Life's Too Sports

On June 11, 2021, Maroon 5 delighted fans across the globe with the release of their seventh studio album,  Jordi -- a tribute to the band's late manager Jordan Feldstein, who passed away in 2017. While the band's fanbase has been generally receptive of their latest effort, Maroon 5 critics provide mixed reviews at best, scrutinizing the group once again for producing "depthless" pop music, and describing the album as "lackluster" and "forgettable". Nonetheless,  Jordi would quickly garner international success on brand name alone, as Maroon 5 remains one of the most well-known ensembles in the world. With two months now firmly in the rearview, here's a look at the Spotify play count of all 14 tracks on  Jordi 's deluxe edition, arranged by popularity. 1. Memories (1,235,564,787 streams) 2. Beautiful Mistakes (244,091,342 streams) 3. Nobody's Love (132,862,809 streams) 4. Lifestyle (95,293,396 streams) 5. Lost (31,675,612 streams) 6. E...

One year ago today, I had the opportunity to see my childhood idol in concert for the second time, as Avril Lavigne took the stage at Fox Theater in Oakland, California for the third show of her "Head Above Water Tour". Anticipation of the evening began a year prior (in September 2018), as Lavigne announced her triumph over Lyme disease by releasing the title track for her upcoming sixth studio album: "Head Above Water". This was a very personal song for Lavigne, as it was written during a vulnerable time in which she spent two years bedridden. In an interview with Billboard magazine, she said, " I was in bed for [expletive] two years. It's a bug - a spirochete - so you take these antibiotics, and they start killing it. But it's a smart bug: it morphs into a cystic form, so you have to take other antibiotics at the same time. It went undiagnosed for so long that I was kind of [expletive]." Thankfully for Lavigne and her family, friends, and fans...

In the past few weeks, I've ranked Maroon 5's " Red Pill Blues ", Taylor Swift's " folklore ", and Paramore's " After Laughter ". However, this has easily been my most challenging album ranking to date. Before I dive right into it (see what I did there?), I'd like to confess that I don't listen to many of the featured artists on this album; thus, I'm mainly assessing it through the lens of Sheeran's discography. And now, as they say in the UK, off we go... 15. BLOW I sincerely wish I could rationalize my ranking of "BLOW". On this track, Ed Sheeran experiments with the rock genre, which should be extremely exciting. He also features a pair of artists that I admire immensely in Chris Stapleton and Bruno Mars. So what's the issue? Aside from simply being caught off-guard by a new sound, I feel that overwhelming instrumentation somewhat negates the vocals of three phenomenal singers here. Nonetheless, it's ...

Following the relative success of my rankings of Taylor Swift's " folklore " and Maroon 5's " Red Pill Blues ", I've decided to make these posts a semi-regular occurrence.  As I've followed Paramore religiously for over a decade, this one seemed like the next logical choice. Without further adieu, let's dive into Paramore's 2017 release entitled "After Laughter", an album that saw the band adopt an entirely new sound. 12. No Friend Three years have passed and I still don't fully understand what "No Friend" is, but I'm not convinced it's a rankable song. It sounds more like a dramatic reading of a poem drowned out by one of Paramore's jam sessions. Congrats, Aaron Weiss? In any case, please let me know if there's more I can give you. 11. Idle Worship Perhaps suffering from being linked to "No Friend" in such an inseparable way, something about this track is just a tad unsettling. From its ...

On July 24, global superstar Taylor Swift released her second album in as many years, surprising even her most loyal fans with 16 new tracks into which she "poured [her] whims, dreams, fears, and musings". Swift's eighth studio album, entitled "folklore", was met with widespread praise, criticism, and an unprecedented amount of comparisons to her previous work. Written and recorded amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, this album saw the perennial pop icon stray from nearly a decade of chart-topping hits, taking a more understated artistic approach instead. Six weeks following the release of "folklore", I have decided to retract my initial rankings in favor of a refined blog post, including Swift's bonus track entitled "the lakes". I'll preface my discussion by saying this: ranking any album from top to bottom is an incredibly difficult and perpetually impermanent feat. 17. hoax (⬇️ originally 16) While Swift's vivid lyricism remains...

Maroon 5... A band with more than five members. A band largely carried by the overwhelming success of its frontman. A band that has continually managed to produce chart-topping hits for the better part of two decades, despite maintaining a polarizing presence within the realm of pop culture due to its ever-evolving sound. So what is this band: funk, soul, rock, pop? Perhaps guitarist James Valentine explained their efforts best in a 2018 interview with Billboard, stating, "The last few records have been more electronic in their production, but at the end of the day we're a rock band. So we get in a room and figure out how to take some of the electronic elements and flesh 'em out with real instruments and interface some of the studio sounds with the raw elements of a rock band, which can be a challenge sometimes ... I think that's what makes it unique and what people really enjoy about the live experience. We always tread the studio differently than a live gig. We ...

He's not a rapper, he's a singer with a flow. From growing up in the small town of Framlingham, Suffolk, to selling out shows at Wembley Stadium, Edward Christopher Sheeran's path to stardom has been anything but ordinary. Born on February 17, 1991 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Sheeran spent nearly the entire duration of his childhood singing in a local church choir and working tirelessly at improving his skill with the guitar. After attending a Damien Rice concert at the impressionable age of eleven, Ed Sheeran was finally sold on the idea of following his passion: music. Sheeran began recording his own songs in 2004, carefully crafting five independently-released "EPs" before finally hitting the mainstream with his debut studio album "+" in 2011. The album featured six unique singles, with "The A Team", "You Need Me, I Don't Need You", and "Lego House" leading the pack, and clearly showcasing the diversity of this br...