I’m psyched to introduce a new recurring feature here on Pretty Much Amazing, a little retrospective we’d like to call “Blinded By The Hype”. In Blinded By The Hype, we’ll take a look back at some of the most highly rated albums we’ve reviewed on this site, after some time has passed, to see if the albums were truly great or whether they were lifted up by buzz.
We’ve all been there – everyone you know is talking about the new album, the single is great, and after a few spins you’re convinced you’re going to love it. You make all of your friends buy it, you listen to it for a week straight, convinced that the album’s an instant classic. A comeback. A brilliant debut. The best album of the year. A couple months later, it’s collecting dust on your shelf, languishing in the dark recesses of your iTunes.
In today’s music world, music is released at a machine gun pace. It’s a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately type scene, and “lately” usually means this week. Rarely do we stop to smell the roses. Even good albums get overlooked as time passes. And we almost never – aside from year end lists – take a look backward. Hindsight is 20-20, and we’d like to apply that retrovision to set the record straight. Hence, Blinded By The Hype.
To start, since this is the first edition, I’d like to set some ground rules for what is eligible for Blinded By The Hype:
- 1. Only full albums will be re-examined. Tracks are finicky enough to review the first time, and how a single track fares over the course of a few months is more an issue of personal preference than quality. Album grades mean more, album spins mean more, therefore we’ll stick to albums.
- 2. Only albums that received 80+ grades will be re-examined. No point in re-opening old wounds. If it wasn’t good with the hype, it won’t be good without the hype. Sure, there are albums that get better with time. No doubt about that. But hype isn’t involved there – it’s tracks that are growers and lyrics that are layered. Totally different ballgame, we’ll stick to the initially well-received.
- 3. Only albums that are at least 3 months old will be re-examined. Hype is all about timing. When an album is released, there is an upswell of buzz that races around the blogosphere. Sometimes that buzz cycle extends for a couple months – there’s the leak, the first single, the release, the second single, etc. So we’ll wait until the dust settles before stirring things up again.
I’m making this up as I go along (like most things I do), so I reserve the right to break these rules at will, or add any other pertinent clauses. If you have an idea for how to make this segment better, please share it in the comments – constructive criticism is always well received.
Word. Without further ado, let’s get on with the first edition of Blinded By The Hype. The album? Britney Spears’ Circus. Continue reading →
I posted this remix a few months ago when it first hit the web on some obscure multi-remix post. I’ve been listening to a lot of Miike Snow (Bloodshy & Avant make up 2/3 of Miike Snow) recently, which has inspired a few run-throughs of their remixes. This remix of Britney’s “Radar” is one I kept coming back to. See, Bloodshy & Avant actually produced this track for Britney, as well as the superior (and PMA favorite) “Toxic.”
A 3+ minute clip of an alleged Britney Spears track with Lil Wayne titled “Bad Girl” came to my attention thanks to various emails from fans. The track is supposed to be the first single of her upcoming “The Singles Collection” compilation album. The album will hit shelves Nov 21st, but the single will be released on Sept. 21st.
