The Unfettered Critic – April 2021

The recent Super Bowl halftime show (well, last February) featured music by “The Weeknd.” We’d seen The Weeknd perform on several late night TV shows, so we knew his shtick. We say “his,” because The Weeknd is one guy. In our memory, one person occupying center stage used to be called: Frank Sinatra; or Billy Joel; or KD Lang; or Elton John. The Weeknd draws from another tradition.

There was a time when seemingly every band’s name started with “the:” The Beatles; The Stones; The Who; The Byrds; The Kinks; and so on. Even if one guy fronted the band, they still used “the:” The Dave Clark Five; The Marshall Tucker Band (That’s an oddity. Google it.). But with the millennium, styles changed, and we found ourselves listening to: Korn, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Radiohead, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Weezer. Great bands all, and even if you never heard their music, the name told you that it was a band.

Then the cloud of change passed over again. Today’s Top 50 includes hits by—and this is true: Dua Lipa; DaBaby, Zebra Katz; Sada Baby; Arcangel; Remi Wolf; Doja Cat; Soccer Mommy; Lil Baby; Megan Thee Stallion; Lady A; and Lady Gaga. So here’s a test: Guess which of the above are individuals and which are bands.

We admit to having given you a break at the end of that list, as you likely know one of the “Lady” names is a group and the other is, well, Lady Gaga. But unless you’ve been devout in your musical yearnings, we’d bet the others put your mind in a spin.

So let’s take a look. Dua Lipa hints at a female duo. In fact, she’s a twenty-five year old singer-songwriter from England, actual birth name: Dua Lipa. Dua looks so much like actress Scarlett Johansson that we’d like them to do a project together, and it’s possible they might, because guest backup singers on her recordings, (like the wonderful “Levitating”) include such big names as Madonna and DaBaby.

And there it is, next on the list: DaBaby. He’s a multi-Grammy nominated singer-songwriter from Ohio, real name—Jonathan Kirk. In fact, all of the other names on our list are individual singers. Had you fooled, didn’t we!

Of the bunch, our favorites are Dua and Soccer Mommy, which is the stage name of a twenty-four year old guitar-playing vocalist named Sophia Allison. Sophia was born in Switzerland, raised in Nashville, and has toured with Kasey Musgraves and Liz Phair, singers we hear regularly on our local JPR station. Plus, she has opened at numerous shows for Wilco. Her hit “Your Dog” is a sample of the pop rock that makes us smile, although we prefer traditional bands, especially those whose names start with “the.”

Which brings us back to The Weeknd. The singer, not the end of… oh, you know. He’s Canadian. His real name is Abel Tesfaye. And his “dark style of R&B” has won three Grammy Awards, five American Music Awards, nine Billboard Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, nine Juno Awards, and an Academy Award nomination for his song, “Earned It” from the movie Fifty Shades of Gray (in case you were wondering what had qualified him for the Super Bowl halftime show).

All of these singers can be heard on YouTube, or on your favorite streaming service. Or, if you’re like us, you may want to upgrade to a modern turntable and bring out that vinyl you’ve been treasuring but haven’t set a stylus on for a while.

You’ll probably refer to it as The Turntable.