Album Review: “Camila” by Camila Cabello

Camila Cabello was originally a part of Fifth Harmony. A lot of people were shocked that she left the group, but I wasn’t one of them. After the breakup of One Direction, you start to figure out who would leave first to start on their solo career. For some odd reason, I always thought Camila would go out on her own, mostly because I think she has such a strong voice. You heard her more than you did any of the other girls in the group! Which is what I thought about when Zayn left 1D, he had a very prominent voice. I went through this with both Backstreet Boys and N’Sync in the 2000’s, I mean I know what I’m talking about here!

I have only heard four songs and they’re not even included on the actual album. I was shocked to not see “Crying In The Club” on the list since it was her first real track, back in December 2016 and another one I also enjoy is “OMG” and that features Quavo, it’s actually one of my favorites, but it’s nowhere to be found. I wasn’t too happy about that part, because I mean they are your entrance to the music world as one artist, and if you don’t include them, I think it makes the artist seem they don’t take their early success seriously. They should all be on the album either as the original version or in different forms like acapella, acoustics, or remixes. I don’t know if she intends on releasing a deluxe version of the album yet, but I’m hoping all four tracks they kept off of it will be as part of the bonus tracks.

Anyways, the album starts out with a song called “Never Be The Same” this has been playing on the radio like nonstop lately! I’m not even tried of hearing “Havana” yet and I’ve heard this song a lot more! I like ominous introduction of the song, the low and slow bass-y sound is a good way to start the album. It’s a good love song and despite it being in that theme, it still has a nice beat to dance to. I really like hearing Camila’s voice kind of match the tone of the sound too. Next, there’s “All These Years” and it’s also a ballad, love song. I think it’s a little interesting to start off with two very slow and romantic songs. It brings a different vibe to it! I like the stripped sound of it, you only hear her gentle voice, and an electric guitar. It’s very pretty!

Third is “She Loves Control” and the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the title of this song, I thought it’s going be so sassy! And I was right! Since Camila is half Cuban, she likes to bring that sound and vibe into her music. I think this is mild compared to the next song. It still has that sassy feeling to it that I was looking for, but there’s not much structure to make the song interesting enough. So it’s a bit of a let down for me. After this attempt though, you have “Havana” that features Young Thug and I really love this song! I think the big difference between this song and the previous is the fact that the beat sounds authentic. You get the sense that you’ve transported to Havana, Cuba. It’s very dance-y; I feel the need to the salsa everytime I hear it on the radio. I cannot stop dancing to it! Every part of it is amazing!

And then we have “Inside Out” and at first, you hear this peppy beat. It has a very tropical vibe to it! You will have trouble not dancing to it, but I feel like it’s a weird sounding. I like the lyrics. I don’t have a problem with that, it just sounds weird like the two doesn’t mesh well together. It’s hard to explain what I was thinking about while listening to it. I get like that every once in a while. We move on to “Consequences” and for once I actually spelled it right on the first try! I liked the fact that it’s such a easy going song. Camila has an unique voice and I like it for only having a soft piano and her voice together. It’s very beautiful! And then you have “Real Friends” and I actually liked the lyrics to it first. I can relate to the song right now, and what I really like about it is that it’s not about a specific person like a boyfriend or family member, she’s talking to about a bunch of people that she wants to surround herself with and I bet it gets pretty lonely while working in the entertainment industry.

The eighth track is “Something’s Gotta Give” and it’s another soft, ballad. She’s got a lot of these on here, but I actually like them a lot. I know, I’m even surprised at myself! This is another one where I really love the lyrics, it can kind of go with “Real Friends” in a way. If they were switched around, they would have been an interesting story line. It’s very relatable. Next there’s “In The Dark” this is pretty chill but it’s not bad. For it to be this slow, it kind of has peppy feeling to it. So you instantly feel happy to hear it instead of the other way around. It’s interesting! And then lastly we have “Into It” and I’m glad to say that this is a happy song! Fun and upbeat, which is the perfect way to end this journey I think.

I think as a whole, the album was actually really good! I thought we’d hear more of her Cuban roots on this, especially with the blowup of “Havana” I figured that there would be more songs like that or similar then just the three that we were given back-to-back. I didn’t like that, since she had a lot of ballads on here, there are many spots to put in one of those tracks, but they didn’t. However, it doesn’t change my opinion of it overall, I mean it’s a good first release. I wouldn’t say it’s the best of 2018 so far but we’ll have to see what happens later on in the year and maybe it’ll hit the top ten.

Are you a fan of Camila Cabello? If you listened to her debut album, what were your thoughts about it? Do you have any favorites yet?

Summer 2017 Playlist

Howdy!

Today is finally the day we discuss the summer anthems of 2017!

Unlike last year when EDM basically ruled the charts from top to bottom, the list of summer anthems I thought for 2017 was fairly low! Even I was bummed because I love whenever the DJs release banging music during the summer months. Everybody is looking for a party so it’s a good time to release music in this genre. However, I don’t usually like when artists, especially pop singers release new albums from June to late August, because you can clearly tell that were only made for the summer. They have those like Caribbean and exotic music and it honestly gets annoying pretty quickly!

Here are some of the popular tracks I heard this summer!

Body Like A Back Road by Sam Hunt
Slow Hands by Naill Horan
Sign Of The Times by Harry Styles
Stay by Zedd featuring Alessia Cara
Weak by AJR
Sweat by All-American Rejects
Help by Papa Roach
Issues by Julia Michaels
Believer by Imagine Dragons
Now Or Never by Halsey
Galway Girl by Ed Shereen
Despectio by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber
Most Girls by Hailee Steinfeld
Sorry Not Sorry by Demi Lovato
Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift
Something Just Like This by The Chainsmokers featuring Coldplay

I never create this playlists according to charts or anything like that, I just try to pay attention to what I hear on the radio or Spotify and make my selection from there! So we can agree to disagree on this batch of songs, if you have any others that you think did fairly well this summer you can also create a mini playlist in a comment  down below and we can talk about them! Otherwise, I hope you enjoy this mini playlist!

If you’d like to listen to Summer 2016 Playlist, click here!

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Song Review: “Drag Me Down” by One Direction

I recently just celebrated my one year anniversary of becoming a 1D fan. It’s a little bittersweet because not only before that the group celebrated their five years as being a group, but with one less member. If you’ve been keeping up with all the entertainment buzz or living under a rock at times like myself then you might know about Zayn Malik just signed a contract with RCA just one week ago. A day later which floored me One Direction released their new single without their fifth member. Thanks to Facebook trends, I found out about of those when I login to my account. Apparently it doesn’t matter how much I try to take away, websites just assume you need to read the bullshit!

When I heard about “Drag Me Down” for the first time, it was literally like 20 minutes after I had gotten up that morning! Thank god I didn’t have to keep my music down that day, but I thought it was interesting. Is it wrong that you can tell who is who in this track? I mean, I’ve listened to three out of four of their albums but I’ve always had trouble figuring out who was who whenever they would sing together. I like the fact that you can clearly hear Liam and Niall, I hardly hear them unless it’s like more of a ballad. This song has a soft, but up beat too! It’s got a nice beat, very poppy but not overwhelming! I was very impressed with it. I’m actually looking forward to new music from both sides. I wish all the best for Zayn, Harry, Liam, Niall and Louis.

What do you think of One Direction’s new song? 

Nothing Lasts Forever

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If you’re currently sick and tired of hearing about Zayn Malik leaving One Direction, this is not the post for you. For everybody else, let’s get right to it. It happened. It actually happened and why does it usually happen whenever I just get into the group or artist? That’s the one thing I’ve never been able to figure out. Zayn left One Direction, the news came after he left the tour because he was “stressed.” He left to be a normal 22 year old outside of the media. When I heard the news about this, I knew I’d have some thoughts about that and thought I’d share them on here too!

I remember watching their film This Is Us and was of course hooked to that after seeing it the first time, but my sister and I were both sad for the guys because they didn’t have much of a private life, they were kind of thrown into this during their time on The X Factor four years ago, they can’t be normal people going through their ups and downs without somebody saying something about it or taking their pictures while they’re out and about, so I feel for all five of them, not just Zayn. I understood his reason for leaving.

Now about the song that Naughty Boy released, I thought that was a little fast. Whether or not it was Zayn’s descision or not, it was still pretty quick! We all know that there’s a good chance all five members of One Direction will want to release solo music projects. Harry, Louis, and Liam have been writing and composing songs for themselves and other artists in the last few years. I don’t usually read music blogs or articles of that nature, but I did find one that got me, I don’t remember the website of where I saw it on but they “found out” that Zayn was working on his solo project with Naughty Boy, we’ve all known about that. We might not wanted to believe it at times, but you can’t expect them to drift away. Something that everybody keeps forgetting that these are FIVE individuals, they might want to go in different directions at one point in their lives and we are going to have to accept it and move on. Something that I’ve also kept in mind is that we can choose to see this in a bad or good way, maybe the guys need a break from each other for a little while. A quote I’ve recently found in the mess of all this.

“The bad news – nothing lasts forever. The good news – nothing lasts forever.”   

I’ve been thinking of the time where I had both of my childhood boy bands break up. I grew up in the 90’s so the break up of N’Sync burned me bad, but not as bad as the news of Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys leaving the group in 2004. Holy cow! I was sad but even back then I knew things couldn’t have lasted long. All members of BSB have had separate careers outside of the group, even N’Sync too! Despite Justin being the only one that I’ve seen have a successful solo music career, everybody was freaking excited about the reunion performance last year at the Billboard Awards. That’s another thing that fans keep forgetting about these groups and bands, that even though they might be leaving the group – that doesn’t mean that they’ll never get back together! Who knows maybe in a few more years if they are all on good terms with each other, maybe Zayn will join them for in 10 or 20 years. These guys have been through so much and clearly love all of their fans so much that they will never be gone.

Backstreet Boys have been together for 20 years! It’s been a long journey for them too! Kevin came back into the group early 2012 and they released their first album as five members again in the summer of 2013. Every group has had a break up of some kind, whether the original members leave and only one is left or they disband altogether. It’s still heartbreaking! When everybody heard about My Chemical Romance break up, my entire Facebook page exploded! Everybody was so sad. Classic rock band Guns ‘N’ Roses has had every original member leave the band except for Axl Rose. I can’t even tell you how many times they’ve had to replace a member. However, not every break up can be considered a bad thing. Singer Tarja was symphonic metal’s Nightwish first lead vocalist and after leaving the band, she has had a very successful career! Remember R&B group Destiny’s Child? You gotta remember that Beyonce was once in the group too! They even changed formation twice, before becoming a trio. I also feel like that both Kelly and Michelle have had excellent careers too!

We need to stop expecting that our favorites are perfect, they’re not. They may have dreamt of becoming what they are, but on certain scales I don’t think they all expected where they’d end up. They’re all human beings, so let them be just that! Musicians count on their fans so much to go to their shows, buy merchandise, etc so they can continue to live their dreams. It takes a lot out of one a person, imagine what it does to five people. It’s not easy. I love being a fan of music and I’ll support them in any way I can, that goes for good and bad.

Music Video Review: One Direction’s “Night Changes”

I think I’ve been getting lazier as the days go by. It might the colder temperatures or it could just be me altogether. Whatever the reason though, I thought I’d push aside my normal Tune Tuesday routine and do a music video review instead. This one has been long overdue, but considering I can’t stop thinking about what I would talk about I need to let this out. So bear with me as I talk about One Direction. Again.

One Direction released their second music video to help promote their album, Four on November 21st. See, I told you it was long overdue! I wasn’t on the hype for it after being disappointed with their music video for “Steal My Girl” but leave it to me, once they posted a collage photo of the different scenes of the guys, I’ll be honest a spark got me excited. Something about that collage made me think of Christmas. So when it was released, it didn’t take me long before I had to watch it. Probably a good two or three hours worth depending whether or not I saw it early in the morning and had to wait until somebody got up to watch it with the music playing. Each verse is separated out with Zayn being first, then Liam, Harry, Louis and lastly Niall. All five boys have different scenes by themselves and they act like they’re taking a girl out on five different places. Seems like every hardcore 1D fan’s dream honestly!

When I first heard the song “Night Changes” I just loved it! I unfortunately had to wait until the release date of the album to hear it. Every link I found on YouTube wouldn’t load fast enough or the quality was awful. The radio also played “Steal My Girl” and “Ready To Run” more than this single. This song has a very slow, but strong romantic feel to it. Of course, I wanted the music video to have some element of a romantic vibe to reflect the song. Thankfully, I did get that this time around. For each “date” it was very adorable and quirky to see how each one would respond to each date. My favorite date out of all five is probably between Liam and Harry’s. I’ve got it on my bucket list that I’d actually like to go on a date to a carnival. Technically in a way, I already have but that’s another story! Honestly, Harry’s date was the most ideal date. I could see him sliding all over that skating rink, Best acting out of the whole thing would have to be Zayn. I’ll explain why next. I said the photo collage had a Christmas feel to it right? Well, one of them had an ideal wintery/Christmas feel date. Niall wore an ugly sweater for his date and had a fire-place in his part. Very home-y but romantic kind of date.

 Although things seem so sweet and innocent, nothing would stay that way, especially for a One Direction video. There has to be some element of being hilarious whether it be in the background of it or just in front. As soon as it gets  to 2:29 all hell breaks loose. From the first time watching it, you are immediately swoon by the feelings of romance but then things drastically change and it is hilarious how all five dates end very badly.  Out of all the endings, the worst way to end a date were probably Liam, Harry and Louis’s. Liam throws up after going on a go-cart ride by using his dates hat, Harry wants to do a spin as a couple like professional skaters who have practiced on that exact move for weeks and breaks his arm and his date’s ankle and Louis gets arrested for speeding. In a way, I think every girl likes a bad boy so getting one speeding ticket wouldn’t consider not getting a second date but that’s just me! Both Niall and Zayn’s dates were bad but not as bad. Accidents happen, even if one’s shirt gets caught on fire. The reason why I like Zayn’s acting on how his date turned out was that honestly no matter how a date turns out with Zayn, you never walk away from him! He almost made me cry and I’m not kidding either!

I really liked this music video a lot more than the first one. Nothing was awkward about it, too much in it, or anything. If you were going out on a date with anybody, this might be a good video to watch ahead of time. I’m being serious here. If these dates were real, with different people (sorry 1D fans!) and the situations were still the same. Would you really walk away? I mean, I see Liam or Harry’s date not on the top of getting a second date anytime soon, but accidents do happen. I’m getting a little too serious with this review. I’ll stop here while I’m ahead. Hopefully the next music video review I do won’t take me three weeks to make. I hope you enjoyed this! Which date was your favorite?