Sky's Music Reviews

Going back to the old format for a while! Expectations is the debut album by Hayley Kiyoko, AKA "Lesbian Jesus". It was released on March 30th, 2018. The majority of production is handled by 4e, and it should be noted that all but two songs have at least four songwriters. It is 11 songs long, with an intro and an interlude track. Hayley Kiyoko is quite the interesting character, and this album definitely shows that. She started as an actress in Lemonade Mouth; later, she went on to release three EPs. Though most of them were not memorable at all to me, "Gravel to Tempo" is one of my favorite songs and everyone should definitely give that a fair listen. Anyways, I digress. A very big part of Kiyoko's character is her being a proud lesbian. The fact that she has absolutely no shame about this (to the point where the original cover has a nude girl on it, I had to edit it) and sings loud and proud about her female lovers is extremely admirable to me and defini...

Bobby Tarantino II is Maryland rapper Logic's sixth mixtape, released on March 9th, 2018. It's a fairly standard hip-hop/trap mixtape; it's full of hype music, fairly standard lyrics, and doesn't try to get much more fancy than that. I FAR prefer this to Logic's previous album, Everybody , where it seemed like he tried to fit the same message about being biracial every 30 seconds. It just got tiring and seemed fake deep. That's not to say that this album is totally free of messages, but Logic is a lot more subtle about it this time and the relatively rare moments when he tries to fit a message in make every lyric about it more meaningful. The intro, "Grandpa's Space Ship", is a Rick and Morty skit. This isn't his first time associating himself with the show. In the episode "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender", Logic starred as himself at a concert at the end of the episode. It seemed really strange the first time I saw the ...

The Chainsmokers - Sick Boy +1 for the single cover. That's amazing. The general consensus for this song seems to be that it's fake deep, and I agree. However, I don't think that it's quite as cheesy as most people think. After reading a lot of the Chainsmokers' reddit posts, I do think that they are a LOT deeper than they let on. That being said... this is a little too much. The concept that they're trying to project could use a lot of work. I do think that the whole east side / west side part of the song is getting misinterpreted. I believe that it means that no matter where The Chainsmokers go in America, their ideals supposedly still make them the "sick boy". Doesn't really make the concept better... but, that's just my two cents. I also lowkey like the "how many likes is my life worth" part. The production is really great. I LOVE that gun cocking sound throughout the song, and the synth for the post-chorus is really ni...

First review of 2018! Camila is the debut album by former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello. It was released on January 12th, 2018. It was extremely hyped up in the pop world, with Camila's lead single "Havana" topping many charts worldwide, beating any of the past placements of her former group members. Personally, I was extremely excited for this album. Camila was always my favorite part of Fifth Harmony, due to her very distinctive voice and the spotlight that usually shone on her. I was actually rather excited to see that she was leaving 5H, because I felt that a solo career would be the best choice for her. Her initial two songs, "Crying in the Club" and "I Have Questions", were both pretty okay. Nothing amazing, but I still had hope for her. Finally, the two follow-ups, "Havana" and "OMG", were both amazing. I'll talk about "Havana" later in the review, but "OMG" ended up being cut off of the al...

Wew, I haven't posted in quite a while. It's winter break for me, but I don't have much motivation for the blog right now, and I feel like there weren't any albums worth reviewing recently. I will, however, be reviewing the new Camila Cabello album that comes out in 5 days. Anyways, here's my ranking for all of the albums and EPs that I listened to last year. Combined, there are over 70 projects, all organized into tiers. If you'd like to discuss one of my placements, just leave a comment! I'd really like to see more comments and discussion on this blog. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gXQCRxoPm5x4mQu9jNCOwwOnteNXszeJQ4XAGfm2zio/edit?usp=sharing

Blue Lips is Swedish singer-songwriter Tove Lo's third solo album, released on November 17, 2017. It is the second half of a two piece concept album; the first half is last year's Lady Wood , which is one of my favorite albums. It features the final two chapters of the concept album; Light Beam and Pitch Black. It was a hard choice to decide to review this album. This is simply because Tove Lo is definitely my favorite artist ever; Queen of the Clouds is my favorite album. Thus, I figured that I would be too biased. However, after listening to this album many times, it seems like I am in the right mindset to accurately review it. It certainly has flaws and strengths that I can address through a mostly unbiased lens. I'm going to return to my older format of reviewing for this album, track by track, because it's mostly chronological. I'd like to address the cover. It's frankly horrible, and I didn't want to really put it on my blog because my parents re...

Reputation is "pop goddess" Taylor Swift's sixth studio album. It was released yesterday, on November 10th, 2017. Taylor made the rather predictable choice to keep this album off of streaming services for at least a week, in order to boost sales. That effect definitely happened; about 700,000 sales on the first day of its release. It could've been worse, of course; the rest of Taylor's catalog was only recently added to streaming services, after over a year as purchase exclusive. Thematically, I never really had high hopes for the concept that she was trying to push with this album. When I heard "the old Taylor is dead" lyric from the lead single, I knew that there were two possible options for the sound of this album. One: Taylor can actually recreate herself with a new, darker and more raw image. Two: Taylor can act like she's totally reinvented with a few darker tracks, but for the most part, stick to her normal, safer sound. Of course, she...