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Song Review // Jensen McRae – ”Wolves”

Beautifully crafted. Perfectly worded. Iconic. Show-Stopping…

This song made my jaw drop, put a knot in my stomach, all while simultaneously making me fall in love with music all over again. 

The instrumentation is simple and raw which is exactly how the song is supposed to be portrayed. When you think about what it represents, there’s nothing more you should add to the instrumentation because it’s the honest to God truth and we don’t need to cover it up as the wolves in disguise are. The guitar riff is consistent and stagnant yet haunting. This complements Jensen’s incredibly low vocal tone and gives excellent delivery to the message she has about the wolves.

We’re talking about the people who prey on people as wolves do. 

Let’s take a look at the first verse. 

I was 15, still in the valley

Walking in a parking garage

First time I met a wolf in person

At first I thought it was a dog

I tried to dodge him, he was faster

Than I’d ever had to be

He smiled and howled in the same moment

It knocked the wind right out of me

Let’s point out that when she means – ‘‘At first I thought it was a dog’’ – it simply means what it is if you’re looking at it as a wolf from an animal perspective. But in the perspective of a wolf being (in this case) a man, this hints at the ‘‘nice guy’’ persona that these predators put out and victims mistakenly fall for. 

Verse 2: 

I was 19, still fun at parties

He plied me with shot after shot

He assured me he was harmless

Why did I ever trust a fox?

I ignored all of my teachings

How I survived, I can’t believe

I almost let him get his claws in

Still knocks the wind right out of me

This part stopped me in my tracks. Now if it wasn’t obvious, she clearly nods to the wolf as a human cisgender male. 

‘‘I was 19, still fun at parties’’ – at which now, she longer can be ‘‘fun’’

‘‘I ignored all of my teachings’’ – women are raised differently from men to be wary of them 

The way she sings ‘‘I almost let him get his claws in’’ – truly breaks my heart because the vocal performance sounds as if she’s choked up from this traumatizing incident, even as it was noted an ‘‘almost’’ incident

Chorus: 

Now I bury my smile and show no interest

Now I carry myself a little different

Now I avoid the woods

Now I know the wolves

This! Chorus! 

There’s a reason why we don’t smile or ‘show any interest’ because we’re afraid of what might happen to us. Jensen has done an incredible job writing from the perspective as a predator in the wild and working that into the realities of victims of sexual assault. She’s truly created one of my favorite songs and one of the best lyrically written songs (IMO), but take a listen to Wolves, as well as her newly released EP, ”Who Hurt You?” and tell me what you think!

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Music News Reviews

Album Review: The Vamps “Cherry Blossom”

As a longtime listener of The Vamps, I was very eager to get an advance of their 5th studio album Cherry Blossom. I’ve been listening nonstop for a few weeks now, and I can confirm that it’s an all-out bop, with catchy hooks, solid vocals, and an all-around feel good album. Here’s some of our favorite songs on The Vamps new album Cherry Blossom.

The opening song on Cherry Blossom is Glory Days, and the first time I heard it, I was definitely in my feels. It has a super catchy hook: “I just wanna lie back in your room / While I’m getting high off of your fumes / And I’m thinking these are our glory days.” It’s a perfect song to start the album, because it’s a mix of a classic The Vamps sound, but with a more mature tone. They’ve gotten even better since Night & Day.

Next is Better, which has a throwback vibe to it, and you can’t really listen to it without moving along to the beat. It’s about getting complacent in a relationship and realizing that you can do better. “We should be lovers if there’s a spark / We should recover all that we lost”

Married in Vegas is one of the singles from the album, and for good reason. The piano dances around the song and adds a playful melody to the storyline of surrendering to your whims and getting married in Vegas.

Chemicals is sexy from the moment it starts. It’s about that dreamy feeling when you’re so into someone else. This song is catchy to the max, and there’s a rock sound mixed with growling vocals. “Sweet like caramel / The way that you get me high / Is something like chemicals”

Would You focuses on a lover second guessing their partner. “If I walked out the door would you even notice I’m gone / Would you even miss me at all?”

Bitter is one of those songs that has a super fun beat and tells the tale of a love that you just can’t get away from. The line, “You turn cold, and I turn bitter” will be stuck in your head all week.

The album rounds out with Part of Me, Protocol, and Nothing But You, which balance the album with some more serious themes about love lost and broken hearts.

Nothing But You is one of my personal favorites and picks up the tempo. I love the line, “Over and over doing over emotions / I know it’s hopeless so can we skip to the moment / Nothing I would lose if I know I’d / Wake up wearing nothing but you”

The last track on the album, Treading Water, starts with an acoustic guitar and solemn vocals. “This lonely heart of mine / Grows colder every night.” It ends, “I just wanna feel understood / Patiently I waited patiently to share all of my insecurities / First I really gotta work on me”

You can feel the growth in this album for The Vamps, who have continued to build their songwriting and musicianship in maturity and style. Cherry Blossom is a quality album that’s catchy in sound and relatable in lyrics. We can guarantee that you’ll be streaming this album for the rest of the year.

You can check out Cherry Blossom right here and follow The Vamps on Instagram here. Comment below with what your favorite song off the album is!

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Interviews Music News

Georgia Webster releases first single “Tell Your Mom”

“Now I don’t know what to do / I got a call yesterday afternoon from someone I used to know / Summer nights and the way we kissed / Thought I was done, didn’t know I missed it / But when I heard her voice I couldn’t breathe / Tell your mom to stop calling me”

These are the very clever lyrics from 17-year-old Massachusetts native Georgia Webster. Nearly two million people watched her serenade us singing and playing guitar from her bathroom in a TikTok video that went viral last month. I hopped on a Zoom call with Georgia to learn more about her writing process and her new single that drops today.

Georgia started writing songs in fourth grade. “When I was ten or eleven, I started writing songs for school projects. My first song was about Ulysses S. Grant. People in my class kept singing it after because it was catchy. So from there, I wrote songs for other school projects. One was about horses and another was about the Aztecs. Then around sixth grade, I started writing songs about my friends and relationships and it grew from there.”

I asked her what it was like when she found out the video had gone viral. She said, “I was pleasantly surprised. I woke up and it had 100,000 likes and I was like, “What is going on?!” From there, Georgia wanted to get the song recorded and out into the world as quickly as possible. Her dad was a big help with helping her find a recording studio to make the song.

“He has always been really involved in my music. He didn’t have a background in engineering, but he’s figured out all of the sound stuff and helps me set it up for shows. He’s just always helping me.”

After the video went viral, Georgia decided to have the song recorded. “I realized I needed to get the song produced and into a real song.

I asked her what she thought of the song after hearing it recorded, and she said, “This song is definitely–I can hear it being on the radio. I have so many songs and this is the first one that I’ve actually heard it come together as an actual song, which was really cool for me.”

When it comes to writing, Georgia prefers the writing process to performing. “I love writing the songs way more than performing them. I like being in my room and writing songs. Once it comes together, that’s the height of it for me. And my rule is if it takes more than 20-30 minutes, then it’s not a great song.”

“Usually for me, songs start with something that actually happened to me, and then it grows into more of an exaggeration. I’ll write about pretty much anything, but a lot of it is dating and that kind of stuff. If I’m writing about a relationship, it’s not forced.”

Some of the people commenting on her TikToks mentioned that Georgia reminded them of a young Taylor Swift. “That’s the biggest compliment to me. She’s one of my favorite artists and I can see myself being that singer-songwriter vibe but also pop-country. Lennon Stella is also one of my favorites, and I love Chelsea Cutler. They’re such good songwriters.”

Georgia also covers songs on her YouTube, including songs by Mazzy Star, Cage the Elephant, Lennon Stella, and Billie Eilish. You can check out her YouTube page here.

Her plan is to keep building herself as an artist and writing more songs before signing with anyone, but she does have an acoustic version of Tell Your Mom in the works for people that loved the stripped down version. “I want to release an EP soon, and then I also want to do some SoundCloud acoustic covers and stuff that people can listen to.”

She’s a senior in high school now, but she’s thinking of going to Berkley, Belmont, or a music school in California next year. A lover of all types of writing, Georgia has also begun writing a book, but of course today she’s focused on the release of her first single, Tell Your Mom.

“I want people to hear the whole song. Just hearing the little bit of it, you don’t get the whole story line, so I’m excited for it to be out in the world. And I have so many songs that I think people would love.”

Her new single, Tell Your Mom, is out today, and we’re so excited for you to listen to it! Check it out below, and follow Georgia’s SoundCloud here.

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Music News Reviews

Shallou creates pure magic on debut album, Magical Thinking

Whether you’re social distancing at home or driving to your (essential) job, consider putting on a track or two from Shallou’s newest album, Magical Thinking. It contains thirty-eight minutes of pure emotional joy that deserves to be thoroughly listened to. The first few seconds of the intro track immediately brought me back to a past summer and pushed all worries I had from this difficult time out of the way. Nothing like a nice drive with ‘‘Forget’’ playing in the background to make you feel like the world is back to normal, even if it isn’t. 

The album surrounds the concept of memory loss, holding onto those intimate moments before they become out of reach. It shifts from the sadness of memory loss to represent the seasons with all of it’s changes and how that relates to people. The album holds an emotional aspect to it; maybe it’s from the introspective lyrics, or the spacious, light tone of the vocals, but it definitely left me with a heavy heart and a breath of fresh air. The production seems slightly opposite from emotional as it stems from joyous electronic pop but does a magnificent job keeping the allure of ‘‘whimsical sadness’’ that Shallou describes in his music. 

The album features collaborators; Ashe, Daya, Zachary Knowles, and many others, that makes it all even more worth listening to as each artist brings their own flair without compromising the overall message in each track. 

My favorite track would have to be, Older featuring Daya. It’s everything you need in a song from the combination of Daya’s vocals, Shallou’s production, and the top-notch songwriting putting it at my number one track on-repeat. The lyrics, ‘‘Maybe one day when I am older, I might understand why love doesn’t happen to everyone who wants it’’ is so beautifully written and performed, it is just the heart-breaking, ambient ear candy we were all looking for. Shallou has built a name for himself as one of music’s most organic artists who successfully gained over three million streams thus far. I cannot wait to hear more from Shallou and expect nothing less than something magical from him on the next release. 

LISTEN HERE 

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Interview with Dhruv

Trading lectures and lessons for studio recording sessions, singer/songwriter Dhruv elaborates on the life of a college student– who happens to have a single with 500k streams, and all without any industry help. If you know anything about music, you know that it is extremely hard to promote an artist without even a little help, but Dhruv’s talent proves otherwise. His first single, ‘‘double take’’ was released in May 2019 and has since amassed over 500,000 streams alone. As a student, he plans on making his way into the music industry, one way or the other.

Now, we are not here to talk about how well he seems to be doing in
school. We want to know if his music is any good! I was lucky enough to get the chance to hear his unreleased track ‘‘Moonlight’’ which is set to be released today, February 21st. The song depicts the naivety and simplicity of a relationship, and it is so well-written musically and lyrically that you’ll be falling in love with it too.

Growing up queer in Singapore, dhruv spoke
about the difficulties navigating his identity in a place that was not nearly as progressive. ‘‘Lyrically, it is about pining for something that seems as if it only existed in movies. I wanted to write something intoxicating and beautiful like the love we see on the big screen, something I never got to experience in real-life, I only learnt about love as I saw it in pop-culture/movies/books,etc.’’ There are lines in the song that give examples, ‘‘poetry and hand-picked flowers, say you’ll meet me at the altar’’ and ‘‘true love, kinda hoped it would feel like a rom-com’’ that directly represents the movie kind of love that I searched for.

Dhruv sends his love to his fans, and apologizes for the long wait. He made sure to only release what he felt was ready to be heard. Be on the lookout for more of Dhruv and stream Moonlight on all platforms today!

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Crowdsurfer Collection Playlists

February 2020 Playlist

Our resident playlist curator and NYC-based music producer, Sonca Nguyen, has agreed to grace our music magazine with new tunes every month of 2020.

If you don’t yet know her, you should know that her playlists are pretty iconic. From a mix of the latest releases and local favorites, she always seems to capture the mood of the month with her curated playlist.

Head on over to Spotify to check out this month’s playlist for February, and let us know what you think! And while you’re at it, be sure to follow Sonca and Crowdsurfer on Instagram.

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Cellus Hamilton on Rapping in the Subway

We’re so excited to bring you a behind the scenes look at NYC artist and performer Cellus Hamilton. He moved to New York from Atlanta to pursue his music career, and he spends a few hours every week performing in Subway cars to commuters and tourists. We followed Cellus during one of his shifts and talked to him about the process, why he started rapping on the subway, and where he’s headed in the future.

Watch the video below:

If you liked this video, check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.

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Music News

New Artist Alert: Molly Lovette

Molly Lovette is an up-and-coming country pop artist. She’s making big moves this year and so enlisted the help of our own Lauren Hayes to make a video to kick off 2020!

Shot in her hometown in Missouri, Molly showcases her voice, guitar skills, and a wardrobe with just enough sparkle (which we love). We’ll be keeping our eyes on this lady as she’s sure to be releasing new music soon.

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Crowdsurfer Collection Playlists

January 2020 Playlist

Our resident playlist curator and NYC-based music producer, Sonca Nguyen, has agreed to grace our music magazine with new tunes every month of 2020.

If you don’t yet know her, you should know that her playlists are pretty iconic. From a mix of the latest releases and local favorites, she always seems to capture the mood of the month with her curated playlist.

Head on over to Spotify to check out this month’s playlist for January, and let us know what you think! And while you’re at it, be sure to follow Sonca and Crowdsurfer on Instagram.