Paramore
It would be unfair to start with any other band, as they were my first love band-wise and still, my favorite one. With they're new single coming out Monday, (!!!!) I can't help but feel a little pumped about them. The first thing I'm going to admit is that Brand New Eyes is my favorite, and their first isn't so much. Their songs were there for me from freshman year until now, and hearing that their new album is coming out this April is pretty damn exciting because I want to hear them and go back to them again and again, like I have in the past. Their early songs are rock, power and depiction without being, well, too imposing and epic. Their newest albums are subtle, each different in their own right but deeply tied to one another thematically.
Personally, I like the songs that I can relate too, and are told the way I like to hear them.
Several examples:
The pride of someone who's been betrayed
The lost feeling of knowing there's wrongness but not know ing another other than leaving it behind
Hope for the future even when the odds for happiness have not been in your favor
That desperate, almost happily determined defiance against apathy.
I like them the most, because I can relate to them the most. Not just because of the lyrics (although they are a pretty potent factor, and we're not even mentioning Hayley William's great voice) but their guitar riffs and beat and all those little music things add to the theme of the lyrics rather than detract. On a really bad day, you can really sinkself into one of their song, and when it ends, you feel right because it feels like your feelings went into listening. Those emotions in your head aren't gone, but your gut resonated with the music, enough that you sinking into the music is easy and worth it, a recognition of yourself when you don't have time to break down. You could play one of their songs, and the world will get it, even if they don't like it. That's what I would like to think.
Panic! At The Disco
They were my first, even when I didn't realize it. (Nokia ExpressMusic's phones came with, ironically, either a Paramore song or Panic at the Disco song downloaded on the phone on purchase. Seventh-grade me ended up with Panic, having no clue what I was listening to, but still loving the song anyways.) Comes freshman year, and I know a little more about band thanks to Paramore, so I google these guys up and find that they are quite a strange back. Their first album was emo pop laden with innuendos and insidious language, their second album was a Beatles-esque homage to wistful metaphor and clever beat. Their third album was set to come out in March 2011, and flashfoward, I loved it.
It's filled with homages to being left behind and lost and love disguised underneath songs about the pride of losing these things. It's an album about losing what you care about, but still pretending to be nonchalant and fine with the game being played, even with signs of desperation and sadness leaking through. Fittingly, their most recent album is titled "Vices and Virtues". As fits the moralistic tone of the title, the songs explore the sins we make while trying to be good. And if you know me, personally, I'm a sucker for that stuff. (Maybe because of this album O.o)
Imagine Dragons
Unlike the bands prior mentioned, they are a new love. They happened after I watched The Perks of Being A Wallflower trailer again and again, and slowly came to adore the song that was featured during the end of the trailer. It was "It's Time" and then when I finally listened to it, it was so much better than I thought it was going to be. Downloaded on iTunes, and I waited anxiously for Night Visions to come out. When it did, I henceforth got all the songs I could find, and found out that this is not their first album. They released three EPs in the past, but this is the first one that's been broadly distributed. That, of course, is broadly reflected in their songs. Dan Reynold's doesn't belt out as often as Hayley, but when it does, you know what he's belting honest and important. Their songs are about working and working towards that goal you want, of waiting and losing and failing and how we fix ourselves in the broken places after. But they've also written other songs, exploring their genre, but I speak of their most-known music, the stuff that's made them famous. There's a reason why, you know.
I, of course, have other songs that I love so much, and sometimes several of them are from the same band, but these are the three that I can listen to their albums entirely without wanting to skip or getting bored.
What about you? I'm always looking more music.
