Tag: Olivia Rodrigo

Rona Rock: Chvrches’ ‘How Not To Drown’ Is A Bop


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m natively good at a few things. Among them is, apparently, being a pop rock DJ. Just in the last few months, I’ve started to notice an uptick in the type of music I would have played at Nori in Seoul. I call it “Rona Rock” because, well, lulz, that sounds cool.

But the song that hits the sweet spot for a good tune that I would have played at Nori the moment I heard it is Chvrches’ new song “How Not To Drown.” It’s definitely got that pop rock vibe to it. The type of song that you could play in primetime on a Friday night at the bar and people might endup dancing on the tables before it was over with — especially if it was the first time they had heard it and they really liked it.

It’s very danceable and it has that thump-thump-thump bass needed to get people out shaking their grove thang.

Source: Internet

The thing I would note is — whatever Chvrches is doing, they need to sprinkle it in the drinks of Olivia Rodrigo and Miley Cyrus. “How Not To Drown” is exactly the “new sound” those two women seem to be struggling to discover. It’s pop rock, people! People want to dance to rock music! Why is this so hard for the corporate shills of the modern music industry to understand?

That The Cure’s Robert Smith is involved in “How Not To Drown” is a testament to exactly what I’m talking about. It pains me to no end that Olivia Rodrigo and Miley Cyrus and thrashing about, looking for the New Sound and they probably won’t notice that Chvrches has found it.

‘Rona Rock:’ I’ve Seen The Face Of Pop Rock And Its Name Is Olivia Rodrigo


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve written at length about this before, but Olivia Rodrigo’s release of her album “sour” has me thinking about it again — now that the United States is getting out of the pandemic, maybe it’s time for pop rock to return.

I call this neo-pop rock, “Rona Rock.”

Let me give you some context. There are millions of old farts like me who love rock that has a beat and you can dance to. Maybe a few dozen million. And, at the moment, they are forced to listen to “classic rock.” Not a lot of new pop rock is coming out and that which is coming out is almost exclusively Miley Cyrus doing covers of old pop rock songs.

Sour is so close to being a traditional pop rock album. It still, however, lacks the edge of a true pop rock album. It’s more a POP rock album. So it seems to me that of all the popular acts out there that Rodrigo is the most likely to come out with an album produced by someone like Butch Vig of Nirvana’s “Heart Shape Box” and the band Garbage.

In fact, I would go so far as to say if Rodrigo did go that route that a lot of GenZ people would experience a significant amount of musical future shock. They wouldn’t know what hit’em.

There is another, safer, direction that Rodrigo could go that would be almost just as good — the Nelly Furtado option of teaming up with someone like Timbaland. The album they did together is one of my favorites of the Before Times when some form of pop rock still existed.

And, yet, I doubt this will happen in any way. It’s too risky for an established act to make such an abrupt break with existing musical tastes. If my dream of “Rona Rock” is going to happen, it’s going to happen because a pop rock song becomes unexpectedly popular on Tik-Tok.

Olivia Rodrigo And The Deep Echo Of 80s Pop


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is probably the best pop album I’ve heard in 15 years. It isn’t as danceable as maybe it could be, but it definitely seems to be something of a deep echo of 80s pop.

Every once in a while listening to Sour, I feel as though she’s so close to producing a song that The Cure might have done. It’s a testament to how musical tastes have changed that all the great pop hits of the 80s are now very niche. Young people are so interested in listening to 30 second bites of songs that they are completely oblivious to all the great songs that have come before. I keep hoping for some sort of revival of pop rock but…I’m beginning to lose hope. It definitely sees as though pop rock doesn’t exist and will never come back.

But having said all that, I really like Rodrigo’s album. She’s just a baby at 17, so she potentially has a very long career ahead of her. She’s a great singer and obviously a really good writer. (I’m assuming she wrote her songs.)

It would be nice, however, if in the future she might produce songs that “have a beat and you can dance to” like I grew up listening to.