling on how these songs don't have substance. The reason behind it is because if you make it into the Hot 100, you don't have to proof anything anymore. Artists like Drake, Shawn Mendez, and Rihanna can give us not even the minimum effort and still have a commercial gain because their name and image has become a marketable brand worldwide. Other Bands and Artists around the world don't have this luxury of writing a lazy song and call it "Avant Garde" and be popular. This is why, the best song in 2016 is NOT a song featured in the Hot 100.  "Kishikaisei" translates to "Resuscitation" and that is literally what it feels like listening to this song. Not only is it one of the best written, best composed, best produced, and most unique sounding songs I've heard this year, but it also has an outstanding amount of energy that after time in this wasteland of the barely living corpses of pop music it brings you back  ready to face the challenges ahead. It is too bad that the song was not as popular as any of the songs listed above. After such a terrible year, a resurrection is exactly what we need to move towards a better future.

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