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No one should ever be ashamed of their taste in music. (Period.)
Yet… almost of all us have been in a situation where we felt the need to explain why a particular song was part of our music collection. Some call it a “guilty pleasure,” whereby we embarrassingly enjoy a song and quietly revel in the joy it brings us, while convincing ourselves and probably many others that it’s just an outlier that does not represent our “typical” listening habits.
Right…
Well, whether that stems from a fear of what our peers might think of us, or whether it has more to do with that internal voice who says we “should know better” than to like that song, whether we like it or not, that song usually does reveal something about who we are!
And in the latest episode of our podcast, Themes and Variation, Mahea and I set out to discover exactly that with composer, producer, and Soundfly Mentor, Lavender Looi. Enjoy Episode 31: “Songs I’m Embarrassed to Admit I Love” below.
To get all of our biweekly episodes right on your phone, head over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you get your podcasts to subscribe and download.
For anyone out there interested to work with Lavender Looi — to improve your songwriting and production, your skills in Logic Pro, your sync/licensing abilities, and your understanding of music theory — you can request Lavender for a four-week Soundfly mentorship session here.
And another small housekeeping note: we have a brand new course coming out in November with the virtuosic pianist and producer, Kiefer, exclusively on Soundfly. The course will cover how to harness the intersections between jazz improvisation, piano, and hip-hop beat making in your own music, while delving into the inspirations and inner-workings of Kiefer’s own music. Hop on our mailing list now to be notified as soon as this exciting course drops.
Episode 31 Highlights
1. Lavender on the vocal production of “My First Kiss.”
Lavender: “I love the vocal production of this song. I don’t think i would be able to do like whiney vocals, this is pretty whiney right? But it works so well, and that ending part, the part where the music drops off and it’s just like vocals. It’s so tight, and so crisp.”
2. Carter on the on the “embarrassment” of his choice.
Carter: “So it almost feels like it’s a tough cover because it’s just so good. As it is on it’s own, it’s really hard to be like ‘yeah, I’ll just do a cover of that.’ It makes it even tougher when you’re like ‘I’m gonna do a big band swingin’ cover version of this.’”
3. Mahea introduces us to a new sub-genre of music.
Mahea: “There is like a whole sub-genre now of melancholy covers in trailer music. People are calling it “trailercore.” I don’t know if that’s like something that’s used a lot or if a couple blogs decided to use it and now it comes up when you search. ‘Cause there’s other things like when The Social Network did that extra creepy version of ‘Creep.’”
Join Our Collaborative Playlist
Every other week, and with every episode of Themes and Variation, we launch a new collaborative Spotify playlist that includes the songs mentioned in the episode and more, which you can add to and enjoy. Here’s this week’s collaborative Spotify playlist!
We’ll see you in a couple weeks with a new theme, new guests, and some new songs to break down. If you have any comments, questions, or theme suggestions, drops us a line at [email protected]!
